Pleased to meet you . . .
I was raised by tie-dyed wolves in the wilds of Northern CA, my hippy mother moved me and my brother to a bluff by the ocean to live in a teepee and be 'as one' with nature, it was very cold and damp among the elements- it wasn't long before we moved into a real house. My brother and I were barely cared for; we were given concepts and culture in place of clean clothes and brushed hair. We learned to fend for ourselves at a very young age. The ideology of our elders was to expose us to all of life's mysteries and to not hide any truth, [No matter how age-inappropriate] from us. This was supposed to make us into enlightened little geniuses. We all started using drugs at a very young age and most of the people that I grew up with are dead or imprisoned.
The last time that I was in school [as in a desk and a teacher] was in the eighth grade. I went to hippy high school and spent those years, high or selling drugs. My fifteenth year is almost completely blacked out; I remember only bits and pieces of it. I fled my small town for San Francisco when I was 17, I ended up a homeless punk-rocker, strung out on drugs and drinking around the clock. The fact that I lived to see my 18th birthday was an absolute miracle. But I did, and about a month after I turned 18, I cleaned up and stopped drinking. It took me many years to achieve equilibrium and to learn basic life-skills. It was during this period that I began to manage large venues and became a nightclub/restaurant consultant.
After many adventures and lots of lessons, I married my husband and we had our son. I am now involved at our boy’s public school and I serve as secretary of the PTA and chair various fundraising committees. My other interests include political reform and the prevention and dismantling of media-conglomerates.
Last semester I began as a freshman -majoring in psychology- here at GCC. I started by taking one class to become accustomed to the idea of being in a classroom and taking notes at a desk in a traditional learning environment. I am entirely self-educated and in the past couple of years it’s become clear to me, that it is high time that I fill some of the giant gaps in my education that self-directed learning overlooks. I dreamed of going to college when I was a little girl and of learning everything that I had ever wanted to know and the time has come for me, at long last, to pursue that dream.
I have always been fascinated by what makes people tick, partly because, early on, my survival depended on my ability to correctly gauge the mood or motivation of the people around me. What was first a necessity of survival, became an avid interest. The more I learn about people the more I reaffirm that we really have more in common with each other than we may initially imagine and that every judgment and assumption that I make about a person decreases my ability to learn something new.
Despite some of my formative experiences with human beings, I adore people and will never cease to be amazed by the spectrum of what we are capable of. I am looking forward to this class, learning more about psychology and discovering new knowledge-gaps that need to be filled.
The last time that I was in school [as in a desk and a teacher] was in the eighth grade. I went to hippy high school and spent those years, high or selling drugs. My fifteenth year is almost completely blacked out; I remember only bits and pieces of it. I fled my small town for San Francisco when I was 17, I ended up a homeless punk-rocker, strung out on drugs and drinking around the clock. The fact that I lived to see my 18th birthday was an absolute miracle. But I did, and about a month after I turned 18, I cleaned up and stopped drinking. It took me many years to achieve equilibrium and to learn basic life-skills. It was during this period that I began to manage large venues and became a nightclub/restaurant consultant.
After many adventures and lots of lessons, I married my husband and we had our son. I am now involved at our boy’s public school and I serve as secretary of the PTA and chair various fundraising committees. My other interests include political reform and the prevention and dismantling of media-conglomerates.
Last semester I began as a freshman -majoring in psychology- here at GCC. I started by taking one class to become accustomed to the idea of being in a classroom and taking notes at a desk in a traditional learning environment. I am entirely self-educated and in the past couple of years it’s become clear to me, that it is high time that I fill some of the giant gaps in my education that self-directed learning overlooks. I dreamed of going to college when I was a little girl and of learning everything that I had ever wanted to know and the time has come for me, at long last, to pursue that dream.
I have always been fascinated by what makes people tick, partly because, early on, my survival depended on my ability to correctly gauge the mood or motivation of the people around me. What was first a necessity of survival, became an avid interest. The more I learn about people the more I reaffirm that we really have more in common with each other than we may initially imagine and that every judgment and assumption that I make about a person decreases my ability to learn something new.
Despite some of my formative experiences with human beings, I adore people and will never cease to be amazed by the spectrum of what we are capable of. I am looking forward to this class, learning more about psychology and discovering new knowledge-gaps that need to be filled.