Tactical Socialization

This semester hasn't been the most successful for me. Part way through I experienced some heavy burnout that really set me back academically. Even now I'm still feeling the consequences of it. One of my biggest failures, I think, has been socially. I've done a really good job at keeping people at arm's length or further, and I'm starting to rethink whether it actually was so good an idea.

Gah, People!

I've always been a loner. My circle of friends has never really been that big. People tended to go in and out of it as life circumstances demanded. I never really preferred team projects, but if I did find myself in one I usually took the leadership position. It did the job.

Although I didn't know about the word until my teen years, I'd easily be classified as an introvert. There's a difference between intoversion and shyness. Introverts don't talk much because it expends energy. Shy people don't talk much because of fear, anxiety, or something else. I have the double whammy of being shy and introverted.

One of the main things I've noticed about how I socialize is how I dislike small talk. It occurred to me a few years back how useless it seems to be. How often do you hear a conversation go "Hi!" "Hi!" "How are you?" "Good." "That's good." What's the point of that? That little exchange goes nowhere, does nothing. I would rather get to the meat of the conversation. If you have anything important or meaningful to say, go ahead and say it. I don't see such social niceties as worthwhile.

I've also taken issue with the "stock questions" you hear around a college campus at the start of a new school year, or at other significant times of the year. You probably know what I'm talking about:

• Where's your hometown?
• What's your major?
• What year are you?
• How many final exams do you have?
• What are your plans for break?
• How was your break?

It bugs me to use and be asked these because I find them cliche. They're outright predictable. They're asked so often, and I repeat myself every time.

Basically, I abstained from these things. If people asked me them, I would answer as appropriate.

Not So Empty Chatter

I did not expect to have such big problems with this approach to socialization as I've gotten. Of the 100-odd students living on my floor in this dorm, only 20 were present last year. The rest are completely new faces. While people were trying to get to know each other early in the year, I basically stayed out of sight. Some of them I've become acquainted with. The rest only know me as the quiet, somewhat goofy, kinda grumpy dude that lives at the end of the hall. I feel like, by and large, I've missed out on a lot of important interaction with my peers. I don't even have a baseline acquaintance relationship with many, if not most, of them. 

Why do I think these non-existent relationships are important to have? Because I'm a social creature, just like anyone else is. If I don't have anyone physically present I can go to, then I'm in a lot of trouble because the social needs I have can't be met. These are needs everyone has. We fulfill them by talking with others, hanging out, and otherwise being physically present with fellow humans.

It dawned on me that small talk, which I long thought of as purposeless, is actually kinda useful. Those stock questions I avoided asking have a role. Split-second greetings while you pass someone in the hall does indeed do something. They open channels to making some kind of relationship with that person - be it friendship, simple acquaintances, business partners, co-workers, romantic partners, and so on.

The thing is, while those small exchanges themselves don't contribute much, they open the opportunity to lead to more communication. This is a really good thing for somebody like me who often finds himself feeling lonely.

Tactical Socialization

I call it tactical because the way I see it, there's a plan and a mission to it. There's things I need to do, want to accomplish, and there's a way to get them done.

What I'm looking to do is have a healthy social life, considering my naturally introverted nature. Despite being the "quiet guy," I can still have those baseline acquaintances with people around me. I've spent enough time going the opposite route, of generally avoiding talking to people, to know what's better for me. I do think the key, for now anyway, is getting used to making small talk with people. I've had more than enough instances of sitting awkwardly in silence by someone, because I didn't know what to say, or could not muster up the courage to speak.

I feel like I have what might be called a "social duty." Calling it a duty isn't really the right word, because nobody's requiring me to do it, but it's the best I can come up with. What I mean is that it's proper and beneficial to open those lines of communication with people around me, wherever I may find myself. I have that duty, that role, to carry out. I do it by saying hello as we pass each other in the hallway, or by using those stock questions during the right time of the semester. You engage the person, it creates that connection which helps a lot.

