Today in therapy my therapist brought up one of my great failures, not finishing my double major. Forgive me if I have told the story before. It was the end of my junior year of college, and I was doing really well. I had just come back from presenting my psychology research at conference in Denver Colorado, my GPA was approaching 4.0 I had a lovely fiance, things were going well. I had finished my community college programming school at community college in the Spring it was Fall of 2019.
The class was Computer Architecture, and it was taught by a man to whom English was not his first language. It is to my everlasting shame that this is one of my beefs with him. My whole life, I have loved and tried to find common ground with immigrants and non English speaking people. This one time, one crushed my dreams. It was also a problem that I am slightly hard of hearing, and not willing to talk about it. He also gave out a syllibus which he didn’t follow to my satisfaction.
It came around to midterms and I was failing. This was agony at this point in my college career, because I was so used to being brilliant. I tried everything I could to salvage the class, but it was beyond hope. So I dropped it. That indirrectly led to me having to give up on having a computer science major along with my psychology major.
I think I also really thought I was getting into grad school, which is a whole other sad story.
My therapist pointed out though, that I ran away from my failure there. Then asked if that happened a lot. I admitted it did, but traced it back to my anger management. Quite often it is merely the consequence of me wanting to step out and take a deep breath. I’m not compliant enough. So instead of lashing out at people, I step aside and take a breath. That offends some people.
Is it maladaptive though? I admit it lost me a few jobs over the years, and my second major. On the other hand I know for a fact it has kept me out of prison. Not being dramatic there, I have a temper under the surface that frightens people deeply.
She pointed out that me wanting to bail out of Oklahoma is running away, and in a way she has a point, but again; I’m doing what is best for everyone involved. What serves me best does tend to serve those I care about most. If I live longer and abuse fewer substances, that’s a win, right?
I do need to find a better way to deal with anger, but I think when anger reaches that peak……. better walk away than throw a punch. Which is a thought especially relevant as my therapist has an office right across the way from my ex bosses’ office….. and if I could throw a punch……. I try not to look at the building lately. Or even think about it. I’ll never qualify for services to need that building, so it might as well not exist, like a lot of buildings in my city.
Do you see? Avoidance is a really practical strategy when it comes to anger. When I find someone who has done me harm, if they reside in a building I never need enter again, why I never need think of them again! They might as well be one of the fairy folk. Who’s to say they ever existed in the first place?
I do find dissassociation is also very useful in these trying times.
3 comments
Is it possible to retake the course with someone else and finish up your degree? Also, have you considered tutors? I have a professor that is similar, and I’ve been utilizing a tutor for the things hard to understand
I left some details out. If I had kept at it back in 2020 I would have had 15 credit hours left, which would have been pretty easy to get done, I probably would have done three over that summer and 12 in the fall. If I knew then what I know now…. When I talked to my advisor and decided I wanted the degree in May 2020 though that meant that if I ever went back it would mean 30 more credit hours to get my second major, and also that there wouldn’t be financial aid for it.
The whole strategy I had been doing was spiking my grades, I would plan out my whole semester in the first week. Most of these upper level courses had one huge project that the whole course hung on, and I’m in general really good at those. Most professors were really good at writing out specifications for those projects, and I was good at filling those. This guy had quizes and tests, which is a lot harder to spike.
I do think that there is a certain amount of any degree that is a test for the student’s tolerance for the industry’s nonsense factor. I did well in the other one for that degree; software engineering which was all reading papers that were clearly written to justify funding and not to actually advance the field. The professor for THAT class was brilliant.
I mean, I took positive psychology. It was as silly as it sounds. No field is immune to nonsense that I’ve found.
I don’t think what you described is maladaptive at all. It sounds like you sized up the situation and determined the best way to adapt is to avoid a confrontation.
I think ‘maladaptive’ would be someone who stubbornly argues or entrenches themselves in their way of doing things, whereas you did the opposite which is to give way.
I guess your therapist also has a point, in terms of semantics, that leaving is not ‘adapting’ either. But for the most part I think leaving an unsatisfactory situation is one way of solving a problem.
Hah, I just caught the parallel to suicide there. Not intentional.
Have you read Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”? In it there are a race of Martians who absolutely never engage with hostile humans. In one chapter some drunk guy is picking a fight with a Martian who completely ignores the guy and walks away despite all the taunts. The guy, incensed to fury, chases after the Martian and they disappear around a corner. Some time later the Martian comes back. The man was never seen again.
I don’t know why that stuck with me all these years (I read the book when I was a kid). I guess it’s because I always considered that to be be the coolest way to deal with conflict. Don’t engage them, just walk away, if they follow you keep walking. But if they get too close… well someone aint coming back.