Astrid’s Journal

The exams so far are going reasonably well. Only Latin went really bad. I filed a complaint to LAKS about the very vague questions in the first part of the exam - many questions could be interpreted in multiple ways. Yet my translation assignment went yet worse, but that was solely my sake, since I made a very bad, stupid mistake causing me to make the entire assignment horribly. I hope I’ll have a 4.4 at least, since that’s what I’ll have to have on my exam (I think) to have a sufficient grade average.

Last Wednesday, a few books arrived from the National Library for the Blind in the UK, which I joined a few weeks ago. I’m currently reading My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult and Emma and I by Sheila Hocken, which is part of the blind author’s autobiography.

I bought new clothes yesterday. I’ve worn all black for nearly four years, but for some reason I didn’t feel like it anymore, so I bought an orange skirt and green T-shirt. The style is still the way I used to like it - with all sorts of decorations and the like on it -, but the colours are different. I like it, only I hope I can distinguish them. I can see the colour differences and I think red/orange is quite easy to distinguish, but I don’t think so of the green, especially should I decide to buy more coloured clothes - now I can still distinguish the green T-shirt from all my black ones. I feel a sort of reluctance to label my clothes - it reminds me of a discussion with my parents about this topic about six or seven years ago, when I could still identify colours (I’ve only lost that ability not too long ago). I stopped wearing coloured clothes quite a while before I lost my ability to identify colours, and for some reason the need to rely on some other means to distinguish colours, feels like a loss, even though nothing specifically has changed about my abilities. It’s quite a bit strange.

I had French today and it went quite well. I checked with the correction paper and I have at least a 5.7, but the norms are not at all clear yet so it may be much better. So it’s most likely that I’m going to have a seven on my final marks list, since I’ll have to have a 6.0 for that. Strangely enough, everyone said it was a very long exam and they didn’t have enough time, but I didn’t feel stressed at all and needed only ten minutes of extra time, after 150 minutes of normal time. If I had to, I could’ve finished it in 150 minutes, since at least five minutes were spent saving and printing and yet again saving my work.

Tomorrow will be history and Dutch. I’m not too nervous, only I hope history will be doable, since there were hardly any practice exams since the subject matter keeps changing every year. But I studied quite well, so I’m hoping for a good mark on that as well. I didn’t yet have a thing to complain about at LAKS. Can you make up something *grin*?

So, the exams will start tomorrow. I’m sooo nervous!!! My first exam will be French - could it be worse? That’s my worst subject, and for my last practice I had a 4.3. I have to have a 4.0 to keep a sufficient grade average, and I sooo definitely hope that I’m going to get a reasonable mark!!! It’ll be a reading exam and I ain’t bad at understanding what a text is about, but on those tests you have to understand it really literally. Well, I’m hoping for the best.

My computer had to be completely “clean”, ie. with no software or documents that one can’t use on the exams on it. So I’m using my Dad’s computer now and have copied all my files onto this one. My usual one is going to remain at school to prevent me from taking material to my exam that isn’t allowed. Yeah, really high security measures are needed, lol! Wish me good luck!

I had the discussion with Jan. Mum and Dad both attended. The greatest part of the discussion was about exams, of course. They seem to lay-out those exams really great! Only the format is really old-fashioned, but that seems to be cause they have to be fit for printing in braille. As if anyone would do their exam at my high school level this year, and have the same subjects as I do, and also request that they be transcribed in braille. We settled the issue with the Latin dictionary - my dictionary is really small and has no grammar index -, by deciding that the person who is going to supervise my exams can look up words that aren’t in my dictionary or grammar issues.

The other thing was about September. They said that my parents could leave. They shouldn’t according to me. I was so scared for the same situation as last time, where Jan and Mr. De B. made clear “my” decisions and all my ways of communicating that I disagreed would be “recognized”. But as Jan said matter-of-factly that I was going to study English, I said that I wouldn’t for a while. I made clear that I would go to the centre for the blind and would see what they could do for me and if I agreed, and depending on the situation I would go to university in either January or September, 2006. My parents have known this for a few weeks and it felt comfortable to know that I wasn’t telling all people that hadn’t known before. Jan asked about the eval and that kind of stuff, about what I went there for - hmmm, I probably came across a bit curt when I said I hadn’t felt like sticking to the communicative paradigm (they laughed at the word “paradigm”) in March -, etc., but overall I think the message has come across. Really come across, that is. Mum said I’d made clear well what I was going to do and that I’d thought about it. I don’t know what the people think of it, but I don’t know if I should actually care. I feel sooo happy that at least I didn’t get patronizing remarks, like I used to get. Happy about that. I’m feeling a bit bad cause I had to play these tricks to get the situation as I wanted it, but at least no-one openly disagreed. I’ll see what’s coming out of the eval thing in June.

