Homemade Infrared Goggles

For about $10, you can build your own infrared goggles. No, these goggles won’t let you see through houses, clothing, or in the dark. These goggles work simply by blocking all light that is not infrared. In technical terms, the goggles are infrared-pass goggles, meaning they filter out everything that is not infrared.

The inspiration and design of these IR goggles comes from Bill Beaty.

Warning: Wearing these goggles causes dilation of your pupils, which means more infrared light is entering your eyes than normal. I can’t tell you whether or not this is dangerous.

The first thing you do is purchase a cheap pair of welding goggles with replaceable filters. I got these ones on Amazon, and they work great. You’ll also need a sheet of 181 Congo Blue gel filter and a sheet of 106 Primary Red gel filter.

Welding goggles

Take the colored filters out of the welding goggles and for each eye, add 1 red filter and 1-6 blue filters. Put the goggles on on a bright sunny day, and enjoy walking through a surreal world of infrared light.

Red and Blue gel filters

Most infrared light is invisible to the human eye. These goggles do not allow you to see more infrared light than you normally can–they just block everything else so that all you see is the infrared light. To “see” infrared light that is invisible to the human eye, try this IR detector. The way these goggles work is that the red filter blocks the various shades of blue light and the blue filter blocks the various shades of red light. Together, they block almost all shades of visible light except infrared and the very near-infrared.

The picture below is sort of what it looks like to walk the sunny outdoors while wearing the infrared goggles. The reality (looking through human eyes instead of the eyes of a camera) looks even more surreal. The purple/violet colors are a lot more powerful and vibrant than what you see through the eyes of a camera.

It looks even cooler through human eyes!

Warning: Do not look directly at the sun with these goggles. Even though the sun looks a lot dimmer, the goggles are not blocking any of the visible or invisible infrared light, which can severely damage your eyes in seconds.

The One Year Anniversary of the New Me

Even our Amish parents and siblings made it to our beach wedding.

One year ago I was working a dead end job and “investing” in a business by going into credit card debt, I was several thousand dollars in debt, I was living in a big house with people I wasn’t getting along with anymore, I had too much stuff, I was addicted to Mountain Dew, I was struggling with personal upheavals related to a fundamental shift in my worldview, and I was dreaming of someday getting a college degree.

I had always planned on enrolling in college as soon as I was financially stable–as soon as all my debts were paid off, the business was doing well, and I could afford to take a several year sabbatical to pursue an education. Then almost exactly a year ago, I was encouraged to enroll in college despite my responsibilities. I was encouraged to enroll in college even if it was just to take one course at a time. I was persuaded to enroll in college and try it despite my constantly-changing plans for the future.

It didn’t take a lot of consideration before I decided to enroll. My life was getting stagnant, and college, it seemed, was exactly what I needed. I enrolled in college, but I did way more than that. I took the opportunity to completely reorganize my life and my priorities.

The first thing we (myself and my fiancee at the time) did was move out of the big house where we lived with 5-7 other people. We moved into my aunt’s nice vacation home and cut some of the toxic personal relationships that had been dragging us down for the past year. I quit the minimum wage dead end job that I had been using to help make ends meet until my online business brought in more sales, and I stopped deluding myself into thinking that I would be able to survive on my business income anytime soon. I quit pumping money, energy, and time into the business. Instead, I began a part-time lawn care job. The work was hard, but it paid way more than minimum wage.

By transferring my time from internet marketing and a minimum wage part-time job to lawn care, I was able to pay off several thousand dollars of debt that I had incurred over the previous three years. In fact, working only 2-3 days a week, I was able to pay off most of my debt and still have the time and money to go to college full time. The only debt I have left is a bit on my vehicle loan (which I had purchased a month before losing my internet marketing job about three years ago). To help support my addiction to higher education, I also sold most of my stuff and cut my expenses as much as I possibly could.

