Keeping Up the Fight

Hopefully this won't be me soon

I’m starting to get genuinely scared about my short term future, and potentially my long term future, as well. I almost didn’t cover my rent for the month, as my family couldn’t manage to send me the full amount that is due. Unfortunately, my apartment complex won’t allow a partial payment, even one which is only $20 or $30 short of the total. That means that if things don’t turn around soon, I could conceivably miss my rent for the next month, and that would mean I would be on the street with nowhere to go by my birthday, which is in the middle of May. I spent most of last weekend in a deep depression as I struggled with that realization. I wish I could say that the thought of suicide didn’t appeal to me at some point. However, since I have lived with depression for the majority of my life, I suspect that suicide will never fully leave the list of possibilities that I consider whenever I am faced with adversity. At least, I can report that, since graduating college, I haven’t been fully overwhelmed with emotional anguish. The feelings of depression didn’t completely overcome me, and a walk around the lake on Sunday afternoon helped me to break free of the painful, obsessive thoughts about homelessness or suicide which had grounded me on the previous two days.

On the other hand, I suspect that my gas will get cut off soon. That means I won’t be able to cook food on the stove, and I will have to endure cold showers. Luckily, the temperatures have now warmed up, so I don’t have to worry about being too cold during the day or night. As an odd consequence of my tendency to ignore some things, such as money, I had built up a credit over the last year with the electric company, as I set up my bank account to just send a regular monthly payment which was apparently slightly more than what was owed each month. That means that my electricity is still up and running, and current, for now. It will probably be another couple of months before my electricity will be turned off, assuming I haven’t been kicked out my apartment before then. I do plan to talk to my property manager at the apartment complex, when she returns to her office this Tuesday, to see if there is any way that I can negotiate my apartment rent downward for a few months while I continue to look for work. I am hoping that since I have been living here steadily for nine years that they will be willing to give me a little slack. Living in Raleigh, the lowest rent these days, which isn’t in a slum, is $600, and those are student apartments not far from where I am currently living. My rent, right now, is $700.  If I could get a couple hundred knocked off the price for a few months, it might make a world of difference for me, not to mention my family. Though, to be fair, that is probably more wishful thinking than anything based in fact. But, I don’t have much other choice than to try.

Fallen Through the Cracks

The last of my food supply

Right now, I’m debating whether or not to eat a box of macaroni and cheese.

I’m not debating whether I should eat it versus something else which would be decidedly more nutritious. I’m debating whether or not I should eat it, or go hungry another day. You see, I only have three boxes of macaroni and cheese left to my name. I have no other food in my apartment, and I currently have $9 left in my bank account. My Internet and mobile phone were turned off at the beginning of January, and my gas will probably be turned off in the next month. My electricity will eventually follow suit. The only reason I still have an apartment is because of the charity of family, however their finances are stretched too thin with almost half a million dollars in medical debt, and the costs associated with caring for an elderly matriarch in the last months of her life. The only way I am able to receive calls from potential employers is through an old flip phone loaned to me by a family member while I look for work. I’ve been living off macaroni and cheese since January, eating a box every second day in order to stretch what meager funds I had as far as they would last.

You may be asking, “But, Ashe, weren’t you in college? Did you ever graduate?” The answer is, yes. I graduated from NC State University in December 2012. I earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, and had a 3.44/4.00 Cumulative GPA, as well as a 3.75/4.00 Major GPA. It says so, right on my resume. I spent two years doing research for the Good Doctor, although, to be fair, that last semester I really slacked off since I had a small bout of depression, later followed by fear and anxiety associated with not having a job waiting for me when I graduated. My slacking showed, as the Good Doctor only gave me a B for the last semester in his lab, where previously I had made A’s. I really feel bad about that, and I feel that I left things off with him on a sour note, as a result.

While I did attempt to apply to graduate school, finances dictated that I could only afford to apply to one school, NC State. As anyone who has applied to graduate schools can tell you, it is not a good idea to place all of your hopes into one university. Unfortunately, I was a little too vague on my application when explaining what I wanted my research focus to be, and was rejected despite what one of the professors reviewing my application said were very good GPA and GRE scores.

The problem, as I see it, is that I am a bit afraid to tell any professor about my true goals for research. Ever since returning to college, I have had a dream of doing research which would lead to the creation of an artificial intelligence, which would reside on any mobile device, computer, or perhaps even a web-enabled television, that would be used mainly for the treatment of depression, anxiety, and some mild addiction disorders. Several problems get in the way of this research. One, I have no engineering or computer programming background, so I would not be creating the actual programming code, myself. Two, there is very little research in the psychological journals pertaining to the use of artificial intelligence, as it seems that psychologists have mostly ceded control over this area to the engineering field. And, three, since there aren’t any psychologists currently doing research into the use of artificial intelligence as a treatment for depression, there aren’t any researchers whose labs I can apply to work in as a graduate student. At NC State, we have an engineering department with faculty and students who would be of great use in the actual construction of the AI, but the closest thing to a psychologist who fits my needs focuses his research on studying the cognitive effects of playing video games in adults and the elderly. For my purposes, as one who has played video games since I was four years old, I see parallels between using AI for improving the cognitive and emotional well-being of adults with depression, and using video games, which are little more than graphical AIs which respond to player input, as a way of improving the cognitive functioning of older adults.

