#13

A reality: we all want to be special. We all want to have some characteristic that makes us so unique that if only people met us even once and got to know us, they would forever remember us as a distinct person, not like anyone else they ever met. This isn’t even remotely true. You meet people, and most of the time, you describe them in relation to someone else you’ve already met. “You remind me so much of my friend so-and-so.” Even the people who aren’t exactly like someone you’ve met you can still describe as being mixtures of people. And everyone else can describe you the same way. You can’t comprehend this exactly. You see yourself as the YOU, the most important person in your world, since without you, your view of the world wouldn’t exist. I think people honestly can’t see themselves as anything but special without thinking really long and hard about who they are and who other people are. That’s probably why people are always convinced other people are talking about them when they probably aren’t (I’m guilty of this, too). You are very concerned with you, why wouldn’t other people? There’s a really good episode of Community where Jeff Winger is coming to grips with his non-specialness. “You’ll be good at a few things, but not very good at many others.” It sounds like terrible advice to give to children (at least to Americans), but maybe we shouldn’t encourage kids to aim ridiculously high. Maybe then there wouldn’t be the giant disillusionment when kids grow up, like in Avenue Q. The world isn’t one big happy place. Why should we pretend it is for children? I think they understand more than we give them credit for.

                So I have an inferiority complex. I’ve mentioned before that I get really good grades. I define myself by the fact I’m really smart. I’m constantly terrified of other people beating me academically, however. I’m always convinced everyone is going to kick my ass in a class. They never do, but I’m still worried about it. I can’t imagine not being as smart as I am, and so I assume everyone else is as well. I know logically that people aren’t as smart as me, but I still worry about it. My intelligence is my “specialness.” I’m worried about losing what, in my mind, is my defining characteristic. I have no problem not being the best looking or most athletic or most popular. I never thought of myself in those ways. The thought of not being the smartest can send me into a giant bout of depression. This is why grades are my number one trigger. Losing my grades would be losing my very self. I know this isn’t healthy, and I try and work on it. I’m trying to find new ways to define myself. But it’s not something that you can just change by wishing. It’s hard to redefine yourself. But that is the source of my inferiority complex and a major source of depression.

                I’m also crazy. I have trouble keeping my thoughts grounded in reality, and constantly drift off into fantasies. I have urges to hurt or kill myself. I have violent urges to hurt other people. I most definitely have problems. However, so does everyone else. Many people, if you talk about this with them, also think they are crazy. They are convinced there’s something more wrong with them than the average person. Except, that can’t be true of everybody. Therefore, it seems everyone is probably all doing many of the same things in their mind and think they’re the only ones who do that. Being borderline crazy is another way of being special, oddly enough. It’s easy to take some weird pride in walking the line of sanity (or so you believe). I also do this. I like to think I’m unique and different because of what goes on in my mind. However, a lot of the time, my thoughts are just normal. There are a couple things that set me off, a few radical ideas that will really set me off, but I think that’s the same for everybody. I like to think that because of my “craziness,” my desire for specialness is more dangerous than in other people. But is it really? Probably not. It’s just me wanting to be more important than other people.

                Everyone thinking they are/wanting to be special is a possible reason, I believe, for the large amount of hypocrisy in the world. Everyone is a hypocrite about something. It’s so easy to judge a person for something, and then not even realize that you do something very similar. If you do realize that you do something similar, it’s easy to make excuses why your situation is different and not subject to the same judgments. Vee is especially bad about this. We were having a conversation about two people, each of us hating one. I could admit my hatred was unreasonable. Vee agreed mine was, but wouldn’t admit hers was, coming up with flimsy reason after reason why hers was different. She couldn’t see her own hypocrisy, even though I was trying my best to point it out to her without directly calling her a hypocrite to her face. Vee points out things I do all the time, and I actually try and think about what she says. Of course, maybe she did as well, just later on her own. I don’t know what’s going on in her head. As I get older, I’m starting to recognize the little red flags where I’m making excuses for my own situation. In my post about pre-med students, you’ll notice I admitted I was being hypocritical. I’m not perfect at recognizing when I am, but I’m getting better. Writing (or typing) out my thoughts about things really helps me notice stuff a lot better. But it’s still difficult, and still most definitely a work in progress. It really seems like many people don’t have these red flags, but again, I don’t know what’s going on in their heads. Maybe the recognize and reevaluate their opinions on their own later on. I also pride myself on being able to see every point of view when I think about it. I try and make myself do it as often as I can. Why would this person believe something else? What are the merits to it? Most people only focus on the errors in any viewpoint. You’ll get a much better understanding if you try and see everything about a view. Of course, maybe other people do this as well, not just me. Again, I don’t know what’s going on in their heads. The number one place for crazy hypocrites not trying to understand other people’s points of view is the internet. Especially certain individuals on Yahoo Answers. There’s this one guy I saw who said he “didn’t judge or hate” people. One of his answers was judging and hating hardcore on someone’s beliefs. He also claimed to dislike “closed minded ignorant people who won’t try and see other views.” From some other things he said, you could tell he only meant people who didn’t agree with him. He really didn’t realize he wasn’t giving their views a chance either. A different person mentioned how much they hated haters, and then later proclaimed one should never apologize for how they feel about something. Really? So why should haters feel bad about hating? Comment sections on Yahoo are another bad place if you want reasonable people who will examine their own views and others’ fairly. It makes me think of a quote I saw once: “I guess you’re right.” – No one on the internet

                One thing that has driven home my lack of uniqueness is going on the internet in search of people like me, to read their stories. Guess what: I found them. Lots of them. LOTS of them. With stories and experiences and personalities remarkably like mine. Many people take comfort in finding others like them. There is a relief, sure. But there’s also that sudden realization that you are not a beautiful, unique snow flake. You are the same decaying filth as everyone else. (That’s from Fight Club. The quote’s not 100% right, but it’s still from Fight Club. I love that movie.) Finding tons of people just like you really drives home the point that you aren’t special. And that loss of specialness can really make you realize how important being special is to you. Or maybe that’s just me. And maybe that’s just me wanting to be special. Basically, thinking this way makes it impossible to analyze or trust any thought or opinion you have about yourself. You’d think me understanding my drive to be special would lead to greater understanding about myself. Instead, it’s lead to more uncertainty. It’s like that saying, the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.

