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The absolute starting point of the summer’s events is somewhat hard to distinguish. After pondering about it for a while, I would put it on the last day of class for the spring semester of 2011. I was a graduate student at an esteemed private school in northern Indiana (as I would be for the entirety of this story), and the only class I was taking that semester was a straightforward lecture class being taught by my advisor. Unfortunately, as has become the case with me—especially during my graduate studies, my grades in the class were less than satisfactory. My advisor was the type that felt a good motivator was to intimidate her graduate students (a “tiger mom” if you will) into working harder. After both of the tests in the class, tests on which I scored below average, I enjoyed a thorough tongue lashing from her about how careless and inattentive I was. Though throughout my life I would let such criticisms as these get to me, I had been exposed to this type of attitude from my advisor for the better part of four months at this point. While I took these outbursts with stride on the outside, my motivation and confidence began to take a dive appreciably.
My advisor’s constant chiseling of my motivation and, honestly, self esteem finally reached new levels of low during my end of the class presentation. Each student in the class was to pair up with another student and give a presentation on experimental results. The class was cleanly divided between undergraduates and graduate students. The undergrads were to do presentations on these lab modules that were performed by all students, while the graduate students were to perform original experiments and present the results. I was paired with an international graduate student from the Chemistry department, and we decided our project would be something more involved with her research. While I worked hard on the project and did my fair share of the work, she had a better grasp on the theory and experimental techniques involved. We processed our data, organized a powerpoint presentation, and felt properly prepared for our presentation.
A total of five groups were presenting that day: two undergrad groups and three grad groups. The groups were to give a ten to fifteen minute presentation and answer questions for about five minutes. The undergraduate groups went first, and the questions offered by my advisor were challenging but fair. The same went for the first graduate group. Feeling encouraged by how smooth the other presentations were going, I volunteered to go next. Our presentation wasn’t the smoothest; but it went without any serious problems, and we finished in a timely manner. Unfortunately, the question period was awful. I cannot remember any of the specific questions per se, but I do know that my partner and I were scrambling for answers as my advisor swiftly and professionally dismantled our results. The questions were very complicated, and several neither of us were able to answer. I knew I was disappointing her more and more as I heard her voice get progressively more irritated. Sure, the description of these events may sound like I am being too hard on myself; however, one objective way of measuring how badly we were getting grilled was the time. While other groups were getting about five, no more than ten, minutes of questioning, we went well over twenty five minutes of interrogation before finally being let go. Naturally, the next and final group’s presentation went smoothly; and the questions and question time were much less demanding for them.
Two things were really wrong with this situation. First, if looking at my experience on its own merits, it doesn’t look that bad. Like a parent/teacher who has the unfortunate job of teaching some kind of class that has his or her child in it, my advisor may take great pride in her research group and her graduate students and wanted to work me harder than the undergrads and nonaffiliated grad students. Ok, that makes sense until one realizes that the group following mine had another grad student in her group. How was his experience? It was the same as any of the other groups. The questioning was involved, but nothing too tortuous; and, of course, the questioning period was over within ten minutes. Secondly, the embarrassing performance occurred in front of a group of about 25 people. Throughout the entire year I was getting this kind of treatment from my advisor, but it was always in front of my research group—a group of three or four people I knew fairly well. Getting this kind of treatment in front of an entire class, several who saw me as a superior considering I was the TA for the class, was more than disheartening, it was downright soul crushing.
The class was dismissed after the last presentation. I would wind up making an A- in the class, probably due more to the generosity or pride of my advisor more than my own accomplishments, but while walking out of the class I felt I was destined for a failing grade. My group mate gave me comforting tap on the shoulder and a “good job”, to which I responded likewise. I felt bad for her as well, for she would not have gone through that grilling if it weren’t for me being her partner. She was a nice girl, too, and she really worked hard on our project. Chara, the name I will give her, and I became good friends throughout working on the project; but, outside of a couple of conversations on facebook, we would not see each other again after the conclusion of the class.