About to Drown

What $180 buys you. I'm so gangsta.

My first day back for the new semester was cold and wet. Come to think of it, most of my first days of the semester since coming back to college have been rainy (and cold for the Spring semesters). My Behavioral Research lecture doesn't start meeting again until next week, so for today I merely had Modern American History and Philosophy of Science to deal with. And, even though first days are typically non-eventful, I still found myself feeling a bit in-over-my-head by day's end.

As luck would have it, both courses are taught in the same lecture hall in Withers, so I get to sit in the same seat in the same room for two hours every Monday and Wednesday this semester. My history professor is a middle aged woman who seems pretty nice overall. She assured us that we weren't going to focus so much on names and dates, but rather on historical trends of consistency, continuity, and change. That said, there is a great deal of reading that will need to be done for the course, and our grades consist almost entirely on a short paper, a mid-term exam, and a final exam. On Fridays, we will have discussion groups led by the professor's TAs, one of whom I found particularly attractive in a sort of bookish, sexy, academic way. It doesn't hurt that the TA in question was wearing some really nice black leather boots, as I discovered early last year that I apparently have a previously unknown boot fetish! Although, with my luck, she probably won't be the TA for my particular discussion group.

The entirety of my Philosophy of Science course sort of bothers me, however. I don't think the material will be challenging in and of itself, since I do enjoy reading philosophy and science, already. The problems for this course come out of the fact that the professor seems rather pedantic. He is a nice, older man, but he spent an hour today explaining to us about how he did an in-depth statistical analysis of his prior courses to determine what sort of studying behaviors led to good grades in his courses, showing us the results of that analysis, and trying to instill upon us the necessity of regular, consistent studying versus cram-style studying. As both an old man, myself, and a psychology major who has taken Cognitive Psychology, I was already well aware that cramming isn't an effective way to study. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop me from doing it every so often, as I did at the end of the last semester! Another problem with the course is that all the quizzes and tests are online, something I have always detested because I tend to forget to do them when they aren't placed right in my face during a class period.

An End is Just a New Beginning

I now have a 3.239 GPA overall and 3.597 in my major

The fall semester ended a little more smoothly than I anticipated. After camping out at DH Hill for most of finals week, I was able to somehow manage all A's and B's for the semester, although I honestly didn't deserve the A I was given in French 201. I shouldn't have gotten more than a B+, at best.

The Saturday after exams ended, I took the GRE in order to apply to Graduate School. While I know people who bought all sorts of study manuals, flash cards, and practice tests, I can't imagine how anyone would truly study for the GRE. It was, without a doubt, the most obtuse exam I've ever taken in my life! Rather than the analogies that I recall having to sort through during the SAT I took back in the early 1990s, the Verbal sections of the GRE required me to read a bunch of essays and analyze which of five paragraph long answers seemed to best respond to whatever deep thinking question was posed. And, usually, the paragraph answers I could choose from were incredibly subtle in their distinction, which only succeeded in making the test unnecessarily dense and incomprehensible.

Regarding the Quantitative sections of the GRE, maybe I would have done better if I had been fresh out of high school and college before taking this, though the main focus seemed not on actual problem solving, but rather on understanding the relationship of variables to one another. Most of the questions didn't even involve numbers, at all! The few questions which did have numbers that could be solved couldn't possibly be solved in the short amount of time given for each section. So, I was left to only half solve each of these questions, and then make some leap of logic to guess from among the given answers. At any rate, I was able to score in the 84th Percentile for Verbal, and in the 61st Percentile for Quantitative, which is enough to qualify me for the Graduate Psychology program at many US universities, including NC State. Presumably, I could apply to other universities, as well. However, as I've said to friends, I don't really want to pack up and move unless I have a job to go to which is paying for the move.

Off My Game

I'm still waiting for the release of The Secret World

This week has not been one of my better experiences. And, as I've mentioned previously, this semester isn't exactly shaping up to be one of my more crowning achievements, either!

Aside from being low on sleep for most of the week, I got grades back on two tests which were not very good, at all. To be fair, the 80 (B-) I got on the Finite Math test wasn't as horrible as it could have been. I wasn't as confident in my math skills as I perhaps should have been. I made a minor stupid error that cost me 5 points right off the bat when I got confused and thought that the slope of a line is the negative of the slope of its corresponding perpendicular line, when it is actually the negative inverse of the slope of its corresponding perpendicular line! Oh well... I've never claimed that math was a strong point of mine.

