I’m like Goldilocks when it comes to guys.

This one’s too short. That one’s too skinny. That one’s too chubby. This one’s too hairy. That one’s not that hairy, but why is his neck so hairy?

Maybe it’s just what I tell myself to make myself believe that I have some deliberate choice in this single status.

Today was the first time I laughed in a very long time.

…by telling my boss he was sweating after he apologized for an hour.

I don’t even know what to say.

Crying in public is awkward.

Death in Bobst

edit at 4:15pm: This post garnered an freakishly large amount of pageviews based on what people are googling.

It’s been confirmed a suicide and I’ve heard through the grapevine that he jumped from one of the higher floors.

I tried entering Bobst a little before 8am, but it was “taped” off by yellow cones and NYU security. I asked one what was going on – police investigation. My initial thought was that someone committed suicide. Considering that there has been an identified death and administration won’t talk, looks like that might be the circumstances. 

As jaded as I am after eight deaths (5 or 6 of them suicides) in high school and two suicides and at least one death in college, this hits me oddly close to home considering how much time I spend in the library. There’s certainly the “regulars” – the people I see frequently, if not every time I’m there.  While I certainly do not condone suicide as an option, it aggravates me that people fail to really understand what triggers suicide. Suicide is not about getting a bad grade or being dumped by “the love of your life.” It’s about the complete loss of hope that you’ll ever truly feel better. It’s lonliness to the complete extreme and suffocating under the pounding thought that you’ll always be alone – meaning that no one else understands. Yes, suicide in Bobst is public, but such act of publicity clearly illuminates what the person felt he lacked. This problem will clearly never end when we have a university president blind to the actual circumstances of this campus life, describing NYU as “in a close-knit community.”

Wait, are we in the same university?

How many times do we ignore each other on the elevator? How many times are we unresponsive when someone attempts small talk? How many times do we think “well someone else will do something about it” when we see someone clearly upset or hurt?

A few people in one of my classes got in a debate about whether or not Bobst should raise the plexiglass walls even higher. One of the girls got a bit oddly offended when people argued that yes, NYU should take the responsibility to raise the walls – you’d think it was the other way around. She argued it isn’t fair for others to be “punished” with these higher walls. One certainly can’t blame a building’s architectural structure for one’s suicide, but not barricading the railing onto the library really parallels the notion of handing a gun to someone who wants to kill themself.

The usual happenings around NYU “Campus”

• Ever since I mentioned that Bobst PhD Student is alive, I keep seeing him everywhere again – literally, he’s three computers away from me right now on the 6th floor and was a couple of aisles away from me on LL1 around 8am earlier today.
• I really need to stop going to Space Market. Forget the prices, forget the nasty buffet food – the cashiers are every shade of nasty.  I don’t know which one is my personal favorite – the one that gets impatient when you take five seconds to find four dollar bills in your wallet, or the one that makes you wait for your credit card while she texts someone on her phone. Wait wait wait – I know which one! The one that had the audacity to snatch my credit card from my hand when I took it after she swiped it. That is the only place of business I ever encountered that I honestly wish will go out of business.
• A few more than the usual 40 out of 108 people in my archaeology class showed up to lecture this morning. My professor finally stopped looking like she was going to cry.
• My abnormal psychology professor’s inability to give me an education worth my scholarship money makes me want to cry.  But at least the guy who’s been sitting in the same area as I do in Cantor 101 in Statistics, Cognition, and now Abnormal Psych is hot.  He should probably start wearing a jacket considering how many times I hear him blowing his nose behind me though.
• Does a public safety shift begin at 7am? There was an oddly large amount of purple uniforms walking around campus at that time.

I think I’ve been leaning over a desk for 5-7 hours at a time almost daily for a month, and my back is killing me.  At least on muscle is clearly unhappy.

In other news, my seminar professors recognize my brilliance.

