Solving Life's Problems

They say that the first step one should take to start solving your problems is that one must first admit that a problem exists. This first step is the single-most important step of them all.

But there is a problem.

Living in today's world, being a part of this highly-socialized civilization which demands such a high standard of each of its individual participants, it's citizens, an often unreasonably high and distant standard which is fed to us by the media, admitting that one has a problem is the last thing one would want to do. In a society that demands perfection from each and every single person, while knowing that no person may ever be able to achieve it, for one to admit that they have grown host to imperfection would be nothing short of, as some have referred to it in the past instances, "social suicide".

People's problems often stem from their inability to cope with society, especially in their self-defined inability to meet the expectations of others, which eventually grow to become their own standards for themselves. It's interesting that humans should want to take on other people's standards for them as their own, and while socialization is, to an extent, the basis of human progress, each of us asking the other to do more, creating a somewhat unconscious, interdependent need to do better, there are times when our societies around us ask for more than what we may be capable of. While dreams and imagination have taunted us with such high, over-idealized, near-perfect standards of living, at what point will we ever be able to say we've achieved those standards, if they are nothing more than completely un-concrete, ambiguous, ominous illusions of an ideal life?

It is almost safe to conclude that the things which we've fought so hard to resist as great societies, things like imperfection, disappointment, fear, insecurity, dissatisfaction, distress, etc... These are the things that make life what it is. Life isn't about being perfect, it's about being imperfect. And if life is about being perfect, then it's up to the individual to create their own definition for perfection. For all we know, the imperfections in our lives are in themselves the things that make life "perfect", but only on the imperfect conditions that allow live to exist.

But really, if anything, just be honest with yourself, and be honest with others, and you'll be alright.

-nesqu!k

Dreams: Journeys To a Parallel Universe?

Dreams are very interesting experiences.

Of course, the term "experience" is highly subjective, if not the most subjective thing in consciousness, and it all really comes down to the way you choose to look at what is presented to you.

But there I go again on another tangent, heh.

Like all my usual blog posts, I am going to propose a theory. Just a disclaimer, I am in no way attempting to state my explanations as if they are facts, but rather as proposals (that's usually, if not always, my intention when I write these sorts of things). Like all my other proposals, I try to make use of scientific empirical evidence as often as possible (not always successfully, though), and build on already existing ideas, while adding my own input and insight.

Anyway, here's the real brain buster: Are our dreams, and our experiences within them, actual occurences, not necessarily of this particular universe?

The primary universe we live in is the one we call consciousness, where we are cognitively aware of our actions, thought processes, and our effect on the universe around us. However, when we experience dreams in our sleep, many report a sense of discontinuity and disconnection between events and experiences in dreams. Additionally, in the event which we are lucky and we begin to realize the tricks that our dreams are playing on us, we start to realize that there are certain things that just don't make sense or add up properly. You dream you're going to class, and right when you think you're about to burst through the lecture hall door, you suddenly find yourself in a completely unrelated spot. If you go along with it, then the dream has control over you. But if you are able to take a step back and realize for yourself that things aren't making complete sense, then you are a conscious dreamer (and as I wrote in a past post, that's when you really get to make things happen in your favor, if you know what I mean).

There I go again, going off in another direction. Back to the topic at hand: when we dream, and we see ourselves in situations where we act in a certain way that seems uncharacteristic of ourselves, that is our (I swear, I cannot think of another word to describe this) soul, or spirit, dare I say, going on a little vacation to another version of ourselves that exists in a parallel universe. If you want to think of it in a quantum physics/mechanics sort of way, lets say one's life structure is like a tree. We start out in one linear path up the main trunk, but after a few years, we begin to branch out in many different directions. The directions in which these branches go are like the different paths we can choose to walk based on the choices we make at any given time. Let's figuratively say that I am 19 years up the tree, going up a branch that is on the northern face of the tree. This particular branch on the northern face of the tree is the world around me that I have grown to accept as reality. However, when I dream, my spirit decides to go on a vacation on a different part of the tree, say 19 years up the tree, but on the southern face of the tree. On this branch on the southern face of the tree, my life went in a completely different direction. Maybe I'm still with someone that I broke up with a long time ago in reality, in this parallel existence. Maybe I have a different car, different friends, live in a different apartment complex, well, you get the picture. When we take a visit in this alternate reality, of course nothing makes sense to us; we're so accustomed to our sense of "reality" that when we visit this alternate reality where everything is completely different, our basic sense of the world is shown to be partially, or completely wrong. Of course, in such a situation, it's easy to get confused, but even though its a completely unfamiliar environment, things still seem to abide to certain basic laws of existence, so we decide to just go along with, not necessarily trying to make sense of anything, but just going on for the sake of living and experiencing something, even if it doesn't make any sense to us.

