Why Herro Dere!

Hi! I'm so horrible about the upkeep of this blog. Meh. Well, it is what it is and I suppose that something is better than nothing.

I can't believe it's November already! Tomorrow, the 7th is the anniversary of my last discharge from the Cooperstown Psych Unit! That was my most recent hospitalization in a series of five. That's right! Tomorrow, it will have been a year since my last stay. I have not had a year outside of the hospital since my first hospitalization in Feburay 2011. So yay! It may not sound like a big acheivement, but for me it most definitly is.

Other News:
I've come to the realization that the Dual Degree wasn't going to happen. In case you don't know, Dual Degree would mean graduating with two BAs (or I guess two BSs or a BA and a BS...). It means taking 30 extra credits outside the two majors, which were Theatre Arts and Psychology. I've kept the Theatre Arts major and now am going for minors in both Psychology and French. So I should be graduating, hopefully, in 2016. Which is nice, financially!

I don't remember if I announced this here already, but whatever:
The Breakfast Players (the group I did Hamlet with) has gotten the rights for "Waiting for Godot" for August 2014. This production will benefit the Lustgarten Foundation. In addition, we will be presenting a collection of original monologues, one acts, and a short play. These productions will benifit the charity To Write Love on Her Arms.

And...I think that's about it. I will try to have some more upkeep on the blog!

Packing for College: A Love-Hate Relationship

College Tetris!

A Bunch of Good News

So, here it is. The post that you've been waiting for.

I will be returning to Hartwick in the fall.
Take a moment to think about it. When a child starts school at 3 or so, the biggest break they really ever have from school is summer-about two and a half months. On September 1 when I return, it will have been seven months and one week, exactly. That's a long, long time. But, as most of you know, I have not at all been wasting my time.
I used the (unwelcomed) break from school to do something really amazing. I produced, directed, and acted in "Hamlet". This was a project far beyond the scale of what is even asked as a senior thesis for my theatre major. Not only that, but it was entirely for charity. Over $1,500 will be donated to the Lustgarten Foundation (I do not have the final number yet).

My Personal Appeal to Hartwick

Hi everyone! It is with great joy that I tell you that the letter to Hartwick asking them to allow me to return for the Fall 2013 semester has been sent! I also faxed a copy, so there's no way things could get messed up or arrive late.