That's what I want to do. I want to try and say hello as I pass people in the dorm hall, in between classes, as I sit to eat and there's really not anyone else around, etc. I'd like to ask them what their plans for break are, how they feel about the exams they've had. Or just that vague old "How are you?" which can be used to start a chit chat or dismissed as a formality. I don't desire to push people to speak to me, or force a conversation. Starting conversations is hard for me; but once I'm in it, continuing and ending at the right time are more or less natural to me. That's what I'm going to aim to do more often.

I'm not really looking to become close friends with everybody I meet. First off, that's not in my nature. Even if I say hello to everyone, I'm still an introvert. I prefer to stick to a few close friends, rather than try to befriend everyone. I do want healthy social interaction, though. And who knows? Some, or even many, of those interactions can lead to friendships. I'm OK with that. Second, I know not everybody will want to be friends with me. I'm the calm, cool, collected, religious type. I tend not to get very emotional or rambunctious. A lot of people will find that off-putting. That's alright. If they don't desire friendship from me, it's their choice and I won't hold it against them.

On a religious note, this has evangelical benefits as well. The campus ministry I attend has an icebreaker event most nights before the message. I've usually kept out of those, but part of developing a better social life would include engaging in them. The Gospel is not spread by silence. It's spread by going up to a person and showing your godly character, speaking about Jesus where the opportunity arises. Once a person is a believer, having a community to go is vital for maintaining your faith. It helps to not feel alone, and eventually you could find someone to go to about spiritual problems and successes.

Exercise!

Here's a quick update on my weight loss mission. I don't know what my weight is, as I don't know where I would find a scale. However I have still been taking measures to cut back. I'm trying to eat less, though it's questionable how well that's working. One of the main steps I've been taking is exercising more.

In the fitness room of my dorm building there's a device which I've just found is called an elliptical trainer. Basically it simulates walking up a flight of stairs. For the first week I was just doing normal walking on it, but I've started going more intense. The device has several settings for more intensive workouts. So here's my routine right now:

• About a minute of stretching arms and legs.
• 20 sit-ups
• 20 push-ups
• 20 jumping jacks
• Using the elliptical trainer for 10-20 minutes.
• 30 repetitions of arm exercises with 15 pound weights.

The elliptical trainer as an aerobic setting which has a 20-minute workout of increasing and decreasing intensity. I've used this twice, and I've not yet been able to last the full 20 minutes. Perhaps next time I will be able to do better.

I don't know how much exercise is going to be enough, honestly. I shoot for a half hour, twice a week. Soon I hope to get some professional advice about this stuff. But just know I haven't given up yet!

A Simpler Life

As a computer science major in college, I deal with information a lot. My classes daily unload new knowledge into me, which I am expected to retain (at least until the final exam). Beyond that, I spend a lot of time on the computer, doing homework, playing games, or socializing online. Over the past few months I've started to feel a bit overwhelmed by all this information being pumped into my mind on a daily basis.

Part of me has begun longing for simpler times. It's a recurrence of a desire that's been in me for a while. Not too long ago I ran across a website that collects American TV sign-offs, which were played when a TV station shut down for the night. That's right, TV stations used to shut down. I don't remember them, but boy do they bring back nostalgia of simpler times, before information and the Internet dominated.

Another part of me thinks back to the Middle Ages. Back then, there weren't nearly as many possibilities and media as there is nowadays. Your collection of friends was limited to who was in your village. Long-distance friendships were probably maintained by sparse meetings. There weren't hundreds of different jobs you could take. And while I certainly wouldn't want to live in the Medieval times, there's something... quaint about the comparatively simple lifestyle they had. You worked, you dined with the family, and on Sundays the entire village gathered for Mass.

I've spent a lot of time musing on what it is that I desire. My thoughts have led me to a few things actually.

