crushes

I am sick. As usual when I am sick, I come up with crazy ideas for me to do when I am not sick. The number one crazy idea in my head right now is that I should use Freddy to get me information about Jim so that I can seduce him until I grow tired of him.

Who is Freddy?
I have known Freddy for more than three years, but I cannot answer this question fully. Freddy is this person who likes to keep other people at arm's length, and one of the ways he accomplishes this is to not call anyone by their names. He is amazing, though, and is really the only person I can talk to about sneaky crushes that I have, because I can trust him not to tell anyone else anything. Worst case scenario, he tells Jim that "Person" has a crush on him. Will Jim be able to figure that out? Who cares? The important thing about Freddy for this project is that Freddy is ubiquitous, especially in the science buildings where Jim probably spends all of his free time.

Who is Jim?
Jim is this boy who I used to have a lot of classes with but no longer do. I had the biggest crush on him ever while I had class with him but then I forgot about him last semester. However, yesterday I saw him in the library and he is just SO FUCKING GORGEOUS. Of course, instead of saying hi which WOULD Have been totally OK since I had class with him alot, I decided to be awkward and avoid him instead by going to check my mail. WTF.

I figure, I need to get over this now if ever, and if I don't at least try to get into this kid's pants this year I will totally regret it for the rest of my life. Besides, Desperate Housewives makes me want to be sneaky and full of intrigue.

Surprisingly, this sounds like me.

Who becomes an MD/PhD?

There's no such thing as a "typical" MD/PhD applicant, but in my experience here are three qualities often found in MD/PhDs: 1) they get a kick out of science, 2) they're good at a lot of different things, and 3) they dont know what they want. This last quality is almost a definition - if they knew they wanted to practice medicine they'd go straight MD, if they knew they wanted to do research they'd go straight PhD. Few are willing to believe they can't do both well concurrently.

Addendum

And how fucking funny is it that I can only express something as emotionally charged as that was in a place where nobody I know is likely to read it? What a way of avoiding actually fixing the problem, what a predictable thing for me to do.

This will never make sense to anyone but me.

I can't stop thinking about how our brain works as a prediction machine, how every bit of sensory information signals to somebody higher up, "This is mister slanty-line detector, all slanty lines are in order, CHECK." And how bad it is to anthropomorphize my cortex so, but this is not my Div III, so I can do whatever the hell I want, and cringelaugh at myself later. But it works like that, and there's a hierarchy, so the details that are in order don't really need to be noticed, unless something WEIRD happens, and then mister slanty-line detector says, "STOP, this line is out of order," and then the higher-ups rationalize it and it becomes another part of the paradigm. It becomes another FACT you learn about the world.

And now I see this tendency everywhere, especially in my relationships. If I expect you to act a certain way, unless you do something that really stands out enough to get by my normalcy barriers, you WILL act that way, as far as I'm concerned. I wish I knew how to say what I'm thinking, that the neural basis of love, or at least in-love, has less to do with a particular chemical and more to do with everything that person does being NOVEL, being out of order enough to make it way past mister slanty-line detector and all the way up to the top of the hierarchy, where it begins and the hippocampus starts to rationalize it. Next time that thing happens, it won't be a surprise, lucky there are so many other things one person can do to surprise you.

Until you get to know them so well that you can predict their every move to the point that you can't see it when they're more than that. I don't want my friends to become predictable obstacles in my environment, but that's how it seems like they become, one after one. I think I finally have a definition for what is REAL, what I crave, it's the things that make it to the top, that are so out-of-order and not what I'm used to that they can't be rationalized and have to just be accepted as a new experience. I know how to behave if I see a competitor (fight!), a predator (flee!) or a paramour (fuck!), but I am unable to face the type of real socio-emotional experience that will force me to recognize the part of other people that is just like me, or scarier yet, different.

