Student Diary

“If you’re late on a test day, don’t even bother showing up, because you will be turned away at the door.”

Simple.  So simple.  And stupid.

I set my alarm clock for 6:40… PM.

P. freaking. M.

With only 20 minutes to shower, dress, and take a 45-minute train ride, I’ve resigned myself to eat breakfast and do something useful for the first half of the day.  I will work to make the 1pm roster-all, at least.

Gaaaaaaaaaaah!

It figures!  On the day of our first big assessment!!!  Of course!

I’m nervous enough already because I had to miss MAK110 twice and APP110 once.  There is nothing more nerve-wrecking than getting sick early on in the year.  Obviously, I cannot even remotely afford to fail any of these courses.

Maybe my constitution is just too poor to exist amongst other human beings.  Maybe I should just live on disability for the rest of my life and claim “poor immune system” as the cause.  Why do I get sick so often, when other people around me don’t?  I surround myself with such a wide sampling of people: it’s not my diet, it’s not my weight, it’s not my recreational habits… Hell, if anything, all the pot-smokers and party animals in my class should be the ones getting sick several times a year.  But no.  For some strange reason, the rest of the human species seems to hold itself in fairly good form.

I am having a huge. panic attack.

Doing poorly in this course is simply not an option.  There are no other options but to succeed hardcore.  I sank everything into this school; I am out of options.  There are no other paths for me.  Not financially, not psychologically, not… anything.  This is it.  There is no failure.

And I managed to set my alarm clock to 6:40PM on the one day it mattered.

I will at least show up when they take roll again at 1pm.  With a written explanation.  Written, because, well, I woke up this morning to the not-so-pleasant discovery that i have no voice.  And I don’t mean that I have a hoarse voice, or a raspy voice: I have NO voice.

Probably a product of hanging out with Ron for two and a half hours the other night.  Neither one of us know how to shut our yaps.  There was a lot of yap.  A 70ies feminist rap group couldn’t have yapped better.

Bad idea when you have a cold.

I can’t believe I set my alarm clock for PM…

This is a homework assignment.
Class: PEC 110
(Personal Ethics and Communication I)

Date: 05/12/08

—

What values are most important to me?

Reason: confronting the world with an undiluted eye, free from the prejudices and logical impediments of religion, superstition, and cultural brainwarps.  No one can ever be possess an entirely free intellect, but it is a virtue to constantly strive.

Feminism: the freedom and dignity of women.  The untangling of gender from the way we perceive the more cerebral, emotional, and ethereal aspects of humanity.  This is a constant, actively maintained state and psychological process—hence a personal value.

Love, and the absolute freedom thereof.  Making the important distinction between love and obsession, or addiction, I think that freedom of love—both culturally and internally—is the single greatest value relevant to our species.

What are the character traits I deem essential?

The ability to admit that one is wrong; openness to change; the capacity to formulate genuine apologies; humility and arrogance in ample amounts where they are appropriate, and only where they are appropriate.

Who and what have been major influences in my values and development?

I mostly freestyled.  My values come from constant philosophical churning and the observation of the world around me.

What are my attitudes and beliefs about wellness?

The “self” is not something that floats around inside of the body, as though the body were merely a container.  We are our bodies.  The very core of consciousness that philosophers have debated over for millennia is inextricably connected to every nerve and fiber tissue in our bodies.  In striving for the proverbial philosopher’s stone, we cannot—absolutely cannot—neglect the body.

What are my attitudes and beliefs about my profession?

I think is a very valid, complimentary form of medicine.  There is multi-dimensional healing in the kindness and educational exchange that occurs in this form of hands-on, one-on-one experience.  It is important for human beings to take time with one another and provide some relief in our transition through life, and when this can be done with feet planted firmly in both heart and science, I believe the result can have a profound effect.

What are the key personal characteristics for someone in my field?

An ability to access a sort of unconditional humanitarianism, and to constantly be willing to have one’s brains unraveled.  Nothing tramples more on one’s deeply ingrained biases than the willingness to and necessity of opening your heart to full respect and honor for every client who pays to board the table.

What are the most important professional characteristics for someone in my field?

An acute philosophical understanding of the many facets and subtexts of touch.  The ability to tackle this intense, complicated subject with a clear, mature vision.

What are the most meaningful attributes of an effective practitioner in my field?

Not sure what you mean by attributes.  Warm hands?

How do my values affect my work with my clients?

Not much.  I believe that every person who gets on the table deserves the best massage I can possibly give them; that’s about the extent of where my values and their experiences touch.

Which of my personal values conflict with professional rules of conduct?

Well… Actually, depending on how you look at it, my extreme dedication to freedom of expression might be an issue.  I will never, ever hide my lifestyle or my body modifications because someone else things that their lifestyle and relationship with their bodies takes dominance over mine.  The whole notion of a “professional appearance” is utter bunk; hygiene should be the only essential requirement.

Which of my personal values conflict with laws or regulations?

All of them.  Since I’m almost an entirely contextual thinker, and the law is, you know, the opposite of that.

How do my values enhance my professionalism?

Work ethic is a strong value of mine, and that ties into professionalism pretty directly.  Other than that, this is really too abstract of a subject to draw any concrete lines on.

May as well do this while my insides are slowly turning to tar.

It really is disturbing and breathtaking all at once how powerfully one’s mental and emotional state can affect one’s body. I will never take that for granted again; I will weigh it seriously with every client who walks in my door.

