A Fascinating Concept

Geocaching.

I'd never heard of it but came across the term while working on an annotated bibliography reviewing articles on internet/computer addiction. Someday when I'm not fused to my computer slaving to finish this damned degree I might just try this out!

Ok, it was the 'damned degree' that brought it to my attention, I concede. :)

Any of my readers been involved with this?

Powerful People

Today while I was pulling into the bank I saw my old boss, C, from that past life when I was an Agricultural Biologist. This man was a mentor, and very nearly a demi-god to me in my early career. He was incredibly competent, no-nonsense, and he listened to me and let me take ridiculous risks that could have reflected badly on him if they'd gone sour. I had to work my ass of for C though, and prove that there was a good reason to try this or that idea. This was how he shot to the top in his field; combining his education and vision to try new approaches to farming. He made unbelievable advances in just a short time, such that he was well respected and well known up and down the west coast and in the vegetable industry in general by the time he was 30.

After 8 years I got frustrated with my limited options in the area and decided to go back to school. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do instead, and when it wasn't agriculture I think I disappointed him terribly. He remained polite, but the relationship was clearly different.

Through most of those years my husband worked with him too, as an independent contractor doing computer work. Together they developed an amazing program that saved the company millions of dollars and allowed C to do three times the work he was doing in half the time. He eventually became an owner in the company, but he was only one of 6 and often they wanted AR to do other things that he found pointless and frustrating. C tried to back him up, but in the end, when it really counted he didn't come through for AR and he left with a very bitter taste in his mouth. I was very let down that our hard work and loyalty wasn't returned in kind when it meant the most.

Still, today I found that after our brief meeting my heart was pounding and I was wondering if I made a good impression. When I told AR I'd seen C and he'd asked how we were, AR said he wanted to go see him and say hi. He too still has a sense of awe about the man.

It's interesting how much power we give certain people in our lives. I still admire C and appreciate his influence as a mentor during that period of my life. I think though that it must be quite a burden to be that sort of symbol for so many people. He looked old and stooped and he was limping. It's hard to be larger than life all the time, everywhere you go. I hope he finds some peace somewhere during his days.

The Next Chapter

Well the last two applications went out this morning, so I am officially done with that part of my odyssey. I have been told that this wasn't the worst part, but that the waiting for interviews, interview process, waiting for match and then possibly the clearing house is all just as awful. I simply can't imagine that. I'm prepared to have no interviews at all. I've heard that at some very prestigious, APA accredited schools not one student got an interview last year, so if I don't I'll certainly be in good company. I imagine there will be stress yet to come, but this was so horrific and my expectations are so low I simply can't imagine how anything could top this.

I thought about it and decided that if I get nothing at all I will not regret having gone through this. I'm not glad that some of my professors (one in particular) have been insensitive pricks and made this much harder than it needed to be. I'm also not pleased that some of my classmates (a couple who aren't going through the process this year)have done that too. But overall this has tested me in ways I never dreamed of. It's tested my marriage, which has come through well thus far, and it has tested my friendships.

I have two weeks of school left after Thanksgiving and an unholy amount of work to do to see that through, but one way or another this ghastly term will be over in three weeks. I still have some prep to do for the class I'm teaching in January and my dissertation looms like an enormous thunderhead all the time. Still and all, THIS term, the WORST term, is done. Two more and the whole academic hill will be crested. Woo Hoo!!! Ok, that wasn't a heartfelt woo hoo, but at least I said it.

Didi, I remember your pain in that last term before your comps and I feel like we're blood sisters. I guess there is some truth to the talk about how some portion of grad school is just about suffering and persevering for it's own sake; to be in the "club" I think the idea that everyone NEEDS to go through that to get a doctorate is bullshit, but ok, since I suffered it, I'll give it a nod.

Here's to some peaceful time for all of us grad students in the world just to BE for some little time, without any cares.

Sad Tidings

Well the news is in, my professor did lose her house in the fire. When she was finally able to go back she found the houses on either side of hers still standing, but nothing was left of he home but the chimney. She escaped with only the clothes on her back and her two cats.

Of my friends and acquaintances in the area, she is the only one I know personally who lost a home. That may change when I go to work this Friday, if any of the evacuees whose kids I notified last Friday, lost their houses.

