Here's to You, Mr. Potter

Hey kiddos!

It’s twisted, I know, but now that the new semester is starting, I finally feel like I can begin to relax.

My testing report is done.  Feedback is scheduled.  My externship applications are mailed and emailed.  That horrendous paper is finally finished (packed with APA style guide* errors which will assuredly drag down my grade, but I just can’t manage to care).  And it’s official: I have a thesis data set.  Almost 40 whole articles made the cut!  I haven’t chosen a statistical program yet, but that’s a task for another day.  Apparently.

About externships: I already have two interviews!  I don’t plan to run my mouth about it to my classmates (unless I’m asked, I guess), so I’ll share it here, instead.  I’m excited. :)

In spite of being in near-constant panic-mode for the last two months, boyfriend and I ultimately managed to carve out a couple of much-needed fun times over my winter “break”.  Perhaps our best fun time involved going ice skating in one of my favorite parts of our fair city.  It’s something we’d been wanting to do for over a year, and finally we decided it was time to just make it happen, school work be damned.  It was wonderful... even more so than I anticipated.

Good times!

And WHO could resist those stylish skates??

As of the last three weeks or so, boyfriend has ALSO succeeded in convincing me to watch Harry Potter movies, adding to the long list of his notable personal victories.  And I actually really... really... like them.

Up until a few weeks ago, out of an annoying hipsterly resistance to anything overly popular, I had completely avoided all things Boy Wizard.  I was a little too old for the books when they first came out (though I did read one chapter of one of them to a girl I babysat for, only to have her correct my pronunciation of Hermione’s name).  I saw the first movie in theaters and hated it.  I have many friends whose opinions I normally respect who are devoted to these stories, and whose protestations that Ms. Rowling’s work was worthwhile I stalwartly, stubbornly ignored.  I just couldn’t get over my elitist too-many-people-like-this gag reflex.

Until now.

Okay, I was wrong!!  Fine fine FINE!!!  The movies are really actually pretty... wonderful.  I was intrigued by the revelations about Voldemort’s origins in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), and completely won over by Alfonso Cuarón’s odd, dark humor in Harry Potter and the Prisoner Azkaban (2004).  I was pushed to the brink of tears by the death of a classmate in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) (Spoiler alert: Robert Pattinson is vindicated... apparently?), and finally succumbed during Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) when we watched it two nights ago.  I am unabashedly converted.

What did it?  Again, spoiler alert: During the climactic fight scene in the Ministry of Magic’s Department of Mysteries, as Sirius and Harry fight side-by-side against Voldemort’s Death Eaters, Sirius calls out to Harry, “Well done, James!”, momentarily mistaking the boy for his dead best friend and Harry’s father.  It broke my heart.

Even if I now have to swallow my pride and turn in my hipster card, as a result of watching these movies (with some other non-HP features thrown in), I am happy to say I’m well above quota for my 2011 movie-watching resolution.  And I’ve experienced the first of what I’m sure will be many learning experiences in the coming year (movie-related and otherwise): Hipsters aren’t always right.  Even when they’re me.

Now I just have to find the time to read seven 800-page books.

Happy New Semester!

<3

* A brief note on the APA style guide: In my opinion, anyone who really thinks you can only use the word “since” to refer to stuff happening after a particular event or time period and not ALSO to convey logical links between concepts seriously needs to be poked with something sharp.

To clarify, according to the APA style guide:

This roaring headache has plagued every moment of my life SINCE I started writing this paper.
....is CORRECT.

SINCE they are both stupid, this assignment and the infernal APA style guide make me angry.
...is INCORRECT.

Don’t even get me started on which numbers need to be spelled out and which need to be written as numerals.  It completely makes my head swim.

Thank GOD I'm done with that paper.

Not-So-MiniPost: 2011 Resolutions

Hi guys.

Before we get too far into this new year, I thought it worthwhile to officially state my resolutions somewhere.  Given the origins of this blog, this seemed like the best venue.

THEY ARE:
1. Call/see family and friends more often
2. Finish thesis by 2012
3. Continue meditating daily

And, obvi:
4. Continue 52 movies/year goal

The breakdown:
1. There are a lot of people on this planet I love.  I don't talk to them enough.  This really became clear to me while in Viet Nam on a school-sponsored excursion this past summer.  The classmate I shared a hotel room with talked to her family multiple times a day, despite being halfway around the world.  I talked to my mom twice during the entire two week trip.  This struck me as stupid.  If some families can swing talking to each other every day no matter what, I can talk to people I love more than once every few weeks.

This resolution is partly due to pure selfishness.  I know it'll make me happier if I talk to the people who make me happy about humanity and life in general more often.  I avoid calling people out of stress, since talking on the phone is one of very few activities that inhibit my furious multi-tasking.  Again: stupid.  Talking to people I like makes me less stressed.  So let's do that more often.

But also: I was listening to the latest podcast of This American Life yesterday.  Part one is about a man who visits his friend after a suicide attempt in a bid to talk him into living.  It reminded me of how many people I desperately love, whose lives I am grateful for, and whose loss I could never come to terms with.  It made me hungry for the chance to tell each of them I want them here in this life with me.  Some people I love very much have been affected by suicide recently, or have thought about or attempted suicide in the past.  Out of a more community-focused/nationwide concern, one of Boyfriend's Christmas presents from me this year was a shirt that constituted a donation to the saintly Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project, whose aim is to end the sudden tragic onslaught of young gay people ending their lives this past year.  And as a mental health professional responsible for keeping people safe from things like self-harm, maybe I'm just unusually primed to be struck by the aims of the man in that TAL story.  In any event, perhaps morbidly, I want to talk to the people I love more often, to make sure they know how beautiful and hopeful my life is because of them, and to make sure they know how immeasurably valuable they are.  Even if those dark thoughts never crossed their minds, it just can't hurt.

2. The ambition of this resolution is so terrifying I'm just going to skip it.  But it's made.

3. For a few years now I've been waiting for the breakthrough I needed to finally get into a true meditative discipline.  This summer, during a trip to visit a family friend, it finally came.  All that friend had to do was give me permission to sit for only two minutes a day, and my sitter's block evaporated.  I've sat (almost) every morning since then--and typically longer than two minutes.  Sometimes you just need to let yourself start small.

4.  Like I said: obvi.

Resolutions aside: chugging along, as always.  Thesis data stuff is painfully slow, but progress is being made.  My testing report is just about complete, which is a huge relief.  My testing supervisor wrote me an absolutely lovely recommendation for my externship applications, of which I'm deeply appreciative.  And that last paper I have to write will get done sometime... I guess.

Back to work.  Once again, Happy New Year!

It's going to be a good one.

<3

PS: Because it never hurts to make sure people know what their resources are:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
800 273 TALK

The Trevor Project
www.thetrevorproject.org
866 488 7386