withdrawn

I hate to admit this more broadly, but I've been having a much rougher time this semester.  It's no wonder there are a lack of people going into STEM fields.  It's so much more challenging.  I don't know that the material itself has to be, or if there are issues with the way that it's taught, but the difference has been huge.

With the issues I'd been having with physics on top of that.. yeah, just too much.  I dropped physics, to focus on math and chemistry.  Unclear if there will be some sort of penalty down the road, possibly not.  If I had a 3.8 GPA, that might put a serious dent in things, but for me, no.  It might not matter at all, as long as I don't make a habit of it.

It's a great load off my shoulders, but it's still been really disconcerting.  It's like there's a sort of memorization that my brain has become extraordinarily bad at.  My memory is fine, generally.  I can remember the forest just fine.  Individual trees, though?  Can't I just Google it?

I wonder if it has to do with being so reliant on technology to do a substantial amount of the heavy lifting, for so long.  I've been Googling since before it was even known as Altavista.  Given the way the brain finishes developing by 25 or so, trying to remember anything after that just seemed so inefficient, right?

Honestly though, I'm appalled at how difficult it's been for me to remember much of anything.  I'm learning, but nowhere near the pace I'd expected given the amount of time I put into it.  Nowhere near the pace I'd need to be, to actually do well. The classes I have done well, were mostly classes in which I didn't need to learn much of anything.

I remember when I was a kid, refusing to do homework, acting as if I were above it.. I don't remember if I actually could do the homework, or if maybe I was frustrated because I didn't even understand what I was supposed to be doing.  I wasn't really paying attention.

Maybe I was too distressed, too distracted, too withdrawn. It's hard to say what causes it, but I'm realizing that I've never even attempted this, in the most elementary sense.  I essentially refused to put any effort into the entire education thing, and as soon as that started to equate to bad grades, as school started to demand anything at all, I wasn't having it.  I don't remember considering any alternative.  Maybe I didn't see any alternative.

Looking back on it, as I try to finally push myself now, I realize that there's a distinct pattern to it all.  Whatever intelligence I may have, and have ever had.. It seems to have a massive gaping hole in it.  I'm barely starting to get the hang of things, just enough to realize, I'm actually really bad at this.

Guess I'll see how I do going part time.  One advantage of that being financial aid covers classes year round, instead of being forced to take summer off.

3/1/2019
  

Fucking hell.. After assurances by both my adviser and the financial aid office that the class would still be covered before I made my decision ..half my financial aid was immediately revoked, and the school is now billing me $1500.  Technically, they'd still pay for the class, but since I'm no longer enrolled in 12+ credits, I don't qualify as a full time student, per federal aid requirements.

6/15/2019

Months later, I get a call out of the blue, telling me I had an unpaid balance for next semester, but taking another class would net me better financial aid, and oh btw, they're refunding me the $1500.  Then asking for $500 back.  Ok, still +$1,000.  Great, for the moment I think?

what IS factoring

Sometimes people remark that going back to school is tough.  It's been a long time since I've been in a math class, right?

No, I've never been in a math class before last semester.  My placement test put me at the college algebra level, but I was totally winging it.  I never learned ANY of this.  I'm not going back to college.  I dropped out of high school, just as we were starting to get into the most basic of math using letters as variables.  I've been trying to pick it up as I go, but it's been rough.

The other day, my pre-calculus teacher did a quick factoring review, and I attempted to ask this.  What IS factoring?  She starts by explaining that it's breaking numbers down into factors - duh, I get that - and then she goes on and on, without answering my question - I only realize that now, as I've finally figured out the answer for myself.  What I can't figure out is why the hell teachers don't just put things in direct terms.  I seem to have this learning disability where I have no patience for the rest of it, when I don't even understand the point.

Going through youtube videos and online tutorials, it's the same way, except that somewhere in the middle, sometimes I find what I'm looking for.  Aha!  This could have been a ten second video, what the fuck.  Factoring is such that the multipliers of term C can also be added together to equal term B. 

Suddenly, I know what the point is, and it's goes from immiserating confusion, to oh.  This is easy.  What the hell.  I realize it gets much more complicated from there, because some equations are complicated and require further tips and tricks to work with, but I needed that basic foundation, before I could understand anything else.

I suspect that physics is somewhat similar.  I have no patience for two hour lectures, where all the vital details and formulae are interspersed throughout.  Maybe it's severe ADD, or maybe it's just my learning style, the way my brain works, because of how I learned to learn, when I was very young.  When I was way ahead of everyone else.  On the other hand, it just makes sense to me, that you put the foundation first, before building on it.

It's not just an issue with teachers though.  I have a textbook, and it's the same way.  If I sit and read the entire chapter, I can't make sense of it or retain a goddamn thing.  I need it condensed to a succinct list of formulas used.  That should be page one of each chapter, rather than piecemeal all over the place.

There is a chance here, that I am still in fact pretty damn smart, but I've been having some serious doubts, wondering if after years of disuse, my brain has simply shriveled up, and I'm actually a moron now, only just coming to realize it.  That has certainly been what it's felt like.

are we having fun yet

Turns out, it's not all my fault.  Two years ago, CCV changed the pre-requisites for taking physics, from pre-calculus to intermediate algebra, because there weren't enough students taking it.  They did this despite the fact that we still need trigonometry to understand the curriculum, which isn't taught until midway through pre-calculus.

