Three days ago, I was hanging out with these guys. Then I came back to grad school. Screw reality.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Things to do to avoid packing...
Got this from Jim.
I AM going to Hungary tomorrow. Yahoo!
I WANT to stay in Europe for a month or two.
I WISH I didn't have to come back sooner than that for summer classes.
I HATE the taste of the "tuned up" Diet Mt. Dew.
I MISS my family in Tennessee.
I HEAR with a supersonic percision that bugs everyone, including me.
I WONDER if I'll ever lose weight, or be motivated to try for real.
I REGRET not being an exchange student at least once.
I AM NOT very good at being quiet.
I DANCE like Elaine Benes.
I CRY all the time. I'm the sensitive type. ENFJ's rule.
I AM NOT ALWAYS kind or patient.
I MAKE WITH MY HANDS a neato garden on our balcony.
I WRITE too many boring papers for class instead of what I want to write.
I CONFUSE my family member, who do not quite know why I've been in school forever.
I NEED to wax my eyebrows and shave. I'm so hairy.
I SHOULD not hate "I SHOULD's" so badly.
I START my fourth year of graduate school this August.
I FINISH in three more years.
I'm tagging: anyone who wants to do this.
I AM going to Hungary tomorrow. Yahoo!
I WANT to stay in Europe for a month or two.
I WISH I didn't have to come back sooner than that for summer classes.
I HATE the taste of the "tuned up" Diet Mt. Dew.
I MISS my family in Tennessee.
I HEAR with a supersonic percision that bugs everyone, including me.
I WONDER if I'll ever lose weight, or be motivated to try for real.
I REGRET not being an exchange student at least once.
I AM NOT very good at being quiet.
I DANCE like Elaine Benes.
I CRY all the time. I'm the sensitive type. ENFJ's rule.
I AM NOT ALWAYS kind or patient.
I MAKE WITH MY HANDS a neato garden on our balcony.
I WRITE too many boring papers for class instead of what I want to write.
I CONFUSE my family member, who do not quite know why I've been in school forever.
I NEED to wax my eyebrows and shave. I'm so hairy.
I SHOULD not hate "I SHOULD's" so badly.
I START my fourth year of graduate school this August.
I FINISH in three more years.
I'm tagging: anyone who wants to do this.
I was born and raised an orphan...
I grew up in a tiny tiny town in Tennessee. If you removed the law enforcement aspect of the Andy Griffith show, then at times you'd have captured the quintessential nature of my childhood home. My parents bought a little two bedroom stone house when my older brother was 6 months old, two years before my arrival on this planet.
As I grew, so did the house. My parents added a bedroom and bath before I was born, building much themselves. For most of my early years there was no hall, and the door to my parents' room was in my room. Perfect for a young girl who was prone to irrational fears of the dark who snuck into her parents bed every night until she was way too old to be doing so. When I was 8, the back patio with the sliding glass door became the hallway. The carport became the den (paneled...so 1988). A two car garage replaced the circle drive in the side yard. Finally, a place to put my bicycle so I didn't have to scrub the rust off with Brillo pads every spring.
The parsonage for our church was next door. Andy, a sweet man who died a couple of years ago, was our pastor most of my young life. He and his wife Ruby were so sweet and kind. The giggled when at age 4, I asked, "Preacher, you want to see my new panties?" (He said yes and nothing made me happier than raising my dress to show everyone..luckily, I grew out of that)!
Across the front street, were a factory worker (actually pretty upperclass for our rural area) and a bank president! There was a smaller house that a poor but clean (the measure of worth..cleanliness) family. On the other side street was a rental house, where a little boy named Glenn lived for quite some time. He was our constant play mate and yet, also someone who we avoided like the plague. He always had a snotty nose, his parents didn't keep watch over him, and so he had no level of social skills. He never wanted to go home.
Up and down the street were the mostly older people who I went to church with, who taught my Sunday school class, who came to the youth spaghetti dinners, who uncomfortably sang the praise choruses on youth Sunday. Two houses down was Aunt Hazel and Pop, my Granny's sister and her husband. I would visit and she always gave me pennies out of a brass frog in her living room. Right next door was my Great Great Great Aunt Ella. Mowed her own yard until she was 93, died at 96 when I was in high school. She always said she never married because her boy must have died in the war (The first WWI!). Across the street from Ella, my Great Great Aunt Effie and her husband Homer. My maternal grandfather might have left my mom and her family, but all of his family knew he was wrong, and they were my neighbors, friends, and teachers in the church. They always were welcoming.
