Reddish Musings

So many decisions to make, and so very little time to make them in.  I have 2 semesters left in my undergraduate career.  Two semesters in which I need to make straight A's to bring up my dragging GPA.  I like to joke that falling in love messed up my GPA, but I think I can honestly say that I would not have gone to class the first two years of college even if I had not met my then-boyfriend now-husband.  The first two years were Grade 13, and they were entirely pointless to the furtherance of my education.

That said, my GPA is floating around a 3.45, and I'd really like to see it bumped to at least a 3.5 before I start my applications.  This is where making a name for myself really comes into play.  I need to study hard for the GRE (I just registered for it!) to show that I am more capable than my GPA would have the reviewers believe.  I need to make nice with my professors so that they know my name and will be inclined to write me a few letters of recommendation.  And because I'm tired of being the quiet girl who makes A's on the tests but never wants to say anything out loud.

But there are bigger battles than the GRE and my current grades.  I have to decide Big Things, like where I want to live and what I want to do.

Sure, I've gotten by saying "I'm going to be a clinical psychologist!" for a while now, but I haven't been able to answer the question, "But who do you want to counsel?" Because it's hard!  I've grown up as an overweight, middle class white girl who got a full ride scholarship to an okay school.  I know I deal with anxiety and depression, and my sister has autism, but overall I haven't been exposed to a great deal of psychological variety in my life.

Part of picking a graduate school that is crucial is finding a school with faculty that have similar interests to yourself.  Well, what are my interests?

I talked a lot about studying autism as I was growing up, but I think I've come to realize that I am too close to the issue.  I don't know if 17 years of dealing with an autistic family member would help me  or hurt me when it came to helping families deal with these issues.

I probably would not deal well with autistic children on their own.  I could probably assist in helping families deal with autism, in helping them understand that it's not their fault, and they should not feel guilty for being overwhelmed by the disorder sometimes.  That would be nice.  But can I make a corner market on that?  Or should I focus on something more vague?

My current drive is helping people feel okay with themselves as they are.  That sounds fruity and vague, but I think I can boil it down into more scientific terms.  I'm probably the biggest fan of cognitive-behavioral therapy.  I believe what you think about yourself determines how you feel about yourself, and informs how you act.  I believe anxiety and depression are rooted in self-destructive thought patterns that are self-reinforcing.  I believe that some aspects of yourself are unchanging, and some aspects are completely within your realm of control.  AND I believe that adolescents in particular have an absolutely terrible time picking out what they DO have control over and what they do not.

I think I could do the most good reaching out to the "forgotten" class of adolescents.  There are degrees for child psychology, and adult psychology, but few seem to focus purely on that transitional period where multitudes of problems seem to either begin gestating, or fully blossom forth.  Eating disorders, self-injury, depression, anxiety, suicide, additions, sexual promiscuity, bullying, sexual questioning and shame at the answer, overly risky behaviors all over the place.

My heart goes out to gay or questioning kids who can't find a safe haven to accept themselves.  I cry for girls like me who can't figure out what to do with their bodies, so they let them lapse into obesity or work them to frailty and death.  Social injustice makes my head and heart hurt because I know it's more than just a societal problem.  It hurts every single person in the neglected, prejudiced, hated categories, and they are all PEOPLE who deserve the same rights and respect and chance at happiness that everyone gets.

So... maybe that is where I want to focus.  But how do you quantify that?  "At-risk youth" is probably a good term for it, I guess.  There are so many layers in each of these though.  There's depression, anxiety, poverty, personality, age, developmental psychology, etc.  And faculty at these schools tend to focus on narrow targets within these realms.

But if I'm honest about my passions, and I try to match with different topics the faculty study, I should be okay.  That's just where my Personal Statement (how do I write that? Argh.) comes into play the most, I guess.

So I'm working on it.

I'm deciding to work backwards.  Instead of finding schools in places I like, I'm looking over the list of schools that are APA certified, going through the faculty and the funding, and the programs and everything I can get my hands on, and seeing how the schools sound.  Then we'll look at locations.

