All the Pretty Words

Yikes, it has been a long time since I’ve written. Life suddenly became very hectic, and blogging will probably be sporadic for the foreseeable future, but I will at least give an update of what’s been going on now.

I got a job at a yarn shop and really like it there. I started off part-time in mid-September and was still scrambling for a second part-time job when one of the full-time workers suddenly left. Because of that I started working eight hours a day Tuesdays through Saturdays, and I’m also volunteering at the Probation Services Office for half-days on Mondays, so those two things alone would keep me pretty busy. But wait, there’s more! I also have a third job that I do from home in which I write short nonfiction articles on various topics for a website, which eats up more time but is great because it makes staying within budget *much* easier.

I’m also taking the Psychology GRE this Saturday and the General GRE on the 26th of November, so I’ve been studying hard for those. I just took my last practice test for the Psychology GRE today and did very well on it, so I’m pretty confident! I’m less confident about the quantitative section of the General GRE, but my prep book has this great four-week study plan that I’ve been using and I think it will help me a lot.

We’ve been staying with friends and are still looking for an apartment. Finding an apartment that will accept cats, is within the city limits of Seattle, and is $725 or less is harder than you might expect, so it is taking us a while. Hopefully something will turn up soon…

On the knitting front, one of my nieces is getting married this Friday, and while we can’t make it to the wedding, I’ve been knitting a pillow for them. The cover is finished and waiting to be blocked, stuffed, wrapped and mailed. Her older sister is getting married on December 14th, so I’m knitting a pillow for them as well, but I just started on it last night. No photos of either yet, I’m afraid, but I will try to remember to take some when they are finished. I also have knit the body for a baby sweater for an impending familial baby, but haven’t knit the sleeves yet. I’m not too worried about that one since he/she isn’t due until sometime next year. No photos of that one either–such a bad blogger! :)

I have a few other UFOs floating around, but my only other major project (my true major project, actually) is currently a secret. I’m not getting published or anything like that, but it’s important and pretty and I’m quite excited about it. You’ll find out what it is in December!

I don’t like being alone. I get lonely and a bit grumpy and it’s just generally unpleasant. I’ve found that it’s best for me to keep as busy as possible when I start feeling this way, so I expect to be quite busy over the next few weeks. Bryan’s visa expires tomorrow, so I took him to the airport today, and he’s in the process of flying to Toronto. He’ll wait for me there until I drive up on May 2nd–as soon as possible after my classes end. I think he’ll have a good time, since he’ll get to see some friends he hasn’t seen in quite a while, and the lucky boy also gets to play the Wii one of those friends is getting (I’ve been experiencing some serious Wii-wants).

We have had a good week, though. I sort-of kind-of finished the thesis on Sunday, which is a very nice feeling. It’s finished in the sense that I’ve done as much with it as I can on my own, but it’s not truly finished because I have to wait for my thesis advisor and reader to go over it and get back to me with suggestions for revisions. I also need a bit of help with interpreting the findings, which means it will be a while until I’m actually finished. On Monday, we had to drive all the way across Vermont to give my microwave to the only person who wanted to buy the thing, so we made a couple of stops on the way back.

Woodstock was one of them, and we had fun wandering around, taking photos, and picking out sock yarn. Yesterday, we had a quiet day at home, watched lots of clips from the Daily Show to make ourselves laugh in the face of impending separation, and then watched Deep Space 9 until we fell asleep (ahh, the love lives of geeks….).

Oh, and I finished the first sock of the Embossed Leaves pair last week. I’ll finish the second soon!

Today has been one of those days that is both good and bad, and also marks an important turn of events in my life. I would say it has been bittersweet, but that isn’t the right word for it.

I went to my juvenile delinquency class this day knowing that we would have a guest speaker, Ron Powers, but hadn’t thought about it too much. We had been told to read one of his articles, The Apocalypse of Adolescence in preparation for today’s class, but I had read it several weeks before and didn’t have time to go over it again. I was unprepared, but today’s class found me pleasantly surprised.

The article is about these two teenage boys from a small town in Vermont who brutally murdered a married couple of college professors. Beyond these two boys, it spoke of how the small-town values espoused by Vermont and so much of the United States often hide a dark and even ugly underbelly, one in which the children–supposedly the reason people hold those values–are bored, anxious, depressed, filled with pathos, and sometimes are even murderous. Mr. Powers talked with us about the article relates to the state of the juvenile justice system today, and the conversation eventually turned to one of his books, Tom and Huck Don’t Live Here Anymore, and how during the process of researching for it he had visited this out-of-the-way, nearly abandoned little hospital where some “feral children,” as they were unofficially called, were kept. These were the children who were known as disruptive or dangerous and simply could not be managed within the normal school system, and thus were sent to this “alternative school” for lack of a better placement. He met the children and described them as blank, distant, nearly translucent, and asked the man who was in charge of them, “Is justice being done here?” The man shrugged, spread his hands, and said, “I don’t know.” I think that’s a strong metaphor for the way we’re dealing with juveniles who run across the legal system. We try our best, but rarely are we sure that we’re doing the right thing.

