Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Forty Bucks is Forty Bucks

Forty bucks is forty bucks, right? So I find myself in the research building of the psychology department at the University of Iowa participating in one of those studies where you fill out four thousand questions and get interviewed by an eighteen year old who believes a BA in pysch followed by an MBA is this ticket to a six figure income in marketing or advertising in a Fortune 500 company.

This particular study has a lovely title given today's political environment, it's called "Personality, Anxiety and Depression". Dare I say the shelves of our booksellers will be filled to the brim with similarly titled memoirs in the years to come? If I had more confidence in the general public's ability to embrace the concept of irony, I'd keep this one for myself. Ha Ha, who really gets to choose what their book is going to be called anyway? Maybe, Dean Koontz.

Meanwhile back at the lab....question three hundred & fifty-two: "You have to sit through a long concert of boring music you do not like or be in a bank during an armed robbery, which would you do?" Okay, clearly I feel like I should the say concert. I'm a middle-aged woman and I've already led a fairly dramatic life. An evening of Kenny G or, worse yet, the 1812 Overture, ought to be a no-brainer but this future Forbes magazine cover girl is paying me to be honest, isn't she? The question doesn't specify I would be shot in the robbery or even forced to squat down for an unnecessarily uncomfortable period of time. Hell, I might even wind up being the hero and get to be on prime time news so I clearly had to go with option numero dos.

Hhhm, this is another post w/ a bit of a science theme. I'm going to resist the urge to wrap this one up in a nice little package. I'm working on my "issue" of perfectionism. It's one of the darned reasons I qualified for the study to begin with.

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