![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 32 to 56 of 79. Go back in thread:
Posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2015, at 21:37:48
In reply to Re: fear, posted by alexandra_k on April 11, 2015, at 23:18:29
please tell me it is going to be okay.
please.
Posted by alexandra_k on April 13, 2015, at 22:36:20
In reply to Re: dr bob?, posted by alexandra_k on April 12, 2015, at 21:37:48
So, my last test I got disability accommodations. 10 extra minutes, per hour and a testing room with less than 10 people in it.
But I finished the test within the standard time (just!).
I realise... I need to be able to work at the pace they need me to be able to work at. 30 seconds per bit of information... Fairly standard.
I'm not sure whether or not they would hold it against me, or whatever. With respect to entry... But I really don't want to take that risk. And I... Don't think I need to. I kind of think that the most important thing, really, is (just in case they are paying attention) to not play the disability card. If that makes sense.
I have compression gear. And it helps. A lot. It really really really really does. I think it has made it possible for me to habituate to people, some.
And I have a studio apartment. And it helps. A lot. Again...
I don't think I need to ask for anything else. I'm okay.
The chemistry test is going to be tight, though. I need to practice my strategies for doing things quickly... Things like counting the number of carbons... If you lose your place then you have to start over.. And so many freaking rings... I think the thing to do might be to count the Sp3 and then the Sp2 and then the Sp... Because it is easier to eyeball that way... Anyway... I gotta practice little dinky things like that.
It is helping me to try and keep perspective... 100 marks... But the test is worth 15% or (bio) 33%. So.. It isn't the end of the world if I can't get some of them. Things will come out in the rounding (a little bit) and there is a little bit of a buffer...
Also... I don't need to do as well as most who get in will need to. Because of the whole mature thing... If I can get an A- for Organic I'll be stoked.
I'm just scared because I really want this so very much. More than I've ever wanted anything, I think. I really really really really really really do. And the thought of missing out.. Is really hard.
I've stopped drinking coffee... Onto camomile tea of all things. relax... relax... relax...
It is going to be okay.
Posted by jane d on April 14, 2015, at 17:17:48
In reply to Re: fear, posted by alexandra_k on April 11, 2015, at 23:18:29
"The main thing is to be able to control my attention. So that I can spend some time worrying about something / trying to fix something... Then spend some time doing something else."
You said this several posts up and I think it's important. It's very easy to get totally caught up in what's wrong with the world - especially if you are in the habit of noticing and analyzing everything and that doesn't leave enough time for you.
A couple of thoughts. I grew up riding crowded buses and subways so I usually can shrug that off but I've had periods in my life, corresponding to my mental state, where I found it nearly unbearable. What I did to cope then was to try and pretend to be someplace else that I liked - for me it was a specific mountain top - for you it might be looking out the window of your room -and I'd try to fix as many details in my mind as I could remember. This let me partially tune out the fact that I was jammed up against people like a sardine.
I also wonder if you are making time to get to the gym or do any other kind of exercise. I remember your posts about how much you enjoyed that. I know it's very hard to do when you have a heavy course load - in fact it's one of the things I always let go first when I got busy and in retrospect I think it's one reason I always ended up falling apart (Yes - this is a do as I say, not as I did kind of message - sorry about that).
Wishing you good luck.
Jane
Posted by alexandra_k on April 15, 2015, at 1:08:26
In reply to Re: fear » alexandra_k, posted by jane d on April 14, 2015, at 17:17:48
Hey. Thanks for your post :-) I appreciate it, a lot.
I think I was losing it, a little bit, with the stress.
The weather has turned cooler now, finally. That means I can sleep with the windows shut. That really cuts down on the road noise. That helps a lot. We get some heavy traffic at night from the harbour. And there is building construction just a little bit down the road, too. My curtains don't really get things dark inside, either. So I've turned my bed around to sleep at night so my head is in the quieter and darker centre of my room and it really seems to help.
I've also shifted my focus from global to local. I brought a LED lightbulb for my desklamp. Got an organic chicken, rather than just the cheapest one. I've started reading labels better, and figured out a particular brand of cleaning stuff / bathroom product that is safe for septic tanks etc... Because when the sewerage system is overloaded (as it often is) then they dump things into the harbour... I never really thought properly about where the water pipes (and sewerage pipes) go before...
And keeping up the gym, yeah. I don't have a lot of time to spend... But it is important to spend some. I try and play... Take the gym ball into the squash court and kick / punch it about... Battling ropes... Working on my cartwheels... Having fun with it. Keeping it light (careful of my ankle, now).
Classes start back next week and it will be really full on... I think I've got into the swing of how I best learn biology and I'll have a better time of keeping up from now on, I think. I got a bit far behind, I think. Nothing irrevokable, but I need to do better from now on, for sure. Chemistry is... Damn... It is a hard one for me because it is still really very different from anything I've done before. Can spend hours trying to follow through the freaking 9 step equations they want us to be using for labs, or whatever.
On the upside, I have a wonderful packet of rainbow colored highlighters, now. And embryology lady taught me a good one about the arbitrariness of color (by changing up the colors in our lab manual for the model embryo we were supposed to build so I messed up the wiring / forgot the allantois). Anyway... Focusing on what is important, again. Don't have a tantrum that the temporal lobe ain't green. Sigh.
Onward ho...
Posted by alexandra_k on April 16, 2015, at 3:47:16
In reply to Re: fear » jane d, posted by alexandra_k on April 15, 2015, at 1:08:26
I think it will be okay... A couple of past tests later and things are looking brighter... A few questions that recur every year and a more... Circumscribed body of knowledge / skills to be developed. Only 3 days till classes start back. Eep.
I need to get into the habit of rewriting my biology notes every night after lecture. Get it done then. The time consuming nearly mindless thing of getting them into a learnable format. All the bits that I don't remember... Till that piece of paper gets smaller and smaller. I'm actually quite good at the cram / quite enjoy it. Especially this content. Cell / Devo / Organ systems bio is so fun!!!
I did really crap on my health systems essay. They said I was 'editorialising'. They didn't want me to make a case / defend an idea. They just wanted me to... Regurgitate theirs. I think. I think that is how it is supposed to go. Everything wrong with the world... Increasing the volume of information without any advance in the content. I don't want to read one article and then 9 others that are people rephrasing that one article in their own words. I mean.. What is the point, really. Sigh.
Not good to piss management people off. Sigh.
Anyway... Ortho, meta, para directing here I come. Reagents. Sigh. Reaction schemas...
Posted by alexandra_k on April 16, 2015, at 20:21:28
In reply to Re: fear, posted by alexandra_k on April 16, 2015, at 3:47:16
I wish I had another week. Dammit. Needed to take a few days off over easter. For sanity. Nearly lost it, there, I did.
Remembering... That it was about this time last year that I had the bugs incident in my room... I really did have bugs (the bites were visible). But... With things like that... It is partly to do with immune stuff / how much they irritate you so you scratch at them...
I will be glad to get back, though. The people contact, yeah. The new stimulus. I just feel a little sad that I don't think I'll have squeezed all this into me the way I could have if I had another... Few days, at least. Just feel like I'm a few days short...
Anyway... I have learned a lesson about getting behind. It is hard because with classes at 8am... Then if you try and keep a bit of a routine with things like grocery shopping and the gym... And then you have fiddly administration tasks to do... The day just goes. People are honestly about 'when do you have time to study' and it really does feel like that... Especially with 3 hour labs (that take at least that to prep for)...
Anyway... I guess the thing to do is to get into the routine of spending at least 1 hour per night on chem and 1 hour per night on bio... In a semi-mindless state, even. Just to get the content into a learnable format... That first work through.
I think I've learned a lot about how to learn this stuff... With respect to needing to keep up. Really. For reals. They really do minimise the amount of time we have to cram. E.g., by giving us very early exams with not much time between... Chemistry first. Then only a day before bio in the afternoon. Followed by population health (UMAT prep style intelligence test, really) the following morning. Then a couple days before I get my *ss kicked for editorialising, again. Sigh.
Anyway.... Get used to long days. Huh.
God dammit... I wanna be a surgeon. For really. For really reals. Oh please let this turn out okay...
Posted by alexandra_k on June 13, 2015, at 19:03:37
In reply to Re: fear, posted by alexandra_k on April 16, 2015, at 20:21:28
chemistry exam: done.
feels funny. chemistry has been this worry in the back of my mind for the last couple years... done now. i hope i did enough. that's about all i can say, really. the exam felt a lot better than the last test. but i don't know. i felt pretty good about the first test and then was really disappointed in how much i managed to mess up, so will just have to wait and see. i... really don't know.
biology tomorrow. labs turned badly, again. basically lose one grade because of that. labs are... mostly about your ability to extract the appropriate answers from the laboratory demonstrators, feels like. certain things you can do to make that more likely... show them you have done some work before-hand etc etc. but if they decide it is fun for them to steer you wrong, or whatever, then, well, that's the way those go. Make sure we test / reward what it is that we value, oh yes, for sure.
i like the content okay but... mostly about studying for the exam, really. you can know the content but the questions be... odd. oddly phrased. tangential relationship between the questions and the lecture content. i see why people think the textbooks are a waste of time... study for the exam, indeed... Hunt down the answer to those questions as best you can... Go in prepared.
i don't need to do as well as the kids who've been trained up in doing this over the years... but... i still don't know that i can do well enough. you need people to back you, i see. people need to give you permission to try / to succeed / to have any hope in getting out. guess they will only back the people who they think are like them / are one of them etc. makes it more likely they will go back, i guess. means... they might be more likely to back the wrong ones in the first place (the ones who do better in their environment rather than the new one they are supposedly being selected for). I guess that is the point, really, from their perspective.