Man, going to have a discussion with Jan this coming afternoon at 2:00 PM. I don’t know what to think about it. Most stuff will be about exams, so that won’t generate any difficulty. However, I’m sure that we’ll also get to talk about this autumn. I still haven’t told Mr. De B. or any other school folk that I’m definitively not going to college in September. I have to tell Mr. De B. before I inform the student counsellor, I have decided for myself, cause that theoretically the entire world knows of my decision before my tutor does, okay (I could say he could’ve known for half a year), but that literally everyone has been informed before he has, that I consider going a bit too far. So I want to be a bit subtle, but I’ve never been quite good at being subtle. Sometimes, I just don’t want to inform anyone anymore and just do my thing without letting people get involved, but I’m scared that if I don’t inform the student counsellor, I might not be able to finish Future Planning (don’t know about those rules, could look them up but don’t feel like it).

Dad’s going to attend the discussion, for he’s our school’s system manager and we’ll have to arrange for an extra computer to be in place once I’m doing my exams. ALVA, the company that produces adaptive computers, said they could offer to give one on loan, but the people said it would be too expensive, and now Jan may get an extra computer from the school for the blind. Dad also wants to keep his own laptop as an extra computer, cause he knows that computer. If it isn’t needed, I can also use his computer in the evenings, for my computer will have to stay at school.

I’m very busy preparing for my exams. Had maths last week Tuesday. It went reasonably well - I’ll probably have a sufficient grade, but not too good. I finished preparing for geography and history (except for looking over the short summaries), and am now studying for economics and philosophy, both of which will be on Monday the 30th. History will be the 24th and geography the 27th, by the way. I haven’t done a thing for the languages yet. Latin isn’t going to be problematic - I studied half the course material in two hours last month and got an 8.2 -, but I’m a little worried about French and Dutch. English is going to be easy I suppose, as it’s going to be a reading exam. I want to get an 8.9 at least, so I’ll have a nine on my final marks list. But French is very difficult - I have always had just insufficient marks for French reading tests, but I don’t know how to prepare quite well for it. I can do lots of exams, of course, and have done some, but that’s about it. And Dutch, well, I used to be quite good at Dutch, but I’m just a little worried cause I’ve done so little (not done any special preparation yet and not practised much in class either). French is going to be my first exam on the 23rd, and Dutch will be the 24th.

By the way, the schedule really sucks. There are two exams each day, one starting at 9:00 AM and the other starting at 1:30 PM. Well, all languages and most society-related subjects start at 9:00 AM, and all nature-related subjects and the compulsory subjects start at 1:30. That means that as a person with Society and Culture as a collection of subjects, I’ll have to start at 9:00 each day except for once, and my sister’s boyfriend, who has Nature and Techniques as his collection of subjects, starts at 1:30 PM each day except for once, which is on a day when I also have to start at 9:00. The only thing in which I have a better schedule than he does, is that my last exam will be on the 31st of May, and his last exam will be on the 2nd of June. Mostly, they’ve made a stupid schedule. If I can think of no other thing to complain about at LAKS (which is the organisation where you can complain about the exams), it’ll make a good topic. Whaha yeah, I’ve resolved to complain at least once, lol. No, if I really have no complaints, I’m not going to call them for fun, of course.

Astrid

I came across one of those personality type quizzes. I tend not to take these sorts of quizzes seriously and mostly laugh at the results. However, just cause you shouldn’t take these things seriously, doesn’t mean you can’t comment on them. Comments in brackts are mine.

[It would have surprised me a while ago. I'm not a native speaker of "emotion language", so anything that said something about deep feelings would have surprised me. However, over time, I've learnt that just because you don't know the difference between certain feelings, that doesn't mean your feelings aren't deep. The names we've given to feelings, are only linguistically made-up. Further, I'm indeed quite creative and original. People also tell me I'm a good listener. And most definitely am I independent and stubborn!]

[This type is more what I'd seen myself as a while back. It's very correct: I'm very analytical and logical in my thinking, and am very interested in learning new things. I'm also very loving of order - which is not to say I'm organized. However, engineering or programming are none of my favourite activites. I prefer more creative work.]