They only asked for a letter from my doctor, but I gave them one thing more. I also sent a personal appeal to them, and I thought I might share it with you all.

~~~

"One of the most vivid memories of January 25th 2013, the day I was told that I could not return to Hartwick until the fall semester is Gary Robinson explaining that to return I must do as my therapist at home suggested. 'If they say to get a job, you get a job,' he said. I remember thinking that there was no way I'd ever be on the campus I love again if that was the case.
"In Westchester County, one of the most affluent counties in the nation, there are three types of people in my age bracket. Category I is the people who have finished college with a four-year degree meaningful to the career they wish to pursue. Category II is the people who, at best, finished high school, but most of these people are drop-outs. Category III is the most unemployable, and also the category I belong to. It is people who finished high school and have some college experience. This group is not qualified to do meaningful jobs like Category I is, and are over-qualified to do the menial minimum-wage work that Category II does.
"This categorization is not something I made up to validate not having a job. I applied. If I had gotten any interviews, here's how I think the conversation would have ended: 'you got in to college, why aren't you taking classes?' It's a question that I do not want to give the answer to. I'd have two options that involved honesty: a) I am on a medical leave-which would be followed by the questioning what I have because I don't look sick, or, b) I am on a mental health leave-and that answer wouldn't do because people don't trust the mentally I'll to do anything, even though my mental illness would not really impair my job performance.
"Allow me to dispel something that may have caused some confusion-my therapist did not ask me to get a job, he asked me to find something to occupy my time, be it classes at the local community college, volunteering, etc. Naturally, my first avenue to explore was getting a job because life is a lot easier with an income. I searched until the middle of February-when I found something a whole lot better than a job.

"On the last day of classes for the Ardsley High School class of 2012, we were told that one of the most beloved teachers in the whole district had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I had had the miraculous luck to have this teacher, Rod Baird, that year until he left just after February break. My relationship with him changed my life and I can easily say that the news that he would in all likelihood be dead within a year and there was nothing to be done about it troubled me more than any other student I knew. Eleven days after returning home from Hartwick I received the news that Rod had passed away. Many of his past students came from all across the country to attend his memorial service. And it was on my way there that I thought up what I'd do for the next six months.
"Mr. Baird, like all the other twelfth grade English teachers taught Shakespeare’s 'Hamlet', but no one taught the play like he did. With him, even the most delinquent student (I use that term loosely) not only was interested in the lesson plan, but understood the complex existential points it made.
"The day of his memorial I was texting my friend, Nico, who had also hand Mr. Baird and was going to give me a ride home after the service. I punched the two characters that would dictate my life for half a year: '2b'—short hand for 'to be'—and, like any good Theatre Arts major, thought of Hamlet's most famous soliloquy: "to be or not to be, that is the question, weather 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take up arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing; end them"- when he stops the play midway through to ask "what's the point?"
"I can't say exactly in what pattern the synapses fired to give me the idea, but I would spend the next six months preparing a production of Hamlet: the most revered play in the English-speaking world as a fundraiser for pancreatic cancers one of the most under-researched cancers.
"If you have never produced a play, you may think “how could doing a play take six months?”, but if you have produced a play you aren’t asking any questions, you’re just in awe that a student barely in to her BA Theatre Degree could pull this feat off. My answer? Carefully, and with the support of the community.
With a work like “Hamlet” which is in the public domain, it’s easy to get a hold of a script. What’s not easy is that the script, uncut, amounts to about four hours, and not only does no one want to sit through a four-hour play, but no actors want to perform a four-hour play. Shakespeare even admitted that Hamlet is long-in Act III, Polonius says “this is too long!”, and right he is. I cut the script from about 150 pages to roughly 110, which is no easy task as most of the play is about Hamlet’s lack of action in avenging his father’s death and that must be preserved.
"Secondly, I had to find actors. I had decided that I would play Hamlet because I was directing and I could to that, and I didn’t trust anyone else with the role. So that left me with more than twenty other roles to cast. I with some sleight-of-hand, I was able to have a cast of just 11 people. I can’t tell you how, because I don’t really know—that, and magicians never reveal their secrets. Although the cast was a bit more like a splint as it slowly shifted from what I had established in March to what we will perform with next week, it was hardly the most difficult part of making this happen.