We all know of one time in our dreams when we jumped off of a cliff and landed unscathed. Perhaps a different path in human evolution led our bodies to have greater structural integrity to withstand that kind of impact? Bah, I can already feel my attempts at reasoning starting to fall apart, heh. That's one of the most interesting things about science: the scientific method basically implies that there will never be "absolute certainty", because all empirical evidence and conclusions have to be refutable. While a system like this promotes the development and advancement of new ideas, at the same time, it seems to ensure that we will never find truth. Or maybe not so much that we will never find truth, but that truth is such a subjective thing that it is whatever we as individuals choose to make it. Even fields like quantum mechanics carry the belief that 99.9% of the universe can be fully understood and predicted, but they still take into account that there is a 0.1% that takes an "unknown factor" into account. Why am I talking about quantum mechanics all of a sudden? I do not know, lol.

Alright quick summary: basically, I'm proposing that when we dream, we are experiencing an alternate true physical existence that is not of this particular universe, the one we refer to as our sense of cognitively conscious existence and experience. In our dreams, our spirits, or souls, make a jump into a life which consists of what we in our realities refer to as the unknown, the "what-could-have-been", a true, nonsensical experience of reality in a world where we decided to walk down the other road in that wood (to make a reference to the poetry of Robert Frost, sort of).

...And I feel that I have just now lost all my power to explain something as complicated and open as this. Feel free to analyze this however you want, for it is your right as one of my readers. After all, that's what life is all about: taking what the universe gives you, and making it your own. Sort of.

One love, me breda, seen?

-nesqu!k

Interpreting Dreams

Now I'm sure this has been talked about by plenty of other people before (Sigmund Freud, and plenty of philosophers), but there's no better feeling than when you come to a realization or learn something extremely profound and complicated on your own.

Let's start with a story.

Last night I had a dream in which I basically missed my 10:30am final. Despite me knowing for a fact that it was a morning final, in my dream, I found myself rushing to the bus stop surrounded by nighttime lighting conditions; it looked a lot more like 10:30pm to me.

The P-Line was just pulling out when I managed to get the driver to stop, and I found myself boarding through the only door on the bus, which was on the left towards the midsection, which is nothing like the actual design of the typical Unitrans bus, or any American-made bus, for that matter. As I got on, I was greeted by the driver, who was an old lady, who asked to see my ID. The driver's seat was mounted in the very center of the front of the bus, and as we began to set off, she got out of her seat and asked me for my UCD student ID card. I reached into the strap pocket on my backpack like I always did, and pulled it out. Upon close examination, she said, "This isn't fake, now is it? Ah, no its not...", and right when she finished her sentence, my ID suddenly split into two layers, as if it was two sides of a UCD ID printed on two card-sized sheets of paper, with a few index cards in between to provide stiffness, and the whole thing was sloppily "laminated" together by clear Scotch Tape (and I'm not gonna lie, I made one of these in the past when my other UCD ID got lost).

As the old-lady driver looked at me in surprise and disgust, I reached into my strap pocket once again, noticing another ID-shaped card in it, and pulled it out, only to realize that it was a card that read, "UCD Alumni Association", to which I recall replying, "What the fuck is this... Dammit." Now mind you, this was all happening with the bus in motion with no one at the wheel; the old lady was too busy looking at my fabricated student ID. "Uhh... maybe you should pay more attention to the road, heh" I said to her. But before I knew it, we were pulling up to the MU bus terminal. I remember seeing a building that looked like a mix between the right-side entrance of Springstowne/Solano Middle School (both schools have the exact same design), and Hunt Hall, which is adjacent to the bus terminal. After that I remember running towards Young Hall, which for some reason was placed where the MU usually is, rushing into the north entrance (the Social Sciences Structure side), and going left into Young 184, where my Psychology 131 class is held, and where my final was supposed to be. When I burst through the door of the classroom, guess where I found myself: in the piano room of my house in Vallejo.