                I didn’t read this stuff anywhere. Maybe a dash or two from it came from my psychology class or something, and maybe something I’ve forgotten that I read on the internet somewhere. Most of this I’ve come up with by stringing together a bunch of disconnected thoughts I jotted down. But you know what I can guarantee? That none of this is original. That someone else has come up with these thoughts and theories before. It’s basically impossible to come up with a thought no one else has had before. Reading people’s blogs should convince you of that. I haven’t read this sort of discussion anywhere, but I’m sure it’s out there. The worst part is that I can recognize all these things about myself, but deep down, I still want to be special. I still want to think that I’m the most interesting/unique/important person in the world. I know in my mind it’s not true, but my heart won’t accept it. Maybe I can change it, but it will take a lot of work. And that is why I say fuck reality. No matter what you discover about yourself, that doesn’t mean you can change that about you anyway. And then you have to live with the knowledge that it needs to be changed. Oh, well. That’s life.

7-28-12

So I’ve been home for about a week now. I got delayed in Chicago airport, so I didn’t actually get home until one in the morning or so. It’s nice to see fields again instead of trees everywhere. The only bad thing is that many of the fields don’t look so good. Farmers’ soybeans still look OK, but pretty much every corn field is showing the effects of the lack of rain to some extent. Some are just looking a little yellow, but the farmers should still get something out of them. Others are really stunted, and whoever farms them isn’t going to get much at all. Our yard is completely brown. I’ve never seen it this bad. The frustrating part is that there is rain around. Storms blow up every couple of days, but they either give a negligible amount of rain, or they avoid our area completely. On Wednesday we had a line of showers form a small break in the middle that passed right over our house. Really? The lack of rain wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so hot out. It was super hot in the beginning of the week. It reached 104° one day and 105° another day. Thankfully it cooled down a little so it’s been in the 80’s the last couple days.

                So, yeah, I haven’t done too much since I got back. My mom took me and my little sister to Brave on Sunday. It was alright. It was a little more of a mother-daughter movie, but at least it got me out of the house. I did manage to make myself clean my room. The longest part of this was organizing my textbooks (I don’t sell them back) and notes and deciding which ones I’ll need this fall and where to stash the ones I’m not taking. Then I organized everything I was going to take to college this fall. My little sister (who is going to be a freshman at the same university this fall. I’m not sure if I mentioned that before.) is jealous of how little stuff I have compared to her. She has so much she wants to take to college with her. On Wednesday, mum, little sister, and I went shopping. I didn’t want to go, but decided it would be easier to go to the bank and deal with money stuff myself. We also went to the library, which was another place I wanted to go. But after that, we went a bunch of places where I didn’t need anything. My mom and sister would promise to be done soon and I’d hang out somewhere more interesting to me, but there is only so much looking you can do. I always ended up bored and waiting for them. Shopping like that puts me in a horrible mood while it’s happening, and I have a short temper the rest of the day. It’s fine for a little bit, but after some random point, I’m just super pissed they’re taking so long. I’ll be perfectly calm in the evening, it doesn’t put me in a bad mood for the day, but it hardly takes anything to suddenly get a biting comment or a rant out of me. I guess I just bury my anger so well I don’t even know it’s there until it’s brought to the surface. Oh, well. That’s why I don’t go shopping often. Me and my little sister (let’s just call her Lils from now on) went to Ted on Thursday night. It was OK. I enjoy drug humor, but they relied on the two guys smoking weed way too much. It wasn’t that amusing after about 5 minutes. You know it was over the top, since I love Pineapple Express and Harold and Kumar. Last night, Mum and Lils went to the county fair. I decided I didn’t want to go. I would probably have run into a classmate or two I wanted to see, but other than that, it’s really not that exciting. I can be entertained for an hour or two usually, and they were there four or five hours. So I’m not really sad I didn’t go. I can always see people on my own, no reason to go to the fair to do it. Instead, me and my dad went on a bike ride. The weather was beautiful for it, so it was fun. It’s good for me to get out of the house and do something.

                So other than all that, I really haven’t done much. A lot of sitting around the house, a lot of movie watching. I’ve been playing Zelda: The Minish Cap on GameBoy. I’ve been reading some. It’s nice to have unrestricted internet access, but I’m usually not guaranteed enough privacy to go wherever I want online. I miss having my own computer to access the internet freely. It’s kinda been a week of ups and downs. I told my mom I was having more thoughts of hurting myself one night when I was depressed. She was a little disturbed by that. I wouldn’t have told her, except I get a real “fuck it” attitude when I’m depressed. I just don’t care about repercussions. Thankfully, she hasn’t brought it up again. I keep flip-flopping about meds this fall. I know that logically I should take them, but my stubborn side keeps saying I don’t need them, that I can do this on my own. I had a slightly disturbing conversation with Lils. I’ve been getting crazier as I get older. I know it, my family knows it. My conscience isn’t quite as robust as it once was. I really do my best to control myself, but there’s always that chance that one day I’ll snap. It turns out that me and Lils both thought that the crazy gunman out in Colorado could be me. Which is kinda disturbing. I promise I’m not a homicidal maniac right now, but under the right conditions, I can see it happening. Which brings us back to me starting meds. Probably a good idea. So hopefully Dr. H can help me and everything will be a bright and wonderful future. Hooray. To end on a lighter note, we have a bunch of kittens from this spring. They’re all pretty cute, but they’re a little past the cutest stage. I just noticed that two of them (from the same mom) had weird orange eyes. Most cats have yellow eyes, but their eyes are darker. It’s kinda weird. Its more noticeable on one because she’s a weird light orange color. I didn’t know they had such weird eyes before I left because all the kittens had blue eyes when I left. I don’t know if you  know this, but all kittens have blue eyes when they open. They’re really pretty when they start turning to the normal yellow. It makes a cool green color. Anyway, that didn’t have anything to do with anything, but just a recent observation. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend (I mean everyone in general, not just my readers, because, let’s face it, I don’t really have any consistent readers). Peace.

#12

A reality: I hate pre-med people.

                So I have to wait in an airport for a couple hours before my next flight, so I decided to go on an angry rant. Ever wanted to see the innermost feelings of a complete nerd? Brace yourselves.

