Creating Insecurity in Health Research

Sigh...

Did NOT get funding for next year.

Feeling pretty gosh darned dejected, and the massive head cold I picked up from a kid this week is not helping me bounce back. If I hadn't already slept all day, I'd just go back to bed. Ah, wtf, I'll go back to bed anyway! My eyes feel like two piss holes in the snow.

I just think that they should stop calling them scholarships and just refer to them as a lottery. The reason I got turned down is because, "the candidate has changed field of studies at least twice, which raises th econcern that this candidate does not have th eperseverance to complete a PhD and move forward towards an academic career." They also claimed that my referee said that I don't "criticallly evaluate [my] own research plans and proposals." Interestingly, my referee's letter states explicity that I DO think critically in the evaluation of my research plans and proposals! So yeah, my reader #2 missed the point that finishing two degrees in the SAME discipline and then switching disciplines because I needed to recover from an ED means that I am MORE likely to persevere and finish something. Add two more fucking degrees to that, now in psychology, and for fuck's sake!!!

I was warned that these "competitions" are very much like lotteries before I applied. That they will look for any "excuse" to disqualify you. But I didn't think it included what appears to be deliberately misreading what an applicant wrote. I had that application checked by two supervisors, the application clinic, and the fucking dean. They said it was air-tight!

So yeah, I guess I'm bitter right now. I know it will blow over and I'll cope and deal. I just really did not want to have to deal with a TAship next year. I didn't want to have to work my ass off the Org. I feel like I work at the MacDonalds of counselling centres sometimes. Well, minus the scholarship opportunities, clearly. I made way more money when I worked as a booze jockey... and I was allowed to drink much more at work for that matter. And Jeebus, considering the two TAships I've had so far... I'm primed to expect some kind of hollocaust denier who frequently mistakes their cock for blackboard chalk.

I will call him Professor Chalky-Dink.

See, Psyche? You're feeling better already!

You know, I'm just so sick of worrying about money. I just got a big chunk of $$$ from my supervisor for work I'm supposed to do next semester and I was going to use it to go to a conference in Zambia. But now I feel like I should save it for the slim-pickings of PhD1. Sigh...

You know, one of the reasons I left the theatre was because of never knowing if I would have enough money... But I seem to have changed it for a career where the audition process is just as dubious but instead of preparing a monologue, I spend 40 hours putting my heart and soul into a research proposal. It's just that now, instead of not getting the role because I'm 10 lbs heavier than a twig insect, I don't get the scholarship because some egghead with a god complex can't slow down enough to read the difference between "does" and "does not."

So yeah, I guess this week's lesson in grad skule is that life is not fair. And that really honks. But I'll deal. And we'll just have to see what happens. There's always another surprise around the corner. No one knows what tomorrow will bring. Platitude platitude platitude.

Driving the Bell Curve

So I’m now working on a spring contract for a board of education about an hour and a half drive away from home. And before I start going on and on about how much fun it is to high achieving kids for giftedness, let me just tell you that having access to a car frickin’ rocks! This is seriously total and complete awesomeness the likes of which I have not known since I was 18 and my brother and I shared a car in my last year of highschool. Yeah, we had OACs back then...

It’s like you can drive around a really large briefcase and clothes closet. I’m staying with my parents for a few days, because they are MUCH closer to the schools I’m visiting... and I don’t even mind the excessive intrusiveness and house full of clutter that would rival any OC type on the show Horders. I have a CAR. I have hundreds of pounds of steel surrounding me and protecting me from having to deal with the cesspool that is commuting. With the bottom feeders that are my fellow commuters! I don’t even get riled up when someone cuts me off, tailgates, or decides that stoplights are a modern convienience they can do without. As a pedestrian, I get sidewalk of the extreme that will eventually see me living out my final days in a cold, dark cell. But as a MOTORIST! Well, you could pretty much do a shit on “my” hood and I’d bronze it and call it a hood ornament.

Sigh... it’s my father-in-law’s car... and he’s a veteran, with one of those veteran liscence plates. So yeah, I’ve had about 4 people so far stop me as I get out of the car to ask me where I saw action. This is understandable, because I do not look the army type. But I also look considerably younger than I am. At times it is not understandable, when said stoopid lady from a few posts ago asks me the same question. “Seriously, Stoopid Lady? But... you KNOW me. You know I was a PERFORMER before I went back to school. You know my whole sordid life story. And you know that I FREAKIN BORROWED THIS CAR!!!” So yeah, I told her I was in Nam, and please don’t tell anyone else, because I’m really older than I’ve been telling everyone. Sheesh. Her IQ is so low it could walk under a snake with its high hat on.