I've always felt... People were like 'she'll be right' even when I was very specific that I wasn't alright. And then 'oops tee hee' when it turns out that they were wrong - she'll not be alright, indeed. Turns out... The truth of it is... That they simply couldn't care less. Instead of them going 'what a bad fit, indeed, lets try and send her on with our blessings (since she's the child / the one without power / the one we've been charged with looking after / protecting / helping'... Instead of that... I think they'd have been happiest if I'd just have curled up and died, honestly. I wonder where all the Autistic Spectrum Maaori kids are. One doesn't have to look further than cot death, I suppose. If you cringed when people tried to cuddle you... You'd probably have been smothered.
Sigh.
Ugh. Not quite out of there yet...
Things are good. Except for the street kids who've moved into the low cost long term accommodation next door. There is an empty lot with a fence / billboards that keeps the empty lot hidden from the road. There is a side exit out of the accommodation with outdoor stairways up on to the roof etc. Recycle bins out the side etc. So... They party out there... Whooping and squealing and carrying on into the small hours of the morning. Throwing their glass around loudly and living in their... Trash, basically. The ground is all littered with trash for them to sit amongst. You can take them out / get them out. But if you take / get a whole bunch of them all together at the same time them they just sort of bring their sh*t with them.
Like how you defeat the purpose of total immersion overseas experience if you go with a bunch of other people who speak English / are from similar places.
Anyway... I think the culture here is fairly much that exam takes all. Got a C+ for that first law test, I remember, then did really much better in the exam so... Isn't quite this situation now since labs and tests do contribute towards our overall grade... But exams are worth around 50% so... Anyway... Just do the best I can is all I can do. Done Saturday evening next week. Will take a few weeks for things to go through boards of examiners and the like.
No more chemistry. And possibly... After this exam... Just possibly no more biology, too. I like the content... Shame about... Well... I guess you don't know whether things get better in later years without actually doing later years to see... I think... Most of the serious students mostly hate labs... Because they dont' actually teach you how to do anything properly... I think... I think... Because they don't know. Truth be told. So we're left playing the socially gregarious playing lab game...
I see why some of the great scientists did badly at academic science. Dropped out of school, even. I see why people don't care particularly about your grades... Why they don't mind / sort of expect uneven results. Or maybe I'm thinking of arts people who basically left science in disgust (or something)... Who got sick of the uneven grades. Who got sick of playing the 'lets study multi-guess questions over the last few years in order to deduce the correct fairly arbitrary answer' instead of... Maybe... Focusing on learning / understanding the content of the book...
I see why.... The kids think it is work. They've basically... Been trained to work, over the years. Sort of... Dilligently do this and then do that and then do the next thing. Carefully... Without errors. And of course sometimes they do get the opportunity to be creative (likely be berated for how they can only diligently do this and then do that and then do the next thing rather than be creative)...
I see why... The pre-med kids are all like 'do you expect us to learn that?' Because lecturers will throw up seriously detailed diagrams.. Far too many for you to learn... And so you need to know what it is exactly that they expect you to reporoduce / draw from memory for the exam for 10 marks... Or, at least narrow it down to a list of 3 or 4 that are up for grabs so the content is manageable. Or maybe that was just their long winded speel that was only there in a half-hearted attempt to help you narrow down multi-guess question 5 for one mark. And then the lecturers complain that students don't care about the content they only care about their grades. And the students who actually listen to what the lecturers say (focusing on content rather than studying for the exam) are the ones who either don't do well enough in science to continue... Or who don't get into med because they didn't do well enough... Just another case of how the people whose job it is to help you learn... Seem to delight in tricking students. In making them play 'find the content / answer that we have to learn' instead of giving them answers / content and seeing which ones of them can actually learn the most of them... It is just... Sigh.
Sigh.
It is just... The way it's been done. For a number of years. And people do think it is silly, sometimes. But they don't seem to think there is any alternative...
It feels faintly ridiculous. Lottery? That would be unfair. These sort of... random.. arbitrary assessments... I guess they are training us in useful skills? I don't know... Time for a holiday, soon, soon.. I suppose it is about doing your work. Doing the job. WOrking through the exams... Takes time. They are trying to reward the kids who have put in the most time. Not in the big cram before the exam but dilligently over the course of the semester (which is why they cram all our exams all together in the first week of the exam period so you'd likely run out of endurance during the actual exam if you weren't careful to pace yourself).
I suppose it is useful skills that they value. Sigh. Do I really think that clinical assessment skills are so very different from lab skills? Damned people. I just wanna... I dunno... Grow bone in a petrie dish, or something. You'd need to exercise it. I keep thinking about that. How you would exercise bone in a petrie dish... Whether you could get the matrix to form properly... Whether I might need bone plugs in my feet once the screws / the rest of the metal comes out. Heh. I'll build me better feet one day. I swears :-)
I hope I get into med. I think that physiology with the rest of them might be... Insufferable. For me.
Fingers crossed. I guess.
Posted by alexandra_k on June 13, 2015, at 21:02:07
In reply to 1 down, 3 to go, posted by alexandra_k on June 13, 2015, at 19:03:37
> If you cringed when people tried to cuddle you... You'd probably have been smothered.
Because you are supposed to squeal and writhe with pleasure. Or at least be happy baby to soothe soothe soothe mothers anxiety into something more pleasant.
One can only suppose that that's what the neighbours are up to into the small hours of every morning.
Babies would have evolved to evoke care-taking response from caregivers. Or they would have been left to die.
What does the mother need, though? Baby to hush / entertain itself unless baby actually needs something from mother because mother is busy... or baby to spend all the time trying to entertain / soothe / look after mother? Which is most likely to result in survival of baby?
I guess adaptive is best... Though... A certain amount could come through in hard-wiring, I suppose. Hard wired in a suitably matched environment would probably be optimal. Hard wired in an unsuitably matched environment would probably be suicidal / homicidal. Adaptive... Good old 'good enough'...
I think we have to do these broad competency things because... We don't actually have many doctors per head of population and so we sort of do expect doctors to do everything. The whole 'GP for rural community' thing basically seems to be about a doctor working all by themselves without the support of other doctors in an environment where hospital back-up isn't likely and where one is on call 24/7. I mean... That's so very much cheaper than having people seen in hospital environments. All the 'unnecessary' tests. All the 'unnecessary' specialists.
We complain 'we can't afford them'. Yeah. If you pay me 1 million I can write you a report showing how I've improved efficiency (access or equity) by 3.9% and saved 2.6 million to boot. I bet. I bet that is where the money goes. Salaries for members of boards of directors and salaries for people working for multi-million or billion dollar 'not for profit' (aka: we no pay taxes) 'charity' organisations. This country is so corrupt we don't even seem to think we have a problem with corruption. It's... Ridiculous.
I do keep thinking back to one of my supervisors books... Aspects of it... Making sense of things... You do need to demonstrate commitment. Like having the gang tattoos so you demonstrate that your fate is tied to the fate of the group. Demonstrating that it is far too costly (for your own interests) for you to opt out of working to better the fate of the group. What do you have to do in order to succeed??? Sell your soul? Kinda sorta feels like... I don't know. Time will tell, I guess. I feel... I do lack some kind of social skill that is needed to play the game. The game that will give me things like... I would like to own my own house / apartment in a nice enough part of the city so I don't have to listen to neighbours who prefer to live in their own trash and coo coo coo to each other till the small hours of every morning.
A lot of people want that.
A lot of people *say* they want that... But they don't work for it. They are too busy coo coo cooing their way through each and every day... Maybe if they coo coo coo to the right person then the person will have them move someplace prettier and they can coo coo coo to them. Or their baby or their dog or whatever... I don't know...
Back to working past years tests, hey.
One task then the next task then the next task... And so on. The more science I do the more I do appreciate the arts. Pretty things. Aesthetic. Something about it that makes us distinctively human. Emotional trips in a way that is... Manageable. Somehow.
Sometimes I think there are people looking out for me. Othertimes I think it is one of those Maher's 'feelings of significance' thing that I need to be a bit careful of. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle...
Immunology ho..
Posted by alexandra_k on June 25, 2015, at 23:30:52
In reply to Re: 1 down, 3 to go, posted by alexandra_k on June 13, 2015, at 21:02:07
1 semester down, 1 to go.
I don't really know how I went. Even when I find out my grades... I expect the only thing that can be taken from it, really, is 'need to keep on and do better if at all possible'.
I know I get.... Sort of transiently psychotic. Not sure psychotic is the thing, exactly. People... Tell me that I'm probably right (the stuff I'm 'psychotic' about is probably true). So... I can't tell how much they are just sort of humoring me in an effort to help me recover back to more normal faster, or how much they genuinely do think what I'm saying is probably true. My keyworker person said I was scaring her, at one point. Because it is stuff people don't want to think about... In that way... So... Maybe it is more about that. The issue is more that I get intently focused on it and kind of wound up. Some sort of feeling of significance about it which has me focused... Anyway... A couple days and it passes... So...
