Ten Minute, Ten Day Challenge

Game on, Computer.

Stark realizations make me think that I may be destined to become a hermit crab in the next life. Or this life. I've never been convinced Kafka's Metamorphosis wasn't based on true events. Plus, didn't your mother always tell you that if you make that face long enough, it'll stick? I'm fairly certain (within one standard deviation and under four degrees of freedom) that it applies to life habits as well. Which leads me to believe that if I keep my shenanigans up, I'll either become a hermit crab or the puppet that lived in the trash can on Sesame Street.

Side note: Oscar had it rough. He lived in a trash can, for crying out loud. I mean, let's be honest, what did he eat? Where did he go to the bathroom? If that were me then I'm sure I'd be grouchy, too. You'd think at least occasionally Bert and Ernie would let him crash on the couch or something...

Seriously, Jerks.

What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, so since I live the antithesis of what college life should be (Because who actually assumed college was for academic work and furthering your career prospects? Haven't you people watched American Pie 7 or whatever? The real U of M is featured in that film.) I am deciding now, and holding myself to it by announcing it to whomever still reads this thing, to get myself out of my books.

Once a day I will blog for ten minutes, starting today. The rules are:
1. Write about everything BUT academics, because right now they are the devil.
2. At least ten minutes must be perused in the act of writing. No watching America's Next Top Model in front of a blinking courser and calling it good. ...Not that I'd ever do that anyway.
3. I will do this for ten days straight.
4. When If I do succeed, I will reward myself with an undisclosed gift.

So this is basically a win-win. I'm hoping that it will prep me for talking to real people in the real world and I get a break from the hell-hole that is Microsoft Word in exchange for Blogger's wonderful interface. 

(If that won me any brownie points at all, Blogger. Add an umlaut function. I get sick of copy-pasting those suckers.)
Let the games begin and May the odds be ever in my favor.

A selfish eulogy

I can't even say I knew him. We met via e-mails when I wanted into his class because he was a forerunner in his field and I wanted to work it into my major. He let me into the lecture even though I didn't have the prereqs and I felt so special, like I somehow swayed his opinion. Two weeks later a mass e-mail went out saying the prerequisites had been dismissed and the class was open to the general student body.

We had a grand total of one face-to-face conversation. It was in a Kroger when I only needed to grab cat food but was with friends, so I had the forty-pound bag propped like some over sized toddler on my hip while I'm walking around looking at the discounted cheese.

It was one of those moments where you stare at someone for too long trying to decide if you really know them so then you're obligated to speak to them after you make eye contact. Only it wasn't anything like that at all.
I thought it might be him so I stared until he looked at me because I wanted to talk to him in person. He was dressed down. T-shirts, jeans, just some white tennis shoes. Did you ever have that moment in grade school when you see your teacher outside of class and you can't believe that they are allowed to exist outside of school? It's the opposite of that in college when your professor is world renowned. You start looking around hoping to make an impression, get them to remember you for a recommendation, for a faculty advisor, for graduate school. He looked up from the deli ham for a second, probably realizing I was staring pretty intently at the back of his head.

I did some damage control for the creepiness by saying his name as a question, as if I was trying to decide if that was really him or not. "Dr. Peterson?" As if that worked.

In summation, he essentially looked me up and down, cat food and all, and then looked to his basket. Then back at my cat food baby and back into his basket of paper towel and apples and said, "I can see you have a cat. Well at least there's nothing in here," as he jostled his basket, "that is too incriminating." We parted ways and that was that. He was a good guy that treated his star-crossed fans well.

I had his lecture from 4pm-6pm on Tuesdays. We got the e-mail Wednesday afternoon and suddenly he was gone. You want to know what my first thought was? What my first horrid little thought was? This insipid gnat of a wisp was, "There goes a grad school opportunity." Because I am a terrible person. A selfish horrid human. But human none-the-less. I cried that night for reasons I can't fully explain but I know it wasn't because of graduate school.

The next day we got an e-mail with the subject line "Take a break" from a Mrs. Colleen. She informed the students that everything would continue on schedule and not to worry because she would take the course over starting next week. The next day. It was as if this man had planned this all along and it was no problem. No inconvenience at all. Just take a little break, that's all. Except there would be no break. Things would run seemlessly.

How does that work? How does the world just keep going? When I do something small like just moving my couch for the next couple days I need time to adjust to the changes. I bump my leg on the chair that wasn't there before, I have to double take when putting papers away because the shelf used to be over there...
Chris Peterson wasn't just a couch.

Is this Cheating?

