Jus' bloggin 06/19/11

BLOG 06/19/11

Another semester gone by!

This was a hectic semester. I have a mathematic weakness that basically stems from my childhood. I’m great with theoretical concepts even very complex ones, however throw some numbers in the mix and I’m like Huuuuur?!

Anyway, I still did very well over the chem and molec bio classes I completed this semester. I learned a lot from the hands on laboratory experience and definitely feel more like a “scientist.”

I was convinced by my friends to go to Hawaii based on the utilization of an inexpensive time share and by the sheer luck that I got a plane ticket at almost half price. Simply an amazing experience, and I now understand why VACATIONING is SOOO important to so many people. I will definitely plan to vacation again in the future. I’ll probably blog about that experience soon.

I’ve kind of become a little unmotivatated recently simply based on the magnitude of what I am attempting to accomplish academically with limited resources and a pressing time line. I definitely wish I had taken these courses when I finished a BA, but of course the allure of just “getting a degree” without any insight into a real career or making money got to me in my younger days. I don’t loathe my previous education; I just wish it held more value than it currently does.

Basically I have a lot to accomplish this summer as well.

I’m taking an accelerated pre-cal right now to prep to re-take the GRE, and to take physics in the fall. However since this class is an incomplete form of pre-cal, I actually have to test out of the subject before I can continue to calc or physics. If I don’t pass, I literally add another YEAR to my academic time line, and at the age of 25, doing any more prereqs will literally drive me insane.

On top of that, in August I need to re-take the GRE –REVISED, which changes the format of the test which I had previously studied for. On this test I basically need an incredible score as well as I am seeking financial support to do doctoral work.

In the fall I’m going to be taking an organic chem course, physics and calc at the same time. Sometimes I get a bit envious of fellow students that hail from old-money sources that simply just go to school as their job. I guess I shouldn’t hate too much, at least I’m capable of taking these courses and the fact that I earn my own way through it is gratifying in a cosmical sense.

Also in august I need to go through my list of potential schools that I want to apply to for admittance. The four states where I would be willing to move to I’ve decided are Cali (of course), Florida, Hawaii, or Massachusetts. It’s actually very time consuming. In the process of just simply researching the many schools to which I apply, you have to look up what research projects are in the works and who is working on them. Then you kind of have to be an e-stalker and look up a short biography of the principal investigator (scientist) you’re looking to work with. All of this research goes into a customized letter of intent to each program you apply to. 

In addition it costs ~ $80 per application eeegh.

Oh well, when you want something difficult out of life, it’s the hard work that makes it worth it right?

A nursery story I read about recently has become a source of inspiration.

Tortoise and the Hair.

Slow and steady wins the race!

-Joey

Individual Significance blog 03/07/11

Blog 03/07/11

Heard a couple powerful statements this week, some were by people unaware of what they were actually saying.

In regards to the value of life:

“What value do they have to ones such as we?”

“We all die, and that’s what makes life valuable.”

“Would you kill someone in Africa for a billion dollars right now?” – “Yes, definitely.”

“I wish we could just get rid of mentally ill people somehow.”

In regards to Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

“I only wish we hit China and Korea too.”

In regards to Chernobyl:

“Death is the price you pay when you don’t raise your people right.”

In regards to moral reasoning:

“Most people’s opinion on politics and religion are gotten at second hand without much thought.”

These statements aren’t taken out of context and are presented in entirety. While the statements may be offensive or disturbing keep in mind 5 out of the 7 presented here came from devout religious individuals. Even more so, keep in mind the specific statement(s) you consider to be offensive may be insightful to another and so on.

I don’t consider myself holier than thou, nor more intelligent or capable than most. In addition I’ve been told that I am difficult to approach or communicate with. I’m notorious for being I’m callous to the immediate emotional wants of others, and intimidate others with resolute solutions to problems that I portray as being “below me”.

However for many, I’ve been told I’m the only source of honest feedback, a trusted friend, a confidant that doesn’t judge, a catalyst for the improvement of others, and a precocious young adult.