The combination of letting down my advisor, my groupmate, and myself—along with the tarring and feathering witnessed by my classmates—finally broke me down. I had felt doubts on my ability to perform at the graduate level since I had started my studies, but this was just too much. I could tell my advisor was sick of me. I was sick of these disappointments. Ever since elementary school, I was always a top student. I was an All A student throughout elementary school, I graduated in the top 10 of my high school, and I graduated Summa Cum Laude at Mississippi State (granted, a big state school without the greatest academics, but I still did well). I was not used to this type of failure.
Combined with all that, I hated what I did. Every day was such a bore. I woke up later than I wanted, I went to the gym, and I worked for 7 or 8 hours on a project for which I had no vested interest in a basement without any windows or cell phone service. Seriously, I won’t get too into the specifics of how dreary my lab was, but it felt like freaking prison. I spent half of my work day killing time goofing off on my computer until it was time to go home. I would play 7-8 games of solitaire, 3-4 games of chess, approximately two hours on an internet forum discussing banal subjects such as college football (during the offseason, no less) and Jersey Shore. I was just not motivated to work, and with every passing day I realized this just was NOT what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Hell, I wasn’t even good at it. Did I want to spend my entire professional as an unhappy, mediocre scientist? No, not at all. I needed a drink.
Luckily for that last sentiment the presentation period ended in the late afternoon, right around quitting time. I sat around my office for about twenty minutes before heading home. On my way, I stopped (as I frequently would throughout the summer) at an Indian grocery store down the street from my apartment and bought a cheap bottle of Shiraz. Upon arriving home, I turned on my tv and my laptop and had the first of what would be several drinks from that wine bottle.
There was a small problem with my rapid consumption of alcohol and that day, and it’s something that I have willfully ignored until now. The girl I was seeing at the time, whom I will call Lynette, had a big oral examination the same day as my presentation. Considering the event was a big step towards her PhD, she had been stressing out about it for a pretty long time. The poor girl had expressed doubt as to whether she would pass or not.
I should give a brief synopsis on our relationship at this point. Lynette was a nice, well meaning girl who liked me; and I obviously liked her. She was a bit of a quiet girl, a biology PhD candidate who was vegetarian and very pro-environment. Her passive demeanor sort of conflicted with my more active and boisterous personality, but it wasn’t really a big deal and we got along fairly well. We had been dating for about two and a half months at this point, but problems were already beginning to show up. One of the bigger problems with the relationship was a lack of trust on my part. See, Lynette had broken up with a boyfriend of two and half years last August. Though I subscribe to the “it takes half the time of the relationship to fully recover from it” rule, I normally wouldn’t object to it much.
My problem was that…well, she still saw the guy fairly often. The guy lived in Chicago, about a two hour drive from our town, and she would visit him and his friends about once out of every three weekends. She would stay the entire weekend as well, staying until really late Sunday night before coming back to town. I never got an invitation, which didn’t really help matters out. Upon thinking about it after the fact, I am not sure how weird of the situation it really was. Maybe others experience this all the time, and I was just being stupid. Regardless, I had never had a girlfriend who was that active with a recent ex, and it made me insecure. I am not sure when I first brought it up to her, but what REALLY didn’t help was what happened when I did bring up my feelings about the situation to her. Her response was to put on a “neither confirm nor deny” type demeanor. She would just be quiet and not say much. While this wasn’t really enough to condemn her—after all, who know, maybe I was the crazy one, it didn’t really alleviate the situation much.
Last point before I go on with the story: at this point in my life I had had several girlfriends. I never had such feelings of insecurity like I did with Lynette. That’s what that made this relationship so…weird.
On my way home, I texted her asking how she had done on her exam. She replied saying she had passed and invited me out to a local bar to celebrate with a few friends for dinner and drinks. I congratulated her…and then went on with my drinking.
