Psych Major Syndrome

by Alicia Thompson

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I tried not to let it all bother me as I followed Andrew to his BMW with the individually heated seats, but for some reason I couldn’t shake it. Nathan is indifferent to me, Ami hates Andrew, and as for Andrew and me…well, who knows? He’ll do something so thoughtful that I’m reminded of how perfect he is for me, but then we seem to bicker over the pettiest crap.

  I’m starting to think that, for a future clinical psychologist, I’m really kind of clueless.

  REALITY PRINCIPLE: In Freud’s theory, the set of rules that govern the ego and dictate the way in which it tries to satisfy the id by gaining pleasure in accordance with the real world and its demands

  WE opted to eat at a small Thai restaurant near campus. Or rather, Andrew opted. I’m probably the only person in the entire state of California who hates Thai food. But Andrew and I had Thai for our second date, and then it had seemed an awkward time to tell him that I spent half the night worrying that I was going to vomit peanut sauce all over his crisp white shirt. So unfortunately, once Andrew realized that there was a Thai restaurant every hundred yards in California, it was all we ever ate anymore.

  Tonight I ordered the fried rice, just as I have every other time since the peanut sauce fiasco, and Andrew gave me a dry look over the top of the menu.

  “You always order the same thing,” he commented. “Live a little, Leigh.”

  Because out of all of them, fried rice tastes the most like Chinese food. I can close my eyes and pretend I’m eating at Shanghai Sun. “On our second date, I ordered the noodles with peanut sauce,” I reminded him.

  Andrew just shrugged, and I fiddled with the napkin in my lap while glancing idly around the restaurant. The obligatory mirrors hung on the walls, and there was one of those fountains with fake lily pads in the entryway. The restaurant was also lit like a mine shaft. I’ve never understood why dim lighting is supposed to be so romantic. Night vision belongs in a Paris Hilton sex tape—not in a restaurant that could potentially poison me with peanut sauce.

  “Oh!” I couldn’t believe I’d almost forgotten the linchpin of any good conversation—salacious gossip about people you used to go to school with. “Do you remember that kid from senior English, the one who called himself Pookie?”

  “Yeah,” Andrew said cautiously. “Why?”

  “He’s totally gay!” I said. “Apparently he even joined a homosexual fraternity. His parents have disowned him. Can you believe that?”

  “Leigh, those are just high school rumors.”

  I gaped at him as if he’d said that America’s Next Top Model was just some dumb reality show, instead of the greatest sociological experiment of our time. “Don’t you get it?” I asked. “This means I’m three for three.”

  “Three for three?”

  Holding up my hand, I counted them off on my fingers. “One, Danny. I always thought he was gay, despite whatever his girlfriend said. And then he came out, just like I predicted. Two, Melvin. Again, I called it, and again, everyone doubted me. But then he started dating that kid I had a huge crush on in sixth grade. Which brings us to three—Pookie. Seriously, I should have my own television show.”

  “You know what?” Andrew said, taking my hands in his. “If I’m going to miss a night of studying for this, let’s at least talk about something important. And not just high school stuff.”

  “Fine,” I said. Of course, all I wanted to do was swap stories about who from high school had become a raging alcoholic in the first two months of college. The statistics are disturbingly high. “Well, pick a subject, then.”

  “All right,” Andrew said. “What about our theses?”

  For a minute I thought he said feces. “What?”

  “You’ve thought about it, haven’t you?” Andrew asked. “What you’re planning to write your senior thesis on? I’m considering an examination of Kant’s musings on the pantheism dispute.”

  Oh, theses. I probably would’ve had more to say on the other subject. “Um…” I said, “I really haven’t thought about it.”

  “Really, you haven’t even thought about it?”

  “It’s not like I don’t know what subject I want to study,” I said. “And I have three more years to narrow it down into a thesis topic. It’s not a big deal.”

  This is one of the drawbacks of Stiles College. It’s a really small school, and they really bring the whole “take charge of your education” thing to a new level. This means that, while the rest of the country is worrying about pledge week, students at Stiles are freaking out about their entire academic future.