                Pre-med kids piss me the fuck off for many reasons. The main one is that most of them come in their freshman year determined to be a doctor. First of all, most of them are not smart enough for it. They are too fucking stupid to realize that medical school is actually hard work. Some got good grades in high school and just can’t keep up in college. Many people complain about how much harder college is than high school. I never found it so. Everything I do is just one big monotonous routine. Nothing rocks the boat in my life. I kinda wish it would, but that’s a problem for future me. Anyway, there is always multiple weed out classes designed to get rid of the people who are too dumb. Most take the hint and drop out. Some refuse and won’t change their major until too late. They end up not being able to get into medical school and are left with an unusable major. One kid I know is sort of in this boat. His major is actually legit, but he just doesn’t have the grades for medical school. He says his advisor keeps telling him to drop the pre-med designation, but he refuses. He is dead set on medicine. I’ll probably come back to him later. Let’s call him Zee. So then there are kids who do get the grades, but only through ridiculously hard work. They have to study 24/7 just to keep up as undergrads. I have no idea how they make it through med school. In fact, many of them might not. Vee said her sister (who just graduated from med school) said that a ton of people dropped out the first semester. I wonder if they just couldn’t physically study anymore. The kids who do have to study constantly, also have no fun. Their entire lives revolve around school. They honestly don’t know how to relax. Many will probably burn out later in their lives. They claim they don’t need to go out and hang with people to have a good time and instead study on Friday nights. I wonder if their parents haven’t done some sort of damage to kids like that, causing them to equate any relaxation with laziness, guilt, and failure. I personally would rather have a doctor that can actually relate to people and isn’t burned out and on antidepressants (hypocritical I know, but I work on it, and they don’t even seem to try. Plus, I’m not trying to go into a job that requires very personal interaction with patients). They are all paranoid about their grades too and will argue over every single little point. They have to be perfect in everything. Except that’s not possible, but they can’t admit they’re flawed. They sit there and compare grades and GPA with everyone and always try to be the best.

Which brings me to my second complaint: They are way over competitive. So to start, I hate people who are competitive in pretty much everything. I hated PE in high school mostly because everyone was competitive. I enjoy working up a sweat and trying my hardest while playing, but I don’t get upset when something doesn’t go right, or the other team is better. I’m not going to turn on someone on my team because they aren’t as good. I have the view that if I have fun, I win. Try convincing other people of that. Some kids in high school would get so into a game they would be pretty much dangerous to anyone who wasn’t as good as them. Seriously, chill the fuck out. I also hate people who are constantly comparing their grades in school. I avoid revealing my grades when at all possible. I even try to avoid telling Vee most of the time. These kids constantly try and figure out who is beating them. They brag about every good grade they get. It drives me crazy. I constantly have to fight my own competitive side when it comes to grades. I try not to define myself by my school work/achievements. But sitting listening to these kids talk always makes me start being paranoid that I won’t be the best at school. Grades are the number one source of depression. These fucking dumbasses often trigger spells of depression for me with their discussions, all because they’re insecure and can’t let mind their own fucking business about people’s grades. Granted I obviously care too since their conversations bother, but I try really hard not to care. They don’t give a fuck. They just get right down in there and wallow in the shallow world of grades. They don’t try and be better people or anything, they just want better grades. There’s this one guy we’ll call Nett. He found out I get better grades than him and some of our mutual friends told me that he said his new goal in college was to beat me. Seriously? I need more pressure, someone else rooting for me to fail? If I ever man up enough to blow my fucking brains out, he is getting mentioned in my suicide note. Fuck you Nett. I can mostly avoid him, but he’s living with Vee this fall, so we’ll see if that can continue. These kids all just want to win at everything. Dr. P said his son wants to be the best at baseball, have the highest grades in all his classes. Why can’t people just chill the fuck out and smell the fucking roses? Unhealthy pursuit of something isn’t admirable. Think Moby Dick. Now, I realize that not all people like this are pre-med. But most pre-med kids are like this. I would really rather have a doctor who can treat me without feeling superior because they have MD after their name.

Which brings me to my third point: Most people go into medicine for the wrong reasons. I have specifically heard many of them say they want to make money. They think if they get the degree, their life will be made. Do they not realize the crappy hours, the malpractice insurance, how just plain shitty the job can be? Seriously? All because you want money? You will kill yourself in school and make other people’s lives unpleasant by being a shallow doctor just so you can get money? Then there’s the people who go into it to prove they’re the best, the overly competitive ones. They also don’t want to help people. They just are trying to feel good about themselves. They have inferiority complexes they’re trying to get over (Nett is very much like this. Again, I feel like I’m being a hypocrite, but I’m also not pre-med). I know one girl who just wants to one-up her sister who’s in law school. Really? Then there’s the people who just want to make mommy and daddy proud/happy. I have one friend, Bat, who didn’t really want to be a doctor, but his parents told him he had to. And now he won’t even admit that he wants something different. He will do anything to please his parents, and they intrude scarily much into his life (like randomly stopping by his apartment and keeping constant tabs on him when he’s in college). He can’t see a difference between what he wants and what his parents want. His parents are an art professor and a lawyer. How the hell can they demand he be a doctor? Why is it any of their business. He’s smart enough for higher education, but why should his parents say only a doctor is good enough when their own fields aren’t related at all. I know maybe two pre-med people who actually want to medicine for good reasons. One is the Zee guy I mentioned earlier. He works his ass off, but simply can’t get the grades he needs. However, he really just wants to help people. He wants to make their lives better and ease their suffering. I feel really bad that he probably won’t be able to do this. If I could switch my grades with his, I would. He really deserves it.