Anyway...
BIOSCI... I think I got the hang of things better as the course progressed. Learned a lot about how to study for the assessment. Which involved learning the content, yeah, but in a differently focused way to what I was used to. I really enjoyed the class. It is meant to be a lead in to MEDSCI next semester... Sort of feeling cautiously hopefully slightly optimistic about how the exam went. Fingers crossed... I do hope I'm starting to get the hang of it.
CHEM... Done now. Yeah. Fingers crossed I get no less than a B-... Hopefully B... Fingers crossed for a B+. A B+ would make me so very happy, yeah. I dunno... I felt the exam went a lot better than the previous assessments - but the previous assessments went very poorly indeed and I don't know that I did well enough in the exam to recover particularly.
Population health... Sucks. Really. I mean, aspects of the subject matter are genuinely interesting to me... But I really didn't like the courses at all. The core one was better... The other one was horrible. Really horrible. And I did poorly. 35% first essay. 30% second essay. only just scraped a pass on the 10% in tutorial group multi-guess. All of this is... Surprising. I've never failed an essay in my life. I mean, I've recently had problems passing things with equations / algebra / calculus in them, but that's not surprising given my educational background. Failing a first year essay?
I applied to have someone independently re-mark it. That was a process... Population health is... Taught out of this satellite campus. It's basically on a chunk of land that was (is?) Maaori land. It is a 'health science' campus. Because the main health problems are with Maaori and there are equity issues and so on and so forth... And because lots of kids want to be doctors (because they watch soap operas on TV and so on) and while they don't get high enough grades to do the bio-med pathway to medicine they let them into the health science pathway (the one that I'm doing). Only... I'm not part of their equity group, am I. They don't want me to do well... Their kids... They've picked them out already. The socially gregarious bullies, of course. They won't show us the best examples of essays they got... So we can see what they are looking for... THey won't give us more detailed feedback on the multi-guess quiz (so we can ensure they graded them properly instead of pulling our marks out of their butts).
It is traumatising for me... Because much of my life... It isn't a Maaori thing, exactly. It isn't a culture thing, exactly. Only.... It sorta kinda is... But lots of non Maaori people have it and it isn't essential to Maaori culture at all... Its an attitude... I had all the way through primary school and High school. An attitude I found with my Maaori carers when I was placed in foster care. An attitude I found at tech. At the uni across the bridge. At my accommodation out there (in association with a supposedly elite Maaori secondary school / the university out there) and I find it now, here, too.
Imagination???
Very first day was an orientation thing. So they get us all in a lecture theatre. Activities. Stand back to back with the person next to you and when they yell out the emotion word turn and face each other and pull that emotion.
Get into tutorial groups and throw the ball to someone and say your name. And then after some time of that throw the ball to the person whose name you call.
Lets play with the autistic girl?
?
Yeah.
Then multiple choice test. Instead of doing it normally (printing off the questions and we mark our answers on the page) and we get 5 minutes... All the curtains must be closed. All the flourescent lights must be turned on. The questions must be overhead projected onto the wall. The tutor must stand right next to the questions (so the questions can't be viewed without her bobbing smily face in the same frame). The tutor must give time cues '30 seconds, 10 seconds' and move onto the next question after 60 seconds (only one question displayed at a time). And all the rest of it must be group work.
I feel like they have intentionally tried to wind me up / trigger me from day one. INforming them of my disability meant that they intentionally targeted me negatively. How is that not bullying? If you want to interact with someone and they make it clear to you that they are busy (working) and you feel that it is acceptable for you to disrupt their work (punish them for not paying attention to you on demand) by kicking at the back of their seat and so on... How is that not bullying?
Beam me up, scotty.
The upshot is that I don't know whether I'm even going to pass their paper. The exam was worth 50% but I was doing pretty f*ck*ng badly indeed before going into the exam. I need to trust that the academic board will put the brakes on things if they try and fail me (if I fail then there is no way my GPA can recover from that). Even if they C- or C+ me there is basically no way that my GPA can recover from that. they know i can't function in their environment (there is no f*ck*ng way i'm going to go live with them / help them). i can't function in their environment. they certainly aren't interested in giving me any power (so i could actually help them) they're more interested in the people who can smile giggle flirt make them think they will stay... only to genuinely screw them over at a later date. it's a sort of... attraction to being f*ck*d over. anyway... there is nothing that i can do about any of that because they simply will not let me function. so...
I have to hope the academic board will step in. i tried to write a nice exam... because i guess if there is a sticking point they will ask to see it. i guess they also have the power to view OTHER exams. that will be the thing, really. i know full well they have a lot of basically illiterate people in the class... so... it shouldn't be too hard to put the brakes on their failing me. i don't know that i can trust the process... especially given my more recent (bad) performance in physics... need for someone to see that algebra / calculus for me is a very different bag from health science out at the campus where they've realised they can make money off of people by offering them a pathway into medicine that seems mostly designed to f*ck people over / waste their time / set them up to fail. except for the few maaori students they select to A+ so they can help them cross the application criteria threshold then TAS them a place...
they're tarteging me because i'm eligable for TAS admission, too. and (autistic stereotypes they'd be most knowledgeable in given their performance thus far) they probably think i'd do well enough in chem / bio for failing me to be their only way of obstructing my getting a place.
anyway...
round 2 next semester. sequal paper. have to do it.
also MEDSCI. which should be great. everyone says it is wonderful. more like med school than anything we've done thus far. huge chunk of it is multiguess because the major med school exams are so.... simply have to learn to do well at that. and the other LAW paper which is.. the equivalent paper for law school, really. statute interpretation and the like. i'm thinking that will be fun for me and i'll be reasonably good at it. i mean... in reading the textbooks i can ancitipate their next point and so on.. it is just very logical and straightfowards, i think...
i think the UMAT will be important. because the people who write that are (I think) the people who write the medical school multi-guess. Our equivalent of the STEP exams. So... We need to do well at their way of thinking / their multi-guess. If I do well at that... I really don't think they will give a f*ck about how sh*t I do at Tamaki.
I don't know. Lets see how badly they manage to f*ck me over this time. I mean... Story of my life, hey. Only trouble was they didn't get to me early enough. Cot death and all that. I mean a kid whose natural / automatic response is to cringe away when we shriek and giggle and squeal and squawk at it?
I suppose I might be transiently psychotic about this / them... I do think that a number of things they have done are straight out of the 'how to upset someone with autism' sort of stereotype from 20 years ago literature that they are probably familiar with...
i suppose they probably have the best intentions in the world. that is typically the problem... the whole 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' thing. i saw this poster up out there on that campus. they wanted volunteers to play with this autistic boy. that's what got me thinking about how they were tormenting me with the same things. but of course... honestly... they probably dind't know that it is tormenting. they have no comprehension that being raped... anything... any knid of physical contact against someones will can be tormenting. there is no comprehension that someone might have a will that involves less person contact. how can that be? A will for another person to back off. i don't think that makes sense to them. or... it is like teaching a dog to stay... you need to start out with 3 seconds and then reward. and then 30 seconds and then reward. and it is a huge f*ck*ng path to things like just being able to do your own f*ck*ng thing without praising people for not crowing you all the f*ck*ng time...
anyway...
their thing is that the more time you spend with them the more you will learn how well intentioned they are and the more empathy you will develop for them.
but i know that is not true at all in my case. the less time i spend with them the more i'm able to focus on the relatively removed things like the history of injustice they have suffered and current inequities in policy and so on... these things make me feel more empathetic towards them. i am able to feel empathy and understanding for their communication style (and so on) when my whole body isn't screaming out to me from being physically tormented which is what inevitably happens when i spend much time with them.
or my mother. huh.
or, anyone, really.
jeez.
i think i might skip lectures next semester. listen to them online. the multiguess quizes are immediately after (no time to study after attending - you wouldn't want to reward people for studying because that would mean punishing their own kids who are too busy socialising to study)... no time to listen to the lecture recordings before the test. again... can't reward people for doing work when we are about rewarding the people who value socialising above work.
it's hard to find kids who are acceptable to their people who are capable of passing the australian medical councils multiguess. for sure.
my worry is... there are probably more than a few who would do great. if only it wasn't for things like cot death. huh.
i feel sad. i'm not racist. really. genuinely. i do have a lot of empathy. i have lived with them a lot. i have tried to help... what limited power i had... when i couldn't function in their environment at all. i tried to help them understand what i needed.. i tried to help them understand how aspects of that might help them do better in things they might want (e.g., having a quiet study space might help them focus on the work)... and they didn't want to know. they were just hating on me that i wasn't expressing sadness / remorse / regret that i couldn't just hang about with them socialising all day. if that isn't what you most want in the world...
alien. yeah.
Posted by alexandra_k on June 25, 2015, at 23:51:37
In reply to Re: 1 down, 3 to go, posted by alexandra_k on June 25, 2015, at 23:30:52
I think it is partly a climate thing. Our climate is very forgiving. South Pacific Islands. The North of New Zealand. The climate is very temperate. There isn't much need to get up off your *ss and do various things... Food is relatively easy to find. To pick. To pluck from the ocean. It isn't like you need to be out there all day fishing in order to find enough to feed your family. It isn't like you need to work hard all day to make a house so you and your family don't die of exposure. So... Play all day. Just hang about and play all day. And that is what people do.
