Holidays, such as Thanksgiving, are times for tradition. The idiosyncrasies that make up my family’s holiday traditions are precisely the reasons I look forward to the holiday season all year. What would this fourth week in November be in America without turkey, football, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade? My personal Thanksgiving favorites include enjoying […]

Roughly 30 million Americans do it every week. And I hate to admit being one of them.
But watching American Idol has become a habit for many people as the show has grown into an icon of modern culture. Why do so many people watch? Perhaps they tune in to hear the judges share uplifting aphorisms […]

As my experience with the masters program in positive psychology at Penn nears its conclusion, I thought it might be appropriate to spend my time this month writing about adventure.
The last year certainly has been an adventure, particularly for many of my classmates who took time away from their careers and their families to travel […]

Every few days or so, when I need a break from the world, I go to my sanctuary on top of a remote mountain in the Canadian Rockies.
Well, at least my brain is convinced that I do.
During my junior year as a varsity collegiate rower in Boston, my coach – concerned about some of our […]

The approaching Memorial Day weekend marks, for us Americans at least, the official start of the summer season. And summer just might be the season of positive psychology. Beautiful, long days that allow for outdoor activities into the late dusk hours. The laughter of children playing baseball in the street. Festivals celebrating everything from art […]

 
Derrick Carpenter, MAPP ‘07, is currently a research coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania studying perceptual learning and mathematics education. In the past few years, he has been employed by the psychology departments at Yale, Harvard and Tufts. Derrick has his B.S. in Mathematics from MIT.