First, I miss the lack of information overload. You know how Facebook has that mini-feed in the upper right corner of the screen? It shows in real time what your friends are doing. Honestly it just clutters the screen with a distracting moving object. I hid it with the online friends list, and I've felt better about it since then. I still check once in a while but I'm not being spammed with information. Media is another big thing for me. I think the biggest problem is the Internet. There's so much information available that I take in on a daily basis. I don't think the mind is supposed to have so much dumped into it on a daily basis.

Because of all this, I have learned about so many systems of thought and ways of life that it's really caused some internal confusion. I feel like there are too many things that have my interest, too much I want to know about. Every time I learn about something, there becomes more I am curious about. Before the days of the Internet, we couldn't satisfy every curiosity that we had. Now we can. Perhaps my desire is to limit the information dumped into me. Stick to the things that interest me, and stay out of other stuff. To some this might seem to be a call to ignorance. Perhaps it is. Not trying to understand everything perfectly would lead to me - gasp - being wrong about things! Yet as I've seen, we humans are wrong about many things, and still we've survived.

The second thing is genuine friendships. It's so weird how I could be friends with someone who lives a thousand miles away, yet never say a word to my next door neighbor. Sites like Facebook and Twitter provide us all sorts of means of staying in touch. Yet it seems that people are more depressed and lonely than before. Why is that? I would wager it's because we've picked up a method of socializing that isn't natural to us. We're not built to have friendships with people on a screen or a text box. We're designed for person-to-person interaction. It's almost embarrassing how infrequently I see the people I consider my closest friends in real life. While a good, long chat on Facebook is satisfying for me, there's something quaint about hanging out with someone in real life and bantering.

Third, there is the matter of planning. I work best and feel the most at ease when I have things planned out and organized. It makes it easier to make decisions and get stuff done. One of the biggest blocks in my daily life is when I don't know what I should do next, or I don't know how to do something. This sort of ties in with my first point, where possibilities were more limited back in the day. It meant less distractions and (hopefully) somewhat clearer ideas of what one was going to do in the future. Back in the past if you needed help you would ask for it. That's something hard for me. I prefer to do stuff alone, figure it out with my own brainpower. Which is kind of foolish because a problem that I might stress over for hours could be figured out in mere moments by someone with better expertise than myself.

So, hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to have this "simpler" life, what kind of things would I do? I think the number one change would be connectivity brought on by the Internet. The Internet becomes a novelty for me. I use it for school, but not much else. Perhaps in the evening I would give myself a chance to browse a bit. I certainly wouldn't spend forever on sites like Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. This would probably have the effect of clearing my mind out a lot. I would be able to focus on the specific things I like or need to do - school, writing, gaming, etc. I would still use it, of course, but this time to pursue my interests. I feel like the freedom from excess information in the past allowed people to better specialize in things. Another thing I'd do is try to spend more quality time with those around me. To be honest, I won't talk to most of the people I've run across in college after I graduate. Most friendships tend to be, by nature, transitory. Life just happens. I would also look for help more. College provides all kinds of support systems that I would do well to take advantage of.

Motivation for College

For as long as I can remember, I always knew I was going to college one day. It was never really a question. My earliest memories of report cards comes from elementary school where I was consistently an A student. This continued all the way through high school, where my grades were high. I graduated high school ranked 3rd in a class of 249. Community college was no different, as I graduated with a 3.95 GPA. Academics were always a strong point for me.

When I transferred to Kansas State, I found things had become more difficult. The level of thinking, the sheer number of hours that was necessary to devote, all these things hurt. It's still something I have trouble with, because I'm stubborn. Recently I've begun feeling like I'm running on empty in things. To keep going, I think I need to remember my motivations.

Why College? Why Computer Science?

I don't think my parents ever pressured me into attending college. If I had decided not to take the college route, I don't think they would have held it against me. I have heard many people say college is a waste of time and money. Perhaps they are right, but I likely will not know until after I am finished with it. I am inclined to think that attending college was mainly my own choice, although perhaps I was influenced by the school system encouraging it.