"The most difficult part was finding a space to perform in. I searched the area, and two weeks before rehearsals started at the end of June I decided on the Ardsley Community Center. The ACC decided on me, too. As the production was being done by students (and mostly Ardsley students at that) and because it was a benefit production, the Town voted to waive the rental fee-which would have been close to $1,000.
After that, I needed to find a place to have the rehearsals. With the support of the Village of Ardsley and the community center, I approached the town library. They too waived the cost of the rental of their community room.
"This brings me to yesterday, when I picked up the props that the after-school private theatre group I attended are lending to me, also free of charge. And later today I will go to the Independent Grocers to measure the pallets they are donating to us that we will make the stage with. This coming Friday, the local newspaper, The Rivertowns Enterprise, is doing a full length article about the production. Tomorrow they will be at the rehearsal to take photos.
"Doing all of this won’t earn me a cent. But it has, and will continue to give me something much more valuable than any amount of money. It has given me, and countless others, closure for Rod’s death. Even though there was nothing we could do to save him, doing this is our way of showing that this shouldn’t have happened; that it’s not okay; that no community should have this type of loss. I could have sat by and done nothing to improve the lives of those living with this cancer, which has less than a 20 % one-year survival rate and a five-year survival rate under 5%. I am using theatre as it is meant to be used: as a device to bring together peoples of all different backgrounds to see what we all have in common.

"The production is not the only thing that I have spent my time with, though it is what has taken the vast majority of my time. Aside from therapy, I started a blog about my favorite television show, Doctor Who, and the site has become a rather big fish in a small pond. It has had over 14,000 views since I started it in mid-March. My material on that also caught the right person’s eye landed me a freelance journalism gig as a Doctor Who correspondent for the international entertainment site WhatCulture.com. WhatCulture! is comparable to a magazine, but it is completely online. It is based in England, where I hope to move after I graduate from Hartwick. I have yet to publish anything there, mostly because Hamlet is taking up so much of my time. The site is visited by over one million people around the globe every month.

"I sincerely hope that this has given you a perspective of who I am and how I am more than Mood Disorder (NOS) and Personality Disorder (NOS). I hope it shows you my potential as a student now that I have received treatment for the illnesses that hinder me. I hope it shows you how much of an asset I could be to the college. But overall, I hope it shows you what I know now more than ever to be true: I am so incredibly ready to return."

Advice for Incoming Freshmen

Dear Class of 2017,

This fall, you will embark on one of the most marvellous journeys life has planned for you. You will make new friends, discover new interests, and, most importantly, learn who you are. But only if you let yourself.

When I went to college, I literally knew no one at my school. I am literally the third graduate of my high school to attend my school, but that isn't always the situation for everyone. So for me, I had no choice but to make new friends at school. If you are going to a place with people I know, my advice to you is to try to not be with them for the first month or so. Chances are that in the new environment you will meet people that you may even like more than your old friends from high school simply because there is a larger pool of people. I don't mean that you should abandon your old friends (part of my attempt to not do that is this blog!), but expand!

These new friends that you make will probably have a whole set of interests that you haven't explored, especially if you haven't declared a major. I went in to school with the Theatre Arts half of my major decided, so I can't really speak to being undeclared, but I do know people who went in thinking of being a math major and met a religious studies major and loved what she was studying so much that he ended up a religious studies major. For me, a lot of people in the Theatre Arts major like Doctor Who, and that is how I got in to it. Now, I run a relatively popular Doctor Who blog (TARDIStyle.blogspot.com). I never thought in a million years that I would have started to like the show (I could write a whole separate post on why, but I wont, at least not now) and it quickly turned in to something I love. 

This above all, to thine own self be true. Some say that college is a chance to reinvent yourself. And it is, in some sense. But that is not to say that you should dress goth when you're a hipster, listen to rap when you're in to punk rock or fake an accent. For me, my "reputation" in high school was no where near accurate to who I really am, and college was an opportunity to align me and who people think I am. You won't have another chance to do this, really.

A great change in who you are is about to happen, probably for the better. You have to let yourself become the kind of person you want to be.

Sincerely,

Ley

Fall Fears

