Oh, by the way...

In 2011, it was my goal to post something to my blog once every day for the entire calendar year.  But at some point, I realised that I was posting for the sake of posting.

In 2012, I realised that I wanted my blog to have a direction.  So I pondered.  And pondered.  And pondered.

Wedding blanket finished this summer

In 2013, I decided that I would just blog when the mood struck.  When I had a book review to share, I would.  When I had an exceptional recipe that I was excited about, I would let you know.  When I finished a knitting/cross-stitch project and I wanted to show it off, by all means...

But I wouldn't feel pressured.  I wanted my blog to be something people WANTED to read -- not something that was a chore to read.  And I decided I'd ease back into blog writing.  We're into September, and I figure an average of one post every four months should give you plenty of time to catch up.

Let's catch up on a few things that have happened this year, shall we?

I had hip surgery where the surgeon went in and cut some extra bone off of the joint.  The rehab is going really well.  In fact, the surgeon says I'm MONTHS ahead of schedule!  For the first time in YEARS, I'm walking without either a cane or crutches!

I got reunited with a friend I'd lost touch with several years ago.  She's local, and we just happened to run into each other on the sidewalk outside of work one day when I was walking to lunch and she was walking to a parking garage to pick up her car.

I got accepted to a doctoral program in my field; it was my second time applying.

I quit my job so I can go back to being a full-time student.

I just joined three fantasy football teams, each with a different format (not that I'm excited about football season or anything).

But that's pretty much all I've had going since the last time I wrote.  

Like I said...  I'll just pop in and write when I have something to say.

See you again in another four months!

Mrs. Tennison and The "Just About" Debate, Part II

So, once again, I get slaughtered in the "Just About" debate.  Sigh.

It's okay.  Y'all are entitled to your wrong opinions.  :P

Today has been a mixed day.  NASCAR is back in full swing, but today's race meant Danica time, and I wasn't that thrilled with most of the Top Five finishers, with the lone exception being the guy who is now the Nationwide points leader.

Mom started working a doll fair today.  It's a three-day fair where everyone who has a table is selling something to do with dolls.  As most of you know, she makes American Girl doll clothes and accessories (the accessories are mostly doll bed sheets since AG sells doll bed, but no sheets.  Poor dolls!).  She called me from the fair, which was odd, so I ran to the phone.  (If you've ever been with me when Mom calls, you know she has a rather special ringtone.)  She asked if I remembered when I was in school.  Now, think about this for a second.  Is this anything that most people in their mid-30s who haven't suffered brain damage have forgotten?

Me: Uh, yes.
Mom: Do you remember being in [the gifted programme I was in.]
Me: Yes, Mother.
Mom: Do you remember Mrs. Tennison?
Me: Uh-huh.
Mom: Well, she's here.
Me: Mrs. Tennison is there?  Oh, wow! I remember her!  She was mean!
Mom: She was???
Me: Yeah.  Well, not mean, just, you know... not the warm fuzzy type.
Mom: Do you want to talk to her?
Me: Let me make sure I have the right person.  Is she kind of short and overweight?  And black hair?  And glasses?  And a big nose?  with a mole?
Mom: I don't see a mole.  But maybe it got cancerous and she had it removed.

Anyway, I got to talk to Mrs. Tennison for about ten minutes, and it was really lovely.  I didn't ask her about her mole, though.  That seemed rude.  She told me when I came back to town, I should look her up in the phone book and come visit her.  I just might.  I really enjoyed her class, and [the gifted programme] was always a respite from the rest of the school.

We were bussed to [the gifted programme] every Wednesday (each school in the district went on different days).  It was a special programme where we didn't do regular classes.  We got to do Logic (instead of Maths) and play with these things called computers (this WAS the mid-80s, remember) and had Creative Writing (instead of English) and every one else was either a nerd or a geek, too.  Going back to my regular school on Thursday was SUCH a letdown.

I really may look up Mrs. Tennison come December.

DrPH News

On Wednesday, I officially got news that my application for the DrPH programme for which I had applied was rejected. I think it was nice of them to let me know a full 34 days before classes were to have started. But the chair of the programme did handwrite a note of the bottom of the form rejection letter that reads "please call me if you'd like to discuss," and a neighbour of mine who's a professor told me this is a VERY encouraging sign.

