Assured I am Graduating from University

I went back to see an academic adviser. He checked with three different University employees and assured me I had completed all the requirements. I sat there, clutching my Fossil handbag to my heart, and smiled at the adviser. I am done with my B.A.! Done! Belated, botched, and barely sane, but done nonetheless! It has been a difficult decade for me. In and out of school, in and out of the psychiatric hospitals, in and out of minimum wage jobs....until now, when my future actually seems promising.

I can still remember telling my psych ward psychiatrist that I wanted to go back to college and complete my Bachelor's degree.
"No, no, you can't take the stress. Schizophrenia is very serious! Just rest." That image, of myself lying a bed seven days a week, getting up only to eat and paint little pictures, was more stressful than the actual process of going back to college and achieving my B.A. in linguistics!

Now, I have been assured my degree will be granted, I can enter next semester as a graduate student in the field of linguistics, and my life will not be spent becoming a hermit with a little aluminum foil hat. My summer is open before me, free to paint, write, draw, read, watch movies, surf the internet, blog, and enjoy free time, temporarily of course, as I return to college in August.

With my new life as a graduate student, I suddenly feel like life has a purpose. The purpose is to gain knowledge, study, make contributions to the field, and succeed. I could not have done this without my out-patient services. Despite the view (as discussed in the previous blog entry) that out-patient services create government aid-dependent, docile, chronic mental patients, I have found that these out-patient services have been a vital part in my recovery.
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I tried re-reading "The Center Cannot Hold" but I found that the descriptions of hospitals, restraints, stigma, and suffering is very triggering for me. I love the book, but right now I cannot read it because I will end up blogging about how unfair the system is, how depressing and dehumanizing it is, and I am not in the mood for negativity right now.

Instead, I am reading a layman's book on game theory. As you may know, Game Theory was created centuries ago, but was fine-tuned and perfected by John Nash, the famous mathematician, paranoid schizophrenic, and Nobel Prize winner who I idolize. Game Theory is essentially the study of minimizing losses. Pardon me if I butcher the theory, but I only got through Trigonometry and I went insane while taking precalculus, got hospitalized, had my precal book confiscated by hospital staff as contraband, and never finished the class. So, I am not a mathematician and my writing on math will reflect that...but I still have an attraction to Probability, Game Theory, and computer programming that I intend to pursue this summer. So in case you stop by the blog one day and find a random entry on Game Theory, it is because I am trying to be productive with my free time.

It figures that a paranoid schizophrenic was the one who mastered the fine art of making paranoia a field of mathematics. The Prisoner's Dilemma is the most famous example. James and Janet committed a crime and they are being interrogated separately by police. The police need a confession from one or both of the criminals in order to lock them up. They are willing to plea bargain with whichever one confesses. Now James and Janet are paranoid that the other is going to confess. James and Janet do not want to go jail. What do James and Janet do and why?

I always wondered why there are not more paranoid schizophrenics in the field of Game Theory. It seems to be fine-tuned for their paranoid and suspicious nature. For example, while slightly paranoid, I devised an excellent method of home surveillance. My natural paranoid nature was perfect for thinking about all possible entries into the home. My method involved not one, but four cameras, each located at a different part of the home (one attached to the garage, one pointing across the front of the house, one perched hidden in a tree pointing at the front yard, and one guarding the side windows). Then, my plan included two motion-activated spotlights for flooding the premises with light when intruders walked onto the property. In the backyard, more motion-activated spotlights. Motion-activated alarms would be attached to all major windows, so that any attempt to lift the window would trigger an obnoxious alarm. I was very happy with my plan, but unfortunately my mother was not pleased and discouraged me from spending a ton of money to guard our cheap possessions. Still, it was a good application for my natural paranoid tendencies. If only I could somehow build a little moat with alligators to guard our house....