Because my life was changing so much, I decided it was also time to quit my excessive inhalation of Mountain Dew. I quit that without a problem and even cut down on my smoking.

The biggest change in the last year, however, was getting married. When I asked her about 9 months ago, we had been dating for more than 5 years. Why so long? First of all, we lived together for most of those 5 years, so getting married wasn’t something that seemed like too big of a lifestyle change. More importantly, much like college, I had been waiting to get married until I was “financially stable” whatever that means. Enrolling in college without that financial stability forced me to question my justification for waiting to marry. Long story short, we got engaged and had an awesome beach wedding five days ago.

That, in a nutshell, is how my life changed over the past year. Sometimes, you gotta know when to fold ’em and start fresh with a new hand, and that’s what I did a year ago. So far, life is looking much better. My only regret is that I didn’t do all of this when I first lost my job instead of wallowing around for next three years in various entrepreneurial pursuits.

Breaking Bad: Making Meth… I Mean Aspirin!

Image: Ursula Coyote/AMC

Today I made aspirin. Next up… meth! I kid. At chemistry lab tonight, we synthesized aspirin–it was pretty cool.

I find it amazing how creative and yet utterly logical that chemists have to be to come up with a procedure for synthesizing a specific chemical. In order to arrive at a destination (aspirin in this case), the chemist has to follow a very specific procedure. Well, not necessarily. There are multiple procedures and multiple ways in which each step can be accomplished, and that’s where the creativity comes in.

Let’s say you want to make C9H8O4 (i.e. aspirin). From the formula, we know that each unit of aspirin contains 9 carbon atoms, 8 hydrogen atoms, and 4 oxygen atoms. The problem is, we can’t just take 9 moles of carbon, 8 moles of hydrogen, and 4 moles of oxygen, put it all in a bag, shake it for a few minutes and open the bag to find aspirin. Oh, no! We’d probably be left with a pile of carbon at the bottom, oxygen gas in the middle, and a bunch of highly flammable hydrogen awaiting us at the top of the bag.

The puzzle is, how to we utilize the different properties of different chemicals to create a specific chemical that we don’t yet have? Well, in our case, we mixed salicylic acid (the stuff you put on warts) and acetic anhydride (it’s basically dried vinegar) together and added a few drops of phosphoric acid to speed things up. Then we applied heat, which caused the stuff to magically react to form something that was not in the test tube to begin with. Who would’ve thought? But now our aspirin is contaminated by an excess of acetic anhydride. How can we get rid of it? I know, let’s add water! (I’m trying to think like the chemist who invented the procedure.) That will turn the acetic anhydride into vinegar which can be filtered out of the aspirin crystals. That’s basically the process we used to synthesize crude aspirin. If you’re interested, you can find the full procedure here.

Our class’ synthesis of aspirin was simple by chemistry standards, but it gave me a peek into the mind of a chemist. A chemist is much like a chef. A chef has an extensive knowledge of the properties of different foods and spices. He or she thinks logically–following multi-step procedures in a specific order to create a product worthy of awe. The chef is precise–too much or too little of any spice will ruin the product. The true chef is also creative–the true chef experiments and designs new procedures that yield amazing new products. The chemist, I’ve come to see, is much like the chef. There is careful precision, there is a lot of logical planning and procedure-building, but there’s also creativity and experimentation. If I wasn’t so set on making Star Trek a reality, I would be quite happy being a chemist.

How to use your Video Camera as an Infrared Detector

Many modern video cameras have a “night” mode, which allows grayish video of close subjects to be taken, even in utter darkness. This feature means that such video cameras can be used as infrared (IR) detectors–they can pick up infrared light that is invisible to the human eye.

The video camera I’m using today is a Sony DCR-SR45. It’s not a high end camera, and I purchased it used, but it has “Nightshot Plus,” which I’m interested in today.

