Santa Claus is coming to couch 68!!!!!

5 more minutes

I find it a bit difficult to express what I'm thinking right now but thanks for writing that post. I could certainly relate to it. No one ever took me to university lectures when I was a child but I've always looked up to academics and people who know a lot (I was one of those children who stayed in the classroom after lessons and talked to the teachers about science, religion and existential questions instead of socialising with people my own age).

Thanks. That means a lot to me. I hope I'll never stop wanting to learn things and I hope that I'll learn how to deal with the fear of failure.

You're probably right. Thank you. You and the others have helped me calm down a bit. I'm still feeling anxious but not as much as before. I find it very difficult to deal with everything I go through on my own. Not sure what I'd do if I wasn't able to get some support from all of you.

I saw The Hobbit in 3D last week. Dropped a contact lens halfway through. That was.... unfortunate. But I did manage to enjoy the film a lot, still. They showed a trailer for The Anchorman 2, and I have to admit that it looked like a film I would hate every second of, so I won't be seeing that. I don't go to the cinema more than maybe twice a year anyway, I miss most of the films I think I would enjoy. When I watch films and TV series at home I fast forward through everything that's about love or sex, provided I'm watching alone. I have no patience for that kind of stuff.

H and I are watching I, Claudius on DVD tonight. We're having a feed break for the cats, they were starting to use us as scratching posts. But now I think I hear H opening a bottle of beer, so maybe I should go and get one for myself, too...

I am home and officially on break.

I like my own popcorn best. And I get so bored during movies. If I go to movies at a theatre, I usually fall asleep or leave and pace around the theatre. I finally decided to stop paying them to nap or pace.
I don't mind the love or sex. I like funny best.

Just piping in here -- I used to really agonize over grading, too. I knew there had to be a cutoff somewhere and that some of my students would not make that cutoff, even if they were very bright. It would upset me when their grade did not reflect their enthusiasm for the work. This is something that TAs usually can't really communicate to students, though. I had to help them accept that, unless they were actually graded unfairly (the class I taught had multiple sources of grades), the grade they were assigned was based on statistics and numbers (with a small amount of input coming from me about their participation and engagement), and there wasn't much they could do except keep going. But then I could go home and curl up on the couch and bury my face in a pillow.

Don't get me wrong -- your grades matter. But you don't need a straight-A average to get into a good graduate program.

Seeing as I'm not perfect, I'm afraid I am in no place to give advice about it . As others have said, perfection is an unattainable goal. The only thing you can ask yourself is, am I doing the best I can? That's a hard question to answer, especially early on. I will tell you how I started do better in classes -- my GPA got better each semester, until I was senior and pretty much getting all A's. Part of it was getting to know my TA's better, rather than only going to them when I was in trouble. I would check in with them at office hours (do you have those?) even if I was feeling ok about stuff, unless I didn't have time. And part of it, I kid you not, was sleeping more. It worked wonders. More sleep did way more for me that cramming until the wee hours.

And what I always tell my students is, do the practice problems. In science, a lot of it is learning how to answer the questions. Sometimes it is more worthwhile to spend time learning how to answer the questions than trying to cram in more information. You may already do this, but since I would tell it to my students all the time, I'm telling you now .

I didn't start medication until I was in grad school. It helped a LOT. My issue is depression; I will get demotivated, distracted, and unbearably sad. I also have some problems with intrusive thoughts. Basically, instead of rolling the dice each morning (Will Sally get up on time and get to the lab at a reasonable hour? Or will she feel incredibly upset for no obvious reason and stay in bed crying until noon?), I was sort of at a baseline level of ok most of the time. When something was upsetting, I did get upset, but I didn't get quite so dragged down and hopeless and paralyzed. After I defended my dissertation, I baked espresso brownies (I saw she had a personal coffee maker in her office) for my pdoc, to thank her, because I didn't see myself finishing my degree without her help.

I wonder sometimes if I had taken meds at university, if instead of sleeping through class, or spending countless hours being depressed and unable to move, or being so anxious that I had a hard time approaching profs and TA's, I could have been in a more consistently "ok" place. The place I was in as a senior, getting sufficient sleep and being more proactive about my classwork.

The downsides to meds are that they sometimes need to be adjusted, and they don't work for everyone. I've had to make several adjustments over the course of the past few years. And there are side effects, and they can be difficult. If you can plan when to start trying them, or switch them, for times where you don't have to be too social or don't have anything critical going on, that's best.

I was kind of afraid of them at first... I thought I would no longer be myself, which hasn't been the case, and I thought that taking meds was a sign of failure. It's not. It's no more a failure than making an attempt to treat any other type of illness.

I totally get what you mean about applying a different standard to others than you do to yourself. It's a long, hard journey to get to a point where you can be as kind to yourself as you are to others. You're worth it, though.

So much this. When I turned in my dissertation, I also had to turn in a survey that all students fill out asking a variety of questions about my time in grad school. One of them asked something like, "Do you have a mental or emotional issue that has made it more difficult to succeed in graduate school?" Actually, yes! Thank you for asking. Thank you for being the only time anyone has ever bothered to [bleep]ing ask.

