Talk Hard!

By Ed

Probably one of the most challenging times in a student’s life is high school, that transitional time where everyone argues that each choice you make will directly impact whether you get to go to a top-notch college or end up living in a dumpster.  Beyond the academic pressures of completing a public education, high school students planning to enter college have to take a bevy of extra tests, enroll in extra-curricular activities, and hold down external employment.  All in an effort to try to have the best possible image of yourself to put on college applications. But at the same time every high school student I’ve talked to is also trying to figure out what they want to do when they get into college.  Having been through the process, and having worked for a major university now for over eight years, I have a few tips to make the process a little less madhouse.

First, prior to your senior year in high school, probably the middle of your junior year, you should do a little looking online and read up on a handful of colleges you might like to attend.  Emphasis on schools you would like to attend; ignore advice from “helpful” people on this subject and ignore those magazine rankings.  Read up on the schools’ programs, look at pictures of each campus, see if any of them look and sound interesting.  In particular look at the sections on campus life, student activities, and the surrounding community.  You will be spending around ten to sixteen hours in classrooms per week, true, but you’ll be spending around sixty to eighty hours a week doing other things outside of class.  Read up on those too.

Second, if you find a few schools you really like, read up on a few broad majors that might catch your eye.  Ignore suggestions or demands you focus on “valuable” majors, whatever field of study you enter into is one you will have to enjoy doing for four years.  You might change majors, you might find you aren’t enjoying the field you started in, heck you might even not be that good at it.  I started in computer science and ended up in history, both because I loved history and because I was awful with computer programming.  But read up on a few fields that interest you and then email whomever the webpage lists as the “undergraduate advisor” or, lacking that, the director of the department.  Explain your interest in the program, that you are looking around, and ask what sorts of activities and classes the department looks for in potential students.  You will probably get a boilerplate answer but within that boilerplate might be some clues to things that will help you stand out a bit as an applicant.

Third, and finally, when it comes time to apply for college, spend a bit of time thinking about the essay you are going to write.  It does not need to be brilliant but it should speak to whatever passion made you want to go to that university.  Believe me, when reading those essays the admissions officer will be impressed with fine grammar, but even more impressed with an essay that actually sounds enthusiastic instead of blandly interested.  In any case though, good luck and don’t fret; most people who try to find a spot in college can make it in somewhere and the name on the diploma is not the key to success many people make it out to be.

Today ZenHabits has an article about dealing with money in a relationship that I recommend people read. I think these are good things to think about when talking about money with anyone, whether it’s your boyfriend or girlfriend, your best friends, your parents, or yourself. The important things include discussing priorities, being honest about what you’re spending and what you want to spend money on, and planning. Oh, and talking. Talking is important. Even talking to yourself (by way of making lists and reviewing what you’ve spent money on and what you want to get and how much it costs).

When you’re a teen these days you start to receive offers for credit cards in the mail. I recommend you accept one and start learning about how to manage money. If you take a part-time job so you actually have some money to play with, that’s even better. Having a credit card is useful for a few reasons. It’s convenient, the bill gives you a way of reviewing your expenditures that spending cash doesn’t offer (unless you keep receipts for everything), and using credit improves your credit rating if you do it responsibly, which will help you qualify for loans in the future.

The downsides are that you have to pay your credit card bill (at least the minimum payment) every month, on time, or you will get charged fees and your interest rate will go up. And you will get charged interest for any balance that you don’t pay off in full each month. Also, having a credit card can mean that you are able to spend more money than you have to spend, more than you can afford.

Most people would list that last as a positive aspect of credit cards, but really it’s a very dangerous thing. If you get in the habit of spending more money than you have, or than you’re going to have by the time the bill is due, then you may fall into the trap of maintaining credit card debt. Consumer debt is costing millions of people millions of dollars per year and making bank executives richer, all because people don’t learn to save and then buy instead of borrowing against money they don’t yet have. Then once you have debt it’s easy to just keep adding to it while ignoring how much it’s really costing you. In addition to the actual cost of fees and interest rates, there are the opportunity costs of what you could have been earning on that money if you had posted it in a savings account or CD and earned interest on it and then spent it, instead of spending it first and then paying that interest to somebody else.

In general, you want to stay aware of what you’re spending and whether or not the money you spend today will frustrate you by preventing you from buying something more important to you tomorrow. Don’t just spend what you have while you’ve got it, plan. Open a savings account and keep money there until you are ready to buy it, instead of keeping it as cash, which is easy to spend without thinking. And be careful about debit cards. Overdrawing a bank account can wrack up fees even faster than not paying a credit card off, sometimes.