Impending doom

Minus the weekends, I have but ten days to pass Div II. I'm starting to get nervous. This is it, I really can't fuck up any more. It's not helping that I've been feeling uninclined to interact with anyone for a few days, when that's pretty much all I have to do at this point. I did get some stuff done today -- I made an appointment with Fred, which is in a way one of the biggest hurdles. Here is my anticipated timeline of what will happen:

Friday: Meet with Fred. Give him what I've got for a portfolio, most notably my retrospective. Then, go to Neil's office and see if I can catch him, if not make an appointment to do so. He's hard to get a hold of so I may have to figure out his schedule and intercept him when he leaves class.
The Weekend: Do whatever Fred advised me to do on Friday. Go to Gloucester and chill out.
If all goes well (contingent factors: getting a hold of Neil, Fred liking my retrospective, the fact that Ken still hasn't evaluated me not being an issue, getting thems all together for a final meeting), I should be able to pass Div II by the end of next week. The deadline is the 28th. It approaches!

Also, I will have to write a Div III proposal and get Jane +someone else to sign on. I should really figure out who that someone else is. The deadline for that is Oct 5. And then, Lyrics Born!

I cannot WAIT to have this all behind me. I just hope that "having it behind me" doesn't mean having to drop out of school.
On a lighter note:

I've forgotten more than you'll ever know

Today I had the first meeting of the artificial intelligence course I'm taking this semester. I'm really psyched about it -- the professor is really personable and the material is of much interest to me AND relevant to what I plan on doing for my Div III. We had a nice talk in the few minutes before class began and I told him about my studies. Somehow, while talking to him, my Div III crystallized out of the half-vague ideas that have been floating around in my head and turned into something I was actually proud to be the creator of.

The project that I've been considering most strongly is an idea that came about in a large way because of a talk I had with Larry Abbott during the summer. I am interested in memory and learning, and I knew that I wanted to try and create a computer model of some aspect of those functions. Larry suggested that I look at recognition memory, which I can describe best as the brain's ability to determine from sensory information whether or not an object is familiar or novel. From what I've read, in the brain this is actually accomplished by a LOWERED response from certain neurons (I think they call them "novelty" neurons).

I like the idea of this project, but I've been feeling like something was missing from it. Something about it wasn't very me, that is it was something that I knew I could be proud of, but it didn't feel very personal. Last night I hit on what it was. I need to continue learning how to write, and so I have to have a strong writing component on my Div III. I've decided to write a research paper about memory in general, what our current models of human memory are and how we think the brain stores them. I think it will be illuminating and result in a product that will make me happy.

As long as I pull it of, of course.

I wanna be a full-fledged blogerist

My first day back at Hampshire (after unpacking and sweating and drinking beer all day), I met with Herb Bernstein, the original physics professor. He's really interesting and clearly knows how to make physics fun, which alot of people seem to suck at, even though physics is the most awesome ever. I'm going to be TAing his mechanics class, and he gave me a section from a book he wrote that he's planning on assigning. It's called "Experimentation as Bizarre Behavior," and there were a few points that enlightened me. I give you, quotes:

From my perhaps idiosyncratic emphasis upon experiment as the arbiter of verifiability, and measurement as the characteristic distinguishing experimentation from other human behavior, it becomes clear that Truth cannot be the goal of this endeavor, Rather, science seeks consistency.

I really like this method of dividing between science and religion. It makes any friction between them irrelevant. You can keep your Divine Truth -- we're just looking for patterns. It also cleverly sidesteps the prickly dilemma of defining truth. Leave that to the philosophers.

The emphasis on logic and rationality leads to a conventional suppression of the true motivations for the work.

An explanation for why scientific papers can be so boring!

We are, in effect, making phenomena appear rational for our own intellectual and emotional pleasure.

What is "rational," of course, except that which appeals to our inner sense of logic? Nature doesn't care.

Today, I went to Mt. Holyoke to check out a class on artificial intelligence. Stupid me didn't know that classes didn't start until tomorrow! But the professor got my e-mail and found me staring in confusion at the empty classroom. We had a nice chat and I'm totally psyched for the class. I also met with Jane about Div III stuff, and I'm feeling good about that, too. Tonight is curry and poker night. peace out, friends, RAMEN