Someone who spends more time in Bobst than I do….

http://twitter.com/NYUBobstlibrary is one of those websites I’m supposed to snub my nose at because a good majority is just profanity, but it’s so ridiculous that it’s funny. Bobst apparently thinks in ghEttOtYpEz and refers to other well-known, iconic NYU buildings, personifying them with character traits. The following made me laugh out loud:

I AM SO TIRED. Fuck. How am I supposed to sleep when bitches is in my lower levels all night long???about 18 hours ago from Twitterrific

Checkin out Tisch Hall. motherfucker just sits there all day doin’ jack shit. I’m the dopest NYU building there is.1:42 PM Oct 1st from web

SILVER CENTER, IMA LET YOU FINISH BUT BOBST LIBRARY IS THE BEST BUILDING OF ALL TIME.2:22 PM Oct 1st from web

YO BRITTANY HALL Why ain’t you returnin my txts?? I knw ur gettin them. My big red brick heart is straight up breakin. Imma be single 4evr 9:53 PM Oct 6th

Goddard keeps making all these fucked up faces at me. Dat bitch is sooooo immature. When will these buildingz learn 2 grow up??? 1:12 PM Oct 7th

It’s really one of those things that’s only funny if you attend NYU and understand why the first one is absolutely hysterical, because the basement floors are actually called Lower Levels. Most of the buildings referenced are neighbors Bobst.

Happy moments at Bobst today:

• I found a new, tucked away corner that has two of those black chairs!
• There’s this one PhD student that I’ve been seeing around Bobst during my entire college career. And by entire, I mean every semester, every season including the summers — basically every time I was in Bobst. Hell, I even saw him over the summer in a cafe on MacDougal. I guess I remember him moreso than others because I’ve had awkward eye contact with him, including that cafe. He kind of stands out in the sea of fashionable hipsters because he just looks so miserable and stressed out about his dissertation… or loosing World of Warcraft. His expression matches his disheveled hair, clothing, giant stacks of papers that he lugs around despite the fact that I’ve never actually seen him look through the stack of papers… I’ve frequently seen him sitting in one spot alone, starring off into space. I’d step out of Bobst to buy dinner and pass him in the lobby. 20 minutes later, I return with dinner and PhD Guy is still sitting in the same spot, with the same depressed expression, as if he’s contemplating jumping off of the tenth floor. Since I saw PhD Guy basically every time I was in Bobst, I got worried that I haven’t seen him at all this year. Now considering that I spend 5-7 hours a day there, you’d think I’d eventually see him. I got kind of worried that his contemplations ended with fatal actions.

  Long digression aside — I saw him today! He’s alive!

Not so happy moment at Bobst:

• I almost got crushed by an elevator -_-

This is probably the first time since the 6th grade where I’m ahead of my reading, writing papers, and studying well in advance. It’s a combination of actually enjoying my assignments and a habit I developed when I realized that the only real way I silenced the demons of my depression was to focus my mind on something completely unrelated to personal life. I concluded that working hours in Bobst was far more productive than sitting around pitying myself. If I wasn’t going to have a life, I might as well get started on my assignments Thursday night as opposed to Sunday afternoon.

It’s nice that I’m on top of my schoolwork, but unfortunately it’s the only thing I’m on top of.

This past Abnormal Psychology exam was the first time I didn’t have a panic attack while taking a psychology exam. (Oh the irony, considering the exam included questions about panic attacks.) There’s really two reasons for this rare occurrence.

1. I actually knew what the exam was asking me. The professor is a lazy tenure who administers tests from the textbook. My previous psychology professors created the exams themselves and subsequently the exams just were not consistent with material covered in lecture or the textbook because they did not write standard exam questions as a career for a reason.  My developmental professor didn’t even USE a textbook – she claimed exams were based on lecture but she only presented the questions in lecture – she never gave us the answers. She “taught” based on her personal opinions and it was easily one of the most aggravating classes I ever took because I did not regard all of the material as fact.

2. I’m simply familiar with the material through first hand experience as well researching the subject independently for years. I’m ready to jump out of my skin during lecture because the professor has been an aggravating and disorganized lecturer, but when all is said and then the subject is very straight-forward after taking five psychology courses already.

I had an uncomfortable phone conversation with my mother because she was doing one of those silly.. parenting things where she forgot what kind of stubborn mule I am and she told me that she wants me to get an internship next summer. Both my mom  and sister frequently approached the future with the perception that hitting certain Stages is the way to gain Success. Good grades => college => internship => job that requires fancy business clothes => big salary => “success.” Admittedly I had this same notion and attempted to follow it my first year here. It’s a topic I avoid because while my mom is awkwardly quiet when I flat out say “I am not pursing any career that requires formal business clothes” because she’s probably thinking about the fact that my closest in the Poconos is full of this exact clothing that I told her at 16 that I’ll never need. Back then her response is “you’ll need them because that’s what you need to wear to work.” Now it’s silence because she knows I have the final say whether or not she agrees that I have the final say.
“What kind of internship. What kind of career am I pursing.” I said, not asked. Again, silence. I was challenging this magical term and the false promises it carries that my sister exposed her to. A few minutes later, she said something how she meant finding a research position, like one of her client’s kids who got paid for research on schizophrenia. I was too tired to argue because I wasn’t in the mood to open a can of worms. I decided it wasn’t the right time to tell her that I decided not to major in psychology months ago. She’s probably still carrying false ideas that I’ll one day wake up and agree with her that I should apply to medical school for the hell of it. The next day I’ll wake up and apply for law school, just for kicks. (I’m not even kidding, one day she concocted some idea that I’ll get both a PhD and JD.)

