Research Unplugged Episode 1 – A cup of ambition: Happiness, humility, and Dolly Parton

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• Interviewers: Andrew Welsh, Tracy Woodford
• Guest: Dr. Judy Eaton
• Length of Interview: 28:57
• Listen to the Episode

00:00 [Intro music]

00:00:15 Andrew Welsh

Late October, Rainy Day it is so it looks like all that late summer. Nice sunshine is coming to an end.

00:00:22 Tracy Woodford

Right. It finally feels like fall.

00:00:25 Judy Eaton

It definitely does.

00:00:27 Andrew Welsh

It's pitch black when I get up to walk my dogs in the morning and it's pitch black when we get home.

00:00:34 Judy Eaton

Sad days.

00:00:37 Tracy Woodford

We were spoiled. We were spoiled.

00:00:38 Andrew Welsh

We were very much spoiled, but you know that's OK because that means after Halloween, Christmas is around the corner.

00:00:44 Judy Eaton

That's true.

00:00:46 Andrew Welsh

All right, that's enough of our friendly little banter. We're going to get started. This is the first episode of the Faculty and Human and Social Sciences podcast called Research Unplugged. Unplug, stay connected. What we're hoping to do is each month interview a different faculty member about their research, but we want this to be an accessible kind of interview for students and just people in the general public. Our first guest for our first episode is Doctor Judy Eaton, who's coming to us from the Department of Psychology.

00:01:16 Andrew Welsh

Thanks for joining us, Judy.

00:01:17 Judy Eaton

Hi. Thanks so much for inviting me. I'm very. Excited to be here.

00:01:19 Andrew Welsh

Excellent, excellent.

00:01:22 Andrew Welsh

With me is.

00:01:24 Tracy Woodford

Tracy Woodford. I’m the research coordinator in Faculty of Human and Social Sciences and I'm your sidekick.

00:01:31 Andrew Welsh

Not my sidekick. My co-host is. I think that's what we'll call you. And I'm Andrew Welsh. I'm a criminology professor and the associate Dean and the Co host of research unplugged. So, you're not my sidekick.

00:01:45 Andrew Welsh

So, I guess what we'll do is we're going to get started. We have some questions that we floated the questions out to you before. And again, this is really kind of more of an informal chat. We have questions, but it's OK if we go off topic or freestyle a little bit, but we're going to start off with kind of a light softball of a question, what drew you to psychology?

00:02:05 Judy Eaton

Yeah, a great question, and I've been thinking about this question because I don't think I ever set out to become a psychologist. I think I started out just being interested in how people tick and watching people and being introvert, I tended to observe rather than participate, so I think I was always just interested in observing people. And then when I went to university, I was trying to decide between journalism, which was a way to investigate how people tick versus psychology, which is a way to study how people tick. So, I took English and psychology and thought I'll figure it out later what I'm going to end up doing. And so, my interest in psychology was based on basically what a lot of people seem to think psychology is, is, which is counseling. And then I realized pretty quickly that I didn't really want to do that. So, then I sort of got interested in the research part of things. And so that really sparked what you know, you can do research, you can collect data, and you can learn about people. And that's really cool.

00:02:56 Andrew Welsh

It's interesting to say that because when I was in high school, I'd seen the movie “Silence of the Lambs” and thought, “Well, that's really interesting. I want to be going to forensic psychology, but very quickly after a job in customer service, realized that clinical psychology wasn't for me [laughs] and like you mentioned, it kind of sparked an interest hearing professors talk specifically about their research.

So, my follow up to that which you kind of started going into is at what point did you know that not only you liked psychology, but you wanted to be a professor?

