Micro-Scope-ing

There was a time when I thought I'd get a CAGS degree in psychology, it's a Master's degree on steroids. With this, I could hang out a sign and get third party payment in counseling. In order to do this, you have to take a battery of tests, come up with recommendations...the filing fees (money..always the money) in order to be even considered for a graduate program. Good luck!

I took three separate tests, the Miller's Analogies, the GRE's and it's subset in psych. All three are well designed in validity and reliability. This basically means it's truly discerning just how smart you are. Don't like the test results and want to sue? Good luck. They can prove the tests are doing what they are supposed to. Go ahead and argue with mathematics...you'll lose.

Miller's Analogies are the worst. It starts off simple: “Dog is to cat as day is to.....” You pick from a choice of four answers. Do I have to tell you the correct answer is “night?” God, I hope not. The questions get progressively difficult to the point of insanity. WHIRLY : HIRSUTE :: ALWAYS : (a. woven, b. suitable, c. altered, d. wayward). The answer would surprise you has it has NOTHING to do with the definitions, but there is a logical relationship there. The “hir” in the first two words is a clue, the “way” is the clue in the choices given. I scored dead even with Millers. I was smart enough but no Einstein. Ok, fine.

The GRE's surprised me somewhat, I managed to get a swelled head and have my self esteem kicked in the balls at the same time. The GRE's, when I took them, were divided into three subtests, language, mathematical and analytical. I scored a standard deviation plus a few points above everyone in language. That makes sense. I could real Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the original middle English w/o the translation to Modern.

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

That's what English used to look like...things change, evolve. Anyways, I could read it. Smart cookie I was at times.

The mathematical part I scored on the median. Half of the people did worse than me, the other half did better. Ok, I hit the dead center. That was enough.

What surprised and insulted me, was that I scored a standard deviation below on the analytical part. Ouch. The analytical part had tons of spatial relationship tests that I completely suck at. 

These test are just plain evil...

I managed to get a few Graduate Schools interested in my and I applied. Two said yes and another told me to learn how to tie my shoes again. But, as time went by, I noticed something happening in the counseling field, insurance was pushing like hell to give pills instead of paying for talk therapy. Pills were cheaper and provided a greater profit margin to insurance. Guess what happened to talk therapy over the years?

Today, to have a practice, you have to stuff your daily calendar from 9AM to 9PM with clients. You see them once per week only due to the nature of therapy. This means you have 60 paying clients in a five day week, 72 if you are open Saturdays. Shit...trying to keep 72 life stories in your head ,with varying levels of client instability...all for about $43,000 a year. If I fucked up, then I'd enjoy the inside of a courtroom in a civil lawsuit circus.

Yuk!

I never did it.

Add to that, from my own experience with people, 95% don't bother to follow recommendations anyway. I can point the way, show you how...but the client has to DO it. Very few do. One time, the state funded a “job coach” position where I would place clients into “real” jobs. They were sick of living on SDI and all the welfare connotations that meant. The program sounded great and positive. That was until the clients found out what working for a living meant. They hated it. Each client I placed into job bugged out in less than a month. So much for the motivation behind personal growth.

**

I have a silly, almost annoying habit of being able to focus like a laser on whatever it is I'm dealing with. It's a powerful tool for getting things done the right time the first time. What will piss me off is when something interferes with that. There are things in life you have to pay attention to like you're cutting a diamond.

I have to thank Dad for this.

In second grade, I was sucking at math to the point of failing with a 69. In my family at the time, that was a sin. You are supposed to do well. 69 might as well be a total zero.

I give Dad credit for this. He sat me down, night after night and worked with me on how to deal with the homework. I can remember complaining to him, with my seven year old boy's worry and fear at the amount of work I was given would drown me.

“But look at it all! There's twenty problems I have to do! It'll take all night.” This was just my looking at the Mt Everest of math problems and believing there was just no way to surmount all that in one taking. Then Dad showed me something I never would of thought of. Hell, how many seven year olds are creative enough to figure this one out.

“Don't look at it all...just look at problem #1, there are no other problems. Focus ONLY on what I show you.” He then covered up the rest of the paper I was working on and left only problem #1 showing. I cranked the problem through and hey presto! Correct answer!

“Good!” He moved the paper to cover up everything but problem #2. I worked that through and again, correct answer!

#3 nailed it.

#4 correct too

#5 success!

All the way through problem 20.

“This is how life is Ronnie, you break the big things down into little pieces then work on the little pieces ONLY. Ignore the rest, focus strictly on the ONE thing. Eventually, it all comes together.”

It worked every time I came to find out. It took me from second grade math to wrestling with the Miller's analogies when I was 24 years old. Hell, I still use it.

“You must be easily distracted.” some people tell me when I recount this story to them. Perhaps. I think it more so that acute, fine attention is easily ruined when you have some god damn phone going off in the background, someone knocking at the door or like me, you use this tactic as a default state of awareness, meaning nearly 24/7. To develop this kind of focus and make it work, it has to be finespun. It is by nature delicate and works like a charm, but it can be easily wrecked too. I'll tell you this, it's almost close to meditation I think. There's a reason why you find signs in libraries that say “QUIET...asshole!”

Don't worry, I'm not fully in this 24/7. I can shut off my brain till I'm nearly drooling and forget how to breathe. I enjoy those times as well. Flipping the switch to “stupid” is necessary at times. But when I am up for bat, time to activate the lasers!

Thanks Dad! I was trained by an Certified Public Accountant who eventually got the MBA and wrote in trade journals waaaay back then. I guess other Dad's show their kids how to swing a bat..mine showed me something else.