I’ve noticed the difference between the two perceptions of my behavior lie within the eye of that specific beholder, as opposed to actual schisms within my own personality. Those that are more willing to admit to a lack of knowledge and pursue truth within evidence tend to understand my mentality of crude skepticism as canonical to their development of moral reasoning. The latter, not so much and view my methods as invasive, inappropriate, and unnecessary.

C'est la vie  -

When figuring out for yourself which of these statements is more offensive than others, ask yourself just how valuable you are. Then ask how valuable your family and friends are, and compare your own value against theirs. From there, ask how valuable the occupants of texas, congress, California, mexico, Haiti, London, Russia etc are. Once again compare your value against the individuals of the respective groups mentioned.

When you’re done wasting time, did you realize that placing value ratings on the lives of others was for starters not easy, and second too subjective to have any significant value? Did you seem to have a strong bias to your own value? What do you think would happen when someone from Russia has to make the decision about who or what is most valuable, will you be considered significant?

While it is painful to embrace the fact of just how insignificant each and every single one of us is, it helps to put in perspective that we’re all insignificant together. –Joey P

Altruism, and an austere respect for life is the way to live my friends.

-Joey. P

Death of our Past

Recently through talking to friends I’ve made note of a trend that we as a culture kind of generally share.

“We were so stupid when we were young.”

In retrospect it’s easy to see the correct path we were supposed to take, the relationships we shouldn’t have invested in, or the priorities and mentalities we should have maintained. It’s that one magical situation called hindsight. However with hindsight, there is so much bias that goes unnoticed. Emotions associated with those times are lost, the contemporary perception of what’s important at that time in our lives is diminuated, and the thought processes associated with previous decision making are impossible to re-fabricate.

Not that it’s wrong to say “I was so stupid back then.” Everybody probably lives with the regret of poor decision making especially when it stemmed from a lack of maturity at some point.

In short – we change with time, so much that if we were capable of holding a conversation with our previous selves, it would probably be an argument. At least that’s what I think would happen if I was able to discuss with my 18 year old self about the facts of life and what really matters in the world. I’m sure my 35 year old self will think my 25 year old self (now) is utterly stupid for how I’m handling things. It’s ok though, my 35 self should be grateful that 25 year old Joey is living as he is.

“Let my future self writhe with enmity for how I’ve lived, I don’t care. For the sake of my own development the person that exists today would have committed suicide. My remnants would persevere merely as a distorted memory to my own harsh judgment filled with an undeserving righteous clairvoyance.”  –Joey. P

And I’m not saying our personalities change, even though of course it’s very possible. However I’m talking about our sense of perception, and our wealth of information. Through the acquisition of knowledge, both epistemic and rote memory we are able to make better decisions.  However this acquisition takes time, and like every other thing in our lives, it isn’t FREE.

And no, I’m not a proprietor of any predetermined causation or fate; however shit happens, learn from it, then get over it.

I personally have made countless mistakes that originated from a lack of insight, a sense of direction and of course, maturity. Keep in mind I’ve maintained this self inflated image of having this well endowed sense of sophistication in my reasoning abilities that excelled above my peers since I was 16. Obviously there is something either wrong with my sense of perception, or there is no upper ceiling to my reasoning potential as I would hope to have developed by leaps and bounds in my capabilities since the age of 16.

One of the tools that I’m so glad I’ve used since I started college back in the day was the blog. Basically a diary online, but so amazing. I really only blogged when something bothered me, or I felt I needed to communicate some idea but found it difficult to articulate via discussion.

Up until recently I thought of my youthful self as an immature kid with a lack of priority that kind of sabotaged my future. Not that I was a bad kid or anything, but I definitely felt that I’ve wasted a lot of time not accomplishing as much as I should have.

I even have resented my formal education in Psychology, seeing it no more valuable than an education in home economics.

One amazing thing that I discovered however; was that young Joey was an amazing thinker. Really though. For fun, I wrote pages upon pages on abstract concepts such as the birth of moral reasoning adding onto the work of Kohlberg. I further dissected of Jungian archetypes, and found new ways to support the abjuration of fallacies in my daily life. I tackled and stated boldly the conceptual problems of eternal existence, morality, and discovery of self purpose. I accomplished discovering what it is I value in life, and what I was willing to do to protect it.