By this time next week, the letter asking Hartwick to allow me back as a student for the fall semester will have been sent. With that comes multitudes of emotions-the principal of which are joy and fear.
I know I have not written about what happened that made me leave the school of my dreams in January, and don't hold your breath for a post about that. You'll die. Those of you who know me well know what happened and those of you who don't, well, have fun speculating.

The joys thinking about returning to school brings me fill me with bubbles. Yes, bubbles. I feel like fizzy soda, which is a sharp contrast to how I have felt lately. Without Hartwick, I feel like I just brushed my teeth and then drank orange juice which I proceed to spill. But the next week or two of not knowing, I think, will result in me doing my hamster impression. The equations are quite simple, really:

and 

but

A quick thanks to Jenna Lowry for assuring me the ± meant what I thought it means.

See? that's not too hard is it? It can't be; I (mostly) figured it out and I didn't even finish Algebra 2/Trig (usually second [but sometimes third] year of high school math)
The proofs behind the first two are so easy, I won't do them. But allow me to explain the third equation. That's what this whole post is about!

First, there are the fears that all people in my place would have regardless of major.

1. Will my friends have replaced me in my social group?
2. It's not my first year, so I'm not a freshman, but I also don't have the academic credits to be a sophmore. What does that make me? A freshmore? That sounds like a bad brand of deodorant. A sophman? No, that's not good either; it makes me sound like a guy who can't get it up. There is a poll to the left-should I say Sophman or Freshmore when people ask what year I am? Vote :3 <3
3. Do people think I died? Are they gonna look at me like I'm a ghost? In my defence, this has happened to me before. After I came back from a month and half of being in a hospital in 2011, some of the people in my school actually thought I had killed myself. Yes, I killed myself and there was no funeral or anything. True story, bro.
4. Does everyone know what happened? Are all the returning students gonna think I'm psycho or something? Were there rumours after I left?
5. What to do if people ask what happened and I don't want to tell them. Well, that's not a worry. I'm going to tell people that I went travelling with the Doctor and he messed up the return date.

Then, there are the questions unique to being a psychology major:

1. Will my peers in the major try to analyse what happened to me?
2. I declared my psych major at the end of the fall 2012 term, and haven't taken the basic level psych classes (psych 110 and 111) yet. What will my peers think of a [enter class name here] in their freshman level psych class?

Lastly, (and my biggest concern) there are worries unique to the theatre arts major.

1. When I left, I had to drop out of the play. Am I ever going to get cast in a mainstage again, or will the directors worry that I'll have to leave again?
2. I failed my Intro to Theatre class last fall (a fluke) and wasn't there to take it in the fall, so I will probably be taking it this fall, and last time I checked the department head was teaching the class this time. Will he judge me? I don't want to mess up what is pretty much my first impression with him.
3. In jTerm, I gave my all to the class I was in. I wanted to prove to people that I am serious about being in theatre and the like. I fear that may have been my last chance to show that I'm not a joke and I may have ruined it.

~Conclusion~

Many of these may sound irrational, and maybe they are but, they are real and legitimate concerns I have. They may all revolve around what other people think of me, but let's face it: no matter how much we may say that we don't care what everyone else thinks of us, it does change the way we think of ourselves and our cognition in general. I had a high-level idea of how things were going to be when I came to Hartwick last fall, because no one knew really anything about me. But now I may be about to enter an environment where my reputation proceeds me, and that reputation may be based on he-said-she-said things that went around seven and a half months ago. It may be true that I can't wait to prove my rep wrong, but what if I prove it right not even knowing it. I really have no idea at all what lies ahead of me, and that scares me more than AMC's The Walking Dead, which really scared me. But it probably was not the best idea to watch it at night home alone in a large-ish house right before bed. At least I had the lights on.

Oh, Hey, I Didn't See Ya There!

It's been a while since my last post! A month and a half! You could attribute it to the fact that absolutely nothing has really happened in my life since the begening of February....
I've started a new blog, about my new favorite TV show, Doctor Who. You can read it here: tardistyle.blosgpot.com
So yeah, that's been up for a month as of the 18th, and is just 4 views away from 1,000. Isn't that nice? Yes,  yes it is.
That's really it. Other than that I finally was able to add Facebook plug-ins to my blogs.

Announcing.....HAMLET

In sixteen weeks, I will begin rehearsals for one of the most revered plays in the English language.
Two weeks ago I began preparations for producing one of the most revered plays in the English language.
In twenty-two weeks, I will perform the title role of one of the most revered play in the English language.

(see what I did there?)

"HAMLET, Prince of Denmark" is, the best, most human, living piece of work.