I don't consider myself a computer person. In other words, I don't know much about the intricacies of how computers work. In theory I could find out the information needed to build a desktop of my own, but I have no desire to do it. I consider myself a programmer. Someone who takes ideas and instructions, and turns them into code. My passion for coding started when I was about 11 or 12, and I really latched onto it after I graduated high school. Being a programmer requires a degree of critical thinking skills that I am blessed enough to have. The title I am likely to adopt when I get a programming job is "software engineer." Programmers are in high demand in a world where computers predominate. It also pays very well. So there is this economic reason for college. A Bachelor's degree makes it more likely I will get a well-paying job somewhere. College is also where my programmer skills are being developed and refined. My skills are not as developed as they could be, even though I'm a senior. In college I have learned things I probably would never learn using online resources. I never even heard of a "data structure" before university!

Most of my life, I'd say I have lived in the lower middle class bracket. Enough to pay the bills, but not always much else. To a degree, this has been good for me. I have picked up a sort of utilitarian mindset with material possessions - if it doesn't have a useful function, I probably do not need it. I have no aspirations of living in a big old mansion by the lake. The Mercedes Benz does not appeal to me. That said... lower middle class is a very wearisome place to be for years on end. It's not something I want to have as part of my life. During the first few years following college I likely will remain in that economic bracket simply because I won't have that big a paycheck. But it is my dream to have an income that allows for a more comfortable life. Sort of my aim is to have a nice house in a safe, quiet neighborhood. If on the off chance I do become more wealthy than what I really need, I foresee myself donating to church ministries, or perhaps things like ChildFund. I might also try to endow scholarships.

So that is my goal. In the meanwhile I need something to keep me going. One of the biggest motivators is me thinking about the goal. Remembering that all of this is happening for a purpose: to graduate and get myself going in life. Doing so requires action now, and it serves as a great incentive.

What Breaks Motivation?

Of course, staying motivated can be hard in a college setting. There are plenty of times over the past three semesters I have questioned why I keep going, or why I'm not wanting to keep at it. What are the things that quell my motivation?

1. Lack of organization: If I don't know what I'm doing, it can be hard for me to find the energy to set up a plan. There might be too many things I need to do. Or I may not have all the items I need for something.

2. Distractions: Internet. People. If my energy is sapped by these things, or if they're causing my attention to be pulled in several directions, my motivation is spent.

3. Not understanding something: L. Ron Hubbard wrote in Dianetics (yes, I've read it) that confusion can result from misunderstanding a single word. Regardless of one's opinion of Hubbard's works, this sentence is true. If I fail to grasp one concept, everything else can be very confusing. And when everything escapes me, I feel no desire to keep going.

4. Impatience: I hate when I can't understand things right away, nor can I get things done in under an hours. But dangit, when stuff takes days' of work I get impatient. I just want to have something done and over. I want to grasp it after the first few tries.

5. Loss of direction: This is a big one. Although I plan in the long-term, generally I am more short-sighted. Getting caught up in the details of life, it's easy for me to forget why I'm doing this, and what I am working toward. I'm not doing this for graduation's sake; I'm doing this for the life I begin after college. The idea of finishing college and starting my life provides a sudden boost of motivation for me. When I lose sight of that, I lose motivation.

6. Lack of support: When I start to feel down or overwhelmed, I need people I can go to for help. Unfortunately I don't always feel like I have that. So I end up bearing my frustration in silence, and this has a habit of ruining the rest of the day. I also don't often have people to tell me I'm doing a good job, or encouraging me to press forward, or keeping me accountable to my schoolwork.

7. No reward: I might put hours and days into something, then instead of any relief or good grade I just have another assignment to do. When there's no end in sight I am inclined to get disgruntled.

I Want... an Office

This is one of those more random thoughts I felt like sharing.

