What's my Problem??
Diagnosing my problems using the internet.
The internet is a source of many wonders and lots of nearly instantaneous gratification. Today, I decided that I will identify all of my problems for free (and nearly instantaneously) using the internet. Following are some diagnoses.
Dating/True Love:
The results of this test probably explains why men love to hang out and talk with me but don't want to date me: I am "one of the boys" (I am talking about the gender percentages shown in the blue square, the other stuff is just "padding" so I don't feel so gender-ambiguous);
Your Brain is 46.67% Female, 53.33% Male |
Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve |
Or maybe this test explains my dating problem (as in; do you know an attractive and "normal" man without er, hygiene issues who actually wants to date a nerdy female? If so, send him my way!);
Personality Disorder:
This test reveals that my job hunting woes have truly damaged my personality and will probably transform me into a hermit forever;
| Disorder | Rating |
| Paranoid: | Low |
| Schizoid: | Low |
| Schizotypal: | Low |
| Antisocial: | Low |
| Borderline: | Low |
| Histrionic: | Low |
| Narcissistic: | Low |
| Avoidant: | Moderate |
| Dependent: | Low |
| Obsessive-Compulsive: | Low |
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! -- | |
My parrots
demanded that I take this test (I don't know why), arr!;My pirate name is:
Black Grace Flint
Like anyone confronted with the harshness of robbery on the high seas, you can be pessimistic at times. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!
Get your own pirate name from fidius.org
My Future Home:
Well, the good news is they won't charge me rent and I am grateful that I am not stuck on the tenth level of hell (unemployment and job hunting) for all eternity;
the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | Moderate |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | High |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | Moderate |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | Very Low |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | Moderate |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | Very High |
| Level 7 (Violent) | Moderate |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | Moderate |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | High |
Take Dante's Inferno Test
© 2004, 2005, 2006 by GrrlScientist
posted by GrrlScientist at
10:45
18 Peer Reviews:
Well, hello Satan, .. my future landlord in the afterlife! It's so nice of you to drop by and fraternize with your tenants!
I am glad that you enjoyed these tests. I have been playing with them for a few weeks so I thought I'd share the fun with my readers.
I see that you surround yourself with people who will reside on the 6th Level of Hell-- An interesting bunch of heretics to be sure.
I only took the Inferno test-- just curious about where I was going to end up-- At least I'll be among friends.
omg, that quiz diagnosed me as AVOIDANT. I never knew this about myself, but I didn't want to take any chances so I emailed my symptoms to my online medical clinic, and after a short chat session the virtual doctor prescribed me some pills. At first I thought getting the pills would be a problem because I don't make it in to town much, but I was able to forward the virtual prescription to an offshore pharmacy who will mail the pills to my post office box as soon as my paypal clears. I will keep taking the quiz and when I am no longer avoidant I will put the leftover pills on craigslist in case anyone else needs them. hedwig you saved me! I will send an e-card when I am better.
Well, at least we'll all be together in the afterlife. That's assuming I don't actually commit treason, because while the Hell quiz sentenced me to the 6th level, it gave me "very high" grades for three more levels, including the 9th. But even if I do I imagine I'll be enough of a heretic to end up on the 6th level.
I only got 72 on the nerd test (still an undergrad, not interested in Star Trek, can't recognize scientists by their pictures...), and while I imagine that when I start dating I'll be most attracted to fellow geeks, you're more than twenty years older than me.
I had no idea this message would get so much attention, but I should have guessed it would because, after all, isn't it part of the human condition to try to figure out what is wrong with us? I am pleased to see that I will be stuck for all eternity in the company of such fun and interesting people. Are you bringing the beer or the ice, dharma bums? Do you think we should bring our own hot wings, or will they be provided?
Oh, and Mike S .. your message was a riot, you gave me the best laugh I've had all last week (and probably this week, too -- and this reminds me again why I love blogging .. I love my readers!). Thanks for that! By the way, I took the personality test again, hoping to get a higher "avoidant" score because I think I suffer from a higher level of social anxiety than it gives me credit for, but alas, I am still a moderate avoidant. Not good enough for drug therapy, I guess. I hope you share your drugs with me.
It is true that the people on this coast are strange when it comes to love, gollux. My experiences with east coast relationships suggest it is a huge "trade up" scheme, which makes me believe my problems will be solved if I date a good plastic surgeon. Certainly, as a west coast grrl myself, I prefer west coast relationships, especially if there is lots of birding and sailing and hiking and books included!
It's too bad (for me) that you are an undergrad, Alon Levy, but I could be your professor and you could have a crush on me! (Several of my students have mentioned crushes to me, already .. what happened to suffering in awed silence, as when I was an undergrad??) And speaking of crushes .. ah, that's a future blog entry, methinks.