Here’s how the night mode works on these cameras:

1) An infrared light on the front of the camera illuminates the subject with infrared light. You might see the near-infrared output of this light as a faint red glow if you look directly at the video camera when it’s in night mode.

2) The infrared sensor in the camera picks up on the reflected IR light to render the picture. If you’ve ever used such a camera, then you know the video it produces when you’re using night mode is grayed out and looks something like the following:

So what can we do with this IR detector? Well, one of the easiest things we can do is check if our TV remotes are working. Most TV remotes work by broadcasting an IR signal to the TV. To the naked eye, this IR light is completely invisible, but not to our IR detector. Check out the side-by-side video captures of a TV remote without and with night mode:

If you want to try it for yourself, just point the TV remote at your video camera (which should be in night mode) and press a button on the remote. If you’re watching the screen on the video camera, you should see the little bulb on the tip of the remote turn into a rapidly flashing light.

To the naked eye, the infrared light from the TV remote should be completely invisible, but even video cameras without night mode may detect some infrared light (see the left picture above). Turn it into night mode, however, and the IR emission from the remote becomes practically blinding.

Another interesting use for your IR detector is to tell from a distance whether a heat source is radiating thermal energy in the form of IR radiation. Recall from physics class that heat is transferred three ways: conduction, convection, and radiation. If you run really hot water through a faucet and take a look at it through a video camera on night mode, you won’t notice anything unusual. This is because the hot water isn’t transferring much heat through IR radiation. If you hold your hand close to the stream of hot water you won’t feel much. Touch it, however, and the heat from the water is conducted into your hand. Now take a look at a radiative heater through your IR detector, and you’ll see something interesting. In regular video, the heat source in the heater appears orange but it’s well-defined. Turn on night mode, and the heat source turns into a bright diffuse glow. It’s particularly interesting, to watch such a heater warm up through a video in night mode. When the heating tubes (or coils) are cold they look well defined (but monochrome) in the video. As they heat up, they become enveloped in a diffuse, white glow.

If you’re the nefarious type, you may find our IR detector very useful. Security cameras with nightvision capabilities usually illuminate their field of view with infrared LEDs. To the naked eye, this illumination is invisible, but point a video camera with night mode toward a house with nightvision security cameras, and those security cameras stand out like spotlights.

One thing I haven’t tried yet is to point the video camera in night mode toward a circling police helicopter to see if they’re using an infrared spotlight to illuminate the ground. Some day I’ll check it out. I’ve always been curious whether or not our local police chopper uses IR technology to track suspects.

CourseNotes: MAC 1105 College Algebra

I am your friend!

When I enrolled in college, my placement scores allowed me to skip college algebra. I decided to take it anyway because it had been several years, and I was sure I was rusty. I’m so glad that I took it. I’m currently studying calculus and analytical geometry, and I gotta tell you. If you’re taking algebra, don’t slack. If you do you will seriously regret it when you get to calculus. You can breeze through pre-calculus and trigonometry without being an algebra ninja, but not with calculus. It’s just like my calculus professor said–the hardest part about calculus is algebra. You’ll repeatedly use algebraic techniques that you thought you would never see again. The slope formula? That thing will beat you silly the first week in calculus if you don’t learn it now. In calculus, you will literally use everything you even just glanced at in algebra. Furthermore, your calculus professor will be disappointed that you didn’t see more things in algebra.

I don’t have a lot of advice for students taking algebra, but following are some of my thoughts. I’m sure your professor will drill it into you, but I should probably say it too… good note taking and practice are the key.

Modelling

Modelling problems, otherwise called “application problems” or “word problems” are often the most difficult part of mathematics for most students. It takes me more time to solve a modelling problem than it takes to solve other problems, in fact, I would even say that modelling problems are more difficult than other problems. However, where I differ from a lot of math students is the attitude I have toward them. I like them. I find them challenging. To me, they’re puzzles, and I love solving puzzles. There is a very real benefit to doing modelling problems and that is that it takes all that abstract mathematics and turns it into real, useful, tools.

