![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
awhyzipWhat an unsettling day this has been in terms of my mood.
I kept myself up last night finalizing my portion of a big programming assignment from Cognitive Modelling. The course is really interesting and I actually do enjoy the projects for it, but they take so much effort. This one especially I have been allowing to consume huge portions of my life. Before I knew it, I saw the sun lightening the horizon. Because I had been working in fornt of the panoramic window of the hall lounge, I had a gorgeous view. I stopped to watch the day break over a skyline of downtown Boston and forested hills, then put myself to bed.
When I woke up the next morning, I expected to be incredibly groggy, but instead everything felt vivid and good. Admittedly, I slept right thru my classmate's helpful wake-up call, but once I was out of bed I felt alert and happy.
The happiness was a surprise. Low-key happiness used to be my default emotion, but I have been missing it this year. I blame that on having 5 courses, 3 of which are extra-heavy loads, and on my serious attempt to live life by a schedule. So far I have been able to keep almost up to date with all my work. But I have not been happy. I don't know if it is really the classs' faults. Also before the semester really began, I was feeling anxious rather than happy. At that time I blamed it on fear because I had an arbitrary schedule and was scared that I wouldn't be able to find courses I would like by the end of add-drop. So it's always school's fault, no?
At the mandatory "re-entry" meeting for study-abroad students, one of the speakers talked to us at length about reverse culture shock. She warned us of depression and forced everyone to share in small groups. At the time I thought it a total waste of 2 hours of my life. I still think that meeting was useless, except that now I have the idea that maybe the fact that I had a semester abroad and now am returned may be causing me psychological issues. I wasn't worried about that before this meeting! But, I do not feel any sort of culture shock (reverse or otherwards), and to be honest Australia didn't feel that shock-y.
Back when I was attending that meeting, what I was feeling was simply a lack of the excitement I ususally felt at being back at Brandeis. By now it has gotten worse. Most days I am not happy. If I am in a good mood, there generally needs to be a specific cause for it -- and they can dissappear scarily fast. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the issue of "anger management" has been concerning me. Little annoyances flare me into rages. When I can calm down, the good mood is pretty well irretrievable because I hold resentment at loosing my tranquility!
(That was when one of my older friends lent me a couple comic books after I told him about how I was feeling angry: Transmetropolitan; he said I might like Spider Jerusalem, the main character. Spider's rages are so much worse than mine it worked like a reverse shock -- I realized I don't hate people as much as that guy does. I wish I had more Sandman's to read.)
But back to my story of today: today when I woke up, I felt happy. I went to most of Developmental Psych, and felt happy. I sat thru Discrete Structures, and only felt bored. I busily did work until Anthropology of Writing Systems class, and was still in a good mood at the end. In Anthro, we spent the end of class organizing upcoming presentations and suchlike. Despite the fact that we were focusing on student scheduling responsibilities, I managed to avoid the despondancy that making plans often brings me to. I have a group now, for the presentations in two weeks. All thru doing homework in the after noon, I was feeling happy -- until abruptly at about 5:30pm.
Nothing had happened, but I realized the happyness was fading away. I responded to some group members about our project (due yesterday). By 20 minutes later, I was back to the unpleasantly blah mood that has been oppressing me for so long. I debated if I should push on, or try to cheer up. Decided to take a short break, and stop by a pal's room. He lives in the same building and I though maybe a chat with him would be good for me.
I caught him when he was just on the way to the shower, so I took a seat on a box at the end of his hallway to wait for him to come back. As I was waiting, two tall guys came by. One of them suggested that I was sitting on someone's property, and the second one was the roomate of the first guy and the owner of the box. Box-owner seems put out to find me sequestering myself in his box and tells me to get off of it. This box was left out in a corner of the public hall and contains what is apparently a comforter or down jacket, visible thru the gap between the top flaps. It was remarkably comfortable to sit on.
I got off of the box, and told the guy that if he wants his box to be inviolable, he probably shouldn't choose to leave it in a public passageway. Guy seems mildly defensive and volunteers that it wasn't in anybody's way. This is true, the box was in a dead-end corner, which is what had attracted me to it already. I go on the offensive in order to avoid being the apologetic defensive one, and magnamiously assure him that he did alright at not having his box block the passage, then walk to the nearest other corner and collapse into tears.
Ten minutes before, I was perfectly stable and decent!
If you understand how important my sense of location and freedom of exploration is to me, this overreaction will make more sense, but even to me, I knew I was overreacting. I stayed in the corner by the ladies bathroom door for about an hour, weeping uncontrolledly.
Within half an hour from simple happiness, to hiding in a corner, to tears!
Eventually, two girls from the floor above stopped by, and sat with me for several minutes. They lent me some tissues, and assured me that I am not crazy. The most unsettling thing about the whole incident was how suddenly I fell from one mood to the other -- even though nothing had happened. They understood that. Bless them.
I got their names, and it turns out we have mutual friends.
As a final explanation, there's the old stand-by of lack of sleep. That's been hitting me pretty hard, these last few weeks. I'm not going to be able to really catch up until the end of the week, which seems so far away. Today was a Monday. I have confidence for my two midterms, but it is mostly confidence based on wishful thinking. I'm not sure what could help most.