00:03:28 Judy Eaton

Yeah, I came to that realization really late. I was probably in grad school at the time, so when I entered grad school thinking I want to learn how to do research, and that's really fun, but I don't, I'm too introverted to teach, I don't think that's something I would want to do. So, I'm just going to not do that and figure out what I’m gonna do. And then when I was in my first year of my PhD, I had the opportunity to teach a course and as soon as I started teaching that course, I realized that I loved teaching and so that was when I realized that a professor would be the perfect job for me. But before then, I wasn't really sure because I didn't really understand what teaching involved. I just thought you had to be an extrovert, you had to be comfortable. Just, you know, speaking off the top of your head in front of a class. And as I've learned over the years, that's not what it's all about. And so that's what appeals to me.

00:04:13 Andrew Welsh

I mean, I'm an introvert, so I'm curious as an introvert, how did you get comfortable, though, with standing in front of a room full of people?

00:04:22 Judy Eaton

It's taken a long time and I'm sure you have. You have found similar things. I mean, I think the more, the more it goes well, the more better the better you get at it, the more confident you get, but certainly it has taken years for me to feel that I can get up there without notes and and just talk about what I know. I think my early days were spent memorizing things and having, like, really detailed notes in front of me. But I was lucky that the first course I taught was, it was a part time. It was for part-time students, and it was an organizational psychology course, so they were all working mostly full time and I was this young person trying to teach them about the business world. And so, I just went into it saying to them “Look, I know the theories behind organizations, but you guys have the experience. So, let's do this together.” And they were so kind. I think they thought I was like 20 or something. I was a bit older at the time. But they thought I was younger than I was, so they were very kind to me, but that that was a really good first experience teaching. And I think that helped.

00:05:21 Tracy Woodford

I think it's really good to point that out for any of our students that are listening that may be interested in psychology, but they feel maybe they're too introverted to to be a professor too, and they see you and I know that you have very popular classes so people can look and you Oh well, if professor eat and start it out like that then I can too, right? So that it's a good it's a good view into the other side of research in academia.

00:05:51 Andrew Welsh

I remember just the first class I walked in to teach. I was so nervous, like sick to my stomach, and there was a mature student sitting at the very front who kind of joked like in a nice way. But you know, it made me even more nervous? She asked if I was old enough to teach the class [laughter]. It was a bit of a confidence shaker.

00:06:07 Tracy Woodford

Now if someone asked you that you would be, that would be a compliment.

00:06:10 Judy Eaton

You’d be delighted [laughter].

00:06:12 Andrew Welsh

No, I don't look like one of the students anymore, so no one's asking for my ID, not even at the bookstore [laughter]. So, or Hawk Shop. I'm sorry, not the bookstore. Alright. Well, you've already you've kind of communicated you have a passion for research. So, tell us a little bit about your research program.

00:06:27 Judy Eaton

Yeah. So, I want to tell you the history of the research and how I came to it though, because when I when I, so, when I graduated from my undergrad, I had a degree in English and a degree in psychology; I did a combined honour’s. And the job that I found at the time was working for a publishing company. And so, it was kind of a cool job. It was this legal publisher in Toronto, and they hired a bunch of liberal arts majors just out of university, and so we all had this kind of common experience, and you know, they didn't pay well and the work wasn't all that interesting. But it was a really fun place to work. And then after a couple of years, it was bought out by a bigger company and they started taking away all the benefits and the fun things that, you know, “Casual Friday” went out the window and the Christmas party was cancelled.

And so, people started not liking the company, they, the whole culture of the organization sort of went downward. And so, and I became kind of cynical about that. And I felt like, I didn't want to feel like I was a cynical person, so I wanted to understand what happened there.  And so, when I decided to go back to school, my master’s research was on how do, how do organizations contribute to people becoming cynical about their job. So organizational cynicism. And so that was sort of the beginning of interested, I'm interested in conflict and sort of where it comes from.