I didn’t drink my wine like normal, civilized people would—mostly because I didn’t own any wine glasses. Instead, I got a 32 oz. tumbler and poured about a quarter of the bottle into the glass for one “drink”. After about two of these mega glasses, I decided to listen to Lynard Skynard’s “Sweet Home Alabama”. Now, when I get drunk (which I was very close to by this point) and enjoy listening to a song, I want to hear that song over and over again. “Sweet Home Alabama” was my song for this drinking bout.
Of course, I’m originally from the South. I didn’t think too much about being from the South outside of “fat rednecks am I right?” most of my life, but once I moved to Indiana that started to change. I was actually somewhat stereotyped for my Southerness. For instance, I had to pick up a friend of a friend once for some random errand, and she marveled at the fact I drove a Toyota. “Collin, I am very surprised you drive a Japanese car”, Friendofafriend said, “I figured all of you Southerners only drove American cars”. This, along with my alleged romantic inclinations for the KKK, had a strange effect on me. I took a “haters gonna hate attitude” and, instead of allowing these subliminal insults to hurt me, I took pride in my heritage. I knew Southern people weren’t that bad, and honestly we are not really racist. At least, we are less racist than some people in other regions I’ve met (and if you are reading this and thinking “wow that’s finger pointing and stereotyping in itself” well, you are comparing your proud views to us redneck southern racists and thusly should rethink your argument). Anyway, I learned to appreciate Southern culture, and the musical stylings of Lynard Skynard—a band I already respected since I was a pretty big Southern Rock fan, were my cup of tea at the moment.
As the influence of the wine, my failure, and the southern rock continued to swirl in my brain, a weird sensation took me over. I was through with everything. I was through with graduate school, the pretentious people I had to see everyday, my girlfriend, and Indiana in general. I wanted to rage about my troubles and my new found rebelliousness, but it was hard to do this in an apartment by myself. I looked at the clock and saw it was about 5:45. I was supposed to meet those people at 630. Well, screw that! I’ll show up when I want to, which will be after about five more repeats of “Sweet Home Alabama!”. I’ll rebel with my absence!
But these actions weren’t enough for me, the world needed to know my pain. Therefore, I turned to Facebook. My first post was relatively mild. I just posted the Youtube link to the version of the Skynard song with the caption “AFTER A COUPLE OF DAYS LIKE THIS ONE LOOKS LIKE THIS WILL BE MY THEME SONG YA’LL”,and, yes, with the caps. I felt pretty confident that my message, that I had a bad day and figured I was probably close to being let go and returning to the South, was clear. After pouring what would be my final drink (at my apartment), I felt the world needed a clearer message. I typed a message saying basically “I am done. I have given what I can and I hate it. I hate what I do. I hate graduate school, I am not good enough for it. Screw this”. Looking back upon it, this status was probably my most immature facebook post I had ever made, especially considering I scoffed at people who put there drama in public on the site.
As I finished my drink and got ready to go…at 635…I started talking to several friends on facebook who had taken quick notice of this new “fuck the world” message. Most of the messages involved me “doing what I thought would make me happy” and people “supporting me no matter what I decided to do”. I especially remember one of my better friends saying something along these lines, to which I responded “Betterfriend, you know you are my best friend, right?”. Yeah…I am not sure if it was obvious I was drunk on facebook or not; but this was the first time I had really expressed a distaste for what I did so publicly, and the response was not so negative. I know that the next day, after sobering up, I would take my controversial status down. It would prove to be one of my most popular and most commented statuses ever.