I went against my upbringing both in fear and moral duty via the pen. Not only did I define for myself the difference between right and wrong, I then took up rhetorical arms and boldly stood alone to defend what I believed to be right.

Even further, I influenced those close to me to behave similarly, to develop. The young Joey was a catalyst of improvement to others. That’s an accomplishment!

 In addition I had forgotten the trials and tribulations I dealt with at the time. They were self shattering events alluring to the macabre and the destruction of my childhood. The act of becoming a man itself in our culture isn’t easy.

How could I just easily judge young Joey as a mindless idiot that plotted to hold back his future?

The answer is I can’t.

 And in hindsight, I’m thankful I was the person I was at the time. I don’t think I would be as strong or as capable as I am today without my past self pushing his own boundaries to become stronger. In the death of my old self, may the man I am now keep a positive memory of who I used to be, without the distortion of regret causing me to lay blame.

I am what I  have created. Nothing more, and of course, nothing less.

-          Joey P.

My brief history of blogging

Whenever I blog, I try my best to ensure that as I write I do so in a stream of conscious fashion.

I don’t edit, spell check or grammar check (hence the often run-on sentences.) Hell I don’t even check to see if whatever I wrote or said made sense. I try to keep my thought process raw on paper (or screen) as possible. While this method may be confusing for others to read, I blog for my own purposes of self reflection. I want to read the unadulterated memory of my thoughts whenever I look back upon these blogs.

I usually have don’t have a purpose or a greater message to get across when I write these blogs either. By some haphazard method the ends of my thoughts meet in an organic fashion into one theme and I usually develop some purpose in my ramblings.  Maybe it’s a Jungian typology that is buried within my personality that takes over from time to time. Who knows maybe I’m a cultural superhero in disguise even from myself! Right Carl Jung?

In my earlier days of blogging I was very uncensored in my thoughts, and was freely able to do so as social networking was in its infancy, and the premise that the judgmental eyes of someone like grandma was unlikely to see anything you did online at the time. However over 6 short years times certainly have changed.

During my unadulterated blogs I would openly challenge social groups, colloquial ideologies, and draw my ever emerging circles of skepticism while further admonishing mysticism and its pervasive hold on society. I would say the blogs themselves were deep, as I would be honest with what I thought about serious topics. Some of them being so personal that today, I would never post them on facebook as I’m sure they’d offend en masse which isn’t necessarily a productive goal.

The topics I would discuss were diverse; from the ethics and basis of moral reasoning often citing Dr. Kohlberg’s psychological experiments, to more abstract topics as if I were Aristotle himself, struggling to define what was “Good” in the wake of discovering the lore I had been raised upon was mostly a lie.

Some blogs were written in secrecy out of chronic anxiety which kept me from sleeping. For a while, Claudia wasn’t in my life, because of it I had no confidential outlet to express my worries, stressors, and maladies as they unfolded unexpectedly. For about two years I developed profound insomnia while I was in the middle of my college career which of course manifested itself in my writing.

 Of course when it’s 3am and you hadn’t slept for two days going on the third you tend to be a bit more irrational and cynical when blogging. However those blogs are the most special in that I focused my energy to convey the pain I was feeling at the time through abstraction. It’s as if I had developed an art form without the cheesy guise of poetry with its flauntish “I’m an artist” poise.  Instead, I was somehow handed a single paintbrush of apathetic dictation to write the tales of my purposeless existence. Like an artist, I did my best to further the verstehen of myself, and to portray the calamitous need for our society to establish further meaning beyond the stories of our elders. Verstehen is a German word with an unclear English translation, however it is synonymous with the word, “Understanding” which is a prominent theme and invaluable quality in the realm of Psychology.

Of course I implored those who spent the time to read my blogs to respond with their own perspective on whatever I had written. The responses were sometimes shocking in the time and effort that people would take to convince me otherwise or further fortify my standpoint. I discovered some amazing thinkers and friends amongst those I had previously thought were just a common casual acquaintance.