It is far from perfect. You learn this when you have to cut the script so its not a kajillion hours long. Shakespeare captured the human quintessence of imperfection in the work. What a piece of work is man! I'll speak more about this later. Perhaps a weekly musing on what I've discovered about the play that week.

Now, I know some of you are asking: "Gee, Ley, isn't that a lot of work, to produce, direct, and act Hamlet?"
I know you are asking this because some of you have asked this.

And to you, all those people out there who are completly corect, I say:
"Yes, yes it is. And, I am on a mandated psychiatric leave from school right now, so I have absolutely nothing to do. I have nothing but time right now."

I'm sure y'all have other questions, too. Like, ego trip much for casting yourself as Hamlet?

Yes, I guess, if you psychoanalyze the vashta-nerada our of it. The here are the real reasons:

1. Some of you may have noticed that I inhabit a very female body. Hamlet is male, so I don't quite see someone with breasts like mine getting cast as him. There. Candid. Scientific terms.
2. I would feel weird asking someone to play a role of that size.
3. Because I can.
4. If you want something done right, do it yourself.
5. I feel I have a great understanding of Hamlet. I relate to him easily already. Any person playing him explores their own darkness, and that is something I feel I need to do.
6. Because I want to.
7. I have a vashta nerada-load of time, and the role is massive and others are already concerned about the time commitment of this.

There. Seven reasons. I think that's enough.

There will definitly be more entries on this! It's tag is Hamlet. Click here for the rest of the entries on the play!

Oh, I almost forgot! Mr. Baird (I refuse to tell you who that is, use the handy-dandy search box to your left if you don't know) loved "Hamlet" and this production is in his memory and honor. After the production costs, all the money from ticket sales, etc. goes directly to pancreatic cancer research.

ps. The Vashta Nerada are one of the scariest things I've come across in Doctor Who, so it is in place of swearing. Click here for the TARDIS Data Core entry on these freakin' terrifying lil' buggers.

Rod Baird's Eulogy

Its possible that y'all are getting tired of me posting about Mr. Baird.

If that is the case, allow me to direct you to the X or the red dot in the upper right-hand corner of you screen.
No one's forcing you to read this.

That being said, this is possibly--but no promises--the last post completly about him.

This was written by Tara Baird.

Good Morning. Welcome and thank you for joining me today in honoring the memory of Roderick Baird.
For those of you whom I have not yet had the privilege of meeting, I am Rod’s middle daughter, Tara. My father may have referred to me as the pediatric nurse who lives in Utah.
Looking around this room, I am moved to see how many lives have been touched by my father. Yet to anyone who knew him well, this profound influence to so many comes as no big surprise.
Although tempting, I’ve decided not to stand before you and rattle off the long list of achievements my father accumulated during his life. Instead, I want to talk about who he was, which was far greater than what could ever be captured by a conventional resume of accomplishments.

It was his inner strength, insatiable curiosity, unwavering integrity, and most of all, his deep love and commitment to family and friends that defined his greatness.
This devotion to family was most evident in his union with my mother, Nancy. Their partnership was one for the ages, nearly defining the word. They were teammates with the shared goal of raising a loving family and conquering the unknown together, all the while, completely trusting in the other to have their best interests at heart.

Yet balanced with my father’s greatness was a profound humility. Upon diagnosis of this insidious illness, his response was not the typical why me? But instead, Why not me?
His love and lifelong study of literature helped craft his unique perspective of the world. Ever the philosopher, Rod approached each day as encouraged by one of his favorite characters, Vladimir from Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” to “Let us do something, while we have the chance!”
He strived to teach all of us to do the same. While a teacher by vocation only during the last decade or so of his life, in reality he was a mentor to many here in this room and here in spirit for much longer than that.
His amazing ability to challenge our self-imposed limits, tell engaging stories, and above all, share his intense passion for life, always left us wanting more. He inspired us all to “do something while we had the chance.”

Yet, it was his final lesson that may have been his greatest. He taught us how to overcome fear and uncertainty with dignity and grace.
“I do not want to go gentle into that good night. I want to rage against the dying of the light.”
It was with this last lesson that Rod Baird cast off, trusting us to use what we’ve learned to forge our own paths.

If there was anything that defined my father, it was his devout belief, that each and every one of us, possesses our own distinct greatness to share with the world.

Why We Love The Doctor: Part I

In November, Doctor Who will celebrate its 50th anniversary. 

This is the first instalment of a series of me being an existental geek.

(For reference, I’ve so far only seen the Ninth and Tenth Doctors and the next episode I’m going to watch is “The Pandorica Opens”. I don’t like the Matt Smith portrayl that much yet, and David Tennant is, as they say, "My Doctor")

