Happy Birthday!

Hello friends! It's been a while since I last posted. Since we last talked, RA training finished and the school year is growing ever nearer! Over the course of the last few days I've had much deep introspection about what having Tourette's means to me and to my identity, and unfortunately I can't say it's all positive. The best thing for me to do is keep on keepin' on, finding hidden rays of sunshine where you'd least expect them.

Elephant Follow-Up

Hello again friends! It's only been a few days since I wrote about my question-ball trick. Since then, I've been making it a point to bring up my Tourette's in group conversations to show that I'm comfortable talking about it. A few of the staff have since approached me either in private or in a small group asking me to answer questions they have. Everyone has been extremely polite about it, and I've done my best to assure them that any question is a good question if it's a sincere question. At least one of them even had prior experience with somebody with Tourette Syndrome, and that's always a good feeling.

Also, I finally started mentioning my blog to people. It feels so wierd to me to promote myself like that, especially since I don't really think I have anything all that special to say in the first place! However, I feel like a do a better job explaining Tourette's in writing than I do in person, so perhaps it's not that bad after all. That being said, if you're reading this blog after I told you about it in person, I really appreciate the time and interest you're giving me - holla!

Mohawk

So today in RA training, my staff did a skit based on the popular video game Guitar Hero. We dressed up like hard rockers - let's just say I got a little carried away!

Yes, the mohawk is real. No, I do not plan on keeping it for very long!

The Elephant in The Room

Let's face it; Tourette Syndrome is a rather visible disorder. What makes it so difficult to live with is not so much that it's painful or harmful, but that it's embarrassing and awkward. It can be particularly difficult in groups of new people, and different based on if the majority of the new group already knows each other (such as transferring to a new class) or if everybody in the group is new to each other.

In the RA training that started yesterday, I've been in the latter situation where everybody is new to the group. There are twenty people on my staff, and I've mentioned my Tourette's to some of them here and there, but as a group it hasn't been brought up. I felt like it was a 400 pound elephant in the room that everybody was wondering about but weren't comfortable talking about. I grabbed the bull by the horns and found a way to bring it up in front of the whole group.

As an "icebreaker" game, our staff tosses around a beach ball with questions written on it. You read out the question that your right thumb is touching and answer it to the group. Today when the ball was thrown to me, I faked a question that would let me open up to the group.

"What is your greatest fear?" I pretended to read off the ball. Fulfulling the ball's inquiry by telling everybody wether I was a dog or cat person would have to wait.

"Well...." I said, pretending to pick my brain for fears and phobias. "I'd have to say that my biggest fear is more of a smaller, constant fear. I have Tourette Syndrome, which is a disorder that makes me twitch and what not. I'm always nervous that it will cause a particuarly awkward situation or make me do something that's hard to explain." Then I departed from pretending to answer the question, and went straight for self advocacy: "I'm really open about it, and I don't mind answering questions about it."

And with that, I felt more at ease and I sensed that the group was more at ease. Whether they really were or not I don't know, but I can relax now and twitch comfortably. I trust that everyone feels comfortable coming up to me and asking questions about my Tourette's - and that's what it's all about.

Half a Pachelbel

Today was the first day of RA training, and it went quite well in my opinion. I got to meet my coworkers for the next year and start building relationships with them. After the training was over, three of the more musically inclined guys made their way to my room, where we proceeded to jam. We had a drumset, two guitars, and a mandolin going (all of which were my instruments except for one of the guitars). The guy playing the mandolin was new to the instrument but picked it up with surprising speed - the man's got good string sense!

We all doodled around a bit with various melodies and chord progressions, but we locked together on one in particular and had a really awesome groove going. The chords were C, G, Am, and F repeated. In the key of C (which it was,) this is reffered to as a I V vi IV progression. The C chord, being built from the first note in the scale, is symbolized by roman numeral I; the G chord is built from scale degree 5 and is symbolized by roman numeral V, and so on. This can be heard in a great deal of songs, like "Don't Stop Believin" by Journey, "Let it Be" by The Beatles, "Sk8er Boi" by Averile Levinge... you get the idea. People refer to this as the "Pachelbel chords," but this is wrong.

