Zach Wasielewski
Dr. Roth
Pavlov/ Lycabettus Blog
4/17/13
Waking up
for class was a breeze because I awoke fully recharged and ready to go. Walking to class I ended up having a few
Euros in my pocket. This was not
uncommon because whenever I would spend money the change they returned back was
ridiculous. Since I had 2 Euro in my
pocket I decided to treat myself to the donut house. The donut house is a bakery on the way from
our apartment to the school. They have
bread, cookies, pastry dishes, desert, sandwiches, and much more. The most important item on their menu is the
donuts! The donuts are the size of my
head at least and taste out of this world.
The best part of these donuts was that they were only one Euro and
breakfast was complete. I started to
scarf down the donut on the walk from the donut house to class. While I was eating the donut the only thing
that I wanted was a big glass of ice cold milk so I could wash down each bite
of my donut. Walking into class just
finishing up my donut from the rest of the walk I was ready to talk about Corelli’s
Mandolin.
Although
today Prof. Roth decided he wanted to talk about Pavlov first. He asked us to remember three terms from the
day before. These terms were pressure,
schedules, and extreme conditioning.
These three terms were the experimental work of Ivan Pavlov. He would do test with dogs that were stimulus
vs. response. He would give the dog food
with a bell and shock the dog with a buzzer sound. During his experiment he noticed that the
dog’s tail would wag when he heard the bell before the food was even
offered. The dog would also whimper and
cry when the buzzer sound was made. This
ended up taking a different amount of time for each type of dog. His work showed that each dog reacts to a
different amount of sensory stimulations that are received. The work with the dogs would later be used by
Americans which changed the modern social control. Pressure is the sensory stimulations the dogs
received. This is the amount of pressure
that maximizes the learning process. The
schedule is when the dog receives the food throughout the day. The dog would receive the same schedule every
day. Finally extreme conditions are
brainwashing the dog’s brain clear of all existing learned responses. This was when the lab flooded and the dogs
were terrified of water and anytime they hear running water they whimper and
cry. This reminded me of when I would go
to feed my cats and I would open up the cabinet were the cat’s food was. My cats would run right up to my leg before I
would even pull the food out of the counter and I never knew how they knew it
was food time. Learning about it and
being able to relate it really made learning about Pavlov a lot easier and
interesting. After discussing Pavlov we
turned our attention to discussing Corelli’s Mandolin. Corelli’s Mandolin is about an Antonio
Corelli, an Italian Captain and Pelagia the daughter of the local physicians,
Dr Iannis.
After class
I walked back to the apartment to get some lunch. For lunch I decided to make grilled cheese
because that is one of my favorite lunches of all time. At home I would always make myself grilled
cheese for lunches so I am a pretty good grilled cheese maker. After I finished making my grilled cheese I
brought it out onto the deck and enjoyed the food on the roof top deck. Getting use to not having a roof top deck
back at home is going to be very hard because that roof top was one of my
favorite places to sit and enjoy the sun or moonlight. After I enjoyed my grilled cheeses I sat out
on the deck for a while. It was such a
beautiful day that I said that I wanted to go to mount Lycabettus and Pat
agreed with me. We decided that we were
going to go get some gyros for dinner and then climb up to the top of Lycabettus
for the sunset.
Walking
about Lycabettus brought back memories for the first time we walked up to
Lycabettus as a class one of the first weeks in Athens. Being here for only 3 months really did fly
bye. Sitting at the top I could only
think that this would be one of the last times that I am going to have the view
of Athens from the top of the mountain.
Walking down is the only part that I truly hated. The reason why is walking around Athens I
noticed that my knees started to become shot.
When walking down stairs or any sort of downhill walking made my knees
throb. I am not going to miss having to
walk everywhere in town but I noticed that walking around I got to enjoy the
views and experience much more than if I was sitting in the back of a car. After getting back from mount Lycabettus I
came back to the apartment and had to end up reading the last part of Corelli’s
for class tomorrow.
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