But I digress in ways that only Psyche can digress. I want to tell you about the delightful gifted children! Now, look, I pride myself on giving a very standardized but “human” WISC-IV. And I am completely flabbergasted by some of the incredible responses I get. Now, I can’t actually tell you any of the questions because putting them out on the Internet would give little Jeezurs like the one I tested today an unfair advantage. This kid, who was NINE btw, told me that he knew what we were doing. I said, oh? What? He says, “this is a memory subtest and I suspect that you are testing my working memory and not my long-term memory.” He had been online “practising” at the behest of his helicopter parents. Another kid, who was doing a test that measures their ability to use logic to find patterns in a series of pictures, got to the final item and when I turned the page to reveal the last (and most difficult) puzzle, he said, and I quote, “JEEBUS, Psyche! This is reDONKulous!”

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my share of shy, and slow to warm up kids. I don’t know if it’s because I am some sort of super-rapport machine, or if kids today are just more outspoken than when I was being tested, but Jeebus, they are a lot more outspoken that I remember being.

Having said all that... I’m loving giftedness testing (except when you get some kid whose parents you suspect of bribing the learning resource teacher). They are so bright, articulate, and for the most part beginning to bloom with some self-confidence. They seem so happy to be in a situation where someone is talking to them like an equal instead of talking down to them. And I’m happy to do so. I DO remember what it was like, after all.

I’m rooting for all of them. Really hoping that they will meet teachers who realize that just because they may be “gifted,” that doesn’t mean that they “will be just fine” if left to their own devices. They need guidance, they need help to build and grow their skills, but also their personalities, their citizenship, their mental health. I pray for excellent teachers. These kids need and deserve as much special attention as those who are on the other side of the bell curve.

Speaking of bell-curve... one of the girls I tested this week was a fellow Triple 9er. I desperately wanted to tell her! This information will probably never actually get to her (unless she tries out for Mensa or the actual Triple 9 society – bastions of superior intellect and poor social skills) and that’s probably good. I suspect her EQ of being far too high to feel at home in either of those clubs. I’ve noted her name. I hope I run into her again someday. Bless her heart. Bless all their hearts. Geez, I’m starting to wonder if I should leave the clinical field to advocate for the gifted?

I was identified as gifted when I was in grade 5. I went to a small school with less than about 80 kids in K – 8. There were only 7 kids in my cohort. There was this weird rivalry between myself and a guy in my grade so each year, instead of giving an award to the top student, we always got “top girl” and “top boy.” It pissed me off more than you can know. I mean, surely they were just being nice to him, right? HAH! In retrospect, this fellow definitely skooled me in reading and verbal, and I kicked ass in anything to do with numbers or visual-spatial problems. Exact opposite of what you’d expect considering our genders. I’m going to see him in a couple of weeks at my grade 8 reunion. We both went into the gifted program in grade 6, and I got to leave my childhood “bully” behind me (cause she was nominated for gifted but didn’t make it!!!) WIN! Rot in hell enormous BITCH who cut my hair off while I was asleep at a birthday sleepover party! Whoooooot! I revel in my relative superiority! I have no idea what’s become of you, but can only think of you as my pint-sized tormentor and the girl who thought it was a cool insult to call me “dickless.” What can I say? You were technically right.

I, ladies and gentlemen, am a dickless woman. Well... let’s be honest. I DO have a dick. It’s just that my husband has it most of the time...

In other news... I’ve just emailed off my final take home exam for the year, and I’ve decided that if my partner for my other course’s paper (Ms. Stoopid) doesn’t get her act together, that I’m just emailing the prof and saying I’m done. So really, I’ve only got my thesis and this teachers’ guide to work on now. That and work. Summer is coming. Relaxing time is almost here!

More news to surely come soon. Stay tuned!

Ack!

Really? Remaking Nightmare on Elm Street? Is that necessary? Could they at least add some Freudian "Interpretation of Dreams" stuff into it?

Sigh... kids these days.