Kathryn

Being a Psychologist, what is the interpretation as a character or trait of “balloon in the sky” and “gently swaying tree”.

Thank you very much.

Here’s the link: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/graduate/mapp/

It is an applied program, so I suspect that the admissions people will be more interested in ways that you could apply the knowledge than in previous publications. What are your work experiences? What domains of application do you understand particularly well?

Good luck!
Kathryn

http://harvardmagazine.com/1998/07/alumni.why.html

I wonder what the world would think if I offered my honest submission to the alumni magazine: Claudia Cummins recently left Washington, D.C., where she worked in the White House and then served as a journalist, to return to her family in Mansfield, Ohio. She works part-time at her family’s hinge factory, teaches yoga in area banquet halls, and babysits her brother’s children on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She’d love to hear from anyone passing through north-central Ohio–contact her at her parents’ home, where she still lives.

The truth is, I wake up most mornings with a happy heart. I’ve crafted a life full of the people and places and creative explorations that I love. I write endlessly, and practice my happy yoga, and many mornings walk through the sky-filled meadows behind our house. My part-time job, in an office I share with my two brothers at our (utterly unglamorous) business, offers me ample time for around-the-world travels. My siblings, my parents, my cousins are also my best friends. I’ve found in them that safety net of unconditional love and laughter so desperately missed in my years away from home. And I’m beginning to feel I’m an important strand in this web of helping hands as well. I have a growing circle of yoga students who say I help them live fuller, happier, wiser lives. All this means more to me than any of my Harvard honors. …
And so here I am, living either a really small life in a little town in Ohio, or, as I would like to believe, living a far bigger life than I could have ever fathomed. As I recently wrote another Ivy Leaguer, I am in paradise as long as I don’t think about the future. Maybe by the time our fifteenth reunion–or twenty-fifth–comes around, I’ll feel okay enough about all this to come back. Perhaps by then I’ll be old enough not to care so much about how my life reads on paper. Maybe I’ll be wise enough to remember that words and titles and addresses can never capture a life well lived. And that this world is so much more vast and varied, bigger and more brilliant, than any Ivy-covered promise could ever foretell.

Deciding on the Penn program wasn’t an entirely rational process. I heard about it, I was intrigued, I was accepted, and I decided to go.

For me, it has been very worth it. I had been looking for a direction change for a number of years, and the MAPP program helped me make it. Plus I’ve met hundreds of fascinating people — professors, students, people who have gotten into positive psychology in other ways, people who are just plain interested, people who are skeptical, … I miss my old partners at IBM, but I’ve found new partnerships out here.

Thanks for asking.
Kathryn