After college I took hiatus from blogging for about two years, however as I recall those were probably the unhappiest times of my life. Things were well in that I had money, responsibility, I was the “Boss” at my daytime job but I once again lacked purpose. As if I refused to stop and take the time require to accept meaning as I encountered it, then meaning would no longer reveal itself to me. No matter how hard I would try via other methods such as relationships, working, acquiring distinction, and accomplishing goals it was fruitless. They were nothing but raw vanity turning into ash in my mouth in comparison to returning to that one, single, paintbrush.

However, over time and possibly as a product of neural pruning, I somehow either reached a new level of maturity or a higher stage of moral reasoning. I’m not quite as brash and bold via the pen, however I am definitely more so in person. As if the child hiding within the story replaced the shell of the individual that inhabited the real world. Because of this, I no longer need the blog to self medicate or find purpose, as I do so en vivo on a daily basis, and I happily enter open discussion with those that would challenge my ideologies. While I do occasionally write to preserve certain dates of personal discovery, it’s no longer really necessary in the grand scheme of what I value or even my happiness.

To many more nights of censorship free blogging.

-El Yoey

A little wakeup call, a little persepective, a little bit more resolve.

Have you ever had everyone around you agree that you’re doing well, but at the same time you feel like you’re failing? That you’re not doing enough? That your life is supposed to better than it is and it’s your fault that it’s not?

Generally I get the impression that others approve of who I am and what I do.

I’m a pretty busy with little free time to spare for the most part. A trait I’ve noticed to be admirable amongst the general population as productivity usually equals value. I’m eclectic in my hobbies and dabble in many activities from athletics to musical composition. For the most part I feel that I demonstrate a sense of competence from in my dealings with other people.

However recently I’ve been dissatisfied with what I’ve been actually doing with my time. It’s kind of affected my self esteem. Even though I have the general approval of my peers and mentors I’ve had a sinking feeling like I’m behind the curve in where I’m supposed to be in my life. Maybe it’s because I turned 25 and I imagined being a homeowner at this age, or that I had the overzealous impression that I was just so damn gifted that I would have found some amazing career that afforded me a six figure income while having an Adonis like physique.

What I’m having the most difficulty understanding is what this desire to accomplish more comes from. I’m sure it’s a universal feeling, in that we all wish to accomplish more than we currently do. Albeit I’m also sure there is a distribution of actual desire versus willingness to accomplish amongst the population. However it’s an emotion that anyone with the competence required to read this blog should be able to relate to.

Even more so, what if we are all ingrained with this desire to do more with the time we have given and yet regardless of our accomplishments we perpetually continue to want more? It’s even more ironic that our acquisition of epistemology is so inherently skewed. Although I understand it would be for the purpose of keeping humanity productive, as complacency doesn’t necessarily get us anywhere. However from many long nights of blogging and self reflection I’ve taken on a slightly nihilistic view of the intrinsic value of most of whatever it is that we do as we exist day to day.

However because I developed this stalwart perspective into the purpose of our actions I’ve developed a stronger sense of self esteem for the most part. Ever more so I’m relatively invulnerable to criticism of others because of this nihilistic perspective.

Basically in a cosmic sense your perspective or any criticism you have to say simply has no value to me. Now don’t think I just say it this way to sound like I’m that confident. It’s a philosophical ends that I have drawn from much introspection into the greater meaning of thought.

Hilariously a coworker that I’ve worked with since we were both 19, (that’s almost 6 years now!) asked me just YESTERDAY. “Hey are you still in SCHOOL?” in a diminutive fashion. My response was “Yes, I’m pursuing a PhD.” He responded with “Wow, well after you’ve been in school forever what kinda job will you get with that?” in a mickey mouse fashion, as if there were no value in higher education.

