Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!
New Comments on Serendip
Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities
Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.
Narrative is determined not by a desire to narrate but by a desire to exchange. (Roland Barthes, S/Z)
What's New? Subscribe to Serendip Studio
A Random Walk
New Topics
-
10 weeks 4 days ago
-
10 weeks 5 days ago
-
11 weeks 1 day ago
-
11 weeks 1 day ago
-
11 weeks 1 day ago
Ann Lemieux--
Last month we were talking on-line about presenting ourselves in public, trying to make a “true self” accessible to a variety of others. This month, you are exploring the (very related) question of how self-conscious middle and high school students might admit publicly that they have and need accommodations, without drawing attention to their differences. I see very strong similarities between your work, Amoylan’s essay on queer disability and taylor11’s on changing elementary schools--you should certainly read these two other essays, and discuss them with the authors.
I share your great admiration for Culture as Disability (and along with you, urge everyone to read it!). I love especially this one line that you quote: “The world is not a set of tasks, at least not of the type learned at school, but made to look that way as part of political arrangements that keep people documenting each other as failures.”
What is then the world? How would you like it to look??
Please look also @ the essays written by Amoylan on queer disability, and by taylor11 on changing the structure of elementary schools, in preparation for y'all's talking together in class...
Amoylan--
Last month, you were writing about how differently you experience classroom and performance settings: how the first lacks the comfortable “distances” of the second. This time, you are writing about much larger issues of accessibility that exclude folks of all sorts; you’ve gone from the individual to the social, from the personal to the political, and done so in a way that leads with intersectionality: “What about the girl who’s queer? Where’s her ramp?....”
Your final claim that “everyone has their own story and all we are allowed to do is listen” is actually much more timid than several that you make earlier in your piece: that you and your brother “resent the questions and stars mutually—for each other,” for example. That description, along with the “ramp for the queer girl” gesture toward a politics of accommodation that is not “accommodating” in the patronizing way your definition suggests, but rather accessible in a way that has to do with equal rights for all.
Ellen Samuels, whose critique of Judith Halberstam we read a few weeks ago, is one of the many scholars (like Eli Clare) who are now doing very interesting work in the nexus of queer and disability studies you lay out here. Read her piece called My Body, My Closet: Invisible Disability and the Limits of Coming-Out Discourse—and let me know if you find it useful or helpful in your thinking.
Also, please read both Ann Lemieux’s essay on accommodating gender queer and learning disabled students, and taylor11’s piece on restructuring elementary school classrooms for disabled kids, too, in preparation for y’all's talking together in class...
pialamode--
As last month, you’ve done a nice job of researching a complicated question about public performance and reception of identity, focusing this time on questions of intersectionality. You list a range of needed interventions in high schools, calling for reforming those environments so that all students--especially queer students of color--“can both express and explore the many aspects of their identities freely.”
You recommend that
* “teachers must be taught…to confront differences in identities intersectional identities head on”;
* “a very simple way to begin countering verbal abuse is to intervene when they hear the use of language”;
* “resources such as Gay-Straight Alliances” must be made available;
* policies should be adjusted “to explicitly address harassment in school”;
* “staff members should intervene when they witness any harassment”;
* classes should be altered to include information about intersectionality; and
* classrooms should be made safe.
These are all worthwhile efforts—you won’t get any argument from me on any of these counts! And/yet/but….
I find myself hung up on a word you introduce in a quotation early in your paper: that “our efforts to challenge one form of oppression often unintentionally contribute to other forms of oppression.”
Unintentionally.
So much of the prejudice that gets expressed amongst us is unintentional, its motivations not known or understood. Last month, I often found myself evoking the work of Elizabeth Ellsworth in response to your classmates’ web events, and I evoke her here now for you. Ellsworth is a film theorist and educator who wrote a book called Teaching Positions: Difference, Pedagogy, and the Power of Address. Applying the idea of mode of address from film theory to education, Ellsworth posits that, just as films are positioned to appeal to particular audiences, teachers address their students in order to appeal to who the teachers think the students are. But, Ellsworth goes on to explain, positioning by filmmakers and teachers is always imperfect: “The point is that all modes of address misfire one way or another. I never ‘am’ the ‘who’ that a pedagogical address thinks I am. But then again, I never am the who that I think I am either.”