Thank you to those of you who supported me through the roller-coaster of emotions this summer while I waited.

And now that I know that I won't be attending school, I'll start the job search in earnest. I had been hesitant to do so because I didn't want to start a job only to tell them that I had to leave because I found out that I was beginning school. And then, a few years later, have a bad reputation in the public health community for having shafted XYZ organisation.

So, now that my days are unscheduled for the next however long, I have contacted Michael Waltrip Racing (you may remember that I won a RaceDay Experience when I was in North Carolina) to claim tickets to the Dover race. Mom is going to fly out here, and we will go to that race together. Then we will fly to Kansas City together to attend the Kansas race together (those races are back-to-back weekends.

It's been a banner year: I lost a job, lost Oscar, got rejected from a school, and for those of you especially close to me, you know about The Big Drama going on this week that I won't be blogging about for matters of personal security.

Breathing again

Sorry I've been so quiet lately.

Last week, JUST as I was getting my essay wrapped up I called the admissions people just to make sure I would be DONE. Nope. They also needed a writing sample. WHAT? Yeah, a writing sample. Anything that was 5-30 pages would do. It could be anything that had been submitted while I did my Master's work. Okaaaaay. Deep breath.

I decided to just turn in my thesis. Then I decided on a paper I'd turned in for Dennis because I remembered that I had a paper he said he was going to keep as a sample of how to do that assignment. Then I dug it out and realised that the reason he said that was because I'd done the final exam as an outline and he thought it was creative and original and I'd thought outside the box. And if one didn't have the final exam question, the outline really made NO sense. Then I found another paper in the file I'd kept because he'd really liked it. So I decided to use that. Except it was too short. So I decided to turn it into a longer paper.

Then I went out with my friend Rachel to celebrate her birthday. And I caught her up on the Application Debacle. At this point, it's Thursday evening, and the application is due Monday morning. She felt that I should NOT turn in the Dennis paper and that I should turn in my thesis. She was pretty convincing. So I went home, called Mom, discussed it with her (for the THIRD time), woke up on Friday, and sent in my thesis.

DONE.

In the meantime, I've had two doctor appointments and both of my cats have had doctor appointments. They no longer think that I have early onset osteoarthritis of my pelvic joint; the new theory is that I somehow managed to tear my hip labrum (the cartilage on the socket part of the ball-and-socket of the hip joint).

My new PCP (who isn't really all that new since she filled in when my former PCP was sick or on maternity leave or otherwise unavailable) saw me for the first time and we had a great visit. I caught her up on my endo and GI appointments from last month, and the 6-day migraine I had a few weeks ago. She's referred me to someone for that since my former neurologist retired and I haven't found someone since who I like as much as that guy. The nurse practitioner I saw last time wanted me to schedule a physical, but the PCP said she doesn't think it's necessary since her plan is to see me every 3-4 months anyway, and she'll continue to coordinate my specialists, just as Mira did. And my next visit, we get to talk about My First Mammogram. Even though I'm young, since I also don't know my family medical history, she wants me to think about it.

As for the boys... Felix is healthy and Dr. Kurpel was impressed with how healthy his teeth are. We talked a lot about his increasingly aggressive behaviour (both toward me and Ocs), and she was really helpful and understanding, and she gave me a lot of tips on how to deal with him. As for Ocs, his thyroid levels are looking great and we've adjusted his meds slightly. But his new labs showed that he's slightly anemic, which his last month's labs didn't show, so we now need to keep an eye on that, too.

I also talked to Dr. Kurpel about how difficult it is to pill Ocs and how he hates Greenies Pill Pockets, and it doesn't help that I have NO idea what table foods he likes since I don't give them table food. I did figure out that he likes Velveeta, but that wore off in two weeks. Now I'm getting away with dipping the Velveeta in his canned food gravy first, but I can tell the novelty of that is wearing thin, too. So I asked her (pre-emptively) what to try next (cause I bought some hot dogs and he was NOT interested in those). She suggested trying beef or chicken baby food and grinding the pills in that, so we'll be trying that next. Pilling twice a day is getting to be not so much with the fun. Wish us luck!