Woah, betcha didn't expect to see me here again so soon! (See, that was a joke. Because I am the worst up-dater in the history of up dates. And it has really been a long time. And I am just now updating. Do you get it? Huh? ...I can be funny.)

Some may call this cheating. I call it creative re-uses of my work.

I was told I needed to write an essay thanking the donors of a scholarship I recieved following my time in Germany and this is what I came up with. I think it adequently summarizes my life feelings right now: stress. anxiety. and a whooole lotta time constraints.

I hope you like it. My German advisor was oddly impressed. I honestly feel like I made everything too sugary sweet. Your thoughts?

--No exam question, no essay response will ever be as stressful to a college student than when someone asks, “What are you going to do after you graduate?” The consensus amongst the student population is to respond by elaborating one's extensive plans while paradoxically being as vague as possible. The trouble with this question is it implies the entire purpose of our college careers; literally everything we have been working on up to graduation has been a means to our educational ends, and it is a bit scary to reach the brink and realize that after nearly sixteen years of being a student we truly do not know what will happen. Even being wiser than our former high-school selves, who truly believed that when we go to university to study medicine that we will become doctors, what we have really learned is that we can be certain that nothing after graduation is certain.

If anything, college is the four years in one's life where learning to accept personal faults and strengths is a key development. Above all else, this aspect of learning is highly valuable because knowledge is something that you can always find if you look in the right book, but wisdom comes from knowing yourself. Unfortunately, opportunities to gain personal insight do not arise as often as one would hope during university classes. Not once have I looked up from toxicology text with a revelation about my life goals or purpose. Fortunately, university is not restricted to classes chosen to fulfill a concentration requirement. Quite the contrary, the University of Michigan's Program in the Environment requires that students complete a practical experience. This can be anything as easy as attending the university's field station or as complex as arranging your own internship and self-delegating a research study. The latter, which I chose, allows for a bit of leeway in designing and exploring one's way out into the real world.

As an environmental and German double major, an important part of my practical experience would be to discover an internship where these two fields could converge. A very simple search of possible combination of work in German natural settings helped me discovered the Wald Piraten Camp in Heidelberg, Germany and I almost immediately decided that this camp would be my practical experience. Unlike many of the other options recommended to me, the Wald Piraten camp mixed both natural environments and psychology to improve upon the camp experience for children affected by cancer. Only in Germany could the environment be seen as a tool for psychology and physical healing with cancer patients and personal experience pulled me toward it. It is a pleasant surprise to find out that your dream job does exist in the real world. 

At the time, I was not really sure if I could handle working with kids—yet this was the only job I had seen mix German and environmental psychology. To be completely honest, this was the first job I had seen outside of academia using environmental psychology at all.

 ... (Editor's note: Irrelevant donor-thanking removed)..

As a result I believe I have found a career path that I would like to stay on. Working with the children was an enriching endeavor that I will take with me forever, but possibly I will not have to take it very far. The camp has offered me a position next summer and they are awaiting my answer. To have discovered not only a career path that aligns with my values and intentions but that is also reciprocated by the organization itself is a wonderful feeling. I go into my graduation ceremony now not with a heavy conscious of what I will do after I remove my cap and gown, rather I am looking forward with optimism to a possible job. That was only possible through the expansion of my education at a small summer internship, something I could never have gotten out of a book.--

 

Stress, Coping, and Live Nudes

 Let me begin with the obligatory apologies. I did, indeed, make a safe trip back to the United States. I experienced the very miracle of flight without much of a hitch and then life decided to sucker punch me while wearing brass knuckles. I'm back in (my last year!) of school, back working, and ultimately back to being an all around stressed out basket case.

I'm so sorry for tauting about my insignificant first world problems, "Wah! I'm getting a top shelf education. ... Pity me because it's hard!"

It's just been one of those days where every "meal" I have had has been cereal. Eaten standing up. From the same bowl.

It's been one of those weeks where as soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm out like a light. And getting up is a battle with the blankets that can only be won with peace talks between my pillow and my course books.

It's been one of those months where...well, you get the idea.

I need some good nights of sleep but sometimes that doesn't happen, but I've got to get my stress relief sometimes. Somehow.

Even if it means staring at naked men. The horror!

Nah, I'm just kidding with you.

No I'm not. I took my first figure drawing class yesterday. Because at first I was like, "Wow, I used to love drawing in high school and this event is free. How could it get any better?" And then my eyes fell across Live nude model.

 

Very nice.

I'm not artistically inclined or anything, but there was something really engaging about staring at a man's bare buttocks for an hour.

So this is a fun event that I'm fairly certain I will be going back to on a regular basis.

Because high five Ann Arbor! What you don't have in strip clubs you make up in academic and cultural sexiness.