Someone mortally wounded something inside of me last night, and now I feel as though my body is slowly shutting down. I’m cold; I’m achy; I’m slow. I have no appetite, for food or music or carnal pleasures. I don’t even feel like reading. Fantasy suddenly seems too two-dimensional—reality made too crisp by the sharp cuts it has made.

There is clarity in painful neutrality.

—

1. Who were the people that touched you when you were a child?

My mom. Even though she seems like a background character to my childhood in many respects, I do remember the warmth and security of maternal hugs. How often, I don’t know. But there was a time before anything was complicated, when being held by one’s mother was the ultimate commonality of content. The school’s toughest bully; prudest nerd; shyest mouse; most image-obsessed diva would happily forget the arbitrary dignities of their positions and surrender to the warm, endless sea that is a mother’s love.

Back then, it didn’t matter if you’d had a yelling match with her just the other night—or even an hour ago. Hurts never took deep root. I wonder when all that started to change; when being touched by one’s mother became complicated.

My grandmother touched me, too. By Freyja, she did. On the rare occasions when I would fly up to see her in Kristiansand, she would bundle me up and kiss my cheeks and call me her little gold-clump. Of course, it wasn’t all good… I also distinctly remember her chasing me around the house with a hairbrush, telling me I looked like a trollchild.

I was touched by my friends. I never had more than one friend at a time. Usually, they were an outcast, like me. I can count my childhood friends on one hand, in order. Three girls, one boy. The boy and I never touched; we had cooties. But the girls and I took baths together, wrestled, played, hugged, cuddled, and experimented with kissing. Inevitably, these friendships were always somehow brutally cut off.

There was a fifth figure. Another boy. I didn’t think of him as my friend, but he let me come over and watch him play his Nintendo, which was as close as I could ever hope to get to one, so I went and hung out with him anyways. He let me eat the chocolate around his kindereggs because he was only concerned about the toy. He sexually bullied me, constantly, for a blurry but extended period of time. If we were older, the things he did to me would be considered rape. Last I heard, he was facing charges for exactly that.

2. Did being a boy or a girl affect the kind and amount of touch you received?

I’ve never been a boy, so how can I say?

3. How did the amount of touch change when you started school?

I received the added touch of my one-at-a-time friends. On the other hand, there were time periods between those friendships, or drawn out occasions where my friend and I were just too odd to cope with one another. Those times seemed virtually touch-free. It wasn’t something that I missed, or thought I could miss. I lived inside of my head. Touch wasn’t a part of that reality.

4. How did the kind of touch you received affect your self-esteem?

You’d think all the hugs in the world could or would have some effect on one’s self-esteem compared to one single destructive touch. But they don’t.

5. What were the touch traditions in your family?

For old ladies to smooch little children and pinch their cheeks a lot. Other than that, I didn’t really pay attention to how anyone touched each other. I don’t really come from a touchy-feely culture to begin with.

6. What gestures did your family use to demonstrate they cared about you?

They said so.

7. How were you touched and cared for when you were sick, injured, or upset?

I was given special little treats and privileges. When I was sick, that is. My mom would come into my room and stroke my forehead and use her poor-sick-child voice. Now and then, if I felt up for it, I would be allowed to sit quietly in her lap and listen to her heartbeat while she held me. I was never seriously injured. When I was upset, well… I usually made it very difficult to get within a ten foot radius of me when I was upset. Both literally and figuratively.

8. What did you do to have fun as a child?

Get lost. Odin’s eye, but I was a nightmare. I would wander miles off course, exploring hidden paths, climbing curious heights, and shimmying into mysterious enclosures. It was all about getting lost in my mind; half of the time, I couldn’t tell you what was actually going on in the physical world around me. It’s just that my mind and my body got lost together. I lived in some weird place between fantasy and reality, where rocks had spirits and trees could talk. Hours and hours and hours drifted by each day in this strange, timeless psychosis, while my mother screamed at me that I needed to learn how to read a watch and I stared at the sky, surprised by how it got dark so quickly.

I also drew. I had my own miniature art-desk in my room, and my mom made sure I was constantly laden with art materials. I could pass an equal amount of time getting lost in pictures; in the soothing concentration of movement creating visual reality.

During the times when I was strongly bonded with a friend, it was all about make-believe. Escapism was the one central thing that all my friends and I had in common—not just in childhood, but ever. I don’t think I could ever forge a connection with someone who didn’t approach my level of escapism. Sometimes, my friend and I would lose ourselves so deeply in an illusion that we’d be unable to break it when the game was over.

Sometimes it involved touch: wrestling lion cubs; a knight riding a horse; a pet and her owner; a doctor delivering a baby; a husband and wife getting it on. I know—the list gets more questionable with each item, eh? It was all childlike fun and innocent exploration.

Except for the boy. We just played computer games together.

9. Did any of your play activities or interactions with others involve touch?

See above.

10. What touch exchanges did you have with pets, nature, or toys?

The only pet I had growing up was a yellow parakeet, which obviously excludes touching, but our neighborhood was awash in stray cats. Come to think of it, the stray cats weren’t very cuddly either.

Nature was probably my number one touch relationship as a child. That includes people. I spent more time exploring rocks, bark, pond water, snow, twigs, thorns, berries, leaves, dead birds, dirt, worms, poison ivy, mud, weeds, and ladybugs than I ever did skin.

11. Were there adults—besides relatives—with whom you remember having touch exchanges?

Nope.

12. Who was the person who gave you your favorite touch?

When I was very young, it was being held by my mother. When I grew a little older and complicated, it was kissing a girl. I still think kissing a girl is the best form of touch in the world.

