The Importance of Being Kind

Today was a very, very busy day and even as I'm typing this I can feel my eyelids drooping and my body yearning for my bed, but this was very important to me so I will stay up and write this motherfucker. 

I had a really good albeit tiring day--I slept later than expected last night because some conversations are too engaging to cut short for sleep; that and I drink too much coffee for my body mass. This resulted in a jug of coffee (the problem is self-perpetuating, you see) gulped down on the bus to school this morning (I burned my tongue) and a quick run up five flights of stairs. 

 I've been studying BS Psych for a while now and the thing about the College of Science (COS) is this--they don't shit you. When I was still in OSDM (my course, pre-shifting), I'd never had to fucking study and I was on the Dean's List every term--as with my CLA subjects (BS Psych is a hybrid-course because we have subjects both from the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Science). I really appreciate that the COS bit of my course is so grueling because it's an exercise in discipline: it takes a lot to bore or tire me out, these days. But also, as a result of that gained independence and drive, I've come to expect teachers in COS (or  teachers in general, come to think of it) to be heard-hearted and extremely utilitarian when it comes to teaching. That is, with the exception of the Chemistry Department.

I have a special relationship with Chemistry. We have 10 chem subjects in our flowchart and prior to that I'd already taken 2 chem subjects, so yeah--that beast and I know each other well. I used to have a very love/hate relationship with chem because I felt like it was an unnecessary pain in my ass, not to mention the reason why I've gotten so delayed: I pushed back all my chem units to a separate year so that I could focus on them, which seems to be working. 

But anyway, I digress. I realized today that I've had pretty good luck with chemistry professors as all the ones I've had are people who really care about whether or not you understand what they're saying and who care about their students enough to actually know their names--people who are tough but fair. During today's  first chem class of the term, Dr. Janairo he talked to us about something absolutely unexpected--the importance of kindness. It was something so simple that I couldn't wrap my head around it because it felt like something that we should already know, but that I know we all didn't, to some extent. 

He said this while we were discussing house rules--he told us to be kind to our classmates and to help people out, if they need help. He told us to stop using "well no one is nice to me" as an excuse to not be kind to other people because the whole thing that's wrong with this world is that people expect kindness from the people to whom they were kind; he got very Haley Joel Osment on us and said "Don't expect to be paid back, tell them to pay it forward." He talked about politics and how the whole system suffers from people expecting to be paid back: "I'll run your campaign, build me a vacation house," as opposed to "I'll run your campaign, build these people homes."

He shared a couple of stories with us, about students who out of desperation and absolute aloneness, came to him with problems that had nothing to do with him: poverty, pregnancy, suicide--he talked about how easy it is to say "no" and to say "well, that isn't my problem". But he said that if you can make that teensy difference in someone else's life, then you can probably get through a term of chemistry. If you can be there for someone and pay attention to what they're saying, you can probably sit still and listen long enough to understand mechanisms. He said not to give up on people and to most importantly, never give up on yourself--because that's when you become a real sissy. I found it so refreshing to hear someone say these things in a manner that wasn't condescending and also, wasn't self-righteous at all. He told us that he would make the course as understandable for us as he could, given that we put in the work and put in the time. 

I have high hopes for this term indeed.