Confused, I ran out of the room, went up some stairs in what I thought was still Young Hall, and went into what I thought would be the right classroom, only to once again find myself in the downstairs guestroom/piano room of my Vallejo home. Confused and panicky, I exited the room and found myself in the family room in my house, next to the door that leads to the garage. There I saw my mom. My mom was talking about some wierd-ass shit (sorry if you're reading this, mom, I have no other way to descirbe it, lol). She asked me what was wrong, and I told her that I was about to miss my Psych131 final, and that if I didn't take it, I'd fail the class. To that, she reponded, "It's ok, your dad is also failing his Master's right now." In my head, I'm thinking, "What are you talking about, dad already has his Master's degree" but I didn't say it out loud. My mom then went on to tell me that she had lost her job, and asked me if Benson maybe had any job openings for working for TIZ (wtf?), and went on to explain that she would rather start job hunting with small-scale companies, because she didn't feel like submitting big fancy résumés to larger-scale organizations.

And that's all I remember.

Anyway, the point is, for most of us, when we have dreams, we don't think about how plausible or realistic our experiences within our dreams are; we just go along with the flow of events, even if, in reality, they would make no sense to us whatsoever, and that was the case for me this past evening. In our dreams, we find it so simple to just vicariously follow wherever our dreams choose to take us, and we do so without question. While there have been a few cases where I was able to come to realize that I was dreaming within my own dream, and as a result just fool around, knowing there would be no real-world consequences (those are the best dream situations, by the way), the majority of the time, we just follow the course that our dreams set out for us, without question.

This led me to wonder, to bring back the whole concept of the Matrix trilogy, if what we consider conscious, real-time awareness of reality, could be just another mindless, vicarious following of wherever the environment might lead us. What's to tell me that I'm not dreaming right now? There are some times when conscious reality feels just as disconnected, fragmented, and unrelated to everything else, as if the world around us is just a bunch of completely random images and actions collaged together to form everything which falls under our senses of perception.

But the biggest difference between dreams and reality is that in reality, we are able to make conscious decisions and actively evaluate our current situations, evaluations which help us to make more decisions, and so on and so forth. In dreams, on the other hand, we just follow along, not thinking about connections, logic, reason, or anything like that; we just hop on a train that already has a set destination, rather than be the ones to drive our own vehicles in the direction that we see fit. On top of that, reality is a lot easier to remember that dreams; probably because we are more able to create connections between past and present events, whereas in dreams, we choose not to do so.

Blah blah blah, I don't know what else to say.

-nesqu!k

The Chase

So this is what it's like.

Those of you who are close to me know what's going on, and know all the names attached to this story, but the rest of you, well, you're out of luck.

A year and a half ago, I found myself on one side of a situation just like this one, and now I'm on the opposite end. But I refuse to let myself do what he did. A year and a half ago I lost the one person who I was closest to to some ambiguous, unknown figure for reasons that I could not accept but later learned to understand. While I can look back now and say that I'm perfectly happy that it happened, I remember how much it sucked when it did. I remember how lost and confused I felt. I was angry beyond explanation, I was sad beyond counsel. And because I know what it's like to lose the one person closest to you to someone else, I decided that I would never be the one to take a girl from another guy. Yet here I am, on the very edge of doing it.

Ever since I came to Davis, I've met a lot of people, and I've made a lot of great friends. I've met a lot of cute girls too, and while it was easy for me to like them, I've always found it difficult to find a girl who feels the same way about me as I do about her. One thing that I've learned since my last major relationship was how crucial the connection is in a healthy relationship. A girl can be as hot as she wants, but if there isn't a good emotional connection between a guy and a girl, then it'd be a pretty shallow, empty relationship. It wasn't until much later that I realized that those kinds of deep, emotional connections can't be forced; they have to be there from the start. That's how it was for me, a little more than four years ago, when I embarked on my first serious relationship. Clearly we were very much into each other, and as a result, things went pretty smoothly for the two and a half years that it lasted. It wasn't hard for me to feel comfortable around her; I could be exactly who I was, and she loved me for it, and I loved her for it.

