“The College Experience” On Being The Sober Friend

Does it make sense?

There’s a caricature hanging on my wall, with it’s date marked as the 11th of September 2019. I look at it several times a day and wonder about my personal insensitivity. 

I sat for said caricature on said day, and truth be told I was smiling. 

I won’t attempt to justify my role in this. I was there, same as everyone else. I ate the food, same as everyone else. If we were wrong (and I believe we were) then I was wrong. 

The caricature in question was drawn at an institution event, a club fair, somewhat of a celebration. Isn’t it wrong? Wasn’t it wrong, to be at a celebration, at a military institution, on a day that marks a great American tragedy? That same night a remembrance ceremony took place. Doesn’t it pervert the nights remembrance ceremony to be hosting a celebration during the day that could have occurred on any other day? I won’t claim that people born on the 11th should’t celebrate their birthday, their births remind us that horrible things and good things can occur simultaneously. I do wonder about the justification of an institutions celebratory event. 

I will not pretend to remember 9/11. The fact is I simply don’t. I do not remember that day, nor any of that year. Regardless, it was a tragedy that affected an incredible number of Americans. I believe it was insensitive to hold the fair on that day and I have my sincere regrets about my part in it. 

A second event also occurred that seemed ill timed. 

A young man, about to graduate died on 9/15/19 in a car crash. Yesterday, 1 week later the institution held it’s 200th celebration. Today it held his funeral. I will not say that the institution should have altered it’s plans on such short notice, but I will say I believe they should have provided more than just 1 echo of his name as so many students mourn his loss and fight off anguish at the denial of half mast rights for the enlisted young man.   

Does it make sense? To What Degree Should We Mourn For Losses To Our Greater Community? 

Stardate 73155.1

Sol15

Earth date 9/9/2019

Today I try oat milk. Discovery: oat milk tastes very little like milk and very much like sad oatmeal.

Technology's impact on those who pursue art or math. Good isn’t Good Enough.

First off, I would like to preface this piece of writing with a disclaimer. The ideas drafted here are just that, drafts. They are based purely on my views of the universe without external reasearch at this time.

All of that said...

Artists and Mathematicians, treated by the traditions academic structure as opposites far to often, are drawn together by some critical similarities. This piece will focus on just one of those similarities, how mathematical and artistic pursuits have changed with modern times. 

Proficiency in a set of mathematical or artistically based skills is incredibly useful and impressive to many who do not share those skills. Being able to balance a checkbook or represent something from life that someone else can recognize are both useful skills that many envy. These basic skills however, are mere tasks, that can in today’s age be completed by a computer. Many people have adopted the use of Microsoft’s Excel for keeping track of their financial transactions and generations worth of people now communicate via pictures taken on a smart phone. 

So what then, is the purpose of studying either mathematics or art, if in our day to day lives we will use some form of computer to preform many of the tasks that were once claimed as their uses by high school teachers everywhere. Years ago my teachers had already thought of that, the justification time after time being “You need to understand what the computer is doing”. I would not argue that that is an invalid explanation, especially for those who are not particularly interested in studying the subject. The real argument for either mathematics or art is advancement. 

An Exercise in Unpacking & Havin' More Fun:

Imagine this:

Your shuttle, a lovely blue craft old enough to vote, returns you to mars late enough in the sol that it is already dark and you can feel the cold of the atmosphere in spite of your insulative layers.

Alone, you must unpack your craft and the extensive resupply materials it contains. Because you are alone you cannot leave the craft docked in front of the mass housing unit and since nearby docks are taken you must dock up hill from the housing unit.

How then do you get the supplies into your personal chamber???

Well, if you're me...

While wearing full insulative equipment you drag one of the carts up the hill, load it with the supplies, increasing its mass significantly. Then you push it and a rolling desk chair toward the hill, hop into the rolling desk chair and hold on.

I may be many things, but I'm certain I had the most fun in unpacking.

How to do engineering homework: An informative guide and window into life.

1) Procrastinate while convincing yourself you're being productive

2) Find a Location to work

3) Write down the problem

4) Get halfway through and go to staple something

5) Break stapler...

Spend the next, far too long period of time disassembling and reassembling your stapler until several things occur:

- you are fully confident that in an exam situation you could, completely disassemble and reassemble your stapler in less than 5 minutes

- the components of the stapler get so worn out from disassembly and reassembly that the stapler no longer functions quite right in spite of being once more reassembled

-it occurs to you that you will not be asked to reassemble your stapler during an exam and you will be asked to turn in this homework

Addendum: After this particular event occurs, admit it to other engineering students. Upon request demonstrate your ability to disassemble and reassemble your stapler completely and pass off the stapler to another engineering student who obtains an initial 30 minutes of joy from disassembly and reassembly of the stapler. The stapler which still worked marginally after first rounds of reassembly no longer functions from wear. Gift it to the other engineering student and resolve to purchase a new stapler.

