"Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness." ~Richard Carlson

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to anyone who has had the misfortune recently of encountering Crazy Katherine. Crazy Katherine is not a nice person; she is snippy, cranky, flaky, irritable, constantly hungry, often smelly/disheveled, and basically a vapid narcissist. She is stressed to the max, and will randomly reference something from psychology that is neither relevant nor of any interest to you. Her room is incredibly messy, and she consumes an amount of sugar that would repulse even the most rambunctious kindergartner.

Crazy Katherine takes over my body during situations of extreme stress (and during extremely stressful situations, the brain signals the body to release adrenaline and cortisol, but sometimes during traumatic situations, the medial prefrontal cortex is slow to react, causing a failure to inhibit the fear response once the danger has passed. This is theorized to be a cause of PTSD, according to Pitman et al, 2002, in case you were wondering).

I am, in fact, quite stressed. I have six exams in total, two of which I have now taken, two I have next week, and then two more after that (but the last two are not in psychology, and don’t count for 100% of my grade, unlike the others, so they are somewhat less stressful than the first four). The way the exams work here, at least for psychology, is, in my opinion, an incredibly unfair system. There is no way to properly prepare or even really know what to prepare for. Worse still, there is truly no one to help you. Office hours do not exist, and professors simply do not care about you or how you are doing or if you need help or if you are sitting in your room, hysterically crying because no matter how hard you try you cannot remember the difference between the Furnham 1992 study and the Furnham 2002 study (FYI the 1992 study examined the influence of cognitive style and personality traits and the 2002 study examined why studying personality traits is basically pointless. I admit, there’s a clear distinction but when the same guy has written about half of the articles you need to remember, it gets tricky). I have never encountered a professor who did not want to help his/her students, and they all said that we should not hesitate to ask a question so when I had gone through all of my notes, all of the lecture slides/notes, and looked up all the stuff on psychinfo, and found nothing, I emailed my professor a simple question, just asking for a little guidance as to where to look for answer to a question, and his reply was so snippy and nasty it had me in tears (yes, I am in tears quite a lot in this post, and I am in tears a lot in general, but trust me, this email was mean)

(Dad, if you’re reading this, I’m sure this is the part you’ve been waiting for). The exams so far have been fine. Not great by any stretch of imagination, but not as horrible as I was thinking. I kept calm, and I did the best I possibly could, given the circumstances. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) I will not find out my results for a very, very long time. That extra “very” is in there because my professors are likely going on strike and refusing to grade papers, postponing results even further. I’m just glad they’re not postponing the giving of the exams, a threat which sent me into an anxiety attack earlier this week.

So, why am I blogging? I NEED A BREAK! After my exam today, I was completely spent. I desperately needed to shop (not wanted to shop-needed to. I hadn’t taken spring humidity, heat, and a lack of air conditioning into account when I packed to come here).I tried studying when I got home but it just was not happening. So I’m blogging, watching Glee (the cure for all life’s problems), and going to bed early so I can wake up and study, study, study. Social psychology=fun!

Before the hell phase of exams set in I was taking one day off per week, which was lovely. While my lovely friend and I were at Leeds Castle we mentioned that we both really wanted to go to EuroDisney. The next weekend was the only chance I would likely have to make that trip happen, so we decided to go for it!

My previous Disney experiences were less than stellar, so Kristin made it her personal mission to make sure I had a great time, since she loves it so much. And, I am happy to report, it was a fantastic day. We went on just about every roller coaster in Disney World and all but one of the roller coasters in Walt Disney Studios (the equivalent of MGM). They were surprisingly fun, and we had a great time. And, for anyone planning a trip, I highly recommend the new Finding Nemo Roller Coaster. It seems to be unique to EuroDisney, and it was both Kristin and my favorite of the day. It was really fun to hear Mickey Mouse speaking French, and Crash from Finding Nemo speaking French in an Australian accent. We did, however, realize that the Haunted Mansion is a lot less scary when it is narrated entirely in French so you have no idea what is going on or what the significance of the bloody bride is.
Anyway, here are some pictures:

Sleeping Beauty's Castle


Screaming on Space Mountain


Screaming on Tower of Terror (also note the terrified little girl on the far right. She could not have been more than five, and she came off the ride hysterically crying, and it was all I could do to keep from hugging her and calling the French social services.


We went to a really fun blacklight show (where we may or may not have been the oldest people there without children), where they sang and performed Disney songs, alternating between English and French. Mickey spoke French, and Donald spoke English!


Lion King float in the parade (Timon and Pumba spoke French, which was weird)

Blogger is annoying me to no end, so if you want to see more pictures, let me know.

(Also, MAZEL TOV to Chani and Oren and their beautiful baby girl!!!!)