A Sorrowful and Sad

I found out two days ago that a good friend of mine killed himself by hanging.  I still don't fully accept that Joe's gone, and keep thinking about asking him why he did it, and then remembering that he's gone, and I can't ask him anything ever again.  He was by far one of the best people I have ever met.  He truly cared about the WORLD and everyone in it.  He opened my eyes up to many, many things in the four short years that we were friends.  He was my longest friend and one of the first friends I made on the UM campus.  We had each other when we didn't have anyone else, but we did grow apart a bit after he moved into Debs Coop and I got a boyfriend.  I went to his graduation party at Debs and kept in touch via text after he moved back to Traverse City a few days after his grad party.

From what he told me, I gathered that he was having chronic pain issues that were affecting his ability to function, and he had to quit his job as a counselor because of it.  It was only a month after he told me that that he was found dead.  He's been battling depression his whole life.  Some depression medicines can cause suicidal thoughts...I hope he didn't end his life because some medication made him think he wanted to.  Who knows.  He was posting updates on his Twitter all the way up until the night beforehand, and there was no hinting at what he was about to do.  I wish I could have done something.  He was such a precious person, one in 7 billion, that's for sure.  Although he annoyed me sometimes with his negative outlook on politics and doom and gloom attitude, he was a realist.  He was brave, and he didn't sugar coat the world so that he didn't have to feel bad about it.  Maybe that's why he is gone?  Well Joe, I am grateful to you for many things.  I think you probably affected more people in your 25 years than many do in entire lifetimes (well, long lifetimes).  I'm going to Ashley's this Saturday night and I'm going to order a Delirium Nocturnum and drink it for you. 


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In other news, I still hate being in the group I'm in.  I feel so defeated and so emptied of my confidence when I am around them that I don't even want to try to be friendly or excited about anything anymore.  I feel like a complete lackey.  I was incredibly nervous to give our presentation today--MUCH more nervous than I have been in years when giving a presentation in class.  I usually get a little nervous, but not so nervous that I forget what I'm saying and mess up like I did today.  The thing is, I wasn't nervous at all about speaking to our classmates.  I was nervous about what my group was going to think of me.  I feel like they all think I am some baby who doesn't know what she is doing and they have to do everything for me.  They forget, however, that our whole project is running off ideas I GAVE THEM.  I told them about commuting and stress.  I told them that we should send out a survey to friends and family in metro areas.  It doesn't take much to find a bunch of statistics, Matt, especially when you have a state-of-the-art electronic library provided you by the business school.  Oh, and group tyrant Matt also got us into a bungle:  while he was thinking solely of the business side of our project, he completely overlooked that our prototype is supposed to somehow improve democracy, and he even said in our presentation today that our idea is not driven by wanting to improve democracy.  Wonderful.  I mean, I can think of several easy ways to argue that our project improves democracy, so it's not that big of a deal.  I just want to emphasize how money-obsessed he is.  Ugh.  I can't wait until this is fucking over.

Meno -- an understanding

While working with my group on a project for my journalism class this evening, I suddenly realized I was having an experience similar to Socrates' in Plato's Meno.  I was creating circle-graphs, and I was thinking in my head that they were kind of silly, unnecessary, and just for aesthetics, when my group member looked over at what I was doing and was like "Nice! Awesome! Those look great!"  I felt good that he had finally said something I was doing was "great" because they all seemed to hate the slides I made for the powerpoint presentation, but then I realized that he was saying that merely because making graphs looks impressive.  They didn't mean anything, really.  All the stuff I had made for my powerpoint slides was actual meat and material, and they hated everything I did until I made something simply for the looks.  (Hated is an overstatement....they just totally criticized them and we ended up throwing them out and making new ones...great.)

This is exactly what Socrates experiences from Meno in Meno.  Meno is delighted by impressive shows of "knowledge" like when one quotes poets or uses big, extravagant words or ideas to describe something.  You know, displays that are largely fluff and showy-ness...superficiality.  I have a hard time working with these people because none of them seem real...they're all bar-going, money-spending, self-absorbed, gotta-get-the-A, gotta-do-what-teacher-likes college students.  Hell, they're whatever, I don't care.  They can be how they want to be and I will be the way I am.

When I voiced my opinion about something I had one person (the above guy; other two groupmates are girls) against me, saying no no no, and it was like his word was the last word.  I was trying to convince only him...but he ended up saying no to me and my opinion wasn't taken into consideration.  Whatever, not a big deal, but I still felt weird.  It was like, why do I have to convince him?  Why is HE in charge?  Why does HE get to say "NO" and I just have to live with it?  Fuck, I can't wait until this presentation is over.  I just hope we don't sound like idiots up there because we started putting it together at the last minute.