The Creative Process

Working on the novel

While trying to figure out whether I wanted to try my hand at freelance writing as a source of income, I realized that I was becoming gripped by the overwhelming urge to FINALLY finish the science fiction novel that I've been sitting on for the last 20 years. It dawned on me over the weekend that if I were to write a mere 3-4 pages each day, a very do-able target goal, I could complete the story by January 1. I started the year with only 70 pages, but thanks to a brief spurt of writing at the beginning of the year, and my recent spurt which I hope will become a more sustained effort, I am now at the halfway point to my goal of writing a 300-page novel. Assuming that I can complete this novel, it is my intention to one day write a complete series of ten novels based around this main character, with this current work being the third of the ten books in the series.

Every time I complete another page I feel a jolt of excitement course through my spine. I feel like I'm finally getting closer to finishing a goal which actually has meaning to me. It helps to add depth to my self-identity in a way that just working for a paycheck does not. Of course, having said that, I am still worried that I may starve or be kicked out on the streets soon. And, I am still diligently trying to find a paying job that will satisfy my financial/survival needs. However, one of the main reasons I began this blog years ago, and the main reason for returning to college, was to chart my progress as I attempted to transition from a lonely, scared, and depressed guy into a man who can successfully set and achieve realistic goals for himself, and live a better life. Admittedly, the current state of the economy and job market has made that more difficult. But, finally being able to complete a project that I had essentially put off for so long would be hugely gratifying.

Still Alive...

Have Portal Gun Will Travel

Despite the long break since my last posting, I am still alive. I managed to have a brief reprieve from absolute destitution in the form of a job. I worked for four months as a car salesman for a local car dealership before the franchise was sold to a competitor and I was laid off, having been a recent hire with no established sales track record. It happens, although I wish that I had been able to keep the job a little bit longer, for no other reason than I was finally able to eat regularly. I even went out to eat at The Raleigh Times a few times. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend their burgers, and the Blatherskite Scottish Ale from the Raleigh Brewing Company. It sort of tastes like the perfect blend of Red Stripe and Stella Artois, my two favorite beers. I would say that it has the clean taste of Stella without the astringent quality, and the deep flavor of Red Stripe without the bitter aftertaste.

Now that I'm back to being unemployed, I am largely in the same position as I was during the first five months of the year. I desperately search the online job postings every day in search of some job which would serve my needs, hoping that I get callbacks for the jobs I want, and feel vaguely qualified for, rather than the jobs which I would only accept based on pure desperation for a steady paycheck. And, as before, I don't seem to get called for the good paying office gigs I would like, nor the low paying grocery store/fast food/convenience store jobs which I would take to benefit my survival. With unemployment in the city still hovering around 6-7%, I don't have a lot of expectations that things will improve quickly. And, with the recent government shutdown adding pressure to social safety nets which were already in a precarious state thanks to the inconsistent moral values of our elected "leaders", I am stuck wondering when my hopes for a better future will ever be realized.

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.

This Shit's Got to Stop Right the Fuck Now!

Birth control is a GOOD thing!

Over the last couple of weeks, Republicans have been driving me, and anyone else with a functioning vagina or penis, batshit fucking insane! I was content to mostly ignore this sudden rampage against women's access to birth control until someone I follow on Twitter referenced this article about New Hanover, NC county commissioners rejecting funds for local family planning services. Once this crap starts happening in my home state, I have to speak up.

Now, understand that I'm about to make my case in a perhaps inappropriate way, with details which you probably don't want to read, but I have to get this out into the open. I'm not sure exactly who Republicans think they are controlling, punishing, or otherwise dictating, but you would think that people who have fucked as many individuals who AREN'T their wives while still espousing "family values" would understand that women are made for more than just birthing babies! In fact, these despicable Randian Conservatives who "don't want to have to take care of" other people should love giving out free birth control on every street corner, as there would then be fewer people around to need taking care of.

Now, depending on the type of birth control, and to what amount a woman's insurance may or may not cover the birth control, a year's worth of birth control can cost as much as $1000 a year, not including the medical consultations required by the doctors who must act as gatekeepers for the birth control. If a woman is living on the edge, financially, this cost can be too much to bear. Even for a woman who is living a relatively comfortable middle-class life this expense can put a stress on her financial situation. The Conservative argument is that if they think they can't afford it then these women should keep their legs closed, as one of these brilliant luminaries recently suggested that women should use a Bayer aspirin as birth control by holding it between their knees!

Taking a Break From All Your Worries

I'm trying to consume healthier sweets

Now that it's Spring Break, I have some time to catch up on things.