~~~~~~~

The Doctor has three great enemies  the Daleks, of course, the Cybermen, and the one people leave out, himself. He is his own worst enemy.

A Dalek

Both the Daleks and the Cybermen have had their emotions removed.

The Daleks are a race bent on exterminating all things not Dalek. They’re little ugly one-eyed octopus looking things inside a robotic casing made of Dalekanium They are not impossible to escape—its just extremely very not likely. The creator of the Daleks took out their emotions to make them better fighters.  

A Cyberman

The Cybermen, on the other hand  are not alien. Sure, they were created in the alternate universe, but they are native, so to speak, to Earth. They are humans who have been “upgraded” by having their brains put into a metal suit and having emotions neutralized, because the man who created them found emotions to be too painful.

David Tennant as The Tenth Doctor

The Doctor’s most dangerous enemy is what attracts us to the show. Not only are we watching a man fight threats beyond our imaginations, we are watching a man fight himself. The Doctor is the last of his species. Although he is an alien (Gallifrey, in the constellation Kastaberous) he is exquisitely human. He looks like a human (or, as he puts it, humans look like Time Lords as Time Lords came first) As he puts it, being a Time Lord is “A sum of knowledge. A code. A shared history. A shared suffering” (The Doctor’s Daughter). Being a Time Lord was having a connection with your people that all humans long for. (People=members of the same species, relatively generic, human=Homo sapien) The Doctor had all of that, and he blames himself for its destruction in The Time War. He had it all, and now he has nothing at all. He grasps out for a companion all the time, knowing that they can stay with him forever, but he cannot stay with them forever: at the start of the most recent revival (2005), the Doctor is already 900 years old. No human can possibly live that long. He is truly and utterly alone in the world.

In Loving Memory of Mr. Baird

Yes, I already posted about his death, but as a mentor of mine, I think I can post twice. That, and it's my blog. This is his official obituary.

~~~~~~~

Roderick A. Baird II of Pelham Manor, NY, educator and author, passed away on February 4th with dignity and grace surrounded by his loving family. He was 62 years old.

Born January 8, 1951 in Utica, New York, he was the son of Jane Baird and the late Roderick Anthony Baird of New Hartford NY. He was a loving friend and older brother to John Baird, Billy Baird, and Andrea Gilbertson. He is survived by his wife of 37 years Nancy, their 3 daughters Megan, Tara and Lesley and a granddaughter Genevieve. He is also survived by son-in laws John Sutton and Paul Tusting and several nieces and nephews

Rod had a long, successful, and fulfilling career. He spent over twenty-five years in the magazine business. He worked for The New Yorker from 1975 until 1988 in the advertising sales and marketing departments, rising to National Sales Director. In 1988, he founded SalesConcepts Associates, Inc., a national publishers rep firm that develops markets for consumer magazines. In 1996, looking further for an outlet that reflected both of his passions for athletics and media, Rod created The Natural Athlete LLC, a sports event-marketing group and magazine, The Natural Athlete. In 2000, he sold his majority interest in these companies to pursue his real passion, teaching. For the last eleven years Rod Baird has been a high school English teacher at Ardsley High School. His experiences in the classroom inspired his book, Counterfeit Kids: Why High School Students Can’t Think. Rod Baird was also an avid skier. He was a mogul freestyle coach and ski instructor at Stratton Mountain VT for more than 20 years. He has inspired kids of all ages to fall in love with skiing, to conquer their fears and most importantly to have fun. Rod Baird lived his life to the fullest and used every opportunity to learn and teach life’s lesson to his students.

Rod was an accomplished entrepreneur, educator and author but most of all he was a loving family man and friend.

Rod Baird graduated form New Hartford High in 1969, and in 1973 from St. Lawrence University with a BA. in English and German. He spent his junior year abroad attending the University of Vienna, Austria. He was a proud brother of the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity. It was his passion for literature and writing that led him to earn his MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College and latter obtained his teaching certification from Columbia University Teachers College.