13. Long list of items I’m supposed to circle and write about. Skipping this one.

14. Were you ever hurt by adults, relatives, teachers, or friends?

Yes. If “friends” can be extended to mean “peers who were not my friends”.

I was severely bullied growing up.

15. Which family touch traditions from childhood lasted into your teen years? What new ones were added?

Really, it’s kind of difficult to answer these “family tradition” questions, because I only properly saw my “family” a couple of times a year when we would gather somewhere for a Jule celebration or the like. For most of my life, my “family” has simply been my mother.

Obviously, I took hugs and embraces with me. Equally obviously, I, er, added a few forms of touch to my repertoire.

16. How open to touch from your parents were you as a teen?

Zilch.

17. When did you feel connected to your parents? When did you feel isolated from them?

Complicated question. My parent was a full-time student, and a young woman trying to have a social life. The overall impression lingering in my mind is that she was very, very absent from my life. I remember my connections with her as brief, flittering moments of warmth and joy, when we would actually understand each other for a transient and wonderful moment. It could be some poignant words exchanged, some gift given, some content shared. Ice-cream eaten in a park. I felt one with her in the way a daughter does during those fleeting instances; the rest of the time, I was alone in my mind, and she seemed like an alien to me.

18. What kind of touch role-modeling did your parents provide?

Yeah. Only one parent. She kept porn under her bed, if that counts for anything. (Seriously, parents—get more creative. File your porn in your tax folder or something. Geez.)

19. Which DOs and DON’Ts about touching came from your family?

Don’t touch or allow yourself to be touched if you feel uncomfortable. DO hug happy-old-lady relatives when they give you a gift. Or else.

If those two mandates happen to conflict, too bad.

20. Question asks about touch from non-relative adults, which I don’t have a recollection of.

21. What touch memories do you have with friends of both genders that occurred throughout these years?

I think I’ve covered them pretty thoroughly. Three girls I had every imaginable type of childhood touch with; one boy I didn’t touch at all; one who touched me abusively.

22. How much touch are you getting now throughout the day?

Only the touch of fellow students practicing on me during MTP110. Having my scapula palpated in class is pretty much the full extent of human contact I enjoy.

My (platonic) better half and I give one another brief hugs “hello” and “goodbye”. Other than that, we don’t really touch. She simply isn’t a touch-person, and our relationship—while truly like Plato’s soulmates—is almost entirely cerebral. It’s a little weird when our shoulders brush. There’s no offense meant by it, but we both sort of readjust silently if we happen to sit down in a position that makes contact in some way.

Only one person has really touched me in the past… year. I only saw him a few times, scattered over the past six-ish months. He would do the sorts of things that touchy friends do: put an arm around my shoulders, nudge my arm, hug me goofily/comfortingly/casually. It was complicated, because I had a lot of painful emotions associated with this person, and fundamentally disliked them… but I think that in sharp contradiction to my own sentiments, I developed positive—if torn—feelings toward him, simply because he was the only person who provided me with human contact.

He moved to CA a couple of weeks ago.

23. What kinds of touch are you missing from your life right now?

All kinds and no kinds. I stopped actively “missing” anything a while ago, for the preservation of my own sanity. Before starting school and at least getting to be around other people for three days out of the week, I was literally losing my mind from lack of human contact. I have dreams that I cuddle up to computers at night, which isn’t too far from the truth. Actually, it’s only a few inches from the truth… and sometimes I do sleep with my arm over my laptop.

Of course, the absence of a particular touch seems to be a constant theme in my life, but I won’t get too detailed with it. Sexuality is a valid part of the human condition, and it’s not unfair to say that being barred from sharing it with someone—when you want to—can be a serious downer. I see everyone around me progressing through natural parts of adolescence and adulthood, exploring sexual touch in mutual, curious settings, developing sexual relationships and engaging that part of their being. I linger completely on the outside, turning to stone.

It’s not hard to find men who want to touch women—genuinely, sexually touch women. I’ve indulged in that, but I feel empty. Inside myself, I still feel like a virgin. Finding women who want to touch women—genuinely, sexually touch women—seems next to impossible. Not women out to “pick up” other women; not heterosexual women out to “experiment” with other women; not heterosexual women engaging in lesbianism like some sort of fashion trend, in order to please men; not dykes out to assert their sexualities… but simply another person, who I can grow to feel a connection to, and naturally transition into a relationship of touch with. The way my peers got to do, snogging behind the gym and sneaking over to each other’s houses when their parents were out.

The one sexual relationship I have had with another woman was completely deranged. She was abused by her family; she hated her sexuality. She took her disgust for her own self out on me, and simultaneously used me. I was expected to satisfy her, but she never, ever touched me. I wasn’t even allowed to be naked in her presence.

There have been casual encounters with females, of course, but I was always touching and never touched.

24. How receptive are you to receiving touch?

From strangers? Casually indifferent. I don’t care about being the demo for the class, or being squished on the subway. There is no inherent alchemy in touch that pushes a button in me.

When it comes to touch where emotions are involved, however… it’s a different universe. I’m not just receptive to touch from a loved one; I’m crying out for it with every pore of my body, every day.

25. Have you allocated the time and energy to develop meaningful relationships that provide the opportunity to exchange touch?

This is a stupid question. Frankly.

26. Is there someone special whose loving touch made a difference in your life? Who? Why?

The aforementioned crazy ex-girlfriend, whom I dated for almost three years, held me once. I mean really. held me. After so many years without a single loving touch, it was an incredible, painful catharsis. I will never forget it.