Thanks everyone for reading and joining me in my silliness! You are the bestest!
Disappointing your advisor? Why? is that because you bailed out on the PhD, or you didn't?
I am sure I am a huge disappointment to my advisor because, well .. ah .. you know. I should have bailed on the PhD (or I should have met, charmed and then married a very wealthy man).
Not only am I an undergrad, but also I'm in mathematics rather than in biology. I'm taking a biology class this semester, though, and it's more interesting than at least 5 of my 6 math classes. Apart from that, if you could give a lecture without making a single grammatical mistake I'd have a crush on you even if you were male. But I think I can wait for a few decades and then see how you are in real death in Hell.
Well, we all have our character flaws, Alon, it's just that some (math majors) are a little easier to identify than others.
All joking aside, I really love math. I had the best dreams when taking calculus, in fact. They were better than any drug-induced dreams I've ever had, although mushrooms do result in some interesting adventures.
Er, which is not to say that I would know about such things first-hand.
Anywho, my most grammatically-perfect and entertaining lectures take place in my local watering hole. The best aspect of my "watering-hole lecture series" is there are NO EXAMS!
Speaking of character flaws, technicalsatan, you are welcome to read here, even with your character flaws (we all have them). I only post naughty (embarassing) stuff here once in a blue moon. Okay, more often than that: I am trying to desensitize my "avoidant" personality by revealing my secrets.
At least I don't have a fetish for lab work... Trust me, mathematics is the least of my possible character flaws. If you think I was joking in my reply to you in Scammed, think again (from a darker viewpoint, the flaw is not that I consider it appropriate to short-circuit one's way out of poverty but that I'm too bad a liar to pull anything like that off). Plus, I don't know if it's a character flaw or just my weirdness, but my eyes lit up when I read you'd invented secret writing systems,
As for grammar, as long as you don't say "is equals to," "a problems," "what do you intends," or "different of," you'll be fine. Plus, I assume that as an American, you have an accent that actually pronounces all consonants normally.
I hope you don't mind me asking, but how come you only finished your postdoc a few months ago? Did you start college late? Did you wait years between college and grad school?
No, you cannot get avian influenza via a weblog, which obviously is a Good Thing, technicalsatan, although I am sure that terrorists and the peeps in those long-suspected-but-never-discovered bowels of military research in the USA ("counter terrorists?") would be thrilled to develop just such a technology.
I'd have to be really blasted to use grammar such as what you describe, Alon. Even if I had the money to get that incapacitated during my "local watering hole lecture series" (now suspended indefinitely), believe me, I'd save it so I could drink again another day!
Well, to answer your question, I never waited to go to school because in fact, becoming a scientist (and a writer) was my life long ambition that kept this farm girl alive during some incredibly bleak times. I am not sure how much of my blog you've read, but I occasionally make oblique references to my childhood and early adulthood.
Basically, life has not been kind to me, so I have been struggling always to go to school and struggling to stay there when I managed to get in to school. I have always been broke (or close to it) and was even homeless a couple times. I also managed to become seriously (life-threateningly) ill three times while working my way through school (pneumonia twice, and mononucleosis combined with hepatitis once). Any one of these illnesses could have killed me, and they all stole almost 3 years of my life as a result (not including the finances they happily absorbed that should have gone towards my education -- this explains, in part, my anxiety about not having health insurance).
But I do wonder sometimes, what the hell happened? How did so much of my life disappear, still with nothing to show for it? I mean, I did the best I could under the circumstances, but really, what a damned and damnable waste!
Okay, it's true: I wonder this a lot, especially now, when I have nothing fulfilling or meaningful in my life to distract me from such sad thoughts.
You'd have to be blasted or a Singaporean. Here such solecisms are virtually universal among the locals. And that's without delving into accent intricacies and plain mispronunciations ("stastical tables").
In fact, I've read every single post of yours on this blog at least once, and some of them, such as the post about your going to prison, twice or more. I just thought you might have started late because it had taken you some years to save enough money to go to college.
As for sad thoughts, at least now you have a job, and still may get a well-paying position with health insurance. I can't think of any reason a self-respecting institution that discourages a professor from conducting research, but if I were you and were offered such a position, I'd opt for paying the rent and feeding myself without moonlighting; a tenure-track position, or at least a position that encourages research would be my second priority.
Prison? Urgh. I was in Reform School, which was horrible enough as an experience and as a stigma, but .. ? That other word sounds so .. Scott Peterson-ish!