A 1/2 mile bike ride away lived (and still does) Granny, my maternal grandmother. She babysat my brother and I every summer. My mom, me, my brother, and Granny...we went to "town" every Friday and did our shopping. Walmart, grocery store, and so on.
A mile away, next to the interstate lived Papaw and JoJo, my other grandparents. We visited them every Sunday afternoon. They had land so we gardened there, they had sheep once, my Papaw always had some new tractor/toy/motorized vehicle for us to come see. My cousins lived with my grandparents, so I always had built in playmates there.
Just past Papaw and Jojo another mile lived my Aunt Susan and her husband Charles. They lived in the "country" with neighbors who had horses. She was the assistant coach with my softball team. They came over every Friday night well until I was a teenager.
Still within the area, were my other 8 aunts and uncles. All of my great grandparents (I knew them all but one who died of brain cancer before I was born) lived in the area.
We rode our bikes all over town with no worries about safety, and no helmets. The church was two blocks away, on the other side of the rail road tracks. The church where my parents got married. The church where I got married! The "Country Market" where I bought lunch sandwiches and YooHoo! to drink every summer at 11:30 was just past the stop sign. My parents had their turn at owning the Country Market when I was in high school. My neighbors were witnesses to my brother and I growing up, changing, maturing. They fostered us, angered us, and dare I say, loved us. I didn't even realize it was community because I had never NOT had community.
The house grew even as I left for college, graduated, got married, moved away with my husband for graduate school. A new front porch, somewhere along the way it became a vinyl siding house, a new room upstairs over the den. A library where the side porch used to be. A patio to a hot tub patio back to a patio then to a screened in porch where my parents now eat breakfast every spring and summer morning. Add a deck, and a waterscape. Add some beautiful landscaping. (I always irritated my brother because mowing was boring for me if you did it in a straight line. His precision cross over looked like a baseball field). The shed became enclosed, hand shingled by my brother and father. On and on...
And yesterday, my mom told me that she and my dad would like to sell the house in a few years when they retire. They want to sell MY HOME. The corporate box that my husband and I live in isn't home. It's not even in the right place...Chicago?! I think if we had children and owned a home, then this new would not feel like such an insult to my senses, but it stung. Tears burned at my eyes and an aching in my chest signaled the loss that the selling of this place, this town, this history is to me. It's like selling my heritage. When all else is horrible, there is a huge comfort in knowing that I could get to that house and that my parents would be there. The back door might even be open if they knew I was coming.
I understand my parents' desire and what they want to have if they sell the home has distinct advantages for hubby and I. They want to buy some land, closer to the city where my brother and his soon to be wife live, where we'll live when I graduate from school. They want to have animals, and board horses, and have a garden. They specifically mentioned having their grandchildren over to pet goats! (albeit, no grandchildren nor goats in the family at this time).
But I think that the loss for me will be like a fellow blogger described here. I feel like I'm going to be homeless.
As I grew, so did the house. My parents added a bedroom and bath before I was born, building much themselves. For most of my early years there was no hall, and the door to my parents' room was in my room. Perfect for a young girl who was prone to irrational fears of the dark who snuck into her parents bed every night until she was way too old to be doing so. When I was 8, the back patio with the sliding glass door became the hallway. The carport became the den (paneled...so 1988). A two car garage replaced the circle drive in the side yard. Finally, a place to put my bicycle so I didn't have to scrub the rust off with Brillo pads every spring.
The parsonage for our church was next door. Andy, a sweet man who died a couple of years ago, was our pastor most of my young life. He and his wife Ruby were so sweet and kind. The giggled when at age 4, I asked, "Preacher, you want to see my new panties?" (He said yes and nothing made me happier than raising my dress to show everyone..luckily, I grew out of that)!
Across the front street, were a factory worker (actually pretty upperclass for our rural area) and a bank president! There was a smaller house that a poor but clean (the measure of worth..cleanliness) family. On the other side street was a rental house, where a little boy named Glenn lived for quite some time. He was our constant play mate and yet, also someone who we avoided like the plague. He always had a snotty nose, his parents didn't keep watch over him, and so he had no level of social skills. He never wanted to go home.
Up and down the street were the mostly older people who I went to church with, who taught my Sunday school class, who came to the youth spaghetti dinners, who uncomfortably sang the praise choruses on youth Sunday. Two houses down was Aunt Hazel and Pop, my Granny's sister and her husband. I would visit and she always gave me pennies out of a brass frog in her living room. Right next door was my Great Great Great Aunt Ella. Mowed her own yard until she was 93, died at 96 when I was in high school. She always said she never married because her boy must have died in the war (The first WWI!). Across the street from Ella, my Great Great Aunt Effie and her husband Homer. My maternal grandfather might have left my mom and her family, but all of his family knew he was wrong, and they were my neighbors, friends, and teachers in the church. They always were welcoming.
