Blog 15

I took this picture a few years ago when the ice storm hit our city and every thing was shut down. I feel shut down again. I did all the research and wrote most everything, but at the last minute I seized up again, and shut down. Plus I ended up getting the flu like terribly back over the last few days. Way to make a girl feel like she in a hole.

Blog 14

Free style

!!!!!!!!!Graphic images!!!!!!!!!!!   

 just wanted to do a blog about self harming in the form of cutting. While the picture above is not me for many years it is what my arms looked like as it is with so many cutters. Cutting is one of the most prevalent forms of self harm the a person with BPD does. It is also one of the most easiest to go back to. It gives the person immediate relief from a variety of life issues, but is terrible in the long run. Cutting especially in people with BPD can lead to increased suicidal behavior, and when in a group setting can lead to new cutters or relapsed cutters. I can not begin to tell you how hard it was for me to stop cutting, and for the first time in years this year I relapsed and cut. It is very important to spread knowledge about self harm and give teens safe alternatives such a writing and other encouraging practices to express themselves.

BE HEARD, LISTEN! 

RAW:

Just to give some one who has no idea how hard it is for a person in remission I like to compare cutting to a person who has a drinking problem. I can not begin to tell you how hard it is for a person with a cutting history to read a book with a detailed section on someone cutting with out fantasizing about previous experiences, or see a picture and feel nostalgic and fall back into the idea of cutting will just let it all go. 

Blog 13

What will I gain?

What do I hope to gain. Well lets be totally stripped down for a minute. I used to be very good at writing, and I used to enjoy it.... A LOT, but I grew up, and out of writing, and into terrible panic attacks. AND now writing gives me a tight chest and headaches and breathing problems. Every time I take this class ( 3 now) I have a major panic attack by the end and have to go to the hospital because my family thinks I’m having a heart attack. SO my main goal the main thing I want to take away, is peace of mind at the end. I need this class to graduate, and I hope to do so after spring semester assuming I pass this class. I really hope to take away the knowledge that I can get through something that makes me feel so terrible. I want to know that I can do it. I have to know I can do it. Because honestly at this point I am almost done with my undergrad ( 4 classes away from graduating), and I don’t for me see any real life relevance for this class for me. Yes I will be writing many more papers on my road to my doctorate, and yes every paper will give me more practice along the way, but MY main goal, like I said, is to pass this class and not end up curled up on the floor feeling like I’m gonna die.   

Blog 12

Here is another video form Keira. Here she is speaking at Yale. It does not include the slideshow that she was using, and I wish it did. But it is a great talk. I see so much of myself in her.

Keira video 2

Blog 11

{{{{!!!!!!UPDATE STATUS HERE!!!!!!}}}}

Sooo, Web analysis, oh you sneaky cheeky little thing. I though you would be so easy and you tricked me. I knew what web sites I have wanted to use for this sense we first talked about the assignment. While I was doing my research for my I-Search I found some amazing communities online. While doing my research I have found the BPD is something that is not very often talked about, now why that is I am not completely positive I feel like it is because there is no real one sure fire way to treat it, and for that reason it is taboo in the psychological community. But again as I was researching this topic I found loads of online communities of people with BPD and those who live with people with BPD. I found this to be a sad thing that people with this disorder had to resort to chatting online, but it makes for some good webpages to do an analysis on. 

Blog 10

Response to Graff and Birkenstein

So the first thing that comes to mind after reading this is the Dresden Dolls. Amanda Palmer is one of my favorite song writers and one of the most convoluted that I know. Her lyrics sound like they come from a paranoid schizophrenic with BPD, and because of this she is a hot topic in the lyrical world. People either think that she is a genius or crazy, and often times the people that support her want to and try to analyze her lyrics. But to their surprise they are mostly wrong. Amanda talks frequently about how her lyrics don’t mean what people to suspect them to, she sometimes seems frustrated while doing this, but she ( in a very sneaky stringing you along kinda way) She never tells you what they are really about.

Here is a link to one of her video’s. The lyrics to this song are some of her most talked about. 

Dresden Dolls - Half Jack

  

Blog 9

Process Update- Annotated Bib

Where am I at?

Well, I am know finished with my “first draft” of my annotated bib. I know from experience that it will inevitably change as I do more research for my research paper. I will gain many resources while I look further into the subject, and I will probably drop some of them that end up having nothing to do with my end topic. It is hard to stick with one topic as it seems when you research your information is constantly changing.

Also At this point I am still not 100% positive on the direction my paper. As I have been gathering information it has become apparent that there is not very much out there that is published that seems to be different. Most everything I read about BPD is concerning living with it, and the treatment option of Dialectical Behavior Theory. It is becoming increasingly more frustrating.   

Blog 8

Whatever I want?!

Keria Video

So this is a video that I ran across while doing research on my subject (BPD). Keira the woman in the video is the author of the book “The Buddha and the Borderline” the book that started me on this journey. The only problem that I am running in to while researching this topic is that the more research that I do on the topic the more deeply personal it is getting, and the more I wish I didn’t choose the topic, but glad that I did. If that makes any sense. 

