Elena Salvatore (staywhoyouare) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-12-09 21:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, beth greene, stiles stilinski |
Who: Beth Greene & Stiles Stilinski
When: Set around November 30, afternoon
Where: At the Irvine library.
What: In which Beth & Stiles meet in the library & discuss the meaning of psychology.
Status: Completed; log.
Beth found her usual table in the library, unoccupied. It was near one of the better, but definitely occupied, tables, which had an outlet and a view of the campus below. She was rearranging her stack of textbooks, most of which were on psychology, when she realized she hadn't charged her laptop. And she needed that if she was going to write ten pages on psychology research. "Hey," she said, to the occupant of the better table, "do you mind if I steal your outlet? My laptop's about to die, and I haven't even started my final papers…" It was getting to be that time of semester when everything had the word 'final' attached to it. Final papers. Final class. Final exams. The last one made her cringe mentally. She already spent more than enough time here, where it was quiet, and she could think without having to see her sister or her roommate. Stiles was currently chewing on a highlighter and had another between his fingers as he tried to make sense of abnormal psychology. He wasn’t a dumb guy, but psychology still seemed like mostly guessing to him. What was normal? Who decided what was abnormal? From what he could tell, it was mostly old white dudes. He looked up from his notes at the question, distracted, glasses halfway down his nose. He picked this table specifically because of its outlet access, and if he was in a dickish mood he would have told her to suck it up--but despite his general distraction, he wasn’t feeling particularly mean-spirited, so he shrugged when the girl asked him. “Uh...sure,” he agreed, only hesitating a moment to make sure his laptop was fine. It was. He had at least six hours of battery left. He unplugged his power cord and tugged it free from the outlet, gesturing vaguely. “All yours.” "Thanks so much. Normally, I'd charge it before I get here, but my mind's been everywhere this week…" She stopped, aware suddenly that she was rambling. He probably didn't need to know why she'd been distracted this week, or anything like that. That's not why people went to the library. "Uh… sorry." She offered him a hesitant smile. Unwrapping her power cord, she plugged into the outlet, and was about to return to her table when she noticed his highlighted notes. She was only about three-quarters through her first semester here -- which meant things like library politics and final exams meant very little to her. It also meant all of her first-year courses were repetitions of high school, but she at least recognized coursework from her major when she saw it. "Are you in psych?" Stiles grimaced and ducked his head a little. He had no problem with chatty people at the library, really. He had just been in the middle of a study binge and it took awhile for him to remember how to interact normally again. “Uh...yeah. Trying to get my Gen Ed requirement out of the way. I didn’t have room in my schedule as a Freshman, so I thought...this year’s the year.” He exhaled, loudly, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Not really a fan, I got to say. I mean, sure, some of its useful, but the standards by which some of these diagnoses are made are gray areas at best.” "Oh." She tried to remember what it was her professors always said about psychology and its relationship to the harder sciences. "Yea… I guess it's a little bit different from other subjects because you're trying to see into people's heads, only you can't really see into them?" She let out a sigh, realizing that wasn't as precise an insight as she'd intended. It had been a long week. "So it's a lot of what one person thinks about a subject rather than concrete data. Which is either really interesting, or…. not." “Right it’s just...there are concrete things we can measure. Like, chemical levels, and the way the brain lights up during an MRI. Stuff like that. But a lot of this stuff is just...interpretation. Deduction based on previously made assumptions by the community before we even had some of that knowledge. I mean, did you know that homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder up until 1973? That’s fucked up.” Stiles drummed his pencil on his textbook as he regarded her. “There’ve been gay people as long as there’s been people, but some guy who had some power decided it wasn’t normal based on assumptions. I’m Stiles, by the way,” he added, flashing her a tired smile. "Well, yeah," agreed Beth. "That is pretty wrong. I mean, I don't think anyone's going around citing Freudian psychology and saying that's how we should live our lives… Right?" She looked at him as she leaned against her table. "But I also think a lot of it is still pretty subjective. Maybe we can look at lights, and chemicals, but what are they really telling us about ourselves? Someone has to interpret what all those concrete signals mean..." She had to admit that she wished she understood all of this better, but she didn't. She only had what she learned about in class, and all of those ideas seemed jumbled in her head right now. "I'm Beth... You're a sophomore?" “Yep,” Stiles replied, idly tapping the textbook with his highlighter. “And it’s the subjective interpretive bullshit that drives me crazy,” he added. “Pun intended. I guess I just wonder…” he continued, thoughtfully, distracted. “You know, if they were that wrong about homosexuality, what else have they gotten wrong?” She frowned. It was hard to argue that psychologists were perfect; they were far from it. And what did all the people who still worshipped Freud and all the old frauds really say about the profession as a whole? She'd read more than a few off-the-wall theories in her introductory textbook, all of which had been held for a period of time, and then modified, or just plain discarded. It was hard to have a perfect science when what you were doing wasn't even -- scientific. "Well, then, I guess… It's down to people like us to tell them they're wrong. I mean, maybe that doesn't make it better, but it's a start? Sorry, I should let you get back to fighting all those wrong dead white men." Her comment induced a laugh, and Stiles smirked and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well...I’m not going to change the world in one gen ed abnormal psych class, but...thanks for the vote of confidence?” Beth just smiled. "Well, you never know," she said. As she went back to her table, she supposed that he was right. They weren't going to change the world in one gen ed class, but maybe that wasn't the point. |