                My last complaint about pre-med students is their choice of majors. They either go too hard or too easy. Let’s start with too easy. I’ve seen many who do majors that are all brute memorization and don’t encourage individual thinking. They want to be able to just memorize their way to the top. I hate people that try and memorize everything rather than understanding the material. People often confuse being able to list off useless facts with intelligence. Truly intelligent people can take what they know and apply it to a problem as needed and get all the information they need from that. The professor I do research for (I don’t think I ever gave her a name, I’ll have to work at that) is amazing at this. Watching her work through a problem is mind-blowing. I respect that lady so much. One really common major is psychology. There are so many psychology pre-med students. Seriously? You can’t do a real fucking science (most true science majors don’t consider psychology legitimate if you didn’t know.)? Me and Vee make fun of psych pre-med students constantly. My Orgo professor had this thing, if his doctor didn’t know what they were talking about, couldn’t problem solve scientifically, he told them to get out and ask for another doctor. I think more people should be like that. Then there’s the people who do too hard of majors. There’ this one guy who is doing a really hard degree and three minors. The degree he’s going for usually takes five years by itself, and he’s behind in it. And he was in the easy section for the intro classes rather than the majors-only section, probably trying to boost his GPA. I’m not sure what year he is, but he might actually already be a year behind in his major too. It’s like, really? His major isn’t even super applicable to medicine. The best majors I think are Biology, Chemistry, and Biochemistry. Pre-med students who do these often still define themselves as pre-med first. They also tend to brag about how much they know after undergraduate classes and rely on memorization rather than understanding the material. I was reading a blog, and this pre-med guy who was about to graduate was bragging about everything he knew that wasn’t common  knowledge to most people. I had heard of everything he brought up in my freshman/sophomore classes. He just wanted to show off to his non-science readers. Fuck you, ya glory seeking, small dicked pansy.

                If you can’t tell, I don’t have a lot of respect for most doctors. Most who get through are shallow, arrogant people who memorized their way through school. Which you do have to do to an extent for medicine, but it’s still not my favorite. I believe the truly useful thing to do is research. Get a PhD instead of an MD and do true science, trying to understand a system. Once you understand it, you can then try and fix it. Of course, you still need doctors to apply the discoveries, but whatever. I have to wonder if pre-med people are that bad, or if I just resent them or feel threatened by them (I do have some inferiority problems. I know they’re completely irrational, but still). It really is impossible sometimes to analyze the source of feelings. Any doctor or therapist who speaks with certainty is full of shit. The people I’ve met that I respect the most are professors who do research. They are incredibly smart, have amazing analytical skills, and usually don’t believe in memorizing. They emphasize understanding. That’s what I want to do. Understand. I will also point out that way too much credit is given to modern medicine for the vast increase in life span. Dr. P was talking about this graph that showed an increase in lifespan after the discovery of penicillin. The real cause? The improvement of sewer systems and increased hygiene. Hygiene and healthy lifestyle can really do a lot more for people than drugs and surgery. Drugs and surgery most certainly have their place, but (one of my favorite sayings) an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So you really want to make a difference in the world? Become an engineer or someone who improves infrastructure and makes cleanliness and waste disposal possible. That is what will change people’s lives. Not that that’s what I’m doing, but still. So I obviously have some very harsh feelings toward a lot of the people I meet in college. I’m trying to work on it, but they still piss me off and make my life more difficult that it needs to be. Fuck reality. This turned out quite long, and I still have a while to wait for my plane. Oh, well. I need to calm down for a while. It’s nice to get frustrations out in the open, but it’s also not good to dwell on them. So time to put them away for a while. I don’t have to deal with people like I just ranted about for a month, when school starts again. I’m going to do my best not to worry about it for now. Hope everyone else is have a wonderful weekend. Hopefully I’ll get this post up sometime tonight or early tomorrow. Till later.

7-21-12

    So I’m going to write about my week. I feel like this is going to be a long post, so let’s get started shall we? I left off with glow golf last week. We went there after supper (everyone minus das Germans and Ant, Sco, and Da.). It has awesome 80’s music, as I mentioned, and had a haunted/monster theme going. I was in a group with St. C and Jus. I hadn’t really talked to Jus since the night before the really hard test, but it was fun. I came in last, but I got a free game out of the deal (all losers did), but I didn’t have a chance to use it. Oh, well. It’s a good marketing idea. So our professor this week was pretty cool. He was in pretty good shape for his age, but he had an earring in one ear, which I’m not a fan of. He had kids. I think if you’re that old, you need to drop the earring. They just don’t look good. He just kinda covered whatever material he wanted since there wasn’t any test for what we covered this week. He really went hard trying to recruit people to his school for graduate school (most of the kids here are going to be seniors and are thinking about such things). He took a bunch of people out for lunch and went to the beach with people. I didn’t go, but people said it was fun. I didn’t get to the beach at all this week, so I’ve only been to the ocean twice. Oh, well. I’ll get to it again someday. Maybe the Pacific next time. Thursday we had presentations to give over the same topics as our term papers. I didn’t put my powerpoint together until the night before, but it went alright. Dr. P even complimented my presentation at the end. I tend to just have very few words on my slide and rely mostly on talking to get the information across. He said it was a good way to keep the attention on me. He also complimented my slides, since I did a very sensible background and easy to read font. He did this in front of the entire class, so I felt pretty good. He also said something about not having rising intonation/inflection, which I really hope I didn’t. I’m going to try and watch out for it next time I give a speech just to be sure. It was kind of boring sitting through 15 (including mine) presentations. We went from 8:30 to a little after 2, but we got breakfast and lunch, so it wasn’t terrible.