They call out to each other. I guess because there are trees and stuff on islands. Insofar as people go off to do their own thing they constantly make bird call sort of noises. Expressing that they are okay. I think that is what it is. So you stay in auditory contact. People do that all about the city. Constantly. Through the night. I guess if you don't hear someone for a while you go see if they are okay or if they need help.
I think there is a way of doing your own thing. But it starts with your needing to express remorse or regret that there is a competing SOCIAL demand that requires you to go away. So... People will be understanding if you can't hang out with them because you are hanging out with OTHER PEOPLE. Or if you have to do some kind of a chore for another person.
There was this wonderful essay thing that I read from this girl who is at uni on scholarship. It was about how they were doing maths... And about how one of the problems was hard... And the kids were having a hard time working individually to get the answer. So their teacher started humming / singing to help them feel happy and calm and relaxed... And that got her humming along with the tune..
And her story was pure description. But reading between the lines: It is freaking hard to do maths when people about you freak out about the emotional state that is appropriate to working on a hard problem and when they need to regulate your emotion to a happy not a care in the world state... Where (of course) one is no longer doing maths.
Insert any kind of work... Insert anything that doesn't have a fairly immediate payoff... So hard... To get permission to do it.
Hence 'tall poppy syndrome'. This thing of 'thinks they're better than us' if someone wants to work at something... No understanding that someone might enjoy things like doing puzzles... No comprehension of that at all. Which, of course, makes it fairly impossible that they can identify out the kids who do enjoy such things / who are amenable to learning to enjoy such things. No understanding at all that the LESS socially focused might be ideally placed to focus on other things... Just this desperate thing of 'don't leave me'. I guess. I guess that's it. Convincing them that you would stay with them forever if you could (but competing social demands over here and there...)
Could it be a more alien world for someone like me?
I really don't think so.
Posted by alexandra_k on June 30, 2015, at 22:30:12
In reply to Re: 1 down, 3 to go, posted by alexandra_k on June 25, 2015, at 23:30:52
That's the thing, really. I can have empathy from a sufficiently removed place but I lose my capacity to be empathetic when I'm not in a sufficiently removed place.
I found this ex-pat website... A lot of comments that help me put things in perspective...
Nearly half the teachers in the region I grew up have convictions. Drunk driving (of course) but also surprisingly high rates of violence. Their defence is that a number of their students have done worse. Looking at the rates of sexual activity in 9-14 year old girls. The numbers of abortions carried out on these children each year. The rates of infant death due to abuse. Most primary school teachers say they feel unable to teach math. Cases of people attempting to bring charges against gangs youths who violently gang rape (with knives and broken bottles), to teachers who have history of sexually abusing their students, to university students who drunkenly abuse each other and police, and these cases are all smoothed over and no convictions are given or only a mild tap on the wrist. 'Boys will be boys'. Because it is all an accepted part of our culture.
And yet we say that this is a wonderful country for people to raise their kids. We say 'we have a family-friendly laid back lifestyle' (high achievers will be relentlessly persecuted and gang connections are for life).
I remember there were two stabbings at my High School over the period of about a year. That was a couple years after there was a sequence of three at a neighbouring one. I remember I was part of a group who spent the better part of three years going back to one of the girls houses to drunkenly party every lunch time. I ended up in hospital three times for having drunk too much. Collapsed at school. I most certainly wasn't the only one. And then having a sexual relationship with one of my teachers... Who ended up having to leave that school once it became public. She had to commute out further away, but ended up with a new job with a promotion. She got made head of department.
And all of this was normal...
But I really did just want to curl up and die for much of my life. And I did always feel like there was something very deeply wrong with me. That there was something different. That I didn't fit.
Most people get into the spirit of the dramatics. The appeal of the 'he drunkenly abused that bloke who called me a ho - aaaaaaaw he must really love me' and 'he drunkenly abused me for being molested by his best friend - aaaaaw he loves me' dynamic. Thrive on the drama, somehow. Why do I say that? Because the majority won't leave despite opportunity. Only... That's not quite fair... I don't know how many get the opportunity to go.
When I was doing psychology however many years ago I got to be friends with this adult student who had a non-profit working with street-kids. Basically, they needed to be in school until 16, by law, but they'd been expelled from all their local schools for their glue sniffing, molesting, fighting etc etc... So he put in a paper-work heavy proposal to educate them. Ages 9-15. He represented this country at kick-boxing at some point. A huge guy (very tall and very big boned and also very heavy). Long dreadlocks. Street cred kinda guy. Anyway... He had this one girl who was very sweet... She stood out as not having a chance, really. He (and his wife) basically took her in and offered her a proper fresh start. A proper one. For reals. She repeatedly ran away back to the drunken garage party that was her life up north (until social services did some kind of a raid and took her 9 year old self out of there). Anyway...
Anyway...
Point was that there are people who don't want to leave. Who don't know any different and who have somehow swallowed the whole 'we don't know how lucky we are' propaganda and our 'clean green' propaganda ( with our heavy reliance on agricultural exports and all the dirty pollution alongside). There is some new performance indicator b*llsh*t that we somehow manage to top for some kind of social progressiveness...
People get ahead because they see an opportunity and they take it. I think that often that opportunity is fairly clearly something about exploiting something or someone. The sort of thing that people with a moral compass would think is perhaps not very moral. And then you find out that really there are no laws preventing your doing it. And so... If you make a move surreptitiously and keep your mouth shut (to protect your interests) then you can 'get ahead'. And I see very clearly why people think that there is a hierarchy. Because it is about power relations. About having more than others. I never saw the world that way. I'm not used to thinking of finite resources and infinite desires. I'm used to thinking of things like 'achieving your potential' where that doesn't involve your screwing over anybody else and the world can only be a better place if more people do that... Things like... This country would be better for everyone if everyone lived in a world health organisation approved 'healthy home' instead of the mouldy and leaky damp wooden huts that most people are stuck with.
I've been dealing a bit with ACC... I'm trying to get the metal removed from my legs / my feet. I can feel that my range of motion is limited by the metal and I'm keen to get it removed and see about recovering the range of motion as much as possible. I've had good success at fixing my hips that used to be creaky and clicky and sort of arthritic. By gentle exercise / movement over a period of years. I'm hoping that my feet might similarly improve. Anyway... The dynamics of trying to get this done...
Need to keep track of everything. Every time you speak with someone keep track of who you spoke to and what was said. Their job is to post-pone things as much as possible in the hopes that you give up and go away and thereby money is saved. So they do sneaky little things. They'll claim that the computer somehow mysteriously altered your address so you didn't get that letter they sent. Or they will deny a claim and nobody will let you know that it was denied so that you can get back to them because there is no grounds for their having denied it.
The thing is to realise that that is just the process. That is their job. They get performance bonuses for being the person in their office who authorised the least things, or whatever. It isn't personal. You just have to be persistent and keep a record and be clear and take 30 minutes once a week or whatever to chase things up and keep things moving along. Because that's the way it is done. You can't trust that anything will happen if you don't do that. Because it won't. And this whole thing pisses me off. That the world is like this. That people who are too sick to chase things up... Those are the people who suffer the most from the way things are.
There was this WHO thing... A surprisingly tiny amount of the health system is actually devoted to health outcomes / clinical competence. A surpringly lot is devoted to things like 'service quality' where an appropriate indicator is 'they did everything for me'. So... If you can convince a person that you did everything you could for them... That is what it is about. If you can convince a person that you went out of your way to help them. In getting them an appointment (only just) within a sort of 'acceptable' (in some sense) time frame you really went out of your way for them, you totally went above and beyond, you shuffled other things back and you worked over hours and... You get the idea. Having a wonderful receptionist really is the keystone to any successful practice.
Only...
It is dishonest. I think.
I don't know that I have the ability to negotiate 'mutually beneficial collaborative partnerships' with others. Because I have a 'different' moral compass... I don't like it when people tell me fibs about how they are going out of their way for me - when they are just doing their job - and when they are most likely colluding on the whole delay delay delay thing in order to achieve THEIR bonus. I think it is lying. It is dishonest.
Most people don't care, I think. They want to feel special. Like an exception is being made for them. Like they are in one something. The people who are able to make people feel like that... That's the most valuable skill of all, really, isn't it. The one that is most financially renumberable. You can do anything... Politics... Business... Anything. Hells, you can get other people to throw money your way so long as when they are around you they get to feel special. That is basically your job. There is a tone to it... And an edge. There is an edge that has to go with... A vague threat of 'you want me on your team because I'm capable of being mean to my enemies' and then very clear signals of how they really like you and really want to help you and really want to be on your team...
There is money to be made from 'education'. From universities. We don't have jobs here. Not entirely sure why or how, but there it is. Something about how we don't have the usual sorts of employment laws that other countries have... Then we have a bunch of migrants who are less complain-y... I have a friend who used to work hospitality in Australia (not much of a tipping culture, so not a great job, but okay-ish). When she was here places were very reluctant to hire her... She ended up applying for much more junior positions than she was capable of... Eventually... She'd get a phone call and they would offer her one night of work as a trial to see what she could do. Unpaid. Because (actually) a worker had rung in sick. Nothing came of it. They were basically calling people off the roster list for the free labor.
