"Student Development" or Fuck yo' boundaries!

As part of going back to college, I am retaking the classes I failed, including SDV100 -- "Student Development".  Essentially an orientation to college, it is largely worthless but is a transfer/graduation requirement.

Today's class time was spent attending the first of a series of "Making Connections" seminars.  A team-building/icebreaker exercise, for the most part.  Graded for participation.

Before I get into why this got to me today, two points:

- I am an introvert.  This does not mean I hate people; it does not mean I hate being social.  What it *does* mean is that I find being in a group of other people to be stressful.  After a certain period of time (depending on various factors such as the size of the group, my relationship with each member, etc.) I have to go spend some time alone or there are serious consequences for my temperament.

- I am not touch-adverse.  However, I *do* expect to be able to choose when, where, and by who I am touched.  (Within reason; I'm not going to flip out on someone who brushes past me on the bus.)

This meeting involved several classes, for a total of around 100 people.  Simply being in a group this large is enough to put me on edge.

To open the session, the speaker told us that we were to respect each other's boundaries.  Good.  (And to the credit of my fellow students, they *did*.)  This was followed by an exercise in non-verbal communication.  Then the funky chicken (what). Then bizarre "handshakes" (borderline).

Then standing toe-to-toe, elbow-to-elbow, knee-to-knee, head-to-head and various combinations thereof.  Direct contact.  Explicitly with someone we *haven't* met.  This continued, with new and larger groups each time.

This is beyond what I'm willing to do.  Is it intimate contact?  No.  But it's a violation of my personal space.  More importantly, I am not initiating it.  Not even my "partner".  It was personal touch initiated by a third-party.  Unacceptable.

So, I backed off, and did not participate.  A teacher walked by, and asked me to join a group that was short on members.  I refused.  She insisted.  I refused again, and she gave up.  *Another* teacher decided to come over and be my partner (because obviously I don't mind an authority figure in my space, right? Right?).  The exercise had moved away from the full-body-contact to essentially holding hands, so I went along with her.

In the end, did any wrong come of it?  Other than pissing me off and ruining my mood for the day, no.  But I should not have had to refuse participation twice, or even once.  The exercise itself is far out of bounds.  I should not feel compelled, for a grade, to touch or be touched by other people, people I do not know.

As a contrast, later exercises (team-building stuff, for example lowering a stick to the ground while everyone keeps contact with it) did involve contact with other people, but to an incidental degree, and as part of another activity.  There is a difference, and it is important.

The solution is not "tell everyone else to respect each others boundaries."  The solution is for you to respect my boundaries and not make physical contact part of the exercise to begin with!  Which should be obvious.

多読２０１２年３月

こんばんは・・・

Of the goals I set out for this Tadoku, I only met my overall pages goal. I barely touched アイアン・サンライズ, and only read one novel. However, I still landed 5th place, with over 1200 pages read in 2 weeks. The majority of which come from playing リトルバスターズ, which I finally completed up through Refrain (after the contest ended, otherwise I may well have won this round.)

Overall, what I read this round:

- 涼宮ハルヒの消失 (Complete)
- とらドラ (Barely scratched the surface)
- リトルバスターズEX (鈴's route + the first half of Refrain)
- とある科学の超電磁砲 ２－５ (Complete)

Not exactly satisfied, but what can you do.

またなぁ

新しい本と次の多読

こんにちは、ブライアンです。

The next round of Tadoku (an "experimental" 2-week sprint) starts this coming Sunday. And since someone upstairs has a good notion of dramatic timing, I opened the mailbox to find a (larger than usual) package this morning.

New books!

- とある科学の超電磁砲 2-5
- とらドラ！ 1&2
- 狼と香辛料
- アイアン・サンライズ (J-translation of Charles Stross' "Iron Sunrise")

アイアン・サンライズ is a monster of a novel, 650 pages (with very thin margins.) The original English book is among my favorite books ever (the temptation to start reading it when I had the translation on order was unbearable) but nonetheless it's kind of intimidating.

Silent (Tadoku's 管理者) says this round's score doesn't count on the overall total, so I'm going to concern myself less with my pages goal (set at 700, just under half of what I got in the full month of January) and more with getting through some books. I *still* have not finished a novel since January's Tadoku -- whereas if I'd kept up the pace I set there I would have another 4-5 read by this point. Not sure what I need to do to fix this... perhaps log my reading on a daily basis regardless of Tadoku.

In any case, my goals for this Tadoku:
- 700+ pages read
- 200+ pages minimum in アイアン・サンライズ
- Top 5 for novel pages read
- Stay on top of Anki reps throughout

Looks reasonable to me.

Before all that I need to finish 涼宮ハルヒの退屈, however.

そのわけで、読みます。またねぇ。

多読２０１２年１月

久しぶりです・・・本当に６ヶ月になりましたか？

Still progressing with Japanese, and participated in the 多読 contest last month. (For those who don't know, 多読 is a foreign-language reading contest.) To put some things in perspective, I finished RTK1 in February 2011; I've been reading Japanese (for various values of "reading) for almost a year now. However, it wasn't until December that I finally finished reading a complete novel in Japanese. Now, after a month of 多読, I'm a few dozen pages short of finishing my sixth novel.

I set myself what I thought was an ambitious goal -- 1500 pages. But while I only just reached it, submitting my last pages with 30 minutes to spare, I *could* have done a lot more. (Blame falls squarely on Battlefield 3 being so goddamned addicting.)

So, here's what I read this month:

Novels:
俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない。③ (Complete)
涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 (Complete; already started prior to 多読)
涼宮ハルヒの溜息　(241/275 read)
あの日見た花の名前を僕達はまだ知らない（上） (Complete)
隙間女（幅広） (Complete)
ギフテッド (80/347 read)

Manga:
とある科学の超電磁砲　第１巻 (Complete)
Various 同人誌 and other assorted manga.

In the end, I landed 10th place on the overall ranking. (7th for Japanese.) Near as I can tell, I was in the top 5 for novel pages read. (Which strikes me as pretty incredible for my first time.)

More importantly, I gained a much better feel for Japanese. Large blocks of text are becoming less and less intimidating; I'm able to push on through now without looking up every word, and still grasp the overall meaning. My reading speed is ridiculously faster now -- what took me a full day of reading to do before now takes a few hours. I have not reached the point that I could increase my vocabulary simply by reading, but I haven't fallen behind on vocab despite having ignored Anki all month. Simply put, I feel far more comfortable with Japanese now.

And isn't that the goal anyway?

以上。