Ellsworth attributes the failure of mode of address to match the requirements of an intended audience to two propositions: that what we think we know of other people is limited to what they have told us; and that what we think we know of ourselves is limited only to what we are conscious of. So, rather than suggesting ways to bridge this gap, trying to make ourselves more completely known to and readable by others, Ellsworth argues that it is to be preserved as the space of agency and of learning. She claims that it’s actually in that space that teaching takes place; without it, we’d have nothing to learn.
I wonder how that strikes you as an intervention?
I’m thinking here, for example, of the most powerful moment (for me) in Eli Clare’s intersectional memoir: "The same lies that cast me as genderless, asexual, and undesirable also framed a space in which I was left alone to be my quiet, bookish, tomboy self, neither girl nor boy....How would I have reacted to the gender pressures my younger, nondisabled sister faced?" (151-2). Here misreading one identity—that of being disabled as being asexual—grants Clare freedom in another dimension—that of being queer.
Unintentional. And freeing.
I had asked, in response to your last web event, whether the harder we try to represent the self --especially the fluid, ever-changing self--the more specific we get, the more we might miss. Some of that possibility haunts this project too, I think.
P.S. Be sure to look @ the events created by ccassidy and Maya--and come to class ready to discuss your shared ideas.
ccassidy--
I’m seeing an interesting relationship between your last web event and this one: there, you were reflecting on your own silence in the classroom; here, you are thinking about a much larger, cultural silence, one that pervades most high school classrooms: the languages of sexuality and gender.
What’s of particular interest here (to me) is the material you’ve found that advocates “queering” the h.s. classroom—not just working to include and affirm a wide variety of sexual identities, but shifting the focus to “examining how language and culture [operate?] with regard to all sexual identities.” Over ten years ago (and for several years before that) I taught a praxis class here called Thinking Sex, which
thought the language of sex, about bringing that language into the classroom, and about addressing issues of sexuality in a wide variety of other sites, such as nursing homes. It was something of a revelation, and might enjoy looking through the syllabus.
What is also striking to me is how “boring” you describe your h.s. experience as being—“constrictive and heteronormative,” yes, but “essentially boring.” Queering the high school curriculum would certainly intervene in that dynamic!...but it would also go far beyond the sort of “acceptance” you celebrate to initiate a life-long mode of inquiry that would continue to question all sorts of “discursive and cultural practices” –including those that dominatein most classrooms and (to loop back to your first paper) silence most students therein. It’s less the acceptance than the continuing to question what is acceptable that most intrigues and excites me here.
Along those lines, be sure to check out the related projects by pialamode and Maya--and come to class ready to discuss.
Maya--
I taught an ESem a few years ago called InClass/OutClassed: On the Uses of a Liberal Education, which worked specifically with the (range of answers! to the) question of whether schools function primarily as sites of socialization and normalization, reinforcing the status quo, or whether they might be explicit sites of intervention, mobility and change. Although you focus here on issues of gender and sexual difference, rather than on those of social class, it seems to me that the core questions are the same.
You pay attention to the “preventative measures” that schools can take, the “solutions they can look toward” in “creating a safe space” for queers to represent themselves, to “not feel ‘othered,’” to be “surrounded by a loving and accepting community.” “To create this safe space,” you argue, “people need to become more aware of the discrimination that goes on in high schools”; “teachers perpetuate the problem,” and this is “all because of the lack of knowledge.”
But where I feel an interesting tension in your project is in the rub between “queer” and “normal.” Your stated presumption is that “people do not want to stick out,” that “queer people are forced to hide an important part of their identity if they want to ‘fit in,’” that “people create this standard norm in high school that everybody strives to live up to, but queer people will never fit this norm,” that they are “made to feel exiled if they deviate at all from the norm.”
There’s actually quite a debate in the queer rights community about such questions; the defining text in the argument is Michael Warner’s 1999 book, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Warner argues that the sole goal of gay rights activism should not be same-sex marriage, which stigmatizes other types of relationships, constituted by contrast as abnormal, inferior and shameful (you should be hearing echoes of Judith Halberstam’s challenge to “normative time” @ this point….). Warner says “straight” out that the queer rights movement would do better to abandon the pursuit of normality, and campaign instead for the recognition of broader varieties of sexual expression. In his analysis, the “norm” thus becomes what is problematic, rather than what must be accommodated.
