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katstergot my router working.
so now I'm watching debian do its thing on prufrock, while I'm sitting here on Macavity typing this LJ entry and IRCing and poking through LJ. I'm going to go to bed here soon so I can wake up and do homework *gasp*, but there's a lot on my mind and maybe typing it out will help.
i'm starting to feel somewhat isolated. The depression beast is slipping in and nibbling away at my self-confidence. I've been seriously pondering dropping out of graduate school, that's how horribly desperate I'm starting to feel. It's difficult to tell the difference between what is real and what is just the depression beast talking. I'm not sure how to tell, and I need help.
The biggest problem is 208, Systems Analysis and Design. I got an email from my TA in that class asking me to call her because she's concerned about my project. I haven't managed to get the guts up to call her back, and maybe it's something simple, but I hate notes like that. Especially when I'm fighting a depression, those sorts of things have my mind jumping to the worst case solution. This is something I need to get up the courage to do tomorrow, and it's hard when I'm expecting the worst case. And I'm not a business major. Mission, Goals, and Objectives seem like entirely stupid concepts to me, and to be utterly honest, I don't learn well when I think things are stupid. Which means dragging my sorry ass into Yale on Monday and asking if he can make sense of things for me, or at least have them not appear stupid.
I can't dodge the TA forever, though, she's the captain of our softball team, and softball is one of the few joys I have in my life at the moment. So I'll prolly call her back tomorrow.
The second big problem is my other required class, 206, Distributed Systems. Take what I said about not being a business major above. Substitute "computer science" for business. Same thing. I feel overwhelmed in that class, and it doesn't help that I accidentally read chapter 3 instead of chapter 4. No wonder I was expecting networking on a quiz where networking didn't show up, I read the wrong chapter. We have another quiz on Tuesday, and this time it's only on one chapter, and so I'll try my desperate hardest to make sense of things. I'm more worried about this, but it's groupwork, and there's not much I can do about it except hope and pray. I have a difficult time programming, it just doesn't contain much interest for me. And again, maybe it's worth bugging Tygar and Chuang and see if they can make some sense of why I'm going to need this.
In my last class, I'm actually doing okay. I like Glushko as an instructor, and I'm actually sorta getting XML stuff, so... I still need to go in and talk with him, just because the illness is going to try to screw with my head there too.
And then I have to find time to finish Java from last semester. Whee. Kill me now. And I think I'll bug Lyman about why he thought of accepting me, he's familiar with bipolar and maybe if I phrase it that the depression beast is munching on me, maybe he'll tell me.
I don't want to drop out, because dropping out means going home to Redding. And going home to Redding is a failure, and I fear that if I ever go back to that town for more than a visit, it's going to reach out and swallow me whole, and I'm going to be stuck there. And as much as it's beautiful country, I think I will kill myself if I have to go back there. It's devoid of most sentient life, and I get the vague implication most of the people there are only there because there's nowhere better to go. Soul crunching, mind melting horrible Redding.
But what does one do when one isn't happy with one's current situation, but finds that the alternative is worse? Right now, I'm staring down two pathways, and they both lead to soul crunching depression, and I'm not sure which way to go.
o/~ if I was not so weak/ if I was not so cold/ if I was not so scared of broken/ growing old/ i would be... / i would be... o/~
I don't have many friends in the bay area. There's Luns, but Luns has things to do too. I don't think I'd call anybody in my program a "friend", although some are closer than others, but they've all formed cliques that I don't feel like I totally belong in. The few callahanians around here swing in different circles, and it's hard to make time for folks that aren't doing the school thing here at Berkeley. Again, it's a case of not quite fitting in. It's hard feeling like a square cog in a round world.
This makes me lonely for the people that do understand me,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zibblsnrt most of all. and it's hard, being that the one person who might possibly have a chance at understanding me lives in Atlantic Canada, and the next time I'll get to see him is the spring of '04, unless I suddenly win the lottery or discover I have a long lost rich uncle or have something happen to me in which I can sue and get rich or something, all of which is really doubtful. I mean, I guess I should be okay, I have enough money for rent and stuff, at least until May. But after that, I die a miserable death or something.
And it's just hard when I have things that I want to do, but it all costs money, and so I spend a lot of time ruminating, because rumination is free. But rumination allows for the perfect opening for the depression beast, and I can't tolerate that anymore.
And it's just getting difficult. I promised a long time ago I wouldn't try to kill myself, but I'm finding that I have to force myself to back away from high windows and to try to force the fun ideas involving knives and prescription drugs out of my head. In some ways, I feel like the depression beast is taunting me with the one promise, and it's going to force me to deny the rulership of the world as Christ once had to do with Satan. Dying doesn't scare me, but I've got things I want to do in between here and there. BTW, this isn't a plea for attention, this is seriously the way my thought processes have been going. Depression is like that.
And well, I guess I'm hovering on the edge of a complete and total breakdown, and I need to avoid that, and I'm not sure how.