Censorship of Suicide Prevention?

The other night our dorms held a “Trick or Treat in the Halls” event for the children in our Martian settlement. Prior to this event there were prepatory events, pumpkin carving, door decorating and removal of posters and signs deemed inappropriate for youth.

Some of these things made sense to remove. But among the things that were mentioned as necessary to cover, I wonder about two.

First of which is a cartoon ghost wearing a bra on a sign explaining the risks of breast cancer. Maybe it’s bad maybe it’s not. But doesn’t breast cancer awareness include the children? Don’t they see the advertisements on television? I’m not one to advocate for something being okay just because it’s been seen or said before, but I’m unsure that this needs censorship?

I am against the censorship of the suicide prevention sign. To censor this implies that the children won’t be affected by mental health issues before they are too old for the trick or treat event. This event includes children up to 12 yrs old. I was 9 the first time I recall mental health related struggles affecting those around me, but in all honesty I may have been somewhat aware of it even before then. I wouldn’t be introduced to suicide prevention till six years later.  I don’t think this is unusual.  When I mentioned this at one of the events, the others around me in a similar age group, the same ones who’d been planning to cover the sign recalled similar occurrences. They noted that they’d definitely known about these things to some degree by 5th grade. We can’t prevent these from being things that our youth have to deal with and giving them inadequate resources makes them things that they have to deal with alone.

In my experience, the deliberate censorship of mental health made it harder to speak about it because it seemed “bad”. Censoring it in the same way that drugs, alcohol, sex and excessive violence were made it seem like something that I “wasn’t spost’ to be aware of yet”.

It’s just a couple signs and in all honesty I don’t think their removal matters in the grand scheme, but I do have to ask: Does it make sense?

Conclusion: I should not consume caffeine based pain killers

Sometimes I'm "that" person. I take to statics with fond memories of vectors from my trouble causing multivariate days and my appreciated too late linear days, allong with a bystanders view of euclidean geometry. This is to say: I draw a mean triangle and think I know more than I actually do.

So when the problem is posed in such a way that it forces one to make one of two conflicting assumptions, I cant help myself.

And when I find that the solution most people will be bringing in makes both of those conflicting assumptions.... something in me can't resist.

I'm 2 pages in on a 4 page detail of why said assumptions break the problem, steadily on my way to the conclusion that the problem statement is ill posed, when I realize what I've done. Ive taken caffeine based pain killers, at night, my resting heart rate shoots up to a conservative 100 beats per minute and my hands are too shakey to write clearly.

I am forced to succumb to a different conclusion: I should not consume caffeine.

That said...I have an explanation. I just hope its correct and not a caffeine + exhaustion based misinterpretation of the problem.

It doesn’t get easier…There isn’t an answer…But there is a right thing to do.

I used to believe that qualified adults were less afraid and more proficient in handling critical issues. I thought that perhaps their age, wisdom and expertise granted them skill and grace in handling human desperation. I now know it doesn’t get easier.

I know now that when someone close to me first opens up to me about self harm, suicidal thoughts or actions, etc. I will always be initially choked by fear. And every time, I will push aside my fear to talk with them. I think all who have opened up to me have been worried about causing this fear. This initial fear comes from love and an overwhelming desire to keep my friends safe. The initial tightness in my chest comes from knowing that now in context my actions and words matter. It’s terrifying, but I can’t let it petrify me.  

This initial fear is worth the knowledge.

Ignorance does not make it better.

The initial fear is mitigated by presence. To be there. To be committed to being there.

And I assure you, dear anonymous reader, that it is worth it. That this presence, commitment and closeness is worth the fear.

As life has progressed, I have spoken with and listened to presentations by several professionals, trained in helping people overcome mental health struggles. I’ve been told the same things on repeat.

I’ve come to realize that they don’t have the answer either. There isn’t an answer. It will never not be hard. There is no answer, and it will never be easy, but there is a right thing to do, and there are things that make it less hard.

The Right Thing To Is To TRY.

There are resources, some of them are good, some of them are not. Some of them make it better, some of them make it worse. You have to use your best judgement, your intuition, and do the best you can. Sometimes the best you can do is sit somewhere with someone and listen.

“He's told us not to blow it Cause he knows it's all worthwhile”

Healthy Life Choices:

My mother insists I eat more protein as my post-flu diet has been poor.

My doctor insists I increase my iron intake as my Martian diet lacks meats.

I think... I have found a solution: