I switched up my medications and I’m feeling a lot better now, although it being summer really helps. Everything is better when the world outside is warm and sunny!
I’ve been looking into trying Spravato (Ketamine) as well, although the bureaucracy to actually get to trying it is no joke.
Thanks for asking!
Thanks, it’s my first time linking to my own sequence. I fixed the link to the first post in it.
I like your approach! The only caveat I have is that the students taking these requirements could be anywhere from 9-17ish, so they won’t necessarily be able to investigate the tools and concepts in depth the way they might in a college course.
Curious to hear your thoughts on my sequence.
I’m going through a theoretical redesign of American public education, and I’d appreciate the feedback from a teacher’s perspective.
I completely agree—often the hardest part of designing a system is what to do about willful defectors.
Hopefully some of this will become more clear as I keep posting, but the basic gist is that students have to be allowed to fail. We should make every effort to accommodate those who need help and rehabilitate those we can, but in the end if a student is determined to not learn/disrupt other students, they get failed and kicked out.
If there are actual crimes going on, I’d imagine the police should be called.
If a student is genuinely acting in bad faith—attending a class and ruining it for their peers—then they should be removed from the class and sent to a counselor/social worker.
Otherwise, “disruptive” is a difficult thing to pin down when there’s no actual instruction to be interrupting.
They both tend to limit my (already limited) tolerance for it and make it much harder, although the depression makes it harder in general while the anxiety only makes it harder in higher-stakes situations, such as at work with a boss.
Your post is another interesting perspective I haven’t delved into as much as I’d like. It reminds me of the parts work some of my friends are fond of—taking something negative in one’s brain and asking, “but how is this useful? What is it doing for me? What is this piece of me trying to protect me from?” and then running with the result.
I’ll have to give it more thought.
Fixed, thanks.
There’s a joke in here about getting negatives wrong when depressed...
You’re welcome! I’m glad it was helpful.
I also just looked up monotropism—I haven’t run across the term before—and was like, yeah, that seems about right for me.
Interesting.
You’re welcome!
Call it...unintentionally intentional? It makes sense to me that the mechanisms between them are related in some sort of Unified Field Theorem of the Mind sort of way.
I also have mental metaphors involving thermal mass and emotions...
Huh.
As a fellow procrastinator, I’m right there with you. I’ve found, for instance, that downers (alcohol, barbiturates, etc.) can allow me to be productive if anxiety is the cause of the procrastination, but if it’s depression than the downers don’t help at all.
Sure—I’m always interested in hearing other perspectives.
What’s your secret?
Is it yoga?
(I bet it’s yoga.)
Not being very sad all the time is good for you, 10⁄10 recommend.
Words to live by, right there.
I think everyone has some experience with anxiety and depression; the alternative is literally ataraxia. The distinctions come with things like, “is it transitory or chronic?” and “is it ruining your life?” I’m glad you’re not in that state anymore, though.
With regards to anxiety, I’ve had thoughts recently along the same track; maybe I’ll write them up at some point. It’s almost a case of “the dose makes the poison”—some amount of anxiety is natural and can motivate you, but too much and it prevents you from doing anything.
That’s a fascinating description of your own state, and I hope you’re working through it with your own resources.
For the post I was focusing more on a behaviorist approach to depression and anxiety, explaining what the resulting state/actions were by metaphor of how it felt internally, but I do also get the low mood and the feeling that everything is terrible.
I think I also get the ‘lose the ability to perceive gradations of color’ thing, which I think Scott’s talked about before.
(I also had a nihilistic phase I grew out of. There’s only so much ‘depressed French people complaining’ I can take!)
Thanks for the response!
I agree that the social services model is simultaneously good and bad. The issue stems from schools having to contend with two very different problems:
How do they deal with children from poor backgrounds who don’t want to learn? How do they deal with idiots, special needs students, assholes, troublemakers, etc.?
How do schools deal with gifted children? How do they deal with students who are smarter or learn faster than their peers?
These kinds of students need very different kinds of environments to thrive.
Paul Graham is representative of 2., and so the social services model is pretty useless to him. But there are plenty of children who can benefit enormously from it.
Future posts go into the school-as-education model, which is more suited for students from group 2.
As for designing from the outside in, it’s a cool idea, and I’d love to read someone’s attempt. I decided to try it from the inside out because I’d never seen it done before in the modern age.