After you have a credit card for a year, request an annual overview from your credit card company, which can probably categorize your expenses for you and send you a report. Look at your expenses and be honest with yourself. If you’ve bought things you wanted and are happy about, and paid your bills on time and in full, pat yourself on the back. If your interest rate has gone up, call the company and ask them if they’ll change it back down. Often they will. All it takes is talking.

Being aware of your spending habits will also put you in a better position to talk to other people about them. If your parents or your partner criticize your spending, you can respond from a position of knowledge. And that can make it less difficult to talk about it. People avoid talking about money for all kinds of reasons, but you shouldn’t feel ashamed about it - don’t feel ashamed about having it, needing it, spending it, or saving it. But do be aware of your own and others’ values having to do with it. Figure out what your values, habits, and priorities are, and talk about them to the people who are important to you. They might even be able to help you achieve your goals, if you talk about them.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports today that a middle school health teacher (*gasp*) answered student’s questions about homosexual sex, oral sex and masturbation. These topics are outside the core curriculum and a group of parents are so frustrated at being limited to administrative repercussions (the teacher has been put on paid leave pending investigation) that their representative in the Utah state house is introducing a bill that would enforce criminal penalties on teachers who deviate from state law governing sex education.

I look at this sort of thing and think this is why a teacher friend of mine warned me people would sue me if I wrote this blog. And here’s why I’m writing it anyway:

Thursday morning, students put up signs at the school supporting the teacher that read, “We were the ones asking her questions.” 

I believe students deserve answers in an educational setting, as well as outside of one. You deserve answers. Ask away.

Talk hard, students of Utah.

Bleach is a caustic chemical you are not advised to get on the outside of your skin, much less pour down your gullet.

If you swallow bleach, you could get chemical burns in your esophagus (the inside of your throat) and your stomach. It could even kill you (though that is more likely with industrial bleach than with household bleach). You are advised to call 911 and or 1-800-222-1222 to get help from a poison control center if you mistakenly ingest bleach. For crying out loud, don’t do it on purpose.

Why am I saying this? An Associated Press article indicated that some teens in Florida believe that drinking a cup of bleach will protect you from HIV. Other rumors have been known to suggest it can help you pass (or foul up) a drug test.

Except insofar as drinking bleach will make you so unhealthy you are unlikely to care about any of the rest, and will therefore not participate in activities that lead to STDs, pregnancy,etc, for a while, bleach is not a prophylactic medicine (prophylactic means something that prevents or protects). Bleach isn’t a medicine at all. It is a cleanser, but it is very harsh and not recommended for use on skin, so don’t wash your genitals or douche with it to protect against HIV either. It will burn you and still not prevent transmission of the disease if you’re otherwise participating in dangerous behavior that exposes you to it.

If you use drugs with needles and syringes that you share, you can and should use bleach to disinfect those implements. Wear gloves while doing so. It can also be used to disinfect clothes and surfaces like counters and floors.

Please don’t try to use it to disinfect the body.

Thank you.

So, did you hear about the 5-year-old who got voted out of his class?

The boy in question is, according to him mother, in the process of being diagnosed with Asperger’s, which is a high-functioning form of autism. The Asperger syndrome itself has a range from low-functioning to high-functioning, which generally describes how socially, physically, and cognitively coordinated the subject is. I happen to have two friends with Aspergers right now, both of whom are fairly high functioning, though they still have to interpret many social signals cognitively.  What helps kids like that is patient feedback, such as explanations of (among other things) why other kids might find their behavior disruptive and unnerving, and how to act differently and interpret social signals.

What does not help is having the majority of a classroom express such feedback in a horribly humiliating session of “Tell Alex why you don’t like him,” which is what his teacher did. She has since been transfered; further punishment is currently up in the air.

If you have a student in classes with you who tends to rub people wrong and get in fights, try finding a moment just before conflict, when you see it coming, and head it off by explaining, in clear language, why you would have chosen to act differently. What input you took note of to come to that conclusion.  What rules and social mores were at work in your head. Thinking about things that way might even be interesting to you. I had a friend in middle school who had fought a lot before he joined my class. I remember one day being surprised that he did not understand the basic concept of the social contract - of picking up after yourself because you hope someone else will do the same for your environment if they spill something, and because spills - of drinks, of a packet of pens, whatever - can be dangerous if left unattended to.

The person in question may not welcome your input. But then again you might be surprised.  My friend started picking up on notions of social utility. He still bugged other people (especially for the month or so when he found it hilarious the way some girls would get upset just because he stood near them - social psychology and personal space at work) but he didn’t get in fistfights any more.

Try talking things out, and your whole school experience could become more interesting and less violent and disrupted. Try not to be mean about it. Let them know you want the best for them as well as yourself. Mean it. Talk hard.