I Should Be Writing...

but I need to vent.

I tendered my re-write to my friend Kristi last night. I told her that it wasn't COMPLETE, but I wanted to get her thoughts on it before I went completely down one road, only to find out that it was the wrong damn road. About half an hour later, she emailed me back, said my rewrite was much improved, made some suggestions, and had made a few edits.

I made supper, watched some television, and then I sat down to work again. Of the four things Kristi wanted me to work on, I worked on two of them. At 3:00 a.m., I finally called it quits, decided to sleep on the other two and finish them this morning. I figured I could do them today, she could review it today, we could polish over the weekend, and I could send everything in on Monday. Done!

So, right before I went to bed, I looked up the application checklist. And I discovered that the essay question has been changed from when the chair of the programme emailed it to me on 03 November. So... that's exciting. I had a dream about it this morning. In my dream, I went to the school to talk to the chair about it. But I ran into one of the deans instead. And she asked me about the Olympics. And I ranted about Team ROK getting screwed by the judges in speed skating.

Anyway, first thing this morning, I drafted an email to the chair, and then I called Kristi to read her the email. I wanted to make sure it didn't sound hostile or whiny. Basically, I'm just stating that I've nearly finished the answer to the essay question she emailed me, but just last night discovered the new question. So do I need to reposition the essay to fit the new question. I got an immediate response: She'll be out of the office until next Tuesday.

So Kristi said I just need to suck it up and start re-writing. We worked on an outline, and she gave me a deadline of Sunday to get her a good draft. We have a goal of getting this in the mail by Tuesday.

I'll start working when I finish crying. Mostly it's just sheer exhaustion at this point. I asked Kristi if getting the actual doctorate is this difficult every day (yes, I know it's difficult overall - duh), and she said it's different because if you miss on a paper, it's not as if they won't let you back into class the next day. This is to get in; thus, more pressure. Right.

UPDATE: I just received an email back from the chair. "The website is wrong. Please use the question I sent you."

I need a drink.

Ball o' Stress

Woke up this morning to a strange sound. Turned out that my ceiling was leaking. And Felix was freaking out that water was coming out of the hallway (of course, as I told Cristi, this is the same cat who freaks out about his tail occasionally).

Called the maintenance guy. Haven't heard back yet.

Then, on some random whim, I decided to check on something on my doctoral application. Apparently, at some point in time, the school changed the application deadline from 15 April to 15 March. Did they decide to let us poor applicants know this? No. So those of us with partial application packets are now scrambling. And, of course, I'm one of them.

What does this mean for me? Well, I called the Admissions Office to find out.

After being told that they're experiencing a high volume of calls and that my wait might exceed three minutes, then waiting ten minutes, then being told I could leave a message, I hung up and called back later and got through to someone. He told me that they had only received one of my three letters of recommendation (and told me which one they'd received). But they did have all of my transcripts. They still need my portfolio and my essay.

But I had been planning on re-taking the GRE in about two weeks (Ria can tell you that I've been copiously studying for it lately), and I was actually going to pay for it this Friday with my last severance cheque! Good thing I found out today that I needn't do that! See, even if I took it TOMORROW, the scores wouldn't get to Drexel in time for it to count by the deadline. My current scores are fine, but I'm confident that I could have improved at least the quantitative portion.

As for the essay, I've been working on it for the past couple of weeks, with the idea that I could work on it, let it marinate, have my proofreaders have a go at it, rework it, set it aside, revisit it, lather, rinse, repeat until I was satisfied with the final product. Instead, now I'll have to eat, drink, breathe this until I'm sick of it. I don't have the luxury of setting it aside and knitting on some thoughts and letting things marinate for awhile.

As for my letter writers, I was able to successfully contact both of them today. One of them said he SWORE he sent it in December, but he'd send it again today. The other said he was aware he hadn't sent it yet, but he promised he would on Tuesday. I trust him. He's the Wonder Dennis who some of you might remember from my Master's days.

Speaking of, he's currently getting me through today. I didn't think anyone could make me laugh today, but he did. Here's the email exchange that just took place:

From me to Dennis:
Dennis,

Thank you very much. I remain very appreciative of all that you do for me.

