Dithering

by jenna Posted on September 29, 2009

Today is mountain day, one of a bazillion Mount Holyoke traditions, during which classes are cancelled and people climb the mountain and eat ice cream at the top.

I was hoping so hard it would be today (it’s always a surprise), because tomorrow is the last day to drop and I’m trying hard to decide what the heck I want to do, both with this semester and with my life in general. First I wanted to be a psychologist, and then after seeing all the difficulty people experience being shuttled around between different doctors who can do different things for them, and trying to explain a years-long situation in 15 minutes to get the medication they need, I decided I wanted to be an MD, a psychiatrist.

Enter physics, and MHC in general. I feel like if I say this shit is hard, everyone will think I’m just wussing out, and that is not the case, but, y’all, this shit is hard.

My advisor advised me to make lists of the various potential paths and majors I could take to my goal, and I did this, making a list of what I would take as a neuroscience major, and one as a psychology major. When you add in all the premed requirements, they’re about the same, so I decided to stick with neuroscience. What I didn’t do, then, is make a list of stuff I would take if I didn’t have the premed requirements. This I did last night.

Here’s my problem. When I look ahead, and see physics, organic chemistry, genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, biochemistry, anatomy & physiology, I think “oh, God, eugh.” I feel tired just looking at it, and very little interest. (Chemistry is interesting, looking at 40 million slides is not.) When I look ahead and see theories of personality, and philosophy of the mind, and seminars in perception and cognition, and labs in psych assessment, I feel excited and alive and ready to jump in. I feel like this is significant, like maybe I’m on the wrong path, and I should be on the one that thrills me and lights me up, not the one that makes me dread everything to come.

But maybe I’m just being lazy! Maybe I’m daunted by the difficulty right now, but if I do it I will learn to love it and someday it will all be worth it. Visions of a lab coat and an MD and holistic therapy dance in my brain, and they still inspire me. But maybe all that stuff is just ego, and I want it more because if there’s an MD after my name, no one can ever call me stupid again.

I worry that if I go the science route, the art will be lost, and if I go the art route, the science will be lost. I want to integrate them, but I don’t know the best way. A psychology major would be fun. Even the hard stuff is easy in a sense, because it is so fascinating to me. The pre-med neuroscience route would be less fun, but there is good stuff there too, and maybe somehow my brain would change and the rest would become fun too.

Is it worth it to spend the next 7 years learning about bones and musculature and immunology and microbiology and histology just so someday I can prescribe medication? Maybe it is, maybe the connections of all the things we experience including our bodies, are significant enough to make that worthwhile. But maybe I can do everything I want just by having a good professional relationship with a psychiatrist, and my time would be better spent elsewhere.

I don’t know, and I need to figure it out pretty soon. I wrote my physics prof about it and he send me a lovely reassuring letter telling me not to worry about my grade, and that this is just normal nervousness, and he can see that I can do it, I just have to keep trying. And maybe he’s right, maybe I’m just having scientific cold feet.

Or maybe this is actually all wrong, and I was right the first time about what I really want.

Augh.

Seems like a good day to climb a mountain.

Posted in academia, psychology, science | Leave a comment

In defense of the other

by jenna Posted on August 17, 2009

My boyfriend Franklin posted today about George Sodini, the man behind the Collier Township shooting. Franklin is understandably horrified by this man’s actions, and while I don’t agree with his conclusions, I can certainly see how he gets there. He’s convinced that Sodini is an asshole, as are many of his commenters (convinced, that is, not assholes), and while his actions are obviously reprehensible and indefensible, I don’t believe the same is true of him. And further, I feel it’s very dangerous to pigeonhole this man as a run-of-the-mill asshole without considering what made him the way he is. This is not to absolve him of responsibility of his actions, but maybe to help us understand why this happened, and how we are directly responsible to keep it from happening again. Reasons are not excuses, and this is about reasons.

I, and many other folks on the internet, have talked before about nice guy syndrome. There are very real and justified objections to the sort of man (and woman, we’re certainly not exempt) who is endlessly confused why his generosity and friendship are not rewarded with sex. But there is another side to the story, and it’s not pretty either.

We are taught from day one on this planet that the holy grail of our lives will be that one relationship that will be full of magic and joy and love and will save us from dying alone and being eaten by wild dogs. There are reams of articles dedicated to teaching us step by step how to acquire this person.