And debian has conflicts which I can't resolve tonight, and I think I'm going to take another one of my klonopin to hopefully knock down enough anxiety for me to be able to sleep. And I've prolly done all this soul baring for nothing, because I'm just tired of everything, and it's hard to find joy. Everything is growing green and light; it's the time of rebirths and new beginnings. The whole world is shaking off its coat of winter and starting to move into greenness and happiness; why am I not? why am I just getting worse?
why, god, why? why did you obviously make me so smart and capable, and then give me reason to never be confident in myself? why?
g'night LJ world. I'll make it through the night somehow, I always have before. somehow.
so now I'm watching debian do its thing on prufrock, while I'm sitting here on Macavity typing this LJ entry and IRCing and poking through LJ. I'm going to go to bed here soon so I can wake up and do homework *gasp*, but there's a lot on my mind and maybe typing it out will help.
i'm starting to feel somewhat isolated. The depression beast is slipping in and nibbling away at my self-confidence. I've been seriously pondering dropping out of graduate school, that's how horribly desperate I'm starting to feel. It's difficult to tell the difference between what is real and what is just the depression beast talking. I'm not sure how to tell, and I need help.
The biggest problem is 208, Systems Analysis and Design. I got an email from my TA in that class asking me to call her because she's concerned about my project. I haven't managed to get the guts up to call her back, and maybe it's something simple, but I hate notes like that. Especially when I'm fighting a depression, those sorts of things have my mind jumping to the worst case solution. This is something I need to get up the courage to do tomorrow, and it's hard when I'm expecting the worst case. And I'm not a business major. Mission, Goals, and Objectives seem like entirely stupid concepts to me, and to be utterly honest, I don't learn well when I think things are stupid. Which means dragging my sorry ass into Yale on Monday and asking if he can make sense of things for me, or at least have them not appear stupid.
I can't dodge the TA forever, though, she's the captain of our softball team, and softball is one of the few joys I have in my life at the moment. So I'll prolly call her back tomorrow.
The second big problem is my other required class, 206, Distributed Systems. Take what I said about not being a business major above. Substitute "computer science" for business. Same thing. I feel overwhelmed in that class, and it doesn't help that I accidentally read chapter 3 instead of chapter 4. No wonder I was expecting networking on a quiz where networking didn't show up, I read the wrong chapter. We have another quiz on Tuesday, and this time it's only on one chapter, and so I'll try my desperate hardest to make sense of things. I'm more worried about this, but it's groupwork, and there's not much I can do about it except hope and pray. I have a difficult time programming, it just doesn't contain much interest for me. And again, maybe it's worth bugging Tygar and Chuang and see if they can make some sense of why I'm going to need this.
In my last class, I'm actually doing okay. I like Glushko as an instructor, and I'm actually sorta getting XML stuff, so... I still need to go in and talk with him, just because the illness is going to try to screw with my head there too.
And then I have to find time to finish Java from last semester. Whee. Kill me now. And I think I'll bug Lyman about why he thought of accepting me, he's familiar with bipolar and maybe if I phrase it that the depression beast is munching on me, maybe he'll tell me.
I don't want to drop out, because dropping out means going home to Redding. And going home to Redding is a failure, and I fear that if I ever go back to that town for more than a visit, it's going to reach out and swallow me whole, and I'm going to be stuck there. And as much as it's beautiful country, I think I will kill myself if I have to go back there. It's devoid of most sentient life, and I get the vague implication most of the people there are only there because there's nowhere better to go. Soul crunching, mind melting horrible Redding.
But what does one do when one isn't happy with one's current situation, but finds that the alternative is worse? Right now, I'm staring down two pathways, and they both lead to soul crunching depression, and I'm not sure which way to go.
o/~ if I was not so weak/ if I was not so cold/ if I was not so scared of broken/ growing old/ i would be... / i would be... o/~
I don't have many friends in the bay area. There's Luns, but Luns has things to do too. I don't think I'd call anybody in my program a "friend", although some are closer than others, but they've all formed cliques that I don't feel like I totally belong in. The few callahanians around here swing in different circles, and it's hard to make time for folks that aren't doing the school thing here at Berkeley. Again, it's a case of not quite fitting in. It's hard feeling like a square cog in a round world.
This makes me lonely for the people that do understand me,
zibblsnrt most of all. and it's hard, being that the one person who might possibly have a chance at understanding me lives in Atlantic Canada, and the next time I'll get to see him is the spring of '04, unless I suddenly win the lottery or discover I have a long lost rich uncle or have something happen to me in which I can sue and get rich or something, all of which is really doubtful. I mean, I guess I should be okay, I have enough money for rent and stuff, at least until May. But after that, I die a miserable death or something.And it's just hard when I have things that I want to do, but it all costs money, and so I spend a lot of time ruminating, because rumination is free. But rumination allows for the perfect opening for the depression beast, and I can't tolerate that anymore.
And it's just getting difficult. I promised a long time ago I wouldn't try to kill myself, but I'm finding that I have to force myself to back away from high windows and to try to force the fun ideas involving knives and prescription drugs out of my head. In some ways, I feel like the depression beast is taunting me with the one promise, and it's going to force me to deny the rulership of the world as Christ once had to do with Satan. Dying doesn't scare me, but I've got things I want to do in between here and there. BTW, this isn't a plea for attention, this is seriously the way my thought processes have been going. Depression is like that.