I found this article. It’s quite cool. It makes clear how all of us “wear different hats” as we encounter different situations. Everyone has several different roles and, if you liked, you could see them all as different Selves, as the writers of this article are doing. I learnt about the structurialist protrayal of mankind in philosophy class, and I think this pretty much makes sense in this context. It’s making clear how, as we move about in life, we acquire different qualities that are important in different situations. We all like to please others, and you could see a Pleaser personality in that. We all also need to endure stressful situations at times, so a Pusher may come in handy. This is not the usual structuralist viewpoint, that just says that we’re different persons sort of when we’re at school versus doing a summer job, etc., but it makes clear how each of us has different qualities and viewpoints that are not always compatible. I mean, a Vulnerable Child (the concept of an Inner Child is very widespread) wouldn’t be quite compatible with a Pusher, would she? But everyone has the experience where different “parts” of themselves have different interests. Like, I may want to watch TV but need to do homework. If one were always the same, it would be quite boring, wouldn’t it?

Of course, this theory is yet another rigid theory of personality, especially the ideas of how each of our personalities develops. It is no more accurate or inaccurate, in my view, than any other theory of personality - they all have some good parts and some bad parts. In this particular case, as I see it, a person can have unlimited selves, cause what’s the different between a trait and a self? I like, however, their idea that a person isn’t a solid, stereotyped collection of characteristics that are all fully compatible, but may in fact have quite contradictory traits. As a “lover” of contradictions and a person who has named numerous aspects of herself (although none are as stereotypical as being simple traits), I like their viewpoint of a multi-focal self.

I was just reading the article All Animals Are Equal by Peter Singer. In this article, the Australian-born philosopher and professor at Princeton argues for equality between humans and nonhuman animals. He argues that the capacity to suffer and enjoy should be the only requirement for consideration of one’s interests (which is what counts in utilitarian ethics), because some being who can’t suffer or enjoy, can’t have interests. “Sentience” is the word Singer contends to use. If a being is sentient, it means it has interests. That is a more plausible requirement than reason, or moral capacity, or any other characteristic, for it is what is at the core of the idea of considering interests: if a being can’t suffer or enjoy, that means intrinsically that it has no interest. On the other hand, however mentally defective or morally incapable a being may be, if it can still suffer or enjoy, it has an interest, for it will be affected by what happens to it. In this case, mental capacity or moral ability is equally arbitrary to, for instance, skin colour. Therefore, this is the defining characteristic of whose interests should be considered, and according to these standards, nonhuman animals should be given equal consideration to humans.

Throughout the article, I remained suspicious, for I know Singer for being quite prejudiced against a particular group of human beings: the disabled. I kept wondering why he does argue for equal rights of animals, but still advocates infanticide on the profoundly retarded. Singer however does mention the retarded, although in this article he uses the argument that we wouldn’t do experiments on the retarded to state that we shouldn’t do the same on animals, either.

Still, I seem to have to take it that Singer thinks that, apparently, profoundly retarded people have no sentience. He does not discuss this in this article, but he does say that reason, apparently, is not needed for sentience, since we suspect that some animals do not have reason (or, traditionally, that no animals have reason). Having said that, I still feel a little puzzled, for it is determined by some other standard whether someone has sentience.

Cause how does one determine whether someone has sentience? I heard sometime that fish could feel pain. That didn’t surprise me, but it makes me wonder how they found out, especially since a philosopher who argues for animal rights as well as infanticide on the retarded, now is using sentience as an argument for the former. It is generally by getting some sort of reaction that it is found out that someone is sentient. And, even though no conventional communication may be needed to indicate that one has feeling, the being’s reactions (if any) must be interpreted as indicating that it can feel. This is even a controversial issue with people who are in a coma, so how controversial it must be with animals! Is there any reliable means of measuring whether a being is sentient? Aren’t we biassed by our own standards? I am afraid we are.

Last night, I came across this letter. It is yet another touching example of how children with disabilities are being abused in the name of treatment. I have been reading the writings on Autistics.org for a long while, even though I’m not personally part of the Autistic community anymore. I’m still a person with a disability, and it still touches me that problems of children with disabilities are being dismissed as behaviour difficulties regardless of what caused them. I know hardly any childhood psychiatric or developmental disorder that is truly a behaviour disorder - Opposition Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder are in fact the only ones I know, and even those are so far only believed to be purely behavioural.

I have never liked the behaviourist viewpoint altogether. It connotes the idea that others know better than the person himself not only what should be going on (how a person should feel, what he should do, how he should express himself), but also what is actually going on with this person. It is based on empirical experience, and that connotes the idea that another person knows all the motives, feelings and thoughts behind a particular behaviour. No, true behaviourism doesn’t even value thoughts, feelings or motives, but in the human behaviour field it is too often distorted to the idea that “it must be fun to behave this way”, to point the stimulus > response mindset plainly. And even though I agree that each behaviour has a particular function, it is too often assumed that it also always has a particular purpose, with negative behaviour too often along the lines of “attention-seeking”.