There must have been some sort of open admissions day going at NYU because a couple of places seemed more balloon-a-fied than usual. Even though there really were not many customers throughout the day, two different kids threw temper tantrums with their parent. The first was a boy of about age 6 or 7, yelling incoherently while his father was trying to quietly get him out of the store. It’s as if he was hoping we wouldn’t notice the scene if he remained silent. I don’t know how his father acted once they got outside, but it was obvious that he wasn’t the disciplinary parent, or even the present parent in the kid’s life.
The second instance of awkward parent-kid feuding was between a Soccer Mom and her brooding 15 year old. I noticed the girl a few times since the teeange goth look is kind of hard to miss. It wasn’t goth all the way, meaning that the most she got away with was wearing all black and dying her hair whereas her mom clearly didn’t tolerate more extreme accessories or loud details, such as studding and make up. The issue was at the register where the daughter want to purchase some Stephen King book. The mother intervened, saying that she won’t buy it because it’s “too scary.” Uhm, by the looks of your daughter, she already seen a couple of horror movies. It was awkward for us to politely ignore because the daughter was clearly bursting with embarrassment and argued in typical teenage-girl fashion. I think the daughter ended the argument with, “I just wanna go home!”

A few of us had a discussion which person was at fault in each situation. Most cashiers sided with the teenage daughter whereas the assistant manager sided with each parent. At the end of the day both are to blame. It was control in two extremes: the younger boy had no control whereas the teenager’s mom was too controlling. Each kid was clearly frustrated with their parent and rebelled in ways that we label as spoiled or immature. I’m biased with the teenage girl because I had that kind of mom who treated my refusal to wear colored shirts (in other words, I only wore solid-colored black tshirts with jeans) as if she found drugs under my bed. [I wish I was exaggerating, but she literally told me that I have a problem. Needless to say she completely got off my case about clothing when she learned what a real "problem" was.] Digression aside, that mom from the store is going to find drugs underneath her daughter’s bed in a couple of years if she doesn’t loosen her grip. Her daughter clearly isn’t happy for whatever reason and it’s only escalating because her perception is exaggerated during puberty.

We didn’t really come to a conclusion when discussing whether its parenting or the kid. I added, “After six psychology classes, I finally learned the secret.” A couple of people faked excitement, egging me to reveal this unknown information.
I lowered my voice, to protect the secret: “Psychologists don’t know either.”

[Ironically my train of thought behind organizing this entry did not revolve around parental control, but my decision to end my "education" in psychology this semester. Since I wrote my observations in the store before I finished writing about my phone call with my mom about internships, I unintentionally carried over the theme.]

The point of this long entry is to state what I was thinking about when I started writing in the first place: I really think psychology as a field is a load of crap. I probably went into it with false expectations, but so far I really haven’t been exposed to any grand answers to the human psyche. I’ve pretty much come up with this crap on my own and yet I struggled with exams testing me on the labels placed on common sense.
On another level, I’ve really questioned my desire to even pursue a lifetime of immersing myself in the depths of abnormal psychology. I can’t help applying the material to my own life which is ironically why I developed an interest in the first place. I was determinde to explain events and personalities that destroyed my innocence, to explain WHY it happened. Unfortunately, I keep getting stuck in revolving doors because I never really close those chapters of my life. I can’t separate myself from the material and unfortunately it has negative consequences.

I probably chased this topic for at least 5-6 years for the same reason the teenage girl developed her interests in horror books/films, and my mom really held on to the idea of  hitting milestones to reach The American Dream: all three of us are looking for answers.

Does my personality suck so badly that people continually ditch me?

Yes. Yes it does.

You know you’re spending too much time at the library once you start dreaming that you’re in the library.