But after two years of studying that for my master’s research, I talked to a lot of people who had pretty negative experiences at work. I collected data from about 200 people who told me about the bad things their organizations had done, and I thought it was really interesting research, but I thought I can't continue to study the negative aspect of this. And so, in my PhD work, I focused more on forgiveness and apology and how you can sort of rectify or try to deal with the conflict that is inevitable. You can't make conflict go away, but you can deal with it in a productive, positive way. And so that was the beginning of my current research program, which is on forgiveness and apologies and how they can be used to resolve conflict.  And so, since I came to Brantford with this great criminology department, so my research sort of moved away from organizations and more into the criminal justice system. So that's been a really interesting transition too. But there's certainly no, no shortage of research questions to ask in that area.

00:08:38 Andrew Welsh

That's one of the reasons I like that question we included is, it's always kind of cool to hear our kind of organically how someone's research program develops. I mean, your story is different than mine, but it's the same kind of story. So, it's always kind of neat to hear that. Now for the rest of the episode, we wanted to take a deeper dive into your research on country singer Dolly Parton because you're a big Dolly Parton fan, right?

00:09:03 Judy Eaton

I am!

00:09:06 Andrew Welsh

So, I mean, what, how long have you been a Dolly Parton fan and what is it you like about Dolly's music?

00:09:13 Judy Eaton

I mean, first of all, what is not to like about Dolly’s music? [laughter] So, I've been a fan, I think forever. Like so there wasn't a lot of country music in my house growing up we moved to Canada from England when I was 2, and so my parents, there was a lot of Beatles, like, they listened to great music, but there wasn't a big country, there, there wasn't much country music in England at the time. So, they didn't really listen to country music. So, I my exposure to Dolly was probably from the Brantford radio station CKPC, and there I mean, I love that radio station. They play such a wide mix of music. And at the time, even I think there was less of a division between genres, so you'd hear pop music, you'd hear country music. And so, I would hear Dolly on the radio and her songs were good. I mean, the songs that she was releasing back then were good. And so I always sort of liked her. But then it wasn't till I was at a friend's house and we were listening to records in their basement, like you did back then, and you just listened to the whole record without speaking, just listening; and back when we had more time [laughter]. And I don't know, something just struck me about her voice and her lyrics. It's just I think it was probably the first artist that I really listened to the songwriting, and I think that really struck me as like, wow, she's female and she's really, really talented at songwriting as well as singing. And so, I think that I've always sort of thought that about her, but I wasn't, I wouldn't say I was a super fan, I think I just really respected her work and then, you know, she's just always been there. I mean, she's probably been there for both of your lives too. She's been writing songs and singing for like, 60 years now. So, she's sort of the soundtrack to lots of people's lives, whether they realize it or not.

00:10:53 Andrew Welsh

I always remember. Didn't she do “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers? Yeah. And she had the Christmas album. Yeah, that's where I know Dolly from.

00:11:00 Judy Eaton

Oh, that's funny.

00:11:01 Andrew Welsh

I’m not even a country music fan and I like Dolly Parton. She's kind of hard to not like, right?

00:11:04 Tracy Woodford

Well and like you said, I would have been exposed to her. My family didn't really per se, listen to country music, but it was on the radio. She was, she was mixed in with all the pop music. So, I know Dolly Parton songs from that, yeah.

00:11:18 Andrew Welsh

“Nine to Five”

00:11:19 Tracy Woodford

Yeah.

00:11:19 Judy Eaton

“Nine to Five”.

00:11:20 Andrew Welsh

And she did a terrible movie with Sylvester Stallone.

00:11:24 Judy Eaton

She did.

00:11:25 Andrew Welsh

“Rhinestone”

00:11:26 Judy Eaton

“Rhinestone”

00:11:27 Andrew Welsh

But we won't, we won't talk about that.

00:11:28 Judy Eaton

But she also did “Steel Magnolias” and “Nine to Five” So we can forgive her for this.

00:11:31 Andrew Welsh

We'll blame that other movie on Stallone so [laughter].

00:11:34 Tracy Woodford

Yeah.

00:11:36 Judy Eaton

I don't think they got along very well either. I think that movie wasn't a good experience for her either.