After this time, there was a young woman I’ll just call J. I think I would be a very different person if she had not popped into my life, even if her stay was short-lived. She re-introduced touch into my life with infinite tenderness and care. She taught me how enriched a friendship can become by touch; how deeply and meaningfully we really do communicate by touching one another. After an entire adolescence of purely cerebral interaction, I had almost written off the value of human contact. She taught me that it was beautiful and essential. That a silent embrace in a time of sorrow can touch more deeply than the most poignantly written poem. I wish she knew how much her simple, loving touch meant to me.

—

This was very difficult to write, but I’m glad I wrote it. Some details I kept strongly to myself and mulled over in my own mind, but others… are healing to speak of, out loud, unashamedly.

I’m going to go have a cup of tea now.

Hah.

The good news is, my resilient little body is kicking this virus’ ass.

The bad news is, it’s kicking my constitution in the process.

The direct effects of the virus itself remains contained to a scratchy tingle in my throat, some mucus, and small bouts of mild fever. Indirectly, it’s as though Chicago firefighters ran out of water to put out a fire and mistook me for a fire hydrant.

After coming home from Kimi’s the other day, I immediately collapsed and slept for the rest of the afternoon. Waking up that evening was freaky. Take the most oppressive, dear-odin-I-don’t-want-to-get-up 6am feeling you have ever had, and multiply it by about thirty. Except that it was made scary by the fact that I wanted to get up… I just couldn’t. I was so heavy—it was as though a really fat panda were sitting on my body and brain. It took me ten minutes to struggle through a giant bag of sticky marshmallows to even sit up.

After being awake for a few hours, I zonked again, slept through the night, got up for school, attended APP110… and by the time I got to the end of the class, felt as though I could lay right back down and sleep another twelve hours. The teacher sort of noticed and I agreed it would be better to come in and retake MAK on Saturday.

I slept on the train on the way home… got home, sat around for a bit, fell asleep… Here I am, awake again, still feeling drained. But my throat is sort of hovering in a strange inbetween place, only getting better and worse along a narrow axis.

Thankfully class doesn’t start until 1pm tomorrow…

Ugh I think I need to be horizontal again…

I don’t know how I am going to handle touching five different people a day as a massage therapist. How are massage therapists not sick all the time? Even if you have a strong immune system, if you GET a virus, you GET it, and you still have to expend mega energy FIGHTING it… even if you fight it well.

Maybe the fact that I am getting sick once a month has more to do with exposure to a new environment and new microbes… but seriously, in a city of 12 million—about three times the population of my own home country—isn’t that sort of a constant, everyday experience? There is no consistent little set of sicknesses to gain immunity to. There are new and exciting pathologies crawling all around.

*Shakes head* I will have to ask my teachers how they stay above the weather…

Time to rest some more…

You know you’re nerdy when you finally blow a big glob of mucus into a piece of toilet paper and celebrate with a panties-in-the-bathroom dance because it means that the thing that’s been making Parmesan-shred of your throat the past couple of days is a virus and not a bacteria.

…Yeah.

This is only, what… the third time I have gotten sick in the past almost as many months?  It’s getting really, really old.  Especially right now, when I’ll all geared to kick the summer-preps into full gear and start hitting the gym 5-6 times a week, and to start jogging again, and to make use of my new swimsuit-

-but no.  Apparently, my body has other plans.

The crappiest part is that I know exactly where I got it, too.  I got in the elevator with a very non-hygenic lady in my building, and while we were in there she bragged/complained openly to me about how she’d been knocked flat by this sickness for the past couple of weeks, how it had ravaged her throat, and how this was her first day even being able to talk.

DEAR AMERICA!

Not to be unkind, but… What the *bleep* is wrong with you?  In ANY civilized country in this world, there are certain precautions that are exercised as a simple kindness to your fellow citizens.

1) If you are lucky enough to live in a country that is not so barbaric as to embrace absolute capitalism, you can actually stay HOME when you are contagious!

2) Since you’re not that lucky, look at what they do in parts of Asia: they wear face-masks.  No, they don’t look silly.  They look gorgeous.  They look gorgeous because when I see it, it’s a big, glaring sign for me that says, “I respect you enough to protect you.”  It also screams, “Don’t shake my hand”, which is equally good to know.

3) If all else fails—if you are too dirt poor to buy a thirty-cent mask or too downtrodden by capitalism to huddle inside your apartment for two weeks—just wait for the next elevator, or ask if you can take this one alone.

4) Above all else, don’t leave your apartment, wear no face-mask, get into an elevator with another person, and start BRAGGING about how you’ve just been ravaged by a horrible virus while trapped in a tiny space with that person! Seriously!

Your time is my time.  Nobody here can afford to get sick.  I know we all feel like we “especially” can’t, but I would note that my sickness directly affects other people who can’t afford it, either.  I can’t exactly go to school and massage people if I’m contagious enough to breathe a virus on you in an elevator.

The worst part is that I have a palpation-based test tomorrow morning.

Sickness or no sickness, I still get a drastically reduced grade if I have to put it off.  Unfortunately, I think that might be the only polite thing to do; I don’t think I could put my hands all over another person in good conscience… especially not knowing how contagious this is.  The lady who gave it to me was older and unfit; I can probably fight it off with less trouble, but geez.  I’ve been making with the multivitamins, physical exercise, getting “fresh” air… it’s silly to realize how defenseless your body really is, ultimately.

Anyhow.

Nerdiness.  Yeah.  I just spent a weekend at Kimi’s, which was… heavenly, to put it mildly.  The suburbs are a flow of blocked paradise outside the reaches of the smoggy city.  So quiet… so peaceful… so filled with the scent and soul of nature.