Blog 7

Reactions to readings 

So, here is what I don’t get.. I know that this chapter shows us how we can use I in writing our final research paper, but I kinda feel like that is a co-out. I feel that a writer can speak in the tense of I with out using I. The only exception is if you are talking about a study that you did your self, and even then one can refer to themselves as one or the researcher.

While I realize the purpose of this reading is to enhance our knowledge of writing, and show us where we can grow. I feel like that statement might set me back. I feel like if I put an “I” in any other paper than one for this class I will get reprimanded for it.  

This chapter also talked about the 3 main ways to write, agreeing, disagreeing ,and a combination of the two. That is an interesting statement because as you think about it all writing fits into that. Which I didn’t think it would at first reading it. Even a work of fiction has to in a microscopic way agree or disagree. 

Service Announcement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb9nEZB-xCs

Borderline Personality Service Announcement

Blog 6

!!Process update!!

Where am I? In a wonderland,no. In a carnival? Kinda. My daughters birthday was last weekend so it's safe to say I haven't done tooo much work on the Annotated bib. I do have all my sources for it, and I do have a few of them finished, but I don't have them to a level that I would want to turn them in at. It will definitely be ready before conferences.

Enjoy a fun video :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMrN3Rh55uM

Blog 5

I am leaning towards the topic of Borderline Personality Disorder. I really like this topic, and depending on where I go to grad school I am going to need a backup topic to do research on. I cant do work on mental wellness in LGBT youth at St. Francis or a school like that. The only problem I am running into is there is not a ton of different resources out there. All the papers that are published and most of the Randomized Controlled Trials for treatment is all for the treatment option of Dialectal Behavior Theory. So I have no Idea what to write my paper on. 

Blog 4

Questions Questions Questions

What questions do I have so far, well, My main question is how do I take this class and push myself and not fail. I am already stressing about the topics that I have chosen for my I-searches. I feel like they are all really interesting topics, but I feel like none of them will be easy to find information on. I have this thing where I like choose the most terrible topics to try and research and I really like them so I still stick with it and it screws me in the end.

Blog 3

Video Response

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

Well my initial thought to this video is that it is very clever. It also seems to mirror my disdain for public education. I feel that giving students loads of books, and asking them to memorize facts and not really learn why we learn things is exactly why I became a montessori teacher. I think that learning in an organic home environment is the best for children. Also putting education in their hands and giving them the responsibility to meet their goals gives them a sense of accomplishment and allows them to feel good about their education.   

Blog 2

Click Click

So I set off to take the pictures for this project, and I just couldn't get a feel for it. I took a series of pictures of a house being built next to my moms and then I trashed them because I didn't think they were good enough. Then I was going to take the series at a bar I frequent, but it didn't seem to fit the assignment. So I settled on taking the series of my parents land. They have a few acres and I felt that it was big enough to use. I felt that Ballenger in his essay conveyed a sense of not just narrowing but downsizing and uniqueness. For this reason I choose to start the series with a picture of my parents house and narrow it down to the world through the eyes of a butterfly I found. 

Blog 1

The Big 5

Gay Marriage

Same Sex adoption

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

Mental wellness in transgender teens

Montessori education VS. Public education

Both gay marriage and same sex adoption interest me because I am an activist in the gay community and I would like to become more familiar with topics I am fighting for. I would want to focus on a state and local level and see where Indiana stands on these issues. I feel that same sex adoption might be easier to find information on, but it would be really interesting to research what is going on with gay marriage on a state wide and national level. I feel like the LGBT community is about to make a major break through in the next few years is civil equality and it would be great to see where we are now. I went to the resource center on campus and got some literature on LGBT rights in the united states, and goggled gay marriage. I think that same sex adoption will be more beneficial than gay marriage because in Indiana we recognize same sex adoption.    

BPD is something that I have been interested in for a very long time. As a teen I was wrongly diagnosed with it, and it has made me curious towards the subject sense then. This summer after some time in studying psychology my mom gave me a book called the Buddah and the borderline. It is an amazing book about a woman named Kiera who has BPD and her struggles with it. The book has made me want to do more research.

Mental Wellness in Transgender teens is a subject that I did some research on this summer while in a communications class. This subject is something that I am very passionate about. It brings together my love for psychology and LGBT culture. It is also a very personal subject for me as I had a very close friend who was transgender who killed herself not to long ago. When I get my doctorate I want to do pro bono work with homeless transgender youth, who have a very high rate of diagnosis. I looked this up in EBSCO host and found some things on it. I think that this is a topic I want to peruse for one of my I-search papers. 

Montessori education is something that I am very familiar with because I teach at a montessori school. I also am a parent of a montessori child. I also was in line to get my teaching degree in a public school system. So a paper on Public Vs. Montessori seems to make sense. I did some research on this in EBSCO host and I really couldn’t find anything on it. There seems to be books and a lot of person al statements from parents and other teachers, but not a lot of real concrete evidence to support that montessori is better than Public education.