A Bunch of "You-can'ts" Crawled Into My Ear

If you didn't read it in every single elementary school English class, you should read Shel Silverstein's poem about the What-ifs. I've never really been much of a What-if person. I am curious, and have pondered a lot of science-related what-ifs, but I don't constantly worry about what would happen if random bad things happened to me. If they happen, they happen, it's out of my control, and worrying does nothing to prevent them. Instead, I have a different set of creatures that crawl into my ear late at night. They're called the "You-can'ts." They give me reasons why I won't achieve my goals, why I'll never win a fellowship or get a job, tell me why I'm going to die alone and fat, tell me why my children will be ugly and hate me, tell me why I'll never get good grades or be happy.

I'm pretty good at stifling the "You-can'ts." I fill my mind with activities, things I know I'm good at, like writing, making friends, solving math problems, and cooking kale. But when I push myself out of my comfort zone, by taking science classes, applying for jobs, playing with other musicians at Oberlin, and the current stressing factor: consider applying for fellowships, the "You-cant's" get past my protective barrier and creep into my ear when I'm trying to do my homework or eat lunch or take a shower. Avoiding situations where I'm particularly susceptive to "You-can'ts" is no way to live my life. I don't want everything to be comfortable and easy. Every time I do something challenging, I stretch myself and grow. I want to challenge myself as much as possible while I am young and still have elasticity, if you will. And I'm not going to let the "You-can'ts" deter me from having adventures just because they make me vulnerable.

Fortunately, I have discovered a way of kicking the "You-can'ts" out of my ear so I can get on with my life and not wallow in a pool of self-doubt, which is not only unproductive, but unattractive. I call/e-mail/have lunch/wine with a friend. A 30 minute phone call to one of my oldest and dearest friends banished the "You-can'ts" I attracted at a presentation about the Watson fellowship, where I saw a lot of really smart, really determined, interesting, and personable Oberlin students, and felt like the dumbest, laziest, most boring one of the bunch. I know I know I know, comparing yourself to others is bad because we're all individuals and everyone is special and I have bigger arm muscles and thus could take them in a fight and blah blah blah, but when the "You-can'ts" start to hover, I forget all of these things. And this phone call brought me back to reality, got those pesky critters out of my ear, and replaced them with the "You-cans." You can be a good friend! You can have good relationships! You can have interesting ideas! You can write persuasively! You can work hard and intelligently! You can take the other applicants in a fist fight!

I'm just going to go ahead and be really cheesy and say that the "You-cans" are made of love and kind of look like my cat Sadie. When I am reminded of my love my friends, I love who I am, because if I can have that kind of relationship, then I must be pretty capable after all.

I'll never completely defeat the "You-can'ts" but I'll sure as hell give them a run for their money. I am so thankful for the healing powers of friendship.

God is Great, Coffee's Good, and People are Crazy.

It's my 2nd week back from a spring break filled with travel, snow, family, friends, and cats in two different states, and already I feel like I'm ready for another one. One cruel trick of Oberlin (and other schools, I guess), is that you schedule for the following semester about 2/3 of the way into the current semester. By this time, you're getting a little tired of your current classes, but still have what feels like an eternity left in them. And this is usually the point in the semester when I burn out, and decide that it's more important for me to clean my apartment or go on a 2 hour grocery shopping adventure than do the next day's homework. At the same time, I have a lot of academic energy from planning the next semester. So that's where I am now.

This phenomena didn't make it easier to study for my cognitive psychology exam today. I stayed up the latest I've ever stayed up studying for an exam (2 am, come on, a girl's gotta get some sleep). And boy am I glad I did. While I felt like I was just staring at my notes over and over again, when I got to the test this morning, I felt like I knew about 85% of the material, which is really really good for me on a psych test (the one exception was the test when I complained to my friend about people who get 97s and ruin the grading curve after finding out that the curve was only 3 points, only to later pick up my exam and discover that I was the one with the 97). And while I'm pretty sure that this won't match my legendary curve ruining exam results (I mean, I talked about "homework wine" in one of the answers. My professor is either going to love it or refer me to the counseling center), I stepped out of the test feeling okay about my work.

But I didn't start blogging to tell you about my exam. I want to write about over caffienation and important academic decisions.

I guess my coffee habit started freshman year. I was indifferent to the stuff, but after finals week, I learned to use the substance sparingly in order to maximize productivity. My habit really kicked into gear when I got a summer job at a dispensary, I mean, coffee shop. By the end of sophomore year, I was up to 2-3 high test cups a day. I've cut down a bit in my old age, but during the peak of my coffee consumption, I accidentally declared my major while strung out on a particularly strong to-go cup of Black River brew. Declaring my major wasn't an accident, but I'm pretty sure the enthusiastic conversation I had with my department chair about psychology and West Virginia and Oberlin was a result of caffeine, since I haven't shown that much enthusiasm for psychology since.