This deadline change threw me for a loop. I had been planning on re-taking the GRE in two weeks, but I guess I won't be doing that now. I was actually going to pay for it this Friday! I'm polishing my essay now; I just got some notes back from my friend Kristi (you met her at my defense). She also sent me a Paul Farmer article to read to enhance my rewrite. She's funny; this is why I like her. Sorry for the babbling; I'm stressed.

Thanks again,
Min
------------------------------------
From Dennis to me:

well, calm down.
------------------------------------
From me to Dennis:

Roger that.

Thanks :)

Joining the Ranks of the Unemployed

As some of you have already heard, I got laid off yesterday.

My boss gave me several reassurances that this was absolutely not a performance issue, so much so that she and the Director of HR apparently spent the last couple of weeks trying to "reposition" me within the hospital. They thought they had something for me, but it didn't pan out. They gave me a list of the open positions in the entire system (we have several hospitals and organisations) in case I saw something that interested me or thought I might be qualified for that they didn't see. They made sure that I knew how to get ahold of the HR Director and the Director of Employment Services in case I apply to something so I can let them know.

My boss said that she and another higher-up had also fought really hard on my behalf, but clearly it was for naught.

My boss also pulled some strings so that I didn't get the typical "here's a box to pack and we will escort you out in an hour" treatment. She had apparently told them quite firmly that I take public transit to work every day and she was not putting me in the position of lugging a box home on the subway, and that if I needed to come back next week to pick up the rest they would not give me a problem with that.

I spent the rest of the morning with my boss showing her what I do, how to do my job, trying to give her as much of the knowledge that I store in my head as I could, etc. There was a funny moment when I was giving her a rundown of monthly deadlines and who I distribute monthly data to on a regular basis that she wasn't aware of; the look on her face was PRICELESS. At one point, she told me she had no idea who was going to do the monthly graphs from now on, and I wished her luck.

I went online last night and looked at the job descriptions/qualifications of the listings they gave me that were remotely interesting, but they've either been pulled or filled (guess which one I suspect given that I was one of several casualties this week at the hospital). I've been poking around looking at some other sites and jobs that are open, but I'm taking SOME time, considering that I desperately need to finish my PhD applications and I've been toying with the idea of retaking the GRE, which I can now do any day of the week and not have to wait for a Saturday testing day (and have ample time to study).

I have severance and they're paying out my vacation days. They said they won't contest my unemployment (big of them), and gave me all of the information I need to apply. They explained my COBRA benefits, which actually aren't TOO painful, given that I HAVE to have health insurance. My provided insurance will last until the end of February and then I'll start COBRA-ing in March.

I am in such shock and disbelief. And I am so VERY thankful for the outpouring of support I've had since 11:08 a.m. yesterday morning when the first IM went out. And REALLY grateful for the Ben & Jerry's Brownie Batter Ice Cream and several hours of company last night, Kirsten! That cardigan's going to be great!

You take the good, you take the bad...

So you know how all summer EVERY blog entry was about how I was sick? Then EVERY entry was about MJ? Well, now you have to suffer through EVERY entry being about PhD applications. Sorry.

So... the update thus far.

There aren't many schools that offer PhDs in Health Services Research. Of those that do, I immediately eliminated UCLA, UC-Berkeley, Texas A&M, U of North Texas (never even knew they existed), U of Minnesota, and SLU. After a little more consideration, I eliminated U of Alabama at Birmingham, U of Iowa, U of Florida, U of Arkansas, and Ohio State. Which leaves me applying to: U of Washington, BU, and Pittsburgh.

But I found out that Pittburgh's programme is REALLY new. The SPH (School of Public Health - us public healthers are REALLY fond of abbreviations, acronymns, and backronyms) is well-established, but the HSR PhD programme is BRAND NEW. As in, if I were to be admitted next year, I'd be in their second admitted class. And that makes me really leery. Especially after being at Drexel for two years and hearing "you're the biggest class we've ever had and we don't know what to do with all of you" for two solid years.