The harder hit for me came just today when I received my grade on my first test in Cognitive Psychology. I knew I wasn't going to make an A, since some of the test focused on brain anatomy, which has always been a difficult concept for me in regard to psychological study. I try to memorize the parts of the brain and their primary functions in cognitive processing, but every time that I do I get this dizzy feeling upon realizing that my brain is reading about my brain and how it actually functions. It sort of reminds me of the movie Inception, in that some mysteries are just better left unanswered. At any rate, after making a fool of myself on several questions that, again, I should have known the answers to, I ended up with an agonizingly painful 76 (C) on the test! My only refuge is that we still have two more tests, a final exam, and a paper due in that class. Since I usually do well on papers, I am hoping that I will be able to pull out at least a B+ in Cognitive Psych.

One More First Day is Done

This is what $718 looks like

After an incredibly uneventful summer spent toiling away doing little more than data entry for the good Doctor's social psychology review project (without pay, of course), and eating a mostly steady diet of macaroni and cheese and cheap microwave dinners, I am finally back to the grind of classes. A couple of weeks ago, I bought my books for the semester and have since decided that, because they were so expensive and heavy, if I can consolidate my book load by selling back at least half of the books to the bookstore and getting the ebook versions from Amazon, I will probably try to invest in an iPad to use as an ereader. I have already calculated that I can save at least $150 this semester, if I can sell back all my psych books and replace them with ebooks. And, assuming I keep the iPad through at least the next three semesters (and hopefully beyond if I can get into grad school), it will have paid for itself by the time I graduate with my Bachelors.

Regarding my classes, I was actually pretty anxious last night and couldn't get to sleep. I ended up falling asleep around 3 AM, and had to wake up at 7 AM to get ready for school. I was most afraid of Intermediate French and Finite Math. After attending the first day of class, I am less afraid of Intermediate French, but I am still nervous about Finite Math. We aren't allowed to use graphing calculators in the class, only scientific calculators, so at least I won't have to struggle with the old nemesis, my TI-84 Plus. I suppose I can quit carrying it around and save myself some weight in my bag! The main problem with the math class is the instructor, of course. I don't know if he is a full professor or just a grad student, but he goes way too quickly through his notes in class, and speaks very quietly in an auditorium of 200+ people! We are supposed to get assigned seats next week, so I'm sure I will be near the back, which will only make things worse! If I am going to have any hope of getting through this class with a B or higher I'm going to have to do all the homework as diligently as possible.

Preconceived Notions

Number Crunching in SPSS

Hopefully, as you get older, you start to learn that first impressions, while important, aren't the best gauge of a person's worth.

I've been doing a final project in Psych Research Methods involving self-segregation in college lecture halls based on race and gender. Because we weren't allowed to choose our group members, I happen to be in a group with a young woman whose initial impressions early in the semester left me feeling less than enthusiastic about working with her. We had a few minor conflicts in the first few weeks of class which showed her to be a self-centered snob with a very low opinion of me. For my part, I was probably a bit petulant, and unwilling to let her off-hand comments go unchallenged. To be fair, out of the four of us in the team, she and I are probably the most dominant personalities of the group, as evidenced by our performance during our in-class presentation. But, after getting a chance to work with her and have a few normal conversations, I've come to appreciate her contribution to the group. Of course, she now comes off as another one of those overachievers that I've encountered here at NC State who wants to have her entire future mapped out in detail. However, getting a chance to learn that she and I have both been frustrated with our grades in Psych Research Methods, and that we both have issues with how the grad student instructor of the class has taught the course, has allowed me to see her a little more three-dimensionally than before. She still has a little bit of an air of haughtiness about her, but I get the sense that it, probably, is more a guard against her minor insecurities than an actual excoriation of people as being less important than her.

The Home Stretch

The Wolf Ears in Spring

With only a month left in the semester I feel like things are starting to come together, slowly but surely. Of course, I don't really have anything to base that on, considering that I am still waiting to find out what I made on my most recent tests in Biology, Psych Research Methods, and Ergonomics, and I am behind in my work in Accelerated French (bien sur!). And the fact that I am hoping to skirt by on the generous province of my professors' grade curves probably shouldn't be seen as positive evidence of personal progress! Nonetheless, I have made a few small steps in the forward direction. I was finally able to register for classes for Fall 2011, and I made first contact with one of the psych professors regarding PSY 499 work. I still have to fill out an application, so there is no guarantee that I will get accepted to the professor's lab, but my optimism (unfounded though it may be) is giving me a little bit of an emotional boost for the time being. At least getting a response back from a professor is better than the last month of silence I've had to endure!

The one letdown of the week, however, was learning that I will not be able to work in the tutorial center for the university. Apparently, they don't hire tutors for humanities, though nowhere on their website do they mention that fact! As a result, I went to a 30-minute information session only to learn that if I want to tutor I have to be proficient in math, physics, or chemistry! Maybe it is for the best, since they apparently do not give their tutors very many hours each week, and you have to actually pay to take the training course for tutoring. In other words, by the time you actually tutor you would probably only break even financially! The woman who ran the information session even indirectly admitted that fact when pressed about whether one has to pay for the training course. That is fucking brilliant! A part-time job that only manages to pay for itself! Wait until the Conservatives and Corporate Tycoons hear about this one! Fuck you Capitalism! Fuck you right in the face!