And if this isn't explicitly unlawful... Then why wouldn't you? If you don't do this and the next business does then they will get further ahead than you because they have seen an opportunity (and taken advantage of it) to be more efficient / to keep costs down. Of course it is probably wise to be quiet about this so that nobody takes steps to prevent you. But this is how we get ahead...
And I'm not capable of doing things like that. I don't have it in me. I would feel wracked with guilt.
What will become of me? I don't know...
Back to the universities... You want the students to believe that the teachers 'did everything for them'. The course evaluations... If students are happier or just as happy if teachers show them youtube videos or walk them through their textbook then minimum wage lecturer showing youtube videos it is. If students evaluations don't reveal they can tell the difference between people who actually know / are passionate about their subject and people who are basically employed to babysit them and have them believe that everything was done for them then why the hell wouldn't you take up the opportunity to really work that latter line?
People didn't think that it was fair that some people got x and they didn't. So... If you can make money off them thinking they now have x (even though they don't) then... Well... That's good business sense.
I really don't think I'm going to get to do med. It is not for me. I can't cope with the people who have been employed to waste our time to persuade us that they are doing everything they can to help us (screw us over). The whole equity thing is basically about appointing a PR person to go hui (talk / meet with and talk) with people all day... So they feel that everything is being done for them... I'm not really capable of that. And I haven't had the parental investment to have a protective herd of people who are looked out for by powerful / litigious parents. This is why some of the people have this... Fear in their eyes... When it comes to some students. And why they laugh in my face 'what makes YOU think YOU can do this' or adopt the alternative strategy of 'of course dear, we are doing EVERYTHING we can to help YOU'.
The fear of strangers / foreigners thing is about fear of whether people will slot into playing the appropriate game and be happy with the financial / perceived status incentives they get for playing the appropriate game. Like my aussie friend... She had the skills (and experience) of being senior in a hospitality role -- but what they really needed to know about her in order to employ her at all was whether she would slot into playing the phone the people on the job list to get free unpaid workers strategy... Because without that... Even if she was the very best waitress in the world... The very best at organising other people to do their jobs 'most efficiently' (in what sense?)... Without her willingness / ability to do their job as they set it to her either in stupid ignorance of what was going on or her agreeing to play the game in full knowledge... Without her willingness to do that... She was precisely worthless to them. Inefficient, indeed.
And that... Is the way things are done here.
And probably... Everywhere.
What will become of me?
Posted by alexandra_k on June 30, 2015, at 22:42:16
In reply to Re: 1 down, 3 to go, posted by alexandra_k on June 30, 2015, at 22:30:12
Oh, my school was a mid-range school, apparently. There is a DECILE rating of schools... Socio-economic based... Comes up middle range. Not most deprived, at all. So the stats... Would be conservative (leaving out private schools) but probably about right. About half my teachers would have had criminal convictions. And given how many taps on the wrist / no convictions there are...
There would likely be even more taps on the wrist / no convictions issued to private school teachers. Perhaps. I'm not entirely clear on whether our courts are more dismissive of people because of damage to their reputation / social standing or whether our courts are more dismissive of people because of 'equity concerns'. So very hard to say...
You can... Basically do what you like. So long as you have a herd. That's the thing... The herd...
What is wrong with me?
Where are my people?
I think the problem came with the whole quit smoking thing... After my 6 month review when I got ripped into... When no constructive criticism was given. I needed someone to take me aside and explain to me that I needed to work on areas that my supervisers group was interested in / and / or apply the work being done by him and his group to a different area that they might not be initially interested in. It seems obvious to me now that I know. But it wasn't obvious to me before. I couldn't see it. Nobody explained it. Why didn't anybody explain it? Perhaps they saw an opportunity to get ahead in a competitive field... I expect that is it.
What will become of me?
Posted by alexandra_k on June 30, 2015, at 22:53:27
In reply to Re: 1 down, 3 to go, posted by alexandra_k on June 30, 2015, at 22:42:16
The reason why 'equity' is starting to upset me is because people are all about 'its not fair! i got screwed over and its not fair!' but if they were in the position to screw over other people... they would do what was done to them in a flash. So their crying about how it isn't fair... I feel almost completely unsympathetic about it when I think that they would do the same thing (take up that same 'opportunity') if things were reversed.
I wouldn't. And I trusted that somehow... That would matter to the 'right' people (the people who matter to me). That there would be people like me in the sense that they would have an internal moral compass... That they might not take up these 'opportunities' to f*ck over other people for the reason that... They don't feel that f*ck*ng over other people is the right thing to do.
I know a lot of people who 'take up opportunities' think that the above way of thinking is seriously misguided etc etc etc. At the end of the day, how bad do you want out? Enough to play the game?
I... Can't play the game. I think that part of me is broken. I'm not able to successfully mask my emotional state. I'm not able to convince anybody that I'm happy to see them when I'm not or that I'm totally going out of my way to do everything for them when that's simply not true.
There are people like me, yeah? Where are they? I suspect they are the ones who left here... I feel so very sad.
This year is a horrible year. I found out I didn't do any better in the biology final than I did in the first test. Which surprises me a lot... Apparently they are objectively graded and not scaled. I know I missed a bunch of content in the first test because I studied to the content not to the test. I got a lot of multi-guess wrong... Then in my prep for the exam in taking time to work through past years questions I found that my initial judgements were out because I wasn't getting some of the appropriate contrast classes / the style of the questions... So... I expected my performance to come up significantly. But it didn't... Which surprises me a great deal.
I have been targeted negatively... In asking for special accommodations it is like they have researched what is known about autistic spectrum from 20 years ago and they purposefully tried to introduce aspects of that into the learning environment to... Try and trigger me. One can only suppose that that is the intention. I suspect it is about trying to teach me a lesson that it is not appropriate to ask for help. It is coming back to me... About how we say that it is their fault for not asking for help. How can we help if they don't ask? But if they ask for help then we have to be very quick to punish / stomp on that because why would we spend resources to help them? Getting ahead... For anybody to voluntarily offer information on their weakness / need for help... There's an opportunity for the person with the knowledge of that to get ahead... For sure.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 3, 2015, at 19:55:59
In reply to Re: 1 down, 3 to go, posted by alexandra_k on June 30, 2015, at 22:53:27
I went to visit my Mother the other day. It wasn't so bad. Except that the house was so cold that it physically hurt. We are taught to pretend that it isn't cold. Yeah. So very much cheaper that way. Anyway, I brought back some stuff that I had stored there.
I read my old file notes. Not all of them. The first couple weeks of my first admission are missing. There are other chunks, too, but most of them are there. It was weird reading them. I remember there were points at which I did read them along the way. At the time I remember feeling all indignant about this and that. That they had interpreted things in this or that way or that they had written things that weren't true. But I didn't feel that way about any of it. I guess the memories have faded. Into the second year... It was like I was reading file reports for someone else.
I have my school reports, too. Most of my High School ones are missing, but I have the ones from Primary school. And I have my Plunket book (pre-school).
I see why I was diagnosed with BPD. Looking pretty borderline, even to me. There was definate staff splitting going on there, too, with respect to clinicians who had empathy for me and clinicians who saw me as being manipulative / working the system and who wanted me to be terminated because contact with the service only made me worse.
Now... I see their point. The point of the 'evil bastards', heh. I wasn't intentionally being manipulative, but... Well... Linehan did a pretty good job, indeed. I really did do the best I could to cope and I really didn't know any better.
Reading my psychology notes... My first psychologist really went in to bat for me. Amazingly so. But she was... Kinda OCD in her CBTness. She couldn't sit with me in silence and... Just listen. To anything. She had to get to work in reframing it or whatever. She meant well, really, she did, but I couldn't handle anything. I'd forgotten just how fragile and helpless and... Passive and dependent I was back then. I felt safest (happiest in some peverse way) when I was sectioned in seclusion. I figured strategies for staying in hospital like kicking at the doors or attempting (in a way that I knew would likely fail, yes) in order to get sectioned again instead of discharged...
And 'the voices are screaming at me' was a language clinicians seemed to understand (admit and observe) but 'i feel horrible' wasn't... And then I got all confused in myself about whether I was telling the truth about hearing voices or whether I was making up stories. Whether I was a lying manipulative person or what... And I felt like a horrible bad person, yes. And I didn't know whether I was making up stories or not. Whether I heard voices or not. I just knew that I was hurting so bad and I really and truly didn't know what the hell else to do in order to have any hope in gettin gthe only thing that seemed to help me. A seclusion cell. I guess. And the limitied inter-personal contact of a single person (1:1 staff time) of a walk around the yard and a cigarette...
A calming environment.
Anyway...
I wonder if I would have liked a straight jacket. I bet I would...
I guess the point is that I feel at peace with it, now. Some of the clinicians were helpful, some not so much. Some of them were helpful in their intent, some of them not so much. I did do best in DBT. Mostly because of the security of the 1 year contract and the structured session content (so I didn't have to provide that) and the education stuff on emotions was helpful because I thought you were supposed to label them by introspection and I couldnt' really do that before all I had was 'alright' or 'not so alright' or 'f*ck*ng horrid'.
I really have come a long way.