Over the past few days I have been using the study rooms in the dorm building's basement to get away from everything and focus more on my schoolwork. There are mainly two rooms that I've been used. One is pretty small and seems more like an afterthought. As if the architects of the building said "Hey we have this little space right here. I guess we can make it a room." It has a couple tables and chairs, but no air conditioning system. The other room has three tables, three chairs, and a significant amount of the space is taken up with weightlifting equipment. There's also a window and air conditioning system.

I've spent several hours out of the day in these rooms. The doors lock from the outside so while I can get out, nobody without a key can get inside. These rooms don't have clocks on the walls, which for me causes the sense of time to disappear. At one point I was in one of the rooms until about 10 pm. Having a room to myself for an extended period of time with no distractions, complete solitude... it felt really good. A nice little place where I can be by myself.

This invoked a sort of silly pipe-dream desire I've had since last year. I would make the perfect bureaucrat because I like the idea of having my own office. There's just something about having a work space that is solely mine that appeals to me. I could see myself becoming a TA because not only would it likely give me a work space, I could also help people learn. If I weren't going to be a programmer or minister, chances are good I'd be a professor. Even if that would require like three more years of college and doing a bunch of stuff I'd have no interest in. And you can bet I would be a computer science professor.

Of course in reality I don't have an office to call my own, but I do have the next best thing, a dorm room. 50% of it is mine for the school year unless one of us moves out. I could sort of make this into an office space! My desk has a few basic office items - a laptop, clock, and printer. I could perhaps try to organize my books and accessories a little more since things get messy kinda quickly. Part of me would like to go one step further and post a list of classes that I'm good with that people can come see me for help with. I don't think I'd mind being a tutor very much. Unfortunately my amount of free time is quite limited this semester. Maybe next semester.

What Kind of Place Is Your Mind?

This is a question that people bring up every now and then. They ask if your mind was a physical setting, what would it be like? Here's what my mind is like:

My mind is a city. There is a suburb area to the side of the downtown, and it's all encircled by a tall steel gate. The center of the city has three massive buildings: a library, a cathedral, and observatory.

You know the armory scene from "The Matrix," where endless rows of guns appear around Neo and Morpheus? The library's bookshelves are like that. You just think about the desired topic and the shelves will shift around you until the right book is in front of you. This represents my intellect.

By the entrance of the library, where the check-out desk is, you would find a round tables with eight chairs. This is a place where scientists, philosophers, and theologians come to contemplate and discourse. You would find Jesus and Nietzsche talking about the meaning of life; Richard Dawkins and John Lennox debating the existence of God; Leibniz unraveling the intricacies of calculus, and so on. This represents my tendency to think about things, a lot.

The library is on the east side. A cathedral is the second building of the trio, on the north. It's massive, particularly the sanctuary. Enormously tall ceiling with spires, stained glass windows, and imagery. It's a Lutheran cathedral where services are being held nearly all day. Morning services, evening services, mid-day services. Prayers constantly being delivered up, and mixes of ancient hymns and modern worship songs are being played. If you were to step in there any time of day you'd probably see a service being held. This represents my faith.

On the west is an observatory. The pinnacle is a huge telescope which peers into the depths of space. Yet astronomy isn't the only thing happening here. There are also labs for chemistry, physics experiments, research on plant and animal life, and so on. It's an all-around scientific facility. This represents my interest in science.

[TOU] Someone Make My Brain Work, Please...

This is the second post in a little post series I've come up with called "The Overworked Undergrad."

Holy moley, it's been a heck of a week for me. My brain feels exceptionally out of order, and I feel like I'm having trouble focusing on my schoolwork and sticking to deadlines. I really got a lot going on and I need to sort myself out, somehow. I'm really thinking of finding someone IRL who is good at handling this sort of stuff, and talking with them about it. There are a lot of facets with me right now that I need help with.