Well the guidance counselor talked to the teacher I complained about yesterday. He still refused to give the girl extra time or not count the questions she didn't get to, so the guidance counselor went and told the principal who told the teacher he had to choose one or the other or be written up. The teacher chose to give her extra time. The guidance counselor got her excused from the 2nd half of her history exam (that teacher us accommodating) so she could finish science. Before the girl came in, the guidance counselor told me to give her some of the answeres and help her eliminate as many answers as possible on the others to give her a better chance at getting it right, since she was only going to have 30 minutes to finish 50 questions. We were on the "chemistry" section of the test. I was never good at chemistry, so a lot I was completely clueless on, as I just couldn't remember which type of bond was which. I couldn't remember the differnce between an ionic bond and a covalent bond. So on those questions I told the girl her guess was as good as mine. Though on those questions I was usually able to help her eliminate 2 of 4 choices because I knew it was a bond and not a single atom. I feel bad decieving the teacher like that, but I did what my supervisor told me to do. I flat out gave her the answers to the Santa questions when she didn't know them. The others that I knew the answer to, I talked her through finding the answer. Letting her tell me the difference between she understood concepts (i.e. "is an electron negatively or positvely charged?" "okay, so if it looses an electron, what do you think will happen?" "if valence electrons are shared in some bonds, are they on the innermost or outtermost electron layer?") So I tried my best not to just give her the answers as my supervisor told me to do, but I tried to strongly guide her to the correct answer.

The bell rang to end the exam period and she still had 10 questions left, so I just told her to "Christmas tree" it. She said "no, then I might get them wrong". I pointed out if she leaves them blank she definitely gets them wrong, while if she just randomly chooses a bubble, she has a 25% chance at getting it right.

I don't understand this - how would it have helped you if they had asked more or earlier or whatever or what business was it of the university to know this about a graduate student? We are told not to ask anything like this to a student and if we observe excessively unusual behavior, we report it to the dean of students and go on with our classes as before. Rarely do we hear back other than if the student drops the class.

SallyBrown, the fears you had about medication are pretty much the same fears I have. Sometimes (tonight for example) I feel like I should probably really be on meds and I've contemplated trying them many times (I could start taking medication right now if I wanted to. I've got SNRIs in my drawer) but I can never seem to get over the fear of all the bad things that might happen if I try them.

Sorry for such a short answer to your post. I'm really tired and I need to go to bed. Thanks for writing to me though. I appreciate it.

Well, I was woken up 4 times in the middle of the night (1am, 2am, 3am, and 4am) by my phone ringing. It wasn't a number I recognized. All my phone said it was from Tacoma, Washington. I don't know anyone in Tacoma, so who the h e l l was calling me. I didn't answer. I just immediately sent it to voice mail, but they left no message. They haven't called again yet, so whatever. I am just a little pissed that they kept calling and waking me up at odd hours in the morning.

I was lazy and didn't feel like cooking tonight, so I went to McDonalds and picked up my usual. I always laugh at the total for my usual. It always comes out to be $6.66. It has never bugged me as I am not religiously superstitious. But the cashier today told me she would never eat food that came to that total because it might allow the devil to enter her. I bit my tongue not to say anything back. Yes, 666 is the devil's number in Chriatianity. I am Christian, but I could care less about the number 666, it's just a number like 555 or 123 is.

I just re-read this - I didn't even realise there are 3D TVs!

I've seen a few 3D films, and the first ones had a lot of effects that were obviously only there because it was 3D. The Hobbit and other more recent movies suffer less from that. I mean, I think the technology is cool and it's awesome and frightening to see the needle come towards you really quickly in Coraline, but it was so obvious that it was ony there because of the technology, know what I mean?

Hey couch... I have to read back but just dropping in real quick.

I'm ordering a white pizza. Does anyone want anything? I know Sally wants pizza. She said Baby Brown loves pizza.

In other news..I didn't even get a thank you for the gifts for the kids I nanny. I bought them each a V tech toy computer that teaches math, letters, etc. 2 dolls each, beaded toy jewerly, and painting set. Not even a thank you from their father. Rude.

Okay let me go order this pizza.

it would never happen again

Omg squirrel! That would get her sent to court for religious harassment up here!! Plus I dont think thats in the micky dees script!! thank you have a nice day hope the devil doesnt enter you??!

I love White Pizza

You ok, granite?

Jersey that sucks I am so sorry.... will you be seeing the little darlings again before Christmas?
Squirrel what exactly is the "meal of the devil" comprised of?

What is a white pizza?

Hey Granite how are the cards coming?

Mast I don't have a 3D tv but apparently I have a 3D blue ray player... although you need the 3DTV , 3D player and 3D blue ray with 3D glasses to make it work. Sounds forced..haha

Hello again now that I've read back:

On rolling around on Carpets naked: Sounds fun. I'll try it one day. And leave the blinds opened.

CC: Sorry you went all the way there to find out the T can't help. But like SD said at least it's free.

On accommodations for Students: the teacher should have complied. He was being an a s s. I couldn't read until well into middle school ( 6th grade).

On Deava getting a bed: Congrats.

On Granite's cards: feel free to practice on me. Your very gifted.

On losing friendships after 30 years and don't know why: I get it. People always leave me. Always.

On winter break: I work like 5 hours next week. So I'll be bored to. No money to go anywhere and T leaves on Christmas Day for a week. I see her a Christmas Eve at 11am. At least I'll only miss one week. ( she won't get back home till NY day) I missed her by 1 day that week.

I lost track of the conversation about grades and for that I apologize.

Okay, where's my Pizza I'm inpatient today.

CC - White pizza does not have red sauce on it. But it's much more garlicky.

I love white pizza. Spinach and feta cheese is my all-time favorite.

Where I live, $6.66 is the price for the food plus state sales tax (no city or county sales tax where I am) of a large 10-piece chicken mcnugget meal.

It's great for me since I hate pizza sauce

That is my goto order!

Mine was yummy. Figures. Shoveling pizza in my pie hole helped me relax a little.