Well I feel I can safely say that for the first time in a long time, I've met a girl that I can really connect with and feel comfortable around. At the same time, I feel that perfect amount of discomfort, the level that keeps you on the chase, keeps your heart racing, your adrenaline rushing through your veins. There's just something about this girl; for every other girl that I was into that I asked to hang out and spend time with, most of the time I've been met with a no. But her... she answers yes. Every. Single. Time. "Mind if I catch the bus with you?" I ask. "Sure, I'll see you outside" she replies. "What are you doing the rest of the day? Wanna come sit though some my my classes with me?" I ask her. "Yeah, sure!" Every time I've asked a girl if she wanted to hang out, I've almost always been met with a "no", or "sorry, I'm busy". But this girl, despite getting no more than an hour of sleep the night before from working on an eight-page research paper, came with me to my Psych 131: Perception class, and my NPB68: Biology of Addiction class right after. And even though she could have taken the opportunity to take a nap, she sat awake and attentive, the whole time. Probably just because I was checking up on her ever 3o second, heh. I went with her to her NBP101 class too, and her Psych142 class for a bit. As interesting as the classes were, I could feel my attentiveness driven as much by wanting to be there with her as it was by the material. Inspiration + Expiration = Respiration. See? I was paying attention.

The two of us can sit and talk for hours and hours on end. None of that silly AIM stuff that I used to rely on so much. I spend real, face-to-face time with her, something I've haven't been able to do with a girl in a long time. It doesn't matter what we talk about, how weird, silly, or personal it may be; as far as it goes, we just really enjoy each other's company, and in the past three weeks since I've met her, we've been spending a lot of time together. Anything from random food runs at 1am to Wendy's with friends followed by an impromptu drive down the secluded farmlands of South Davis to look at the bright moon in the sky and the stars glimmering in the distance, the distant trees nothing more than dark ominous silhouettes, to random essay/study breaks consisting of hanging out at the dock by Aspen Village at 2 in the morning, to going to each other's classes just 'cause, to going to the Arboretum in our spare time, to spending time with her and helping her care-giving/assistance work, to going to Starbucks or Subway for an essay break... All of that fun, random hangout stuff. Just any excuse I could come up with to hang out with her, we've spent a lot of time together. And I've enjoyed every minute I've spent with her.

I've enjoyed getting to know her, talking with her, walking to class with her, just being around her in general... I love it.

But... she already has a boyfriend. Whom she's been with for about two and a half years. And while they're going through a bit of a rough patch right now, I know exactly what that was like, because the exact same thing happened to me. I was with someone for two and a half years, and because of the distance, I lost her to someone else. He made the first move, and she let herself fall into it. Well because of that, I refuse to do the same thing. Under no circumstances will I allow myself to take someone from someone else. There is no way to justify it. I can't just assume that I'm the better guy like he did to me; I've never even met the guy, and I only have a very faint idea of what he's like. Who am I to say I'm better than someone I don't know?

She tells me they find difficulty communicating, that they're at different stages in their lives, that they want different things from one another, and it's extremely difficult for them to find a compromise. The two of us, on the other hand, we're about the same age, about the same level of maturity in our lives, we enjoy talking with one another, and we enjoy each other's company. She's understanding and patient, like me. We both know how we feel about each other, and the both of us know that we are asking for trouble, and because of that, I can't let myself be anything more than friends with her at this point in time. For all the time we've shared, and for all the times that I'd just wanted to lean in and kiss her, I've held myself back every single time. I've watched my every move, and I can say to this day that I have done nothing that could be considered inappropriate. All I've been trying to do for her is be an exceptional, understanding, caring friend, a friend that will be there for her every step of the way. And for that, I can look back and say that as much as I've been tempted to do so, I have never broken my moral code. And as much as I'll be tempted to do so in the future, I will never do it, because it would just make me a hypocrite.