Kimi and I ended up lounging in the sun on the back porch and playing on the laptop.  (I know, I know… just ignore the glaring cyborg reality for a moment and focus on how pleasantly peaceful this all was.)

“Wow, it’s so amazing…” I murmured, tracing the sideways S-shape of Kimi’s spine.  “How it can just wiiind along like this…”

“Oh!  Yeah, can yours not do that?”

“No, it can–it’s just the backwards bending I can’t do.  I can feel with my fingers how the spinous processes just sort of lock and don’t have any room.”

“Oh yeah.  Huh.”

“Isn’t it incredible how bendy it is?  You’d think of it like a mast, but–”

“But no, it’s so much stronger than that.  And it’s super windey.  It curves-”

“Curves all sorts of directions, twists, bends… yeah.”

I found that as I was describing body movements/features in the writing we were doing together, I would often use terms learned in class—just because they’re so delightfully specific—and dart to my textbooks when something came up that I didn’t remember.

“It’s kind of funny how this stuff is working itself into your everyday vocabulary,” she teased.

“It’s so useful though!”

I can totally tell that I am going to become one of those losers whose work infects every aspect of their lives.  I can’t look at people on the train anymore without seeing their skeletons underneath.  I often find myself sitting around and palpating, pondering.  Every time I hear someone describe an illness or health concern, I wonder how it relates to massage, and whether it’s contraindicative, or what precautions I might need to take to massage such a person, and what it would feel like to take hensyn to these different sorts of bodies…

Mostly I just want to rant off and re-teach all the fascinating stuff I’m learning, although I think I may have stretched Kimi’s mom’s ear just a little bit.  I’m trying to stay cool with the fact that this isn’t nearly as interesting to the rest of the planet as it is to me.  I’d name off every bone in the body to anyone who’d listen.

I’m gonna get back to resting so that I’ll at least feel well enough to audit my own class tomorrow.  Beh.  Maybe if I wear a mask and gloves, it won’t be an issue.  I’ll have to ask the teacher for her opinion, but I’ll bring both just in case.

Peace.

This is a homework assignment.
Class: PEC110
(Personal Ethics and Communication I)

05/03/08

—

I am a playfully ideational auditory learner with kinesthetic strengths.

–

1. Using what you learned in class today, reflect on what classes have been easy, hard, fascinating, etc., and about how TIPP leaning styles could help learning change.

Well, first of all, I want to say that trying to apply TIPP to too general of a student body can be just as harmful as failing to recognize the wide variety of learning styles.  I happen to be lucky enough that every single word in the assessment seemed like an eerie scene from “Killing Me Softly”; a lot of students had the opposite experience.

As for my classes so far, I find APP and PEC to be engaging and thought-provoking in their own ways.  APP really gets my inner information sponge absorbing.  I feel awake and alert and, above all, extremely comfortable; Kristin assured us on the first day of class that she would cater to all learning styles, and that she wouldn’t resent us not being able to absorb the information a particular way… so instead of straining and trying to force myself through an unnatural process, I just relaxed and let the learning happen.  I knew that if there was something I did not understand, I could just take it easy rather than stress, because I would encounter the information again in a digestible form.  So far, that is working out splendidly.  I almost cheered out loud on the first day of class when Kristin told us that she was “doodle friendly”, and immediately reached for my sketchpad—I’ve always doodled through lectures, and find that I sink into a fog if I don’t have that outlet for my brain’s excess waste.

PEC is sort of my dream class; I fit the profile for an ideational learner to a T, and the sort of abstract, malleable, philosophical theories addressed in PEC are deliciously engaging.  I find that PEC is the class I spend the most time thinking about outside of school, and the reading is as entertaining for me as my recreational reading.  I enjoy that it’s a more discussion-oriented environment and actually wish we could deepen that aspect of the class by splitting up into smaller groups now and then so that we can enjoy a natural group debate/discussion more than the raising-of-hands.

MAK is the class that I am having the most trouble in.  I feel very, very disappointed that I have placed in the “a” rather than the “b” class, because I had met Patricia and had deeply looked forward to being one of her students; I felt really crushed when I found out that she wouldn’t be my teacher.  Also, I was split from the people I’d developed the strongest connection with, and who I still continue to associate more strongly with in my other classes.  Outside of that, I find Connie to be a very kindhearted, patient, and attentive person… but I also find myself really straining to absorb information from her.  Maybe it’s disappointment because I had geared myself up for a different teaching style, but I honestly feel as though I am back in High School when I am in Connie’s class, glancing at the clock and longing for the next break.  I guess if I had to connect it to TIPP it would be by saying that my playful learning style (which I scored almost evenly with my ideational) is not being engaged in the slightest.  She’s a very, very traditional teacher, and I think I scored maybe a 3% on traditional.  Add to that, there’s a flip side to every learning style: where-as I learn best by hearing information, I can also get completely lost if the auditory element leans too far the other way.  Connie does a really good job of making sure that she answers questions thoroughly, but she does such a good job that my brain completely shuts off: she will spend 20 minutes answering a simple yes-or-no question, repeating it over and over again in redundant, slightly varied ways.  I find myself anxious to ask a question in that class if I have one because it means that I have to waste 20 minutes of my classmates’ time, and there’s an unspoken groan that falls over the room when somebody raises their hands.  From talking with the people in Patricia’s class, they are spending twice as much time on the actual tables.  I’m “an auditory learner with kinesthetic strengths”, and while you think I’d be happy to sit and listen for most of the class, usually, I just itch with, “Can we get on the tables already?”