It’s a gorgeous day here and I hope everyone out there has time to relax and connect with friends and family.  Don’t forget our soldiers who are far from home, as well as those who have served their time and are home and those who served and died. No matter what your service is, being away from home and loved ones is not easy. Those who have died for our country deserve our remembrance.

You can easily send an online message of support, or contact your local VFW or other organizations for more information on supporting both current troops and veterans. Ask your family about family members who have served. Go to your local cemetery and see how many graves have flags on them. Talk about what it means. Those of you who are too young to simply remember must first learn about the past in order to do so.  I hope you will take the time, today and throughout your lives.

“It made me want to be thirteen again right now and reading it for the first time.”
-Neil Gaiman

“A rousing tale of technogeek rebellion.”
- Scott Westerfeld

Little Brother is worth reading for a lot of reasons. It’s about teens, and school, and authoritarian jerks and using cool technology hacks to get around surveillance, and to organize things like sudden rallies and rock concerts and city-spanning games. But it also has a romance angle, and it also has one of the best first time sex scenes I have ever seen written, capturing the awkwardness and the complex emotional experience it can be. And I particularly congratulate Mr. Doctorow for including condoms in the scene! With spermicide!

All authors should follow his example. At the risk of major spoilers (which I am somewhat alleviating by taking out the names), I offer Cory Doctorow’s sex scene to you now. Two virgins and an Xbox. (No, not like that. In bed.):

When we got to [her house], I had no urge to plug in my Xbox. I had had all the Xnet I could handle for one day. All I could think about was [her]. Living without [her]. Knowing [she] was angry with me. […] never going to talk to me again. […] never going to kiss me again.

She’d been thinking the same. I could see it in her eyes as we shut the door to her bedroom and looked at each other. I was hungry for her, like you’d hunger for dinner after not eating for days. Like you’d thirst for a glass of water after playing soccer for three hours straight.

Like none of that. It was more. It was something I’d never felt before. I wanted to eat her whole, devour her.

Up until now, she’d been the sexual one in our relationship. I’d let her set and control the pace. It was amazingly erotic to have *her* grab *me* and take off my shirt, drag my face to hers.

But tonight I couldn’t hold back. I wouldn’t hold back.

The door clicked shut and I reached for the hem of her t-shirt and yanked, barely giving her time to lift her arms as I pulled it over her head. I tore my own shirt over my head, listening to the cotton crackle as the stitches came loose.

Her eyes were shining, her mouth open, her breathing fast and shallow. Mine was too, my breath and my heart and my blood all roaring in my ears.

I took off the rest of our clothes with equal zest, throwing them into the piles of dirty and clean laundry on the floor. There were books and papers all over the bed and I swept them aside. We landed on the unmade bedclothes a second later, arms around one another, squeezing like we would pull ourselves right through one another. She moaned into my mouth and I made the sound back, and I felt her voice buzz in my vocal chords, a feeling more intimate than anything I’d ever felt before.

She broke away and reached for the bedstand. She yanked open the drawer and threw a white pharmacy bag on the bed before me. I looked inside. Condoms. Trojans. One dozen spermicidal. Still sealed. I smiled at her and she smiled back and I opened the box.

I’d thought about what it would be like for years. A hundred times a day I’d imagined it. Some days, I’d thought of practically nothing else.

It was nothing like I expected. Parts of it were better. Parts of it were lots worse. While it was going on, it felt like an eternity. Afterward, it seemed to be over in the blink of an eye.

Afterward, I felt the same. But I also felt different. Something had changed between us.

It was weird. We were both shy as we put our clothes on and puttered around the room, looking away, not meeting each other’s eyes. I wrapped the condom in a kleenex from a box beside the bed and took it into the bathroom and wound it with toilet paper and stuck it deep into the trash can.

When I came back in, [she] was sitting up in bed and playing with her Xbox. I sat down carefully beside her and took her hand. She turned to face me and smiled. We were both worn out, trembly.

“Thanks,” I said.

She didn’t say anything. She turned her face to me she was grinning hugely, but fat tears were rolling down her cheeks.

I hugged her and she grabbed tightly onto me. “You’re a good man,[…]” she whispered. “Thank you.”

I didn’t know what to say, but I squeezed her back. Finally, we parted. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she was still smiling.

You can download Little Brother for free, or buy it at the usual outlets.

Things people believe at one time and teach other people often turn out not to be right, and are hard for other people coming later even to believe. Take the word hysterical, for instance.

It came from the Greek word for uterus, Hystera, and an ancient Greek medical theory that spoke of a woman’s uterus drying up and shrinking from lack of use and then wandering inside her body and strangling her lungs from inside. In Victorian times, some doctors believed that perhaps even a fourth of all women suffered from female hysteria, a “disease” (no longer recognized by modern medicine) that was caused by sexual deprivation in particularly passionate women. The devices designed to treat hysteria were the ancestors of the modern vibrator, so I suppose we have reason to be thankful for these beliefs, but it just goes to show what an entire establishment can convince itself of, when starting from a certain point of logic.