There is just so dang much work I have to do right now. I'm balancing five classes, five textbooks, and several assignments all thrown at me at once. I know I need to figure out some order to do them in. Usually it's find the ones which are the most urgent, and work on them first. Or if a particular assignment is due later than others but going to require a whole lot of time, do part of that one first. This is not difficult to comprehend, right? Well right now I'm a little rushed. I only yesterday bought the last of the textbooks I was going to need, and I also found out I needed it for an assignment due soon. Today I'm going to spend like another $60 dollars on chemistry lab equipment. Then I should finally be done with throwing money at the college mindlessly.

I don't feel like I'm using my time effectively. Ideally I would be the sort of person who wakes up, diddle around on the Internet for a bit, and then jump into action with my schoolwork. Unless my night's sleep wasn't very good, I tend to be able to focus and work well in the mornings. I want to be able to get started with something and focus solely on that. Then move to the next thing when I'm done with it, perhaps taking a short break in between. A half hour isn't a short break. That's goofing off, and it's detrimental for me. I know I have the ability to do that. It's been done before. I suppose what's stopping me is that I don't quite have the sense of urgency to get stuff done that I would have otherwise. Deadlines and due dates aren't feeling terribly concrete or immediate for me. I could probably push myself to persist despite that lack of urgency.

Oh yeah, I mentioned money earlier. This dude needs a job. The college had a part-time job fair a few days ago, and there were several interesting job positions open. And dangit, I need one of those. Part of me is really hesitant about going through with the process, because I've never worked while at university. When I went to community college I worked about 18 hours a week, and I still did exceptionally well in my classes. Then again, my classes were mostly online. So it doesn't seem like it should be bad if I'm working at most 15 hours a week, mainly weekends, to compensate with the much bigger school workload I have now. Still, now I gotta ask people to be references, find where half these places are and turn in stuff, and so on. I wanted to be on the web development team for the housing and dining, but I need to be available for at least 3 four-hour shifts during the weekdays, and my schedule would only allow for two. Technically I could do three, but that third slot is in a pretty nasty place until October.

And then there's the matter of my weight, and dieting. College food is not always the healthiest thing around. My weakness? It's really, really good. A lot of people talk crap about dining hall food but I think it's yummy. Therein lies my problem. I have a hard time deciding on the spot what stuff is going to be good for me, and what's not. Or how much of something I should eat. I also don't seem to have access to any scales for the purpose of weighing myself, so I don't have a clue what my weight is. I fear it might be going back up. The dorm has a weight room in the basement, but again finding time for that is a challenge.

On the topic of health, sleep and tiredness has been an issue. Don't get me wrong, I have an adequate amount of sleep. I typically get at least 7 hours of sleep a night. But for some reason it's not doing me very much good once I get into the afternoon. Maybe it's diet, or stress, or whatever, but I've been experiencing more fatigue than usual recently. It's basically one more hindrance stopping me from doing my best. Coffee helps, a little bit, but that could get expensive quickly.

You know what I think my problem really comes down to? I don't have a plan. I have a schedule, yes. You wouldn't believe how much I've planned out already. But I suppose I haven't taken the opportunity to really engage in it. I can do a lot of stuff this semester, but I need to get myself in gear. Maybe the best thing for me to do is start following my daily schedules - because believe me, I have the time to do what I need - but also have a sort of running to-do list, where I'm working on class stuff based upon how urgent it is to finish them. Having a schedule I followed more rigorously would let me be more on task, and would also go a way to helping me be less distracted by stuff.

My mind considers what it must have been like for university students and the other intellectuals of the Medieval Ages. They did not have access to knowledge and technology like I do today. On one hand, it made it easier a lot easier to be focused since, hey, they didn't have the Internet to have things more fun to do than schoolwork. If they did decide to slack off, it was usually with a book or other people. So I would wager they were inclined to be more productive than someone like myself. Plus university back in those days was crazy expensive. On the other hand, the less availability of information meant doing things took much longer. High level math, science, and philosophy must have been a real time sink. Yet you still end up with great thinkers like Aquinas, Augustine, Euclid, and so on. Why couldn't I have the kind of focus that they would have?