A Humane Turtle

The last couple of months were quite stressful. I tried to combine a lot of things into limited time. Working full time, taking two courses at university (a full-time student would take three), singing in a band, an opera choir, taking singing and occasional dancing lessons, attending conferences.

In the beginning of June, I expected, I would be very happy and a little proud of myself: I would have managed to do it all, I would have successfully completed my uni courses. Times of little sleep would would be over – or at least more sparse. I would no longer be called a visitor in my own home.

Joy is always in the forecast.

Turned out that I was a bit too much/little perfect(ionist) to be happy.

1. I got a B in one of the exams, not necessarily because I didn’t know the matter, but because I wasn’t focused and talked about structure rather than content, mainly.  So I was unhappy about the B, rather than happy about finishing. Also because the teachers said they’d expected more from me.
2. The teachers saw my frustration and called me in again, offering me to raise an objection. They meant I could argue that, at the exam, I wasn’t able to show what I can. In the end I agreed to re-take the exam. Which was in itself frustrating, because I couldn’t let go, and despite being tired and exhausted, I would have to study for another week. This time I would make sure not to make a fool of myself.
3. The exam was supposed to be this morning. Yesterday afternoon I got an email from my teacher that she had found out that raising an objection isn’t possible in my case, re-taking the exam wasn’t an option.

Expectations just didn’t meet outcomes.

On a side note, if anyone needs flash cards with summaries of papers on CSCW, let me know..

So I went to the movies last night, without any expectations whatsoever. I only went along with the usual crowd, without having seen any trailer. I didn’t even remember what the title of the movie was when I arrived, only that it was supposed to be a good movie (judged by its IMDB rating, at least).

So I watched ‘Shutter Island’ last night.

The movie targets these questions: What is real? Which reality is the real one? Who is sick, who is trying to help, and who isn’t?  I find these questions highly interesting. My problem is just that they aren’t only interesting to me, I feel connected to them in a deeply emotional way.

When I was in my early teenage years, a close family member was diagnosed with Schizophrenia – and is still living with it today. It’s a fascinating condition in so many ways. First of all, you’re not supposed to talk about it: everybody knows, nobody talks. Second, the patients don’t necessarily agree to having it. It’s a mental disease after all. And third, both treating and not treating it will have an impact on the patients’ state of mind, but treating it might mean taking away power from them – something everybody of us would try to avoid at (almost) all cost. It’s a thin line really: when does a situation justify to take away powers of an otherwise free person, to do something to them that – despite the good will – isn’t what they want? How do we know that what we are trying to do is really any good? And who tells us, the involved outsiders, that we have the real reality on our side? Do we just think we do because our reality is close enough to average?

A lot of these thoughts and feelings I can sometimes only handle by locking them away in some shady corner of myself. The movie yesterday managed to break those locks. I’m not sure if that was good or bad.