At some point I was making a point about how there are two Vermonts–the idealized Green Mountain state, full of small town mountains and skiing, and how that struck me as odd, having grown up in Missouri. Missouri is also a predominantly rural state, but has no such duplicity about itself. It is what it says it is–a state of farmers and meth labs, and no one pretends that it is any different. He asked which area of Missouri I was from, and I told him that it was near Sedalia, and he said that he knew the town and had written about it in the book. During a break about midway through the class, Mr. Powers came up to me and asked if I’d like a signed copy of Tom and Huck Don’t Live Here Anymore. I said of course I would, so he signed his own copy and handed it to me. The inscription reads, “To Rebecca–who knows the territory.” I thought that was quite nice of him, and am looking forward to reading it. I’m a little peeved at myself for not realizing until later that last year I had read one of his books, Mark Twain: A Life, and liked it quite a lot.

I came home after class feeling pretty happy, and sat down to check my email. This was when I found out that I did not gain acceptance into the program at Drexel. As I’ve heard from all of the PhD programs now and haven’t been accepted into any of them, it seems I won’t be able to start working on my doctorate this fall. I did get accepted into two PsyD programs, but neither of them would be anything approximating a good fit for me. Now it’s time for the backup plan, which means I need to go about getting permanent residency in Canada. Bryan can sponsor me as his partner, so it should be easy enough for me to get it (we hope). Once I gain permanent resident status, I’ll be able to get some work experience within my field, which will hopefully make me a more attractive candidate for Canadian doctoral programs. I will also take the Graduate Record Exams again next year since my old exam scores are going to expire soon. That won’t be so fun, but with some study I hope to improve upon my previous scores and make myself a more attractive candidate. I’m happy about this chance to live and work in Canada, as the Canadian corrections system holds values that are more liberal than those of most of the United States, making them more in line with my own. I like Canada so much that eventually I’d like to become a dual citizen, but that will have to wait until I’ve been a permanent resident of Canada for at least three years.

All in all, this has been quite a day. It hasn’t been bittersweet, but it has been a day of tempered optimism.

So, FeedBurner tells me that either five people subscribe to my RSS feed and have done so for a while, or else five new people have subscribed to it since I added the feed subscriber counting code yesterday…I’m not quite sure which. FeedBurner also offers some basic stats tracking, which tells me that most people find this site by searching for “pretty words” (number one result on Google, woo!), but almost all of the rest come here through various knitting-related searches. More knitting content it is, then…starting with a future post, as I have to block some finished items before taking photos and writing about them.

In other news, Mom called me today. She had pulled a letter from Sam Houston State University out of the mailbox and wanted to know whether she should open it and read it to me. I said to go ahead, and so it turns out that I haven’t been accepted to their program. I’m a bit disappointed, since I thought I had really nailed the interviews. This means that the only programs I haven’t heard from are Simon Fraser University and Drexel University, my top two choices. I do know that I’ve been accepted to two PsyD programs, but neither of them would be a good choice for me. It both hurts and disappoints me that I haven’t made it into Sam Houston, but as Bryan says, I should look at this in a positive light. If I get into SFU or Drexel, then that’s great, because I’ll be able to start working on my PhD right away. If I don’t get into either of them, then we can move to Canada and settle down together, thus eliminating the problems incumbent on his arrival in the US. I could find a place to work for a while with the help of my thesis advisor, who knows several psychologists in Canada, and make another round of applications to Canadian programs later in the year. Whatever happens, I’m trying not to think about it too much. I have enough to take care of right now without getting all worked up over graduate school admissions as well.

Tonight, I looked into moving my non-furniture stuff from here to Edmonton. It looks like UPS will ship the lot for about $280, which is a pretty low price. We’re going to sell as much furniture as possible and probably give the rest away, so we won’t have to worry about getting a U-Haul or anything. We’re really looking forward to spending the summer in Edmonton, as the weather will be lovely and there will be plenty of things for us to do in the city.

Well, I’m a good deal less stressed out now that most of a week has passed. Right now, I’m trying to focus on my thesis, which is a bit behind schedule. I submitted my proposal to the Institutional Review Board, which makes sure proposed research projects follow ethical guidelines, in early January, but they took until the end of February to approve it! Argh! However, with a good deal of work and some luck in getting enough participants within the allotted time frame, I should be able to have it finished on time. My thesis advisor is asking for April 1st, but we’ll see about that.

I’m conducting a study to examine the effects of criminal sentiments (antisocial attitudes and beliefs about the law, courts, police, tolerance of law violations, and identification with criminal others) and prior mental health service usage (whether or not a person has gone to a psychologist, psychiatrist, or similar professional for help with mental health issues) on criminal offenders’ attitudes toward mental health services (the degree to which they are willing to share psychological issues, their willingness to seek help if they developed psychological issues, and the degree to which they are indifferent to perceived stigma associated with having psychological problems). It all sounds a bit complicated, and I guess it is, but I find it very interesting. I think this research will be helpful for psychologists working within the legal system, because it will help them identify the factors in an offender’s life that might make him or her more or less receptive to mental health treatment, which is especially important for those offenders who have mental health issues. A lot of offenders do have these issues, and at a much higher rate than in the general population, but they also tend to be resistant to participating in the treatment they need.

I’m about halfway through the data collection now, and have nearly finished the literature review (the first part, which describes prior research relating to the topic and the reason I’m doing this particular research project). I can’t write much of the rest of the paper until I’m finished collecting the data, so I hope it moves quickly.