Comments welcome by email. I don't care if you disagree with me but name-calling and cussing are not acceptable. Comments that are just rude and not relevant will not be posted.
Auditory : 47% Visual : 52% Left : 50% Right : 50%
Carol, you are one of those rare individuals who are perfectly "balanced" in both your hemispheric tendencies and your sensory learning preferences. However, there is both good news and bad news.
A problem with hemispheric balance is that you will tend to feel more conflict than someone who has a clearly established dominance. At times the conflict will be between what you feel and what you think but will also involve how you attack problems and how you perceive information. Details which will seem important to the right hemisphere will be discounted by the left and vice versa, which can present a hindrance to learning efficiently.
In the same vein, you may have a problem with organization. You might organize your time and/or space only to feel the need to reorganize five to ten weeks later.
On the positive side, you bring resources to problem-solving that others may not have. You can perceive the "big picture" and the essential details simultaneously and maintain the cognitive perspective required. You possess sufficient verbal skills to translate your intuition into a form which can be understood by others while still being able to access ideas and concepts which do not lend themselves to language.
Your balanced nature might lead you to second-guess yourself in artistic endeavors, losing some of the fluidity, spontaneity and creativity that otherwise would be yours.
With your balanced sensory styles, you process data alternately, at times visually and other times auditorially. This usage of separate memories may cause you to require more time to integrate information or re-access it. When presented with situations which force purely visual or purely auditory learning, increased anxiety is likely and your learning efficiency will decrease.
Your greatest benefit is that you can succeed in multiple fields due to the great plasticity and flexibility you possess.
I do disagree a bit with this assessment. Not the "perfectly balanced" brain thing. That's been obvious to me for years.
But thinking and feeling go hand in hand for me. My actions generally follow my feelings but nothing is going to feel right if it doesn't make sense! (On the other hand, more than once I've gotten in big trouble by going with glaringly obvious and logical choices that didn't feel right.)
Another point of disagreement: I learn quite easily, naturally integrating visual and auditory info, especially when I get words/sounds and pictures at the same time—none of this "separate memories" nonsense! I remember an amazing amount of info from watching/listening to nature documentaries or baseball games on tv, for instance. And I'm a whiz at Jeopardy! because I can look at the printed version of the question at the same time it's read aloud—takes me twice as long to come up with an answer if I only hear or read a question.
Unfortunately, success in multiple fields has not been mine, largely because I was always nagged to "pick one thing and stick to it"—for me, the path of doom because I always got bored with just one thing and was distracted by too many other interests. By the time I realized it was too possible (stamping foot) to integrate several interests into one career, the non-thinking parts of my body decided to go kaplooey. Barely have the energy to get through a day at home anymore, much less tackle outside endeavors.
Sigh...
Oh well. At least it's not too late for my son, who seems to have followed in my path of having "too many" interests. I've always encouraged him to think of ways to participate in several things he likes rather than an all-or-nothing approach to anything. We'll see how that goes over the next few years as he finishes his mission and goes back to college.
9:44:18 PM
This-or-That — Reading
1. Newspapers or magazines? Both!
2. Books-on-tape or regular books? Regular books. I'd only ever listen to a tape in the car but if it's a good book it would distract me from driving. (If it's not a good book, why would I waste my time with it?)
3. Paperback or hardcover? I like hardcovers BUT after you've moved a zillion times, you really come to appreciate paperbacks! Not to mention that your average hardcover is too big to shove into your purse for reading on the bus.
4. Fiction or non-fiction? Both!
5. Sci-Fi/Fantasy or romance novels? SF of course. I find most romance novels to be so overwhelmingly unrealistic that I choke on them. (I have an easier time believing in time travel and elves!)
6. Borrow from library or buy books (either new or used)? Buy—new and used. It got to the point that I was spending so much on overdue fines that I decided that I'd be better served putting the money into books I could just keep—and write in!
7. Subscribe to magazines or buy on newsstand? This is a toss up. Cheaper with subscriptions but so often the magazines are mangled before they ever get to me. On the newsstand side, the magazines are in good shape when I get them and I'm supporting a local small business. (I usually go to a magazine shop—the supermarkets etc. around here don't carry most of the magazines I actually want to read.)
8. Current best-sellers or classic literature? Some of each and everything in between, though I'm usually reading best sellers a few years after they first come out. (Like when the paperbacks hit the thrift stores!)
9. Read books once, or re-read favorites every so often? Depends on the book whether or not I'll go back to it again. I do have a few favorites that are great for those days when I want something that I know for sure won't have any nasty surprises.
10. Here in the U.S., we have two hot best-sellers...former First Lady Hillary Clinton's memoirs, and the new Harry Potter book (coming out June 21). If you had to read one, which one...Hillary or Harry? Why? Duh! No brainer. Harry Potter, of course. I don't even want to watch Hillary on tv for free. Why would I lay out money for her book? On the other hand, Harry so far has been worth every penny I've spent on him.
7:20:45 PM
Miscellany
§ - Sunshine Can Be Good Medicine - "One symptom of Vitamin D deficiency is pain and weakness in the muscles and bones. Based on that symptom, Holick has suggested that some disorders diagnosed as fibromyalgia may in fact be Vitamin D deficiency."
§ - 'Fluorescent fish' give the green light to GM pets - "Scientists have created the ultimate pet: genetically modified fish that glow in the dark. In future, there will be no need for aquarium lights—fluorescent fish will provide their own illumination."
§ - Man jumps several floors off escalator in SF mall, twice - "It could have been a dare, it could have just been general buffoonery. It's hard to say. He could have been on drugs. All we know for a fact is that he jumped twice."
§ - Germans have 'too much time off' - "Germans get up to 17 public holidays a year, depending on which region they live in. This compares with eight days in Britain and 11 in France. They also enjoy a shorter average working week, of 35 hours, than workers in many other European countries."
I was thinking I'd make this a monthly section—but obviously there are more bad drivers out there than I realized! (Since I meet up with plenty of them on a regular basis, I shouldn't have been surprised...)
§ - 20 Dead in Traffic Accident - "43,286 people have died in accidents in China so far this year, most of them on the country's notoriously dangerous roads."
I got into a car accident a week or so ago, I ended up slinging my car three lanes over to avoid getting clobbered by some retarded Emo looking girl who decided stopping at a stop sign was not for her. Ahhh, bless 16 year old rule breakers. She tried to leave, I had to get in front of her car and tell her I was going to drag her out and beat her ass, meanwhile a large group of kids at a bowling alley began to chant for me to kick her ass kick her ass over and over. It wasn't until I began shouting her plate number over and over that she got out of her car. God, I was so lividly angry (which doesn't take a whole lot in the first place.) Good news is, because of my lightening quick reaction time and flinging my car into the absolute other side of the road, I was able to avoid major damage to my car. Today, I got a big fat insurance check for over a grand (thank you State Farm Insurance.) I think tonight we eat steak from a high dollar grocery store my friends, yes, steak, no Ramen noodles for us!
Road Hazards!