However, I spoke to a woman at BU yesterday and she told me that they have a grand total of... THREE seats to offer to applicants for next year's class. THREE. They normally seat four, but one of this year's acceptees deferred to next year. She mentioned that while she knows I have a Master's degree already, I might want to consider applying for their MSc programme in HSR. People who do their MSc programme and go on to apply to their PhD programme in HSR are "typically pretty successful applicants." Of course, the downside to that is that I'd have to come up with my own funding if I was a Master's-level student again.

BUT, she did say that most of those students don't complete the Master's and they transition to the PhD programme after the first semester. The courses taken during the Master's programme count toward the PhD. AND, it doesn't cost any more to apply to both programmes. So I am considering it.

But after being in shock from hearing her say "three seats available..." It just echoed in my head all evening... like an effect from a bad horror movie. So I started giving Seattle a really hard look. And I really liked what I saw. I'd pick an area of concentration, and I easily selected mine last night.

But applying to only three schools when I know that one is BRAND NEW (and thus probably not accepting many students) and another is only taking three students makes me really nervous. So now I'm looking at some of the schools I had rejected after a lot of thought. Maybe I could stand Ohio State...? or Minnesota...?

SO.

THE GOOD NEWS.

The former Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Drexel's SPH (he left Drexel the fall after I graduated) answered my email to him earlier this morning. Apparently, he is "more than happy" to write a letter of recommendation for me for my PhD applications.

My 100th Post

Well, I was hoping for something a little more exciting, but here we go...

Several people have been encouraging me to try applying for Fall 2010 admission. The thought process is basically this: If MY idea is that waiting a year helps me save money, in that year, I'll be living like a poor grad student while aggressively saving money to prepare for being a poor grad student. So why not actually just BE a poor grad student.

The schools I'm looking at require the same thing: three letters of recommendation; transcripts from every school I've ever attended, ever walked by, ever thought about, ever Googled, ever talked about, etc,; a personal statement/letter of interest; GRE score from the last five years (thank God I took it in 2006). And now the ASPH (Assoc. of Schools of Public Health) now has SOPHAS (Schools of Public Hlth Application System), which makes things easier. You feed everything to them one time, tell them where you want to apply, and they distribute. Less hassle, less expensive (paying for transcripts ONCE vs a floppity jillion times - golden!) = awesome.

So. Have any of you ever lived in, know anything about living in, know anyone who has ever lived in: Birmingham, Boston, Pittsburgh, or Seattle?

My Life These Days

Monday and Friday: 7:00-3:30 Work
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday: 8:00-4:30 Work; 5:10-7:50 Calc I

Sixteen weeks worth of Calc I in six weeks.

Some school better fucking accept me. If I don't get my PhD after this hellacious term, I'ma be pissed.

Yes, I did CHOOSE to do it this way, but I have my reasons, mostly having to do with the maintenance of my sanity. I don't think I can stand to work this job three more years, so I've accelerated my pre-PhD schedule. I'll do Calc I this summer, Calc II and III next academic year, Linear Algebra next summer, and then use the following year to re-take the GRE and apply to as many schools as I can afford.

I have a good handle on which schools I'm DEFINITELY applying to, but I still need to figure out a few "safety schools." Speaking of, is there even such a thing as a safety school when it comes to PhDs???? I mean, I've already got the "I have no chance in hell, but let's give this Asian female thing a ride and see where it takes us" schools picked out, but something tells me I also need to be a bit realistic, too.

On to bed. Big midterm this Tuesday. Am still exhausted from weekend.

Promise to get back to updating re: race weekend soon.

RIP President Papadakis

I am sitting here shocked and saddened. Having not read or watched the news yesterday, I just found out this morning that the president of Drexel University, Constantine "Taki" Papadakis passed away on Sunday, from complications of lung cancer. Part of what makes this so stunning is that it was just LAST WEEK that he announced a six-month medical leave of absence.

I never met Taki, but I have some excellent pics of him from graduation.

Here's Taki speaking to us about the responsibility of being a Drexel alum:

And here's Taki with our commencement speaker, Acting Surgeon General Rear Admiral Steven Galson. Note Taki's commencement bling:

I have attended two other colleges, and to save my life, I couldn't tell you who the president of either college was. And those colleges COMBINED aren't as large as Drexel.