A couple weeks ago, I went to Student Health Services to have my blood glucose checked. After the whole Dunkin' Donuts fiasco I was worried about my health. The doctor there recommended that I lose at least 20 pounds, and try to eat healthier, of course. My test results were emailed to me a few days later and reported that, while I wasn't officially diabetic, my blood glucose level was high enough to be considered "pre-diabetic", a term which means I'm basically screwed if I don't do something about my health soon. I guess it is better to know than be in the dark. Since I got the results, I've been trying to cut back on sweets, and eat more vegetables. I still eat sweets 2-3 days a week, but that's better than the 5-6 days a week I was doing prior to going to the doctor. Since the blood test is able to detect glucose levels for a three month period, I'll try to go back for another glucose test in the fall to see if things have improved.

During the two weeks prior to Spring Break, all of my courses held their mid-term exams. I managed to make a 100 (A+) in Behavioral Research, and B- in Philosophy of Science. I don't know, yet, what I made in Modern American History or Western Lit, but I feel pretty confident that I made at least a B+ on each of the exams.

Speaking of Western Lit, the Sexy Scot implied during class a few weeks ago that she is a lesbian. I don't have any problems with gays or lesbians, but I still felt sad when I heard the implication. Why did I feel sad? Well, because my professor clearly won't be having sex with me since she is in a relationship with another woman. It has nothing to do with me being fat, old, broke, or one of her students! No, potential lesbianism is apparently too strong a piece of evidence for even my incredibly strong power of self-delusion to set aside!

Meeting Challenges

I could only eat six of them.

This was an eventful week with an abundance of meetings. Tuesday, I met with Johnnie at the Dunkin' Donuts to attempt to eat a dozen doughnuts in under 40 minutes, the time it took him to eat a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts during the Krispy Kreme Challenge. I was able to eat six of the doughnuts in 17 minutes, so I was well on my way to beating his time. However, I started to feel lightheaded and stuffed. The problem is that Dunkin' Donuts are 1) slightly larger than Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and 2) denser than Krispy Kreme doughnuts. So, eating six Dunkin' Donuts is like the equivalent of eating nine Krispy Kreme doughnuts. At any rate, I lost the challenge miserably, and had to apologize personally, and publicly (on Facebook), to Johnnie for calling him a pussy for initially complaining about having to eat the doughnuts during the race. And, I felt really lightheaded and sluggish for the remainder of the afternoon. I really hate having to tuck my tail between my legs on things like this.

On Wednesday morning, I attended the weekly lab meeting with The Good Doctor. The meeting was largely uneventful, as usual. However, a considerable focus of the meeting surrounded a side discussion about applying to graduate schools. A friend from the lab is currently in the application process, and was lamenting her chances to get accepted. She was concerned because her GRE scores, while good, weren't as good as she was hoping. However, her GPA is considerably higher than mine, and she has the benefit of being multilingual, and has experience from a study abroad program in which she took part. The discussion actually aroused anxiety in me, since, if she is having worries about getting accepted, I REALLY should worry. I did considerably better on the GRE, apparently, but my GPA isn't all that close to hers, and I don't have any sort of extracurricular experience to promote on a CV for grad school. Further, she applied to about ten schools around the country. Since it costs $100 for every grad school application, not including the cost of having the GRE scores sent to multiple universities, I simply do not have the sort of money to send out more than a couple of applications. And, I've been wanting to keep myself in North Carolina, which further limits my options for getting into a program where I would fit. I've been hoping to somehow stay at NC State, and get into one of the professors' labs here, if not even stay with The Good Doctor; but this week's set of meetings has thrown the fear of God into me about getting accepted into a program. And, as I've mentioned in the past, I don't have a backup plan in the event that I am not accepted.

Kreme of Consciousness

The Fourth Floor of Poe

I just finished the fourth week of the semester, which means I'm now one fourth the way through this one. I suspect that this post will be mostly an annoyed tirade, so I wanted to warn you if you aren't into that sort of thing. It does get more upbeat after the break.

Things have been relatively light, despite all the reading that I've complained about in the past. Western Literature is enjoyable, although I dislike the Sexy Scot's habit of always making the class get into small groups to discuss the daily readings. I much prefer discussing the readings within the larger class group. I'm not sure why, but I just find the smaller groups tedious and unnecessary.

And while I'm in the mood to complain about little things, my Philosophy of Science course is really bugging the hell out of me, too. I should be loving this course. Philosophy, science, and religion are some of my favorite topics. We are, of course, talking about the controversy surrounding creation science, or intelligent design. Actually, it would be more to the point to say that the professor is the one talking about the controversy. We are just supposed to keep up with readings, listen to him lecture, and respond to quizzes and tests online. One problem is that the course is a 200-person auditorium class, which greatly interferes with the potential for the students to get into classroom debates. Personally, I don't think any philosophy course should ever be more than 40 students to a class. But, with all the financial cutbacks the university system has endured the last decade, what could we expect.