Pachelbel's Canon is I V iv ii IV I IV V. In the key of C, that would be C, G, Am, Dm, F, C, F, G. If we compare the first four chords of Pachelbel's canon to the other progression, you see that they're the same except for the last chord. However, this is somewhat forgivable because a Dm and an F chord are the same except for one note (D minor is D,F,A; F is F,A,C). The real issue comes in when you realize that "Don't Stop Believin'" and the other songs have four chords, but pachelbel has - count 'em - eight! That's right, what many musicians think of as the "Pachelbel progression" doesn't even have the right number of chords! For a song that uses legit Pachelbel, listen to "Graduation" by Vitamin C. That doesn't really count though, because she (they?) actually has Pachelbel's original piece playing in the background. It's a very nice tribute, but you can see how that's not quite what we're going for.

Luckily for you, you've read this blog and you know the truth. Therefore, the next time one of your musician friends tries to impress you by saying "You hear that? That's Pachelbel!" You can turn around and say to them "Oh yeah? Then where's the other half?"

Zombie Mints

While I was in the bookstore yesterday, I stumbled upon a box of 'zombie mints.' I couldn't resist buying them, as I was about to hang out with Noah and Bruce, who are always preparing for the zombie invasion.

What I thought would be brain-shaped mint-flavored candies actually turned out to be candy-shaped brain-flavored "mints." Noah and I both had to buy a soda just to get the taste out of our mouths, but Bruce was smart enough not to get one. Yuck!

Beginning of the beginning of the second quarter of the way through college

Summer is finally wrapping up and Resident Advisors (RAs) like myself are beginning to move in to campus. It's great to see campus coming back to life after a summer of camps and frat boys. I was lucky and was able to live during the summer in the same room that I will live in during the school year. Basically, I don't have to worry about moving in on move-in day! I spent the day helping friends move into their respective dorms. It was really great to help people get settled in their new homes and to see old friends again. A few highlighs:

While I was in what is the first building of UNC (built in 1793), a friend and I happened upon a way to peek out from the roof. I got the following shots from my camera phone:

New East, and the Alumni Place parking lot.

Columbia street and Playmaker's Theater.

The lights in the background are Hamilton Hall and Davis Library.

Earlier in the day, Noah, Dirk and I were helping my buddy Bruce move into his new RA room on south campus. When we pulled up there was a seemingly abandoned car seat sitting at the edge of the parking lot. It was kinda (ish) near a dumpster so presumably left as trash, even though it appeared to be in perfectly useable condition. It even had two cup holders attatched to the side of it. It was the perfect chair to play video games in, so naturally Noah and I grabbed it and took it up to Bruce's room.

Noah and I went back to the car to get more stuff while Dirk and Bruce wrestled with the carpet in the room. When we got to the parking lot we saw a van parked next to our car and a confused and somewhat upset family of three standing next to a it, the father of which was staring intently at us. Immediately realizing what had happened and what awkwardness was about to ensue, Noah and I went with our first instincts: avoid eye contact and act natural!

As we drew closer the man asked us "did you guys see a van seat sitting here? We put it right in front of this parking space." Noah stepped up to the plate and boldly replied "um... I don't know..." From that point on, both parties knew exactly what happened, but the intricacies of social interaction got in the way of us fixing the problem. Noah and I mumbled that there was a chair that we though belonged to a buddy of ours, so I "went to the room to see if he had picked it up by mistake." By "went to the room," I mean really mean that I went around the corner of the building (I had no key) while I frantically called Bruce (twice) and told him to bring it down.

When I returned to where Noah was, the family had just opened the van door to show him what the seat looks like. "Yeah, that was it!" he said, with a pretty good attempt at acting surprised. Not knowing what exactly Noah had said to them and not wanting to contradict the story he may or may not have told them, I said the most vague thing I could: "They're bringing it down."

It was pretty quiet between everybody as we waited for Bruce and Dirk and Seat. Once the finally arrived, Dirk hit the nail on the head when he quietly sang "aaaawkwarrrd" in a high falsetto. The father looked kind of like a policeman taking stolen goods from criminals, while we felt like dumsterdivers who found out they weren't actually in a dumpster at all. And basically... that's what happened.