…Looking for one of those comfortable, black chairs.

That’s really the only reason I try to grab a seat in LL1, LL2 if I’m willing to walk two flights of stairs with a heavy bookbag. It isn’t the optimal studying place during normal hours because of the heavy traffic, frequent noise level, and florescent lighting.

But those chairs!!

How to Procrastinate in the Third North Computer Lab

Take pictures of yourself in Photobooth:

[22:25] grezakster: guess where I am
[22:25] lacrosse9008: home!
[22:25] lacrosse9008: aka bobst
[22:25] grezakster: YES

Other thoughts:

• I’m tempted to take a class called “V45. 0865 – TPCS: APOCALYPSE NOW? THE LURE OF NOSTRADAMUS” in Spring 2010
• You will never be alone in Bobst – whether its 4am Monday morning or 8am Saturday morning.
• Work was pleasant despite the fact that some middle eastern man screamed at me on the telephone. (I’m a woman and therefore incompetent. I made the mistake of saying “He made a mistake.”) Basically, someone who wasn’t familiar with the system we use to look up books told this guy that we have some book called “Court Officer Exam.”  It was on the system because someone placed a special order for it in 2005. He basically talked down to me from the beginning of the conversation because I asked “is that the title of the book” and “is it for your course.” I’m more astounded at my patience because I just kept repeating my question while he continued to condescendingly and repeatedly spelling “C-O-U-R-T O-F-F-I-C-E-R. It’s really simple. ” For someone treating me like I don’t understand, he certainly did not understand what I was asking. Then he had the audacity to literally continually yell at me to put “the guy” on the phone while I tried to interject by saying, “I don’t know who you spoke with.” After I tried to say that two or three times, I literally put him on hold and he hung up himself.  I tried to find my boss in the meantime to inform him that I need to grow a penis to be competent at my job, but he was understandably hiding.
• Work was… pleasant? Disregarding the bitchy NYU parents and crazy phone call, I enjoyed my shift.

I’ve built walls,
A fortress deep and mighty,
That none may penetrate.
I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain.
Its laughter and its loving I disdain.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

Don’t talk of love,
But I’ve heard the words before;
Its sleeping in my memory.
I wont disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

It’s pathetic how spot on this song is.

What’s my wise, witty, or jaded observation for my daily life on this Friday night?

Classes are good. Work’s gotten better. I still live in Bobst but I guess it’s technically productive and I’ve been getting As on my assignments.

It’s apparently Parents Weekend at NYU, which means the store is filled with rude tourists who feel entitled to bark orders at you. There was particularly one guy that really set a fuse off in my head and reminded me why I couldn’t wait to leave Pennsylvania. There was no “excuse me” or “can you look up,” he just started barking and practically yelling at me to look something up. We didn’t have it so he started demanding that I search the internet. He wouldn’t let me do my job, he kept yelling at me every simple syllable that popped into his tiny brain. I think what bothered me the most was that he kept repeating himself because I didn’t respond within two seconds.  I can’t stand excessive talking and explanations when I’m trying to do my job but being yelled at to “search the internet” really knocked a few assholes down the list.  Seriously, you’re talking down to me as if I’m incompetent? I responded by staring with a dirty look before walking away.

A Note on Dating Adrianna Grezak

A guy I went out with over the summer randomly IMed me asking why I “decided to disappear” which I guess was his way of asking why I haven’t spoken to him since we went out… in June? July?

Uhm, because you never responded to my texts or IMs.

I basically said something along those lines, stating that I assumed he wasn’t interested. Considering it took him over 15 minutes to respond with “well alright. I was just curious” it probably wasn’t the answer he expected.

I had to think, has this happened before with others? Is it happening right now? Are we too quick to judge and assume that the other person isn’t interested? Are our self esteems that low that we assume that we’re not good enough before there’s any real chance to get rejected? I’m certainly guilty of expecting the guy to make a move, but at the same time I do stop trying after someone doesn’t respond to my texts, calls, or my “hints” that I want to make plans to see them. I’m not going to put myself out there if the guy never made the first move or basically rejected me with “I’m really busy” when I did put myself out there.

I’m tired of games. If I go out of my way to talk to you over a year, I’m clearly interested. If I exchanged numbers with you I’m clearly interested, because I rarely exchange numbers and I have flat out refused to give out my number. If I’ve called you in the past or tried to make plans, I’m clearly interested – but I’m not going to be the first person to do so this time.