Some of my friends have told me that this is it: the universe fucked you over in the past, and this is just karma coming back in your favor, just with different people. Well as much as the universe would like to tell me that I "deserve" to take this girl for myself, I won't do it. You might even say that I'm even more understanding of her boyfriend than I am of her. It sucked being in that situation, seeing someone else walk off with your girl and being left behind with nothing. I would never want to induce that feeling in someone else. I can imagine he must be a really great guy, because she likes him alot. Even though, because they're at different stages in their lives, he feels that he has to hold back a lot of her feelings for her, she's willing to be patient with him. And it's qualities like that in a relationship that tell you how strong it is. The amount of effort they put into putting up with their differences, and each other in general. It surpasses any logic, and can only be explained by love, the mose illogical force known to man. Love, compassion... it's things like that that drive people to make irrational decisions. Our minds tell us no, but our hearts tell us yes. As much as my heart tells me that I really like her a lot, my mind knows that it would be incredibly selfish of me to take her for myself and force her to leave her current relationship behind. This may just be a blind assumption (I usually try to avoid making these), but even though she can see her relationship is full of some inconsolable differences, she's going to work as hard as she can to make it work. Even though she's got a guy like me buzzing all over her, she's going to stick with him until she knows it just won't work. And for that, I have the highest level of respect for her. She's such a fighter, and she's not going to give up until she knows it's all over.

It's funny... even though I know I'll probably lose this battle, to myself if anything, I keep fighting, for reasons that I can barely begin to fathom. It's pretty clear that she's going to tough her way though this rough patch in her relationship, that she's going to fight for it until the end, yet here I am, taking every opportunity to spend time with her, even though she and I know that I'll probably just be left behind in the end. There have been many times that I've done this before: chased an unreachable glimmer of hope in the impossible distance, leading myself into my own emotional self destruction, thinking in ways detrimental to my self esteem. But I feel like this time things are different. For some reason that unreachable goal in the distance seems closer than ever before, yet at the same time, it's just as out-of-reach as all the others were. But this time, the only thing that's holding me back is me and my morality. And as long as I have my morality, I will never win this. To be honest, I almost don't want her to break up with him, because I'll know it could probably be because of me. Because I'm "better" for some reason. It's like whichever way this goes, I'll lose in the end, in some way. If she stays with him, then obviously I wont be able to be with her. If she breaks up with him, then I dunno why, but I'll just feel weird. But if that decision is made based on a real heart-to-heart talk between the two of them, if they come to a mutual decision, then only then will I feel totally comfortable being with her. I almost feel selfish for asking for such circumstances.

So it's at this point that I need to make a decision. To do the illogical thing and keep chasing something that I'll probably never get and remain patient while risking losing thousands of other possible opportunities with other girls who are single, or do the logical thing and just give up and move on with my life?

Well... I've got nothing else to do, I'm not aware of any prospective girls out there, and it's not like we can't just be good friends... So I guess I'll wait. Crazy, crazy you.

-nesqu!k

If I Ever Became A College Professor...

Show me you are learning – the continuous paper.

It's certainly a career path that has crossed my mind on several occasions, mostly because I know I like to talk a lot, and I like people who are good listeners and are understanding and receptive towards other people. So long as I was teaching the right topic, I think I would absolutely love being a professor.

On the first day of class, for whatever class I might be teaching, this is what I would tell the students:

“Here’s what I want you to do. This is a class about [insert class topic here]. Over the course of this quarter you will be continuously picking up new bits of information, with each of your acquisitions building on past acquisitions. There will be no midterms, but there will be a final, and depending on the way you look at it, you may find it will seem difficult and daunting, or extremely easy, and more importantly, enjoyable and fun.

From this day to the very last day of lecture, I want you to write a continuous paper, a journal, if you will, of how your thoughts reorganize themselves after you pick up new information from each lecture. On the first day, you will start with something along the lines of, “I know little to nothing about this topic”, while on the second day, you’ll be saying something like, “I came across a very compelling piece of information today”. Whether it be from listening to lecture, interaction with your fellow classmates, interaction with other sources of social contact, like the internet for example. It doesn’t matter, its information of some sort, so write it down. There is no minimum or maximum page limit, and you will turn in this journal/essay of your metacognitive (get used to hearing and using that word a lot) processes on the day of the final. Really, all I ask is that you show me that you are making some sort of advancement of your own, whether it be through developing a better understanding for yourself, a better understanding for others, or even a better understanding of the world around you and the many miniscule variables that affect it’s current state of being. The purpose of you keeping this journal is to show me that you are making an effort to make some kind of intellectual or cognitive thought process, whether it me internal or external. The best part is when you go back to the first page on the last day of lecture and realize just how much information you have picked up, it's truly an amazing feeling to really see the progress you make. While this may seem like pressure to perform a certain way or at a certain level, I promis you it isn't. We may all move at different paces, but so long as we are all always moving forward, then I will be happy.

