#scrollege

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

it's weird tho; i keep getting a kind of impostor syndrome when i try to explain/assert that it's particularly pernicious for me bc of my neurotype

i'll want to say 'i can't do it w/out constant resentment over feeling like i'm wasting my life'

and that's true, but also, doesn't everyone hate doing bullshit jobs?

like the only proof i have that this is worse for me than for other people is that my brain refuses to do it competently. but it doesn't always refuse to do it competently! i know this because so far i have not flunked out.

it's just. idk. i find it extremely hard to believe that "i hate it" counts as a good reason not to do a thing? i've trained myself to see my emotional reaction to a thing as mattering only when it affects the outcome--e.g., i won't make myself do a thing if i know from experience that when i try i will probably just stop and melt down halfway through. "i hate it" often means "it's not a sustainable option for me; i can't trust myself to do it"

whereas here--i have almost finished it. am pretty confident i will finish it. it is possible for me.

so i don't feel confident in my right to deplore the effect this environment has had on my mental health/self-conception/&c., since i don't rly know what to call it. like i don't think i can call it an accessibility issue in good faith, since. guidance counselors always exclaim over how good my grades are? i am succeeding by the metrics that matter to them! it doesn't seem right to say "this is an unfair thing to expect of me" when i perform the task w/ above-average proficiency. it's not an environment where i can't succeed; it's just an environment whose definition of success disgusts me. i don't think that counts as a hostile or discriminatory environment, and yet my internal experience of it is "the values they're encouraging are poisonous to autistic and adhd people"

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

me, writing an essay: *doesn't mention other thing the quoted passage also means, because that other thing isn't relevant to my argument*

person grading: why didn't you talk about how x also means y?

me, writing my next essay: *makes sure always to acknowledge when an x also means y*

same person grading: why did you go off on this tangent? you need to make this tighter, only say things that advance your argument

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

note to self “stop bending rules and relying on quote-unquote nepotism* to succeed” is not overly feasible so like. here are some actual things you should try to do

forgive yourself for imperfect work. in you i think this is mostly fear of vulnerability so like: 

maybe try to collect some evidence that no one will Reject your Entire Existence if you split an infinitive or get snot on your jeans. if this means bringing feathers to class to make yourself sneeze then cool, that’s your homework.

give yourself more time to do things!! you a. have limited energy and b. cannot control your energy output. similarly:

remember that the NT assumption that effort is voluntary does not apply to you. you can’t will yourself to do things that’s not how your brain works you have to set up a situation that favors the doing of those things by

making the thing interesting

taking good enough care of yourself that there’s energy to output in the first place. similarly,

start exploring (e.g. potential essay topics) early so you have more time to exhaust the tangents

don’t “percolate.” that advice is bs in your case. you can go a week with no new ideas and then get seven the instant you try to explain the old ones on paper

tell people about your problems in advance. “executive dysfunction” and “chronic illness” are unhelpfully vague; namedrop diagnoses (bc their mysteriousness makes them unanswerable) and otherwise try to stick to self-explanatory terms, like time blindness.

stop framing the things you want in ways that mean “don’t be disabled.” it’s self-disrespectful and tends also to be incorrect, misleading. you don’t procrastinate, and you don’t need to grow out of it. the thing you do is underestimate how long it takes to finish your work. therefore,

try to overestimate. so far your supposed overestimates still turn out to be underestimates? idk how to stop yourself from Getting Cocky ugh small goals don’t work bc then the to-do list is overwhelmingly long GOD THIS IS SO HARD

...uh. right. also, try not to treat this like a problem that urgently needs fixing, and

resist the temptation to dismiss thoughts like “the system’s rigged against me” as needlessly negative? that’s also basically true it’s how ableism works. so maybe just

stop expecting miracles. see #1

*because i’m white and i talk like an intellectual and i tend to gravitate towards also-sick professors who take pity on me because i remind me of themselves

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

i can’t tell if this is a sick thing or an autistic thing??? (or both?) and it’s happened before but never at quite so inconvenient a time. and like, ok yes, i know the existence of this text post belies what i’m about to say, but: the problem is i can’t write. i was having zero cognitive dysfunction issues for several days in a row and then yesterday morning--of course the day i had a a paper due--suddenly bam. seriously difficult just to put a sentence together. today (unlike yesterday) i can talk almost normally but? it’s like the machine that normally writes just fucking broke and now i have to do it by hand with spare parts each of which i first have to find. i’m so scared and embarrassed idk what to do or if my professor will believe me. i can’t usually push through this problem i just have to wait but... how long!!!

