Good girl vs. me

The good girl follows the rules and listens to the adults. She tries to fulfill all the expectations of her. Not only she "behaves" all the time, but she also tries to anticipate what is going to be required of her. The good girl does not show a lot of creativity. Her talent is to be efficient and accurate. The good girl feels good when she is pleasing other people. The good girl might sometimes politely disagree, but very quickly her mind can be convinced by other people's points of view. This good girls is not very certain about many things, she is always wavering between some inner feelings (noise) and other people's knowledge. She often chooses to believe in other peoples ideas and dismiss hers as problematic, unprepared or unimportant. The good girl speaks very low, sometimes people can't hear her. She does not want to be impolite, improper or bossy. She also really dislikes making mistakes, she rather not make them. And when she does, she feels like her true self is revealed. "Now everyone knows how clumsy/careless/lazy/ignorant I really am" she thinks and sighs. She would really like to be like someone else. She wants to be like the little girl in the playground that is confident but not arrogant. That is who the good girl is. The rest is me.

My Passion

One of the things that I was looking for when I decided to come to the US was what I called "my passion". I had hints of it because I loved my job at the Psychological Research Institute where I worked. But I wanted to go beyond that and really become one with my passion. Even though I had a rough childhood and adolescence in economic terms, I never wanted to settle down for a job that would give me "only" money. And by this I don't mean to diminish the value of money because I know exactly what is like not to have money available for food or other necessities. But I was always inspired by people that did wonderful things and did these things happily. When I see artists or scientists that manage to move people and interest people in their creations or discoveries without necessarily trying, that is when I see the passion that I am talking about. There is something very compelling about someone who is in love with what they do. And there are people like that in all walks of life.
When I taught psychology to freshmen in college, I knew that I had found my call. Not that I think that I am good at teaching, at least not yet. But I know that this is something that I want to spend my energy on. As it turns out, I haven't taught again, at least not formally. Raising my two sons is a continuous teaching process but it is not the same. There is little time for preparation and there are no textbooks whatsoever.
So, I slowly walk towards teaching again, walking the steps of the dissertation process which can sometimes be distracting and often makes me forget that this is really what I love to do.

Brain First

I have had plenty of distractions the last 11 years, some of them more relevant to my life than others, so I did not pay attention to the political campaigns in this country until now. Now that I have children, and I have invested my life and love in this country, now I feel free to care, and express my thoughts about politics.
See, I was raised in a country with no army, where education and health when I was growing up had the level that only industrialized countries had. Still, Costa Rica, where I was born, has better indicators of quality of life than many Latin American countries. The trend for people like me, educated yet underprivileged by many accounts, is to dislike the U.S.. Sympathy for Castro's Cuba and Che Guevara t-shirts abounded in the Social Sciences faculty where I got my undergraduate degree. But I had had early experiences in the U.S. that marked me for life. Part of my father's family migrated here during the 60s and raised their families here. I visited for the first time when I was 10 and I encountered a world that I can only summarize as "better". Of course, the city that I visited was New York, which is very different from the surroundings that I was used to.
Long story short, I was inspired to come to study to a place where standards where simply higher. Where things work in the way that they are supposed to, and if they don't then somebody is going to complain, and somebody is going to work to fix whatever is wrong.
I did not know the intricacies or the complexities that abound in American political life, just as they exist everywhere else.
But I have learned one thing. I have learned that in life an in politics ideas, skills, values, should come first. Not emotions. And I don't mean to understate the importance of emotions for everyone's life. What I believe is that emotions necessitate to be enclosed in a container forged with intelligence. That loose emotions, and particularly fear and anger, need to be processed in order to make a contribution to political life and to everyday life.
I have witnessed the most shameless display of hatred and fear mongering in the speech of Sarah Palin last night. I am not a religious person but I feel that I am very knowledgeable about Christian thought. Palin does not practice the doctrine of Jesus. Period.
I really don't want to get into the details of what upset me, and what is wrong, according to me and the civilized world, with Palin's speech. I cannot do that at this point. The reason being that brain should come first.
If emotionally I am at a state of anger, of fear, or any other emotion that can overcome me, I am probably not going to be as eloquent. I am probably not in control of the production of my thoughts. I need to settle down and calmly describe my ideas and why I feel they are important. Note that I write why I FEEL they are important. And there are rationales for why some things are important to me, and there are also some things that resonate with my feelings and therefore are important. But in any case, emotions should be aligned, contained, shaped and translated by our thoughts. Otherwise we become very manipulative and very manipulable.
Palin's speech last night was an attempt to appeal to emotions known to decide previous elections: fear of terrorism, fear of people that do things differently (or look or think differently), the fear that moms have of "not doing their job right", fear of community organizers (they might want to move the homeless to our gated communities), etc.
I have things to do so I cannot continue this rant for now. But let me just summarize, in a very visceral, not "brain first" way my impression of last night's speech, in the hope that I can later develop a more articulated posting.
Sarah Palin = Dolores Umbridge; RNC= Death Eaters ; DNC= Jedi Council