The worst thing is, I never feel as though my questions are actually answered.  I will ask a question and sit really uncomfortably while she spends 15-20 minutes addressing it in a myriad of ways, but she will never actually give me the clear, concise answer to my question!  At the end, she always politely asks, “Did I answer your question?”, and at that point, you just want to say, “Yes”, and stop holding up the class… even though you’re still just as confused as when you started out.  I’ve gathered that others in the class feel the same way.

Likewise, when I ask for table-side assistance, I feel as though there is a lot of, “Like this and like this, over that, like you see this?”, as opposed to, “Try sliding your hands in the lateral direction just superior to the greater trochanter”, which would be infinitely more helpful.  I am an auditory and kinesthetic learner: I need to keep my hands on my subject and be talked through it.  Instead, when I ask, they remove my hands and have me step back while I watch an example of them doing it—which not only completely disconnects both of my learning styles, but engages one that isn’t very effective for me.  I’ve been meaning to bring this particular one up anyhow.

I didn’t mean for this whole entry to turn into a negative rap on Connie’s class; she is a great teacher and I can tell that some students are thriving in her class.  It’s just not right for me and I feel myself always having to go the extra mile, which is just made so frustrating and heavy by constantly hearing from my other classmates that the experience I wish I were having is happening just down the hall in Patricia’s class.  With no offense to Connie, I’ve asked Pam about switching to the “b” class, but apparently there is some rule about ratios and I can’t be switched unless somebody drops out.  I left her my email address and asked her to get a hold of me if anything changed, and I’m a little confused by the fact that since then, we have had new students joining our class and skewing the ratios, but that only a student dropping out will allow me to switch classes.

This is a homework assignment.
Class: PEC110
(Personal Ethics and Communication I)

05/03/08

—

Task: Write for 5 minutes about boundaries.  Do not allow your pen to leave the paper (or your fingers the keyboard, as the case may be).  Afterwards, answer: What did I learn about myself in this exercise?  Which boundaries were most important to me?

–

Boundaries.  They confuse the hell out of me and I think that no matter how long I live and learn, I will still never fully understand or read them.  My own boundaries are a mystery.  Most people give long talks about how important it is to be able to say “no”—about defending our boundaries.  I have the opposite problem.  I can’t say yes… even when I want to.  I have had occasions where I have been invited to a sleepover… and I want to go—I want to go more than anything!  But I feel the choking pressure of my boundaries pressing in on me, tightening, locking, seeking to block everything out, and I inevitably say “no”—simultaneously excited by and horrified by the idea of so many people around me, all night, with no private space to retreat to.  It’s true for even the most intimate aspects of my personal life.  The people who I love, who are dear to me… it’s so impossible to let them in.  I want to allow them to permeate my boundaries more—but they shoot up, blocking everything away, choking the word “yes” in my throat before it ever finds life in my mouth.  I’ve turned down sex, I’ve turned down hugs, I’ve turned down love.  Comfort.  When I wanted them. To compensate, I often reach too deeply into other people’s boundaries.  I don’t know how to show them that I love them by allowing them to penetrate mine, so I try to penetrate theirs—too deeply, too much, trying to show them that I love.  Sometimes I have found myself feeling emotionally dead in a friendship while the other person feels as though we’re almost spiritually connected.  On the other hand, it’s almost too easy to say yes to strangers—people who don’t care, and who don’t know that I do care.  I feel nothing when they touch me; I could more easily tell my life story to a person sitting next to me on a 9-hour plane ride than to my closest friends.  I wish I could learn how to say yes sometimes—how to stop “no” from defensively, automatically springing out of my mouth.  I’m like prinsesse vill-ikke from the childhood fairy tale.  I stand behind a wall and gaze out a the world longingly.

Time’s up.

1. What did I learn about myself through this exercise?  That I’m allergic to being happy.

2. Which boundaries are most important to me?  Apparently all of them.

This is a homework assignment.
Class: APP110
(Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology I)

05/03/08

—

1. List and explain the functions of the skeletal system.

The skeletal system—or the skeleton—is the basic framework of the body.  It provides shape, structure, and support.  Certain parts of it protect organs, such as the rib cage.  With its joints, it gives the capacity for movement.  Bones also produce red blood cells, and store adipose tissue and calcium.

2. Diagram: see review for lesson 2.

3. Identify the axial and appendicular divisons of the skeleton.

The skull, hyoid bone, vertebrae, ribs, sternum, sacrum, and coccyx compose the axial skeleton.  The pelvic girdle, shoulder girdle, and bones of the arms/legs compose the appendicular skeleton.

4. Name the two types of bone tissue and explain the location and functions of each.

I think you mean compact bone vs. spongy bone?  If so, compact bone is dense and surrounds the vulnerable inner portion of the bone, protecting it.  Spongy bone houses marrow.

5. Name the three types of bone cells and describe their function in bone maintenance and repair.

Osteoblasts form new bone cells.  Osteocytes are mature bone cells.  Osteoclasts are responsible for reabsorption and break down bone matrix.

6. Explain the effects of exercise on bone tissue.

Exercise increases bone density, thus reducing the risk of fracture.  It also improves posture and, if the exercise is balance-emphasizing, can reduce the risk of falling by as much as 50%.  (My step-father fell and broke his hip–well, actually, his femoral neck; that falling stuff is no light business.)

