The Death Of Alan J. Orlanski
There is simply no better way of describing last week (Oct. 20-Oct. 28) than to say that it was the death of me. Let's start on Friday, October 20th.
Friday, October 20th
The first, last, and sole day of Wash U's Fall Break. I, of course, was incredibly grateful for the day off, despite having to wake up for my 9AM radio show, in addition to having a homework assignment due for my cancelled Friday class. I had been needing a break and Wash U., attuned to the needs of its clientele, arranged a very proprietary Friday-Off. You know, I hear that even Georgia Tech gives two days for Fall Break, and my understanding is that GaTech strives to provide nothing more than what's needed to maintain their students' sanity.
At any rate, I did enjoy not having to go to my 2-hour Experimental Psych lab, though there was plenty else to occupy my mind. Earlier in the week, my Summer employment--the documentary. did I tell you about that?--burst into flames and fell wildly from the sky. The details are all very icky, but they amounted to a very simple decision:
IF "The project must be finished by November 10th" = 1 (true) THEN
LET "Alan must go home to Atlanta on October 27th" = 1 (true)
So, come Friday, Oct. 20th, I was gearing up for a Hell Week consisting of the following :
1.An Experimental Psych test on Monday; no big deal, really. Mostly multiple choice, really more like my High School classes than my contemporary College ones.
2.A Pseudopatient Interview on Wednesday; this one was scary. To be fair, I'd known this day would come since early May. All the same, I've never ever done anything remotely like this, and I'm the sort of person who never feels comfortable doing anything for the first time. So, my task was to study the symptoms and various clinical descriptions of Avoidant Personality Disorder, and then to perform, in the context of a mock clinical interview, the part of a person with Avoidant Personality Disorder. I nailed the performance, but I had a secret weapon on my side.
You see, the temptation that arises from giving Psychiatric diagnostic manuals to college students took hold of me. The very first time I laid eyes on Avoidant PD, I thought of Alfonzo.
"Expressively Fretful. Conveys personal unease and disquiet, a constant timorous, hesitant, and restive state; overreacts to innocuous events and anxiously judges them to signify ridicule, criticism, and disapproval."
"Interpersonally Aversive. Distances from activities that involve intimate personal relationships and reports extensive history of social pananxiety and distrust; seeks acceptance, but it unwilling to get involved unless certain to be liked, maintaining distance and privacy to avoid being shamed and humiliated."
So I know what you're thinking, and you're right! I am completely unqualified to diagnose Alfonzo with Avoidant Personality Disorder, and the coincidence of many of Alfonzo's traits with the traits of the Avoidant are likely due to my own interpretation of both. I know, I've heard it all a million times, but there's something else that you don't know.
As the date of my Avoidant performance approached, I realized just how unprepared I was. I had written an entire backstory for my Avoidant avatar, but I hadn't rehearsed or anything. My two forays into theatre were iffy at best, and I'm well aware of my terrible stage fright and spotty memory. I became convinced that I would embarass myself and get kicked out of the class, until a risky idea popped into my head... what if I impersonate Alfonzo? Strangely, this is something I feel somewhat confident in doing, so I decided to give him a visit the day before my performance.
I, essentially, performed a psychoanalysis on him. Let me tell you, he's in some sort of state. He didn't even balk at all the questions I was asking him, but, then again, he only left the couch to let me in. I got the key details from his past, his manifold anxieties and the terror of everyday interaction. Poor guy, really. Armed with his personal details, I set to work on imitating his mannerisms. I didn't need him for this; I'm pretty good about capturing the mannerisms of people I'm around often. Wholly unconvinced that my Alfonzimitation would work, I went to bed. The next day, my imitation proved a wholly-adequate candidate for Avoidant Personality Disorder.
3. (Did you forget we were numbering?) Experimental Psychology, yes, the very same one in which there was a test on Monday, also required that I write a full paper in APA format (title page, intro, methods, results, discussion, references and a bibliography) based on the results of a mini-experiment we ran in lab. I'd saved Wednesday through Friday morning for the task of finishing this paper. However, around 10 PM Wednesday night, I remembered a third assignment.
4. An APA-formatted Introduction and Methods paper, outlining the experiment I propose to run by the end of the semester. Though shorter than #3, this assignment is arguably more important to my final grade. As soon as I remembered this paper, I dropped #3 and started doing the research for #4. By 3 AM, I'd finished #4 and fallen asleep. The next night, I worked all afternoon and evening and finally finished #3 by 1 AM, at which point I set to work organizing my radio show for 8 hours later. I finished (after many technical difficulties) and went to bed at 3:30 AM. I slept through the first hour of my show, though I hear it was an hour to remember.
