Final Project

Well, I guess it's that time again, the end of the semester. For most classes, I am relieved it's over. However, I have thoroughly enjoyed this class. My final project highlights the fun atmosphere that Beth created for us. My strengths lie in programming, so I did a short ditty in php. You choose from a drop down "What Beth Says," and the program randomly chooses from a list of "Class Responses." The class response is chosen from a short list of one-word snippets I remember most about the course.

Some results don't make any sense, some are funny, and some just make you cock your head and say "huh?" This was by design. I could have programmed it to always give you an "appropriate" response. This course has taught me not to give the "appropriate" response in life, just because I am supposed to.

Here's the link: Fun With Seeing Sideways

Thanks to all for a great experience.

Looking vs Seeing

What we do	What we should do
Looking	Seeing
Hearing	Listening
Taking a walk	Experiencing nature
Going for the grade	Learning
Waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can talk, talk, talk about yourself	Listening
Playing a card game	Spending quality time with a child
Blaming others for our crap	Realize our mistake and learn from it

I think that part of the reason we are prone to do the left column of the above table is that we are such a busy society. We have created all of these wonderful gadgets to make work easier (computers, washers, dryers, microwaves, drive thrus, etc). However, all it has done is given us more time to pile more crap into our lives. Sometimes it's our boss expecting more from us since the company installed a new software suite that cuts our workload by 10%. Sometimes we do it to ourselves so we can impress others with the laundry list of crap we've done / are doing. We have to keep up with the Smiths, right???

When we pile all of this on ourselves, all we do is limit the quality of each thing... we don't have time to stop and smell the roses anymore because we're worrying about the 20 other things on our list and how we'll accomplish them on time. Everything then becomes something we have to do, and nothing we want to do just for fun.

Response to Class - 04/12/2010

I enjoyed hearing about others' view of themselves. It's refreshing to learn something about someone else that you didn't know before; sometimes it even shatters a preconceived notion, which is awesome.

I really would have liked a little more feedback... I've been called "baby killer" on this campus before when in uniform, so I wasn't sure how to interpret the class' silence after I spoke.

Addendum to who the hell I am

I did the assignment a little differently than presented by Beth... because of what I wrote about who I am, I decided to ask someone who knew me a little bit in high school, and now is very familiar with me. This really seemed to fit my project better. I did not prompt her in any way, only told her to describe me then and now. Here is her response:

A brief overview of Em:

Emily is one of the most interesting and amazing people I have ever met.

Who she was in high school:
Emily seemed to be very self-assured and confident. I was immediately impressed with her unique persona. She looked and dressed differently than anyone else I had ever met. Besides her incredible good looks, from my first conversation with her it was apparent she was also very intelligent. Possibly stemming from her status as an upper-classman, I was in awe of everything about her. She was a great color guard performer and seemed to be very good at everything she did. I sensed how caring she was, but also gathered some insecurities in conversations we had, but i think she masked those quite well to everyone else.

Who she is now:
Emily is still the beautiful and brilliant person she was 15 years ago. Now, however, she is even more intelligent and stunning. She cares for the environment and the protecting the interests of the weak and helpless. She has a great sense of humor (most of the time, haha) and loves to have fun, play jokes, and try new things.
She possesses a self-confidence now in who she is and what she wants to do. She tends to be a procrastinator, but can really buckle down to get things accomplished in a short amount of time.
She is also a very expressive person who tends to be very vocal with her emotions. She has VERY little tolerance for stupidity and incompetence. By very little, I mean virtually no tolerance. Unlike in high school, Emily's level of patience is now much lower. After her military service and PTSD, she is now quick to anger. She becomes angry because of others' actions and situations, as well as her near constant state of physical pain she experiences as a result of her military service. Emily greatly values her independence and mobility. She often experiences distress at losing a portion of these.

Additional words to describe Emily:
breathtaking, astonishing, fantastic, remarkable, clever, gifted, adept, imposing, authoritative, honest, trustworthy, commanding, dependable, reliable, faithful, responsible, patriotic, hardworking, conscientious, caring, sensitive, striking, faaaaaabulous

~Sarah Allison~

Who the hell I am

Who the Hell am I?
Well, this assignment actually blends well with what I’ve been doing and going through lately. My current being has been almost completely shaped by my experiences overseas. I really didn’t have it bad over there. I wasn’t kicking down doors, or walking the streets. I spent most of my time “outside the wire” in a well protected HMMWV or M915 (18 wheeler). With that said, I did personally witness more than enough violence to affect me. One acquaintance was KIA and at least 10 of my friends were WIA.