7. Locate and explain the general function of the following parts of a long bone:

epiphesys: located at the most distal and proximal parts of the bone.  It contains mostly spongy tissue where red marrow is located.

epiphyseal disk/plate: I don’t remember us talking about any disks or plates.  Do you mean the epiphyseal line?  If so, it is a portion that cuts across the internal part of the epiphesys, which has chondrocytes on either side, allowing the bone to grow in length.

diaphysis: the long part of the bone between each epiphesys.

red and yellow marrow: red marrow produces red bloodcells; yellow marrow stores fat.  The red marrow is located within the spongy tissue of the epiphesys, while the yellow marrow runs along the diaphysis, deep to the compact bone and superficial to the artery and veins.

medullary cavity: the inside of the diaphysis, comprising everything contained within the compact bone.

perisoteum: a non-stretchy film that surrounds all bones; comparable to muscular fascia.

endosteum: similar, but deep to the compact bone, lining the meduliary cavity.

articular (hyaline) cartilage: the smoooth surface of the joint, obviously located where the bone articulates.

This is a homework assignment.
Class: MTP110

Date: 04/29/08

—

Well, A) Kristin has not emailed me the class email list so we can set up the mailing list yet, B) the few people whose email addresses I got never responded, and C) I have no one else to practice on but my classmates.

As such, the only practice I got in was an hour or so before class on Tuesday, when people actually started showing up.

I was frustrated by the prone leg draping. No matter how often I did it, I couldn’t get it right. It wasn’t even a matter of practicing until I improved it: I just wasn’t able to do it, even though I was technically going through the outlined steps. My drape always ended up wrong, overexposing or underexposing.

My body mechanics are disconnected when doing the pettrisage strokes. I tried working on a higher table, but I still end up with cramps in my hands and wrists. I’m leaning my weight into the tissue as instructed, but I still end up feeling like I’m about to snap something in my hands/wrists. I wish we could get some more specific, precise directions about body mechanics. As an auditory learner, it doesn’t really help for me to hear the same words repeated and have the stances shown to me over and over. I don’t and won’t understand it no matter how many times I watch someone else do it, because I just end up awkwardly trying to mimic. I’d really like it if someone talked me through it while I tried to do it myself, as opposed to the monkey-see-monkey-do approach, which doesn’t really help for me personally.

I’m a little frustrated right now because I feel as though it can’t ever possibly “click” for me, especially since everyone else seems to be massaging pain-free without major physical issue. But I guess I just have to keep trying different methods until it “clicks” for me.

While I hope and predict that the majority of this blog’s content will be positive, it can’t all be.

And this is definitely one of those necessary, negative posts.

I want to preface this with the warning that tonight has possibly been the shittiest night I’ve experienced since I moved to Chicago in October. I’m even debating just skipping class tomorrow, which sadly, I know I won’t do, even if it might be better for everyone involved not to be around me right now.

Then again, Kristin’s teaching the first two hours of PEC tomorrow, and being around her shining, smiling face does wonders for anyone, no matter how grumpy.

Anyways, onto the actual massage therapy portion of the post.

What in Loki’s knickers is hokus pokus still doing in our classrooms?

I dove into my massage therapy pursuit with a very clinical mindset. I am quickly discovering that there are much deeper, more human, intimate layers to this practice. And I believe I am becoming a better person for embracing that consideration.

But chakras? Auras? Energy transfer?

On the one hand, I read my text books, and I listen to my teachers, and I hear them both talk about how massage therapy is where it is today because the sciences appropriately took over. From day one, we have heard bragging about how massage therapy is now licensed; about all the medical knowledge we will gain; about the high, rigorous standards.

But then, I hear some of those same teachers–and indeed, even some portions of certain text books–turn around and completely discredit the very field they so elegantly promoted.

The text book “Hands Heal” cites obscure literature from the seventies as supporting evidence for some pretty new-age claims. Even its more contemporary sources show a clear bias toward a very muddled school of thought that I am not sure belongs in the realm of licensed massage therapy.

That, I can ignore, and focus on the helpful information.

But to come up against that sort of thing in class?

On our first day in tech class, our teacher lined us up in rows and instructed the back row to place their hands on the shoulders of the front row. She then instructed us to keep our hands entirely immobile while focusing on projecting the emotion she wrote on the board into the other person.

I was curious if there was some sort of micromovements of the hands that we are unknowingly able to interpret, much like scent, so I did give the exercise my full attention—-but, predictably, nothing came of it.

After eight rounds of “emotion transmitting”, shifting partners each time, the teacher read the emotions out loud one by one and everyone checked their notes. Absolutely none of the rounds had produced any sort of result; the emotion at hand never even approached majority, except for one, which was anger… and even then, there were several people saying things like “happiness” and “serenity”.

All in all, the data showed that there was no correlation.

Still, for some reason, people “ooo”ed and “ahh”ed when 3 out of 12 people would get an emotion right, and started counting almost-right emotions into the mix, like “anxiousness” for “anger”.

“So what have we learned here?” the teacher said, when the readings were concluded. “That what you feel is transmitted through your touch.”

Uh…

I raised my hand.

“I’m sorry…” I said, tripping over my own tongue because I was so awesomely blown back by- I mean- even now I can’t form a coherent sentence expressing my extreme frustration and confusion. “I don’t see how you’re drawing a correlation between these two pieces of data… In most of the rounds, there was no connection between the emotion you wrote and the one we wrote. It may have seemed that way for happiness, for example, but in every single round there were several positive people who were writing ‘happiness’ down, so it was just a matter of waiting for the right round. The only emotion where there was any sort of result was ‘anger’, and even then there were people writing totally opposite things—-and it was only one out of eight, and would need more research in and of itself.” Before you ever draw the sort of confident conclusion you just did, I finished inside my own head.