00:11:41 Andrew Welsh

Oh, I didn't know that.

00:11:42 Tracy Woodford

How could you not get along with Dolly?

00:11:46 Andrew Welsh

Ego. We'll again, we'll just blame it on Sylvester Stallone [laugher]. Okay, from just a casual perspective, researching, researching, Dolly Parton seems kind of removed from at least like at face value from the research program you described. So, what triggered your decision to kind of merge your personal interests with your actual research program here at Laurier?

00:12:12 Judy Eaton

Yeah. I mean, they say “Research is “Me-search.” So, at some point you're studying yourself and your own issues. So, I guess this is a chance for me to turn my research into “Me-search”. But I think it, I don't think it's that far removed, if you think about… You know my basic area that I study is positive psychology. So, looking at how we can use all the great theories and techniques that psychologists developed and use them in a way that's proactive rather than reactive. So rather than just looking at a medical model of illness, like the medical system might, it's more about buffering people to be stronger. So that's what positive psychology is, and positive psychology includes things like gratitude and kindness and perseverance and authenticity. And if you look at Dolly Parton, she kind of represents all of those different areas. So, I always use her as an example in my positive psychology courses, so I've always sort of connected her with positive psychology, I call her the poster child for positive psychology because she really is this unique exemplar of all the things we're telling people that are good and positive. And so, studying her and I've always kind of wanted to study her in a way that sort of, you can hang positive psychology principles on her actions and behaviors. But then during COVID you know we were all looking for ways to be positive and to get through that. And so, I thought, “Okay, what can I do with this?” And also do in a way that I could do without using a research lab in person because we were limited on what we could.

And so, I had been reading this work on narrative analysis, which is basically looking at the words people use when they communicate, rather than just listening to the themes of what they're saying. And it's kind of based on the work of James Pennebaker, who is big on narrative analysis and linguistic theory, and so, there's a line of research on music that looks at song lyrics and how people use words in song lyrics. So, for example, you might say “I love you,” but somebody else might say “I would die without you”. And so, you're using very different language to say something that's essentially similar. And so, people have looked at song lyrics and how they reflect possibly reflect the social, cultural environment. So, are we using more positive versus negative language? Are we using more “I versus You” or “I versus We” language?

00:14:33

And so, I was reading some of that over COVID and then so that that line of research is kind of divided into two areas. There's one area that looks at sort of overall, how does music reflect the culture? And there's really interesting things looking at how pop music has become less positive over time, so there's a pretty famous study that showed that the use of positive language has decreased since the 80s in pop music; decreased significantly. And it kind of coincides with increased rates of depression. And so, the argument is that the more sad we get as a culture, the more sad our music gets. And it's again, it's we're still singing about the same themes that we always sing about, but we're just speaking about them in a less positive way.

00:15:20

So, there's that line of research, but then there's also a line of research that looks at individual artists and how their songs have changed over time, so there's a whole article on The Beatles on Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and no females. And you know, Dolly has written more songs than all those guys. Yes.

00:15:34 Andrew Welsh

Put together.

00:15:35 Judy Eaton

Not put together.

00:15:36 Andrew Welsh

Close, close.

00:15:37 Judy Eaton

But you know, she's been writing like, basically an album a year since the 60s and so very prolific songwriter and there's no article on Dolly. So, I thought this is this is my in! And so, I did this research with Danielle Law and of Avenee Sharma, who was a grad student. And so, we just thought, why not? Why shouldn't there be an article looking at Dolly's music? And we had some theories. We thought that Dolly would probably be more positive just because that's the persona that she has. But we were interested in, you know, she does have this positive persona, so, is she using language in the same way that would sort of match the persona that she has? So that's how it all came about. It was COVID and it was, you know, finally being able to kind of match or put, put some, collect some data and sort of put my theories to the test to the test for Dolly.

00:16:25 Andrew Welsh

And you put and that's up in a published journal Article?

00:16:29 Judy Eaton

Yeah.