Conditioning is something else. I don’t know why it makes sense to say that it works for animals but not for humans, as that is saying that humans are intrinsically superior to animals, which I doubt. But it is still eliciting an automatic response without regard for anything beyond the behaviour. We generally accept that of animals, but with humans it connotes images of Brave New World. It connotes that traumatizing works, on the outside (as with the books and flowers in chapter two of the book), and that’s true, of course, but is it ethical?

With Autistic children, the situation is even more complicated, since Autism isn’t merely a behaviour disorder. In fact, very few disorders in the DSM-IV are. The brains of children with Autism are wired differently from typical brains, and no amount of “clicker training” (excuse my comparison to dogs) will change that. You aren’t making a normal child out of an Autistic child with ABA, you’re making a conditioned Autistic child. That’s unethical, in my view, because it teaches that a child’s identity is wrong. I hae even read about ABA therapists telling the children that what they said they were thinking was a lie, presuming that the therapist knew best what was going on with the child, judging from neurotypical standards, of course. It is teaching the child that what he is, is wrong, not that his behaviour is wrong. And the all too often made statements that these children will “recover” only perpetuates this idea: Autism isn’t a mask under which a normal child is hiding, it’s a *pervasive* developmental disorder (difference, if you wish). These children have neurological differences, and most likely even genetic mutations. Behaviour training won’t do away with that; all it does is to teach the child that his being is wrong and that he should act as if he is somethng he is not.

And that is not even speaking of the unethical ways in which ABA is often performed. You may say that these people are bad professionals, and, even though I’m getting increasingly skeptical of that, it may be true. Still, it is happening, and any form of aversives is, in my view, abuse. Some say that the only sort of aversives they are using are things that autistic children don’t like but would not bother normal children. That’s still abuse, since an autistic child is *not* a normal child.

Now that I just criticized all those soulbonders that do not take responsibility for their soulbonds (”fangirls”, they’re called), I have to make clear that I’m not the greatest at handling my situation either. There is no word that I think accurately describes my situation, but that doesn’t make it any less real, and it doesn’t mean I’m any more fine with it than I am. I have often had the idea that, if I could take full responsibility for the situation, it’d mean I could appropriately synthesize the perspectives, and what would I need the “ladies” for, then? They’re still there because they represent contradictions, as I pointed out already on August 23, 2004.

I can say that it is me doing everything, but that’s not the same as taking responsibiity. Blaming your inside people is no more problematic than blaming outside people, even though it seems more abnormal. And I’m often doing that. You would not see why the “ladies” contribute, but they do: the fact that I often don’t have opinions of my own on important issues (that’s not everyday decisions), or rather, have more than one opinion, makes it very difficult to take a stand on these issues. And the next year stuff is only the most noticeable situation where I got to hand my responsibility to someone else, but it’s not the only one. That’s nothing like being accountable, and I know that. Not that my decisions are a synthesis of all “ladies” in my mind - the next year thing illustrates that pretty well: whatever decision I was making (either on my own or relying on others), there were always those who didn’t agree, even though there’s only one in here who wants to go to college right away.

On other topics, I’m even more “divided”, but my blaming others is more subtle. Blindness is an example, like with the expectations thing coming up time and again on NFB-sponsored lists. This is a form of projecting my own feelings upon the people in the NFB. I’ve gotten a little better in these situations than I used to, but still, I’m kind of flame-ish where I shouldn’t be, when I see people nagging about expectations, expectations, expectations all the time.

What’s the difference between blaming inside people and blaming outside people? I think that with outside people, it’s easier to see that you’re not wanting to be accountable for your own actions, cause you can see that you yourself did something, not someone else. With inside people, that’s more difficult, cause you can’t see on the outside who is “in charge”. However, it can reasonably be expected that a collective take collective responsibility. For me, I’m not a collective, just a person who couldn’t handle aspects of herself that contradicted each other or the expectations set for her, so this doesn’t apply to me. Neither does it to most soulbonders, who see their bonds as mere characters (as I also did/do). I assume that anyone claiming that another of their personalities did something, not themselves, is being declared insane, simply cause any form of having people in your mind is far too often being seen as in and of itself insane (I bet some people would even consider healthy soulbonding to be insane), and most certainly if this goes so far as to not taking collective responsibility.