When it comes to lecture, students, please, please do not hesitate to ask questions, as I’m almost 100% sure that someone in this room, whether it be me, one of your very knowledgeable TAs, or one of your probably equally knowledgeable classmates, will have an answer for you. Don't ever feel intimidated just because you feel that you may not have as good a grasp on certain concepts as others. Believe me, I know what it's like to feel like the only lost guy that's lost in the entire lecture hall, and it's certainly not the best feeling in the world. Concordantly, if you feel that you have an appropriate answer to a question, feel free to offer your answer. As a professor my only role is to stimulate thought, while it is your job to really engage in your own profound thinking, which in turn will help you to better understand why things are they way they are.”

I suppose this is really just an idealization of what I wish school was really like. No pressure, and limited inter-peer comparison, which from my experience can have detrimental effects on the learning experience, and maintaing good self-esteem.

What do you guys think, would you take my class?

-nesqu!k

Interesting Socio-Psychological Theory Concerning Confirmation Bias

I figured I should maybe add some pictures for the sake of using visual stimuli to attract attention.


I suppose it all started earlier this evening when Wilson, Kevin and I were going over our horoscopes, Capricorn, Cancer, and Scorpio, respectively. Wilson looked each of us up and went down the list of typical qualities of people born during these specific periods during the year. For the majority of the list, we found that many of the qualities were some of our own, albeit not all of them. At this point I explained the whole idea of “confirmation bias” which basically refers to the human tendency to gravitate towards things that they themselves agree with. Later this evening I was thinking about how my favorite color is red, and how my preference for the color red may have been a significant driving force behind the formation of many of my other interests as well. Can we maybe infer that confirmation bias is a major driving force behind personality development as people's individual behavior is met with positive reinforcement in social situations, or as we'll discuss, with other things in the environment? It certainly seems to play a large role in personality development and social interaction, but what about the ability to actively (or maybe even choose not to) interact with the environment, which itself can influence personality development?

The one tie in that I found most compelling came to me as I was showering. I thought about how my favorite color is red, and as a result, as a child, I tended to gravitate towards things that were red or related to the color red in some way. For example, cinnamon is my favorite spice. Why cinnamon? Well while it may not actually be red (it’s actually brownish), it’s commonly presented in parallel to the color red because cinnamon, being a spice, tends to taste hot, and the color which we most commonly associate with heat is red. Since I liked red so much, I in turn learned (strong emphasis on the use of the word “learned” here) to enjoy cinnamon, and anything even remotely related to it. Cinnabon is one of my favorite foods ever. You know that sweet dark cinnamon-sugar resin that gets left behind at the bottom of the Cinnabon container? When I was young, I loved that taste so much that I attempted to replicate it by putting some water into a small glass and adding a bunch of cinnamon (obviously it didn’t quite turn out as well as I had hoped). Additionally, I thoroughly enjoy Hot Tamales, my favorite candy. I was also quite fond of Cinnamon Tic-Tac when I was a kid, not to mention Big Red cinnamon gum (until I began to realize that it tended to kill my taste buds and cause significant xerostomia (the scientific term for dry mouth).

More generally, I can further imagine that my love for the color red influenced my attraction to apples (the fruit, but I’ve got an cute little pun for you guys later in this paragraph), which in turn led me to enjoy anything even remotely associated with apples. Candy apples, caramel apples, apple juice, apple sauce (mmm), apple cider, and here’s a nice one: apple pie, which contains apples AND cinnamon. Double win for me. And alright, here comes the joke I was thinking about (now that I think about it it just seems even more silly), Apple computers. lol. Some other fruits that I like are cherries, strawberries, and a couple of other ones that I can’t come up with at the moment. On another note, my phone is also red. My TIZ artist series shirt is a black Zeeb on a red shirt.

