Interesting Times

Finals time is a pretty hectic time, and it's right around the corner. Many of us are plugging away getting the easier, smaller, earliest-due papers done. Others of us are putting off our papers and readings and taking a last dive into the sea of self-care before we finish the semester in a flurry of typing.

I have chosen to partake in the latter. Self-care is one of my favorite things to do. Nothing takes a load off one's shoulders like regressing in the service of the ego.

Some of you might be asking, "so Daniel, how are you keeping your mind fit for the upcoming task of finals while experiencing the joys of reverie, creativity and spontaneity?"

Those of you that are asking that are in luck. This entry is starting off a two part series where I tell you about the journey my mind took last year, and is currently on this year, to prepare for that final push of the semester.

Part I: Last Year

One lovely afternoon, my friend Johnny Fishtail and I were sitting at Blind Tiger near the NYU campus talking about some pretty great things. At some point I said, "the weekends are never long enough."

To which Johnny replied, "You know, I have a way to change all that."

Johnny explained the outline of a plan to revolutionize the current calender system. We further developed the idea and came up with this: We have 15 months a year. Each month has 3 weeks. Each week (and here's the best part) has 8 days. We work for 5 days a week and have a 3 day weekend. The days of the week will be called Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Funday.

The first twelve month names will stay the same just as the first 7 weekday names stayed the same. The three new months will be called, Danuary (in honor of me), Funkuary (in honor of a pseudonym given to Johnny Fishtail some time back), and Baslarch (also in honor of me!).

Some of you who like to think about numbers will have figured out by now that this new calender only has 360 days; a near travesty and something that might keep it from passing through legislature. We came up with the following solutions. Johnny suggested we have 5 days of celebrations to end the year. I suggested, we have an extra 5 days of work in order to make up for all the time we wasted slobbing around on Fundays.

We have yet to come to a conclusion, but what we did decide was that creating this new calender was nothing other than a most excellent and triumphant use of sublimation. I thought about the calender for days later, and it always put me in a brighter mood, giving me more energy to approach the arduous task of finals.

Stay tuned for Part II, where I will discuss how I have regressed this year and where the moral of these stories will be more fully revealed.

Last week I blogged about a fun topic that allowed me to distress during finals my first semester of school at NYU. This week I want to write about the brilliant concept that has captivated my thoughts this finals period. I take pleasure in adapting this new (to me) concept to most anything I encounter. It is relevant to my interpersonal relationships, my placement this semester, my school work and most anything else in my life. In fact, I've decided to create my own theory of general development around it.

Bogosort is an algorithm used for sorting things, organizing data, and putting things in order. It's the equivalent to taking a stack of cards, checking to see if they're in order, and throwing them up in the air until they fall into order just by chance. Eventually they'll fall in place. For a deck of cards, the average number of tosses this will take is: 4.11356693 × 10^69, also known as:

4113566930000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000

Wow! That's a lot of times!

So as you can see, this algorithm is pretty awful. It's so inefficient and absolutely ridiculous. That is why it appeals to me.

While other theories of development try to use rational, logical processes to dictate how someone grows and changes over time, Bogosanalytic Theory takes a different approach.

How many of you look back on your childhood and see a consistently rational and logical series of events? I know I don't. I see a whole lot of seemingly random occurences and a whole lot of inexplicable happenings. How did my personality develop from these random occurences? I don't think it's possible to say using logical methods. Bogosorting makes more sense in the context of a random, ambiguous and bizarre universe.

In terms of personality development, we have innumerable personality characteristics. At each moment our brain shuffles all of our characteristics around randomly, and if they're sorted correctly we maintain those personality structures. If not, then we keep on sorting. This is why adolescents seem to have every type of personality disorder: they are bogosorted so much that extremes in personality come out much more frequently than with the rest of the population. For others with personality disorders, the disorder affects the checking mechanism in the brain, making it appear as if those particular personality characteristics are appropriate in every situation, keeping the brain from bogosorting in the future, and keeping people stuck in one overly used dynamic structure.

How does the brain decide when to sort and when not to sort? When external stimuli impact the brain it checks to see if it is compatible with the current order of our psyche. If not, it bogosorts. If so, everything remains in order. As we get older our brains are worse at picking up on external stimuli, so we bogosort less. This is sometimes referred to as maturation.

Some of you might argue that certain aspects of one's personality remain nearly constant throughout childhood and into adulthood. I say this is either due to pure chance from the bogosort or due to biological conditions. The pure chance argument is as follows: There are so many different elements to developing a person's psyche that it would be improbable for some of them to not remain grouped together during the bogosorting process. Those groups of elements are the consistent aspects of one's personality.

Does this all makes sense? I recognize that it's just a small piece of Bogosanalytic Thoery. It certainly needs more of an explanation, more than I can provide in this posting alone. I encourage you to post your questions and I will respond either in the comments section or in future posts on the topic.

Well, I propose we take an IQ Test to compare. Good luck.

I got questions 1 and 4 right... how about you?

Here's an apology: I'm sorry that I haven't written in a couple of weeks. I realize some of you may be concerned that I was consumed in the abyss known as finals, never to return. Next time for finals, I will plan ahead and have an entry ready so none shall worry about my absence.

An excuse: The truth of the matter is, I was almost consumed by finals, wild boars, placement, holidays, Tim Burton and Charlie Chaplain. They all have come into my life over the past few weeks and taken over my time, so as to leave me without a moment to compose a brief blog entry. I've been too busy.

I recognize that this situation may not be worth an apology or an excuse, but I do feel badly about not writing in the blog for two weeks. This situation also presents me with the opportunity to write about something that I think about sometimes.

Of the apology and the excuse, which do you like better?

In the apology I state the mistake I made, state how it seems to have affected you, and state how I will work to not make that mistake again. This is some hardcore "taking responsibility for myself".

In the excuse, I talk about outside events that are not relevant to you, state how I was helpless and could not have made a different choice. I'm shifting the blame, and not acknowledging how this might have impacted you.

The apology shows that I see myself as a being capable of making and fixing mistakes. It also shows that I see you as a being capable of feeling the effects of choices I make and that I hold some responsibility in our relationship to keep it a good relationship.

The excuse shows that I consider myself capable of making mistakes only when I am forced into them by outside sources. It also shows an utter disregard for how my actions could impact you; denying the validity of your experience in regards to my mistake. This can be rather hurtful.

I think this topic is very relevant to our work as social workers. How often do we make excuses to our clients about our actions because we feel constrained by the systems within which we work? How often do these excuses reinforce power dynamics in our relationships with our clients? When we make excuses to them, are we truly meeting them where they are? Or are we denying their role in the experience for a chance to vent our own problems?