Thanks – and bye for now!

It’s that time of the year again…the Christmas/holiday season is upon us at last.  

DPSN has been running now, in one form or another, for 10 years!  We’ve come a long way in that time, from our humble beginnings as the Diversityworks Peer Support Network, through to our latest iteration as a weekly blog and Facebook page.  We’ve seen our hugely successful MyFilm, 100 Days and #UMAL2M projects. And in the last four years we’ve welcomed on board some fantastic regular guest bloggers.

When it’s hard to find your heroes

A few weeks ago I got asked to give a guest lecture on addiction to a psychology undergraduate class at the University of Auckland.  To be fair, I was asked to fill in for the person who usually gives the lecture, who couldn’t make it. But I still felt just a little bit chuffed to be asked at all, given that I’m still really early in my career.  And nervous of course, giving a lecture to 150 students is no walk in the park when you’re not the biggest fan of public speaking!

The science of imagination

I have a confession to make (but it’s not such a bad one). TED, a worldwide organisation which brings together speakers on education, business, science, tech and creativity, has a Youtube channel entirely devoted to short educational videos on a wide range of topics.  My confession is that I’ve been slightly addicted to watching them lately, finding myself lost in a spiral of absorbing information on everything from how you digest food to how people lived in ancient Rome. They’re fascinating, and I strongly suggest you try them out.

The personal environment

I came across an interesting new term the other day – “proxemics”. Proxemics, a term coined by cultural anthropologist Edward Hall, is defined as the study of human use of space and their environments. In particular, the ways that we view our environments and the effect this has on our behaviour, communication and social interaction – something which is strongly influenced by culture.

The future of work

As someone who works a regular 8.30am to 5.00pm job (plus extra…), I read with interest about a New Zealand trust management company, Perpetual Guardian, and their trial of a four day working week.  That’s working a 32 hour week, for the same salary as a full time employee.