ChessGuy42

I'm a 26 year old wannabe academic. I've got a BS in Computer Science, a BA in Philosophy, and an MS in Cognitive Science. I just quit a Ph.D. program in Computer Science in March, and I'm now trying to put my life back together. For the last year, I've been teaching Computer Science part time at the university where I got my M.S. while looking for a job (academic or non-academic, part time or full time) which would give me enough money to put my life back together after it slowly fell apart over the past four years or so.

Physically, I'm about 40lbs overweight - I'm still trying to fight an eating addiction with essentially no real life support network. Based on my height and bone structure, I should be 200-205lbs. I'm 245 right now... but I topped out at 298lbs a few years ago. I also have a giant gap(big enough to fit a straw through) between my upper front two teeth. My parents were never able to afford corrective gear when I was a child, and I don't have the money for cosmetic surgery... although I would get rid of it in a heart beat if I could. I look a walrus in any picture where my mouth is open.

I also have 'sporadic eidetic memory' - my memory is photographic, but it isn't photographic all of the time. Without going too much into the cognitive science of it, anything which passes through my attentional lens for longer than a certain duration is essentially burned into my memory. I try to hide this because I hate it and because it seems to freak people out... but every now and then, I'll accidentally slip. For example, the other day, I quoted something back that my housemate said to me four years ago word for word.

I come from an incredibly disfunctional family. I'm an only child, and that's a great thing since there's a history of mental illness on both sides of my family. Both of my father's sisters have tried to kill themselves - one succeeded. My father planned to, but he left his journal open and we found it before he had the chance. My mother has a history of depression without suicidal thoughts, and refuses to go see anyone about it. Beyond that, my father has a literal obsession with money that stems from the way his father (my grandfather) treated his family. For example, he refused to give my grandmother any money to buy their children Christmas presents - she had to earn any money herself. I never met that grandfather since he died before I was born, and I'm pretty happy about that. This is problematic since my mother couldn't really work for both physical and mental reasons. After my grandmother died when I was 10, my father became an alcoholic, and there would be raging fights nightly. It never got physical, but I always ended up having to be the make the peace between my parents. Always.

To be perfectly blunt, my parents should never have been married. I'm pretty sure they would have divorced if I hadn't been born.

I pretty much spent my high school years playing computer games since socializing wasn't an option. My parents were too absorbed in their own issues to help me out at all. I did have a few guy friends who lived really close to me(D1, D2, S, K, and E), but beyond that... I live in a really rural area, so walking wasn't an option and we have no public transportation. Plus, I was so embarassed by the behavior of my family that I never wanted rides from other parents or other kids once we were old enough to drive. The only activity I ever did was Quiz Team, because the people there were nerdy enough not to ever try to get personal. I did develop two semi-close friends that were girls on the quiz team, M. and A. I went to a grand total of three dances. I asked a girl to the last one... she told me, "I wouldn't go out with you if you were the last boy on earth." To date, that's the only time I've "asked a girl out" and that was over ten years ago.

After high school, I went to the community college that was across the street from me for two years. Luckly, some of the few friends I had went there too -D1, M, and A. D2 went into the army, later to be discharged for drug use. S went to a different school. K became a heavy drug user, and E(K's brother) dropped off the face of the earth. Anyway, I would actually socialize with people there, on campus... but never off campus. I would actually stay on campus for as long as possible, so that I wouldn't have to go home. Halfway through my first semester, my grandmother(mother's mother) moved in with us... it was pretty clear she could no longer live by herself and she refused to go to a nursing home. Before long, she got really bad, and one of the family had to stay with her all the time. The only time I've ever been 'asked out'... A. asked me to go to a bonfire with her, but I couldn't since it was my night to stay with my grandmother. I hated it - I was head over heels for A... and quite honestly, still am. My grandmother passed away that march, after living with us for most of my freshman year. I nearly failed out of college that year. The next year, I bounced back, though.

After the community college, I transferred to the next closest academic institution... which is about 25 miles up the road. Only two of my friends went here with me - M and A. M and A were roomates, and all of us were in the same dorm. I became the dorm's unofficial computer technicial, so I met people... but nobody that ever seemed to want to really interact with me. My chance with A had passed, and I became a 'Friend' to whom she'd always come when she had a crappy day or had fights with her boyfriend. Finally, I sucked it up, and somehow managed to start dating one of M's friends, B. B was my first kiss, and the age of 20, and the first person to ever say that she loved me while actually seeming to mean it. What sucked was that she was from a different state(Utah, while I'm in NY). We tried to do long distance during the summer of my junior year, but it didn't work out. Not because of the distance, but because she had a boyfriend in the army she never told me about. I was the dude she was cheating on him with. He came back, proposed, and she accepted.

So... I was destroyed. Came back for my senior year... and met C through the school's on-line social networking site (this was pre-facebook). When I met C, who was two years younger than I, she and her fiancee had just broken up. Beyond that, C actually had a genuine chemical inbalance which resulted in very severe depression if she didn't take her medication. One night, I talked C out of killing herself. A few nights later, she went out to a bar after she had taken extra cold medicine on an empty stomach. I went out with her (my first time in a bar) because I thought this was a Bad Idea. Big surprise, I ended up spending all of the next day with her in the emergancy room. A few weeks later, C and I started dating. Over winter break, she cheated on me while on vacation with her family, but I took her back anyway. My last semester of undergrad, I developed an insanely complex computational linguistics project which got me invited to apply to the department's MS program (I was to be one of the first two students in it as part of an experiment to look at how viable a program would be at the school.). The truth is, I accepted because I didn't want to leave C, who still had two years to go. That is honestly the thing I've done of which I am most ashamed.

