On another topic completely...

[baratron]

I'm extremely amused by the answers to my moaning poll. There is a strong correlation between the people who have chronic illnesses thinking I don't moan very much, and the healthy people thinking I moan all the time ;) Oh, sure, some healthy people think I don't moan very much, but they're all the ones who have close friends with long-term illness, so presumably they've acquired some empathy from them. Or maybe I just moan less than their other friends with similar problems ;)

Comments

[nmg.livejournal.com]

1. Yes, McDonalds is bad. My issue was with your self-described boycott; if you're going to break a self-imposed rule of abstinence whenever you feel hungry, don't call it a boycott.
2. Yes, I have had a period of depression that required medication, as I believed I had made clear in my previous comment. Consequently, the state of mind you describe is entirely familiar to me.
3. If, as you say, no-one offered you the straightforward advice that a recognised leave of absence from your studies on medical grounds would require a medical certificate, not your supervisor, your head of group, your group secretary, your departmental counsellor/advisor, your doctor, your family, your close friends or your partners, then I shall withdraw my previous comment.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

[previous comment deleted - I missed an html tag].

What you say in (3) is something of a twist of my words. I was told that I could take a break from my studies (yes, with a medical certificate), but was given the impression that this would be like expulsion - the college would have to "allow" me back some time later, at their discretion. And I was explicitly told that if I did that, I'd be on my own, and would have to find my own way of supporting myself - I wouldn't be allowed to continue with demonstrating, for instance - and I was NOT told that I could receive half my usual grant for x number of months while sick. I was given the impression that writing to the research council was a tremendous amount of hassle for the entire department, and it would be much better if I could just struggle on by myself - not that a simple doctor's letter plus a simple letter from my supervisor (an hour of everyone's time, all told) would be enough.

If I had been reminded at any point that there was a competent College Disabilities Officer, I would have gone to her, and she would have told me this was all a load of bullshit and sorted it out in about a week. But I think no one in my research group even knew there was one until I remembered about her myself and wrote to her, and she then contacted them. This is pretty poor, imo: the Disabilities Officer at IC is not a student representative - she is a senior member of the central College staff, and has the authority to wander down to the Registry or the Rector and shout at them. Thus, research supervisors, and certainly Heads of Groups should know of her existence. The other thing was I was thinking of my depression at that time as a temporary problem that would go away if only I got the right treatment, not as something I'd have intermittently for life, so it did not occur to me that a Disabilities Officer would be able to help with that in the same way she could help with my permanent physical problems. Now, the IC web site explicitly mentions that she is there for temporary as well as permanent problems, but I don't think it did back in 2000, or I would have found out then when I was going through the welfare section, trying to figure out what the hell to do.

Obviously we are having a problem understanding each other, because re your point (2) - in your earlier post, you said I managed to finish mine, though I'm not sure how. That does not convey to me that you have had clinical depression, only that you have had (non- specified) problems. Just about everyone who does a research postgraduate course will have problems of some sort during it - emotional or financial or academic - or all three - and (situational) depression is common. But even given that, not everyone who gets depressed over their studies is clinically depressed - the difference being all the extra stuff that goes along with clinical depression, like poor memory, and inability to concentrate and focus, even when you want to be doing the work. And it was that side of it I didn't know if you would understand.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

[...] in your earlier post, you said I managed to finish mine, though I'm not sure how. That does not convey to me that you have had clinical depression, only that you have had (non- specified) problems.

I had no mental health problems during the course of my PhD. The sentence you draw attention to was an attempt as self-deprecating humour. The period of clinical depression which I spoke of happened some years earlier (1995-1996) and did not coincide with my PhD studies, which began in late 1997.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Also, re (1), I think you missed the self-deprecating irony of my original post. It was meant very much in a "God, I'm so stupid!" sense. If I have gone out of my way to avoid a particular establishment for 2 entire years, that is not breaking a self-imposed rule of abstinence "whenever I feel hungry": I did it once when I was starving and exhausted - the point of my post being what a mistake that was, and I should boil my head in oil for it, except I didn't need to because I'd already received my punishment in the form of the "food".

Okay, "starving" is an overstatement - I wasn't in danger of dying if I didn't eat, I was just extremely and uncomfortably hungry - but "exhausted" is literally true. I was so tired that I couldn't easily walk outside the station, and so emotionally exhausted that I couldn't bear to sit in a restaurant by myself (there are a number of quite good cheap places within 10 minutes of the station, but none of them do takeaway). I'm so tired when I do anything like go to work that I come home and collapse - on a good day, in front of the computer, and on a bad day, in the bed (though I can't sleep because of the pain). I had forgotten in the past few years when my medical stuff has been mainly mental just how bad the pain and tiredness is when it wants to get going, and didn't have any suitable coping strategies in place on that particular occasion. I meant my post to be blackly humorous, not whiny, and I'm sorry that you saw it that way. I suspect if you spent more time with me in real life, you would know my speech patterns which come out in my livejournal, and realise how I meant it - nonetheless, your response is useful to me on the basis that I do have close friends that I interact with only online.