When I first got home, I displayed numerous signs of PTSD. I drank too much. It got to the point where I would drink myself to sleep, so that the nightmares stopped. I would sleepwalk often. If I feel right about talking in person about this in class, I’ll tell you what I would do while sleep walking. I don’t care to put it on the web. Nothing illegal, just embarrassing. I would often, while driving, have anxiety. I would see a car make a quick lane change, or see trash on the side of the road, and I’d immediately reach for my radio to call it in. My adrenaline would kick in and I’d be back overseas.

Skip ahead about two years… gradually most of those things I mentioned above “went away.” I go through my daily activities with little to no side effects. However, I started my care at the VA and after my initial interview and was referred to psych. I went because I was told to and I’m a good Soldier. I really thought I had dealt with it just fine on my own. I wasn’t having nightmares anymore and the sleep walking had pretty much stopped. Even after I went to the appointment and she suggested PTSD, I said pppsssshaw. I’m fine. Don’t write it down, it makes it real.

This last week I’ve been thinking about the assignment and who I am. It also coincided with a session at the VA where I talked some about my experiences. I, of course, skimmed over details and made it seem rosy. I asked her not to put down on paper the official diagnosis of PTSD. Nah, that’s not it, I’m just going through my readjustment period. One night, after really brainstorming on what I could do for this assignment that represented me and not coming up with much, I went to bed. I had a very intense dream and below are the details I remember:

I was back on active duty at Camp Atterbury. I was out on a range in the middle of the Indiana woods. I had all of my gear on and was by myself. (Understand that just because it is a “range, it doesn’t mean that there is any weapons firing going on. I was on a training range, not in an impact area.) I was just rucking through the woods when I heard helicopters above. I looked up and could see two BlackHawks and one was a MEDEVAC and the other an armed escort. I could see the crew chief manning the M240H door gun. I kept rucking. All of the sudden the escort starts doing some aggressive maneuvering near my position. I see a shack ahead so I speed up towards it. Bullets start raining down around me.

As I get to the shack, there are two elderly people sitting outside on lawn chairs. They don’t seem to understand the danger. I drag them into the shack and as I do, the man’s legs are blown to bits. Quickly though the bloody pieces turn into pieces of prosthetic legs. I go back and get the woman in. I get hit this time in my neck. I bandage myself and find a radio. I radio range control and they don’t give a crap and don’t do anything to stop the firing. I pull out my commo card and find the freq the helicopter’s on and radio them. I pop a smoke grenade to prove I’m friendly while talking to them on the radio. They finally stop. I treat the two elderly while I wait for the medics.

The medics finally arrive and take the two elderly away. I tell one of the medics I was hit and show him the bandage on my neck. He removes the bandage, takes one quick look and says there’s nothing there. All of the blood from before is gone. My uniform is pristine again. My hands are clean. “You’re not hurt,” he tells me while rolling his eyes. I saw the blood when it happened I felt the burn when it hit. I KNOW I’M HURT. I just can’t explain why there is no blood anymore. We go back to garrison. I spend the rest of the dream chasing that medic all around post trying to convince him, and anyone else I see, that I am hurt. At one point I am sitting on the steps outside the medics’ apartment sobbing. Someone comes up to me and asks what’s wrong. I tell the story and remove the bandage. Again, nothing is showing, so he too thinks I am crazy. Please believe me. Why won’t they believe me?

So now I’m awake and I’m thinking about the dream; I write it down so I don’t forget it. I wasn’t going to use this as my project at that time. That dream filled my thoughts the rest of the week, though. I couldn’t shake it. After I analyzed it, I realized that it is a snapshot of who I am and what I’ve been doing for the last two years since my return. The medic is my conscious self, I am my own subconscious, and my “neck wound” is my PTSD. My conscious self has ignored it and tried to make it go away; I’ve hid it from myself and everyone else. I couldn’t convince my own conscious self that this really is a problem; that I really need some help. My self-conscious has been sobbing for two years and I’ve ignored her. I’ve used self-medication to shut her up, I’ve painted a picture for myself and others that it really wasn’t that bad. I’ve tried to just plain ignore her. I’ve told myself that others have had it so much worse, so why should I complain? I have some back problems, but that’s it. I have all of my limbs. I had it easy compared to them. Life’s rough, get a helmet, right?