Scottish Fiction

Shirley Manson makes me want to visit Scotland

I should probably be reading right now, instead of writing this post. However, this is ME we're talking about, and when in the history of ever have I actually done the things that I'm SUPPOSED to do in a timely fashion?

Thankfully, I received my financial aid money this morning. The timing couldn't have been better, as my bank account only had about $2.80 as of last night. Before heading to school this morning, I went online and got my bills caught up, which consumed around $700 of my money in a few minutes. By now, though, I'm rather accustomed to this twice yearly routine, as I always end up letting my bills fall by the wayside for a few months as I survive on a steady diet of macaroni and cheese until my next hit of economic prosperity arrives such that I might eat like a normal person until the end of the next semester.

Today's class load wasn't too bad, as I only had to deal with Great Works of Western Literature and my Behavioral Psych Lab. I also got to have lunch with my friend Johnnie, which was nice. We had the opportunity to trade stories about our hot professors. Apparently, we both got lucky this semester. My literature professor is hot in that academic sense I mentioned previously. She is likely in her early 40s, with long brown hair, and a slim physique. Usually, I don't prefer skinny women, as I've always liked boobs and butts. Unless a woman is literally "tits on a stick", as they say, thin ladies just don't have an abundance of things for my hands to play with. That said, Ex was thin, as a dancer, and I found things about her body that I enjoyed.

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.

Time Management

Taking time for lunch outside

This semester is really testing me in ways I haven't been before.

I've posted in the past about my habit of procrastination. Often I find that I work better under the pressure that procrastinating provides. Over the last few weeks, however, that has not been the case, at all. With the homework needed to stay on top of my Intermediate French and Finite Math courses, the 10+ hours of research work for The Doctor each week, as well as the reading for Cognitive Psychology and Behavioral Research, I am really being asked to accomplish more in a limited amount of time that I am accustomed. For ten years at the radio station, I essentially had 10 hours of work to get done in 40 hours a week, with the remainder of my time spent being on alert in case something went horribly wrong.

The thing is, I really enjoy my downtime. I like being able to have time to read Internet forums, watch The Young Turks on YouTube, read political blogs, watch the occasional documentary on Netflix. While I find that keeping up with politics is stressful, it is stressful in a way that I find fun. Having to constantly do work to maintain my grades is stressful, but not in a way that I find especially fun. The problem is that there is a specific goal in mind with regard to the school work. I HAVE TO make good grades. I don't have to know that President Obama's ridiculous "jobs" plan consists of 56% tax cuts for corporations.

Of course, procrastinating wouldn't be as big of a problem for me if I would actually do all the things I need to do. As I put things off, the stack of things I need to do constantly gets bigger, increasing the pressure until I worry that I might explode. And the work for The Doctor is a particular beast for me, because I hate the feeling that I am letting someone else down. If I make a C in French it doesn't hurt me, emotionally, as much as knowing that I'm slowing someone else down or preventing them from accomplishing their tasks in an efficient manner. That's why I was never meant for customer service. I despise slowing other people down.

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.

Waiting...

I'm pretty sure that never happened

The last week or so has been filled with a vast expanse of nothing as I've stayed at home and watched online videos and read articles about how much the world, or at least the US, sucks right now. While I have absolutely no expectation that the Rapture will occur this weekend, despite the assertions of some right wing lunatics to the contrary, with all of the reports of Conservatives taking away people's collective bargaining rights, voting rights, and rights to entitlements around the country I can sort of see why some might be waiting in anticipation for such an event. I'm guessing Jesus offers a better universal healthcare plan than the US!

On the plus side, I finally received some emails from the good Doctor about starting research. His group of around ten research undergraduates, including myself, will meet up with him next Monday, assuming the world hasn't ended, to discuss our various work assignments. Because he has so many students working with him, the Doctor is dividing us among several different research projects. We will have a weekly meeting for all the groups to talk and update one another on the work being done by everyone. I am part of a group that will be doing some literature review work about geriatrics and social psychology. Right now, things are sort of vague, but the meetings on Monday should clarify what we are supposed to research. My group is working under the Doctor's graduate student in cooperation with a research group in Surrey, England.

The Numbers Are In...

I was really expecting a B in French

Well, that wasn't at all like having teeth pulled!