 Dr. P also asked me if I would be interested in being a TA next year for this program. They usually bring back some kids from the previous year. He’s asked a couple kids, but most can’t or aren’t interested. It would look wonderful on grad school applications if I decide to go, and I get paid, so I said I would. So we’ll see if he contacts me. The evening after the presentations (Thursday) there was a dinner thing. It was Jus, Jam, Jul, Sar, Am, St. T, and me around a table. St. T was a little drunk from drinking Petron with Sco beforehand, so he left. This really awesome lady stopped by our table for a bit (she was a lecturer a couple weeks ago), and St. C joined us. Then the professor from this week came and we all talked for a while. The professor had really weird eyes: an insanely light blue with a dark ring around the outside. Afterwards, the four girls went to the beach, and us guys went to the dorm. It ended up being St. T, St. C, Jus, and me talking in the hallway for a couple hours. It was really pretty fun. The TA’s invited people to come over and get drunk, but we had fun just talking. Today we had to sit through a bunch of presentations showing possible jobs in the field of science we studied for the six weeks of this program. Some were pretty boring. The Asian guy from NIST was slightly crazy, so his was fun, and this Russian lady had awesome stories to go with hers. She was with environmental protection, so she had pictures of her in a Hazmat suit, and told us about a pet cemetery contaminating water, and about a random bag of blood samples contaminated with AIDS and Hep B that someone dumped along a road somewhere. Just fun stories. Plus I loved her accent. Tonight, we had a final dinner as a group, and we all met back at the dorm to drink a little and socialize before we left. Ant, Ann, Car, and Da were off on their own (probably doing it) since they formed their little couples and got really close over the course. I don’t know what they’ll do after tomorrow. We ended up playing Cards Against Humanity, which is just a horrible version of Apples to Apples. You can find it on the internet for free, and I highly recommend looking it up. You just might not want to play with parents or respected colleagues. It’s hilarious though. St. T got the drunkest (he’s a mega lightweight). Best quote: (he goes to a Catholic college even though he’s not religious) “I just say I believe in Jesus and pray for an A”. He also is a very suggestive/horny drunk, which doesn’t fit with his extreme innocence. I was the first to go to bed. We all said goodbye, and it was actually really sad. I didn’t come here expecting to like the people and make friends. I was expecting a bunch of irritating nerds, and I got a bunch of pretty cool people. We’re all going to miss each other. For a couple days at least :P Oh, well, it’s human nature to move on. The program seemed to drag along so slowly while it was going on, but now that it’s at the end, it seems like it flew by. I’m kinda sad about leaving and being done with it. It wasn’t as much work for me as everyone else was saying it was. I’m beginning to suspect no one here was actually smarter than me. Scary. Some I’m were were pretty much my equal, but they didn’t blow me away. I’m sorry if this post is a little all over the place. I did get slightly tipsy tonight. Hopefully not enough to interfere with getting up tomorrow.

                Today they also gave us our grades and announced the top student (they get a trip to a conference somewhere). Jus got the top student award. He really deserved it I thought. It was a little disappointing, since I was in the lead after the second test, but the test with quantum mechanics fucked me over since I had never had quantum before. Oh, well. I got A’s so I can’t complain at all, especially since I was in the top 1/3 of the class and worked less than pretty much everyone else. I need to see if the credits will transfer so I can get out in four years now. I’ll have to actually talk to my advisor about my classes this fall, a first. One question I never did get answered this summer was whether or not Ale was gay. Sco and them would say something about it once in a while, but I have no idea if they were joking or not. I really don’t care if he was, but it’s just something you want to know about someone if they are. St. T is trying to go to grad school in NYC so he can never leave the city. He doesn’t even want to think about living anywhere else. It’s where he grew up. I still think he should get out and try somewhere different for grad school, and return here if it really is where he likes best. He loves being surrounded by concrete and how insanely busy everything is. He can’t imagine another way of life. I’m sick of all the trees out here outside the cities. I miss fields and the quietness of back home. I’m looking forward to having four weeks to relax before classes start. It does irritate me that everyone thinks NYC is such a great place, a cultural center. To me it seemed dirty, ugly, and pretentious. I think I can scratch it off of possible places to live when I graduate. Guess what New Yorkers? There’s other places besides NYC, ya dicks.

                So just saying, I really respected Dr. P during this whole thing. He is a very practical man, has a sense of humor very similar to mine, and despises bureaucracy/inefficiency. He also doesn’t pull any punches or sugar coat. If he thinks something (a policy or whatever) is stupid, he’ll let you know. Fun guy. I really would like to come work for him as a TA next summer. I think it’d be an awesome opportunity. We’ll see what happens with that. I’m going to have to get up early tomorrow to pack. My first flight is at noon. I’m not going to land for my final flight until after ten their time tomorrow, and it’s over an hour drive back home. Oh, well. That’s a problem for future me. Also, one quick question to anybody who can answer it: A lot of the blogs I’ve thought looked interesting lately haven’t shown up, saying they don’t exist. Is it the stupid internet here, did the people delete their own blogs, did they get deleted because they hadn’t been posted in for a while, or were they probably removed for inappropriateness? Do I have to watch out for something on my blog? It’s sad because many of them looked interesting. Some of my readers might have a guess what type of blog I’m talking about (I know secrecy on an anonymous blog is stupid, but give me time). Oh, well. I hope everyone has a wonderful week. Since I’m going back home, I have no idea how much I’ll be able to post. It’ll just depend how much I’m around the computer by myself. I might write something tomorrow while I have a long layover. We’ll see. Again, I’m sorry for the much more disorganized thoughts than normal. Or maybe you people like the shorter, more scattered narrative. If you have a super strong opinion let me know. Not that I have any known regular readers. There’s a couple blogs I really want to check out once I’m back home and I’m away from this bloody monitored internet. I didn’t dare go onto any blog with an adult content warning while I was here. Anyway. Till next time.

Procrastination

                So as the title suggests, I should be doing homework right now. Instead I’m going to type up a random post. I still have to put together my presentation, which is in two days, but I should have plenty of time to work on it tomorrow. I’ll talk about how it went and my talk with Dr. P on my weekend journal-ish post. I might try and post that Saturday morning since I leave around noon. I’m really looking forward to being done with class and getting to go home for four weeks before the fall semester.

                So what I decided to talk about on this post was “perfect moments.” I think most people’s perfect moments have to do with one of two things: An incredibly happy/exciting moment/day or spending time with someone(s) you love. Most often the two would go together. Two of my favorite memories do fall into these categories. One is when I opened a letter I’d just gotten in the mail. Me, my little sister, and my parents were all in the car and driving back down the driveway to our house. I opened the letter, read about one line and said “Mother!” and thrust the letter at her. It turned out I had gotten a second scholarship my mom and I had thought my first scholarship had made me ineligible for. I think you can figure out that was my senior year of high school. We probably went out to eat to celebrate after, since that’s what I always demanded for my academic accomplishments lol. My parents still do that for me sometimes. A little family tradition. I suppose the other super awesome news I got in the mail that I really remember was when I got my ACT scores back. I was running around the house going nuts. I’m pretty sure we went out to eat over that one too. I still like the scholarship memory more, thought. The second memory I had in mind was in a car with my best friend from high school and my little sister. I assume we were coming back from a movie since my sister was with us. We had taken a back gravel road home (yeah I live out in the country on a gravel road. I’m not a farm kid either, though our house does literally have corn fields completely surrounding the yard.) and had reached the top of a hill. Off to the left was a gorgeous after-sunset. The sun was completely down, there was just a small glow of orange and yellow, and blue slowly deepening to black. Only the brightest stars could be seen just coming out. Off to the right, miles and miles away, you could barely see thunderheads barely illuminated by the last of the light. The only reason we even noticed them in the first place was that there was faint lightning flashing through them. The two views out the side of the car were both gorgeous. Combined with just getting home from a night out with my friend and sister, it was perfect. That brings to mind another weather related memory. My grandparents live on a farm in a really flat area. One day when we were visiting them, there was a double rainbow outside. You walked out of the house and they went completely over the barn and reached the ground on either side. We weren’t freaking out like that one video, but it was still really cool. It’s still the most complete set of rainbows I’ve ever seen.