The funniest thing... Plunket was fine. No delay in any milestones or problems with any motor skills. Reading words and saying alphabet around 3... Handwriting was remarked on as messy... Lots of careless errors and too much haste more generally. I did quite well in math - but I distinctly remember cheating on my times tables test so they would quit harrassing me when I was about 7 so maybe I learned to cheat? I don't know...
Then about lack of organisation... Messy...
I have this thing where I find it hard to get started / hard to get motivated to get started. Then once I'm started it is equally hard for me to find whatever it is so I can stop. I started going on walks because keyworkers initially made me... Then I really got into it... I didn't want to cook so they made me make spaghetti... Then I wanted to make a chocolate cake... One of them almost got me playing badminton (but I didn't want to - of course)... More vigorous exercise would have helped me, for sure.
Anyway... I really am able to feel objective about myself... Which is good. And... I don't feel burning hatred or whatever for doctors x and y and z anymore. Doctor x... Was right. Only... HIs solution was to... Leave me to die. I guess. Abandon me. Take away the only place I knew of to go to for help. I guess... Without that place (the hospital) I may have made better progress on making the other ones work out better for me. University. In particular. But I do need support when times get stressful... Typically... The holidays. Those are hard times for me. After the first week... All the unstructured time then... That's when I disintegrate. Because I don't have anything to hold it together for. Yeah.
My Biology grade got changed from a B to a B+. I requested all my exam scripts (which I always do) and then it got changed from a B to a B+. Odd. If the board of examinors altered it... If it were somehow disability adjusted that would have happened before I was given notification of my final grade... I... Don't trust things here. This country... Very corrupt... I don't think I'm being especially delusional or paranoid or whatever. Anyway... I suppose a B+ is acceptable in the sense of being a neutral contributor to my required average. Looking back through test 1... Quite a few things... I trust they graded it properly but some of those things... Are they really wrong? I guess without a herd I'm easy pickings...
FFS.
Isn't the world a wonderful place?
Posted by alexandra_k on July 3, 2015, at 20:03:58
In reply to Moving, posted by alexandra_k on July 3, 2015, at 19:55:59
Oh, and of course once I get my exam I'll be able to do the calculations myself and see what message they are giving me as to whether I 'really' earned a B or a B+. Wait and see... Even though I probably can't view my multi-guess answers against model answers... I can see how the numbers add up at the very least.
I'm getting the screw removed from my right ankle. When I talked to the surgeon about getting the metal out I was feeling very bold about it all. When the papers arrived from the hospital and I needed to sign consent forms for anasthetic and realised I was having an overnight stay (good way of doing it, actually, arrive early afternoon, have operations into the evening, admit and discharge after breakfast the next day). Anyway... I didn't feel quite so bold, anymore. Had a vivid dream about it, too. The whole thing. Odd...
I guess that's me all over... I wrote about DID because I thought that was me... And I needed to understand. I wrote about delusions because that was a possibility too... Then the way things went... Which of course led me right into the consumer movement where Autistic Spectrum is basically the best home for that right now... And of course going through the court system a little bit last year when I was studying that... And so of course I'm going to have an operation sometime this year. Ha. At least I haven't had an accident, or something. Hrm... Anyway... Things are meant to be. Or be+. Or something...
Posted by alexandra_k on July 4, 2015, at 2:18:24
In reply to Re: Moving, posted by alexandra_k on July 3, 2015, at 20:03:58
I am really really happy about how it felt to read my file. It didn't feel retraumatising at all. I felt more empathy for my clinicians than for the old me. I mean, I did feel empathy for the old me. I think I have learned a lot... I think there are lots of things I could do from my position now to help the young me. In reading through... I was like... Oh, yeah. I can't do the emotion labelling thing (which is frustrating the hell out of that therapist) because I think you are supposed to cast your attention inwards and squint at it right and then an emotion word is supposed to sort of pop out of you.. Only... I tried and I tried but one wouldn't. And I didn't know how to get it to work... 'I don't know'... And 'I don't know' just drove her nuts. But I can read that now and sort of laugh at it. And have empathy for both, I guess.
And for doctor x who I really did think was the devil. He was the first to come out with the borderline label. He thought I was was just working the system to get in when I wanted and to get out when my attention was captured by fun things over there... And reading now... And even thinking back now... He was right. That was what I was doing. I wasn't trying to be a bad person or anything... But that kind of was what was going on. And talking about voices... Was because that seemed to get people feeling empathetic for me... It got people responding to me more in the way I needed them to... It felt like I'd found the 'magic words'. I didn't know what else to do. I started out with the truth (as best I could) and it didn't seem to work anymore...
But he was right. What the mental health system was... Didn't really have room for me. Didn't have the resources (and at times the knowledge of what was needed) to help me. I wasn't psychotic as often as I was in hospital. Most of my admissions... I probably shouldn't have been there. Others... Weren't so wedded to the letter of what the system was supposed to be... They felt more empathetically about (for example) offering temporary respite while accommodation came through. In some sense they didn't do the right thing in doing that stuff for me, though. I see that now. His perspective.
Which is good... Because some of these people might still be there. Probably not... But possibly yes. And some of the nurses... More likely to still be there. And I think... That is okay. I think... I'm finally at peace about it all.
Thank you autistic spectrum. That... Works.
Developmental. Yeah. There always was something about me... I knew it. Yeah.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 9, 2015, at 19:04:12
In reply to Re: Moving, posted by alexandra_k on July 4, 2015, at 2:18:24
Well, the Maaoris did indeed decide to completely f*ck me over / fail me.
I need to remember that most of the Maaori I know are really rather skeptical indeed about the ones that come up here. All about equity this and equity that gimmie gimmie gimmie and when they are given (in the name of equity) they then proceed to think that it is their right to f*ck their own people over just about as badly as their people were f*ck*d over by the white people however many years ago.
That seems to be what they mean by equity.
A bunch of money was given in the name of Maaori health. Where did the money go? It flew people about the country so they could have meetings all day... Where the meetings about them feeling like they have some genuine standing on some hierarchy. Then they can return to their houses in the richer parts of Auckland. Maybe throw a bit of money at this grandson over here and this niece over there. You know, the socially gregarious bully ones that their hearts have taken a special liking to... Because social gregariousness is what we value most. Big warrior eyes and who cares whether there's anybody home on the inside. Fearlessness is most prized most especially when the psychopathic heart is behind it... Tragedy of the commons... They seem determined...
I didn't use to be racist... But it is developing, oh yes, indeed, it is. Here... With the Maaori who aren't Maaori at all... Just have their hands out waiting for their opportunity to f*ck their people over.
I get f*ck*d over because I won't pay what they believe to be sufficient homage to them. Because I take exception to barely literate people being employed to teach us literacy in the name of equity.
It isn't doing them any favors, either. It is only resulting in more people coming through with racist tendencies. They have to MAKE the medical students attend the Maaori days (threaten to fail them their degrees if they don't attend). They can pull ranks like that for them through medical school - but what is going to happen when they get to be doctors out the other end? You can't make them give adequate medical treatment. Wonder why your people don't get more time / attention from doctors? Maybe if you bullied them less through medical school they might develop a more genuine sense of empathy. If you want to make sure your people are avoided... You couldn't be doing a better job of it than what you are.
But I'm the bad guy for pointing this sh*t out. They actually don't care. Not the ones I'm talking to. THey get their sense of power and control. Over their own people. Over medicine...
MMmm hmm.
I'm remembering now that they did use to say that NZ didn't have any noxious pests.. No snakes. No poisonious spiders. But we had truly noxious natives. Nowdays we call it 'mischeviousness' and 'curiosity' and even things like 'friendliness'. The idea of.... Instead of being in meetings all day... One might decide to build a fence / make a farm. THey will see that... Your being busiliy occupied with something that is not them. They will not stand for it. They'll rip down the fences when your not looking. They'll ruin everything you do. Toddler rage taht you are occupied with something not them.
It isn't because it is on their land, or whatever. It is because they saw you. They saw that you would rather spend time on something not them and they saw fit to ruin it out of toddler rage. That is the Maaori way. And that is what happened. And it led to the land wars and so on...
And now they cry with their hands out for the profits of the land... When they have land... And dont' seem able to organise into doing anything profitable with it... Not least because if any of them tries the others will rise up 'you think you're better than us!' and see fit to destroy it.
The 'tall poppy' thing. It's a comment on Maaori culture. Insofar as it is a comment on NZ society more generally it's a comment on how this aspect of Maaori culture has pervaded it.
This country really is mostly run by bullies. Those with power... F*ck knows how they got it...
There was this thing with the university... Hiring certain people short term... Mostly to look after the early years kids that nobody else much wanted to look after (since they shouldn't really be at uni in the first place since they seem more interested in delighting in their ignorance, bullying others for wanting to study / work, interfering with the efforts of others to work). Then soemthing happened and somehow they managed to turn those temporary posts into permanent positions. Because they had been temporary recurring for so long... Something something about employee rights. So now there are a bunch of people employed in academic posts who think that their job is to cater to the bully children. To show them youtube videos and to give them library workshops on how they can't quote their friends off facebook in academic essays.
And these people... Take extra special delight in failing me... Because they can. Because they can. I see why people are horrified at the thoguht of starting over. Because you put yourself at the mercy of seriously incompetent bully people. Who take delight in saying that you are illiterate etc etc etc. Because pulling other people down is how they get to take special delight at somehow being further ahead on the hierarchy...