Your earlier web-event portrayed a self who felt she should stand up for what she believes, but is guarded in doing so, using body language both to assert and to hide who she is and what she believes. Since I see some of both these moves in this paper, too…I’m wondering if Warner’s analysis gives you an opening….? What do you think of this idea?
P.S. Be sure to look @ the events created by pialamode and ccassidy, and come to class ready to talk w/ them about your shared ideas...
Shaina--
Last month I was listening in as you thought about identical twins as the paradigmatic example of identity formation: genetically mirrors, trying to create a space for expressing difference on a base of sameness, “reconstructing your identities on the foundation of what you were trying to escape.”
This month I’m somewhat surprised to receive your history of the use and teaching of sign language. It is of course a fascinating story, and a problematic one (with fewer children being born deaf, and cochlear implants increasingly available to those who are, the major users of sign are no longer the Deaf). The very language of “foreign” is problematic, given that so many signers are U.S. citizens. And deafness is a central topic in the paradigmatic essay about Culture as Disability (which you should check out—I’d be interested to hear your reactions).
But what I’m not seeing at all yet is just how this discussion arises from, intersects with and feeds back into our work in critical feminist studies. You take your (very general) working definition of disability—“disadvantage, or restriction”—from Eli Clare, whose work we read last week, but otherwise this project doesn’t seem at all to speak to-or-from the discussions we have been having.
I am asking you to form a writing discussion group with two of your classmates who have attended to the gendered dimensions of language (see iskierka on gendered pronouns across cultures, and juliah on the topic of gendered—and indistinct and indirect-- language), as a way to nudge this conversation forward, and nudge you back to the context of this class: might using sign language be a way of intervening in grammatical gender? (I have no idea!) How does-or-might the teaching of sign intersect with the teaching of gender variance? Where might intersectionality be here @ play?
juliah—Last month, you were re-casting feminism as an environmental project—thereby enlarging enormously the scope of the questions we’ve been considering here. This month, you enlarged the scope even further!
Be sure to look @ iskierka’s work on gendered pronouns across cultures, which has many resonances w/ your own project. You actually move pretty quickly from her interest--the English “system of grammatical gender”-- to much grander questions of how “forgoing “any attempt to make ourselves readable” could lead to “a more open, expressive, inclusive form of communication.” I need you to slow down and re-read/interpret that claim for me: what would it mean to “forgo any attempt to make ourselves readable”?
Is this like the work of Elizabeth Ellsworth (whom I quoted exhaustively and repetitively in my responses to your all’s papers last month). Ellsworth is a film theorist and educator who wrote a book called Teaching Positions: Difference, Pedagogy, and the Power of Address. Applying the idea of mode of address from film theory to education, Ellsworth posits that, just as films are positioned to appeal to particular audiences, teachers address their students in order to appeal to who the teachers think the students are. But, Ellsworth goes on to explain, positioning by filmmakers and teachers is always imperfect: “The point is that all modes of address misfire one way or another. I never ‘am’ the ‘who’ that a pedagogical address thinks I am. But then again, I never am the who that I think I am either.”
Ellsworth attributes the failure of mode of address to match the requirements of an intended audience to two propositions: that what we think we know of other people is limited to what they have told us; and that what we think we know of ourselves is limited only to what we are conscious of. So, rather than suggesting ways to bridge this gap, trying to make ourselves more completely known to and readable by others, Ellsworth argues that it is to be preserved as the space of agency and of learning. She claims that it’s actually in that space that teaching takes place; without it, we’d have nothing to learn.
That sounds to me very much akin to your report of Juan Diaz’s intentions: “Diaz does not compromise his breath of knowledge, which encompasses multiple cultures and backgrounds, in order to make himself accessible to a large audience….’what most of us consider normative comprehension an immigrant fears that they’re not getting it because of their lack of mastery in the language’….’go out and ask somebody else…words that you can’t understand in a book are there to remind people that part of the experience of reading has always been collective.’”
What you don’t know, in other words, is ground for learning. And if we had less specific pronouns (for example) it might help us recognize that what-we-think-we-know about others may well not be the case….?
I’ve put you in a reading-and-writing group with iskierka, who also did a project on gendered pronouns, and with shaina, who is thinking about sign language….please read their papers and come to class ready to discuss…
iskierka--
Last time ‘round, you were writing about how virtual reality turns out not to be less an escape from "meatspace” than only an elaboration and extension of it: a "fantasy of the real," but real nonetheless. This month, you are taking on an even larger and more profound topic—the degree to which the institution that is the English language hinders the exploration of gender variance (or: “a "fantasy of the real, but real nonetheless”).