                A couple other of my perfect moments don’t have anything to do with people or beautiful sights. They’re these weird frozen moments where life just seems to stop. I always seem to get them when I’m slightly depressed. They’re totally worth it though. They give me a kind of ache that’s lonely but nice at the same time. I can think of three moments, all of them since I came to college. One was walking down a walkway by the chemistry building at my college. It was fall, so all the leaves were yellow. It was late evening and raining lightly, so there was only the faintest gray light outside. Under the trees on the walkway it was dark except for a couple lights. Not the ugly practical street lights, but the nicer more decorative ones they put by walkways and trails and such. The rain dripping from the yellow leaves overhead was caught in the lights and everything seemed frozen for a second. A perfect moment. Another such moment was when I was alone at a bus stop when it was snowing. Again, there was only gray overcast light, but it was during the middle of the day so it was brighter. I looked out at the brick building across from where I was, and seeing the snow falling in contrast to the building…again, it was perfect for just a second. The last was this summer on our second trip to NYC. I had run off from the group I had been with and was by myself. It was super hot out, my feet hurt, and I just wanted to sit down and forget about everything for a bit. I was by a park in the middle of all the buildings, and I was leaning against the fence/wall around it. I look up and see my reflection in the windows of the store across the street. It’s just me, by myself, with a bunch of green in the background. All these were when I was by myself, consisted of some weird feeling brought on by the scene in front of me, and lasted only a second or two. They all made me feel completely alone, but in a good way. I love moments like those.

                So like I said, a random post that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything thing. I’m just procrastinating and wandering through my memories. It is nice to put down my thoughts on things like this once in a while. I just hope I didn’t come off as too sappy and optimistic. I’m really not, trust me. I really only get moments like those when I’m semi-depressed, like I said, and that’s when I’m most sensitive. My stupid male pride is screaming at me to take the word sensitive off, but I’m going to leave it up. It really does fit. Most of the rest of the time I’m really pretty monotonous emotionally. Again I hope I didn’t make a switch to blubbering weirdo from my first posts bitching about things. (Not that I don’t still have things to bitch about. I just haven’t felt like writing one of those entries lately.) Oh, well. I don’t think I have many if any consistent readers anyway, so I can’t care too much. This blog’s all for me anyway. Not that I’m opposed to meeting new people on the internet. That’s just a pleasant side-effect of blogging in my point of view, though. Anyway, that’s enough emotional rambling from me for one day. I’ll go watch videos of sports or something on youtube now, lol. Yay masculine pride. Actually I’m probably going to sleep. Till next time.

7-14-12

This week was OK. We had a really good professor so class was more fun than with the last professor. This new one went through a lot of material really fast, but he also didn’t expect us to memorize a bunch of specific facts. He just wanted us to get the main ideas and be able to apply them. I love professors like that. Some are all about learning the material and some are all about understanding the material. I think understanding the material is so much more important. If you understand the material, you can often figure things out without having to memorize everything. (Try telling that to a couple people in my genetics class this last semester. I don’t know how much they had to study to memorize everything like they did. I still kicked their asses too. Hence my preference for understanding the material.) The best part about this professor was his voice: he sounded like a cross between Mufasa and the narrator from the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie, the one by Tim Burton. A hint of an accent, but it just served to make him more interesting to listen to rather than making him harder to follow. I really liked him a lot. That doesn’t mean this week was super easy, though. We had two lab reports to write, a term paper, and a test. I think they all went OK (I did end up fighting my computer quite a bit while doing my term paper. Me and my computer don’t get along), but I do have one more lab report to write this weekend before I’m done with them for the class. Then we just have a presentation to give and we’re done. The presentation shouldn’t be too bad. It only has to be 15 minutes on the topic your term paper was over. So basically I have it written and I just need to put some pictures to it and practice. Hopefully I won’t procrastinate as much as I did this week. I was having real motivation problems again. On top of everything I keep thinking I’ve decided to take meds this fall and see if they help, but then next thing I know I’ve decided I don’t want to. Sometimes I’m tempted to not even go back to see Dr. H this fall again, but I’m not sure if I’m going to have to meet with this one bitch from the university, and if I do she’ll probably ask me about it and force me to go if I don’t. It’s not really fair to call her a bitch, since she was just doing her job, but I hate people like her who come off as phony and her job did make my life a pain the last two weeks of spring semester. Oh, well. Problem for future me. We also had a couple mini-lectures again this week. One day was talking about more biology stuff, which I loved. Most of this summer has been more physics related, so it was nice to get more into the area I like. Plus, hearing Dr. P describe cells as shitting and pissing themselves was hilarious. You’d think a guy with a doctorate would be stuffy, but Dr. P is awesome. The rest of the lectures were all about policy, and those were ridiculously boring. One lady had a really dry, cynical sense of humor, which is my favorite kind (maybe tied with dirty), so she was fun to listen to. Her presentation was still boring though. She worked for a government agency and she was kind of rolling her eyes at some of their inefficient ways of doing things the whole time. The rest of the people were sort of with the UN, and I view that whole thing as empty grand gestures made by idealistic morons, so I obviously loved their presentations. Oh, well. We got free pizza before one of them, so I can’t complain.