Knocking Down the Pins

Textbook and Bowling Scores

As another long week draws to a close, I find myself reflecting more on positives than negatives. Grade-wise, I was able to get a 94 on my Biology test (with a 9-point curve), a 94 on my Ergonomics test (with a 5-point curve), an 87 on my second French test (no curve), and a 78 on my Psych Research Methods test (for which I REALLY think there should have been a curve). I am almost caught up on my French homework, and I am fully on top of all the reading in the rest of my classes.

The overarching theme, if one can be found, for this week has been about trying to put out feelers and make connections with people around me. First, I'll touch on the frustrations. Professors in the Psychology Department at NCSU are apparently not the most communicative bunch of people in the world. This comes as a shock only because it has always been my contention that people who are drawn to psychology tend to be over-sharers. Psychologists are supposed to be the touchy-feely people. We're supposed to want to tell everyone everything and be willing to listen as everyone else comes to cry on our shoulders. Why then can't a single professor email me back within a WEEK when I try to set up appointments to talk about doing independent research work for PSY 499? You'd think they would love to sign up suckers like me who are willing to devote hours of our lives to reading research studies and doing data entry for little more than course credit and the vague hope that maybe, just MAYBE, we will look 2% better than some other dumbass when we apply to Grad School. My advisor informed me that I shouldn't get too discouraged by not getting an email back from the professors I contacted and recommended that I continue to be persistent. Anyone who knows me should be aware that persistence isn't my problem. Finding that fine line between persistent and stalker is where I'm a little less comfortable. I'll send out follow up emails next week and see if I can make any progress in getting my PSY 499 done.

Don't Panic. This is Only a Test...

DH Hill QR Codes

While I can't exactly compare it to the trials of Hercules, this has been a little bit of a rough week for me. I've been experiencing a little discouragement as it seems like the honeymoon, hectic as it may have been, is beginning to fade at NC State. I had three tests this week in my hardest subjects (Biology, Ergonomics, and Psych Research Methods). I wouldn't have been worried too much if it weren't for the fact that I've been reminded about three times over the last week that getting accepted to Graduate School is apparently pretty hard. Don't tell me that! Sure, it may be true, but it feels like I was given the option of having sex with a cute, big breasted brunette, with that Jewish Princess look I'm apparently fond of, only to be told, "Yeah, that didn't work out as we expected. Here have this scrawny 12 year old redheaded boy instead!" Besides being quite a bit illegal, I'm not even INTO 12 year old boys! Maybe that wasn't the best analogy in retrospect!

One good thing did come out of the week, though. As part of my newly discovered assertiveness, I reserved a study room at DH Hill and invited several friends from my Psych Research Methods class to study on Thursday afternoon before the test which happened this morning. It might come as a surprise that this was the first study group I've ever participated in during my entire school history. I was certainly aware that such things occurred, but it never entered my mind to try and be a part of one until now. Maybe I wasn't ready to share my brilliance with others. Maybe it was just that I was so scared of doing well on the test. At any rate, it went as well as I could have possibly imagined. Not everyone showed up, but those who did were very helpful. We all seemed to contribute something positive to the group discussion, and we were able to wade through the sometimes confusing material. I won't know what sort of grade I got on the test until next week (nor the grades I got for Biology or Ergonomics), but I felt pretty comfortable after each exam I took this week and think that B's are very likely, and A's are not impossible.

A Change of Scenery

NCSU Belltower

There's the old saying that the more things change the more they stay the same. Well, things have definitely changed. Since last November 1st, I was accepted to NC State, lost my car due to a broken timing belt, road an Amtrak train for the first time to Charlotte, experienced what can only be considered a clusterfuck of a college orientation, registered for classes, and began to make a name for myself in the new environs of a major four year research university. It is sort of surprising how NOT overwhelmed I have been thus far.

I've been attending classes for a month now, and I find that the work load is, so far, about even with what I had come to expect at Wake Tech. Gone are the expectations of a written paper and an oral presentation for every class, only to be replaced with an expectation for a lot more reading and independent homework assignments. The biggest adjustment has been the relative claustrophobia which I've experienced. The buses to school and back have been packed, as have been the 200 seat auditorium classes, the campus food courts and coffee shops, and even the library.

It's Beginning to Feel Not Alot Like Christmas

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. As usual, I had dinner with my uncle and his girlfriend. For some reason, things went better than in the past. That is surprising because my uncle was recently fired from his job of 15 years. Despite being concerned about what to do next, he seemed alot more at ease than usual.