You do this first by evoking the practices of a variety of other languages: the ability to alter the gender assigned to listeners, as in Portuguese; or selecting pronouns based on ceremony and situation, rather than on the speaker’s gender, as in Japanese. You also offer several experiments in English—my favorite is that of the children in Baltimore, who have been able to “create a concept of nonbinary gender and designate a pronoun to associate with it”—that gives me hope for the future! I agree with you that the grammar purists hold “language as more important than the person speaking it, as though languages cannot and have never changed over the course of time.”
I’m quite struck by your characterization of English as “neglecting to engender inhuman objects, but looking warily at any attempt to break the he/she system built up across years.” Given the evolution of our understanding of gender variance, it seems time to play more robustly with our pronouns…especially given the way in which (as you also observe) “English designates men as the primary action providers”—it’s way past time to move beyond that presumption!
So: how to do this? Does it begin w/ children’s books, or…?
juliah also wrote on the topic of gendered language; y’all should talk; I put shaina, who wrote about sign language, in your group as well…
nia.pike--
You’ve made a very explicit link between your last project, on rebelling from the chains of society, and this one, with the citation you include here from Butler: “the reprimand . . . forms a crucial part of the . . . social formation of the subject. The call is formative, if not performative, precisely, because it initiates the individual into the subjected status."
What interests me is the way in which this analysis grows from, and is also much more layered, than the last one: this time ‘round, you are much more cognizant of the ways in which social formation of one sort has the possibility of excluding and deforming other identities. Last month, I recommended a theorist named Diana Fuss to many of your classmates; her essay “Inside/Out” makes it quite explicit that "any identity is founded relationally, constituted in reference to an exterior or outside.”
Following that logic, it may be that if the “cult” and “culture” of Bryn Mawr is (as you say) “above all else a sisterhood,” it will—definitionally, operationally, inevitably—create thereby the circle of outsiders that surround it: making a “safe space” for queers means putting straight people beyond “the pale”; if “being queer is normal” here, then the not-normal is not-that. What happens then to your vision of equality? How build a world without an outside, a community without walls?
Your paper makes an interesting commentary, btw, on Fdaniel’s tracing of BMC’s history of increasing inclusivity; you all should check out each others’ work, as well kwilkinson’s project on re-doing the wellness program here to accommodate more diversity…
Fdaniel--
This event, like your last, is exploring the complexities of individual woman, and the resulting complexities of constructing feminist institutions that attend to such intersectionalities; your own understanding of what feminism looks like is certainly evolving. Both of your projects trace stories of increasing inclusiveness, and/but—seen through the light of Rosie the Riveter, whom you feature in the first—doesn’t the so-called inclusiveness of BMC, which you showcase in the second, seem rather limited? Only women of certain intellectual capacities….? with certain class ambitions…? need apply?
You’ve read a lot of material reporting on the evolving history of Bryn Mawr, relying particularly on Aybala50’s account of the continually revised definition of what “woman” means here, slowly expanding to include women from different countries, races, classes, religions, ages, abilities (or abilities to demonstrate those abilities)—and now even genders. You end with an appeal for the College not to”ignore certain kinds of women,” to be more assertive in seeking out and welcoming transwomen in particular.
It would interesting to have you trace the representation of such diversity in the “profiles” section of the College’s web page: see http://about.blogs.brynmawr.edu/ and say what you think. Are each of the categories you represent represented equally here? Does the College publically celebrate the same range you do?
The story you tell raises a couple of questions for me. I wonder first, how different it would sound if it were more grounded in personal accounts? How do different sorts of women experience Bryn Mawr? Does the College really “allow all students to be comfortable”? Do women of color feel, for example, that they are living in a community where “52% of the student body” looks like them, or is their felt experience somewhat different than that statistic might suggest? What is the class diversity of the international population? (These are intersectional questions…not all women of color are alike in other dimensions.) Does the title of “Pensby Center” signal that the College is working on challenging issues of diversity, or rather managing or accommodating them, keeping them from stirring up too much trouble? (Do you know the history or rationale for that title? Why did the Diversity Office become the Multicultural Center become the Intercultural Center become Pensby? What does that title communicate about what cultures matter here?)