And well, I guess I'm hovering on the edge of a complete and total breakdown, and I need to avoid that, and I'm not sure how.
And debian has conflicts which I can't resolve tonight, and I think I'm going to take another one of my klonopin to hopefully knock down enough anxiety for me to be able to sleep. And I've prolly done all this soul baring for nothing, because I'm just tired of everything, and it's hard to find joy. Everything is growing green and light; it's the time of rebirths and new beginnings. The whole world is shaking off its coat of winter and starting to move into greenness and happiness; why am I not? why am I just getting worse?
why, god, why? why did you obviously make me so smart and capable, and then give me reason to never be confident in myself? why?
g'night LJ world. I'll make it through the night somehow, I always have before. somehow.
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-23 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-23 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-23 02:56 pm (UTC)No, probably not. I never liked the old idea that bad things that happen to us (or the bad things that we live with in our bodies) were "messages" from God to us. I do sometime think that the reason I'm so clumsy is, if I was as smart with my hands as with my brain there'd be no stopping me, and I need stopping. But in general... no, I think there's just a certain amount of pain that goes with being human, and some of us get less and some get more, and no, it's not fair. JFK said that life isn't fair, and if that glided bhoyo felt put-upon, how much more you and I?
It almost sounds to me as if that class, with its Mission, Goals, and Objectives, is trying to teach you a template for doing that sort of project in the future, so you can communicate your ideas for RW projects to people in a form that they will recognize and are comfortable with. Yes, it's bizspeak, and I don't like it. I'd rather challenge people to really think outside the box. But if that's the rationale, it's not the worst one. Especially for people who are less comfortable with the world of words than you are, a template of this type can be very useful. Some jobs even mandate it. The Product Line Managers in our company have to produce Market Requirements Docuements for all the applications we create or enhance, and their template, which comes from the Software Engineering Institute, is similar. (The functional requirements are supposed to flow out of the market requirements, and the technical requirements from the functional, and so forth. In actual fact, as with many companies, the interesting work happens when someone says, "Hey, I've made this cool capability! Where should we plug it in?" The next-most-interesting happens when people think about a problem for years (such as extrapolating smooth, complex, curved surfaces from clouds of points), and the stuff that comes from market requirements is the dull-but-necessary glue that holds things together.)
I wish I could tell you how to wrestle with that depression beast until it slinks back into its cave for good... but I can't. I hope it means something to you, though, that people who have never met you find you admirable. If I can put it this way without again sounding physical, you have more weight to your mind than many folks. Not that you're not fun, or that you can't be silly, but the way you think is substantial, even when it's about funny or silly things.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-23 03:58 pm (UTC)best wishes, kat
/me ponders loading Fallout 2 back on to his laptop, and wandering through Redding with a sledgehammer and a hunting rifle in tribute to the kat ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 12:54 am (UTC)For some reason mental acuity and mental illness are directly linked. Every genius has severe problems such as depression. It will work out, Kat. You're smart and talented and well-liked. You will be able to perform to the best of your abilities. If you can't be confident in yourself, then be confident that other people have confidence in you and believe in you. I know I do.
If you ever need to talk, email me and I'll give you my number.
pccbassbone at mac dot com.
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-24 10:52 am (UTC)This is a very important point. You've always made it through the night, which means that you can make it again.
It may be cliché to tell you to take it one day at a time, but ya know -- there's a reason clichés become clichés: there's a grain of wisdom in them if you think about them deeply enough.
Hang in there. At least you're smart and capable.
*hugs*
Date: 2003-02-24 03:39 pm (UTC)GoodThoughts on the way...
--glinda
I know it sucks...
Date: 2003-02-25 05:56 am (UTC)Mission, Goals, and Objectives... hate to say it... but they are useful in life.... I went over and over them while I was in swimming, and they come useful into whatever aspect of life you are in... I even had to deal with them while I was playing soft ball...
I got to go.. class is starting.. feel better *HUGGLES
grad school
Date: 2003-02-27 03:36 pm (UTC)I went to SIMS a few years ago, and I have to say, as glad as I am that I did... it was also a pressure cooker for the brain. It sounds like you have your own demons to wrestle with that were present before you started the program,but grad school can really intensify stuff that was already there. Among the students, I saw several relationships take a battering (including my own) and some other heavy emotional stuff.
I suspect part of it is that school can raise a lot of expectations that are never entirely fulfilled. And there's probably also anxiety about the future after grad school ("now that I've done this, now what?") And it can be competitive, and there's group projects, which can raise the old anxiety level as well...
Anyway, my point is not to bash the school, but to point out what you already know -- it's hardly a carefree time, and as interesting as the work can be, it's natural to feel pretty freaked out some of the time under the best of circumstances.
So, as far as you can, I'd say try to stick with it -- the time passes quickly, especially after the first semester, especially when you get the core requirements out of the way, and you find the area(s) you want to focus on, and hopefully you've endured enough group projects to know who you can work well with. (My very best group project was preceded by the group project from hell)
Hang in there...