Most of the modelling problems encountered in college algebra involve geometry, interest calculation, mixtures, uniform motion, rate of work done, or proportions. My suggestion is that you try to figure out a general procedure for each different type of problem. Some of these procedures involve the applications of formulas. For example, for simple interest calculations we use the formula I = prt (interest = principal * rate * time) and for uniform motion we use d = rt (distance = rate * time). For other types of modelling problems, you can learn specific tactics that make it easier to solve any problem of that type. For example, draw the problem if it involves geometry, and for mixtures; make a table. The takeaway here, is that general solutions/equations/procedures are extremely helpful when you’re ready to solve specific instances.

Absolute Value Equations and Inequalities

I’ve always had trouble with absolute value equations and inequalities, and so I think do a lot of other people. I try to remember the specific procedures, for example; |x| = a means x = a or x = -a, but come test time, I end up confused and unable to remember the procedures. The only thing that saves me is to think logically about a given case. It often helps me to draw a number line and then mark it up with interval notation and arrows to show the values that x can take.

When working with absolute value, it helps me to think of it as distance. For example |x – 3| is just the distance between x and 3. Distance is always positive–just like absolute value. If given the problem |x – 3| < 9, I would start by drawing a line with an arrow at each end (my number line). I know that the distance between x and 3 is less than 9, so I mark a spot for 3, a spot 9 units to the left of 3, and 9 units to the right of 3. I know that x must be between those outer two points in order for it to be within 9 units of 3. Then my answer is simply 3 – 9 < x < 3 + 9 or -6 < x < 12. What is |x|, you may ask? Well, it’s just the distance between x and zero.

Your Calculator

Your calculator is your best friend. Learn it well. Your calculator will save your life repeatedly when you’re in the midst of battling an exam… assuming you’ve learned how to use it. You must learn how to graph functions and use the trace and intersection features. This will allow you to double check your algebraic work as you go along. You also need to know how to enter an equation and then use the table and VAR features to try different values for x. These skills are guaranteed to save your ass and to save you time in the long run.

Also, be sure to read my post on avoiding mistakes in algebra.

Phi Theta Kappa Membership

Phi Theta Kappa Certificate

The other week I received an email from my calculus professor (she’s the advisor for my college’s chapter of the society) notifying me that I qualify for membership in Phi Theta Kappa–the honor society for 2-year college students. Among other eligibility requirements, one must have completed at least 12 credit hours and have a current GPA of at least 3.5.

The eligibility requirements are pretty low, I think, but I still feel a sense of pride for the invitation. Besides, gaining membership had been one of my goals. It’ll look good on my diploma and my resume, and it may get me some fat scholarships depending on the university I apply to in a year.

I went ahead and paid the $75 fee to join–hopefully, it’s worth it. What do you think? Is membership in Phi Theta Kappa particularly beneficial in any way?

On Being Debt Free

This is a good feeling!

Having debt sucks! Last year at this time, I had $2600 in credit card debt, $1300 that I still owed on my ridiculously amazing laptop, and several thousand on an auto loan.

In the last year, with a part-time job and being full-time in school, I paid off all of my credit card debt, my laptop, and about $3000 on my auto loan. I accomplished it by changing my priorities, getting a part-time job, cutting down my expenses, selling most of my belongings, and living frugally. It’s a good feeling to be pretty much debt free.

I know that $2600 isn’t a lot of credit card debt, but it hangs over you like a crowd of menacing clouds, and even a small amount like that sucks up interest, and it takes a long time to pay off when your income is limited. At the time, I was spending a lot of time on an entrepreneurial endeavor. A colleague from a former job and I were trying to make a go of it selling Amish furniture online. Like all startups, it took a lot of time. Unfortunately, the sales were not yet at the point where it could support our lifestyles, and so I supplemented mine with credit cards. It’s an investment, I thought. Once the sales really start rolling in, I’ll be able to easily pay of the credit card debt that I used to buy food and pay bills.