One thing that helped was that we didn't talk about things we disagree about. Of course, we don't really agree on much, but there was a James Bond marathon on TV, so that held our interest. Additionally, it didn't seem like my uncle was in his usual mood of picking on me and his girlfriend, which seemed to ease my mood.

Despite things going well for Thanksgiving, or perhaps in part because of it, it just doesn't feel like the holidays. Sure, the malls have been decorated since the week before Halloween, and eggnog has made its triumphant return to the grocery store dairy cases, but it all feels like going through the motions.

The economy isn't helping matters. Right now, there is over 10% unemployment, officially, though the real percentage of unemployed is probably closer to 17%. The ones who still have jobs are holding back from spending. As a collective, the bank crisis of the last few years is teaching us to save more and rely on credit less.

To be fair, I am not really big on the holidays, anyway, since I don't have anyone to share them with. However, there is something poignant about ending each year with a familiar sense of loneliness and despair. But even that seems to be missing right now as I am filled with expectation about the prospect of being accepted to NC State. Perhaps if I am denied things will start to feel back to normal, but for now I still feel a little like an expectant father.

Have fun, and keep living life... Or some approximation thereof.

The Masks of Halloween Approach

I've never been one for dressing in costumes for Halloween. It probably wouldn't come as a surprise that I only recall trick or treating maybe four times as a kid. Unless I am in a play, in which case my job is to get into character as best I can, I just don't feel comfortable pretending to be something I am not.

Maybe if I attended more Halloween/costume parties I would feel differently, but then it could be a chicken or egg argument. It perplexes me as to how people choose the costumes they decide to wear. Apparently, alot of people keep an abundance of otherwise superfluous clothing in their homes for the sole purpose of assembling a costume once a year! I barely have enough clothing to keep myself covered for a week. And I wear that clothing until it's ragged and not even worthy for costume making.

This is probably a sexist observation, but it also seems as though women are more into dressing up for Halloween than men. I wonder if it has something to do with societal norms pushing women into a wider variety of roles in their daily lives. Women, after all, are expected to be mothers, businesswomen, therapists, chefs, and dirty whores on any given day! Men are only expected to be... present. I think it is no small leap that women are consequently better at dressing up for Halloween.

There is a little bit of irony to my lack of interest in wearing a costume when you consider that most of my life has been spent wishing I was someone or something else. Throughout my life I have, at various times, wished I were a woman, a time traveller, a teacher, a newspaper reporter, a radio DJ (at least I got around to doing that one for a little while!), a film director, an author, a wealthy entrepreneur, a restaurant owner, completely Caucasian, a cat, a penguin, a painter, a dance instructor, President of the United States, and God. I suppose I could cull together a costume related to some of those, but most would be hard for other people to decipher, and it seems that part of the point of the costumes is that they are immediately recognizable.

Most of the time people just dress in archetypes. The typical costumes seem to be monsters (vampires, zombies), movie characters (Harry Potter, Obi-Wan Kenobi), Super Heroes (Superman, Wonder Woman), or famous people in the news (Britney Spears, Sarah Palin). The problem with all of these is you need imagination and skill with makeup, or money for a pre-made, probably ill-fitting, outfit.

Now that I think of it, there is one component to the phenomenon of dressing up that probably compels people more than all others, and somehow makes the time/expense seem worth it. The sense of escapism, even for a brief time, is a thrill with which people have always had a preoccupation. There is probably something of great intrinsic value which comes from shedding the bonds of reality and dressing up as a naughty nurse or Captain Kirk if only for one night. As soon as I can figure out how to dress up as God, I'll work on discovering what that something is, exactly.

Have fun and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.

Too Much Information...

Are you comfortable in your own skin? I'm not really, but then you probably already figured that out if you've been following my blog for any amount of time. I try to be comfortable in my skin, but then I invariably do something which is apparently socially unacceptable.

The thing about me is that on some deep level (okay, it ain't that deep!) I really enjoy saying whatever is on my mind and seeing how other people react. For some reason, most people don't seem comfortable with the level of honesty that I'm willing to convey. For instance, about a decade ago, while at a party, I was talking to a bunch of people I'd never met. I confessed that I had once dated a girl who wasn't really that into me purely based on the fact that I enjoyed giving her oral pleasure. The group went totally silent. I thought it was hilarious! I mean, they had been sharing stories about people they had dated, so I wanted to tell my own story. It seemed like the most amusing story I could tell at the time. Hell, I still think it's amusing!

And there was the time in General Psychology when the professor was discussing the mental and physiological processes involved in hunger. She mentioned how the pains of hunger go away and re-occur after a certain amount of time until you actually eat something. I chose to reveal, to an auditorium of at least one hundred students, that she wasn't correct. I then proceeded to recount my personal experience of starving myself as a form of personal punishment, when I was experiencing severe depression, and how the feeling of hunger would only return once or twice in the first twelve hours. Then I wouldn't feel any hunger again for at least three or four days, and once went a full seven before feeling anything. However, once I started to eat, my hunger hit me like a truck! Well, half the auditorium turned around and stared at me like I was crazy. Even the professor was flabbergasted for a moment. I was just sharing personal experience... I'm not sure why everyone was so freaked out by it. And in a psychology class, no less!