Never before have I received an email from a university president telling me to email him at any time with ideas or concerns. Never before have I heard of the university president holding town hall meetings with the students.

Taki saved Drexel. Within two years of his taking the helm, Drexel went from being $2 million in the red to being $2 million in the black. At his first faculty meeting at Drexel, he told professors that if they continued to take summer Fridays off, they could expect to see a 20% salary reduction.

Under Taki, Drexel acquired a med school, a law school, a school of public health, and an expanded school of education. Drexel's co-op programme grew and flourished and currently places approximately 4,000 undergrad student in paid internships in 1,400 community organisations and businesses.

He was dedicated to academics and to ensuring that one could say with pride that one graduated from Drexel University.

He will be profoundly missed.

Darren Dean: My egg baby

My senior year of high, we had to have an egg baby. We had to have this child for a week. Any cracks in said child, and we were found guilty of child abuse. If the egg baby was neglected or kidnapped, we were found guilty of endangerment or neglect.

Our punishment was one I wanted to avoid AT ALL COSTS. We would have to wear a sign around our neck that said something witty like "ASK ME HOW I ABUSE MY CHILD" or "CHILD ABUSER" or "I NEGLECT MY CHILD."

I did have an incident with my Darren one day and he suffered a crack (these were hollowed eggs). However, my mother knew that such a punishment at school would be The End of Me. We couldn't create a new baby because each egg had been stamped by the teacher. So my mom and my grandma conspired to clothe Darren. By the end of the night, Darren had a cute, red, plaid diaper.

Darren got injured because I was stupid. I would also like to point out that had Darren been an ACTUAL child, said incident would never have occurred. See, I carried Darren around in a little wicker basket. I need to squeeze between the car and the deep freeze. I often raised my arms above my head to accomplish this feat. But this evening, I had a basket in my hand. Force of habit being what it is, I raised my arms above my head, the basket was upside down, and down Darren came.

Oops.

After All the Queens had put Darren back together again (get it?), Darren went to his first hockey game. There, I informed one of his namesakes that he had an egg named after him. Let me tell you, professional athletes get freaked out about the TINIEST things.

I think we actually had it easy. My mom (she taught Family Relations and Parenting as part of her home-ec curriculum) made her students carry five-pound flour sacks. Of course, she preferred that they clothe them, etc. And, like my class, they had to account for their baby-sitting time, etc., if they left the child anywhere.

Then she got these fake babies approved. Babies that actually cried at random intervals. You shut the baby up by putting a key in the baby's back, turning it, and holding it there for a set amount of time (so you couldn't just put the key in, turn the child on it's stomach, and leave it). AND this had a device in it that would tell Mom for how long the baby cried before it was "fed" or "comforted."

Her favourite story is when one of her students complained. "Mrs. Phillips, people on the bus look at me funny. I've got my baby, my diaper bag, my stroller, plus this fake baby, my backpack... "

It was a fun project. I wish the punishment hadn't been public humiliation, though. I FEARED wearing one of those signs, and not in a good way.

Kind of like when we had to do The Marriage Project and I couldn't find someone to fake marry me. I managed to tell the teacher without crying, but Jody didn't.

Of course, she's married now and I'm not, so there ya go.

In which I try to decide whether to throw in the towel

Some of you have heard me talk about my Epidemiology of HIV/AIDS professor. I hate him. He's an asshat.

He didn't make a good first impression on me when during the first session when he referenced his "contract with Temple" no less than three times (he's an adjunct). He didn't change the impression on the third meeting when he showed us a movie for the entire two hours. Folks, this is a grad-level course. After the movie, he told us that we didn't get to the point that he really wanted us to see (it's called a DVD, moron, and you can start or ffwd to that section). Then he went around the room and asked half of us what we thought about the movie. Not, mind you, "Does anyone have any thoughts about the movie?" or "Does anyone have anything they'd like to discuss about the movie?"

Today was the fifth meeting of the course. Before today, he has blamed the high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Haiti on bisexuals. Then last week, he asked us to discuss the following case study: Tony is a homosexual male who has had three sex partners in the past six months, two of whom he did not know well. Pam has been married to John for ten years. John is the only person Pam has had sex with. They use oral contraceptives for family planning. Who is at greatest risk for contracting HIV and why?

