As For the Rest of It

My life has not actually consisted entirely of movies and online shoe shopping for the last couple of weeks. I've still been going to school, playing Shape Shifter, using my treadmill, catering to the needs and whims of His Fluffiness, and all the rest. But this morning was the first time in a longish while (close to two weeks) that I did not wake up with the same fairly bothersome to extremely bad headache I had suffered from all the previous day and that did not involve moderate body pain lasting most of the day. Most of my thoughts for blogging during this period boiled down to "waaaaaah," "grrrrrrr," "blah," and "fuck the world." Since these thoughts were even boring me, I decided that they were not worth inflicting on you.

Overheard on Tuesday morning walking to class:

Boy: "That masking tape is never going to hold. See how I used duct tape? It's stayed like this for a long time."

Girl: [shoves boy]

Sally (thinking): Is it possible that this girl is using masking tape in an attempt to hold something together in a permanent or semi-permanent fashion? This is madness. A cursory consideration of the primary function of masking tape - to mask (cover up) areas during panting that you want to protect from the paint - and the advantage that it presents for this purpose - an adhesive that allows the tape to be removed without damaging the item that has been taped - would argue against such a crazy idea. Duct tape is my go-to tape for situations that require strong, lasting sticking power. I am personally at least a third generation believer in the appropriateness of duct tape for a (ridiculously) wide variety of repairs.

Overheard on Tuesday afternoon in the math building:

Boy 1: "But girls always go for older guys. It's a law of nature."

Boy 2 (in a voice eerily reminiscent of Dr Suresh from Heroes): "I know. I'm 17. I don't stand a chance."

Boy 3: "Well...I guess you could hang out down by the junior high..."

Sally (thinking): My god, I am twice that kid's age.

I have finally decided that one big issue for me this semester, and a reason that I have been dissatisfied with it*, is that I am really feeling the lack of something that is apparently very important to me - the opportunity to demonstrate mastery.

* aside from things like usually feeling like crap since early January, which I am near to literally praying has been caused to a great degree by cedar fever and will go away!

This is easy to do on a nearly daily basis when you have a job, even an easy or mundane one (e.g. think of the guys at a Mongolian barbecue restaurant who get a kick out of spinning their spatulas in the air), and is a primary thing that I miss about having one. (In some respects, I feel the lack of this more than the lack of income because money can be saved up in a way that this other thing cannot.) Certainly at my jobs, I was an or even the expert in my area and had a lot of room for excelling at tasks and showing off what I can do.

Last semester, my scope for demonstrating mastery was a bit wider due to the format of my math class and the interaction- and presentation-intensive nature of my psychology class. In both of these classes, you could look me up in the registration list under "Bomb, Da."

This semester, I'm feeling very restrained. Some of this is internal - for instance, I do not make a lot of the comments that occur to me in my consumer behavior class because (1) it's just rude to dominate the discussion, given that people are trying to earn participation points that affect their grades, (2) many of the things I would say would simply not make sense to my classmates, who are business students not conversant in the relevant psychological terminology or familiar with the concepts (I do sometimes say these things, but I try to pick and choose opportunities that are less likely to screw with the prof's own teaching goals), and (3) I am hesitant to say something that reveals my history as a marketing professional or college graduate (from Rice). Point 3 is a kind of strange one; if I were not actually such an arrogant elitist, I would be able to do this casually and without particular consequence, but when it comes down to it, I assume that people will react to it in some way because they should. I really am better. Of course, if I were not capable of interacting with the material of a consumer behavior course at a much deeper level than my fellow Bobcat undergrads, my whole plan of getting into and succeeding in a good marketing PhD program to study consumer behavior would be even more misguided than it is.

Opportunities to shine in linear algebra are somewhat limited also, though I am glad that I was the one person who got a +2 to their exam grade by figuring out a proof on the fly. I have started talking more in stat class, which I had sort of fallen into the habit of not doing, perhaps because at the beginning, I did not actually know the answers? Both of these classes (in terms of the class experience and the subject matter) are fine, but I don't like them as much as I absolutely loved my calculus class. We've been doing sums of series and derivatives in stat class recently and I have perked up like a wilting plant given water.

Is the need to demonstrate mastery a form of the need for achievement (N Ach)?