                So everyone’s getting excited about the program almost being done. It’s been a lot better than most of us expected (mostly because we were expecting a bunch of unbearable nerds. Only a couple of people are like that. I’m kinda a mix between the two. Have I ever mentioned I hate other nerds?), but most of us are still looking forward to going somewhere with a little more freedom I think. We basically only get to do things on the weekend nights, and only then if the TA’s will drive us off-site. They usually will, but we still have to work around their schedule. Yesterday was Friday the Thirteenth. I actually had semi-bad luck yesterday. Big things, like the test, went fine, but it was little things. I forgot things I needed (3 times) and had to run and get them, just little things like that. It all worked out, though, so I can’t complain. I’m still a ridiculously lucky person, and most people could have had things go way worse if they forgot such things. So last night a couple of us (Sar, Jam, Jul, Am, St. T, Sco, Da, Ant) went to the beach. It was only my second time going since I came here. On the way there, a couple of us were talking, and we found out St. T is incredibly innocent. First, he’s a virgin. I don’t really care about that since I am too, but the other guys couldn’t comprehend it (I was smart enough not to tell them I was a virgin. It’s none of their fucking business!). Then, we found out he had never seen porn before even. I can understand seeing it and deciding it’s not a big deal, but when Ant pulled some up on his phone, they couldn’t even get St T to look at it. I do envy St. T in a way, since I wish I didn’t watch porn as much as I do (at school anyway). I’ll try and work on it this fall. Lots of guys watch more porn than I do and are unapologetic about it, but I’m a big fan in moderation. I need to get some moderation in my life in that area. Anyway, then they found out St. T didn’t know women were naked at strip clubs. He thought they were mostly clothed and just pole dancing. I’ve never been to a strip club, but even I knew that. If they don’t get completely naked, they still show quite a bit, and just have skimpy outfits. Then, he was saying he didn’t know what sex was until high school, and mentioned a bunch of other sex things that he was completely innocent about for the longest time. It’s basic biology! It’s something people should know (not the really kinky stuff, but you know what I mean.). St. T doesn’t want to get out and learn more. He would rather just stay in with his anime and his mangas. I kinda feel bad for the kid, but he’s OK with it. Then it turns out he’s somewhat of a germaphobe on top of this. He was freaking out about the sand on the beach getting on his stuff, and didn’t want to put his shirt on later because he felt slightly salty and didn’t want it on his shirt. Facepalm. I’m going on a rant about St. T, and I shouldn’t judge. I’ll stop now. It’s just, some of his things are just completely foreign to me. The rest of the beach was fun. We walked, swam, relaxed. Some of the people played Frisbee and football. Sco, Ant, and Da wore very flamboyant, very tight speedos. They were turning a lot of heads, which was their intention. A little bar/snack-bar thing always has a band in the evenings, so we migrated our way up there later. People were drinking and dancing and taking pictures. The three in the speedos continued to wear only those and were having a lot of women come up and ask for photos and stuff. They were loving it, and it was absolutely hilarious to watch. I don’t think I’m ever going to wear a speedo, but more power to them. I was sitting at the table since I was completely sober and I didn’t want to leave our stuff unattended, but the people came over and made me go join them in dancing. The most surprising person last night was Sar. Most of the time she’s overly industrious and scarily considerate of people (to the point where it’s more uncomfortable than anything). However, she also knows how to party hard! Hell, yeah. I like nerds that work hard but still can have fun. I hate the ones who can’t do anything but school. After the band got done around 10, we decided to head to the hookah bar from last week. The only problem was that I didn’t bring my ID with me since I didn’t want to have it at the beach to be stolen. So I couldn’t get in, and I just rode home with Cor, the TA after we dropped everyone off. It sounds like they had a blast and the speedos came out again it sounds like. I wasn’t really upset that I couldn’t join them. I was being a bit of a downer. I wasn’t really in a depressed mood, but I just was perfectly content to spend last night by myself. I was just happy for some me time. I think that’s underappreciated a lot. That’s pretty much it. Pretty much everyone, even the people who don’t normally come to stuff, is going out to eat tonight, and we leave soon. I should get dressed. Until next time!

*Edit: We went to glow golf with awesome 80's music after supper. Whoot!

7-8-12

So this week wasn’t terribly exciting. We didn’t have actual class at all this week since we had Wednesday off for the Fourth. Instead we had a couple tours and some guest lecturers that just gave short presentations on one or two applications of the subject we’re studying (I can’t remember if I’ve said what it is besides the fact it (can) involve(s) some quantum). Two in particular on Thursday were really good. One lady was Australian and the other was actually from the Midwest, only a state away from where I’m from. Both were very interesting and had very good presentations. I think my undergrad research advisor from back home would have liked them even though they weren’t in her area of chemistry. My advisor is also very good with her presentations and has an amazing eye for detail. I’m going to have to think of what I’m going to call her in future posts if I bring her up again since Dr. H. is already taken. Oh, well. That’s a problem for future me. I’m not around her this summer, so I don’t have much to say about her right now. Anyway, besides the lectures, we also had a couple tours. One was of a nuclear reactor at a power plant. It was pretty cool, but the turbine room was super hot and incredibly noisy. We didn’t look at the reactor itself, just the cooling systems and the turbines like I said. Oh, and a mock control room. They don’t use computers to do the controlling, they still have old fashioned lights and switches and dials. They do that because each switch etc is directly wired to the component it controls. There’s nothing to hack into and it can’t get a virus. Security was kinda insane there too. No small group of people is going to get in there by force without a ridiculous number of explosives or gases. And that’s just to get by the guards. I don’t think you could break into where the radioactive material is stored by force in any reasonable amount of time. Apparently after 9-11 this power station got some flak with people saying “what if the planes had flown into the reactors?” They showed us a video of a test doing just that down in NM or somewhere. The wall was a little chipped but otherwise unharmed. The plane was gone. Again, no easy way to get nuclear material from the plant. It’s sad, though, because the people living around there are fighting like crazy to get the plant shut down. People don’t understand nuclear science at all for the most part and just think it’s something to be scared of. The tour guide sounded a little disgusted with the whole thing. Of course he’s retirement age so he’s been having people fight to shut down “his” plant his whole life. Poor guy. Anyone who reads this and is anti-nuclear energy, it’s not something to be scared of. People already knew Fukishima was a bad design before anything even happened to it, so pretty much all plants in the world aren’t vulnerable to something like that. Plus, most places don’t have to worry about tsunamis, which is what caused the problem, not the earthquake.