Now backtrack! Before Hell Week was upon me, there was an additional weight upon my shoulders. Namely, that of the documentary. As far as I could tell, I would have to finish all the work I described above, as well as an assignment or two from this coming week, before driving home on Friday the 27th to finish the documentary. So I used my Fall Break to get a single day of enjoyment in with Sam before I settled into worker-bee mode.
By Sunday, my parents had disallowed my driving home. Carl's mother, my project supervisor, called to discuss the possibilities. This resulted in a more complicated decision.
IF "The employers are willing to pay me more" = 1 THEN
LET "Alan will drive home to Atlanta" = 1
ELSE
LET "Lucy (Carl's Mom) has to figure out how to finish the movie" = 1
All I could do to help was arrange for Carl to get into my house and retrieve the backup copy of the project I left at home. Lucy told me she would just have to find someone to wrap up the project.
Not ten minutes after this exchange with Lucy, Carl called. "So, you need me to clean up your mess?" I didn't quite understand, until he explained that it looked like he would be the one conned into finishing the project. This changed the decision slightly.
IF "Alan will drive home to Atlanta" = 0 (false) THEN
LET "Carl gets screwed" = 1
When I realized what it had all come to, I gave myself the night off from work. Either way, whether I drove home or not, someone was going to get prostituted. It just happened that I was in a position to trade 16 hours of driving and an entire weekend for Carl's trouble, and I was sorely tempted.
And everything was resolved by the next day. Lucy conned one of her Ad Agency employees into finishing the documentary, which meant all Carl had to do was copy some files off of a computer in my house while nobody was home. I told him to make himself at home, for all those amongst you who know what I mean by that.
And so here I am on the other end of all of that. I realize that I recalled it in a chronologically void manner, but I still haven't quite arranged it all in my mind. Thursday, October 26th--by far the most strenuous day, producing 3 pages of work for every hour of sleep I got--was the anniversary of the End of the World, from all the way back in High School. I didn't realize what day it had been until 12:30 AM on the 27th. Maybe, after all these years, it turns out that October 26th really was the end of the world. It should have been the death of me, but I was too busy to die.
-Alan
Friday, October 20th
The first, last, and sole day of Wash U's Fall Break. I, of course, was incredibly grateful for the day off, despite having to wake up for my 9AM radio show, in addition to having a homework assignment due for my cancelled Friday class. I had been needing a break and Wash U., attuned to the needs of its clientele, arranged a very proprietary Friday-Off. You know, I hear that even Georgia Tech gives two days for Fall Break, and my understanding is that GaTech strives to provide nothing more than what's needed to maintain their students' sanity.
At any rate, I did enjoy not having to go to my 2-hour Experimental Psych lab, though there was plenty else to occupy my mind. Earlier in the week, my Summer employment--the documentary. did I tell you about that?--burst into flames and fell wildly from the sky. The details are all very icky, but they amounted to a very simple decision:
IF "The project must be finished by November 10th" = 1 (true) THEN
LET "Alan must go home to Atlanta on October 27th" = 1 (true)
So, come Friday, Oct. 20th, I was gearing up for a Hell Week consisting of the following :
1.An Experimental Psych test on Monday; no big deal, really. Mostly multiple choice, really more like my High School classes than my contemporary College ones.
2.A Pseudopatient Interview on Wednesday; this one was scary. To be fair, I'd known this day would come since early May. All the same, I've never ever done anything remotely like this, and I'm the sort of person who never feels comfortable doing anything for the first time. So, my task was to study the symptoms and various clinical descriptions of Avoidant Personality Disorder, and then to perform, in the context of a mock clinical interview, the part of a person with Avoidant Personality Disorder. I nailed the performance, but I had a secret weapon on my side.
You see, the temptation that arises from giving Psychiatric diagnostic manuals to college students took hold of me. The very first time I laid eyes on Avoidant PD, I thought of Alfonzo.
"Expressively Fretful. Conveys personal unease and disquiet, a constant timorous, hesitant, and restive state; overreacts to innocuous events and anxiously judges them to signify ridicule, criticism, and disapproval."
"Interpersonally Aversive. Distances from activities that involve intimate personal relationships and reports extensive history of social pananxiety and distrust; seeks acceptance, but it unwilling to get involved unless certain to be liked, maintaining distance and privacy to avoid being shamed and humiliated."