  Andrew could be the poster child for this. “Next you’ll be telling me you haven’t thought about grad school yet.”

  Crickets. Seriously, you could hear crickets.

  “You haven’t thought about grad school?”

  Andrew’s habit of repeating things was starting to get annoying. “I mean, I’ve thought about it a little bit. Like, um, I wouldn’t mind going to the University of North Carolina, or Berkeley. Or UCLA.”

  “Berkeley’s a little liberal,” Andrew said. “I’m sick of hearing about UCLA, though. Just because it’s close by, everyone talks about it like it’s the greatest school in the country. Name one worthwhile person who went to UCLA.”

  There have to be a thousand really important people who went to UCLA. Especially in the psychology field, since right now UCLA was actually ranked in the top three clinical psychology schools in the nation. I just couldn’t think of any of them on the spot. “Jack Black,” I offered.

  Andrew snorted. “Let me guess. Communications?”

  I actually didn’t know. I don’t think he graduated, though. But look at him—it’s not like he needs the degree. He’s a comic genius, for crying out loud.

  “Well, what school do you think is better, then?” I challenged, already sick of the Jack Black example.

  “Harvard,” Andrew answered. “Or Yale.”

  Someone had been reading his Generic Ivy League Weekly. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be thrilled if I got into a school with half the reputation of either Harvard or Yale. But surely there’s more to it than just fancy names on a diploma…right?

  Then, of course, there was the bigger issue. If I went to school in California and Andrew was in New England, three thousand miles away, where would that leave us?

  Wait a second. Why were we stressing so much about this?

  “Look,” I said. “You don’t want to talk about high school, and I think it’s kind of pointless to talk about grad school when we haven’t even finished a semester of college yet. So let’s just talk about something else, okay?”

  “Okay. You pick a topic.”

  I wanted to ask him if he thought we’d grown apart in the past few months, ever since it was no longer the same routine it had been back in Arizona of studying for the AP exams and making out in his bedroom. I wondered what he said to all those annoying people who asked if high school relationships could last through four years of college. I wanted to ask him if he was happy, or if he thought we were happy together.

  I wanted to know why we had been going out for over a year and we still hadn’t had sex.

  “What’s your greatest worry?” I blurted out.

  Andrew looked genuinely surprised. “My what?”

  “Your greatest worry,” I repeated. “What’s your biggest fear? What annoys you the most? What was the happiest time for you? Today in Intro Psych we filled out these questionnaires, and I realized…we’ve never really talked about that kind of stuff.”

  “Christ, Leigh,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “Just think about it.”

  “Okay…then I guess, clowns, clowns, and when I’m not around any clowns.”

  I slapped his arm playfully across the table. “Be serious.”

  “Oh, I am,” he deadpanned. “Haven’t you ever seen the movie It? And what about that one serial killer, the one who dressed up like a clown? That’s enough to keep you up at night.” />
  “John Wayne Gacy,” I supplied. “The killer’s name was John Wayne Gacy.”

  “Gee, thanks, putting a name to him really helps.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I put that my greatest fear was getting stranded in the desert. Or being buried alive, but really, I don’t think that should count. It’s like the default fear. Nobody wants to be buried alive.”

  “You’re not afraid of getting stranded in the desert.”

  I gaped at him, affronted. “Yes, I am.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Then why do I have so many water bottles in my car?”

  Andrew opened his mouth but quickly closed it, shaking his head. “You’re bizarre,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong—it’s cool. But you’re seriously deranged.”

  There was no use in arguing. There is at least a case and a half of water bottles that roll around my backseat, just in case I ever find myself stranded out in the middle of nowhere like this one girl I read about in a magazine. She was in a ditch by the side of the road for four whole days, and nobody even thought to look there. If she hadn’t happened to have a jug of water in her trunk, she might have died. As it was, she still had to have her leg amputated because she cut it and it got infected. Or something like that—I was so freaked out by the threat of dehydration that I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the gangrene part.

  “So what’s your happiest time, really?” I asked.