00:16:32 Andrew Welsh

I like the term, by the way, “Me -search,” I've never heard that before.

00:16:32 Tracy Woodford

No, I haven't either.

00:16:34 Andrew Welsh

And that I kind of, like I can relate to it, so I really do like that one. And I do want to know, after you leave, the name of that study showing that song lyrics have become more downbeat, I guess. I just think that, because I just find it interesting.

00:16:50 Judy Eaton

Yeah, it's interesting. So, they've looked at pop and called country music, and they both tend to have become more negative, but country music, they have different reactions to when the economy is bad. So, when things are bad, country music gets happier and when things are bad, pop music gets sadder. So, it's interesting how, I think we could explore that in a whole other podcast episode why that might be. But I think it is interesting. I mean, it's not suggesting that songwriters are affecting the society, but I think they're kind of intermingled. And I think our songs do reflect the zeitgeist, you know, the current climate.

00:17:25 Andrew Welsh

It's kind of like, so, in criminology, they have a cultural criminologist, Jeff Farrow, who talks about the hall of mirrors, this idea that it's not a, it's a, it's not a one-way street where media affects us or vice versa. It's multidirectional that it's things bouncing off each other.

00:17:40 Judy Eaton

That's a great way to put it, yeah.

00:17:43 Andrew Welsh

You've kind of touched on some of the parts of the questions that we had. So, were there any specific findings that you found really interesting if you had to kind of give the average person- so not another university professor- a takeaway from your research on Dolly. What might that be?

00:18:01 Judy Eaton

I think if I were going to boil it down to one thing… So, basically the findings were that as we predicted, Dolly’s music is more positive. So, she uses more positive language than country music and pop music. So basically, pop is the least positive than country. And then there's Dolly, which wasn't surprising because, you know, she is a positive person. But the most interesting thing, and if you know any of her music, then… You know if you, let’s look at “Nine to Five”, it's a song about social justice. You know, “The coat of many colours” is a song about bullying and poverty. And so, she's got these, she calls them her sad *** songs. And so, she writes about pretty deep things and pretty dark things. Like she's got this song called me and Little Andy. And it's it. It'll make you cry like it. It's just tearjerker this little kid that comes to her door, a little orphan, with a little dog and she lets them come in for the night and spoiler alert, they don't make it through the night.

00:19:00 Tracy Woodford

Oh!

00:18:57 Judy Eaton

Yeah, see. So, she but she writes about these things, but she still leaves this positive language, so she takes a very positive approach to conflict and challenges, which I think is something we could all learn from. Right, because language matters.

00:19:08 Tracy Woodford

We could all use. Absolutely.

00:19:12 Judy Eaton

And the other thing about Dolly that's so remarkable is that… We looked over time. So, we also did a longitudinal analysis, which is basically looking at how things have changed over time. So that's how we know that pop music is more negative, country music is more negative. Dolly has remained steadfastly consistent. So, her level of positivity has remained consistent across the last 60 years.

00:19:34 Andrew Welsh

And all I was gonna ask is like my understanding, and I could be wrong, Dolly had a pretty hard upbringing. Did she not?

00:19:40 Judy Eaton

She did. You know, they were very poor. They were like 12 brothers and sisters. And one of them died as a baby. So yeah, she often talks about how much struggle there was growing up. But she also talks about how much love there was. And she has a song. What's it called? “In the good old days when things were bad” or something like that. Like she yeah.

00:20:02 Andrew Welsh

Oh, I like that line. That's a good one. So, I guess there's bits of like in her songs. Like she doesn't avoid tough times, but it's like you said, the language she uses to describe them is much, it's not cynical.