So I know what you're thinking, and you're right! I am completely unqualified to diagnose Alfonzo with Avoidant Personality Disorder, and the coincidence of many of Alfonzo's traits with the traits of the Avoidant are likely due to my own interpretation of both. I know, I've heard it all a million times, but there's something else that you don't know.
As the date of my Avoidant performance approached, I realized just how unprepared I was. I had written an entire backstory for my Avoidant avatar, but I hadn't rehearsed or anything. My two forays into theatre were iffy at best, and I'm well aware of my terrible stage fright and spotty memory. I became convinced that I would embarass myself and get kicked out of the class, until a risky idea popped into my head... what if I impersonate Alfonzo? Strangely, this is something I feel somewhat confident in doing, so I decided to give him a visit the day before my performance.
I, essentially, performed a psychoanalysis on him. Let me tell you, he's in some sort of state. He didn't even balk at all the questions I was asking him, but, then again, he only left the couch to let me in. I got the key details from his past, his manifold anxieties and the terror of everyday interaction. Poor guy, really. Armed with his personal details, I set to work on imitating his mannerisms. I didn't need him for this; I'm pretty good about capturing the mannerisms of people I'm around often. Wholly unconvinced that my Alfonzimitation would work, I went to bed. The next day, my imitation proved a wholly-adequate candidate for Avoidant Personality Disorder.
3. (Did you forget we were numbering?) Experimental Psychology, yes, the very same one in which there was a test on Monday, also required that I write a full paper in APA format (title page, intro, methods, results, discussion, references and a bibliography) based on the results of a mini-experiment we ran in lab. I'd saved Wednesday through Friday morning for the task of finishing this paper. However, around 10 PM Wednesday night, I remembered a third assignment.
4. An APA-formatted Introduction and Methods paper, outlining the experiment I propose to run by the end of the semester. Though shorter than #3, this assignment is arguably more important to my final grade. As soon as I remembered this paper, I dropped #3 and started doing the research for #4. By 3 AM, I'd finished #4 and fallen asleep. The next night, I worked all afternoon and evening and finally finished #3 by 1 AM, at which point I set to work organizing my radio show for 8 hours later. I finished (after many technical difficulties) and went to bed at 3:30 AM. I slept through the first hour of my show, though I hear it was an hour to remember.
Now backtrack! Before Hell Week was upon me, there was an additional weight upon my shoulders. Namely, that of the documentary. As far as I could tell, I would have to finish all the work I described above, as well as an assignment or two from this coming week, before driving home on Friday the 27th to finish the documentary. So I used my Fall Break to get a single day of enjoyment in with Sam before I settled into worker-bee mode.
By Sunday, my parents had disallowed my driving home. Carl's mother, my project supervisor, called to discuss the possibilities. This resulted in a more complicated decision.
IF "The employers are willing to pay me more" = 1 THEN
LET "Alan will drive home to Atlanta" = 1
ELSE
LET "Lucy (Carl's Mom) has to figure out how to finish the movie" = 1
All I could do to help was arrange for Carl to get into my house and retrieve the backup copy of the project I left at home. Lucy told me she would just have to find someone to wrap up the project.
Not ten minutes after this exchange with Lucy, Carl called. "So, you need me to clean up your mess?" I didn't quite understand, until he explained that it looked like he would be the one conned into finishing the project. This changed the decision slightly.
IF "Alan will drive home to Atlanta" = 0 (false) THEN
LET "Carl gets screwed" = 1
When I realized what it had all come to, I gave myself the night off from work. Either way, whether I drove home or not, someone was going to get prostituted. It just happened that I was in a position to trade 16 hours of driving and an entire weekend for Carl's trouble, and I was sorely tempted.
And everything was resolved by the next day. Lucy conned one of her Ad Agency employees into finishing the documentary, which meant all Carl had to do was copy some files off of a computer in my house while nobody was home. I told him to make himself at home, for all those amongst you who know what I mean by that.
And so here I am on the other end of all of that. I realize that I recalled it in a chronologically void manner, but I still haven't quite arranged it all in my mind. Thursday, October 26th--by far the most strenuous day, producing 3 pages of work for every hour of sleep I got--was the anniversary of the End of the World, from all the way back in High School. I didn't realize what day it had been until 12:30 AM on the 27th. Maybe, after all these years, it turns out that October 26th really was the end of the world. It should have been the death of me, but I was too busy to die.
-Alan
posted by Alan Orlanski at 1:39 AM
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