Imralu wrote:To be an armchair psychologist for a moment, it really sounds like it's a self-esteem thing.
I've known other people who will do virtually anything and clown around just to get people to like them. One of them was a guy from Seattle who I knew here in Berlin and he fell in with a group of people who clearly weren't real friends. They used to dare him to do stuff like run behind the bar in a club and steal a bottle of vodka, which he did, but a lot of the time they'd laugh and then pretend they didn't know him. (I'd feel sorry for him but he kind made life hell for one of my best friends. I don't want to draw too close a comparison to you.)
You're probably right. I don't think too highly of myself, even though I carry myself as the most pompous of douchebags (as that's what is considered attractive these days). I guess being a clown to entertain my sociopathic friend not only made me feel adored, but it also gave me some good stories to tell: like how I got alcohol poisoning,, or got tied to a wheelchair and had to untie myself before she rolled me down a flight of stairs (which she did but i was ok). So I'm glad it happened in a way, because it made me more "interesting", but goddamn was I stupid. Maybe this is normal for people my age to do stupid things like this? I can't tell because I don't really have any friends. Not trying to get sympathy, but I'm more of a lone wolf.
Imralu wrote:I still have this thing in my head where I imagine really horrible, dramatic situations happening to me and then I simulate conversations I would have with people. Calling them "fantasies" is a bit weird, because they're things I definitely don't want to happen, but I guess I still want the sympathy that would go with them. I used to do this virtually every night as I fell asleep. Like, that can't be good, right? I hardly do this anymore ... I get enough sympathy about my real story these days and I've seen that even though that's what I've always craved (thanks to my mum, I guess, who established this "feeling sorry for" = "love" thing in my head). I've seen friends of mine start crying when I've told them my real story and that's kind of overwhelmingly strange and I kind of don't know how to feel about that. Coincidentally, I did this last night after a long time of not doing it ... going back to one of my darker dysfantasies where I get raped (!? trying to compete with my mum?)... I didn't imagine the rape at all, but I imagined, in detail, the process of going to the police about it, medical exams, talking to people about it. Like, it's so stupid that my brain does this rather than, like, fantasising about nice things. In any case, I don't let it out and make it reality like I did as a teenager, I don't tell people that things happened that didn't, because I know it brings me nothing and only makes big problems.
(this probably belongs in the Dream thread but whatever)
That's really interesting you say that, because I keep having a recurring daydream of getting HIV and going through the whole process like getting blood tests, going to counseling, trying to explain to my parents, trying to find the person who gave it to me and trying to befriend him just to keep him from slipping away. And then when I'm sleeping, I have nightmares that I didn't get tested in time, and the disease progresses to AIDS and I get sarcoma sores on my face and then my body starts disintegrating into this black liquid. It's really fucking scary and I keep having this nightmare happen over and over again. In real life, I actually got another HIV blood test yesterday. The second one this month. I test myself way too much because I'm so paranoid. I think I'm a hypochondriac.
But I also have conversations with myself too. Maybe this is normal? I actually have the conversations out loud when I'm walking to school or in my room alone, which can be awkward when someone overhears me. It really helps me though, because I always have this stutter(?) where I can't really form coherent sentences. It makes me feel stupid, but it's good for me to be proactive and memorize things to say when those conversations happen in the future.
Imralu wrote:I'm sure my own partial rejection of the real world is what got me interested in conlangs
Interesting, maybe this could be why people make conworlds and conlangs. We are dissatisfied with the real world and want to make it cooler and more interesting. It's therapeutic.
But anyway, time for some venting.
I hate group projects.
I hate them so so much.
In my demography class, the professor picks out two countries for us to do a demographic report on (one developed, one developing), and it is a collaborative effort. I don't know why every educational institute in America has to require this commie bullshit in their curriculum. I could probably do all of this by myself, because I think I would actually enjoy this, since I do it in my free time anyway. I hate group projects, because at community college, I did a similar project in a geography class and was grouped together with this long hair hippie who works at an organic farm and always rambles to me about gardening, how root vegetables are the most aesthetic vegetables, etc. Nice guy, really interesting. Easy to work with. However, he was supposed to talk about Japan's physiological density (people per productive land) and a bunch of other stuff, but he only made 3 slides, and they all had to do with fruits and vegetables in Japan. Each 2-person team in the class had to give a 20-minute presentation. He managed to ramble for 10 minutes about fruits and vegetables. Although we got graded individually, his lack of effort into the powerpoint pretty much made the entire powerpoint shitty and that adversely affected my grade and put my grade down to an 89% or a B, which affected my GPA.
And this group is worse, because I have to deal with 4 other people and a technologically-handicapped professor from Croatia who speaks broken English.
On day 1, I wrote a long beautiful email to everyone in my group because coincidentally, we were assigned the country Japan (and Mexico) so I happily wrote a long list of facts and information + some notes from class to get this project started ahead of schedule.
Nobody had acknowledged my post for weeks.
We have to send in a "plan" of who is the leader, who's doing what, etc. I think this is a dumb idea because plans change all the time. Anyway, I emailed everyone again asking who wants to be the leader, and if nobody steps up then I will be the leader. (I really don't want to be the leader).
One girl responds, but it has nothing to do with the project. She literally just says "i will personally venmo $20 bucks to anyone who signs my name in the attendance sheet (for the group meetings)." I ignored it, because I didn't want to get into any confrontations.
So a week has passed, and I hesitatingly decided yesterday that I will be the "group leader" since nobody is even doing anything.
This is what I gathered today:
Person #1 has never shown up for class except for the first exam. The professor emailed him to reach out to the group, and he has never done that. Then I found out today that the professor gave me his email, through some weird online forum email through the university that I don't know how to use, 2 weeks ago. I emailed the professor that he had not been reaching out to me, and she said I could fire him from the group, so I did. But I guess she assumed that I had reached out to his email first and he never responded. But I never contacted him. Now this guy is probably going to have a talk with the professor, and show that I had not contacted him at all, and then since I am the self-proclaimed group leader, it's all my fault. FUCK.
Person #2 is the girl who is trying to bribe her way out of this, and she has only shown up for class one time.
Person #3 is the only person I can trust right now because he finally responded to my email today, but we exchanged phone numbers since email was too slow. The professor said not to text each other because it's unprofessional, but it's the only way I can get a quick response from him. So we organized a meeting on Monday via text message (just me and him so far). I told the other people in the group, and now I feel like I'm going to get a nasty email from someone about how I'm planning secret meetings behind them. Even worse is that he has the same last name as me, so the professor might think we are related and try to split us up.
Person #4 is some transfer student from Australia and a total jock. Has a douchey vibe. I don't expect much from him because he always sits in the back of the auditorium playing on his laptop and never participates in class. Hope I'm wrong. He responded to my email finally, but he seems to be a little too 'chill' about it, saying that it's not a big deal, and the Plan will be easy to write up. But he doesn't think he will make the meeting. It's understandable, because I just picked a random date hoping someone would tell me ASAP that they couldn't come so that we can change the date....but the Plan is due on Tuesday.
TL;DR
So I accidentally fired someone who I didn't even reach out to, and stuck with some stupid rich girl who doesn't want to do anything, and an Aussie chav who is way to chill, and now I feel like a tyrant who is hijacking the group and planning secret meetings behind everyone via text message with someone who could be my brother.
The worst part is that everyone has to 'evaluate' one another, and I know I'm already going to get an F from the guy I fired and the rich girl who I'm not pandering to, and the Australian who probably thinks I'm being too controlling and authoritarian.
I smell mutiny.