So in August of 2018, I (Dr. Veilleux) took the plunge and did something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time: I started a YouTube channel. It might seem like a weird thing to do, but when I’ve taught undergraduate seminars on Emotion and Self-Regulation, I’ve looked for short videos about emotion to provide as homework assignments or food for thought, and I haven’t found any. I have also found myself repeating the same concepts over and over to graduate students I supervise and clients I see in psychotherapy. Plus, now that I have tenure, I have found myself wanting to do more to make science public. I want to do local workshops to teach people things about emotion, to “de-mystify” emotions. But putting together a whole workshop seems kind of overwhelming, so I thought the short little snippets might be easier to do if I try to do about 2-3 episodes per month. I am calling the channel Professor Emotion, and you can visit it here.
Thusfar we have put together episodes about emotional terminology, explaining the components of emotions, why we have emotions (the functions of emotions, otherwise known as “what emotions can do for us”), the appraisal model of emotions, and emotional sensitivity. I also roped Kaitlyn into talking about her experience of two emotions on the same day to help illustrate the components of emotion and how awareness of those components might be important. Upcoming episodes will be about emotion dynamics, emotional clarity and differentiation, and emotion beliefs.
There has definitely been a bit of a learning curve in this project. How do I film video in my office? Can I show things on my computer and narrate over it? How on earth do I edit the clips together and maybe add visual images or transitions? I’ve figured most of these things out. I can’t say the production value is amazing, but considering I’m doing the whole thing with an old video camera I bought in my first year as a professor, it’s acceptable for now.
I’ve also been having a lot of fun with it. I probably should be spending my time working on papers instead of recording videos, but I really am enjoying making the videos. They do a decent job of conveying my personality and my approach to emotion, and I really hope they will be useful to *someone* at some point. Perhaps I’ll work on transitioning this into a workshop, or maybe I’ll just keep making these videos. This project has definitely reinforced my love of emotion research, in thinking about and talking about emotions, and is a different enough kind of activity from my “normal” stuff that it’s been a nice project to balance.
We do have a long list of topics planned but we are also open to suggestions!
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