Laughter Through Tears

Low available synaptic serotonin in the prefrontal cortex can lead to increased aggression, inappropriate hostility, and screaming your head off at people who push you on the line for the lightrail.

Chronic stress can cause fluctuations in the immune system, an increase in pro-inflammatory factors in the blood, and a gross psoriatic patch on your ankle.

Altruistic punishment motivates people to sacrifice their own gains in order to maximize an opponent's loss, due to the opponent being perceived as anti-social.

Up to 40% of the variation in temperament and personality between identical twins who shared a placenta can be accounted for by unshared (chiefly peer) environment.

I've slept poorly three nights in a row, I'm stressed and nervous, and I studied less hours than I had intended due to life interference and emotional volatility. I am still pretty sure I'm going to ace the fuck out of this test. Which is good, because I have to leave in about twenty minutes and there's no summary document for me to do a quick review from.

Crossing fingers that I don't mix up vasopressin and oxytocin (or worse yet, 5-HTTLPR and DRD4).

Glad to see this project is starting to come along, finally, given that it's due in a stress-inducing week. Prioritizing and scheduling are ongoing learning curve skills, for me. Also glad to note that the Ritalin appears to be taking effect -- pretty dramatically. I still have to rally my self-control, naturally, and I still have to restrain myself from pacing, or opening tabs, or switching between articles in the middle of a sentence.

But if I try to do it, it usually works.

Follow up with the neurologist should be interesting. I've been wanting to avoid using words like "anxiety" or "agoraphobia" but it appears there's no way around it. Once again I'm thwarted by the lamentable fact that ignoring problems doesn't make them go away. Maybe next time it'll work?

If I manage my deadlines, and get my Pilates schedule back on track, and remember to eat meals... and if, and if, and if... by the end of August I'll have a degree. And I refuse to rack my brain over employment until after I've done that. I have no time to be anxious about resumes and job prospects, not until I've wrapped this degree up.

Why is everything so difficult?

At least I can say I'm making progress, even if it doesn't always look like it.

I pinpointed an orientation that my right arm can't hold, while reading an article about visual perception for cognitive neuroscience. I feel unreasonably proud of this.

Last night I finally installed Dragon Age: Origins. I was going to set up my character and play for like an hour or two, just to get a good feel for the game. During the character's introduction mission, I got stuck in a fire trap and had to repeat an escape sequence 4-5 times before I managed to avoid getting myself and my companion killed by guards. By then it was getting kind of late, so naturally I just went and played for three more hours. Mysteriously, while I was trying to save and close the game, my mouse flipped out and I had to change the batteries.

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Maybe I'll play all night tonight. That's what the holiday of freedom is for, right?

If I was a killer robot and you needed a logic bomb (warning: TV Tropes link) to incapacitate my processor, there's one question that would probably work best: What's the opposite of "antagonist"?

I'm sure many fanfic-writing neurobiologists sympathize with my plight.

This post brought to you by the fact that I should be studying amoeboid movement patterns right now.

Holy shit! It's February!

My physiology exam is tomorrow morning. It's the next-to-last in this round, and after it's over I'm giving myself a short break before throwing myself into five days of x-treme biochemistry cramming. It's amazing how I can go from mostly pretty confident to feeling totally unprepared and shockingly ignorant in under an hour, often several times a day. I've learned I have to sort of just plow through it and accept the role of random chance in what topics the lecturers choose to focus on in the exam.

I have so much shit to do in terms of chores. I have so much non-chore shit I want to do but have been putting off. I haven't written in what feels like centuries. Not just the dropping of little vignettes with almost no editing, like my Homestuck ficlets. Real, honest-to-fuck writing that takes time and effort and produces discernibly awesome results. I want that. And movies, and parties, and meeting my friends just to sit in a coffee shop and gab like nosy poultry. And going places.

Anyway NC has 51 followers and I figure I'll make either chocolate balls or rice crispy treats to celebrate, but that's on Friday. First I have to do the stupid test and get some chores done, including doctor's appointments because I am getting sick of wheezing, and a well overdue package. Oh noes. Once that is over and done with, perhaps I'll read the actually fascinating articles for next semester's seminar?

I'm working on statistics. We're studying two variable analysis, which involves making tables of numbers and then checking to see if they form sets. Series of numbers are the sort of thing I find oddly relaxing, although today it was a setback because I found it easier to fill the table out right than to explain (or understand) why that's the right way. Interactions are also easier to understand geometrically (the two lines are parallel) than arithmetically. Then I start thinking about how I process numbers and I get distracted.

Once, a while ago, I posted (on my old journal) about gender and color coding, and how I thought green was more masculine-coded than blue. Just not it occurred to me that maybe it's because it's farther from pink. This is a weird idea, I guess, and it doesn't explain everything. But, when we were little girls at school we went through an obligatory pink-liking phase and then an obligatory "I am too mature to like pink and purple" phase. During that second one, it was fashionable to like blue, which is the next over from purple. Green is the next over from blue, without veering into the orange-yellow spectrum which was the favorite-color territory of eccentrics.

My brain is a very strange place to live, sometimes.

I have not yet watched the finale of Lost Girl. I was all pumped to watch it yesterday and then I somehow forgot, IDK. Tonight I have to deal with some laundry issues so maybe I'll watch it Wednesday. Maybe if I put it off long enough, this whole finale business will turn out to have been a big misunderstanding, and there'll be a new episode next week.

Social psychology exam is tomorrow at 8:30 AM, which means a 6:00 AM wakeup so that I'm absolutely, positively not late. Right now I'm at the point where looking at the material I have to study makes me slightly queasy, and I'm only at page 11 out of 38 of the summary of the book. The summary, not the actual book. And I slacked so hard this semester, I was all like, "Pfft social psychology fuck that noise, I have naptimes! genetics homework."

Spotlight effect: People are not horrified by my totally disgusting toes even if I'm absolutely convinced they're staring at my feet and judging me.

Overjustification: Apparently if you have an objective (?) external incentive to do something, you preceive it as less fun? Seriously WTF-inducing, what is wrong with the human brain, IDEK. I wonder if it's related to the effect of not perceiving an action as altruistic/healthy/moral if you enjoy it.

This cover of that one song is pretty-sounding and also hilarious. A winning combination!

ETA: Ben Franklin effect: "I was rude to you, so you must be an asshole. Oh yeah? Well, FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE!"

I am going through the visual guide to cognitive bias and cataloging all the ways I have noticed in which my brain is broken. I'm probably missing a ton, but it's still interesting (and daunting).

Here is a list of things that will have to wait until I've finished my bacteriophage lab report:

1. Blogging against disablism day, reading and relinking thereof.
2. My Dreamwidth bloggaversary, which is either today or tomorrow.
3. Posting to pfc, which I have been putting off for about a week and a half.
4. Pants. I seriously need new pants.
5. Reading comics. I am sadly behind and don't have time to catch up.
6. Replying to comments? I don't even remember if I'm behind or not.
7. Going to the market to stock up on fresh fruit and vegetables, not to mention other non-approximate food.

Here is a list of things that can't wait until I finish my lab report:

1. Statistics homework, due Monday afternoon. Pairs assignment.
2. 3/4 page summary of an article about "anger and the behavioral approach system", due, as a presentation, in two weeks. Group assignment.

I swear I will post about something more interesting than school, someday soon.