                The other tour we went on was a giant cancer/research center. We saw a lot of imaging machines, a cyclotron, and heard some talks about what they do there. They kept showing images of people with metastatic bone tumors all over their body. It was kinda depressing, and I sat there thinking “There aren’t any other pictures you can use that aren’t so extreme?” They actually do a lot with mice and rats there, and that was REALLY interesting to hear about. I really like bio and genetics, so I might get involved with something like that in the future. It’d be sweet if I did. The cancer place was in NYC, but a quieter area than we were in last time. That’s not to say it still wasn’t way busier than back home, but it wasn’t solid business buildings. There were a lot of apartments and lots of small shops/restaurants on the street level, and there were some trees around. I kinda liked it, though I don’t know that I could live there. I’m too used to fields and such right outside of cities like we have back home. I’m so sick of forests everywhere outside the city. We had some time to wander around the neighborhood and eat before the tour. I was a little sick of the people in the group I was with, so I pulled a disappearing act. Then they were all calling me trying to figure out where I was. I didn’t go back. Vee really is right: I’m stubborn. I get in a mood and decide I can’t deal with people, and I refuse to change my mind. Of course, it’s never anger when I do a disappearing act. It’s always depression. So I’m not sure how much control I have over it anyway. I really should start meds in the fall with Dr. H. I kinda had a little freak out Monday night where I was scaring myself, but I got through it. It was just disturbing for an hour or so. I’ve also had to walk back to the dorm at night a couple times this week and I’ve been having some anxiety attacks while doing it. It’s not that I’m scared of the dark. It’s only when I’m out in the open at night I sometimes go on super high alert for most of my walk. One of the nights it only lasted about half the way back, but the second was really bad. I about had a heart attack at one point and ended up running the last little bit.

                On to the people. I’ve really been spending a lot of time with St. T this week. He’s fun to talk to and his innocence is kind of hilarious. He should actually be joining me anytime in the classroom to work on a lab report, so if he comes in I might have to finish typing this later. I also talked to St. C a couple nights this week. He’s OK to talk to, but he was one of those people who was pissing me off on Friday in the city. He was a little clingy. It’s like, you know you can talk to someone else too. Oh, well. I’ve had a couple days break from him, so I’ll be able to talk to him tomorrow without him bugging the crap out of me. I learned the reason Da and Ant have been going to the beach with the German girls every chance they get is because they are trying their best to get in their pants. I guess I don’t understand people’s excessive sex drives. I mean, yeah I would like to have sex, but am I going to ruthlessly pursue it? No. My belief is that these people have been raised to think they have to be sexual to be cool and so they talk about it constantly with their friends and they all just reinforce the behavior. I don’t think it’s possible that they honestly have as high of a sex drive as they act. That, or mine is just really low compared to theirs, but I think mine’s at a healthy level, so I’m pretty sure they’re the ones with the problem. Anyway, Ant and Da went to the beach Friday night, Cla stayed in NYC (thank God), and Jus, Sar and St. C stayed in their rooms that night. That left me, Am, Jam, Jul, Sco, St. T, Jef, and Cor to do something, all the people who piss me off the least. We went to Ruby Tuesday’s for supper. I’d never been there, but it was good. We were all crammed in one (rather large, but still…) booth. It was fun though. Our waiter was pretty awesome. After that we went to a hookah bar. I was impressed. The hookah was way cheaper than back home, it tasted way better, but it wasn’t as strong. They also served beer there and didn’t card, so I got thoroughly drunk (not sloppy or blackout, but I was definitely drunk). The bar also had a dance floor, lights, and awesome music. No one else was dancing, but our group did. I don’t think Sco wanted to admit it, but he likes dancing. When we were planning on going he was saying he wanted to go there for the chicks (1. That reminds me of the Dane Cook bit 2. There weren’t really any there). But when we got there he kept saying he wanted to dance. Oh, well. We’ll let him keep his foolish overly-masculine pride, right? One of the girls, Am, really surprised me. She liked grinding. She really reminds me of a friend back home I’ll call Ex (creative name, right?). I don’t know if I’ve mentioned Ex before. I’ll go back through and see later, but I don’t think so. I really should write about her at some point soon. She’s really a large part of my life, for better or worse. That’s another story, though. Anyway, it’s starting to be scary how much Am reminds me of Ex. It was super fun there. I’m a really talkative drunk, and I love people when I’m drunk, and I want everybody to be happy. I play the fool consciously to some extent when I’m drunk just to brighten everyone else’s evening. Some of it isn’t intentional, too, but as long as they have a good time and I can just blame the alcohol, I don’t care. I will say this was my first time getting drunk off beer too. I usually use mixed drinks or shots. I also talked to Jef a bunch that night and bonded with him a little. I think I’m going to have to change my mind about him. He was alright to hang out with.

                Last night the same group of people, minus Sco, went to the new Spiderman movie. Everyone else really liked it, but I only thought it was OK. The physics and biology were just absolutely horrible. Worse than most superhero movies, I thought. Most of the time I can just suspend my disbelief, but this was too over the top. Oh, well. It was worth the money just to go out with a group and relax for part of the evening. We also ate at Chipotle. I hadn’t been there in a while, and it was just what I needed last night. I really need to get some lab reports done today since this is going to be a busy week. St. T still isn’t here, and he has the data I need to get more work done. Oh, well. As long as I get at least one done tonight. Exciting development, I finally figured out my bike lock combination. It wasn’t any of the ones Dr. P told us to try. Instead it was a really random combo that my lock was first set on. It is pure luck that I happened to write it down when I got my bike, since I didn’t think it was the combo. Of course, as I’ve pointed out before, I am ridiculously lucky. Now, after four weeks of walking to class, I can finally take my bike to the classroom. Hooray! This has ended up being really long. Oh well. I enjoy being able to actually look what I did each week. Maybe I should have started keeping a journal a long time ago. Without putting it on the internet lol. Anyway, St. T just got here and went to make photocopies. When he gets back it’ll be time to be productive. Till later.