Then last march I made the life-changing decision to pursue a college degree. After several years of babying our company, always believing that huge sales were just around the corner, I decided, essentially, to cut my losses. I’m still a partner in the business, and it’s actually doing pretty well at this time, but the commission checks we pay ourselves are nowhere close to covering life expenses. Besides, I’ve always known that I don’t want to do online marketing for the rest of my life–it just doesn’t exhilarate me like studying math and science does. Although I’m still considered a partner, I don’t put much time into the business, and it’s not on my list of priorities for the future. Making the decision to pursue a degree forced me to face reality, and find an alternate source of income.

Now I mow lawns. Seriously. I maintain forty or so lawns, I trim trees, bushes, and hedges on the side, and sometimes I fill in for another lawn care company. I work about 2-3 days a week, and last year I made between 15k and 20k doing this. It’s  not much, but by cutting my expenses, and living frugally, I was able not only to survive, but actually to pay down existing debt. It helps that for much of the year I can live rent free by “house sitting” a relative’s winter home. I don’t like mowing lawns. After years as a white collar worker, it hurts my pride. Sometimes, pride just has to be swallowed for the greater good.

My ridiculously amazing laptop was also one of those “investments”. I thought I needed it for the business, and the manufacturer allowed me to purchase it for monthly payments of $30 or so. The interest was high–like 30%–but I figured I would have it paid off within a month. It took most of a year. Now I know that I don’t actually need an i7 processor, a backlit keyboard, and an extra-large battery. Live and learn.

As for my auto loan, I’ll have that completely paid off in a few more months. I purchased a nice, used SUV about a month before I got laid off from my well-paying job (three years ago). I had money, but my girlfriend (fiancee now) and I were heading to Switzerland for a vacation, so I decided to take out a loan on the vehicle and wait to pay the rest until we were back from Switzerland. Life had other plans. We cancelled the Switzerland trip and swallowed the $1500 or so in tickets we had purchased. I just didn’t feel comfortable going without a stable income. Two years later, all of the money I had planned on using to pay off the car had been spent on food and other bills, and I was falling back on credit cards while we were trying to get rich selling Amish furniture.

Now, two and a half years later, my SUV is almost paid off. I haven’t taken out any student loans–those will probably come when I transfer to a university. As of right now, I am essentially debt free, and it feels great.

Analyzing and Improving your Math Test Scores

My Calculus Test Grade

Yesterday I finally got my calculus test results for the test I took last week. My grade was 90% (plus 3 percentage points for extra credit work I did). That the class average was under 64% is irrelevant. As a perfectionist with a 4.0 GPA, my grade is unacceptable. The question is, how am I going to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

The first step is a critical analysis of where I went wrong. The second step is to figure out what was wrong with my learning and test preparation strategies, and the last step is to adjust my learning and test preparation strategies so it doesn’t happen again.

It has been my experience that errors I make on a math test fall into three different categories:

1. Format errors
2. Calculation errors
3. Conceptual errors

The first, format errors, occur when you don’t obey the formatting rules outlined or assumed by the professor. For example, if you’re asked to show work and you don’t or if you’re supposed to call a nonexistent limit “DNE” instead of “it no work”, I would call those formatting errors. The second is calculation errors, and those are caused when you don’t pay attention to detail, or you fail to check your work. The third is the worst kind of error because it signals a conceptual misunderstanding of the material the test is testing you on.