It always amazes and gratifies me to see people rally around to help. The entire student body is taking up a collection for our prof and when she has a place to receive it (she's living in a motel for now) we'll have stuff delivered so she doesn't have to shop and work her two jobs (130 miles apart)at the same time.

Where there is a tragedy there is nearly always a silver lining, I find. In this case my teacher was struggling to make he house payments and afraid to quit a distant but well paying job for fear of losing her house. So much for THAT struggle! I'm hoping that if she had fire insurance she may come out of this ok. She bought her house many years ago before the area got so pricey, so with the precipitous drop in housing prices she may be able to get into something decent in a short time. It won't be the home she struggled to buy and raised he three kids in as a single mom, with all the memories and precious things she's lost, but perhaps she won't be homeless for too long. Not everyone is so lucky.

Another bad therapist movie...

Watched The Departed last night. Sigh. Another god awful, misleading and unethical representation of how mental health works. So this woman is an MD, PhD what? Psychiatrist? She's writing prescriptions in little dribs and drabs under screaming threats from her client, who sits across a great big desk while she fumbles around without a clue, clearly quite afraid of him. Then she shouts at him, dumps him abruptly and has sex with him the next day (commenting at how turned on she is by his obvious vulnerability). And this last is, of course, ok because "You're not my client anymore" All that, and in the end she is depicted as a heroine for dumping her bad guy fiancée, whom she has been cheating on with her "not my client anymore" toy boy. Gah!

Not Dying After All

Back from the doc today and learned that my labs were all excellent and I did not manage to fry my kidney or liver when I overdosed a couple of weeks ago. Still having dizzy spells, but less often and they are less acute. She says this may last 6 to 8 weeks. Joy... today is 2 weeks. Oh well, I can drive again and as long as I know it will get better I'm ok with it. She says it's likely related to cerebral hypertension.

Posted a bunch of whiny stuff about the APPIC application procedure, but then deleted it. Hell, I'm even tired of myself at this point. Suffice it to say that I am still very much in it; have made a bunch of niggling mistakes and a couple of serious boners and there's not a thing I can do about the ones that are gone. Forward MARCH! Big batch going out in the morning and then 5 to go that are December deadlines. At this point I'm not sure I care if I get anything. Maybe life would be easier if I didn't have to interview all through January anyway. Then again, I don't really want to go through this all over again in March for CAPIC so I'll keep hoping. Mostly I want the ordeal to be over is all.

Got my first "binuclear family" therapy case going on and while this always looked so cool on the videos, the prospect of sitting with two couples out to eviscerate each other is making me want to flee for the hills! Another case of thinking it wouldn't be so bad if they all decided to cancel. It's odd, one session after another of couples and family therapy has been going fine and yet I still feel terrified of the whole idea. I'm not sure this is for me after all. But then when I work with seriously fucked up families (i.e. people incarcerated, abusing their kids and each other, using every which drug etc) I love it! Maybe I should just avoid working with normal people and stay in the criminal justice arena. I'm thinking it has to do with delayed adolescence. I work well with adolescents, so overgrown, married adolescents are fine, but actual GROWN UP couples are a whole different thing!

And then there's school... somewhere in all this I have homework and shit due. It's gonna bury me in a week or two, but for now I'm just dissociating and staying on the application trail or I think I might lose my whole mind.

Vindication!

I have posted before about my discomfort in the domestic violence group I co-facilitate. Today was one long sermon and once again the words "defect of character" from the 12 step book were used to describe a client. I came away more frustrated than ever, but then got a call from my classmate who co-facilitates the group just after mine. The leader of that group opened the session with a quote from the bible, only to have one of the group members say that she felt it was inappropriate for a facilitator to be reading from the bible in a court mandated group. YES!!!

I have struggled long and hard with whether this is my personal issue, or if perhaps there are group members who might feel the same but are not willing to come out and say so. These groups are anything but safe places since everyone is there due to anger and violence. I'm so glad this person spoke out, and because the facilitator in that group is a very flexible, reasonable person, I suspect it was the perfect place for it to happen. I hope this will have a ripple effect through the whole program and will help support my own comments to my fellow facilitator.