The teacher and the teacher’s aid listened uncomfortably, it seemed, because they were shifting impatiently and nodding at off-beat times while I spoke, and as soon as it was clear I’d shut up, the teacher…

…just turned and continued to lecture the class as though her assertion still stood, ignoring every word I’d said.

It’s the scientist in me that’s offended, way more than the person. Ignoring me, an individual, is fine—-but ignoring science is not. It was a completely sham experiment and the fact that the teacher behaved as though her final conclusion could somehow be drawn from it was angering.

I’m sure she had many, many reasons for teaching us that our feelings “transmit through our touch”. For sure, if a client comes into our office and detects that we are angry or depressed, it will affect their experience. However, if that was the case, she should have cited some of those reasons rather than rely on an experiment that failed to prove her point—-especially after I had pointed as much out.

It gets worse, though.

As she lectured, she slipped in something about, “maybe that’s why you were having such a hard time feeling the emotions that were being transmitted to you”, when talking about mental clarity and focus etc.

Wow. Ok, I get it.

So it’s not that your experiment was a complete joke, utterly detached from all scientific process—-it’s that there is something wrong with me because I am not “in tune” with the hokus pokus.

We’ve all heard that countless times from people trying to push superstitious bullshit, so I raised my voice and talked over the teacher-

“Excuse me, I think you misinterpreted what I said. I did not say that I was having a hard time feeling the emotions—-well, that too—-but that there was simply no connection between the data of the emotions we wrote down and the data that you presented.” Ok, my sentence was completely scrambled and didn’t make a lot of sense, but that’s because I was so offended, I could hardly form my own vowels, much less think on my feet.

“Uh huh, ok,” she said understandingly, and continued the lecture, once again simply blowing my point off.

Here is what infuriates me MOST about this whole scene:

The negative effect it has on my classmates.

By validating that those minority “oo”s and “aa”s were somehow evidence for the proposed conclusion, even against the opposing majority, and by furthermore attributing the non-supporting data to a lack of mental clarity on the participants’ parts, she has flat out created an environment in which mental clarity is going to be a deplorably scarce resource. She makes an enemy of reason and logic in the classroom, and furthermore—-though this next bit is only my opinion—-insults the very field she works for by giving credit to the very same junk that used to weigh it down.

Face it. If massage therapists were still learning about the chi flow of the body instead of the circulatory system, we would be charging $10 for a massage, working barefoot from out pot-stenched parents’ basements.

That may sound harsh, but that’s the modern reality when it comes to medicine. If you give me the choice between a surgeon who operates based on millennium-old superstitions about the body, and one who is up-to-date on the actual facts of modern medicine, I think I’ll choose the latter. Same goes for massage therapy. Wouldn’t you?

I got a pretty direct taste of the effects of the exercise when we moved onto our last one. One partner was to lay on a table, and the other was to place their hands on either side of their head. The teacher played some relaxing music and told us all to simply focus on being “present” and caring for the person on the table.

I practiced deeply indulging the mentality that will become an integral part of my practice: the idea that every person who gets on my table, no matter who they are, is, for that span of time, to be fully recognized and respected for the sacred living being that they are. All backgrounds, all bodies: if you are on my table, I will honor you.

When the exercise was over, we were to remove our hands from our partner’s head and exchange feedback about our touch.

My partner said she felt as though I was transmitting nervousness, and that I should work on that.

And she thought it was completely valid, too—-after all, the emotions she projected into the touch were the same as the ones I was transmitting, right? Hadn’t our little exercise just a few minute ago proved that? Supported that mentality?

Her feedback was thus utterly useless to me.

I am really, really going to have to pull myself together to deal with the continued validation of “hokus pokus” at school. This particular teacher has made several other comments on this topic that have greatly irked me, but this one example will suffice.

In fellow students, it is not so bad. There is a woman in my class named Dana—-youthful, spirited, and probably the most amiable person I’ve met in years. She is instantly likable and engaging. However, she sat in this same class and said something along the lines of, “I believe in energy healing, and chakra healing, and that if your mind is healthy, your body will be healthy. All the science in this course is going to be really hard for me. I mean… it’s not like I have anything against science… it’s just not my thing.”

In this case, I am more sorrowful about the culture that promotes science as “just another belief” system, rather than as—-well—-science. For some reason, science is being treated as a religion, thus utterly blurring the lines between reality and the fictional. If science becomes “just another made-up reality”, rather than the structured examination of reality, then it becomes no different than any random invention of the mind. Darwin’s Origin of Species may as well sit on the shelf next to the Koran. Hell, “evolution” is being treated as its own denomination now-a-days.

I can only imagine what my anatomy and physiology class would be like if we didn’t rightfully acknowledge evolution as the scientific fact and basis that it is for our biological understanding.

(And yes. Evolution is a fact. How evolution happens is where the theories come in, such as Darwin’s theory of natural selection.)

Dana is still a valuable peer, wonderful person, and great table-partner. I bear no resentment toward her, hopes she bears none toward me, and predict that we can learn from each other.

I do bear resentment toward the people who are put in a position of authority over me and who integrate their superstitions into that role.

Practicing your superstitions as a boss or a Commander in Chief is bad enough—-but when you are supposed to be teaching me a science… how am I supposed to take you seriously if you believe in a talking snake, or a virgin birth, or chakra healing, or possession, or the telepathic transmission of emotion?

It’s 4am. I suppose I should get to sleep.

(Remind me to write a post about sleep disorders at some point.)