A Little More Homework to Do

     IT MUST HAVE BEEN some crazy stunt to teach us about Theatre of the Absurd. After all, our teacher not showing up for three days during that unit, thus forcing us to do mindless sub-assigned busy work, would be just the thing to give a “real life example.” Mr. Baird never missed school.

     February became March, and then came the “permanent sub.” We knew it was something more severe than a funny little joke. We knew it was bad. Rod loved to teach. He sold a prosperous business to be able to do it. It was not something he was doing for his livelihood. And he was good at it, too. He made everything accessible, including himself. I cannot tell you how many times I spent lunch with him discussing how God is sick or dying, if still alive at all. He would rebut, as a devil’s advocate, and I would ask him why God has let children be raped. His suggestion was that these things all happen for a reason, so there must be a reason why my Existentialism in Literature teacher, Mr. Roderick A. Baird II, died of pancreatic cancer.

     I denied it. It could not be true. It just didn't make sense, at all, why he could be suffering. And I had just stopped cutting myself, in February, when he left— it must be as Beckett said it: the tears of the world must be in a constant quantity. And that is when I got angry. It must be my fault; after all, if I had not stopped my self-injury, there would not have been a tear to go to him. Or was it my theory proving right? Is it true that once a person knows how the world works on an existential level that they are despised and tortured by God? Every day, I am thankful that I never shared that theory with him. It seemed it was my fault that he had fallen ill. There was nothing to be done.

     I cried at night in bed for hours before sleeping, and once I fell asleep, I was awakened by The Dreams. Of holding him in my arms one last time. Of just seeing his face. Of his death. I was again in the undertow of depression.

     A person with a psychological history such as mine rarely believes in God, and I am no exception. But I prayed to God. For the first time in my life, I went to church. I asked God to heal him. I asked God to make it okay. I entered a hypomanic phase, believing that God is good and He would make it okay. As quickly as it came, it left, leaving me in a dysphoria.

     We, being myself and my psychologist, are finding that I do not suffer from just the symptoms bi-polar depression. I have a severe non-verbal disorder and ADD. Some put me on the autism spectrum  I exhibit traits of post-traumatic stress disorder. I live with Borderline Personality Disorder. And as it is that I have been experiencing the slings and daggers of these illnesses since a very young age, the weekly hour—which is never really enough—in a therapist’s office has been a source of reason and a time to reflect from a hectic life.

     Some people have epiphanies in the shower: I had this one on the couch of a PhD. I can learn more from Rod’s death than his life. I when I first told him I knew of his diagnosis, he asked me to make him a solemn promise. I promised him that when my depression came to haunt me, that I would push it away like the ugly intruder it is, and remember how much he loved being alive. That is his dying wish for me. To be happy. A man that only knew me for six months, I realized, in some capacity, loves me. It seemed a foreign concept. But there is more meaning than that to his death.

     Rod has finally assigned me some homework—something he was not exactly fond of in class. The assignment consists of this: I must learn what he wanted to, but will not be there to teach me. I must learn how to be truly happy even when there is immense sadness and tragedy in my life. I must learn the philosophy of Plato, read the works of Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Sartre, perform the lines eloquently penned by the Bard and the mysteriously perfect ones plays Beckett. I must, or at least attempt, to understand, why he had to leave the Earth so soon, and why it is going to be okay. After all, I know that a person cannot leave this earth until they have done what the Universe put them here to do.

