Well, yesterday was as the subject implies... bittersweet. Not too much to talk about during the day except that I have to make a 3 ft by 4 ft poster board for a statistics research project due this coming Monday. Bleh; weekends have definitely evolved from times of a escape to times of punishment for those of us who lack good time-management skills. Actually, all my teachers have piled on stuff for next week; announcing test dates that are very soon, announcing a BIG-ASS project, and assigning journal responses to lengthy short stories! So, all these unexpected things in addition to the already scheduled stuff like other tests and online homeworks that take forever; I'll be having a lot of fun hah. One thing I am thankful for is that organic chemistry does not have all these unexpected bits of work due and the next test isn't for about three weeks. Needless to say, I still have to put in about an hour or two a day of organic chemistry studying to secure a good grade on the ACS nationally standardized final and have been probably averaging 15 minutes a day! Doh!
If only I grew up in Collierville where I hear an insane proportion of the children have "learning disabilities." How odd that all these children with "learning disabilities" are straight-A students now at the high-school and college level. It's a miracle! Capitalism works! The wealth in that area has allowed them to discover a way to cure these poor rich kids of their debilitating "learning disability"! Not exactly. Actually, there is no cure because there is no medically significant problem. They just treat the symptoms with freaking SPEED! Yep, I'm on another rant about how much I hate adderall, but the theme needs to be tweaked (no pun intended) to include all the forms of ADHD medicines that are just relied on for artificial motivation and determination. There's no strong will to learn in these kids, it's all external; the drugs make them that way! There's no struggle, so there's no drive, so they don't pay attention. It's not that they can't, it's just they don't want to, but their parents want them to say they go to a pediatrician (who, in my opinion, has no right to diagnose this condition due to the massive over-diagnosis of ADHD) and get started on Adderall, Adderall XR, Ritalin, Concerta, Cylert, Dexedrine, Desoxyn (which IS actually METH!), and now the new ones like Vyvanse (time-released amphetamine pill, as in all day ridiculous drive to do everything that needs to be done) and Daytrana (a time-released Ritalin patch that actually has fewer side-effects, which translates into MORE PSYCHOLOGICALLY ADDICTIVE)!
So the parents are so happy that their kid gets better grades and the kid is so happy because they are making their parents happy! Yay! So great! So basically, once this kid gets doped up on speed for long enough, he develops these intense interests in subjects that he was not nearly as interested in in the first place. Then, across the train tracks, there's this other kid who is interested in the same subject quite naturally, but life does its magic and as he grows, time-management becomes an art that needs to be practiced in order to preserve its effectiveness. So, on one side you have a kid who pops a pill and does not even have to think about time-management because he's on auto-pilot from all the dopamine (motivation / reward / reinforcement) and norepinephrine (focus, attention to detail, physical strength/speed) that his little pill has caused to be released into the synapses of his brain. The OTHER kid does love the subject, but at times gets exhausted or just interested in other things. These are perfectly natural occurrences that have happened for all time prior to the invention, mass-production, and mass-distribution of speed for the poor little rich, unmotivated white kids.
Yes, many people stop taking ADHD medicine after finishing school, but what was the net effect of these little pills? It could have caused this person to get the job because his GPA was 0.1 points higher than this other person's because the ADHD person could put in so many more hours of auto-pilot study time because, miraculously, if you wake up tired, groggy, depressed, confused, or just a little bit "off", all you have to do is take the pill and all those silly things can go away. Normal people deal with life as it is; "ADHD kids" are given a much larger capacity to succeed then they should. This disparity in almost a mirror of the state of our health-care with respect to race; how such a higher proportion of lower-class people are in poor health. The poor remain poor and go through life without speed; though interestingly enough, poor white communities have the worst meth problems. Hmm, so everybody thinks meth is the devil's drug and so on, but the FDA gets to say who gets to become a legal addict and who doesn't.
Many people that are aware of the wide-spread abuse of ADHD medicine will go to the doctor and fake ADD/ADHD symptoms to get the medicine. This is a gray area with me because it kind of reminds of trying to solve problems of violence with more violence which just doesn't work in the long run, but these people know that other people are doing it to get ahead and this is a dog eat dog world so you better strike the iron while it's hot. So you go to the doctor and stuff and blah blah blah act like you don't even know what's going on because you're such a freaking bad case of ADHD that you don't know how you'd function without some help from the Messiah's prescription pad and the golden DEA number that allows the pharmacy to give you a known drug of abuse. Problems arise: You must exhibit the symptoms (of course), and you must also seem like someone that does not abuse or SELL drugs. Hmm, who sells drugs? Oh yeah! Black people and mexicans! Who can get into trouble if they are caught writing prescriptions to someone who sells the drugs? The doctor! So, who has a natural tendency to be racist and discriminatory in the midst of protecting their job? Right, the doctor! (You're getting pretty good at this, I might add) Who has the money? White people. Who wants the money? Everybody. Who wants the drugs? Everybody. Who can get the drugs you go to prison for? Minorities. Who wants to go to jail? Nobody. Who actually goes to jail if they are caught with illegal drugs because they can't afford a fancy lawyer? Minorities AND all poor people; especially poor minorities. So now you see how there is much incentive to get your fix by going through the motions and buying into the ADHD phenomenon. You stay out of jail. You do everything that needs to be done, leaving plenty of time for fun and games, and you don't have to be associated with those nasty blacks and those dirty mexicans to feel high. So now you feel morally superior because you don't go down on the corner and buy drugs like all those evil people do that like to feel good for some odd reason. You also feel intellectually and socially superior because you're climbing that corporate ladder so fast because your boss is so impressed with how much work you can get done in a day, and you'll argue a point into the ground because your ass is speeding so much that the only thing that matters at that moment is that you win and your brain just won't get tired and you won't get tired of arguing like the other guy who is simply leading a normal life and probably walking away thinking "Wow, that guy sure is something!" Nope, he's just a legal speed freak who is going to rule your world. He's going to rule your world because he got to a position of power by creating an unfair advantage for himself when he continued popping those pills.
There's such a huge market for this stuff, because it motivates people. Well, I guess I'm conservative in the way that I believe you should motivate yourself and not change the course of your life and consequently everyone else's life that you might have an effect on. Find what interests you; don't just go on auto-pilot! The world is going to be filled with people that reach these positions of power and influence in an area of study in which their heart may or may not truly lie. It's unsettling and now I'm feeling that normal human feeling of day-time tiredness because I don't pop speed pills. Wow, this entry looks like a speed freak who hates speed freaks or something, hah.
Anyways, the true point of this post was to say that the Quality Intern position at the Memphis Kelloggs has been scratched so my future employment status is in limbo. Ah yes, onto the good stuff; right before I read the e-mail from Kelloggs I had just went and seen Angela Davis speak at the Rose Theatre and it was amazing! The University of Memphis has a Podcast system (I didn't even know we participated in that!) and has an mp3 available of the speech! Here's the mp3 link: Angela Davis - episode recorded 04/02/08.
A lot of what she talked about influenced some of what I wrote today I guess; particularly about non-violence and prisons. So that's the reason I called this bittersweet. Awesome lecture followed by financial uncertainty. Alright, well that's about a five-page paper! I guess I am warmed up to go ahead and read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and write a response to it. Either I'll be warmed up or my brain will just be goo, hah. Just in case, might you spare an adderall? Haha. Goodbye peasants!
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