I'm f*ck*d off that they are going to make me do another degree to get away from them (they don't give the bully people control over higher level courses).
I hate this stupid f*ck*ng country.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 9, 2015, at 19:22:40
In reply to Re: Moving, posted by alexandra_k on July 9, 2015, at 19:04:12
So... My Biology B that was changed to a B+. I guess what it shows me is that once a supposedly 'final' grade is posted, it isn't as 'final' as it may seem.
I did the math... And if my math is correct... I got no more than about 90% in the biology exam. Somewhere between 86 and 90, I think. For my grade to have come up from the internal component to that... I did work very hard for the biology exam... So... If my math is correct on that... It gives me hope for Medsci. What let me down was the lab. Because the (not Maaori) laboratory demonstrators took exception that I wasn't paying sufficient homage to them in sucking up for them to give me the answers... And so they decided to seriously mislead me for one of the labs... After not helping me see that they were able to help me rather more than I thought they could for the one previous (I left because I didn't think I could do any of it so there wasn't any point staying).
I only got around 60% on Chem, which is dissapointing, indeed. I expected to do significantly better on the final.
Population health... 60% for the one that failed me on the internal assessment, and a fail from the other one, the one that decided not to fail me on the internal. So I just scrape a pass for one and fail the other. Because social science is clearly not my thing. Mmm yeah.
They have this odd 'truth by consensus' thing going on. Something something about hierarchy and so on. Guess even they know that it wouldn't do for them to piss off the parents of the rich kids. Make sure they correlate the 'right answers' with what kids from certain schools have to say.
I'm sure the UMAT is every bit as bad. When they ask you for your high school so they can figure out teh decile rating for 'equity adjustment' that's just a nice way of them saying so they can make sure the higher decile school kids are favored. I mean... Why else would you send your kids to a private school?
I really do hate this country. There is no such thing as professionalism. Even in the private health system... I don't think you pay more to get professionalism. You pay more to get cable TV and nicer carpet and more varieties of yoghurt. Most people are incapable of getting at... The things that really matter. Mostly because... Their desires are dictated to by advertising / subliminal messages that they don't even know they are slaves to.
This country makes me sick.
I don't entirely know what to do...
I would like to sue them for incompetence, but I'm not sure this is an option for me. ACC... The government took away our right to sue employers (and doctors) for negligence. They took away that right and in return they offered us insurance for problems resulting from accident (arising from negligence or whatever). It was a way of protecting us from people visiting the country (touring) and then suing because our roads are substandard or our tourist activities are too dangerous (conservation platforms sometimes give way etc). So our country wouldn't go broke by being sued from some lawyered up American, I think. We'd offer them free healthcare for their injury (and no, they can't sue for incompetent that, either) and that's all they'd get out of us.
Education... I'm not sure. I think we have a student law clinic here... I wonder if someone might find it an interesting case. We don't do blind grading here. They leave themselves open to it. I've told them... Repeatedly... But they choose to ensure they can do their nepotistic thing. So, well, someone has to actually make them stop, hey. We don't have many laws in this country. What laws we have we don't bother to enforce, hardly.
What happened.... What happened to how things used to be... However many years ago... What happened to all the kids books that I used to read teaching values like honesty and integrity and kindness and compassion. Hard work. All of this is so very far removed from here where we revel and delight and bully those who don't revel and delight in stupidity and ignorance and bullying. There are so many swipe card only access areas all about the place... And all the communal areas are full of cooing and yelping and crying natives. Tragedy of the commons, indeed.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 10, 2015, at 3:36:03
In reply to Re: Moving, posted by alexandra_k on July 9, 2015, at 19:22:40
I do feel... Tender about it all. Not traumatised. But tender, yeah.
I feel that way now. Very much so. That at least one aspect of this university has decided to f*ck me over. Because they can. Because they think they know better than me what is good for me (them). That other people are going to let them.
I hate this country. Really rather a lot.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do. But I will in fact see about suing the university. The people who can't even keep documents (whose funding just keeps on being cut because they can't even keep documents) get to teach literacy. Oh, the irony.
Perhaps it is because it has to come from a 'they discriminated against me because I have a disability' place otherwise it will strike people as racist.
Again. I hate this country.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 11, 2015, at 16:30:31
In reply to Re: Moving, posted by alexandra_k on July 10, 2015, at 3:36:03
I think I might see about overseas, again. Chase up the person I worked well with... See if there is any way that I can work with him again. Start over on my PhD. Even Australia... Not necessarily where I was before. Hunt out someone who feels able to meet with me regularly and help me form concrete manageable goals for the week / fortnight so that I progress my way through my thesis. Get a good thesis done. See about using it as a platform for a solid career.
I'm also going to see about suing the University, here. I'm not sure why it hasn't been done before. Seems to be the only thing that will stop education truly going down the f*ck*ng toilet.
I think the deal with the health system is basically that... We don't have one. Not the way I'm thinking of. It isn't about clinical competence and so on. It really is mostly about those other things. Insofar as there is an aspect about clinical competence and so on it isn't something they will let me do. They have kids cuing up to do it. Kids with rich benefactors cuing up to do it. Kids who have had considerable investment in them over the years cuing up to do it. It simply isn't going to go to someone like me... And it is also going to go to a young person with many years of working life ahead of them. Someone who can spend their prime years working extended shifts at the hospital (rather than partying) and we all know your capacity to do that and still put on a pretty non-puffy fresh face for the customer service smile is... Something that winds down.
Most of it is smoke and mirrors... Making people believe they have a health system. Bait and switch for things like cable TV and soft carpet.
The idea that I might be able to make informed decisions about what is best for me... That I would somehow more likely to be able to get what is best for me... That isn't something that I will ever get to have. Of course people kid themselves that you can pay for it. That that is the point of money and that you can buy it with money. The thing is that you can't, really. You have to trust that you are paying for the things that are important, that other people are informing you properly and so on.
I remember seeing personal trainers at the gym... Some of them purposely keeping their clients depending on them (teaching them exercises that involved the trainer so as to make them dependent). Some of them laughing / scoffing about their client behind their back (somehow getting more kudos out of a certain set because of this). I saw that... And realised that the only way I was going to be sure to get good exercise was to learn about it myself and then I'd know enough to be able to assess whether someone was helpful to me or was having me on...
This country really is a sh*t hole. Here's an example of a *brilliant* idea. What we need... Is paramedics to have more power. LIke they do in the US. More power to triage and to send people to their GP rather than to the ER in particular. To, you know, free up the ER. Save money by ordering less tests. Save money by performing less scans. Make the call 'granny fell over again - but she's probably okay. My guess-ums is no internal bleeding or anything so we'll just say she's fine and save money - yeah?' In this wonderful wonderful wonderful country of ours with socially gregarious natives who are trained in 'me oh me oh me oh me oh can I please make big and important decisions to have esteem from all the people' and ACC (not allowed to sue for incompetence / negligence / error)... I can just see the money rolling in from the 'training program' (accredited and university legitimated, of course' that teaches the 16 year old high school drop outs 'take them to GP not to ER okay?????)'
Beam me up scotty...
Posted by alexandra_k on July 13, 2015, at 16:50:30
In reply to Re: Moving along, posted by alexandra_k on July 11, 2015, at 16:30:31
So, the screw came out. Or, more precisely, half the screw came out. So now there is half a screw with a fairly jagged edge in the vicinity of a mobile joint that the screw failed to fuse. I suppose it could have been wishful thinking... But I thought that I had more movement around the joint. That I couldn't feel the screw transfering the force in weird ways up my knee. If that is so... Then I suppose that is a very bad thing, indeed, since it will involve the jagged edge of the screw jabbing about inside my bone. So...
So...
Worst possible outcome? I suppose I could get an infection...
If you don't do dressing changes then I suppose you limit the risk of exposure. Send them out... If they get an infection they get an infection away from the hospital. Apparently there is a waterproof dressing on it... But when I went to take off the obviously non waterproof outer bandage I got down to blood soaked inner padding so... I guess I just leave it all for two days... Then... Soak it off? Get stitches removed in two weeks.
I'm not entirely sure what to say.
I can't tell if I'm being tested... If I have an actual opportunity to pass this test... Or if I'm being 'taught a series of lessons' about how I can only fail. Getting a D+ for Population Health... There is no way I can get a place if that grade sticks. So... I have to challenge it, of course.
The problem is that they feel that I don't respect them. They are showing me how they feel. They feel like I am giving them a D. The thing is... If they'd have given me a B or even a high C then I would have taken it like the slap on the wrist that it was... But to give me a clear fail and make all these comments about how I'm not answering the question and so on... All semester they have been 'come and talk to us come and talk to us come and talk to us come and talk to us' and when I say 'I'm not so good at the come and talk to us thing so no, thanks' they will not accept that.
I am good with those who feel disenfranchised from within. There are plenty of Maaori killing themselves because they feel bullied and unwanted by their people. i'm good with those people. At placating their leaders... Not so much, no. Why should I be?