~~~~~~~

Rod Baird was born on January 8th, 1951 and 

passed with dignity and grace surrounded by his 

loving wife and daughters on February 4th, 2012.

     Rod Baird has been a high school English teacher for 

eleven years. He is a graduate of St. Lawrence University. He earned his MFA degree in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College and attended Teacher’s College/Columbia University.

     Before teaching, Mr. Baird worked for The New Yorker for many years, then founded Salesconcepts Associates, Inc., a national firm that develops markets for consumer magazines. Later he started The Natural Athlete LLC, a sports event-marketing group. In 2001, he sold his businesses to become a teacher.

     Mr. Baird is the author of Counterfeit Kids: Why They Can't Think and How to Save Them, available on Amazon.

A memorial mass will be held on Saturday, Feburary 16th at 10am at 

Our Lady of Perpetual Help, 559 Pelham Manor Road in Pelham Manor, NY.

In lieu of flowers, his family asks for donations made to: 

The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Pancreatic Center or The Stratton Mountain Clinic

It Could of Been Worse

Hey there! I come bearing good news: I am conscious! This may seem like a given, and it usually is. But I went all syncope Tuesday morning. Take note: eating, in general, and especially when one takes 522mg of medication in the morning, is invaluable. Having hot chocolate with said 522mg does not count. Wearing one's glasses is also an important thing. If these instructions are ignored, a disaster beyond your imagination will occur.
I really love my jTerm class, Puppetry in Performance, taught by local professional puppeteer,  John Ryan. I literally give the class my all. And then some.  I woke up on Tuesday at 9:10, and class is at 9:30. Challenge Accepted. I threw on some clothes, took the afore mentioned 522mg, and was on my way to class. I got there, a little late, and got right in to the warm-up. After that, we grouped up for the activity that day (making animal puppets out of newspaper and tape), and that is when my hunger and lack-of-food induced headache came. That kind that's right above the eyebrows. I couldn't quite mask it that I was in a bit of a hell. Malissa noticed, and so did my amazingly spiffy friend, Etta. Etta gave me a CliffBar, because she is so spiffy, and I went outside (the class is in the Lab Theatre) to nom on it, and got a drink from the super-cold water fountain, too. After about three minutes of upwards-spiraling anxiety, I realized that I was probably about to vomit. I ran through the Lab (the shortest way to the closest bathroom), and pretty much right as I got in the stall, yes-sir-e, I puked. The next thing I know, Malissa is patting me, "Ley, can you hear me?" I let out a light groan, and heard three sighs of relief. One belonged to Malissa who was kneeling just behind and to the side of me, one belonging to Sarah, who was standing above me, and the other belonging to John, who was sitting in front of me. It's pretty lucky that the stall doors in the Lab bathroom don't lock anymore, because I had passed out. Malissa said that campus safety was on the way, and moved to the side as Sarah, who has a fair amount of medical training, found my pulse, because she knew that the EMTs (who were also en route) could use the information. She and Malissa went to elsewhere-that place that I don't know or care about-and John stayed with me, and he let me hold is hand, and reassured me even more, saying that it would be okay. Malissa and Sarah returned from the land of elsewhere and helped me walk out of the bathroom and into the dressing room (remember that this is all in the Lab). Pretty soon after, Campus Safety arrived, and Sarah and John went back down to class. Malissa stayed with me until the EMTs arrived, when she stepped aside to let them take vitals and blood sugar. I rejected the ambulance, but the EMTs went to the hospital to start processing my information. Campus safety took me to the ER and waited until they took me. I was almost petrified at the prospect of doing the ER alone. Just after they left, Brandy, the social worker I see at the campus health center came in. She knew how scared I was to go it alone, and decided to be there with me. Isn't that awesome? It did make the whole thing a lot easier. They did an EKG (I'd had that done once before--but this time they put sensors on my ankles--apparently that's not a new thing...) took blood (I surprised Brandy with how calm I was), had me pee in a cup (one of the things that I absolutely detest most), and did chest x-rays (I wonder, boobs must look quite...interesting on those). Brandy and I chatted while they processed everything. They gave me saltines (of which I am quite fond of) and ginger ale (its a highly advanced medical treatment), and since I was there through the time when normal human beings eat lunch, I had lunch too (which was surprisingly not bad). After four or so hours, they decided that my body is just weird and likes to faint and let me go.

At least a chandelier didn't fall on me.

Me and My Generation

THERE IS A STRANGE PHENOMENON with my generation: the Maskbook phenomenon. My peers and I have an exoskeleton that is so opposite to ourselves. 
The therapist who I started working with on September  3, 2003 didn't realize the severity of the depression I developed over that that time until February 14, 2011, the day I was first admitted to a psychiatric hospital for what ultimately has been diagnosed as borderline personality disorder  
We, as a generation, can be off the radar until we crack. Sometimes the crack is just cleavage in the rock, like me, and sometimes it is earth-shattering, like Adam Lanza. All of us 90s kids and the millennials have been able to present a different version of ourselves online: the version we want to be: the version we can't be. 
I hid an eating disorder for over ten years. In July of 2007, I was 5'4" (just a tad shorter than I am now) and weighed 90lbs. The only reason I was able to break the cycle was because I was put on a drug that was also an antiemetic. 
Adults see the media that we do, the Victoria's Secret models, girls think they should look like, and boys think they should look like Taylor Lautner or Eminem. They don't realize how much it affects us until their daughter gets knocked up, or is too light that they no longer menstruate or their son has one too many sports-related concussions, or gets shot in the street. 

Every member of iGeneration is at war with their sense of self.

Thank you, Twenty-Five!

I've only been back in my room for maybe an hour or so now, and I'm already thrilled to be back. My room is just my room, which, yes, means that I am still sailin' solo sans roomie...well, I have Cappuccina, who is kind of like a roommate in that she's loud at night when you really want her to be quiet, but other than that, she's a hamster. A very good hamster, I may add.