1. Format errors: Sloppiness, failure to follow guidelines
2. Calculation errors: Failure to check work or pay attention to detail
3. Conceptual errors: Failing to understand the material at the conceptual level

Before the test, our professor repeatedly told us that we have to show work in order to receive credit. Well, silly me, on a two-part problem which required the same kind of thinking on both parts, I decided it would be sufficient to show work on one part and just do the next part in my head. Ouch, -1 point. On another problem, I got a -2 for not being explicit enough with my answer. I answered “discontinuous at x = 3 because undefined”. The correct answer was “f(3) is not defined”. I think my professor was getting tired or something when she graded that one. On another one I used absolute value bars when I should have used brackets and a negative sign. I still got the right final answer–my method was just not the traditional one. All in all, 4 out of 10 of the negative points I got was due to avoidable sloppiness–format errors.

On two of the problems, I demonstrated a failure of understanding at the conceptual level. I lost 5 points for mistaking a tangent line to a curve at a specific point for the derivative function of the curve. It took me an hour to figure out where I went wrong–a definite failure at the conceptual level. The one other point loss came from an inability to remember (or to figure out) whether or not a function is differentiable at a removable discontinuity.

To fix errors of the first kind (i.e. format errors) I need to pay more attention to my professor’s guidelines, and I need to follow them to the letter. It wouldn’t hurt to show way more work than I think is necessary. It probably would be a good idea to give my answer in multiple ways just to make it obvious that I know what I’m doing. I didn’t make any calculation errors, but these are fairly easily fixed by checking work religiously and by at least two different methods. Errors of the third kind (i.e. conceptual errors) can only be fixed by analyzing my learning strategy and adjusting it to reinforce and check whether I’m actually understanding the material at the conceptual level. A good review done prior to the test should also help keep the conceptual stuff fresh come test time. So here’s how to fix each of these math test errors:

1. Format errors: Pay attention to and follow your professor’s guidelines and generally accepted math syntax. Don’t forget your units.
2. Calculation errors: Check your work as you’re going along then later come back and double-check it with a completely different method.
3. Conceptual errors: Study, study, study. Constantly review to keep the conceptual stuff fresh in your mind. You need to know the “definitions” so you have a conceptual foundation to fall back on.

That’s it. We’ll see what my grade is on the next calculus test…

Simple Homemade Spectroscopy

I love chemistry. I get to play with fancy instruments, do some experimenting, and act all sciencey and stuff. Next week, for example, I get to play with a nice spectrometer and do some mathjitsu on spectral stuff. Anyway, I decided to see if I could build a simple spectrometer myself. Five minutes later I learned how to build a simple device out of cardboard, some tape, and a DVD. An hour later, and here’s my spectrometer:

Homemade Spectrometer

This spectrometer was designed by PublicLab.org–a nonprofit community science organization. The kit for the spectrometer can be purchased on Amazon, but I built mine from schematics provided by PublicLab.org.

It’s really an amazing spectrometer for its simplicity. Light enters a tiny horizontal slit at the front of the box and passes through a diffraction grating made from a piece of a DVD. Essentially, the light coming through the narrow slit hits the DVD which splits the light into the wavelengths that compose it. What you see looking through the DVD lens is the line spectrum of the light source. A good explanation of the tech and the underlying science can be found here.

So let’s take a look at a few emission spectra (Note: Usually you see spectra oriented horizontally, but these are oriented vertically… same thing different perspective):

Spectrum of sunlight through clouds

Spectrum of fluorescent light bulb

Spectrum of Incandescent Light bulb

I got these photos simply by holding the little homemade spectrometer up to my phone camera. I have a rather cheap phone camera so the spectra are not as well defined in the images as they are if I look through the spectrometer with eyes only. The really neat thing is that I can upload these images to SpectralWorkbench.org where my spectra are converted into graphs. After calibrating my spectroscope with a fluorescent light, I can compare my spectra against each other and against spectra taken by others. It should be a very useful tool for home spectroscopy.

In the image below, I’m comparing the spectrograph of a white L.E.D. light (white line and color spectrum) with the spectrograph of the same light shining through dark green glass (red line). From this comparison we can deduce the absorption spectrum of the green glass. It shows that the green glass reduces the intensity of the light across the spectrum (i.e. the red line is lower), and it shows that the glass absorbs blue and violet from the L.E.D. (i.e. red line drops at the left side).