I finally decided to leave for the celebration dinner at about 7, fully aware I would be more than thirty minutes late. Before leaving, I noticed I had drunk well over half the bottle. I was not in any state to drive, but I was beyond caring at this point and jumped in my car. I wasn’t sure what to expect at this dinner. I didn’t know if it was just dinner or if it was going to be a night of revelry. Sure, it was a Tuesday night, but earlier in our relationship, Lynette and I had frequently visited this bar with some other friends on Tuesdays for their karaoke night that started a little after 10. She didn’t sing, but she would watch me and the others as we made fools of ourselves. Regardless how much singing was done, these karaoke nights would typically lead to pretty nasty hangovers for the both of us the next day. This bar was pretty infamous for its burgers, and Tuesday was 5 dollar burger night, providing further incentive to celebrate a job well done at this particular bar on a Tuesday night. When I started the drive, I was ready for a wild night. As the drive and the drink inside me continued to process, however, I started to realize I probably would not survive if this celebration lasted longer than 10—let alone if we stayed for karaoke.
I parked without too much trouble and walked towards the bar. During my drive, I had received a text from Lynette saying “Just FYI, we’re in the back when you decide to show up”. The text sounded kind of rude, but I was really not in the position or the condition to be upset with her about not being polite. I located her table with ease, and was a little surprised with what I saw. Only four people were there, including Lynette. I was expecting a much bigger crowd, where my absence would not be so noteworthy.
My sober mind would probably be more capable of experiencing regret, but I was more upset with the selection of people who were there. First, we had Samantha, Lynette’s best friend here. Lynette was an alright girl in the sense that she was easy to get along with and very outgoing. Her main problem, though, was that she was extremely annoying after knowing her for about…say, five minutes. She has a tendency to dominate conversations with what she wants to talk about, and it is hard to get a word in edgewise when she is on a roll. This is even worse when she drinks, which—honestly—she’s doing most of the time. She’s a short Asian girl, so she has the tendency to get really red in the face as she drinks more; therefore, one can gauge her drunkenness and thusly her annoying level by her shade of red. Surprisingly, Samantha was just drinking water tonight since her test was later this week. I guess even Biology grad students have a shred of responsibility sometimes.
Another person at the table was Tripoli, who knew Lynette either through Samantha or just from being in the same department as she. Yes, her name is Tripoli. I guess her parents thought they’d be really clever naming their daughter after the capitol of a corrupt, obscure North African nation. She was destined for grad school with a name like that. There is really not much to say about Trips, outside of her annoying name, and that may be a testament to her bland, boring character. The only thing I really have against her is this one time I went to a potluck dinner for a member of my group. The guy was very organized, and all of the invites came on facebook. He was conscientious enough to tell people that if they were coming to announce what they were bringing on the event message board. I accepted the invitation and, being the first one to comment, said I was going to bring cookies. Being the first one to comment means and saying I was bringing cookies meant I claimed cookies. NO ONE ELSE SHOULD BRING COOKIES OR, FOR THAT MATTER, ANY TYPE OF DESSERT. Not being the best cook or even really the best friend, I go to Wal Mart right before the event and buy a huge bucket of storebrand oatmeal raisin cookies to bring to the event. I’m also one of the first people at the potluck (a surprise considering what I’ve done in the current story), so I drop off my cookies with the rest of the food and sit down to socialize. About twenty minutes later, Tripoli and her boyfriend show up. Tripoli was late because she was just getting her contribution to the dinner out of the oven before they left. What was her food? Peanut butter truffle cookies or some shit. If you are reading this and that doesn’t sound like a type of cookie, just know these three things: (a), they had peanut butter in them, (b) she worked pretty hard on them, and (c) THEY WERE FUCKING COOKIES. Thanks for not noticing that I had claimed cookies and, in the effort, making me look like a total punk, Tripoli. Naturally, since she made them herself and actually put, you know, effort into the things, people ate them instead. I was even forced to eat them instead of my own contribution, and I don’t like peanut butter. Nobody ate any of my cookies, so I had to take the whole box home with me. Well, I didn’t really complain too much since I had about a million oatmeal raisin cookies to eat for a week, but making me look like a fool didn’t really do any favors for Tripoli in my book.