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

OH. that. i have lots and lots of this too, yeah. and holy shit you’ve described it well

and hmm true, kempe’s reaction in the moment to what the priest said to her was probably a lot more like animal terror than guilt. plus, she says explicitly that she felt very afraid beforehand both of confessing and of going to hell if she didn’t but. that’s not the same thing as feeling guilty

my understanding of guilt is p imprecise now i think about it. i tend to lump all chronic or chronic-intermittent varieties of assumption i don’t deserve good things under this label, but idk if using it that way makes sense when you take out original sin

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

for scrollege i have to write a paper on what aspects of more’s utopia i think would benefit american society. and it’s so hard!!* i am used to having an Unfair Advantage when writing papers, viz., being enough interested in the topic that i Have Something To Say and so don’t have to stress about how to make the page requirement w/out sounding banal. and i just don’t this time--i think bc usually i can escape the pressure to provide a strong opinion by just having. nuanced literary observations at people? but if the point is to talk about Modern Society then i... don’t rly have room to make those. idk. i can’t write six to eight pages on this topic; with months to think about it i could maybe write 30 but i’m not... 19 years old enough to cultivate opportunities to push my Social Agenda, which (judging by my past self) is i think what i’d need for this assignment to excite me. 19-year-old me in addition to being Smart As Fuck had a ton of Youthful Omniscience going for them but? 24-year-old me is almost incapable of conviction. so instead i’m like “maybe this??? it’d be hard to enforce but. maybe. maybe if it worked we’d be happier. not sure, but maybe” and it just feels so irresponsible! such a waste of six to eight pages. is this what essay-writing is like all the time for other people??? god, if so i’m so sorry

*or i mean, so so-easy-it’s-hard, is i guess more accurate.

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

true! and i’m guessing i am also more accustomed to reading texts where this mindset is treated as normal than are most of my peers? partly because i seem to’ve inherited all the catholic guilt in the family, so it didn’t seem that weird to me in the first place, but also because i just... have been an english major for longer than my classmates. so my brain puts on then-normal perspectives w/out much complaint from or like, friction with my now-normal values, even when these disagree

idk. i think i got scared because “my solidarity w/ a mentally ill woman vs. other students’ attempts to reclaim her as a female historical figure of whom we can be proud” was so. thematic, that day in class. like: my... internalized-control-locus by proxy suddenly felt Very Unfeminist to me. so i’ve been scolding myself since for Judging Her, even tho that doesn’t make much sense in context since. the content of this judgment is that i assumed she was mentally ill already, whereas other students (and the professor) assumed her confessor Drove Her Crazy? which is not even a negative judgment of her!

BUT LIKE this disparity worries me because i know my own locus of control is too far internalized, and i don’t want to extend that unfair standard to other people. both because that’s unfair and because like... i’m used to having impaired judgment as regards myself but if i’m doing it to people other than me then shit, that’s not just self-deprecation that’s a failure of logic, you know?? i keep catching myself in this kind of error lately, and am dismayed

by catastrophe do you mean catastrophizing? or like, that when bad shit rains it pours, maybe?

[makeroomforthejolyghost]

one thing that kept me for a long time from noticing my own tendency toward rigid thinking/literal interpretations is that i’m... rly good at reading lmao, very detail-oriented so i’m good at like. weaving a complex interpretation of a text and modifying it in light of further detail. i have acute + subtle reading (and sometimes listening) comprehension, basically. but like

ok so when we discussed margery kempe in class, for the most part this was a very disappointing experience &c. &c. because other students were preoccupied either w/ diagnosing her or w/ maintaining that she wasn’t really mentally ill (so that they could claim her as Good Representation for women in the middle ages, as tho mental illness disqualified her from that). whiiich of course i should have expected. BUT, one thing i keep thinking about is that like

ok so when kempe describes the huge downward spiral she went into before her first vision of christ, she* explains that she tried to confess the sin she’d been hiding but that the priest too-hastily scolded her for it before she’d actually finished confessing, so then she was too scared to tell him the rest. and like? i interpreted this super literally. i pictured her pausing in the middle to psych herself up, him (thinking she was already done) telling her hoo boy, my child, that is a very grave sin! and never ever ever to commit it again, that it’s very bad very risky to hold onto sins like that for so long and she should have confessed it earlier, blah blah, so that she felt too embarrassed to say there was still more.

but it seemed like most people understood it quite differently? like my professor was all, “who knows what that priest said to her but it must have been something really, really horrible”—implicitly, way way excessively so in comparison to kempe’s actual sin? and like!! when i thought about it i realized that’s... right, or at least, probably a more logical interpretation than mine, esp. considering that kempe was younger than i am at the time. like? it was probably pre-marital sex. Oh Darn

so idk it scares me a little that my brain does this. that i never even thought about what her sin was but just assumed she already felt so excessively guilty that it didn’t take much to chicken her out of confessing it?? like i know that’s not just literalism—that the other reason i took kempe’s word for it that it wasn’t the priest’s fault is because i’m. used to blaming my OWN excessive guilt problems for everything? so that part of the difference i’m noticing here is, i see guilt as normal whereas most people around me today do not, and therefore accounted for her response differently because my understanding would’ve busted their disbelief suspension. but that creeps me out. idk whose interpretation was right but i am used to mine being the more merciful one and that was not the case here

*or the priest who revised her dictation? impossible to tell where her version ends and his begins, unfortunately