In modern usage, the word hysterical refers to acts marked by excessive or uncontrollable emotion, especially unfounded fear or panic, e.g, “mass hysteria was caused by (insert medical or terrorist scare rumors here)”. Beliefs about medical problems with with one’s own body that don’t actually exist are more often called psychosomatic than hysterical these days, though the term can still be applied.

Next time someone calls you hysterical, try answering, “My uterus is right where it should be, thank you very much!” and see what they make of that!

by Ed

{This week has involved a series of topics that came up when I asked people what advice they’d been given that turned out to be completely wrong. One person responded with “The skimpier the outfit, the sexier.” Ed had already written a post on that topic, so here it is!}

I’m an old fogey at heart, well at heart and in age as well, and it amazes me to see the extent to which people are willing to go today to advertise that they are sexy. Both men and women, everything from skirts too tight to move in to shirts that show off the man fuzz, people are always trying to advertise their sexual potency. On the one hand it makes perfect sense, we are all trying to land a partner and it feels good to walk around and think “Damn I’m sexy” but there is a fine line between “Damn I’m sexy” and “Hot damn I’m desperate.” Crossing that line is sadly far too easy, especially today with the growing emphasis on sexual displays in dress and attitude at younger ages.

Don’t get me wrong, back when I was in high school girls wore tight fitting clothes to catch guys’ eyes. Well, other guys’ eyes; I was a mega-geek so I just got to look and drool, but my point remains valid. Even back in the prehistoric early 1990s people dressed to attract the other sex, and even back then dress could easily send the wrong message. Part of what makes for a really sexy presentation is the hint of sexuality, the underlying promise of sexuality, without actually showing off all the goods at once. Letting other people know you are attractive with clothes that fit your body well and show it in a good light: excellent plan of attack. Wearing clothes that if they slipped a quarter of an inch would land you in jail for indecency, well that just makes you seem desperate.

Try this out sometime: get a DVD of an old black and white film, preferably something with Humphrey Bogart in it, just pop it in and watch. Bogart has the distinction of being probably one of the sexiest men in history when he wanted to be and he did so in a subtle manner; his eyes conveyed passion and raw sensuality without being over the top. That is the kind of smoky, mysterious sexual power you should aim for when attempting to attract someone; the sensual, the offer of possibilities, not the all-you-can-eat-buffet in advance. One of the dying arts today is real flirting. Real flirting is a way of making someone else feel attractive without pressuring them into feeling they have to repay the debt in kind; real flirting is the art of saying “You’re yummy” without a chaser of “Can I hump your thigh?”

Always remember you are someone and, because of that, you have value. Buy clothing that compliments your body, no matter what shape it is in; being sexy starts with looking as good as you are, not as you wish to be. Carry yourself knowing that you are sexy, catch someone’s eye and give a small smile. Show off your awesome sexy side without over selling it. If they are really interested they will come over and try to catch your interest. If not, at least you get a moment of knowing that you caught their attention. If you do it right, you’ll leave a smoking impression no matter where you go, no matter what the time.

Following on the last post and cleanliness, smell, and taste, perhaps I should point out that cologne and perfume also do NOT taste good. A friend of mine told me the other day that when he was in high school everybody was recommending that guys spray cologne on their junk and it wasn’t until he got with a girl and she asked him if he knew how bad it tasted that he found out that was not a good idea.

It had not occurred to me that anyone might recommend that, but if you’ve received that advice, I can assure you it’s not really helpful. In fact I encourage you to disregard it entirely.

For the most part, so long as someone stays clean on a regular basis, I like for my partners to smell like themselves. They smell better when they’re happy or turned on and worse when they’re sick or stressed, but I wouldn’t want them to mask their scent from me. When you get into the question of skin I might lick, my feelings are that much more negative about chemicals like perfumes and cologne.

Also, there’s the small note that chemicals burn sensitive skin. This same friend had a story about another friend of his who tried spraying this commercial scent directly into his bare bottom, spread to expose the most private parts back there. The shock and pain startled him so much he bolted forward and smashed his face into the wall and had to go on his date walking a bit weirdly and with a bloodied nose. This experience, I dare to suggest, was not so positive.

So give yourself, and your date, a break, and lay off the scent in your nether regions. And possibly other places too, until you know the other person will like it. It may be that your love interest likes perfumes and colognes on other body parts, and it’s possible they don’t, or even that they have a bad asthmatic or allergic reaction to it.  Want to know? Ask them. It’s that talking thing. Try it.