I wish I could feel comfortable being who I am, but it seems like a given that if I want to be socially proficient I have to be willing to wear a mask of some kind 99% of the time. I can't even be my true self around my friends or loved ones as evidenced by the people on Facebook who have threatened to de-friend me or have otherwise complained that my updates or comments have been a bit too revealing.

It's hard to tell the world to go fuck themselves when I feel such a desire to become socially connected with people. I don't want to have hundreds of friends, but I want five or six who really GET me and have fun with me while letting me be me. What good is being close with people if they don't see you for who you really are? And if you are only my friend so long as I hide behind a mask, what happens if and when the mask breaks?

Perhaps it is a fault in my logic to want everyone else to adapt to me rather than me adapting to everyone else. But I guess it speaks to how uncomfortable I am in my own skin. Maybe the mask has to be there as much for my own protection as for yours.

Have fun and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.

Acting Like a Student

I feel worn out. I had to turn in a paper today for Dr. Mike's Developmental Psych class. The paper was a literature review and analysis of a study on mothers who were survivors of childhood sexual abuse. As part of the paper we had to summarize significant sections of the study, present several pros and cons of the author's methodology, and create two additional hypothetical studies related to the original study topic. According to Dr. Mike this should have been a five page paper. MY ASS! Mine was eight pages and no one I asked wrote less than six! Dr. Mike still contends that we probably wrote too much in trying to summarize our selected studies. Whatever!

I waited until the last minute, as usual, to write the paper. There's something about the thrill of intentional procrastination that works for me. Although, truth be told, I almost chose not to do the paper on time. It would have cost me a letter grade for each 24 hours that it was late. Since I can easily get an "A" on any paper that I write, taking an extra day to do a paper and taking a "B" isn't that big of a deal to me. Of course, that attitude costs me when the final grades are calculated.

Last semester, in Abnormal Psych, I had an 89.64 (a high B) before the final exam which meant that I needed to make an "A" on the final to guarantee an "A" for my final grade. Needless to say, that didn't happen, and I ended up with a "B". I could have made an "A" in the class if only I had turned in my term paper on time and gotten the 95 I deserved instead of the 85 that I received for being late!

It seems I am constantly locked in a battle between my desire to succeed and my utter lack of motivation. I know what I want out of life, but it is so easy to just sit back and do nothing, or let random distractions, like reading Raleigh's 20 year Comprehensive Plan for Growth, absorb my time (yes, I actually read stuff like that for fun... but that obsession is a whole blog post by itself!)

I suppose that leads to an important lesson of being a Lifer: Sometimes you have to do it today no matter how much you want to put it off until tomorrow. Granted, unless it is a life or death emergency, almost everything CAN be put off until a later date. But, there are times when the benefits of getting a job done immediately will outweigh the comfort of delay. We would never procrastinate directly doing something we enjoy, but we often procrastinate to do things (like homework) which indirectly lead to being able to do something we enjoy (like graduating college and getting a successful job). A key to having a life well-lived is to be mindful of these moments when the reward for action is more indirectly earned and to push through our natural tendency to maintain inertia. Perhaps, with a little effort, our dreams and goals will start to seem a lot more accessible as a result.

Have fun and keep living life... But stop procrastinating!

The Doctor is In

I couldn't decide between a picture of Doctor Who, or the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager for this post. Oh well...

In my first post I encouraged anyone who wanted advice from a wannabe therapist psych major to leave comments and I'd try to give responses in my posts. Well, no one took me up on the offer. But, that's okay because I just found my first client. Unfortunately, it's Chris!

We met in my office, a booth in the non-smoking section of Waffle House. It should be noted that Chris is your typical libido driven, non-smoking, non-drinking, 19 year old male with too many opportunities for sex and not enough self-esteem to fully succeed at being a player. The thing is, Chris second guesses his every move with women but then doesn't like, or take, the advice that people give him when he comes calling for help. Much of the time, it seems, he'd be so much better off if he'd actually listen to what other people have to say.

I guess the truth is that Chris doesn't really want advice. Chris wants validation. He wants someone to tell him that he is doing the right thing and that his relationship problems are the fault of the women he dates. I'll grant that the girls he dates aren't exactly the cream of the crop, but, ultimately, he chose them, and he chose to set up situations where they could abuse his boundaries, or lack thereof.

You see, Chris falls repeatedly into the trap that so many young men, myself included, set for themselves and the women they date. Namely, Chris spends exorbitant sums of money on women believing that he is doing it to "treat them like princesses." By the way, guys REALLY do believe this when they're young and stupid. The problem is, of course, that women think the money comes with a price. It does... but not the one they think. Guys, on a deep subconscious level, think that if they spend money it will make women love them. If they spend more money, women will love them even more. Often, it takes years for us to learn that this doesn't actually work. Typically, we don't learn the lesson until after it costs us the one girl we loved the most. That's how I had to learn it, anyway.