In short, since I liked the color red so much as a kid, I unknowingly began to associate my attraction to red with red objects, and objects associated with red. Is it possible that if I decided to pick some other color, like blue or orange, as my favorite color, I wouldn’t be nearly as interested in red things, like cinnamon, apples, and Apple computers? Then again, the fact that I’ve realized all of these micro-connections between my web on interests could be itself interpreted as a divulgence of my own natural tendency for confirmation bias…

You know one of my favorite things about writing is kind of forces me to really take a step back and really evaluate the ideas I’m trying to communicate, and in turn I learn a little bit more about myself, and get to streamline my thought processes as well as I rule out implausible ideas and theories. It's almost like AutoCross: you may not necessarily get the times you want, but you'll still learn a little something about how your car behaves in certain situations. Beautiful metaphor. Alright, I'm starting to digress a bit... Well for my readers, you may get a little entertainment out of reading some of my deep thought proposals as well, so it's a pretty good win-win situation when you think about it.

Feel free to add any comments or additional ideas. It's always nice to know that people read the things I write. Hopefully most of you aren't too intimidated by large blocks of text; I know I for one tend to be, that much I'll admit.

-nesqu!k

My Biggest Fear

I find it kind of silly that all of this is coming out just because I'm stressed out about my Psych141 research paper that's due in a week and a half.

My biggest fear would have to be accidentally or purposefully wasting my parent's money, epspecially if it's due to my own personal little academic endeavors, curiosity, or lack of focus.

Just like most other parents are with their kids, my parents had always told me that after I finished high school, I was going to college. A college education was the key to a good job/career, and a steady income that would allow me to start and raise my own family. Unfortunately, that's all they told me.

My parents never told me about any of the other possible options out there. They never said that there were plenty of other paths that could lead to the same happy outcome. They just said, "This is the path, walk it." Well, as much I feel like I may be walking down the wrong path, it's the only one I ever really knew, so I'm just sticking with it.

One thing I've come to realize in the past couple of years is that I have a lot of hobbies, but I'm not particularly good at any one thing. I lack a good sense of focus. I feel as if I'm a Jack of many trades, but a master at nothing. I dabble. I try something out until I get bored of it, find my limit, or just get too frustrated to keep going. Sure, I've got a pretty good handle on a good number of different forms music, but not enough on any one of them to the point that it could really take me anywhere. I just wish I could find the one thing that I'm really good at.

While Psychology has been my declared major since I applied to UC Davis, I'm really beginning to wonder if it's what I'm good at, or if I even like it. Every Psych class I've taken here, I've never been able to manage anything higher than a C+, and I'm starting to think that I might not even pass one of my Psych classes this quarter. The worst part is that the only reason I'm thinking like this is because I've come to realize just how lazy I am when it comes to school, which in itself is causing me to be too lazy to do anything about it. I don't want to ask for help because I'm too scared to really show that side of me.

So what am I supposed to do? Do I switch majors? Waste of my parents money: I'll be in school for longer than expected. Drop out of school? Even more of a waste of my parent's money: if I drop out now, that's $50,000 of their hard-earned money, gone. Switch schools? I can't think of any other school that I'd like as much as UC Davis.

Now that I think about it, the thing that I really lack is motivation. It seems to be a quality that pretty much everyone I know has. My two roommates spend countless hours studying for Managerial Economics, or Evolution and Ecology, respectively, and seeing them do that just makes me realize how little I do for Psychology. But the main difference that I see is that they are so driven to study that it's just second nature to them. They have found the thing that they are really good at, the one thing that they really enjoy, and every action that is related to it in any way just seems automatic for them, in my perspective. Kevin even reads his biology book for pleasure. I don't do that with any of my Psych books. I can't think of anything that I do that for.

Then again, no. Hold on. What it really is is that I take in all kinds of information. Really random information from whatever sparks my interest at the moment. Two of my favorite websites? Wikipedia.org and HowStuffWorks.com. I absolutely love going to those two sites, and typing in whatever I'm curious to learn about into the search box just to see what will pop up. On top of that, I enjoy finding practical solutions for everyday problems or tasks, whether it involves making certain things easier to do, or just doing certain things because they are neat and interesting. I love picking up just really, really general knowledge over a wide range of fields, because to be honest, I tend to get bored really easily. Unfortunately for me, there's no major for "General and Practical Knowledge". Because if there was, I'd be on that in a heartbeat. That's my bread and butter. Being a Jack of many trades.

Oddly enough I feel a lot better about my current situation, even though the only thing that's changed is that I've realized exactly what it is I like. But I still have no idea what to do at this point. And I still have no idea what I'm going to write about for my Cognitive Development paper.