Throughout your account, I found myself wondering why BMC had become more “intersectional” and “holistic” in its search for a wider variety of students. You say towards the end it’s because the College is “a product of its time period.” That’s very different than the vision of its founders, which was to challenge the established beliefs about women’s capacities. Are you saying that the College, which was so counter-cultural in its founding, is now just reflecting the culture in which it is embedded? Operating as a site of socialization and normalization, reinforcing the status quo, rather than a site explicitly calling for intervention, mobility and change?
Finally, you start (okay: you start, I end!) with the current definition of a Bryn Mawr woman: “an intense intellectual; has a commitment to a purposeful vision of her life and a desire to contribute to the world.” That’s an intensely individualistic definition of each of us; it’s separate, not communal, purposeful, not in solidarity with others, but working for them….
Hmmm….
Your paper makes an interesting commentary, btw, on nia.pike’s study of sisterhood at BMC; you all should check out each others’ work, as well as well kwilkinson’s reflections on re-doing the wellness program here to accommodate more diversity…
vhiggins--
last month you were attempting to re-write the script of the female entertainer, and I was pushing you to be more explicit about the ways in which you think your education might give you a hand up with that project. This month, you are taking on that education directly @ the middle school and h.s. level, questioning the “intense pressure” it places on performing, as well as its use of a "normative time schedule.”
As I mentioned to several of your classmates, I taught an ESem a few years ago called InClass/OutClassed: On the Uses of a Liberal Education, which worked specifically with the (range of answers! to the) question of whether schools function primarily as sites of socialization and normalization, reinforcing the status quo, or whether they might be explicit sites of intervention, mobility and change.
You argue that schools in poor neighborhoods be “cripped”: “by discontinuing the use of standardized testing, embracing the possibility of students not going to college right away, and by having guidance counseling services work in hand with administrators, faculty, and the student’s parents, to help readjust the students’ learning environments in an effort to better guide them, help them navigate their environments with more ease, and be flexible enough to encompass all the intersections of their lives. “
In an (in)famous refutation of the sort of ‘cripping’ you advocate here, Lisa Delpit’s book, Other People’s Children, argues that poor children can’t afford to have their curricula queered or cripped (she doesn’t use these terms, but she’s talking about just the sort of adjustments you describe): they need too much to learn all the skills required in the mainstream. There is no leeway.
EmmaBE’s description of the Posse program is a great example of the sort of thing you imagine more abstractly; please read her paper, as well as that by EP, who is also raising questions about intersectionality and class difference, and y’all come to class ready to share ideas….
EmmaBE--
This project is so different from the very literary one you did last month; I appreciate the sharp shift in focus.
I was on the Admissions Committee many years ago when BMC first decided to affiliate with the Posse program, have participated in retreats, and enjoyed working with many scholars since then. So it’s a particular pleasure to read your account of Posse’s “nonstandard admissions process,” re-read as a “cripped/queered” version of the standard forms of assessment. I agree that Posse offers a concrete example of intersectionality in action, a “way institutions can diversify without compartmentalizing the complexity of identities.”
What you highlight, in your report, is the holistic nature of the process: one that doesn’t limit self-representation to “way you look on paper,” but “judges you dynamically - they look at the way you have grown and will grow, and how you respond to change”; “they assess leadership capability and interpersonal skills in many different formats.” Also very important is the notion that they diversity they look for is not only racial or ethnic, but “a diversity of ideas, opinions and backgrounds.”
Granting the problems still remaining with access, you do a nice job of showing how Posse “accommodates for individual difference, which may or may not be medicalized/standardized. A holistic admissions process such as Posse’s accepts that all identities are intersectional/ nonstandard - everyone has a story to tell.”
And that’s the spot where I’d nudge you to go further. Your account is entirely about the individual achievement; what is also quite distinctive about Posse is the way in which they compose a group of students—the Posse—who are accepted together, get training together, arrive on campus together, meet together weekly, and generally function as a sisterhood of support for one another. That was key to the conception of the program, as I’m sure you know—that a single scholar on his own could not flourish in a culture that was as new and strange as the university can be; he needed his “posse” to back him up.
How I wish that all applicants to BMC had not only the option of dynamic assessment, but could arrive here w/ the sort of support that is available to your posse.
Are there downsides to that sort of communal construction of what it is to be a student here? Can you talk about them? (As nia.pike talks, for example, about the problems of sisterhood at BMC?)