I want Chris to learn before it's too late, but I know that he won't. He can't. He has to really hurt in order to learn, and he doesn't know what real hurt feels like, yet. He still lives with his parents and they still bank roll him to a great extent. That's another thing about the lesson, you have to lose YOUR money AND your girl to truly learn it.

Truth be told, while I don't mind doling out free advice to my friends, I don't want to become his therapist, as I've already discussed that I used to use my counselling skills as a tradeable commodity in relationships. Instead, I want Chris to be my friend because he wants to be my friend, and not because he can use me for free therapy. Perhaps now would be a good time for me to practice establishing my own healthy relationship boundaries. Maybe by learning how to keep a friend from taking advantage of me (or, more honestly, enabling them to take advantage of me) I can learn how to be a better--ie., healthier--boyfriend to the next woman I fall in love with.

Have fun and keep living life... And wish us luck!

Picking Up a Spare

I went bowling last night with Chris, the guy who helped me with my spark plugs a few months ago, and two of his friends. I hadn't been bowling since Ex and I were still dating. In fact, the one time we went bowling was actually the last date we went on before breaking up a week later. I'm not an especially great bowler (I can bowl around 100 on a good day), although I do have my own ball from when I took a bowling class in college back in 1993. I have a thing about touching other people's sporting equipment, so any sport I plan on playing more than a few times is one in which I own my own equipment. I have my own pool cue, by the way.

I had a really good time bowling with Chris and his friends, a heavy set guy with a peach-fuzz moustache named Joe, and a tall average sized guy with a shaggy haircut named Beckett. All three of the guys are under twenty years old. None of them were particularly good at bowling, either, although they kept playing as though they knew what they were doing. All were fond of throwing heavy balls and curving them as hard as humanly possible. Consequently, alot of their hooks ended up in the gutter! For my part, I like a lighter ball (mine is only 12 pounds) that I can bowl straight as a laser and better focus on my accuracy. My biggest problem with bowling is that I can never seem to capitalize on a strike or a spare. My next balls after each always seem to gutter or only hit one or two pins. It would be nice to pick up a spare every now and then.

We bowled for over three hours, and during that time Chris and Joe got into an argument about god-only-knows-what that really brought the mood of the evening down. The argument lasted for at least 20 minutes, perhaps as much as 45 minutes before subsiding. We all continued to bowl, regardless, and my score actually improved with me ending the night with a 127 (I beat all the other guys with that). Of course, during the argument, I made attempts at trying to calm the situation down. Trying to pull as much as I could from my psychological studies, and personal experiences in therapy, I attempted to get Chris and Joe to see things from each other's perspectives and try to understand what was motivating the other's behavior. I encouraged each of them to rise above their pettiness and put the argument behind them so that they could enjoy what was left of the evening. Nothing seemed to help, as these two just wanted to keep digging into each other's skin, figuratively speaking. Even though Chris and Joe eventually ended their outward shows of hostility it was clear that, by the end of the night, they were still holding grudges.

This is where it gets interesting, at least to me. As a final bow to the evening, Joe left before the rest of us were ready to go. While doing so, he picked up the bowling tab for ALL OF US. Joe had already sprung $20 for pizza, which mostly he and I ate, and THEN picked up the $30 tab for all of our bowling. Even Chris was flabbergasted by that move. I'm not sure if Joe was trying to show that he was better than Chris by having done that, or if it was one of those angry, spiteful tab pickups that I've been known to do in the distant past. Perhaps you've done something similar. You know those nights where nothing is really going your way, and you just want to get it over with as fast as possible. So, rather than taking the time to behave rationally you just fork over all the cash in your wallet to the service person and leave without even stopping for your change. It's the sort of rash thing that young men are somewhat typical of doing.

At any rate, it was nice to get out of the house and spend time with other people for a change. I'm fairly certain that Joe and Chris will smooth things over in a day or two, since they've known each other for several years. And, even though the guys are all young enough to technically be my sons, I had a good time feeling as though I was, after a long time without this feeling, surrounded by friends. And it's always good to have spare friends around.

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.

First Impressions Spring 2009 (Part A)

It was 70° F when I woke up at 7AM today! The day got progressively colder from there. By noon it had dropped to 62° F. It's JANUARY! Those flowers shouldn't be in bloom in January!

When I got to school around 830AM it began to pour down a cold hard rain which lasted just long enough for me to get completely soaked while walking to class. It was surprisingly windy outside, as well, and I wasn't wearing a coat. Why would I? It was 70 freaking degrees outside!