No, that’s not it. My subconscious knows I need help and she’s gently nudging me. I wrote this because if I tell someone else I need help, I feel a personal responsibility to get that help. I can’t ignore it anymore. I’m going to talk about this dream in my next session. I have also created a piece that somewhat conveys my feelings right now.

Response to Class - 03/29/2010

I heard I jmissed some great stuff. Unfortunately I had some personal business to attend. Boo.

Fear Experiment Unfolded

Experiment Steps
1) Have class stand up
2) Physically touch each person and bring them into a circle faced right
3) Hold 2 - 3 minutes
4) Count off 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, etc – If they’ve not been in military, may not get this right and may become uncomfortable (fear of mistakes, public embarrassment)
5) Alternately face each other ("2's" turn around)
6) Put right hand on shosulder of person in front of them
7) Hold 2 - 3 minutes
8) End – do not explain experiment to further the unknown

"On-the-fly" Experiment Changes
#2 controlled verbally, not physically
- Instead of physically repositioning them with my touch, I had them do a side step twice. This would make them come closer to each other in a uniform way, which I believed would increase their tension. I believed this would increase the anxiety, because it was an unknown and incremental change.

#4 controlled physically not verbally
- I switched these because I re-thought my design shown above. I believed that there would be greater impact of my physical touch when they were already a little uncomfortable.

Hypothesis
The students will become uncomfortable with the close proximity to each other. This will stem from one or more causes. Some students may actually be haphephobic (fearful of being touched). Other reasons for discomfort are the personal space bubble being invaded, fear of embarrassment by mistake, bad breath, or saying the wrong thing in a public setting. They will exhibit this discomfort in a variety of ways (see Hypothetical Observations below).

I will become uncomfortable / anxious when placed in a “spotlight” role. I will be fearful of making mistakes, stumbling over words, and looking “foolish.” I will exhibit my anxiety by becoming slightly flushed in the neck and chest, increased heart-rate, temporary “word amnesia” and mild sweating. Self fulfilling prophecy, huh?

Hypothetical Observations

• Shifting movements
• Nervous laughter
• Inappropriate joking
• Pulling away
• Dirty looks
  

Some students may also exhibit the following:

• Sweating (possibly profuse)
• Signs of anxiety that I cannot directly monitor (increased heart rate, racing thoughts, increased breathing rate)
• Angry outbursts
  

Actual Observations

• Two people would not fully commit to circle. Put in one foot only, maintaining their 18" bubble.
• When they didn't have to look at each other the timbre of the laughter and joking was lighter. When they turned to face each other, it got louder, almost cacophonous.
• The longer I left them in any position, the louder they got.
• Shifting movements to include: eyes, feet, hands.
• Some immediately pulled away from my touch.
• One person “straight armed” the person opposite when told to put hand on shoulder. The subject refused to let anyone within the “bubble.”
• There was a significant amount of inappropriate joking.
• I did not notice any dirty looks.
• I did notice quizzical looks, indicating they were trying to figure out what I was doing and why. Some didn't like not knowing is my supposition. One student kept asking, as if he couldn’t “rest” until he knew.
• I noticed wiping of hands, indicating sweating.
• No angry outbursts were noted.
• Only one set of 2 consistently looked each other in the eyes. All others looked down and away (mostly to the outside of the circle, or open space).
• One unexpected response was anxiety AFTER release from circle, not during.

Proposed Changes

• I should have asked if anyone experienced increased heart-rate, breathing or other signs of anxiety
• I could have touched them longer to possibly get dirty looks
• I could have gone longer in each position to possibly get outbursts of frustration or anger
  

My Strongest Reaction
I reacted the strongest to Anthony's experiment. My father had several serious detached retina occurances about 20 years ago. Because the first one was not caught in time by an incompetant optometrist, my dad lost most of his sight out of one eye. He, like Anthony, has trouble with depth perception and has had to adjust his life due to his change in sight. Since I volunteered for the experiment, it reminded me of what my dad has to go through all the time.

With all that said, my purpose was really selfish. I wanted to show how most people react predictably when put in to an uncomfortable experience. The body's reaction to fear is the same, but with varying intensity, no matter what the source of the fear. I may just laugh unexpectedly if I am mildly fearful, or scream if I am terrified. These are the same reactions, just at varying levels. No matter who you are, millionaire or homeless, student or teacher, fear and our reaction to it is a commonality. I placed myself into the experiment to show to myself that no matter what the perceived differences between us, there are many more similarities. When we forget these similarities, no matter what they are, we fail to be human.