00:20:17 Judy Eaton

It's not cynical at all, and I I think sometimes people make fun of that lack of cynicism. But it I think it's, I don't know, it's enduring. Right? Like, again, 60 years, she's still writing songs. And the fact that she's been positive over all that time, it doesn't mean that she hasn't evolved as a songwriter. It just means that she's using this positive language that creates a very strong, consistent message, and it's, you know, people talk about authenticity and to look at Dolly, you might say, you know, authenticity isn't the first word you might use because she's got these big wigs and wears a ton of makeup, and there's been some plastic surgery. But she really is one of the most real celebrities, right? She doesn't claim to be anything she’s not. She seems very honest. And she's also, like, completely unproblematic.

00:21:06 Andrew Welsh

Yes. Yeah. Why I look at the music I listened to in university, all the grunge music that was very downbeat and depressing. And it ran through a cycle pretty fast before people moved on.

00:21:06 Tracy Woodford

Yeah.

00:21:18 Judy Eaton

Yeah, that's interesting. It has.

00:21:20 Tracy Woodford

Yeah, if I may ask a question, have you thought if you looked at how you would compare Dolly to someone who's much an icon for a younger generation like Taylor Swift?

00:21:35 Judy Eaton

Yeah. So, they're actually I. So, when you publish articles, sometimes you get asked to be a reviewer on an article. So, I was actually asked to be a peer reviewer on an article about Taylor Swift. And so, there is an article coming out about Taylor Swift using a similar kind of analysis, looking at word usage. That article is really interesting because it does show sort of changes over time per album, so it doesn't actually look at sort of her level of positivity. So, you can't really compare her directly to Dolly but it’s an interesting way to look at Taylor Swift's oeuvre, and she also has, I guess I didn't know this, but there's certain songs on her albums, like the fifth song is a certain, is usually a certain type of song, and the 11th song is a certain type of song. And so, they were actually able to show that the language is a little bit different in those particular songs. So, it's neat like it does. You can really get at lots of things. I mean, obviously you can't get at somebody's personality necessarily, by just looking at the words they use. But it is interesting to look at how the language does change. And we're listening to that language, people are listening to those songs, so they are affected by it in some way.

00:22:38 Tracy Woodford

Yes, and I'm not a big Taylor Swift fan. I'm aware of her songs, obviously, but I feel and you can correct me if I'm wrong, her persona seems to be very positive, and she doesn't seem to carry a lot of controversy where she goes. But her lyrics as I know them are not necessarily all positive either, so she's kind of similar in persona for Dolly, but not so much with the lyrics. Would you agree?

00:23:09 Judy Eaton

Yeah, that's a good point. And I, yeah, I don't know her lyrics well enough to really speak to that. She is interesting in that she, I wouldn't necessarily say she's universally loved, but I think it's really hard to be universally loved in an age of social media. Dolly was coming of age in an age where nobody knew what was going on. I mean, I think, you know, Dolly hung out with Andy Warhol in the 70s and stuff [laughter]

00:23:33 Tracy Woodford

Dolly! [feigning surprise]

00:23:41 Judy Eaton

So, she was getting up to stuff we just never heard about it, probably. So, Taylor Swift doesn't have that benefit. And I think also she's so young that you know. There's lots that can happen in her life. But you know, when Dolly was Taylor's age, she was starting the “Imagination Library.” So she was, like, identifying that kids need to learn how to read. And she created this charity where the kids would get free books for the first five years of their lives. And so, I don't know, I think that's a level of engagement and benevolence that I don't know that anybody can compare to that. I mean, I'm sure Taylor Swift does some good things, and I think she's also well known for giving charity without bragging about it. Which I think Dolly is too. But the level of charity that Dolly achieved at a pretty young age is pretty remarkable.

00:24:18 Andrew Welsh

We may have to edit out your statement about not being a huge Swifty fan, so we don't, so we don't ostracize the segment of our potential audience [laughs]

00:24:23 Tracy Woodford

Oh, right. That's true [laughs].

00:24:27 Judy Eaton

Or get your death threats [laughter].

00:24:28 Andrew Welsh

That's right, they're pretty hardcore fans. Do you? Do you have any plans in the future to do more research on Dolly or something kind of adjacent to that or is that, was that kind of like just the-off of “Me-search?”

