The lows are low, but the highs are home

Long time readers will know that many, many QWERTYs have been shed on this blog over the desiccated corpse of my love life. A lot of the posts under my personal tag, and certainly most of the very long ones, have had something to do with it. I needed an outlet to introspect, and to put things in public that I used to keep to myself. I’m sure the topic isn’t as interesting to most people as it is to me, but I find my long-term emotional development extremely fascinating. It’s too bad I only started writing in 2010, but that’s neither here nor there. Other involved parties weren’t exactly thrilled with all the details that I shared, but I’ve learned my lesson on that.

        That’s important, because I’ve finally entered another relationship.

        It’s been a month and a half so far, and literally everything has been great. I have to laugh at junior high relationships, though - I figured it was a real accomplishment to make it past a month! I mean, surely thirty whole days is plenty of time to ruin the whole thing. This time, it took nearly a month for me to understand that, yes, that conversation actually happened and she did in fact say yes. Ironically, I’m probably more surprised about this turn of events than anyone else. Most people who’ve known about our friendship thus far figured it was going to happen sooner or later.

The story

        This isn’t actually a case of complete stupidity on my part. You see, after we went to PAX East (note the seemingly-outgoing individual) I got pretty interested. I was told it was just going to be friends for now (read as: “until further notice”, aka indefinitely), and I resolved myself to be okay with that. Surely I could manage to be friends with a single girl without developing romantic feelings for her. I mostly did! When I figured I was getting a bit past friendly, I’d talk to her about it honestly, so she could shoot me down (though the opposite outcome would be a nice surprise) and we could keep up with business as usual. There was lighthearted ribbing about my being a lifelong bachelor every time I inhaled my food twice as fast as everyone else. But I always got the distinct impression that she wasn’t gong to change that. She contends she chose her words carefully to avoid saying that, but I guess I think about things too much for that to work.

        So I got annoyed when basically everyone gave me advice to take the initiative, asking me when I was going to make a move, and so on. Granted, I’ve come a long way for my days of telling everyone they “don’t get it”. So I did tell them, each time, that it wasn’t going to happen and that was okay. Which is ironic, in retrospect, because in early December I had just finished dealing with what I hoped was the last stupid anxiety that was making it hard for me to see her as only a friend. Then, out of the blue, our usual goodbye hug was supplemented with a kiss on the cheek. I asked why, and the answer was “because I wasn’t brave enough to really kiss you”.

        Well, in that case!

Obligatory cheese

        It was surprisingly easy to let myself start falling in love again. I initially worried that it might take a while to completely change the nature of our relationship. After all, I’d spent months trying to avoid any untoward interest. As it turns out, there’s a lot of overlap between being very close as friends and dating. Thankfully, I only spent about two weeks of stopping myself mid-thought to ask “is it okay to think that? oh yeah, we said we were dating now! okay, carry on, brain”. And, dear reader, I’m happy. I even accidentally accomplished a goal for 2012 that I didn’t have the guts to commit to! I wrote my first love letter in more than four years. That’s not for your eyes, though. As for what I’ll say in public, here’s the story I recently added to the Facebook event commemorating our change of relationship status:

    "It’s hard to know where to start with this kind of blurb. Maybe the fact that we’re two out of a very small group of people specializing in linguistics within cognitive science. Maybe our shared interest in anime, or video games, or books. Maybe it should be about how a pair of introverts always enjoy each other’s quiet company. Maybe it’s an afternoon spent reading in the sun beside a beautiful lake and a beautiful girl. Maybe it starts with a familiar hand, raised in familiar excitement, in one lecture after another. Or maybe it’s something a bit less romantic, like a nosy classmate telling you never to wear white sock with jeans - in fact, never wear white socks at all.

    Let it not be said that men can’t change; I now own several pairs of non-white socks.“

        Meanwhile, I managed to prod and nag my way into a few nice pictures of us together, which I’ve screencapped for the sake of the album description.

Moving forward, looking back

        I’ll be honest: it’s weird to be starting from scratch with someone new. I’ve literally never done that before. It’s weird to be in a healthy relationship. It’s weird to receive a genuine compliment from someone I have great affection for. It’s weird to not be scared to speak my mind, and it’s weird to want to smile so often, and that she borrows books from my shelf and actually likes them, and that we curl up on the couch to play videos games we both like, and that we can study together, and the list goes on and on. It’s weird to spend so much of my time with one person, and not have the slightest desire for anyone else’s company. I keep finding out how awesome weirdness is.

        It’s a big change, one that comes after years of trying to move on. Four years of being single, all told. Still, it makes these moments of "so this is what a relationship is supposed to be like” that much more powerful. Turns out that desiccated corpse had plenty of life left in it after all.

        I hope I haven’t gone on too long. I just want to do the story justice. I have a number of dedicated readers that I don’t speak to on a regular basis, and if you’ve read even half of what I’ve written in the past, you really deserve to know how well things are going these days. I’m excited, and I hope that makes you happy, too.

A year ago, the Cognitive Science department at Carleton took a vote on whether the primary name for our degrees should be changed from Bachelor of Arts: Major in Cognitive Science: Specialization in X to Bachelor of Cognitive Science: Major in X. I voted in favour, and so did most other people apparently, because earlier this year the BCog became an option for us. I’ve finally gotten around to making the change, and I’m pretty happy about it, I think. The requirements for me to graduate didn’t really change from what they were when I first came to Carleton and the current calendar, so it was an easy decision from that point of view.

The important change is from Bachelor of Arts to BCog. My first thought was “well, nobody’s going to know what to think about this weird degree only offered at Carleton”. Then I remembered that you can often get a BA in psychology, or a BS in psychology. They’re probably quite similar degrees, but odds are there’s one or two differences in required credits. Cognitive science gets a free pass on some of the BA staples like “breadth requirements”, so from that perspective it makes sense to make us separate. But the other aspect is that if I’m BCog with a major in Linguistics, it acknowledges that I’m probably only a few credits away from a BA degree in Linguistics. I can’t necessarily say whether my degree is primarily focused on linguistics or on cognitive science, so I can’t speak on whether “majoring in cognitive science” is better than “majoring in linguistics”. But the specialization thing has always been really confusing, and I’m glad to be rid of that.

It’s really weird to think I’m not far away from graduating. Most of my prerequisites in other areas were taken care of last year, but I had to do logic and philosophy of science this year too. This semester, I’ve got one required cognitive science course and three linguistics courses. Next year will be pretty similar, though at some point I’ll be doing an AI course. Over the summer, assuming I’m at Carleton, I’ll be doing an independent study course to learn statistics the hard way via R rather than the typical “stats for psych students who are scared of math”.

I say all of this because it’s equal parts exciting and scary. As it turns out, I’ve learned stuff over the last three years. Still, I haven’t decided on what I’m going to do after I graduate. This summer is going to be important, I think, for deciding what I’ll do when I graduate. Still figuring that out, though. I’ve been told I could potentially travel to work at another university over the summer, but the trouble with that is I don’t know what my options are. Or if my recommendations are good enough to be accepted by professors I’ve never met.

Anyway, I’ve got some meetings to arrange before I start making decisions. Though, of course, I’ll be screwed if I take too long on that. But then homework. And other things that need to be done. Blaaarg.

[please direct any funny jokes about my bachelor-tude to your usual communication channels, or comment so everyone can chuckle]