Confessions of an Over-Analyzer

5:55 pm: Get home from Field Work, feeling like I am starting to get sick, start dinner for Jon and me.

6:20 pm: Begin to cry while preparing brussel sprouts for seemingly no reason.

6:25 pm: Psychoanalyzing what has made me cry into the brussel sprouts. Perhaps the vegetable brings up a unconscious conflict from my past?

7:00 pm: Really feeling sick. Lay down for a few minutes.

7:15 pm: Begin to bake 4 dozen Christmas cookies for my “Winter Wonderland” group at field tomorrow.

8:30 pm: Christmas cookies cooling, try to read articles necessary for the final papers due next week.

8:31 pm: Pass out on top of a strew of articles--get highlighter all over my face.

1:22 am: Wake up with my body on fire and my throat swollen. Start to panic about field the next day.

3:30 am: Take temperature. 102 degrees. Now I am really freaking out about field--what about “Winter Wonderland”? Maybe I can go in for a few hours in the morning. Start to wonder if my clients will get sick if they eat the cookies I made while sick.

5:45 am: NYU 26th Street dorm is evacuated because of a (false alarm) fire.

7:30 am: After almost two hours standing outside, I am allowed back into the building.

7:45 am: Call in sick to field.

8:00 PM: Finally wake up from fitful fever sleep. Take shower. Try to work on finals.

11:02 pm: Can’t absorb anything I read. Can’t produce any writing. Update blog instead.

I think that about says it all.

You know those commercials, the Verizon ones where they talk about it being a “deadzone” in certain areas? This blogger page is totally a deadzone. Blame it on finals, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, or the ‘got-to-dos’ of the holidays, or something, but I am just not feeling the energy here these past two weeks.

So I have decided to make this an entry of EPIC PROPORTIONS. Well maybe not, because truth be told my finals are in and I am in the mood to be lazy. But I will do my best nonetheless.

Let’s begin by talking about finals. I don’t ever remember being this stressed over finals in undergrad. Perhaps it is because, this year, four of my finals were due within 24 hours of each other. And I don’t ever remember putting this much work into my finals. Actually, that is a blatant lie. The truth is that I put so much work into my Individuals and Families final, that I was careless on my other finals. But something came over me when I was writing for I & F…something that has never happened before…I got so passionate, so fascinated with the information I was reading, processing, and writing, that I didn’t know what to do with all of my ideas. Suddenly EVERYTHING I read in my sources was relevant. Do you know how stressful that is??? I learned something last week…you are better off knowing nothing about a topic, then wanting to present so much knowledge and not having the time or energy to do so! (Actually that probably isn’t true, but it felt that way).

I think I put forth a decent effort on my Human Behavior III final. Although I found the assignment—which included writing about the etiology of personality disorders—to be a challenging one. I mean, the struggle with personality disorders in general is that their etiology is complex and entangled, right? I really grappled with how to separate etiology from familial patterns from psychosocial factors. I am left crossing my fingers and hoping that I answered all the questions!

My Clinical Practice with Groups final turned out miserably. It was the last paper I wrote and I definitely could have done better. But I can’t dwell on it now so I will report back when grades are posted!

Okay. Lunch is over and I have to get back to work. Epic Entry Part II to come.