I’ve put you in a writing group with EP and vhiggins, who are both addressing issues of class; please read their papers and come to class ready to share ideas with them…
EP--
In our discussion after your last web event, I asked how women might overcome their fear of “feeling like a fraud,” and you replied, “feminist ideology, which asserts that women should be equal to those with more privilege,” helps women “ abandon their fear that their opinions are unimportant or that they do not belong in a certain space because of who they are.” I see you asking and answering a related question in this project: how might poor and working class LGBT folks address their exclusion and oppression? Is feminist ideology helpful here also? I’m surprised you don’t draw on Judith Halberstam’s work here. She would certainly say so--does say so in her critique of capitalist productivity as a guide to the normative life.
You do draw on a number of other compelling sources for your account of the affluence and commercialization of queer culture. At the Disability Studies conference I attended a few weeks ago, Eli Clare was one of the few voices speaking about accessibility issues outside the academy, reminding us repeatedly that the issues of accommodation we were addressing were couched in very affluent settings. You use his voice well in your essay, questioning the media portrayal (and queer experience) of the queer movement as “a middle- and upper-class urban party that opened its doors only to those who could afford it.”
Another thing that particularly heartens me here is your taking time to attend to questions of how the dynamic you describe might be changed.
As I mentioned to Maya, I taught an ESem a few years ago called InClass/OutClassed: On the Uses of a Liberal Education, which worked specifically to answer the question of whether schools function primarily as sites of socialization and normalization, reinforcing the status quo, or whether they might be explicit sites of intervention, mobility and change. So now I’m wondering how you see the role of education as a location for working with-and-through the questions you raise. How deeply do you think schools are embedded in capitalist structures, and/or/but how much might do you see them as sites for challenging such structures? (What is Bryn Mawr’s orientation, for instance, towards class im/mobility? Does the College imagine a certain class location for its students to eventually attain?)
For related explorations of class issues, see both EmmaBE’s description of the Posse program, and vhiggins on re-doing the structures of inner city schooling--please come to class having read their papers, and ready to talk!
did seroquel make you manic or restless? It makes me restless in which I take a different medication to control that.
Let me start off to say that I am a Registered Polysomnograpic Technologist. That makes me a sleep expert, but it does not make me a doctor. ONLY A DOCTOR can diagnose what type of insomnia that you have.
FFI is genetic and very rare. That means that you do not have it if no one else in your family has died from it. PERIOD. You just don't catch it. It is that simple. Now someone in your family may have died and not been diagnosed with it, but that is unlikely.
There are different types of insomnia. I will briefly go through them.
Adjustment insomnia is extremely common, probably the most common type of insomnia. Basically people develop this when they are having changes in their lives. This could be a new baby, a new job, being fired from a job. It can be caused by a death in the family or worrying about the economy. School exams and the list goes on and on. It is life's stressors. Usually once the stressor is not so stressful, the insomnia goes away.
Psycho-physiological Insomnia is also very common. This is basically when people are sure they won't sleep they won't. At normal bedtime or normal nap time sleep may be unable to be acheived. Quite often, this person sleeps just fine if it wasn't a "planned" sleep. Maybe falling asleep on the couch watching tv is real easy. Or sleeping during a car ride (hopefully not as the driver). Or maybe you are falling asleep in class. Lots of times people fall asleep on vacation just fine.
Paradoxical insomnia is when people complain of insomnia, but they really had none at all. Even during sleep tests people will say they didn't hardly sleep a wink, but in fact EEG's (brain signals) show that they did in fact sleep quite normally. People with this should keep a sleep diary for a few weeks.
Idiopathic Insomnia is probably the most detrimental (besides FFI). This is a Insomnia due to unknown causes. It is first diagnosed as an infant and continues on throughout a persons life.
Insomnia due to Mental Illnesses is quite common. Name the mental illness and there may be incidences of Insomnia. However, the Insomnia can cause the mental illness. Using depression as an example: Some people with depression can develop insomnias, and some people with Insomnia can develop depression. Kind of like the old age question: What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Many people just have insomnia because they have poor sleep hygiene. There are many recommendations for this. Just a few are: Go to bed only when tired, do not exercise heavily within four hours of your bedtime, do not eat within three hours of going to sleep. You can do your own web search of sleep hygiene. You made it here, so I am sure you can find that.