00:24:39 Judy Eaton

Yeah, it was meant to be a one-off, but it has led, made me think a lot about how you could use Dolly to talk about positive psychology. So, in psychology we have this thing, we call it “Giving psychology away”. So, as you know, like so much of what we research and publish goes into academic journals and no one reads it unless we make our students read it. So, no one hears about these neat things that we discover through this great research. So, my focus lately has been on giving psychology away. So, writing about psychology for general audiences, and I think that is something that we are we morally should be doing.

And so, I've recently written a book about apologies and forgiveness that is, you know, meant for a general audience, because I think it's important to share what we do. And so, I feel like with positive psychology, there's a lot of information out there that is not based on empirical findings. So not evidence-based research. And so, I would like to find a way to do that. Maybe hanging on Dolly, I don't know. But I think when you use somebody who's such an exemplar, it makes it more real for people. So, if I can talk about, you know, people who are doing good things and talk about the reasons why positive psychology, what we know about positive psychology and how it informs what we're, what they're doing than I think it might be a better way to give psychology away. But I don't have any specific plans yet, but I'm kind of toying with that idea. And if I need to go to Dollywood to do some research. well, that's fine too [laughter]. If anyone wants to fund that research, I'd be happy to chat.

00:26:09 Andrew Welsh

Just talk to the talk, to talk to the Dean about that one. I like that. there's another statement you made, I really liked was “Giving psychology away.” That was really good.

00:26:18 Judy Eaton

Thanks.

00:26:19 Andrew Welsh

I'm going to, I'll cite you. I’m gonna use that.

00:26:20 Judy Eaton

No, that’s Phil Zimbardo, I think, was when he was president of the American Psychological Association. I think that was his thing. So, I didn't make that up. I can't take credit. But I am doing it.

00:26:26 Andrew Welsh

Okay, yeah, that's the important part. Well, for our podcast this, we're coming here to the end of our first episode. We wanted to have like, a thing, like a trademark, you know. Like David Letterman had his top 10, so we decided for our trademark-since I do this in my office area, we have a group teams chat and I do a dad joke of the day- so to close out this episode, do you have a good dad joke that you tell your students?

00:26:56 Judy Eaton

I do. I mean, I'm not sure that it qualifies as a dad joke, but it's a joke. So, I teach statistics, which you might not associate with humor very much [laughter]. So, it's also, you know, kind of a deep course and can be a bit challenging. So, I try to lighten it up as much as I can, but there's not that many statistics jokes. But one thing we cover in statistics is called analysis of variance, in the short form we refer to as “ANOVA”. And so, I teach ANOVA later in the course, because it's probably one of the more challenging parts that we cover. And so, I try to reassure students that they need to practice, and they'll get better at it, and so I say “This gets easier when you do it ova and ova and ova” [laughs]

00:27:39 Andrew Welsh

I think that qualifies as a dad joke.

00:27:41 Tracy Woodford

I agree. I agree, yes.

00:27:55 Andrew Welsh

Well thank you very much, Judy, for being, you know, like in a lot of ways, you're like our guinea pig because we we're pretty new to this. But yeah, your research is fascinating. We really appreciate you taking time out of your day to talk to us.

00:27:55 Judy Eaton

Well, thanks for letting me talk about it.

00:27:57 Tracy Woodford

Thanks so much. We appreciate it.

00:27:58 Judy Eaton

Thanks.

00:27:59 Andrew Welsh

Alright. Well, that's wrap!

00:28:01 [Outro Music]

Thank you so, much for listening to the Research Unplugged podcast. This episode was made possible by the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University and produced by myself, Andrew Welsh, and Tracy Woodford. Original music provided by Kevin Byrne, Megan Shubrook, and Tracy Woodford. You can find out more about today’s guest and their research in the show notes for this episode.

Until next time, remember to unplug and stay connected.