GRE Math and the trauma that accompanies it

I actually sat down to study last night, when I gave up on trying to sleep. The quantitative section wasn't as bad as I remember it being... maybe I just got more comfortable with it. I wish I could be in the "I'm just casually trying out these problems" frame of mind while doing the actual test too. My only real major problem with these sort of tests is that there's too much pressure. Pressure to perform (in Math related endeavours) really debilitates me.


I read a psych study once about how this fear of performing poorly in Math is quite common in girls, and this tendency to be afraid leads to actual poor performance because of anxiety during the test. 


You'd think knowing this sort of thing would help, but unfortunately the study didn't talk about how girls with math-anxiety should battle it. Bummer.


On that note, I'm considering doing an Ed.D (Doctor of Education) instead of a PhD. If I did, one of my research papers would definitely involve looking into the relationship between family members' verbalized expectations of a child "मेरा बेटा engineer बनेगा" type nonsense and children's confidence in particular subjects. I'm more interested in the confidence, and the kid's own assessment of whether he/she is good at a certain thing, rather than the performance itself.


I've definitely known a lot of parents to have ruined their kids, and left them with all kinds of complexes that extend well into adulthood. Something as simple as talking about your children in a certain way, at a certain age, when the child can hear you, can really affect the development of long lasting anxiety related to particular domains. That brings us back to the loop of death: [anxiety --> bad performance --> anxiety] and so on.


My new career goal is to make sure that people need licenses to raise kids. It's WAY harder than driving. 

Singapore

I've written to Dr. So (professor at NUS) telling her that I'm on board, and asking for some more details. I've also broken it to my mom, who was hoping I'd be around to help her get through the stress of my brother's college application process.

If all goes well, I should be out of here by the 25th of this month. I arrived at that date quite arbitrarily though so I could leave much earlier or much later too :P

Fire Exit gig has been preponed to the 16th. Preponed is not a word in Standard English (SE) but is accepted in Indian English (IE), did you know?

Apart from the research study with Dr. So, other Singapore plans include:

- Learning Sign Language - Primary sign language used in Singapore is Signing Exact English (SEE 2). Since I'll be doing research in gestures anyway, this is a great time to learn a sign language, and I have been wanting to for a while. This should be a great asset in the long run because a lot of the new insights in language development research are coming from studying deaf children and communities.

Signing Exact English (SEE 2) Manual Alphabet

- Volunteering at the Autism Association - Again, a population I will invariably work with at some point. I actually tried volunteering with them when I was living in Singapore but that didn't work out, and then when I moved back to Delhi, I tried with the association here too, and that didn't work out either. 3rd time lucky?

- Get a diving license - Malaysia or Thailand are as good a place as any to get a scuba-diving license - cheaper than most of the world and only about 5-7 days for the beginners course. I CAN'T WAIT!!

Things are taking shape

I've been asked if I want to do backing vocals for another gig with Fire Exit, on the 18th of this month. It's at a restro-bar called "Attitude" which incidentally is walking distance from my house.
This pushes my studying-for-the-GRE plans even further back - not that I'm in the mood or anything.
I've said yes, since I did have fun the last time, and this now gives me a chance to learn from the mistakes I made the last time around - not so much about the music itself, but just all the things that come with being on stage in front of a big audience, in a large room with poor acoustics.

This also means more practices in Delhi, which is just so much nicer than being stuck in Gurgaon all day.

Meanwhile, things are taking shape regarding my Singapore plans. The plan is to go to Singapore on the longest visit visa I can get, crash with whoever is willing to have me, spend all the money I have left over in my Canadian bank account on meals, transportation and possibly clubbing, and work on a research project that has just started, but will be defined as we go along. The professor has her main idea already, and I've worked for her before, but ideally I want to get there and earn her trust before the planning stage is completely done, so that we can determine the exact direction of the study together, at least with some input from me. 


As things stand right now, she has said she's willing to give me a lot of responsibility and independence, so overall it's sounding like the sort of thing I had in mind when I decided to take a year off. I will probably only be able to be in Singapore for about 3 months, so as of now I'm waiting to hear whether this is a problem for her.

Singapore Art Museum, as seen from SMU

This also means that I'm not going to look for a job when I go back to Toronto, since this project will definitely require a commitment past October. October visit to Toronto, in general, will only happen if I get permission to do convocation in October (probably will, but still waiting on this). So the trip will probably be for about 2 weeks, of which I plan to spend 3 days in London, if I can. 


In other news, my brother's resume kicks my resume's ass, and he's 6.5 years younger than me. *Proud but Envious*

Recent Hard Rock Gig

The singing at Hard Rock thing actually happened extremely spontaneously. I was with an old friend of mine and his girlfriend, just chilling, on my birthday and was generally excited to hear about their band, which I'd heard has been doing very well in Delhi, and across India in fact, in the last couple of years. Mostly as a joke I slipped it in somewhere that I'm in Delhi for a while and I miss singing, so if they ever need anyone to sing different parts to their current songs, I'm fully available to do that. They're also quite chilled so they were like ya ya come.