I'll be alright, I suppose. The surgeon likely did his best... I feel... Really sad that we weren't able to communicate better. I don't know... If there was anything I could have said maybe about taking a bit more time or something... If that would have helped. I didn't know how to help myself... I didn't know how to convey what was most important to me, because I didn't know what the risks were. In the battle between screw and bone I'm glad bone won... But if it was a battle between less time under anasthetic / harder recovery and more liklihood of successful removal I'd have gone with the later... Instead... I said about how I'd rather a local and not a general if possible... But I understood that maybe a general since it had been in there for years and he'd probably have to give it a good yank. I guess... I'm feeling like I wish I hadn't have said that. Maybe it was giving him permission to do that? I don't know... I just feel sad for my foot :-( I think I made things worse :-(
Posted by alexandra_k on July 13, 2015, at 19:46:45
In reply to Re: Moving along, posted by alexandra_k on July 13, 2015, at 16:50:30
Okay, so, after a nap and so on, I feel quite a lot better.
I think I have more dorsiflexion since the head of the screw was jamming / preventing that before, and it isn't now. So I have more movement. Which is what I mostly wanted and so that is good.
Seems that they often break. If they are loose / aren't successful in bone fusion. They wiggle about and so on and break. So... Given the extra special efforts that I made over the years to regain as much mobility as I could... And given that it really did feel like I was hitting up on the limits of the screw repeatedly in attempting to gain more mobility... It really is possible that it was pretty close to breaking all by itself, anyways. So... Yeah.
He said something about getting the rest of it being a bit more major excavation... So I guess we will see whether the remainder is an irritant, or not. And I guess it could come out at a later date. Anyway... Yeah... I suspect it bled rather a lot due to my insistance on catching the bus (walking around quite a lot as well), too. I suppose there could be a waterproof dressing under... Anyway... Whatever... I had started to forget how lack of sleep / food can play with your thinking, yeah.
I'm seeing a student advocate person today. If my population health grade isn't changed into some kind of a pass then I really don't have any hope at all of doing med next year. Even if it is changed it looks a bit unlikely... But it really does look impossible without that. So... I most need for there to be a way out where everyone can save face (especially since I need to do the sequel next semester). I don't know that there is one.
I have a lot of empathy for the (significant number of) people in the world who are... declassed. the underclass. yeah. And a significant number of them are Maaori. There are people who kill themselves and so on because they feel devalued and disenfranchised by their own people. I have empathy for them... I have a hell of a lot less empathy for the leader people who seem to be looking out more for themselves than the people they are supposed to be looking after...
I do have a hard time sucking up to authority just because it is authority. Even when it is in my interests. I think there is something selling the soul about it...
It is crazy... Because we are on the same side, I think. Unless their side really is to divert funds into their own mansion in the richer parts of the city in which case I have no empathy for them at all...
Anyway... Otherwise... I do have a lawyer who I've been reccommended. And if we can make a good case for damages they might be willing to represent me. So... That way seems... Most likely to screw everyone over, though. But then depends how resolved they are... If they really have decided to screw me over I have nothing to lose and they should be stopped.
Anyway... Just more pressure tap tap tapping away on my need to manage my time. Study for UMAT, sort this out, start preparing for next week (courses start)...
If I'm being tested because I have a hope in coming out the other side... Then I'm okay. Just knowing that... I'm okay. But if I really don't have a chance... I'd rather quit now. I think that is the hardest thing about this year. Every year subsequent you know they have invested in you and they want you to succeed. This year... I feel like there are people who want me to fail. Maybe that will always be true. I... Do feel like I have had people on my side this year... Yeah. The compression gear. That was a significant investment and one that a lot of people don't get. My accommodation. Again. The learning people have been good to me. I have a good GP. And so on...
And I do have a tendency to get bored in the holidays... And whatever whatever is going on... I don't feel bored. That's for sure. No more playing of the sims. Yeah...
I wish you could check in slightly more often, Dr Bob. I still need you. Or probably, the idea of you. I guess it is okay that you aren't around... The place still is... I would feel a significant loss if I couldn't post here anymore. Whatever will become of me. I somehow feel like I have more people on my side from posting my stuff here. Maybe it helps people understand me.. Probably it helps me understand myself. I do feel lonely sometimes.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 17, 2015, at 19:05:20
In reply to Re: Moving along, posted by alexandra_k on July 13, 2015, at 19:46:45
I decided to bail on this year. Mostly because I do need to feel like I am part of a group of people like me, somehow. Given that I am most interested in anatomy / surgery, I really need to excel in that, and I didn't manage to do that in Biosci this semester.
I decided to do the medsci paper (more like medschool than any other paper) and the law paper (ditto Law) and really do my best to get A range grades. If I can't do that, the field is telling me something. If I can do that then my people won't give a f*ck about how well I did or did not do in Population health. Or in Bio. I can treat the umat as practice for this year (no pressure).
The coursebook for Medsci is Wonderful. Simple, clear, beautiful. A lot of t g e things I've been struggling with... Non issues. The way they used to be. Maybe I will learn to suck it up and play the PC game. If I want it enough... I see why it is hard to come in later. Young people, in many respects, dont know better yet. Used to manipulating adults to get their way.
Anyway... Medsci rather than bio. Finally. Yay.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 20, 2015, at 0:37:08
In reply to Re: another degree, posted by alexandra_k on July 17, 2015, at 19:05:20
If you walk at your ordinary walking pace all is good...
If you need to walk with someone whose walking pace is faster than you, then things can get painful (my mother).
If you need to walk with someone whose walking pace is slower than you, then things can get equally painful.
It can be easier to stop. Then wait for the person to get sufficiently far ahead... Then to start walking again. That can be less painful.
And that was math. Until... Maths got too far ahead. Oops.
And then there was science. And we did biology. And I suspected that biology was a slow-walker for physics. And physics was the epitome of science (one could study biology a little bit earlier than chem / physics and I guess I had reductionist ideology all the way back then)...
So I didn't try particularly at biology. Thought I'd let it get sufficiently far ahead for it to be fun. But then physics... Turned out to be math. Ooops.
Oooooooops.
Oh wells.
Posted by alexandra_k on July 31, 2015, at 19:22:00
In reply to Re: I have figured it out., posted by alexandra_k on July 20, 2015, at 0:37:08
so i got a months free subscription to the paper. which is kinda cool, actually. anyway... there was this article on how some kinds are learning maths kinesthetically... on their fingers... and a photograph of a teacher holding up her hands... counting off from the thumbs (so you end up with the dead-end meeting in the middle once you get to 10 and no concept of a number line).
sigh.
I do need to work on my basic maths concepts. no help around here... too many people failed to acquire them.
just simple maths...
i sat the UMAT. i ended up not studying for it majorly... realising that it was a practice run. anyway... it is a nice test, yeah. well written. sometimes the answers surprise me... sometimes i need to think very hard to follow their reasoning... but i did work through some of their practice stuff and i certainly went 'oh, one of those, i see' quite a lot. so i think that it does indeed intend to teach you some skills and then test whether you learned them (from them or from school or whatever). anyway... i need to do simple 'liklihood'. and there is some stuff, too, on being able to write (simple) equations. just a very basic understanding of concepts. i see... i think i can do it... but need to put some work in, yeah. the work in did on maths before wasn't wasted.. i just need more practice.
i keep to-ing and fro-ing about things here. somtiems i think they are just profiteering from me, somehow. thinking that they can keep me here on around minimium wage or whatever forever... i mean... sometimes i think i am happy here getting this opportunity to learn stuff. but then other times i rail about how it isn't an opportunity at all it is just babysittting and then rewarding the people who were educated before they came in... i don't know... i am fairly undecided, i guess.
i feel like what is hard is that i can't trust / rely on honesty. because people don't speak honestly anymore. perhaps that is just health. all over. people don't communicate informational contents. most of the informational contents they do communicate seem designed to be (intentioanlly) misleading... people are very selfish... their own interests... the more you learn about how superficial etc most people are the more you feel justified in looking out from your own / treating others differently from how you would want to be treated. most people... like the attention from an operation - right? that is the point. nice food... whatever... stuff like that. service quality... bait and switch...
i remember being surprised that this guy i know... smart guy... was a doc for a while then switched out... he had this sort of thing (obsession? Hobby interest? curiosity about? fascination with?) psychopaths. the idea that someone might be very prosocial to the world but have very disturbing tendancies behind closed doors... i was surprised about this because i didn't think the idea was psychologically plausible. i was quite attracted by some of the moral theory stuff on how you act in a certain way because then you make it more psychologically likely that you will act in certain ways... fostering certain traits... i didn't think it was possible to partitioni like that (maybe that is kind of ironic, or something, but my best efforts to dissociate were surely leaky...)
anyway... i think hidden curriculum... trains people to be like that. to put on a facade... that getting better at the facade... is like standing on a bump on the rug. and then the weird thing bumps out the other way. the anti-social tendancy. what might have been a disagreement... soothed away with some acknowledgement and processing... festers and swells... and some sicko thing gets fostered indeed.
and perhaps... that is the... what do you call it... not a costly signal... a committment signal. to the group. your fate is tied to the fate of the group. like the neurosurgeon who (eventually) got called out for his drug and prostitution parties... eventually... for a long while... that was probably the thing to keep him in line... what sort of a committment signal do they need for sometone to work in social policy.
shudder.
i'm scared. this is why girls aren't supposed to work, and stuff, huh.
hmm...
i don't know what to do... try not to let it distract me from studying, i suppose. even if they are just going to take my money and redistribute it to the stupid kids of the wealthy parents... i mean... what ya gonna do?
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