Day 276: A Missed Meeting

I'm taking a field practicum class this semester.  Basically, I have to volunteer a lot in the field that I want to work in.  That field is clinical psychology.  Unfortunately, as an undergrad, there is very little I can do in the field.  Which makes sense--you don't want someone untrained trying to treat someone with a disorder.

So one of the things that I can do is attend support groups, such as ANAD and FED (Families of Eating Disorders).  I was going to go to ANAD today, but . . .

I skipped it.  I wanted to go, but I'm going out of town tomorrow for 4 days, and so I needed to do some school stuff and pack and such.

Soooo, I am not making much progress in terms of volunteering. :-(  But there's only so much I can do really.

Day 275: King James Bible Ignorance Continues

Today, my school's library had a panel discussion on the history of the King James Bible and how it came to be such a popular and well-known version of the Bible.  I was totally planning on going.

Result:  It started at 530pm.  Normally I have a meeting from 3-430pm every Tuesday, so I was going to hang out on campus and work on school work until 530pm.  Well, my meeting ended 45 minutes early, so I ended up just going home.  I didn't feel like hanging around campus for 1.75 hours. 

I ended up not doing much at home, as I knew would be the case.  I ended up taking a long nap, which wasn't surprising to me.  (I hadn't taken a nap in 3 days; thus ended my no nap streak.) 

I still think it would have been cool to attend that lecture, because I know nothing of the history of the KJ Bible.  But . . . what can you do?  I skipped the lecture and got sleep instead.  You can only learn so much in a lifetime anyways. :-)

Day 274: I Have NO Sense of Direction. Continued . . .

You know how for many many years I would judge myself negatively for everything?  (I've gotten MUCH better about that thanks to this blog, but that is beside the point.)  Well, if there is ONE thing I accept about myself (and I do), it's the fact that I have absolutely very very little sense of direction.  I've lived in the Atlanta area for 20 years, and I still get lost quite frequently, even with directions, even when I'm in an area I've been in several times before.

Today was no different.  I was headed to Rose and Crown Tavern in Atlanta in order to attend a book club meeting.  I got directions from Google Maps.  Well, Google Maps brought me to a part of Powers Ferry Road that was NOT where this place was.  Not only that, it wasn't even close to where the place actually was.

I came VERY close several times to just going home.  It's tiring to try and figure out where you're going when you have the wrong directions and you're stuck in Atlanta with a bunch of traffic.  But I ploughed through it, and an hour + later, I ended up at my location.

I was very proud of myself for not giving up and for eventually figuring out where the hell I was going :-)  So suck it, Google maps!  (Thanks mapquest for getting me to my destination CORRECTLY.)

Day 273: Overeat Much?

(This picture made me lol.)

Today I went to a good friend's house to watch the Steelers football game. 

Result:  My friend bought and laid out a ton of yummy food, right in front of my face, right in front of the tv.  And it was just the two of us.  I thought it was super nice of her to go to the store and buy yummy food for just me and her, and I hadn't eaten anything before that, sooooooo . . .

I totally overate.  And not just a little, but a lot.  It was like a binge, but not quite.

I used to overeat VERY frequently.  Like, on a daily basis.  But for the last several months (maybe even the last year), I have rarely overeaten (yay therapy and working through emotional issues!).  But I had overeaten another day this week, and so this was the 2nd day that I overate. 

If I REALLY let myself, I can eat forever.  Seriously.  So I have to sometimes make myself stop eating because otherwise I will just eat forever.  (I don't get much of a fullness feeling when I eat.  Unless it's oatmeal.  One can only eat so much of oatmeal, and that's not much.)  Well, today I just let myself eat and eat and eat, and eventually I made myself stop.

The good thing about this was that I didn't judge myself harshly for it.  In the past, I would have berated myself and hated myself for being out of control.  But today (and the other day this week that I overate), I just accepted it and that was that.  That was a big step for me :-)  Yay progress!

Day 272: Devereux Training

Today was training for volunteers who want to work with children and adolescents at Devereux, the place I'm volunteering for in order to gain clinical experience and get credit for my Field Practicum class.

I really had no idea what to expect.  All I knew was that we were going to be learning restraint, and the only image I had in my mind was like using a straightjacket or something in order to restrain unruly or unsafe kids.

Result:  First, we learned CPR.  We spent 2 hours on that alone.  We followed along to an American Heart Association DVD in order for the training to be done correctly; I thought that was really cool because it is reliability and validity in action (we learn about that a lot in psychology).  The in-class trainer made us go through each step and made sure we each did the steps correctly before moving onto the next step.  By the end of the training, we were all CPR certified!  I thought it was really cool that I now got a 2 year certification from the American Heart Association for CPR training.

After that, we learned restraint moves to use when kids are in attack mode basically.  We learned how to block punches and kicks, how to shuffle away from them, what to do if someone grabs your hair or your shirt, and some other moves.  My favorite move was the take-down move, when you need to take someone to the ground and then get extra assistance to keep them down and hold them down (i.e. so that they can't kick you or someone else or whatever).  I volunteered to be taken down, and it was fun to see that I was super strong and able to get out of a hold easily, even with 4 people holding me down.  Yeah, I felt bad-ass.  And then I helped take people down, and again, I was super strong.  Sweet!

So yeah, there were times where I totally failed at some of the CPR training (before I figured out how to do it correctly) and times where I did the restraint moves incorrectly.  But the in-class trainer made us do everything correctly before we could move onto the next stage.  SO in this case, practice did make perfect for all of us :-)

Day 271: A Missed EEG Day

I am assisting a professor with research during this semester.  Every Friday he has research assistants run and use an EEG machine for research he is doing.

Today, I didn't go to the research.  I don't know why, but oftentimes, Fridays are really bad days for my physically.  I rarely do anything productive on Fridays because I'm usually really tired.  So today, I slept a lot.  I also had really bad stomach issues all day, so I just stayed home. 

On Monday, I was running research with students, and after I was done, he happened to come in and make sure everything ran smoothly.  I told him that I can't always make it on Fridays because sometimes it's a bad day for me physically, and he was very understanding.  I was very appreciative of that :-)

So, I'm proud of myself for taking care of myself this day.

Day 270: Blasphemy Rights Day

Today was International Blasphemy Rights Day, a day started by the Center for Inquiry after the whole Mohammed cartoon debacle that happened (I think) 3 years ago.  It's a day to celebrate free speech and be grateful for the fact that we here in the United States can show and create images like the one shown in the picture above without fear of being killed for it.  Not all countries have that freedom, so it's a day to bring forth awareness of that fact and to work towards free speech for all.

So, I decided to hold an event for Blasphemy Rights Day at my school.

Result:  We had posters with different prompts on them, such as "School is...," "God is...," "Homosexuality is...," and students could come up and write whatever they wanted.  It was really fun to see what people would write, and some of them were quite funny.  No one wrote anything hateful or mean or anything like that, which was interesting.  Most of the people that wrote on our posters had similar viewpoints as our student group.  Not a whole lot of people who are "opposed" to our group approach us, even though we are there for anyone to come talk to us. 

I didn't know how the event would go, but overall, it went really well, and it was fun :-)