Numb Mind

Hello world! If you have been to this blog before, you probably wondered if it’s owner was dead or something, after all, it was accumulating spiderwebs for quite a long time. Rejoice! The writer lives! Anyway, if you actually read this blog after such a long absence, you absolutely deserve some kind of explanation – which, in case you haven’t foreseen it, is the very topic of this post.

In first place, I must say to my defense that my time has become quite precious to myself these last few months… let’s see, I’ve got a shop of my own, a little project as a translator for an entertainment website and a little hand on a sales representation for a brand of tropical beverages. Besides that, I remain a psychology student, but, as any student knows, that also means a myriad of collateral projects that have taken their toll on my personal time. What can I say, I love doing all this stuff!!! But lack of time is not really the cause for my absence from this blog – or from any other writing activity. The fact is, every time I thought of this blog, I just couldn’t find a subject on which I truly wanted to write, and I really did not begin a blog to be pulling subjects out of my ass. I read many interesting things in the meanwhile, but they’re all related either to work or classes, but nothing I particularly felt passioned about. But how come that I study for a profession I absolutely love and still can’t find a subject to write about?

One of the reasons for that must be the fact that my university, although very renowned, is actually very weak in the subjects I care about. I cannot believe, for example, the amount of time I have to spend on texts about psychoanalysis! There are some very good professors working with cognitive-behavioral therapy and neurosciences there, but the curriculum of the course puts them to the margins and “kindly” allows them to offer a few optional classes and develop research projects; apparently, if I intend to study the specific theories I actually will use as a professional, I have to give up a large amount of my time to insert myself in these optional classes and projects. So, the contents I am studying right now are not worthy of a post in this blog!

On top of that, we have the formal model of the classes in Brazil. Small classes – about 40 sudents in the room – listening for three hours of daily lectures, from monday to friday. Don’t take me wrong, I love lectures, and I can even stand them when they’re about a subject I don’t like or, as in the case of psychoanalysis, strongly disbelieve. The problem is that we’re treated like kids from high-school, who need to be lectured every single day! Dammit! Give me the books to read and meet me weekly for a discussion, but do not keep me in a room for three hours staring at a projector or, even worse, a blackboard! ask me for a paper each month, put me through exams! Do anything, but please, no more of this scheduled encarceration.

So, there you have it: i dislike the contents of most classes I’m attending to this semester, I really hate the model for those classes, and I am very frustrated because of the time I have to waste on subjects that I don’t intend to use even for a blog entry! Every second I waste in there could have been used in one of the optional classes I’d love to attend, or on one of my jobs, or a research. I don’t have the time to read a good, inspiring book, to wander on the Internet and find some new things and, thus, I have no subject that feels deserving of a place in this blog – only the routine subjects I am forced to study in order to keep a nice grade. The professors do their best to overcome the inherent boredom and frustration that this educational model causes, and, in truth, they too are subjected to it and I know they feel the same effects as I do. Some of them care enough about us students to go on and deliver the best class they can under this model; others seem to have given up and give their classes while clearly wishing they were at their labs doing something more interesting. They can’t skip as many classes as I do, but I am sure they would if they weren’t paid to be there.

In his old age, Professor Lattes – a renowned physicist – declared that the formal education was a trap to the creative mind. I have to say I do feel my creativity has been numbed down since the classes began this year – and the void in this blog proves it -, but the elderly scientist was already pretty damaged when he said that. In fact, during the same interview he used a bible to answer how the universe came into existence – something he would never do in the days when he participated in the researches that made his name -, so I will try to keep some faith in the system for now… but I´ll keep some aluminum foil under my hat.