Perhaps the most interesting spectrum I saw was that of sodium in the flame of a butane lighter. First I made a sodium chloride solution by stirring ordinary table salt into hot water. Then I dipped a cotton swab into the solution, held it over the flame of a butane lighter, and watched it through my spectroscope. At first all I saw was the full spectrum of the burning butane, but all of a sudden a yellow line much brighter than the rest of the spectrum appeared. The yellow line was the spectral signature of sodium. I’ve done this experiment in chemistry lab, but to see the same results at home with a homemade spectrometer is magical.

Getting the spectrograph of a fluorescent light.

I did the S-word

I feel almost embarrassed for the lack of updates in the last several months. I’m getting married in a few weeks, and trying to juggle work, school, friends, and wedding planning leaves very little time for writing. I promise to update this blog more often in the near future, but I just wanted to pop in today and share some exciting news.

In my life I have scaled some of the tallest mountains in Montana, I’ve left the oppressive culture that is the Amish, I’ve developed computer software and Android apps, I’ve written a book, I made member of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry (way cooler than Mensa), I landed a white-collar internet marketing job with only an eighth grade education, I convinced a beautiful girl to fall in love with me, but today… today… I stood in front of about thirty people and gave a speech.

To put this feat into context, you should know this–I suffer from debilitating social anxiety, or maybe I’ve just convinced myself of that. Years ago I quit accounting school partially because I couldn’t handle the pressure of the required speeches/presentations, but mostly because I decided I hate accounting.

Here I’ve made a cute little function that illustrates the effect of social anxiety on I.Q.:

Isn’t it pretty? I call it the Social Anxiety Function, where a is your anxiety factor and b is your I.Q. when you’re all alone. It gives your I.Q. as a function of the number of people that are looking at you.

Given my specific conditions, this function shows that my I.Q. hits zero when there are 5 people watching me. Any more than that, and it goes negative, which seems impossible given how I.Q. is measured, but trust me, it’s very real. If six people are looking in my direction, the speech and behavior that I manifest are not possibly the output of anything with positive intelligence.

Sometimes, when I’m walking down the aisle of a grocery store I start walking funny because I think the person I just passed has turned, and is watching me. I walk funny because I’m concentrating so hard on walking like a normal person. I don’t have any kind of physical disability–when I’m all alone I walk perfectly fine, but have someone watch me and I develop a limp because I’m trying so hard not to.

I would like to see a psychologist, but I’m deathly afraid that I wouldn’t be able to talk. I’m usually okay when it comes to answering questions, but it’s very difficult for me to initiate conversation or to say anything that’s not the answer to a question. I think I suffer from some weird form of mutism.

Hopefully, that gives you some idea of the magnitude of the accomplishment I’ve made today. I stood in front of a class of 20-30 fellow students, and I gave a speech about myself. I had no choice in the topic. But, it wasn’t as bad as I had feared it would be. I ended up with a pretty good grade, although the professor told us that she was going easy on the grading for our first speech.

I practiced my speech over and over again when I was alone at home. I actually did pretty good when it came time to speak. I forgot a few things I had planned on saying, and I fumbled my introduction, but other than that it wasn’t too bad. I attribute my success almost entirely to those rehearsals, and I really appreciate the friends that told me to practice, practice, practice! I only practiced my speech when I was alone. It would’ve helped even more if I would have rehearsed in front of my housemates, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even rehearse my speech in front of my fiancee–that’s how weird it makes me feel to stand up and formally address by voice my fellow humans.

Tonight, I feel exhausted. You’d think I ran a marathon. This speech course is a required course for me, but getting through it will be worth it, I think. The sense of accomplishment I felt after the nausea had worn off was great. Now I know that I can do anything. Who knows, maybe I could even learn to function as a social animal despite my anxiety.