Behavioral Insomnia of Childhood is bad sleep hygiene for children and infants. But it is up to the parents to provide this. This is when parents don't set limits. It could be something like letting your child have that one glass of water, or letting your baby fall asleep with a bottle. It could be letting your child play for "just five more minutes" or leaving toys in the crib so they can entertain themselves. Some of these things are okay once in a while, but not every night.
Then there are insomnias due to drug or substances. They could be of the prescribed type or the illegal type. Just about every type of drug could cause disturbances. Just look it up on the web. There are way to many for me to even start naming. Even benadryl can cause sleep disturbances. I know from my own experience, benadryl gives me great restlessness, so much so that I tell health professionals I am allergic to it.
Insomnia Due to Medical Condition is as stated. Certain pains and aches like arthritis or perhaps an allergy in which you itch all night and are up all night scratching. Or it could be just the fact that a person is aging.
Go back and read my post for 06/20/2013. It touched on a few of these topics, but it HIGHLY STRESSED to GO SEE YOU DOCTOR. Maybe you need a specialist even. You go to the doctor and let them handle it. Don't keep coming here trying to diagnose yourself with FFI or any other kind of insomnia. Maybe it is apneas waking/keeping you up. Or possibly it is your bladder waking keeping you up. Maybe indigestion is waking/keeping you up. Maybe it is the TV waking./keeping you up. Maybe it is the dog waking/keeping you up. Maybe your _________ (fill in the blank) is waking/keeping you up...
I'll say it one last time DON'T SELF DIAGNOS, GO SEE YOUR DOCTOR.
Mary Reynolds, RPGST
It is possible that Eva's mind could exist outside of that conventional thought pattern--I've wondered why she wouldn't want to defend herself too. Perhaps she exists too heavily inside her own mind to even consider self defense through verbalization? Can we have conversations with ourselves that are just as relevant and useful inside of ourselves, or do we only make "progress" while participating in society? I'm beginning to think that perhaps we shouldn't expect responses out of people. But in my opinion, you can't really debate that silence achieves nothing in the long run. Humans have indeed developed to be together, to interact in groups. I don't really know how to reconcile the feelings of being an 'outlier' when I choose to be silent on an issue. Part of it feels like I just have a private life inside of myself that is similar, but not the SAME as the life I live with others, outside of myself. I just don't think that it's a bad thing to have that distinction.
A. (2008). Solitary Confinement Facts. American Friends Service Committee. Retrieved November 9, 2013, from https://afsc.org/resource/solitary-confinement-facts
B. Grassian, S. (n.d.). Psychiatric Effects Of Solitary Confinement. Retrieved November 9, 2013, from http://law.wustl.edu/journal/22/p325grassian.pdf
C. Eastern State Penitentiary: Overview Of Its History. (n.d.). General Overview. Retrieved November 9, 2013, from http://www.easternstate.org/learn/research-library/history
D. The Enlightenment. (n.d.). The Enlightenment. Retrieved November 9, 2013, from http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/enlightenment.html
E. Larson, D. (2013, September 24). The Atlantic. The Atlantic. Retrieved November 9, 2013, from http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why-scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/
I think that this is an astute point. When I read the novel there was a sense of there being an absence of time. It was hard to understand what kind of time she was using (queer time, crip time) at different times but I think that she actually did use a combination of different kinds to bring the reader into Eva's mindset. For me it was hard to get away from trying to put parts of the novel in normative time. I could accept that the book was not on a linear timeline but I still tried to put it in the sense of past and present, I thought the present was her time in prison. I agree by doing that even in queer or crip time it is still trying to make it normative. We are still defining and setting up expectations. It seems in Eva's Man for Eva's mindset that she does not have a sense of time. For us as the readers to try to define it takes a little away from the experience of understanding and following along to her stream of consciousness and the fact that for her time may not exist at all.
Very interesting and scary. I have believed for many years that most large corporations most money market/stock market concerns and many if not most politicians and lawyers fall under this category. Which means our retirement accounts healthcare and even our laws are controlled by these people to whom we do not even exist. I see this almost daily where if they see money in you they are your best friend if not then they wont even give room in a hallway for you to walk because you do not exist. I don`t feel we can just pleasantly coexist with people who would take your retirement and cause your early demise to enlarge their obscene fortunes.
Its the most scary this I've ever been through. Just glad to know I'm not alone.