On top of that, there are two physics teachers, one with a reputation for being pretty easy, and the other.. not so much.  Guess which one I got.  It's weird, because he's really nice, and says he considers himself lenient, and yet gives me failing grades for not getting my lab reports perfect.  Despite getting it all right, I didn't show enough of my work?  5/10

I figure I'll catch up eventually, but that will still average out to a terrible grade, below the 70% I need to qualify for financial aid.  So I feel the school pretty much screwed me, and I'm not sure how that plays out.  Will financial aid refuse to grant me anything ever again?  Will I just have to pay for this one class?  Will I be too demoralized to keep going?  Can a person's entire academic future be fucked over this sort of thing?  What the hell, no wonder CCV has trouble filling their more advanced classes, and has an abysmal 11.5% graduation rate.

If possible, I'll just take it again, surely breezing through the second time, but I don't even know if that will be an option.  In the meantime, I've been studying my ass off, and it just never seems to be enough.  Forming new neural connections is taking much longer than I'd hoped.

I had to stop at Rite-aid for a few things after math class yesterday, and they needed my phone number for my discount card.. and wtf was it again, the square root of my area code, divided by cosine and sine squared of a • t / ∆d.. I couldn't even remember my phone number.

At least I know what trigonometry is now.

floundering

So yeah.  This is fucking horrible.  I study, I go to school, I endure all sorts of social hell, I come home.. and I have nothing to look forward to.  I have no reprieve, I go to bed ..and can't even sleep.  I got four hours last night, but got through the day in spite of it, only to not be able to sleep again tonight.

I have to wake up for class in four hours, but I don't think I can do it.  Oh and I'm not doing so well.  I haven't been studying enough, and it turns out, I can't wing physics.  I literally got every damn problem wrong, on my last quiz.  I need to actually study for it.  Which I've started doing a lot more of, but I'm an emotional basketcase.

Seems that whole self-medication thing was actually holding me together, even more than I'd realized.  I'm not sure what to do.  I just have to get through the next two weeks, talk to my psychiatric nurse, prove that I haven't touched cannabis in weeks..and then I'm going to get so fucking stoned.  Yeah, I can see how addicts relapse and end up overdosing.  Good thing my drug of choice is about as harmless as they come.

I'm not sure I can actually pass this physic class though.  Would be great if I could just take it twice, I'd surely ace it the second time, but financial aid doesn't like that.  I hate all these restrictions financial aid puts on me. 

I don't even have physics tomorrow.  Just chemistry and math, which I'm doing a whole lot better in, but that will change pretty quickly if I don't even make it to class.

drug testing

I stopped taking Zoloft a month ago because as SSRIs always do, it stopped working.  I understand a lot about how drugs and physiology work now, and it's frustrating how wrong so much of the conventional wisdom is.  If you take any drug every day, your body will get used to it.  It will build up in your system, you will both become dependent and develop tolerance.  You can increase the dosage, making the problem worse, or you can stop.

SSRIs are especially bad in this regard, because they must be taken every day, and must build up in the system to work at all.  So, their functionality is inherently antithetical to efficacy.  Another point worth mentioning, is that cross-tolerance is also a thing.  If you switch from one SSRI to another, you'll have an immediate tolerance to the new one, also.  These drugs are extremely similar in what they do, and slight variations don't bypass tolerance much.  You can try SSRI after SSRI, looking for the one that works, but surprise, none of them are ever going to work, without a good long tolerance break.

This should be common knowledge, but instead psychiatrists will look at me like I've got three heads for saying it, because it's not what the pharmaceutical companies tell them.  Yes, these highly educated professional authorities are wrong and I am right.  Absolutely.  Still, I've been seeing my psychiatric nurse practitioner, in the hopes of working something out.  He finally agreed to let me try dexamphetamine, but it comes with this long list of demands because it's a highly controlled substance.

I get it, most people are retarded children that would abuse it, without question. It's highly effective, even if you don't really need it, so people will take it every day, more and more, until ruining its usefulness and undermining their health, both physiologically and psychologically, in the process.  The same way they do with caffeine, but caffeine works very differently and has much less harm potential.

It's annoying, but most of it is easy to accommodate.  They want to count my pills regularly to make sure I'm not using more than prescribed and the like, but they also needed to do a urine test.  I told my nurse that I self-medicate with cannabis every day, so he knew I'd test positive for it, but the demand was that my numbers come down over the next few weeks.

So... THC Metabolite reference range < 5.0 ng/mL

...my results > 1,000 ng/mL.  LOL

Self-medication isn't just another way of saying abuse.  It means that whatever I'm medicating will no longer be mitigated.  I will stop vaping for a few weeks, but that means becoming more anxious and suicidal, with nothing to protect myself from that.  I'll try getting more meditation and exercise in, but I'm not terribly optimistic about being in a state of mind conducive to that.

This is an appalling and irresponsible approach to mental health treatment, the likes of which I blame for Jenny's suicide btw, but I have to go along with it, because I'm desperate.  There is a chance that once it's out of my system, which takes a few weeks, I'll realize that I'm better off without it.  I guess it's about time I find out for sure.

Unlike SSRIs, Dex can be taken as needed, work for a few hours, and then it leaves the system.  So of course, they want me to take it every day because they're fucking morons.  THAT'S NOT HOW STIMULANTS WORK.  I'll be taking it three times a week, at carefully chosen times to maximize efficacy and prevent tolerance.  However concerned my nurse is about addiction and whatever that means to him, I'm both more concerned and more knowledgeable about it all.  Number one, DO NOT TAKE IT EVERY DAY.

Most of my life, I've promoted the concept of self-acceptance, particularly in regards to mental health, and the same applies here.  Psychoactive medications are tools that can temporarily help us rise above our endogenous limitations, but they can not change who we are.  If you try to use a drug to escape who you are, you will fail.