So I started going for practices and the gig was about 3 weeks later (last Thursday). I have to say that it was just so great doing music on stage, after so long. The last time I did that was at the ICA Formal at York, but when you do Rock music to Desi crowd at York, except for the cool Karachi rocker kids, almost everyone else looks at you blankly. So Hard Rock was totally different.

My singing, I realised, was extremely rusty, and generally not up to the mark. On a normal day I would never sing a wrong harmony or miss a note, but at Hard Rock I managed to do both. I was definitely under practiced though since we had only one mic for vocals in almost ALL our practices. To make matters worse, I really am more than a little deaf in one ear, so the feedback monitors just weren't loud enough for me and I was singing through muscle memory more than by ear, which is obviously less effective.

Usually I would be very upset about making ANY mistakes, but the whole night was so much fun, and so different from what Delhi life has been like so far - so much closer to what I'd like my actual life to be - that I couldn't care less :-)

Stage at HRC, Delhi. The Drummer and Tabla player can't be seen

I met many beautiful people on Thursday, as you're bound to at any 'event' in Delhi. Too bad most were with their significant others or *WAY* too young.

Chilling. check. Studying. enhhh

Technically I was supposed to be studying for the GRE, but that's taken a backseat for now. Between insanity, messed up sleep cycles, not having a room of my own, and obsessive fear of not living up to my own standards, I was just never in the mood for it.

My new plan is to get back to it eventually, after some healthy fun things.


Of course if you really look at it, I've been having a little too much fun since I've been back from Canada. Fun things I've done since I've been back include:


-5 fun days in the Maldives
-5 fun days in Sri Lanka, immediately after
-2 full days of Delhi sight seeing for the sake of my Bombay friend
-2 day trip to Jaipur for a fairly fun wedding - involving a HEAVENLY bathtub
-Random 2 day trip to Amritsar
-Lots of music practices with Fire Exit
-Hard Rock show with Fire Exit
-Lots of catching up on fiction reading
-Watching Buffy (it wasn't just a phase - my father has officially been proven wrong)
-Countless hours of Facebook stalking, in order to feel caught up with everyone's lives. 
-Lots of sporadic Delhi chilling - involving ice cream, puchkas (golgappas), all kinds of drinks, sheesha, hotels, fountains, chai, and most importantly: chappals, which are the ultimate relief after living in Canada for so long.


So how? 

Spike and Giles enjoying a cuppa

List of things to worry about this year.

Taking a gap year after getting a degree is not how most people go about things, and for good reason. It feels like going backwards in too many ways, but since I'm not ready to work, and I'm not ready to study, and I'm not ready to do anything because I'm too far from figuring out what I want - I guess I figured I might as well do it.

New things I now need to worry about:

Whether to continue staying in Delhi, where money is not an issue because I am bumming off my parents, and where I am gradually losing my sanity OR move to somewhere with lots of friends who can let me crash on their couch on a semi permanent basis. (if Sujesh can do it, why can't I?)

Couch where Sujesh made his home for over a year. Sometimes I borrowed it. 

Whether to go back to Toronto and get closure, since everything happened in such a blur towards the end OR just forget my life in Toronto ever existed, and move on with life (since life in the next place I move to is bound to be drastically different)

Whether to apply to Masters programmes, which give me more flexibility and less forced commitment, but also less money OR apply to PhD programmes, which are harder to get into, involve 5-7 years of commitment, but if you do get in give more money in most cases.

My room needs a makeover

My room needs a makeover. Everything is yellow, green, orange and other bright colours that I feel like I'm too old, or too emo for. I can't feel at home in this room, till I get rid of all the furniture and start from scratch.

Room is way too happy, chee. Notice collage in the background.

Unfortunately I'm too lazy to ever actually do this. I think I'll just leave, so I don't have to deal with all the "this is supposed to feel like home but doesn't, oh no" issues that are keeping me up at night.

Then again, if I leave here, something else will keep me up at night.

Literally, there are collages on my wall that are so old that I actually don't recognize some people in it. And there are lots of ex boyfriends in them, and it's really weird. It's actually pretty funny, you can spot the ex-boyfriends by looking for the pictures that stand out as being bigger than the rest. I had this annoying habit of getting lovey-dovey pictures printed in slightly larger sizes, back in the day when pictures were still printed.

My new plan is to make a collage of scrap-book type fragments of things that remind me that I've made difficult choices before, with little support from others, and have later been extremely grateful to past me for trusting past me's gut. Hopefully that will help me get through this year.