Now that I've completed my first semester at NC State, I have to say that in some ways it was harder and in some ways easier than I had originally expected. As you can no doubt tell by the semester grades, the two biggest struggles for me were French and Psych Research. I was really disappointed with my French grade. While I can only really blame myself, I did explain in detail during my course evaluation a couple of weeks ago that I don't think the course should have required as much homework as was expected of us. That was my major downfall, as I usually made 85-96 on the tests. The course is on one hand sold as a refresher or review of French, and students are required to take a placement test to stay in the class. But, on the other hand, the course crams all of the material from French I and II into the span of one semester. As I commented in my course evaluation, the main reason students take this course is because they don't feel confident in their speaking abilities and want extra prep time before entering the 200-level French course which is taught almost exclusively in French. Students, such as myself, want French 110 to give us greater confidence with our speaking and oral comprehension, which I don't feel like the course actually provided. Granted, my French writing and reading has improved slightly, but I feel as though my speaking and conversational skills actually regressed a bit over the semester because so little time was focused on actual conversation skill. And, after all of that, I have a C on my transcript!

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.

Limping Toward the Finish

Honesty is so refreshing these days

This was the last week of the semester, and I gave oral to women on three different occasions this week, which made things seem incredibly hectic. Now that I have your attention, settle down. My life isn't that interesting!

On Monday I had my final French oral exam. It went well, at least in the beginning, as my female partner and I were reasonably prepared for our skit and art conversation. Things started going downhill once we were required to ask each other questions from a predetermined list of questions in various tenses. The professor started dropping our generally high scores on the grade sheet. At least, we got through it with at least a C.

On Thursday, I had to rent a campus Zipcar for a trip to Wake Tech's Health Education facility for an oral exam that I had promised to do for an old acquaintance from high school that friended me on Facebook. It was okay, although I got there early and ended up sitting in the wrong building for half an hour before anyone came out and asked me why I was there. I was told that I needed to walk to the opposite side of a parking deck from where I was to get to the dental facility. I had some x-rays of my horribly crooked teeth made, but otherwise my teeth were apparently in too good a condition for actual cleaning work to be done. Since it is a teaching facility for dental hygienists, they wanted someone whose teeth were worse off than mine, I guess. At any rate, it was nice to see an old classmate who somehow managed to have a daughter in the intervening years and somehow didn't gain much weight, as so many of my other high school comrades and I have.

Sometimes We Make Sausage, Other Times... Progress

Poe Hall From the Court of the Carolinas

If you happened to friend me on Facebook, you probably already learned that I had a meeting on Monday with a Doctor about PSY 499 work. The good Doctor is a young man, perhaps younger than myself, with a very quiet demeanor. His German accent only adds to his charm, and I described him to a couple of people as "adorable". In fact, even though we have had very little contact with one another thus far, I'd be willing to say I have a little bit of a crush on him. This is hardly a new phenomenon for me, as I have had exactly four crushes on men in my life. Of course the good Doctor is married, and his wife is quite attractive in her own right, if the photo on his desk is an accurate depiction. To be honest, I'm not sure where I was going with that!

At any rate, we only spoke for about fifteen minutes, but it was enough time for me to feel like an idiot, albeit a well-spoken idiot. The Doctor is very intelligent, as are most Europeans when compared with us lowly Americans. He attended the prestigious Max Planck Institute and is currently studying emotion and cognition in adults and the elderly. He asked me simple questions for which I felt like I had no good answer, though I flapped my lips and came up with something to fill the silence. Honestly, how do I get caught up on a question like, "What are your goals for the future?" or "What sorts of things would you like to research?" After giving it some thought, I think it has something to do with motivation.

The Fortunes of Futures Passed

Fortune Cookies Are Getting Morose

I'm not one for backup plans. Generally, I make my mind up, I go in a direction, and I see where it takes me. If I end up someplace good, then I'm happy. If I end up someplace not so good, then I'm not so happy, but I deal with it and accept my fate... at least for awhile. However, I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't start trying to create a backup plan, in the event this whole going to Graduate School and becoming a professor thing doesn't work out.

The thing is, I don't see myself as becoming anything other than a college professor. Well, at least not realistically. I've had a fantasy for years now about creating a company with my friends for the sole purpose of saving the world from itself. That whole God complex of mine enjoys reveling in that fantasy. But, the job of college professor is uniquely suited to what I consider my strengths, while still allowing me to indulge in some of my weaknesses. For instance, I love giving presentations in front of groups of people. I enjoy reading up on some obscure bit of knowledge, breaking that knowledge down into a set of presentation slides, and teaching it to people who didn't take the time to learn what I just discovered. Also, I enjoy being a little judgmental (that would be classified as one of my weaknesses). Asking people to write a literature review paper, or other such assignment, would allow me an outlet for looking down my nose at students who seemingly can't find their ass with a roll of toilet paper.