So over a year later, on the day before my infamous homework-wine cognitive psych exam answer, when I was rushing around like a maniac trying to go to class and take care of business and study and oh did I mention meet with a professor in the sociology department about an honor's project (I don't want to talk about this now because I'm scared I will jinx it and there's a lot of background work involved, but I am so excited), I accidentally/on purpose consumed two travel mugs of CDS and Oberlin Market coffee.

Two travel mugs is not that much coffee, but part of my current coffee habit involves cutting my daily morning French press with decafe coffee so I don't turn into a crazy lady. And with no time that morning for my trusty French press, I had to resort to stress drinking other people's coffee.

I could go on all day about the best coffee in Oberlin and how too much bad coffee made me tear up because someone said "kittens dying" and write long ranting e-mails and shake and misinterpret almost every social interaction (wait, was he hitting on me? Am I supposed to walk away now? Does that girl want to start a fight?). But to make a long story short, I met with the professor, she really liked my idea, she offered to help me pull academic strings, and I figured out what I need to do before I can start this project.

I'm searching for a good way to tie in homework wine, spring break, academia, scheduling and over-caffeination so I can finish tonight's homework and get more than 4 hours of sleep tonight. I would say something about coffee being an academic lubricant for me, but I'm pretty sure that's not actually true, as it makes me kind of tense and crazy when used in excessive amounts. I'm not sure there's a moral to this story except for perhaps, study hard, get enough sleep, and make your own coffee you lazy girl. And academic enthusiasm is a good thing!

Facebook Stalking's Bad, Um-kay?

After what felt like a long hiatus from Facebook, I reactivated my account. While I don't use it much for people I go to school with, it is a good way to keep in touch with my friends who are far away (and if you're my friend, at some point or another you will be far from me. And I will stalk your facebook profile). I haven't really gone facebook crazy again. It's frankly, pretty boring compared to reading blogs, the news, online shopping, and catching up on tv shows. Facebook stalking tends to leave me feeling depressed and unsatisfied (unlike other methods of stalking jk jk lolz). It only took 4 or so years of having a Facebook profile to figure out why.

When I facebook stalk friends who are:

A) Studying abroad

B) Getting cool internships

C) Have boyfriends at school

D) Getting married

E) Have adorable children

F) Really really photogenic

G) Really good artists/photographers/musicians/writers/have other talents that are visible on their facebook profile

I am reminded of all of the things that I want, but don't have right now. Some of these things I will never have (see: being really really photogenic). I'm human, I get jealous. And I hate that I get jealous of other people. I don't tend to think of the things that I want that I already have, like:

A) A really really cute cat.

B) Awesome friends in lots of different places

C) A sweet apartment

D) A lot of really really good stories

E). And I'm not even counting the things like good health, a college education, a supportive family etc.

So shame on you, Facebook, for making me feel bad! But it's equally my fault, for letting my human emotions get me down. So I'm going to do my part. I'm back on Facebook. Friend-who-is-dating-that-really-attractive-dude, friend-who-is-having-escapades-in-Europe, friend-who-has-kick-ass-job, and friend-with-excellent-profile-pictures, I am sincerely happy for you, and excited for you to have these amazing things in your life. But I'm not gonna be stalking your profiles as much until I find the love of my life. Or I'd even settle for an internship.

IMPORTANT: GOOGLE HATES ME

Well it is a sad day for Janney's January Appalachian adventures. Google has decided that it hates my guts because I accidentally created 2 Google accounts because my Oberlin e-mail is confusing, and technology is dumb. So I may have to kill this blog (saving the writing on my hard drive, of course) and starting a new one, hopefully outside of Google control. I like Gmail, but it wants my phone number so it can text me (I don't have cell service dummy) and I don't want to give it to Google. Is anything sacred any more? What will it want next, my height and weight? My social security number? The location of the window in my bedroom?

So maybe I'm a paranoid old lady, but I don't like this. Big brother is not allowed to watch me. But I still want to blog because it's fun. Google can know what kind of beer I like, where i go to school, where I live, and the name of my cat, but it cannot know my cell phone number!

A new blog will be up soon, although I'm afraid that this Google idiocy also means the end of the now-defunct Janney Lockman Living and Cats Do the Darndest Things.

Grrrrrr..........