What we learn is that to get this prize, we must become something else. In a way, this is true, in that by becoming someone interesting, others will be interested. But that’s not the message. The message is that if you follow the rules, if you are thin or pretty or rich or nice enough, you will get the prize, get married, and have many wonderful babies. This is not necessarily the case, and the results of the process are devastating if it doesn’t work. What happens if you are rich and good-looking and smart and funny, but no one likes you? One dry spell can lead directly to shooting up a fitness center, if all the factors happen to align in a certain way.

Here’s how it works. One day you’re going merrily along, maybe you’ve just broken up with someone, or you’ve been single for awhile. You start feeling a little lonely, and you feel like it’s time to look around for someone to spend some time with. Maybe this is a sexual urge, maybe not, but you’re on the hunt. So you put up a profile on a dating site, or let your friends know to keep an eye out for someone you might click with, or go to some singles bars. For whatever reason, nothing comes of it. Maybe it has nothing at all to do with you, but it’s just not good timing for whoever you meet, or the people you like are in other relationships, or you’re not looking in the right spot. Nothing happens. The loneliness begins to become a real problem.

You try for awhile to console yourself by hanging out with friends, or spending time with your other partners if you’re poly, but something is missing. You want something else. So you intensify your efforts. But this time around, maybe your loneliness is becoming palpable, and you try a little too hard, or aren’t selective enough in your choices, and the people you meet are a little put off. Things still aren’t clicking.

This is when the inevitable and awful thing occurs to you. Maybe it’s you. Maybe something is wrong with you, and that’s why you’re alone. You get scared, and your loneliness becomes desperation. Any selectiveness you had has gone out the window, you just want someone, anyone, to touch you, to tell you that you’re worth loving, even if it’s for a night. Most people don’t react well to perceiving this – no one wants to be just the one who said yes. So you keep striking out. You keep looking farther and wider and trying to sell yourself so hard that now you’ve become untouchable. Your desperation stinks. You smell like a bad mate, and now other people are wondering what’s wrong with you too.

The fear rises and rises, and soon you are panicked, begging, pathetic. This is even more off-putting to others, and now there is little hope that anyone will see you as a desirable, because you can no longer see how you could be desirable. You try to fix what’s wrong, try to follow “the rules”, but it doesn’t work, and you can’t see why.

Now you start getting pissed.

I do everything right, I do what the books say, I do what society says, why can’t I get a date? “What’s wrong with me?” becomes “What’s wrong with you?” You feel invisible, unseen, and the harder you try, the worse it gets. You can’t imagine why it’s not working. Society promised you that if you did all the right things, you would be loved, and you’re not. You’re entitled to the prize, but you never win. What the fuck, universe?

Rage is not a sourceless emotion. It comes from anger that goes on and on unchecked, anger that is never redressed, anger that becomes bitterness that becomes rage. The thing you once wanted becomes your enemy, the thing that doesn’t want you back, and it’s not fair.

Once the desired objects of your affection have become the ones who say no, the ones who are keeping you from what is rightfully yours, what’s the next step? How far is it from “I hate you” to “I will take it if you won’t give it to me’ to “I want to kill you”? Not far. Not at all as far as you’d like to think.

Misogyny does not exist in a vacuum. It comes from someplace, and that place is somewhere we have all been. Most of us are lucky enough to halt the process at some point. Either we meet someone who is compassionate enough to help us, or we find someone who does love us, or we learn that we are in fact the problem and we fix ourselves. But some of us never have or do those things, and the process goes on unchecked until the consequences are dire.

We look at these members of society who have lost control and done something horrible and we call them monsters. Assholes. Misogynistic narcissistic bastards. They are awful, they are not us. But they were. They were us. We are so desperate to assure ourselves that we are different, that we are not monsters, that we make them other, and thereby ensure the crimes that horrify us continue. No one wants to reach out and help a monster. No one wants to take responsibility for that kind of horror. And so the horror goes on.

Franklin said, rightly, that this is frighteningly close to making the assumption that women should have sex with men who want them so they won’t get killed, but that is not what I’m saying. You don’t have to have sex to offer comfort, to offer help. You don’t have to go on a date with someone just because they’re lonely. But you don’t have to utterly spurn them, either.

Mental illness has causes, and people can be saved. We save each other all the time. They are not different from us. We have all been in the situation this man was once in. The only difference between George Sodini and me is that I stopped the process before it got that far. I had people who consoled me and pulled me out.

There is no justification for going out and destroying a bunch of lives. But to assume that it happens because of some kind of defect that we don’t have is not only the height of hubris, but deadly. Those women died because of what we teach each other, and what we don’t do when someone falls through the cracks.

George was a murderer, but he wasn’t an asshole. What he did is not who he was. Who he was, is us. We ignore that at our very real and immediate peril.

—–
EDIT: In an ironic twist, when this post appeared in an email comment to me, Gmail’s sidebar ads produced this:

How To Keep A Man In Love
Learn The “Secret Psychology” To Getting A Man Hooked For Good
CatchHimAndKeepHim.com

Posted in psychology, society | Leave a comment

Experiencing MHC

by jenna Posted on April 25, 2009

This week, I drove up to Massachusetts (over to Massachusetts?) to Experience MHC, a sort of open house thing for admitted students. When I left home, I was pretty sure Mt. Holyoke was where I wanted to go, though I had mild reservations due to the barrenness of the closed campus as I’d seen it previously, and the fact that I haven’t heard back from Yale yet. Now, my mind is completely made up, to the point that I don’t care at all whether I get into Yale or not. If I do, that’ll be a nice ego boost, but that’s all it’ll be, because after this week, there is nowhere I’d rather be than MHC. It was an amazing experience, so much so that I have no idea if I can even get it across, but I’ll give it my best shot.

The events were pretty much what you’d expect: meals with the other incoming Frances Perkins students, campus tours, classes, a host student. They were designed to demonstrate life on campus, I imagine, and they did very well. I went to dinner in one of the dorm dining halls the first night. The food was pretty good, with bread that was so yummy that I fear for my ass, and I had a good time chatting with folks during the meal. The coolest thing about it, though, was when no one was talking to me and I was just observing the room.

The first thing I noticed was that all of the women looked really different from each other. Obviously, people look different, but it’s weird what happens to your perception when you’re not dividing a room into women and men right off the bat. They were dressed in just about every different style you could think of, and talking about lots of different things. There was quite a lot of the much-touted diversity, and it was much more notable, at least to me, because of the absence of the category of men.

What struck me most, though, was the incredible sense of relaxation. No one was putting on a show of any kind. No one was “on” in the way that women seem to always be “on” in most situations where competition for men is in the dynamic. There was none of the usual vague discomfort that inhabits a mixed-gender room. The common unease is pretty subtle – it’s not something I’ve really noticed overtly – but its absence was pronounced. In that room, and everywhere I went during my visit, there was such a sense of community, of cooperation and support and welcome. I’m sure there is competition, and that it’s not all roses and bluebirds all the time, but it felt nothing like anything I’ve experienced before, and I want more of it.

After dinner, I met my hostess, who was charming and friendly, and we went back to the dorm to drop off luggage, then went out for coffee at the coffee shop across the street from campus. A bunch of the other students were there, and we hung out and drank coffee and chatted for a bit. The coffee was awesome. I joked that that was my deciding factor, that the coffee was so good I had to come back for more. I enjoyed the conversation, but eventually started fading out due to the previous night’s insomnia, so I headed back to the dorm and crashed.

The next morning I went to a Philosophy of Science class, which worked out to be more like an ethics class, but it was pretty interesting. I was struck by the intelligence and confidence of my temporary classmates. Coming from community college, I’m used to a pretty wide mix of levels in my classes. Half the people are asleep or texting, and of the ones that do speak, 75% of them are telling some weird tangential story about a relative and trying to make that somehow relevant to the topic at hand. There’s some good discussion in my current classes on occasion, don’t get me wrong, but this was a whole other level. Everyone in that room was smart, articulate, interested, and outspoken. Every single person said something over the course of the class, and pretty much everything they said was insightful and interesting and on point.

My calc teacher mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she was really excited for me, and that I would love being in a school where everyone else there was on my level. Which makes me sound like an arrogant snob, but dude, it’s true. I freaking loved it. I feel like the opportunities for where I can go and grow are exponentially higher, and it’s so exciting that I am beside myself.

I originally wanted to go to Yale because of the intellectual opportunity, yes, but also because it would say something about me, validate me in some way. It would label me as better than a high school dropout in community college. No one would ever again doubt me, or something, with that name on my resume. This isn’t a bad reason to pick a school, but it really pales in comparison to what I’m feeling now. It’s like I told Chaos: “I wanted to go to Yale because of the name recognition. I want to go to Mt. Holyoke because I want to see who it will make me. Seems like a no brainer, really.” And it is.

So it’s official. South Hadley will be my home for the next three years, and I couldn’t be happier. I even changed my Facebook network, so you know I’m serious.

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A thing which I have learned

by jenna Posted on February 20, 2009

In our generally monogamous culture, standard dating is viewed as a series of auditions.  If you pass the first, then you get a second date.  If you pass that one, you get a third date (and possibly sex, if we really want to go with the cliched model).   Eventually you pass enough auditions to have a relationship, and if that goes well, you get married and win the game. Most of the poly people I know, myself included, started out being inundated with the standard model, and eventually became poly later. We learned to let go of the idea that there is One Magical Person for everyone, and the purpose of dating is to find them. But the feelings of being evaluated and passing or failing and internalizing what that means seemed to hang around.

What I think most people take a long time to realize (I certainly did) is that poly dating is a bit different, and so is monogamous dating, if you’re one of those who no longer subscribes to the One True Relationship model and your life is full without a partner. For one thing, not many people really pay attention to the amount of sheer upheaval starting a new relationship is. When you’re single, particularly if you’re looking for The One, rearranging your life to include another person is possibly challenging, but definitely worthwhile. The prospect of dying alone and being eaten by dogs is quite the motivator for doing a little life shifting in order to accommodate the person who will notice we’re dead before we start to smell.

When you’re dating poly people, a lot of times you already have someone who’s paying attention to the status of your sinus rhythms, and possibly so does the person you’re dating. This makes the prospect of making space in your life a little more of an optional thing, and one that’s a bit less easy to do as well. Maybe you have that first date and you try each other on, and it goes well. You like them, they like you, you have a nice kiss at the end and you go home. Then your husband or wife or kid or boyfriend has some kind of crisis, and you let that oh-so-crucial “I had a great time” call slide a few days. Then maybe it seems like it’s too late to call. Or you call and they’ve moved on. Or any one of a million other things happen, and your possible new relationship is dead in the water.

The problem here is that so many of us then react as if we had failed the audition. We’re living in the new model, but interpreting things in the old model. We didn’t get to date number two, or maybe we had date number three but then no relationship. We must have done something wrong. One of the hardest things to convey in life, be it mono or poly life, is “I like you, but just not quite enough to make you worth all the shit I’m going to have to deal with to keep you, and that doesn’t really have very much to do with you at all.”

It may have to do with the fact that I recently started another relationship, and my capacity for dealing with new relationship shit is very low right now. It may have to do with the fact that I was tired when we went on our date and failed to perceive the things about you that might inspire me to instigate the massive upheaval required for me to integrate you into my life. It might just mean that we don’t entirely fit, and given that I already have nineteen things going on that I need to deal with, I can’t make time for something that doesn’t entirely fit.

While it sucks a little bit to be good but not quite good enough, it doesn’t really mean what we often think it means. The risk/reward ratio has changed, you see. If you have relationships in place, the risks of adding someone new to your life go up, sometimes exponentially, from the risk level when you were single and all you had to worry about was bookshelf space (admittedly a valid concern). Not to mention that the reward of having someone new and wonderful, while incredibly significant and not to be minimized, is not quite the same level as the reward of having someone new and wonderful in place of no one.. The ratio is different, but we keep acting as if (and perceiving the evaluation of ourselves by others as if) it isn’t.

If you don’t fit, it doesn’t mean you’re bad. It may mean you just don’t have that extra bit of superlative awesomeness to make them go “okay, what the hell, let’s do this.” It may mean they just don’t have the juice to do anything about your superlative awesomeness. It may mean the timing was wrong.

It could mean a thousand things, but it very likely doesn’t mean that you suck, or that you’re not desirable, or that they think you’re not good enough for them, or that they think you smell gross. It’s far more likely to mean that our lives have gotten fuller, and there’s a space that’s just this certain shape, and you have an extra pokey bit that doesn’t quite fit in the empty shape. Or there’s no space at all, but you were just so damn shiny that they had to try you on just this once anyway. Then they realized that there was no space, and they’re as sad about it as you are.

Changing the default model of dating is much more far-reaching than we think it is. It’s not enough to learn that you can find happiness with more than one person. You also have to learn that sometimes you can’t, even if they’re someone that could make you happy. Love may be infinite, but resources aren’t, and the downside of learning that you don’t have to rearrange your entire life every time someone possible comes along is learning that you don’t have to rearrange your entire life every time someone possible comes along.

So next time someone says thanks but no thanks, thank them too and go home knowing that they liked you enough to try you on, and that’s something, even if it’s not everything, and just because their common sense prevailed and they realized you were out of their budget this time, it doesn’t mean that you’re not a great outfit, or that they didn’t go home wishing they had a little less common sense.

Posted in polyamory, relationships | Leave a comment