I responded with “Medical Research, make people live longer.” And I then proceeded to walk away. It’s hilarious, as this person dropped out of college at the age of 19, got married, had a wedding in his backyard, rented out a condo from his cousin and got a second job at target because his cultish small church taught him that we’re all going to die anyway so education doesn’t matter and good Christian men don’t let their women leave the home to work. So by having two customer service jobs 80 hours a week somehow makes you a good husband even though you never get to see you wife or kids. (I’m ranting much?) He’s the father of three children and he’s gained 80 lbs since he got married. He’s 24 (so younger than me!) and he looks like he’s 38.

It’s not as if he’s truly wrong or invalid, but I stop and wonder. Does this guy ever have self reflection? Does he ever think, “Hey, maybe I went about this whole method of life thing wrong.” I mean, I’ve sat back and thought what if I did the same as him? Although none of it is appealing to me at first glance, I’m sure there is its merit and value. However from his physical appearance and level of constant exhaustion, he looks incredibly unhappy.

What makes me shudder is that his paradigm of thought is an ubiquitous one, shared by those that fail to make judgments for themselves and rely purely on the whims of mentors. Be those mentors employers, religious figures, teachers, family etc.

 Establish some values on your own for damn Pete’s sake.

All of that said I am still vulnerable to a critique that I give myself, because without it I would have never been able to be forced to face reality as it persists to be. There is value in self reflection; however it may vary from one to another.

Today I gave myself a reality check. I unfortunately did it at the misfortune of older students in my sciences class but it was just that one “Ah Ha” moment I was looking for. Basically, it’s not too late to accomplish whatever I have planned. It’s just going to take more time.

A little background:  I’m a little dissatisfied that I completed my education in Psychology, in that I have no real interest in counseling others or even dealing with interpersonal conflicts. It’s just not my thing, I lack the patience and I’m too authoritarian to passionately explain the purpose of happiness to someone stuck in a cycle of perpetual dysthymia. I know there are people out there that love stuff like that, but I don’t. 

I found out I hold a passion for further understanding and possibly improving the function of human physiology, unfortunately after I already graduated college. In an attempt to attend graduate school in a new subject I’ve enrolled at community level courses to meet requirements to be admitted to a biological sciences program. While I’ve done very well in the sciences at Cuyamaca it’s been a daunting task to stay motivated in what I’ve been doing. For anyone that’s majored in chemistry, the coursework is very rigorous, and in addition I’m already a college graduate. The fact that I’m asked on a frequent basis “What’s your major” is kind of weird, in that I have to give an awkward answer of “I don’t have one, because I’m taking these difficult science courses for just credit.” Which then ensues a further discussion about my purpose in life with the casual acquaintance. Very annoying.

Even if admitted to the biomedical sciences doctoral program that I applied for, I still feel unprepared. I may need yet another year of community before I am qualified to compete at the level of other students. Also, even if I was accepted to it this year, I wouldn’t be finished with grad school till I was 31 and that’s not even considering post doctoral work. I would say that this something that is kind of discouraging, in that I won’t even have had a real “Career” job until I’m in my 30’s.

However, seeing this 48 year old man working just as hard as I was doing orbital geometry was inspiring. The fact that he has to work with people on chemistry projects that are less than half his age has to be even more belittling than my little problems of already having a BA. I gained some perspective, and felt motivated that the premise of being in grad school for a long time isn’t really THAT bad. In fact, I need to be grateful that I had the ability to find enough support to return to school, as so many just aren’t able to.

In addition, I reminded myself that if it was easy, everyone would do it. I looked up some statistics, and about 0.95% of the American population has a PhD. That’s less than 1%! My goal is to be in less than 1% of the most educated people in America. It’s as if I got a backhand from reality saying “Stop whining that life isn’t perfect, weakling.”

From this moment I’ve decided I don’t really care how long it takes, or if I’m judged by others for not having an established career yet, my own home etc. They can only see the value of my actions from their own clouded paradigm. Even though I’m aware my own paradigm is clouded as well, it’s my damn paradigm, and I’ve got every right to uphold what I’ve learned to value.

Here’s to the end of a very difficult semester, and to the beginning of many more that will be more challenging than the last.

Peace

-El Yoey