How The Hell Do I Talk To People

how the hell do i talk to people

A day in the life of homeschool:

Wake up at 8am. Get ready for the day. Start school at 9 at the kitchen table. Math, vocabulary/spelling, reading. Lunch break from 11:30-12, eat great food made by parents. Grammar, logic/rhetoric, creative writing, Latin. History on MWF and science on TR. Proper school ending at 3pm, do any leftover work following. Average homework time: ~1 hour. Spend the rest of the day reading and drawing (before Internet, also restricted video game time). School consisting of hard books and assignments, no hard due dates. Math: new lesson + 30 problems each day. Reading: read as much of book as possible per day, then write a paper after finishing the book. Science: read about new concept on Tuesday, do experiment + writeup on Thursday. Other classes: read concept, do work, in that order.

A day in the life of gifted school:

Wake up at 7:30am. Quickly get ready for the day. Rush to 8am class. If no 8am class, sleep until ~30min before class. One class every hour MWF, every 90 minutes TR. Six classes per week, minimum. Lunch break around 12, ~1 hr; eat cafeteria food with an Icee. Take notes in every class. No in-class work. Finish class ~3pm. Spend the rest of the day socializing with friends, on the computer playing games/browsing the Internet, or doing homework. Average homework time: ~3 hours, ± procrastination. Work consists of papers and busy work. Math, science: ~20 problems per week. English: One paper ~every three weeks. History: one major paper every semester. If test, vigorously study notes multiple times. Always do work the day or two before it's due.

A day in the life of college, quarter system:

Wake up at 7:30am. Quickly get ready for the day. Rush to 8am class. One class every 90 minutes MWF, one class every 2 hours TR. Four classes per week, maximum; also, all classes lie on MWF in the morning. Take sparse notes in some classes. No class work. Laptop dies in the middle of the third class, no big problem. Lunch after classes at ~12:30, eating fast food with (essentially) free money, restaurant lines go out the door. Spend the rest of the day (or all day TR) back at the dorm/house, on the computer, alone; occasionally hang with friends from high school. Average homework time: ~10min. Work consists of busy work due (and worked on) a week after the lesson was taught. If test, study notes once, five minutes before class. Occasionally skip super easy work that isn't 100% necessary.

I am so bored lately it's not even funny.

There is no good time to have class

Classes in the morning: uggghhh I'm so tired

Classes around noon: let me out already I'm hungry

Classes in the afternoon: today is almost over just finish already

Classes in the evening: why did I sign up for night class

50 followers!

Hooray for arbitrary milestones! shoulda waited til 64

I've nothing to offer for this occasion but immense gratitude and appreciation. Thank you to the 30 legitimate followers for making me feel special, and thank you to the 20 bots/spammers for making me feel like I'm making progress now and again.

And let's not forget those of you without Tumblr accounts who visit my blog regularly. You're awesome too.

Custom tracks in Mario Kart 8.

It's happening.

Paranoia pt. 5: The ongoing struggle

My first quarter of college went really well, but that was from being cooped up at home doing nothing all summer. I was ready to do some work and get some stuff done. Winter quarter didn't go so well, and spring quarter was even more of a struggle, as my complacent tendencies kept getting worse and worse.

I was certain that my pill was the cause. Between that and some new information that it can cause memory loss in some cases, I was tired of it. So, midway through winter quarter, I stopped taking it. There were no adverse side effects (probably because I halved the dose over a period of time), but I did notice myself get more tense and jumpy, and my thoughts raced faster. I haven't had a panic attack since.

But it was immediately apparent that the pill wasn't the problem. It didn't necessarily get worse because I stopped taking the pill, but it did keep getting worse at the same steady rate as before. By spring quarter, I was barely staying afloat grade-wise, and my attendance record was 50% overall.

At some point I even stopped making levels. When I noticed this, I really began to worry about myself. "Maybe I have depression or something? No, that's just my paranoia again. I just have a really bad work ethic. Haven't I always been this way, though? I was this bad in high school too."

With my record this past quarter, I am once again appalled that anyone took pity on my and let me keep my scholarship. And of course these feelings of worthlessness are bigger than just that, knowing that I don't have the drive to complete a simple assignment, or even fully enjoy my hobbies. I feel like I've just turned into a little ball of consumption with nothing to give back.

And thus we arrive at the present day, where somehow all of these feelings of shame, worthlessness, and nothingness have somehow, some way increased tenfold over the summer, even though I've had little to no real work to do. Every time, I think that maybe something's wrong with me, only to remember my paranoid tendencies and tell myself that it's actually my fault.

Just less than a week ago now, a close friend of mine who was worried about me showed me a game called Depression Quest. It's a short text-based browser game playing in the role of someone with depression. The player is given a set of possible ways to deal with a situation, but some of them are crossed out due to the player's condition.

It scared me how much I was able to relate to almost everything in the game. That was the real turning point for me, in thinking that maybe it's not just my paranoia, and maybe something is beyond my control here... Reading and hearing about other people's stories of depression only make me more and more convinced of this:

I think I have depression too.