So... I come back for my first year of graduate school. C and I go through a rough period. C is bisexual... I had always known this. She developed a crush on another woman, and decided to break up with me so she could explore that. It didn't work out, so she came back to me and I took her back. That summer, we moved in together, and stayed in town. Its worth noting at this point that we have seperate bedrooms, because I snore like a warthog. I've heard a tape of myself, and I can understand how hard it is to sleep in the same room as me, let alone the same bed. I got a job working at the college as a tech to support myself over the summer, and she was taking classes. The start of the next semester rolls around, and things start to get a little hectic for me when I start writing my thesis while trying to figure out what I'm doing after my M.S. C is about to graduate and is looking to graduate programs... but she does horribly on her GREs, so her options are limited. Because I'm an idiot, I only applied to Ph.D. programs at the schools she applied to.

After we come back from Thanksgiving break, things get bad. I have a really rough patch about two weeks long.. and C and I get to our first fight ever that I actually start. After we make up, I... like an idiot... decide that I want to spend my life with her, so I start pricing engagement rings I had been saving for a while just in case, but I decided I was ready to take action. I even had it planned out in my mind: I was going to propose at graduation, which was what she had said she always wanted. Two days later, the day after we sign our lease for the last semester, she breaks up with me - it seems we didn't make up all that much after all. I blow the money I have saved for a ring on a new laptop and a bottle of Jack, which I drank in all in one night, mostly by myself.

Being the nice guy that I am, I can't bring myself to kick C out of the apartment. We were both on the lease, but I paid for most of it, and most of the furniture in the apartment is mine. We already had seperate bedrooms as I mentioned above, so that wasn't too much of a problem. What's a problem is that she starts dating another woman right after we get back, and... the walls weren't thick enough, let us say. This was a bad semester, made worse by the fact that I was finishing writing my thesis... which I had no energy to do at all. Also, the only Ph.D. programs I got into were at my 'backup' school.

My thesis defense ended up lasting over three hours, after which I had ten pages of notes on what to change for my revisions. I felt like crap - my thesis was an extension of the project that got me into grad school, and was something I had been working on for two and a half years straight. It was an A.I. program, and C would occasionally joke that it was 'the other woman.' two and a half years of my life, and there was that much wrong with it.

Also, this semester I introduced my best friend (the other grad student in this program)... M2... to one of the undergrads I became acquainted with when I was TAing for one of the members of my thesis committee. M2 and L start dating.

The semester ends, M2 and I graduate... one of M2's friends moves back to the area. This was the summer of... well, insanity. We were out at the bars every night we could be partying. In retrospect, this was bad for me. Very bad, for a number of reasons.

Fall rolls around, and I start my Ph.D. program at a school that I have to commute an hour(via bus since I don't drive) to get to. I hate the program, but think that maybe it will get better. I move in with M2 for money reasons. L is practically living with M2. I pretty much waste this semester without having anything positive to show for it.

My solution is to move to the city where my new school is. I do that, and hate it worse that commuting. Now I hate the school I'm at AND the city I'm in. On top of that, I only know two people in the city, and neither one of them seems to want to hang out with me very much. I waste this semester too and start for looking for ways out.

I move out of the city, and over the summer, get offered a part time teaching job at the school where I got my BS and MS. So, I moved back here, moved back in with M2 and L. I tried commuting to the city for my Ph.D. program, but the truth is that I'm only doing it because I can't find a full time job and I'd have to start paying back my loans if I didn't stay in the program. By Feb(of 09), I hated that program, that institution, the commute, and everything associated with that school that I had to just quit or suffer a severe psychological breakdown.

So... here I am, a part time college professor (that students seem to love, according to my semester reviews). My department loves me - despite the fact that I only have a M.S., I teach all the courses in my speciality, and have even been allowed to conduct an independent study. However, that barely gives me enough money to get by. I can't seem to find a full time job... or even another part time job... because I don't have a car. I don't have a car because don't have a driver's license. I can't drive because I can't afford lessons and I'm too embarassed to ask anyone for help. I still live with my best friend and his fiance... but I wish I could afford to move out. I find myself wanting more and more time alone, I hate listening to their arguments, and MY bed seems to shake whenever they have sex. All my remaining friends have graduated except one or two, and they're wierded out that I'm a professor now so we never interact. I haven't been kissed since March, when a black-out drunk girl tried to make out with me as I was practically carrying her home. She wanted me to come in, but my sense of morality prevented me from taking advantage of her. I haven't sex in year. I haven't had good sex in two years. I haven't had good sex that I remember in three years, before C and I moved in together. Women, in general, seem to treat me like a leper.

In summary, I have all the qualities of a truly pathetic person: intelligent, nerdy, no family(for all intents and purposes), almost no friends, no romantic life, and no money.

"I live that solitude which is painful in youth but delicious in the years of maturity."
-- Albert Einstein