A 1/2 mile bike ride away lived (and still does) Granny, my maternal grandmother. She babysat my brother and I every summer. My mom, me, my brother, and Granny...we went to "town" every Friday and did our shopping. Walmart, grocery store, and so on.
A mile away, next to the interstate lived Papaw and JoJo, my other grandparents. We visited them every Sunday afternoon. They had land so we gardened there, they had sheep once, my Papaw always had some new tractor/toy/motorized vehicle for us to come see. My cousins lived with my grandparents, so I always had built in playmates there.
Just past Papaw and Jojo another mile lived my Aunt Susan and her husband Charles. They lived in the "country" with neighbors who had horses. She was the assistant coach with my softball team. They came over every Friday night well until I was a teenager.
Still within the area, were my other 8 aunts and uncles. All of my great grandparents (I knew them all but one who died of brain cancer before I was born) lived in the area.
We rode our bikes all over town with no worries about safety, and no helmets. The church was two blocks away, on the other side of the rail road tracks. The church where my parents got married. The church where I got married! The "Country Market" where I bought lunch sandwiches and YooHoo! to drink every summer at 11:30 was just past the stop sign. My parents had their turn at owning the Country Market when I was in high school. My neighbors were witnesses to my brother and I growing up, changing, maturing. They fostered us, angered us, and dare I say, loved us. I didn't even realize it was community because I had never NOT had community.
The house grew even as I left for college, graduated, got married, moved away with my husband for graduate school. A new front porch, somewhere along the way it became a vinyl siding house, a new room upstairs over the den. A library where the side porch used to be. A patio to a hot tub patio back to a patio then to a screened in porch where my parents now eat breakfast every spring and summer morning. Add a deck, and a waterscape. Add some beautiful landscaping. (I always irritated my brother because mowing was boring for me if you did it in a straight line. His precision cross over looked like a baseball field). The shed became enclosed, hand shingled by my brother and father. On and on...
And yesterday, my mom told me that she and my dad would like to sell the house in a few years when they retire. They want to sell MY HOME. The corporate box that my husband and I live in isn't home. It's not even in the right place...Chicago?! I think if we had children and owned a home, then this new would not feel like such an insult to my senses, but it stung. Tears burned at my eyes and an aching in my chest signaled the loss that the selling of this place, this town, this history is to me. It's like selling my heritage. When all else is horrible, there is a huge comfort in knowing that I could get to that house and that my parents would be there. The back door might even be open if they knew I was coming.
I understand my parents' desire and what they want to have if they sell the home has distinct advantages for hubby and I. They want to buy some land, closer to the city where my brother and his soon to be wife live, where we'll live when I graduate from school. They want to have animals, and board horses, and have a garden. They specifically mentioned having their grandchildren over to pet goats! (albeit, no grandchildren nor goats in the family at this time).
But I think that the loss for me will be like a fellow blogger described here. I feel like I'm going to be homeless.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
What we do to ourselves...
Before coming to graduate school, and for a period during school, I have worked at various psychiatric hospitals with children and adolescents. It's an interesting place to work, to say the least. You get front row seats to some of the greatest triumphs in individuals lives, and sometimes to tragedies that make your heartache with the painful realities of a broken world. But one thing is constant, for the first two days everyone believes that they don't belong in the psych hospital.
Many people, especially parents and teens, seem to think if a kid isn't psychotic, then the hospital isn't a place for me/my kid/anyone who isn't apeshit crazy. But that just isn't the case. Of course, there are those people at the hospital that are completely off the wall. At one hospital, the staff put two psychotic men who each thought he was Jesus in a room together to argue. The argument went on for quite a while. The final resolution was that they decided one was the heterosexual Jesus, the other was the homosexual Jesus. The even more interesting thing was that neither ever claimed to be Christ, but that theological nuance seemed lost on most of the staff.
Back to my greater point. Suicide, especially with adolescents, is with high probability attempted/committed by those teens who seem "okay." They probably laughed at the joke at lunch today, had dinner with their mom/dad/friend, and did their homework. Nothing probably seemed out of place, except a deep nagging feeling somewhere in a parent/caring adult that said, "Eh, maybe I'm wrong to think that they need therapy. Today, he/she seemed happy. She even laughed."