Unfortunately, that means I may have to move away from my family.  Which is something I haven't even tried thinking about.  I used to strive to get out of Texas ASAP when I was a kid, but I never stopped and thought about the guilt and difficulty that would go into leaving the family behind for a while.

And thus, the future awaits, and I just have to figure out how the heck to get to it.

Speaking as someone who has shown the ability to type upwards of 130 words per minute, I am going to shock even myself with what I'm about to say:

Perhaps it's just the spirit of Finals Week that has be waxing philosophical about the room in my mind, but a thought occurred to me just now.  Here I sat, gazing idly at a review sheet for a comprehensive final in Abnormal Psychology, feeling the words hit my eyes and bounce away into nothingness.  No matter how hard I try to focus on a textbook, a review sheet, my notes, any written word that I want to absorb into my comprehension, I just can't seem to do it.

All right, so, I have something slightly embarrassing to admit:

I don't like taking showers.

I've never liked taking baths or showers.  Even as a kid, I remember it always being something of a struggle to convince me to get clean.  The problem is not that I enjoy being dirty.  No, the problem is now, and I suspect it was then, that showering has always seemed utterly pointless.

My first point: Showering is unproductive.  What can you really DO in the shower?  You can sing, I guess, but Oscar Wilde would argue that, since music is a form of art, that is useless.  You can brainstorm, MAYBE.  But unless you have some kind of magic writing device that functions in water-based environments, you won't really be able to retain many of your ideas.  I guess you could hold a debate, if you had someone willing to stand in the bathroom and argue with you while you lather up.  But overall, nothing really gets done.

Some people get a therapeutic use out of showering, but I just don't.  I can count on one hand the amount of times I've gotten home at the end of the day and looked forward to hopping in the bath, and enjoyed my time under the spray.  So, for some, I guess, there is a use, but it still feels entirely pointless.

"But Red," you might say, "isn't getting clean productive? Isn't shaving and shampooing and washing an end result?"

Maybe.  But it's not a very good result, because... and here's my second point:  Showering does not fix the problem it intends to fix. Sure, it might get you clean for a second.  But, living in Texas, I know firsthand that sometimes I start sweating and feeling gross again before I am even out of the shower at all. And maybe your cleanliness lasts for a few hours, but before you know it, you've gone outside.  You've produced sweat, your hair has gotten oily, your legs have gotten prickly, and the next day you're back where you started.  It's maddening to me.

I just can't really get behind it.  However, society demands that I not stink, and I understand that request, I just wish showering didn't feel like such a time sink.  It feels like a chore, not something I enjoy.  And the older you get, the more stuff you have to do while you're in there!  As a kid, it was basically: Soap up, wash off, get out.  Then it was: Soap up, shampoo up, rinse off, get out.

Now?  The ritual goes: Shampoo hair, rinse out, wash face with daily pore cleansing lather**, rinse off, condition  hair***, rinse out, soap up with scent-free dove soap because my skin is terribly allergic to everything, rinse off, shave armpits, shave legs, tend to lady bits, rinse everything off, dry off, apply lotion, apply powder...

And I'm sure with this list I am not even doing half of the things a Modern Lady is expected to do.  Because I don't care about all of that. All of this is JUST to maintain the absolute minimum amount of health and cleanliness I can bear.

** Face Wash Sidenote:  I used to have perfect skin.  I'd get a pimple every now and then when I put my face in my hands too much, but I never experienced this "acne" thing, and barely had a greasy face or head at all.  Then I got the Mirena IUD.  Sure, 5 years of not worrying about spawning SexFruit is great, but if I still had insurance I would contemplate getting it removed simply because of what it has done to my HEAD.

