Dancin'

I talk a lot - I like talking. Most of it is just that, but every once in a while, one of my purposefully farfetched (while at the same time sensical - I'm great at Balderdash) explanations actually pans out and resembles something that may actually be true. Nicole and I did better on this second mini exam, and while we studied hard and changed some things up, I attribute the increase in our success to one thing: dancing. See, about an hour before the actual test was to get underway, we were doing some last minute memory-tweaking in her apartment, the air full of tension and nervous energy. So, to calm myself down, I run and grab my Mp3. player, and start dancing. She pulls out her ipod and starts dancing too - albeit to very different music. So I'm dancing up and down the room, and she's dancing while she does her hair and puts on her makeup, and we're just dancin' to our own beats. A few minutes later, we went out upon the field of battle (a chilly classroom) and conquered the test.

Now, this wouldn't really be noteworthy, but I came across something interesting last night when I was doing my physiology reading. I was going over the control of blood pressure (baroreceptors, chemoreceptors and all), and came across a brief passage that said something along the lines of "the increased cardiovascular output, as in the fight or flight response, when separated from skeletal muscle output, is actually harmful". Basically, it means that when you get nervous and your HR and ventilation go up, and you don't move, it's bad for your health. I think that very clearly supports my decision to dance before every exam or lab practical.