Posted by alexandra_k on April 22, 2014, at 20:16:02
In reply to Re: going ahead, posted by alexandra_k on April 22, 2014, at 4:27:06
sigh.
well. that's that, then.
i really need for classes to start. starting to go a bit nutty without them.
my one friend up here... has turned out to be not such a good person for me to spend very much time with. for me to... trust in. as often turns out to be the case with me and male friends. i need to be in a Very Good Place Indeed in order to hold the both of us together...
feeling kinda lonely. for 'people like me' contact. i suppose that, yes, i do have some kind of desire to commune with like-minded individuals. i've been having a hard time getting to things. not entirely sure why (maybe due to some kind of ambivalence?) my internal schedules seem to naturally run inversely to everything else. natural time for me to sleep is when everyone else is awake. natural time for me to gym is while others are in class. and so on... i'm always... needing to choose between getting to that seminar (or whatever) and something else important to me... what the f*ck kind of plight is that? socialising is supposed to require... effort. does for everyone... i forget that... priorities...
i'd have made one or two close friends here already if i were still a smoker. because i'd be off outside for a smoke break every 50 minutes or so... out there with my coffee in the mornings... i'd get to chatting with other smokers... or with people just arriving back / just waiting for a ride or whatever in the mornings. without the smoking i have no reason to mill about outside. so i don't. so i don't meet people, really. just an awkward elevator ride where i sometimes manage to practice my small talk. nothing... continuing.
looks like 3 classes next semester. which is more 'normal'. a light full time workload. will triple my chances of meeting like minded individuals. sigh. i do miss that. there should be other mature students doing pre-med. surely. c'mon this country... surely... reading about 'how to pull an A- in org chem' in the NY times... some news clip on some dude in his 40's matching to plastics someplace in california... c'mon this country... or... maybe not. given how they advised me given my lack of science / math background. maybe not. maybe there simply aren't any.
i joined back to that math website. going to do a bit more of a focused run through... need to get from wherever i am now to calculus... so focus on the things that seem important for that... and geometry... i think that stuff is important, too... and... uh... dare i say... fun. i guess what i mean to say is that the stuff on percentages and fractions and conversions is really hard work. sends me into a panic... i think it is because i don't know how to do things the way they want me to do them. i just... stare a bit and, uh, figure it out. but they set it up like a fraction... and then add stuff to it... then cross out redundancies... and i don't really see what's going on with that at all. and i can do 90% of them my way... just those last few that look... odd... and look at them and they don't seem to make sense... and they... upset things for me... and i don't quite know what is to be done. except that at some point... i'll sit down and work through how they are trying to show me properly... like with the long division... then i'll back things up and be slower for a while... and things will right themself in the end...
at least the stuff we are doing now for chemistry... with the balancing and stuff... the numbers are simple. i can play with them a little and doesn't take much for me to simply see. they aren't trying to trick us with the math. it isn't like... it is supposed to be a test of our math. haven't needed to go above about 6 for the, uh, coefficients on the chemical formulas...
practice practice practice. getting better i am. need to remember when things look desperate / hopeless that many many many many many people far far dumber than me with attention spans of goldfish manage to graduate high school math. so. there must be hope for me. sorry. i feel bad for that thought. but i also... feel that it is the truth. so.
i really need for classes to start back... i really need to get out today... for a walk... i don't suppose i will... things feel... hopeless. note to self: things don't always feel this way. things will feel better soon. i've started up with the early morning wakings / ruminations / bawling my eyes out... i almost forgot i did that... that that was a huge part of my life for so many years. haven't been there since i moved across the bridge... things are (generally speaking) so very much better for me these days.
i got an email about a phd scholarship in phil. some uni in aussie. they are advertising for phd students to work on particular projects now. how science has done things for the longest time. philosophy never did that before. they, uh, well, you just applied... to work on whatever... and picked a particular person, of course. and they took the smartest students they could get, i suppose (or those with the best-est writing samples, i suppose). and then... a whole heap never finish. i mean, really. more than half? not entirely sure... a whole heap. and the better the uni... the less likely you are to finish, even. and the profession has been a bit embarrassed about that, i think... about how the smartest are... giving it all up to go open a fish shop in canada, or whatever... anyway... one of my friends back in aussie... after working on something that nobody cared about (after his main advisor moved universities and didn't take him with) who... dropped out after about 10 years... he got... just this year... a scholarship to start all over again. with the supervisor he ended up with before, even. the difference maker on his... uh... state of unproductivity... is (i'm supposing) thought to be that before nobody gave a sh*t about his work. but now: he's applied to work on a particular project. so... he'll have a bunch of readings to be getting on with etc already. not sure if the funding is the same source as before... but funding he got. to start over.
anyway... i got an email about a phd scholarship in phil. $25,000 tax free aussie dollars with all the student perks of being a grad student (cheap buses, cheap student accommodation options) etc etc etc... to work on a government funded project on false memory and sexual abuse. a natural extension of ... stuff... huh. anyway... not entirely sure that funding is available to me... except that... it seems to be the case that... there is something going on along the lines of... instead of hiring a post-doc... who are more expensive... why not take on a phd student? so... research funding money (different source) might be available to do phd work after all... uh... huh... i cried and i cried and i cried...
and then i wondered 'what the hell are you crying about? it (possibly) opens up OPTIONS'. options to return.. if i really do suck at science. or if i find science is not for me. or if i want to take a couple years out at some point and do a phd... in philosophy... all is not lost. necessarily. the crying is physiological, i think. something something about baselevel neural firing and negative affect... i'm sleeping far too many hours... feeling awful lethargic... so my bodies started up this awful quality of sleep thing... need class.. the focal point... my compass...
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1064649
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20140312/msgs/1064689.html