Adderall does not give people with ADHD an advantage over people without ADHD. Just because you've been "diagnosed with ADD" doesn't mean that you know how bad it can be. Adderall doesn't make me motivated at all. I'm more lazy with my school work now than I was before I started taking it. Adderall gives me the ability to pay attention, the same ability that a normal person has. It definitely doesn't make me want to open my books and start studying.
Just had the scariest experience of my life. Fell asleep and immediately I was in a state of paralysis. The weird thing was that i was in a dream in a dream and when i would get out one state of paralysis I would go into another.. I dreamed that I was screaming at the top of my lungs trying to push over my pool table to wake me up and something put its fingers in my mouth and choked me.. there was a light shining in my house and would not go away.. I was running from something.. the weird thing is I kept waking up and would literally blink and go back into this world.. scariest night of my life.. I do not wish this on anyone..
Please Please for the love of god, i know how horrible and offensive this may be i have no idea what kind o person you are, but if you are unable to get help, donate your body to science, im not asking you to suffer. and prion disease only effects a small amount of people, but its so hard to treat, in part so few specimen to study.
ofcourse this is your choice.
there are a plethora of "real men" who don't contribute to the torture and murder of billions of animals annually. Do some research, learn about nutrition, open your eyes.
Carl Lewis, Dave Scott, Brendan Brazier, Patrik Baboumian, and many other world champion endurance and power athletes are vegan. As well as a few players in the NFL.
is that a serious question?
The reaction to Eva's silence seems to make others in the novel uncomfortable. It seems to puzzle them that someone would want to withhold so much hurt and pain. Until one can put themselves in the situation they wont realize the power silence can have. As an outsider reading this novel I still feel uncomfortable especially with her silence. Although it may be empowering it seems as though it would have been even more empowering if she told her story so others can understand her, show empathy and possibly relate on some level. I totally agree with you and the questions your asking about silence because it seems as though there isn't ever a right answer to the true definition of "silence."
For God so LOVED the world.......
His love is eternal. Nothing you can do can change what Jesus did for you and me. I am 43 and am still batteling with this weakness. I love God and He loves me. I have overcome this battle and fallen so many times BUT the Holy spirit told me this one morning when I was in the shower crying why I kept falling to this deed( hope this sets you free like it has me.) is anybody living or past wiggly sin? Do you think it is possible to get to the point where we stop sinning. The truth is this - NO. ( here comes a smack in the evil ones face) No, no one can be so holy as not to "stumble" and fall. it is writen no one is without sin..... If it was possible for man to stop sinning, then Jedus did not have to die on the cross.
!!!! even Jesus fell a few times carrying the cross, BUT HE GOT UP EACH TIME AND KEPT ON..... When you fall, get up and run towards Christ not away.... He understands. His grace is sufficient. ........
hi C.Saul and other IH sufferers
I have been diagnosed with IH and have been on bed rest for 3 weeks, drinking lots of fluids and caffeine. I do not feel those terrible headaches when I get up since starting the bedrest, but I do occasionally get the dizziness (vertigo), light-headedness, blocked ears, numbness in hands and face, and twitching in face. My first day of bedrest started in a clinic where i lay flat with IV fluid and then stayed for 1 week at home with strict bed rest. The following 2 weeks I've been on bed rest, but I do get up more often.
I wondered what happened to you after you wrote this post as you mention you got some symptoms except the headaches after the 2nd blood patch. I would like to know if by my getting these symptoms it doesn't mean I am not healing, as I do not really want to go through the blood patch road.
Anyone have any advice or personal experience, I would love to hear from you.
I agree with you! Hang in there and keep trying! We have one daughter through IUI and have been trying for a second for over a year now. I took various fertility meds for 6 cycles, with 6 failed IUIs. I am baffled as to why I can't get pregnant again. Age? God? Stress? If I hear one more person say, "if it's me a by to be..." I'll scream!
TRY VITAMIN B2 ALONG WITH MAINE COAST KELP GRANULES (HIGH IODINE CONTENT)...I HAVE STRUGGLED FOR ALMOST 15 YEARS AND THIS HAS WORKED TO MINIMIZE THE ODOR ALMOST 80% TAKING IT IN THE LAST 2 WEEKS. ^_^ HAPPIEST TIME OF MY ADULT LIFE...IM 28 YRS OLD :) :)