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I'm having mid-semester panic attacks. Last night was really bad... I didn't even try to go to sleep until after 1am, and then it took over an hour curled up in a ball with my bear to get my heart to slow down. I feel like I always have to be doing something. It doesn't really matter what- writing this is something. But I can't just sit and watch tv or just sit and gossip without my chest closing in. I have so much work to do... I have a position paper on abortion rights due in two weeks that I haven't even started yet and my term paper on health care in England which has to be at least ten pages that I haven't even started yet and I have a Spanish test in three hours that I barely studied for....
and tuesday in my political analysis class we were discussing representative and unrepresentative samples. (...i.e. if you only survey rich people it won't tell you much about the whole country.) ....and he decided to do an example of our class... he picked three people, and wanted to see if they were representative of the entire class... and first thing, he looked right at me and asked if I had an "h" in my name or not. And given the experiment, I could not tell whether he knew what he was doing or not.... I couldn't lie. The very first question- "sarah, how old are you?" and he was staring at me and I didn't know if he knew or not.... so I said "16." and people started staring. Then he asked the other two people (they said 20 and 21) and then he asked "class rank" ....and it's a 300 level class. They wouldn't've even believed me if I lied. So I said junior.... and alll of a sudden people were turning around staring like I had three heads and they were just now noticing. The room got really hot and I was just sitting there trying not to look embarassed and people were talking about me and staring.... and it was about the most awful thing in the world. It was terrible. I can't even think of a word strong enough to describe it. They're not the only people who know. Most of the people in my hall know. Cuz they all know when my birthday is- it's on the calendar. And I didn't want to just lie about how old I am. I told four people... there's 27 in our hall, and half of them have come up to me and said "your birthday's on Halloween? That's so awesome... you're gonna be 17, right?" ...so obviously they talk about me too.... and then someone was in here looking at my schedule saying "you're taking 300 level courses? Aren't those for juniors? How can you be taking them now? Why aren't you taking English?" .....so they know that now too.... but that's different. I didn't have to be there when they found out. I had another class right after that one.... I managed to sit through it and then I came back to my room, shut the door, and screamed along to ani. (not a pretty girl and hide and seek.) ....it made me feel better. A little. But now I have to go back there in a half hour and I am so not looking forward to it.... My stomach has been going crazy on me again. I spent most of last night camped out by the bathroom.... it's actually kinda nice that here the bathroom is a lot closer to my bedroom than it is at home. I'm right next to it here- at home I have to go downstairs. we had a floor meeting last night and we got onto the topic of dental dams (long story...) and I couldn't believe how many of them don't know what they are.... so of course after the meeting I got back to my room and told Nicole that and she said she'd never heard of them before either... so I told her I had one (left over from my AIDS issues class) and I pulled it out and showed it to her and within a minute we had everybody here saying "oh, that's what a dental dam is. Why do you have one?" and I don't think any of them believed me. ...it's the same reason I have condoms- people keep giving them to me and I never need them. ...but anyway obviously the topic got onto lesbians, and half of these people were saying "ewww!!!" and then a couple of them were saying "I'm homophobic. It doesn't matter what sex you are- I'm homophobic." and I couldn't believe these people were actually saying that! I mean, isn't homophobia supposed to be a bad thing???? They were acting like it's completely normal or something. And then they basically all agreed that their parents would disown them if they were gay, and half of them agreed their parents would disown them if they brought home a black guy. And I was standing there thinking I am from a completely different world than these people and I probably don't even belong in their world now. I did feel better that one other person said basically the same thing... so maybe the two of us are from another planet... which is better than it just being me, I guess. One of them mentioned that she'd only learned what a dildo was last month, and basically everybody else piped up that they didn't know what it was either.... and that completely amazed me. How can you not know that? I mean, seriously.... I also don't know how you can not know what a dental dam is... I thought everybody knew that. I explained it to my mom two years ago. And then someone asked if you're supposed to use a condom when you give blow jobs, and she seriously didn't know you can get AIDS from that. It was the weirdest thing. You know what I think it might be? I've had the internet since I was 12. Or America Online, anyway... the world wide web wasn't really around much back then. And that's basically where I learned all that stuff.... that and I read. I still can't believe that I am the only person in my hall who ever reads something that wasn't assigned. Everybody else comes in my room and looks at my shelf and they're like "What class are you reading Stephen King for?" ....I think it's a combination of the two. I mean... a few years ago (maybe three) I was reading a book that kept talking about "SM clubs" and I could not figure out what that was... so I got on the computer and started searching... my cd-rom dictionary actually had "SM stands for sado-masochism" in it... but I had no clue what that was... and it only took a couple hours on the internet to have that one completely figured out. But I guess how I can see if you didn't read or use a computer how you might not even come across that term at all. okay... I've got to get ready for class. I don't think I've written that much in here in months. |