But the sad truth is, that adolescents send subtle signals that they desperately want their parents to pick up on and act on. Not that they're going to act all happy about it when the parent puts his or her foot down or takes some action. Overall, the majority of adolescents with whom I work feel desperately abandoned. Although his study is somewhat flawed, I really think Chap Clark is on to something in his book, Hurt
So what can parents do? Well, first of all, talk to your damn kids!! Ask them how they are doing. Most of all children need mirrors, people who reflect back to them how they are appearing. So saying things like, "You've seemed sort of down or depressed lately, what's going on?" or let a teen know things about him/herself, "You really seem to be good a finding the relationships between different parts, that would really help you in *insert relevant passion/interest here*."
If your kid does things like oh, asking to go to therapy...TAKE THEM! This isn't some attention ploy, most likely. Nope, the kid is being proactive enough to ask for help when they need it and aren't receiving it elsewhere.
Finally, while there is a subset of parents out there that are too controlling, most in this society are just too distant. No matter how much they groan about it, your child needs to know that you care, that you'll protect them when they get in over their head, and that you love them!! If you never say it, you can't just assume that they know. Good grief!
All in all, teens who are depressed and suicidal can really appear to have it together. Don't be a parent or concerned adult who lets your denial of "this can't be happening to my child/youth/family" get in the way of acting boldly. Asking your kid if he or she has ever thought of suicide isn't going to make them run out and do it. Ask! Tell her or him they could tell you if they felt that way!
*The inspiriation for this story was a happy ending, not a sad one.
Many people, especially parents and teens, seem to think if a kid isn't psychotic, then the hospital isn't a place for me/my kid/anyone who isn't apeshit crazy. But that just isn't the case. Of course, there are those people at the hospital that are completely off the wall. At one hospital, the staff put two psychotic men who each thought he was Jesus in a room together to argue. The argument went on for quite a while. The final resolution was that they decided one was the heterosexual Jesus, the other was the homosexual Jesus. The even more interesting thing was that neither ever claimed to be Christ, but that theological nuance seemed lost on most of the staff.
Back to my greater point. Suicide, especially with adolescents, is with high probability attempted/committed by those teens who seem "okay." They probably laughed at the joke at lunch today, had dinner with their mom/dad/friend, and did their homework. Nothing probably seemed out of place, except a deep nagging feeling somewhere in a parent/caring adult that said, "Eh, maybe I'm wrong to think that they need therapy. Today, he/she seemed happy. She even laughed."
But the sad truth is, that adolescents send subtle signals that they desperately want their parents to pick up on and act on. Not that they're going to act all happy about it when the parent puts his or her foot down or takes some action. Overall, the majority of adolescents with whom I work feel desperately abandoned. Although his study is somewhat flawed, I really think Chap Clark is on to something in his book, Hurt
So what can parents do? Well, first of all, talk to your damn kids!! Ask them how they are doing. Most of all children need mirrors, people who reflect back to them how they are appearing. So saying things like, "You've seemed sort of down or depressed lately, what's going on?" or let a teen know things about him/herself, "You really seem to be good a finding the relationships between different parts, that would really help you in *insert relevant passion/interest here*."
If your kid does things like oh, asking to go to therapy...TAKE THEM! This isn't some attention ploy, most likely. Nope, the kid is being proactive enough to ask for help when they need it and aren't receiving it elsewhere.
Finally, while there is a subset of parents out there that are too controlling, most in this society are just too distant. No matter how much they groan about it, your child needs to know that you care, that you'll protect them when they get in over their head, and that you love them!! If you never say it, you can't just assume that they know. Good grief!
All in all, teens who are depressed and suicidal can really appear to have it together. Don't be a parent or concerned adult who lets your denial of "this can't be happening to my child/youth/family" get in the way of acting boldly. Asking your kid if he or she has ever thought of suicide isn't going to make them run out and do it. Ask! Tell her or him they could tell you if they felt that way!
*The inspiriation for this story was a happy ending, not a sad one.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Things about which I do not care...
Darwinism
Functionalism
Behaviorism
American Psychology
German Lab Tradition
Intellectual Assessment
French Clinical Tradition
but, Psychoanalysis...that's kinda cool.
That's what my review sheet said for History and Systems of Psychology. Just those 8 terms, with no explanation. Oh, we asked for an explanation, but it was more obscure than the study guide. I say, never trust a professor who doesn't wear socks.
Functionalism
Behaviorism
American Psychology
German Lab Tradition
Intellectual Assessment
French Clinical Tradition
but, Psychoanalysis...that's kinda cool.
That's what my review sheet said for History and Systems of Psychology. Just those 8 terms, with no explanation. Oh, we asked for an explanation, but it was more obscure than the study guide. I say, never trust a professor who doesn't wear socks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
<