At any rate, my first class of the day was British Literature I. My professor seemed very familiar for some unknown reason, and she seemed to think that I looked familiar to her, as well. That was kind of strange. I've never had her for a class, that I can recall, and I haven't seen her around dancing, so I can't figure out where I would have met her before. The course looks as though it is going to be difficult for me. There will be ALOT of reading. The course is going to cover British Literature from the Middle Ages up to about the early 1800s. We are starting out with Beowulf. God, I hate Beowulf. We're also going to cover some of Chaucer, for whom I also have no particular love. Why did I sign up for this class again? Oh, that's right, it was required that I take a literature course and American Literature was booked up solid. Actually, I don't mind modern British Literature, stuff like Orwell and Huxley, but anything around Shakespeare and earlier can pretty much kiss my ass, as far as I'm concerned. Why couldn't those people learn how to write ENGLISH? They were, you say? No, actually, they were writing in Anglo-Saxon, a broad term for a variety of dialects from around the British Isles during the time of the Middle Ages. Granted, it would later evolve into English, but I wouldn't exactly call what they were writing English anymore than I would call a biscuit with sausage gravy a sausage biscuit!

After class, I spent my two hour break in the library trying to read the first twenty pages of the near 100 pages that we are expected to read by Friday! I say trying since I kept getting distracted in the library by some guy playing hip hop music through his headphones which I could still hear from about eight feet away. I debated several times the possibility of going over and asking him to turn his music down, but I figure that if he had to play the music that loud through freaking headphones he was probably too hearing impaired to fully understand my request, and I never bothered to learn sign language back when I dated that deaf chick in high school because she could read lips reasonably well.

So, Noon rolled around and I headed to my Human Development class. This is probably going to be the easiest psychology class I've EVER taken, and I've never made below a B in any psych class to date. OH MY GOD, I love this professor already. He's a 30-something, thin, handsome, married, Asian-American who wants to be called "Dr. Mike"! He basically admitted that there is NO reason whatsoever to own the textbook for his class even though he is required by the school to make us have a textbook for the class. He said that the tests (there will be four and the final exam) will cover only what is discussed in class, so as long as we show up and participate in discussion we should do well in the class. We only have one paper to write, and there will be quizzes about once a week. The guy doesn't care if we leave our cell phones on, as long as they don't go off in class, and he even encouraged people to eat and drink in class if they wanted to, since he would rather we eat and pay attention than be hungry and tired and sleep in class (his reasoning, not mine).

After class, the sun began to cut through the clouds and fill the Earth with its spirit enriching light, as though the happiness and joy that was Dr. Mike's introduction was enough to call forth from the heavens and make the clouds part like the Red Sea.

Wow... I think I could totally go gay for Dr. Mike!

Have fun, and keep living life... and don't be ashamed to find someone of your own gender attractive!

And a Pocketful of Gold

I finally received my financial aid money from school. The check was for about $3500, but I was in debt to the bank by $500 and had to buy new tires and get my car inspected. Plus, most of my bills were two months behind, so when the dust settled I only had about $1400 left. Fortunately, I'm also going to receive another $2500 soon since I had to update my FAFSA information after losing my job.

This brings me to an experiment that I have been waiting to conduct for about six months, I needed at least $1000 to properly begin the experiment, which may ultimately prove to be either the smartest thing I've ever done or, more likely, the dumbest. I took the $1000 and bought 3600 shares of stock in Citadel Broadcasting (CDL) at a cost of $.26 a share. Using the formula for exponential growth, y=Initial Value x Rate of Change^Time or Number of Calculations, and expeditious use of limit orders, the goal is to steadily buy and sell low cost stocks until the initial $1000 investment grows to at least $100,000, hopefully by the end of six months.

Citadel is either the third or the fifth largest broadcasting company in America, depending on who you ask and what they base their answer on, but its stock took a dive over the last three to five years along with the rest of the economy. I don't plan to wait for it to go back up to $5 a share, but I'll be happy for it to hit $.35 with a week or two. Naturally, though, the stock dropped over the two days immediately after my purchase to $.20/share. That's just par for the course for me!

I recently told someone that I needed this experiment to work or else I was going to have to find a job! You see, I've always been pretty work averse. I've long said I could never work two jobs because I'm barely willing to work one. That's why I worked at the radio station for ten years; It was BARELY one job! That's sort of how I perceive being a psychotherapist. I can get paid to stick my nose in other people's business. And since I've been doing that for 20 years for FREE it seems like a good calling, if I can just manage to make it through school, that is.

I've always dreamt of achieving the Communist Ideal in this Capitalist world, namely by having so much money that I can't spend it all, so that all my needs and wants are taken care of, and I can spend the rest of my life engaged in personal growth and spiritual fulfillment (learning, travelling, helping the poor and homeless).

Since I was a kid I've thought that my life was being wasted and that somehow I was capable of making the world a better place, if only I could get turned in the right direction or somehow gather enough money. I used to wonder, long before I'd ever heard of Communism, how much better humanity would be if none of us ever needed money again and we could all just work toward making the world a better place. For now, though, I look to the words of Robert Plant: "I live for my dreams... And a pocketful of gold."

Have fun, and keep living life... or some approximation thereof.