Dear God, Make Me A Bird

So I can fly far, far away.

"Underneath It All" by Samantha Hogg  DeviantArt

America's Secret Weapon - The H1B

Watch the video first.

I think the point at the end, about "flunkout intro classes", is that it's not that we don't want students. It's that we want properly prepared and motivated students.

Well, shit. I flunked out of Intro Chemistry my freshman year of college. Well, to be fair, I failed the first exam, and the professor (who was also the department head) told his classes that if we failed the first one, we wouldn't be able to catch up enough to pass the other three. He urged those who earned Fs to drop the class, so I took his advice.

If you read the post about my military dreams being crushed because of knee problems, well, here's the rest of the story. I matriculated at a small state military college expecting to DOUBLE MAJOR in--oh geez--physics and aerospace engineering. There was a 5-year program in cooperation with the large state tech university, in which the first three years would be the core curriculum and most of the physics majors classes at the small university, then the physics labs and engineering classes at the tech university. Two degrees in five years, if all went well. This was going to get me into pilot training for the Marines (I'd hoped).

I simply was not prepared for all of these things at once: being away from home for an extended time, keeping up with a boyfriend (at the same college), untreated depression and anxiety issues, physical pain that never went away and didn't seem to have a fix, a full-immersion military program that dictated every minute of free time, and the ironic freedom of no one forcing me to go to class. I slept through a lot of classes. Eleven pm to five am was simply not enough sleep for me, and I developed issues with falling asleep and staying asleep. Once I got into therapy for depression, I was given sleeping pills as well, and in the long run I think those made it worse.

Ack, I'm drifting. What was my point? Motivated students. Those who want to put in the time and effort to learn, to experiment... and then to innovate and make millions of dollars. They just don't come from America anymore; they're the Indian students, the Chinese and Middle Eastern and European students who come to American universities to study. And like Dr. Kaku said, then they go home. And they take their innovative minds with them.

Well, what if I were one of those motivated students? I know I'm not dumb. I know--I think--I could do the coursework well enough if I were self-motivated enough. Typing that last sentence, my mind drummed up a list of obstacles: if I didn't have so many routine life distractions like taking care of the baby and worrying about bills, if I had the money to go back to school full-time, if I had reliable transportation, if I could take advantage of extra resources when I have trouble learning something, if I could manage to avoid flunking a class, if I could manage to keep my grades high enough, if if if.

Yeah.

Happy Birthday to me

"Cleared For Takeoff"

When I was in middle and high school, I wanted to join the Marines and be an F-18 pilot. I read books about pilots, training, the military; I joined Civil Air Patrol; I played lacrosse to have a sport in my high school resume, because it would look good on an application for a pilot slot. I even went to a military college.

Those dreams were shattered when I began having problems in lacrosse. As a goalie in a poor start-up league team, I played with no goalie pants and got hit in the knees at least twice a week (and it's a hard rubber ball about the size of a baseball, very painful). Running was never easy for me to begin with, but it kept getting more and more painful until I quit my senior year to "focus on schoolwork". The ROTC program in college just made my knees exponentially worse, and I eventually had arthroscopic surgery on both. They felt better for a few months, then it all just went downhill.
TL;DR I was never going to join the military, never mind be a fighter pilot.

Seeing this photo today stirred an exhilaration I haven't felt in 10 years, but it was quickly quashed by the "reasonable" side of me. "It won't ever happen, so why get excited about it?"
Then I realized that this is what happens every time I see or think about something I used to care about or enjoy, and over the years, it's become so automatic that I almost never have that initial feeling of excitement at all anymore. My brain is protecting me from itself.

Sure, I could take the attitude of "stick it to the man" and try to force myself to feel those things, as a rebellion... but I don't want that either. I don't want "happiness" or excitement or passion to be just flipping the bird to my screwed up psyche. That's just anger masked as excitement or passion or happiness.

I want REAL happiness.

I know it's definitely the latter.

But unfortunately for all involved, that just makes it all the worse. I'm pretty sure I need to give a fuck, about SOMETHING.

It's getting harder to smile.