Practicum

Purposes

We can make knowledge more complete with action. By including a practicum component in this course we provide opportunity to experiment with personal change in partnership with others. We use "experiment" to denote consciously chosen behavior that we carefully observe, record, and analyze.

Criteria

Please design experiment(s) to be completed, including recording and analysis, in three hours per week, Stanford's benchmark for one academic unit of credit. Plan to engage in experimental behavior, to journal your practice, and to note differences in other aspects of life that you perceive to be possibly related to practice.

Content

For example, you might:

• Sleep an additional 15-20 minutes each night
• Exercise 40 minutes on each of three days
• Meditate 30 minutes on each of four days
• Write emails or letters of appreciation for an hour on each of two days
• Take a two-hour hike or bike ride once a week
• Alter idiolect to affect feeling, thought, and perception (e.g., use negative words less often)
• Change dietary pattern (e.g., eliminate corn syrup)
• Do an electronic device "fast" (e.g., during meals, for an hour before bed, FB one day per week)
• Do some combination of the above

Choose a practicum about which you can be wholehearted. Feel free to mix and match - you may choose to adopt one practice for ten weeks, or you may choose one for two weeks, another for two weeks, or different ones on different days of the week, etc.. Author a life you want with experiment(s) you deem well-suited to you. Please consider what keystone habit you might address in lab. Please see Duhigg, Charles. (2012). "Keystone Habits, or the Ballad of Paul O'Neill." (Chapter 4, pp. 46-56). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. Link For more ideas, see Shake Up Your Life.

Each instructional team member is engaged in her or his practicum. We've more than a century of practice among us. We're glad to share this experience. You may also find one or more partners among other course participants.

As soon as you've even preliminary ideas about your proposed experiment(s), please describe them using practicum template provided on Canvas, and email practicum coordinator hilary@ {ecomagic.org} to let her know that you've done so. We look forward to sharing satisfaction generated by being and doing more as each of us intends.