All is not bad, but I wish it were better.
I kept myself up last night finalizing my portion of a big programming assignment from Cognitive Modelling. The course is really interesting and I actually do enjoy the projects for it, but they take so much effort. This one especially I have been allowing to consume huge portions of my life. Before I knew it, I saw the sun lightening the horizon. Because I had been working in fornt of the panoramic window of the hall lounge, I had a gorgeous view. I stopped to watch the day break over a skyline of downtown Boston and forested hills, then put myself to bed.
When I woke up the next morning, I expected to be incredibly groggy, but instead everything felt vivid and good. Admittedly, I slept right thru my classmate's helpful wake-up call, but once I was out of bed I felt alert and happy.
The happiness was a surprise. Low-key happiness used to be my default emotion, but I have been missing it this year. I blame that on having 5 courses, 3 of which are extra-heavy loads, and on my serious attempt to live life by a schedule. So far I have been able to keep almost up to date with all my work. But I have not been happy. I don't know if it is really the classs' faults. Also before the semester really began, I was feeling anxious rather than happy. At that time I blamed it on fear because I had an arbitrary schedule and was scared that I wouldn't be able to find courses I would like by the end of add-drop. So it's always school's fault, no?
At the mandatory "re-entry" meeting for study-abroad students, one of the speakers talked to us at length about reverse culture shock. She warned us of depression and forced everyone to share in small groups. At the time I thought it a total waste of 2 hours of my life. I still think that meeting was useless, except that now I have the idea that maybe the fact that I had a semester abroad and now am returned may be causing me psychological issues. I wasn't worried about that before this meeting! But, I do not feel any sort of culture shock (reverse or otherwards), and to be honest Australia didn't feel that shock-y.
Back when I was attending that meeting, what I was feeling was simply a lack of the excitement I ususally felt at being back at Brandeis. By now it has gotten worse. Most days I am not happy. If I am in a good mood, there generally needs to be a specific cause for it -- and they can dissappear scarily fast. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the issue of "anger management" has been concerning me. Little annoyances flare me into rages. When I can calm down, the good mood is pretty well irretrievable because I hold resentment at loosing my tranquility!
(That was when one of my older friends lent me a couple comic books after I told him about how I was feeling angry: Transmetropolitan; he said I might like Spider Jerusalem, the main character. Spider's rages are so much worse than mine it worked like a reverse shock -- I realized I don't hate people as much as that guy does. I wish I had more Sandman's to read.)
But back to my story of today: today when I woke up, I felt happy. I went to most of Developmental Psych, and felt happy. I sat thru Discrete Structures, and only felt bored. I busily did work until Anthropology of Writing Systems class, and was still in a good mood at the end. In Anthro, we spent the end of class organizing upcoming presentations and suchlike. Despite the fact that we were focusing on student scheduling responsibilities, I managed to avoid the despondancy that making plans often brings me to. I have a group now, for the presentations in two weeks. All thru doing homework in the after noon, I was feeling happy -- until abruptly at about 5:30pm.
Nothing had happened, but I realized the happyness was fading away. I responded to some group members about our project (due yesterday). By 20 minutes later, I was back to the unpleasantly blah mood that has been oppressing me for so long. I debated if I should push on, or try to cheer up. Decided to take a short break, and stop by a pal's room. He lives in the same building and I though maybe a chat with him would be good for me.
I caught him when he was just on the way to the shower, so I took a seat on a box at the end of his hallway to wait for him to come back. As I was waiting, two tall guys came by. One of them suggested that I was sitting on someone's property, and the second one was the roomate of the first guy and the owner of the box. Box-owner seems put out to find me sequestering myself in his box and tells me to get off of it. This box was left out in a corner of the public hall and contains what is apparently a comforter or down jacket, visible thru the gap between the top flaps. It was remarkably comfortable to sit on.
I got off of the box, and told the guy that if he wants his box to be inviolable, he probably shouldn't choose to leave it in a public passageway. Guy seems mildly defensive and volunteers that it wasn't in anybody's way. This is true, the box was in a dead-end corner, which is what had attracted me to it already. I go on the offensive in order to avoid being the apologetic defensive one, and magnamiously assure him that he did alright at not having his box block the passage, then walk to the nearest other corner and collapse into tears.
Ten minutes before, I was perfectly stable and decent!
If you understand how important my sense of location and freedom of exploration is to me, this overreaction will make more sense, but even to me, I knew I was overreacting. I stayed in the corner by the ladies bathroom door for about an hour, weeping uncontrolledly.
Within half an hour from simple happiness, to hiding in a corner, to tears!
Eventually, two girls from the floor above stopped by, and sat with me for several minutes. They lent me some tissues, and assured me that I am not crazy. The most unsettling thing about the whole incident was how suddenly I fell from one mood to the other -- even though nothing had happened. They understood that. Bless them.
I got their names, and it turns out we have mutual friends.
As a final explanation, there's the old stand-by of lack of sleep. That's been hitting me pretty hard, these last few weeks. I'm not going to be able to really catch up until the end of the week, which seems so far away. Today was a Monday. I have confidence for my two midterms, but it is mostly confidence based on wishful thinking. I'm not sure what could help most.
All is not bad, but I wish it were better.