It is difficult to say what I will do if offered the full-time position (I will supposedly be informed of their decision tomorrow). On one hand, it appears to be a trap, and a rather unpleasant one at that, but on the other hand, I don't really have (m)any alternatives. Regardless of what I decide (if I am even given the chance to make a decision!), it will be difficult, sort of how choosing one's method of execution is difficult.
But there are two good things about this position. First, several of the faculty and most of my fellow adjuncts are really wonderful people; funny, incredibly smart, articulate and passionate with a fascinating mixture of insecurities that I love to observe. And they are, with rare exceptions, the best teachers I've ever seen, and they are so generous to share their considerable talents with me. So I am trying to convice myself that I will be more valuable to a university after teaching at a community college for one year (of course, most universities do not care about the teaching skills of their faculty, so this is, at best, a consolation prize) (and provided, of course, that I ever have the chance to realize my life-long dream to be a university professor with my own research program).
You made it sound like a prison - you said you were locked up with girls who had committed crimes. That judge had to be a complete asshole to throw you there for having dreams different from what your parents intended for you.
About this position you're offered, I don't think you have to justify taking it on ulterior grounds, assuming you're offered it (good luck, again - I presume that by the time you read this it'll already be tomorrow). If you were paid forty thousand and then got a job offer that paid sixty, then there might be some place for ulterior motives, but given that your current job can't even sustain you without moonlighting, you have the right to be selfish.
By the way, you talk about teaching at a community college for one year. Does this university position you may be offered tomorrow only start next January, or what?
The word "prison" bothers me in that context.
Anyway, it was/is a prison, but it was for girls, not adult women, so technically, it was a reform school, especially because this prison also had a school with real teachers. It could have been worse, I suppose, although having bars on classroom windows is not very conducive to learning, in my opinion (the bars did nothing to improve my learning, and in fact, served to make me rather resistant to pursuing this one thing that I loved so much during those dark days). Supposedly, the level of violence and the nature of the crimes that got those girls in trouble were of a lesser nature than those than landed adult women in prison. Even though this was the case for me, it was not generally true.
The judge had little choice but to lock me up because the parental units refused to give the courts permission to place me into the foster care system, and they also wanted me arrested and charged as a runaway, which was a crime that required some sort of punitive response from the courts. In fact, I lived in several halfway homes (for "wayward girls") while family court officials and several others tried to remedy the situation. Finally, after I had stayed longer than my state-approved length of time in these halfway homes, the courts had to act.
Unfortunately, I was too young to become emancipated and was ineligible anyway because I could not show that I could take care of myself. Instead of blaming the judge, I blame the short-sighted and mean-sprited legal system that so callously placed me there. I nearly died as a result of that dumbass decision. Even afterwards, I nearly fell through the cracks on occasions that are too numerous to mention.
Anway .. about the job, if I am offered a second interview (with the Dean!), it will probably pay between 28-32K (estimates from my colleagues) and will start autumn semester. I am sure I will be offered the lowest possible salary in their pay range, but I was also told that salary negotiations are involved, so we shall see what happens. I am going to study a book that was recommended to me; Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and Gender to learn more about how to use this potential opportunity to my advantage. It'd be nice to have some financial breathing room!
Didn't your parents have to produce evidence that you were a runaway? I mean, your friend and her mother would be able to testify that your parents had kicked you out, right?
About that second interview, did they offer you one?
No, Alon, to the best of my knowledge, there was no "proof" presented. I think the courts don't really care, though. Kids are supposed to live with their parents. If not their parents, then they are supposed to live with foster parents or relatives. Obviously, I was not living with my parents when I was arrested and I obviously did not have the foster parent option available. So the courts did what they could under the limited parameters they were confined by. Or so I have been told.
I did not hear about the job yesterday. I talked to my postdoc advisor yesterday evening about the interview (they treated me astonishingly badly, maybe I'll write a blog entry about it) and he says they sound like they are incredibly disorganized so I should not worry that they have not yet contacted me.
If a minor's parents throw him out of the house, then what does the law say the state should do? I can't believe it says "throw the minor into reform school."
Is the position you wrote about in the latest entry the same one we are talking about in this thread?
I really don't know, Alon although I suppose I could figure it out. At the time, I did eventually tell the 'wayward girl' counselors what happened and they told me there was little that could be done under the circumstances. I never told the judge as I probably should have done because (1) he didn't ask and (2) I was still operating under my parental units' belljar of silence. Basically, I was their secret-keeper. It has taken me years to figure out that this is not healthy and to learn how to move out of that role in any relationship. So that entire mess was partially my fault, too, although I didn't realize it at the time.
To answer your other question, that position referred to in my recent rant is not the same as the one I interviewed for two weeks ago and am still twiddling my thumbs over now.
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