My hair gets greasy within hours of showering.  It used to be bouncy and full of wave, and now it's often flat at the top due to the oiliness that I can't seem to get rid of.  And my face.  Ugh, my face.  I feel like I need to wash it every hour on the hour.  I can feel it now. I can feel my face getting oily and it just won't stop and aa;sdfja;slkfj aaaaaugh.  There's gotta be something I can do. Maybe a hormone balancing act? I don't know, but it's driving me nuts.  Anyway.

*** Conditioning Sidenote: I HATE CONDITIONER.  When possible, I buy shampoo/conditioner combinations, because I detest the feeling of conditioner in my hair.  I was raised to wash the feeling of soapiness completely off of me, and conditioner never really leaves your hair.  That's the point of it.  I understand that logically, but some minor obsessive-compulsive aspect of me goes berserk when I can still feel it.


*deep breaths*


Anyway.  Showering.  It's my least favorite chore, one that I am making myself pay attention to and do daily, because that's what adults do.  It's always the last thing I want to do during a day, which is the real reason I normally take them at night.

It's just not fair that everything else in my life can get washed while I attend to other things (dishes, laundry, etc.), but I can't just hop in a cleansing suit and get on with my life while it goes through a cleaning cycle?

Come on, Science. Catch up!

I'm going to do something shocking.

I'm going to defend the Twilight series.

...okay, back from puking in my mouth a little.

All right, so, much like any other popular young adult fiction in this decade, the Twilight series are under attack from "concerned" parents.  These parents are so concerned with what their children are reading that they are challenging the books' rights to be in public libraries.

Now, part of me quails at the idea that this means Twilight and Harry Potter are somewhat related to each other.  In fact, according to this article, Harry Potter books aren't even in the top 10 of challenged books anymore, meaning Twilight is beating the HP series at something.  Even if that "something" is really "pissing off Christian parents who can't be bothered to actually investigate what their children read," that just isn't right.  Come on, pastors! Keep preaching the evils of black magic over the evils of lame vampires!

I kid.

Whenever I hear about books being challenged, banned, or burned, it makes me angry.  I don't care what is in the book, how much I like or dislike the material, the author, the characters, any of it.  The idea that someone out there can decide what is okay for me to read angers me.

But these parents have been on crusades since public libraries began, I imagine. There have always been "edgy" authors who endorse sex, magic, drugs, alcohol, and anything else that these people feel will cause their children to immediately join gangs and go to jail without passing Go.  There will always be misguided parents who feel that the only way they can keep their children in line is to purify the world around them, rather than encouraging their children to make good decisions based on their shared morals. It's sad, really.

The idea that libraries should not be allowed to carry these books at ALL shows no trust in your children, no ability in yourself to monitor what your children read, and an obnoxious arrogance to assume you can control OTHER people's reading choices.

However, like I said, these little wars against books have been happening for a long time, so I don't really waste my time getting worked up over every indictment against a novel with dirty things in it.

What upsets me this time around is that some people are supporting it, only because it's Twilight.


I get it.  I do.  I don't like the books, either.  But before we all grab our torches and pitchforks, remember who you're giving the power by joining the fight.  You are not giving power to the intelligent elites on the internet.  You are not giving power to people with good taste.  You're giving power to people who argue that Pokemon endorses communion with demons.  You're giving power to people who think Harry Potter  teaches you how to kill people with "Latin Words."  You're giving power to people who wanted to ban Shel Silversteins A Light In The Attic because it had "a suggestive illustration that might encourage kids to break dishes so they won't have to dry them."

If you don't like Twilight, that is completely okay.  You're not alone.  But I'm pretty sure I read some books that other people don't like. I also know that it's way more fun to bicker about taste in books than it is to all read nothing but The Bible* all day.

So, encourage people to read better things.  Don't ban them from reading the bad things.

~Red

*Nevermind the part where The Bible has a lot of magic, sex, drugs, and murder in it, too.  Somehow that always gets overlooked.

I've got a problem.

There is one question I get asked on a semi-daily basis, and yet I have still been unable to come up with an acceptable answer. You'd think all the practice I get fielding the question would allow me to have some kind of stock answer, but one just does not seem to be viable.