Disappointments in education aside, there's another drawback to my major. There's always going to be that one student who considers psychology class to be a personal diary/therapy session. Maybe they think they're interesting. They aren't, they're just really annoying. Trust me on this. In my Abnormal Psychology class this semester, I met the Queen of Annoying. I have since named her Madame I-paid-tuition-to-yak-stupid-fucking-tidbits-about-my-boring-life-to-everyone. We'll call her Madame Yaksalot for short. She often splatters her verbal diarrhea all over everything during class. Since this class lasts 3+ hours, it’s a lot of fucking splatter. I know more about her than I once knew about former boyfriends. I’m telling you, Madame Yaksalot gets very provocative. If you think fart jokes hold the secrets to the universe. People always tell her that she’s a very negative person, but she’s just realistic. She gets better grades if she sits in the front of the room (No, you just like to sit front row center so that you can be the center of attention. Sitting in the back makes you uncomfortable because you might actually be fucking ignored. Christ, shut the hell up.). Some family member of hers once had an anxiety attack, whatever could that possibly mean? She finds psychology very interesting but she still doesn’t understand bi-polar disorder because she isn’t bi-polar therefore how can anyone else be bi-polar? Once, she got angry at someone, does that mean that she has a mental disorder? Sometimes, she feels sad. And on and on and fucking on she goes. When she’ll stop, nobody knows. I couldn't possibly find her more enthralling. She's actually the reason we all show up to class. She's the damn star and her classmates are her captive audience. Wide eyed and mouths agape because we are all just stunned, absolutely god-smacked, at how this girl never shuts the fuck up.
Allow me to tell you how yesterday’s class went for me. I woke up at half past ass o’clock with a slight cold and no desire to leave my bed. I’m already fucked because I was actually supposed to wake up at precisely ass o’clock so I’m in a rush. After making sure I didn’t accidentally put my bra on my head or shove my socks up my ass because mornings confuse my brain and having a cold clogged head doesn’t help, I run out the door and deal with the joys of Saturday morning mass transit. This is always a pleasant experience because my train is always being worked on during the weekend and then I have to take another one that is out of my way. Today the one that was out of my way decided to stall at every stop. I sat there silently with my stuffy nose and cough, when this is what is happening inside my head:
*This video may be graphic to some people. It also may make your boss think you’re actually quite disposable as s/he looks over your shoulder hoping that you’re watching some good internet porn for him to jack off to/her to charge up her vibrator for later in his/her office.*
Anywhere from five minutes to fifteen minutes per stop, I’m trying to make the subway doors close with my eyes so that we can get moving. I did not run out the door after not drinking enough coffee, wearing too light a jacket for the weather, and a look of the sleepless deranged so that I can be late for class. Not going to happen. Except that is exactly what happened. I quietly sat down and hoped and prayed to gods I don’t believe in that Madame Yaksalot already got her yammering out of her system and I missed out on the torture. No such luck. Today she did not feel it was necessary to talk about her life. I guess it was because we were discussing mood disorders and suicide and no one who likes to hear the sound of her own voice this much could possibly have a suicidal thought. Or any sort of thoughts for that matter. Also, mood disorders goes into bi-polar disorder a lot and as we already mentioned, that makes her brain hurt so she isn’t capable of relating it to her boring life. Instead, she decided to repeat as many statements the professor made during his lecture in the form of a question. I guess she thinks this makes her sound studious. Here is how the class went:
Professor Too-Patient-For-His-Own-Good: “People with bi-polar disorder will become suicidal simply because they want the uncontrollable manic and depressive moods to stop. They feel completely helpless to it.”
Madame Yaksalot: “So, people with bi-polar disorder will become suicidal simply because they want the uncontrollable manic and depressive moods to stop? Is that why they feel helpless?”
Professor Too-Patient-For-His-Own-Good: “Yes, that’s what happens.”
Professor Too-Patient-For-His-Own-Good: “Fifteen to twenty percent of people with mood disorders will ultimately commit suicide.”*
Madame Yaksalot: “So, fifteen to twenty percent of people with mood disorders will ultimately commit suicide?”
Professor Too-Patient-For-His-Own-Good: “Yes, they commit suicide.”
*I am too lazy to check my notes to see if I got this right. You can’t expect me to retain all of this information when I’m being annoyed to death on a Saturday morning. The numbers aren’t the point here anyway. The point here is that this bitch is very annoying.
Professor Too-Patient-For-His-Own-Good: “When you are a psychologist, you do not want to get that phone call from the hospital telling you that your patient tried to commit suicide.”
Madame Yaksalot: “So, when a patient attempts suicide, the psychologist is informed of that by the hospital?”
Professor Too-Patient-For-His-Own-Good: “Yes, that’s what I just said.”
I am not in any way, shape or form exaggerating. This is how the class went for over three hours. Aside from me not being able to remember the exact numbers, this is EXACTLY what happened. For over three hours. Did I forget to mention that part? Over three hours of this on a Saturday morning.
The professor, bless his patient heart, often says she has many redeeming qualities. For the life of me I can’t figure out what they are. Maybe he thinks she has a disorder of some kind and doesn’t want to seem unprofessional or insensitive when he’s this very accomplished psychologist who belongs to all of these associations and has a private practice (I’m not in any way making fun of him here. I actually have a lot of respect for him. Especially since he hasn’t reached over and strangled Madame Yaksalot when she’s in such close proximity.). Personally, I just think that she wasn’t told to shut the fuck up enough times in her life. And that is the only medication she would have ever needed but now it’s too late. The illness has spread throughout her entire brain like the monster it is and she is beyond the point of no return. Fantasizing about taping her mouth shut with duct tape is the only thing that helps me cling on to my last thread of sanity in the last minutes of class. Once it’s over I am free to run out the door, buy something terrible for me to eat, and light up a cigarette so that I don’t go on a homicidal rampage. That one mental image of her trying to muffle something out of her mouth through the duct tape is all I have.
Madame Yaksalot: “Mrph mfms shemf mssh mssha smfph!”
Did I forget to mention that Madame Yaksalot wants to be a clinical psychologist? Happy mental health everyone!