Some people said Tony because he had multiple sex partners. Some said Pam because we don't know if John is stepping out on her. I asked if we can say that they're at equal risk because they're both sexually active and we don't know who's using condoms. He said no. Then since we were all arguing about it, he decided to make it an assignment. No more than one page, double-spaced.

After talking to several people about it, I decided to phrase my answer thusly: In terms of population statistics, a homosexual male with multiple sex partners has a greater risk of contracting HIV than a heterosexual female with one sex partner does. However, when assessing the individual risk of Tony and Pam, I would need information on whether Tony is having oral or anal sex, whether John is monogamous, whether any of them are using condoms, whether any of them are using drugs, etc., to make an accurate, informed decision.

Today, he started class by asking us how we answered the paper. He told those of us who chose Pam that we were wrong. He told those of us who answered both or neither, that we were wrong. He took his laser pointer and circled "homosexual," "three sex partners," and "didn't know well." Then he told us that since Pam was using oral contraceptives that she and John are "responsible." WTF???

He then spent the next 20 or so minutes explaining to us that homosexuality is a risk factor for HIV. One woman in class and I vehemently argued against him. Our argument is that sexual orientation (or "sexual preference," as he refers to it -- ASSHAT) is not a risk factor. The BEHAVIOUR is a risk factor. A gay man could have protected sex and a straight woman could have unprotected sex. It's the use (or not) or safer sex precautions that makes on at risk, not eh mere orientation. He told we were wrong.

I hate him.

Nancy had talked me out of dropping the course last week, but I'm 95% sure now that I will drop it.

And I had SUCH high hopes for this course.

Stressed Much? Why, yes, I even have proof.

While several of you know that I have some slight OCD going on, very few (if any) of you know that when I am VERY stressed out, I have a nasty habit. And by VERY stressed out, I mean that I didn't do this particular thing when I was in hospital last year for 15 days, when I was going through Thesis Hell (tm) last year, or when I was unemployed and scared that I would have to move back to Missouri.

However, now with having a job that I love, working with people that I love, and facing the very real possibility of losing my job, combined with the stress of having exactly one full day and either one or two evenings (depending on the week) to myself (as in, no commitments), combined with the stress of hating one of my professors because he's clearly homophobic/biphobic, combined with The Big Project at work putting a ton of pressure on me...

Plus, the universe continues to throw shit at my friends. I have friends who are trying to make major life decisions that aren't easy to make. Friends going through major life adjustments. Friends dealing with illness and death. And while I'M not going through it, what affects my friends affects me. Because I love them. And I want to be there for them.

Yeah.

I'm taking a bit of a leap of faith here because some of you won't understand. And that's okay. Some of you might not even TRY to understand. And I can understand that, too, although it's unfortunate. But I have faith that those of you that are my True Friends will try to understand, even if you don't.

So. When I get VERY stressed, I pick at my skin. Usually the skin on my lips. Think about when someone has chapped lips and they pick the dead skin off. Not a big deal, right? Now think about doing that until the lips are bleeding. And they aren't even chapped. The person just digs into the skin with their nails and picks and picks and picks until there's something to grab onto. And then keeps picking. And won't let it heal.

I had an appointment with my therapist today and I told her that I've been so stressed that I started picking again. When I moved my hand away from my mouth, she could see it from across the room. She was shocked. I haven't done this in YEARS - as in, probably about four years, if not more. I've worked hard to develop other methods of coping with stress, but they've all failed me now.

And the fact that I fell off the wagon in and of itself kind of wigs me out.

But she and I talked and I feel better. We reviewed coping mechanisms. We talked about how to deal with work stress. She gave me ideas for managing my homophobic professor. She helped me brainstorm where to do the job search.

But still...

The Blogspot Virgin

So, obviously, this is my first post on my new blog.

For those of you who know how the hell this works, feel free to drop me a line and give me the advice you wish you'd known when you started your blog here.

And for those of you who are so inclined, grab some popcorn, sit back, and watch me experiment with figuring out wtf I'm doing here.

Speaking of figuring out wtf I'm doing here... I have homework calling my name. So I'll be back later with something a bit more exciting to say... I hope!