  “Whenever I’m with you,” Andrew said, smiling, “and you’re being seen and not heard.”

  “Ha-ha.” His evasion techniques were starting to frustrate me. “Come on, Andrew. Give me something real. Your biggest worry. What pains you. Something.”

  Andrew rubbed his forehead. “Don’t do this, Leigh.”

  “Don’t do what?” I challenged.

  “Don’t analyze me,” he shot back. His face was an unnatural, blotchy red, and the veins in his neck had started to throb. My heart was racing, and it should have scared me, the abruptness with which the mood shifted. But instead, I felt alive. It might have been an argument, but at least it wasn’t the dueling monologues that Andrew and I had been trading lately.

  Then, just as suddenly, the fire went out and a cold guilt settled in its place. Andrew really was a good boyfriend, no matter what Ami might think. And we were good together—no matter what Nathan might think. It really wasn’t fair for me to demand so much right now, when we were both trying to get used to a new environment.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly, reaching out to take his hand the way he had taken mine earlier. Andrew was right. We probably wouldn’t have any problems if I didn’t go out of my way to create them.

  “No, I’m sorry,” he said, sighing. “Let’s just enjoy the rest of dinner, okay?”

  “Okay.” I smiled at him, and for a brief instant it was as if we had recaptured everything that we had lost, caught up between us like butterflies in a net. I didn’t even mind when the waiter brought me rice with peanut sauce by mistake.

  Well, maybe I minded a little bit. I’ve always been grossed out by peanuts, and the smell of that peanut sauce was already starting to turn my stomach. But then I remembered what my Intro Psych professor said about couples therapy: they call it working at a relationship, because it’s not always fun. Andrew and I weren’t perfect. We never would be. But as long as we met each other halfway, we’d be fine.

  When I came home from dinner, Ami was lying on her bed, bobbing her head along to music blaring from her iPod while straightening out hundreds of colored staples. It took her only a few seconds to notice me in the doorway, and she sat up, holding the earphones away from her ears.

  “How was dinner?” she asked.

  The question was simultaneously innocuous and meaningful. Dinner had been good for the few hours that I felt safe, secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t alone. I didn’t care what everyone else thought. I’m not the kind of girl who wanted to enjoy the freedom of being young or whatever. After all, there are people who never find someone to spend the rest of their lives with, so the fact that I got together with Andrew when I was only seventeen just means I’m luckier.

  “It was nice,” I said finally. Ami must have caught the weariness in my voice, because all she did was nod. A quiet moment passed between us.

  “So…what are you making?” I asked politely.

  “This?” Ami gestured to the staples as though I could be referring to anything else. “Eventually I’m going to glue these in abstract patterns on a mobile made from old coupons.”

  All of Ami’s art is based heavily around rubber cement. “What’s it supposed to mean?” I asked. I’ve given up trying to figure it out for myself.

  Ami chuckled. “Honey, it’s not supposed to mean anything. Sometimes art should just be pretty.”

  I stared at her, nonplussed. Then, the oddest thing happened. I just started laughing. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. I laughed until tears were pouring down my cheeks. I laughed until I was crouching down on the floor, one hand braced against the dresser for support. And once I started, I just couldn’t stop.

  Apparently it was contagious, because in no time Ami threw her head back and started laughing, too—a full-bellied cackle that had me going all over again. “I don’t even know what we’re laughing about,” she gasped.

  “Neither do I,” I admitted, wiping tears from my eyes. Ami’s blunt statement had struck a chord with me. Sometimes art is aesthetically pleasing, with no other reason behind it. And I started to think…maybe other stuff was like that. Maybe it was okay if every little thing didn’t have a rationale behind it or take on some scary kind of significance. Maybe I should just let it go.

  PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR: Behavior that benefits other individuals or groups of people, also known as helping behavior. Prosocial behavior includes altruistic motivations, but also includes behaviors that may be motivated by egoism or selfishness.

  THE campus coffeehouse and café was called, inexplicably, the Toad’s Monocle. The toad wasn’t our campus mascot—we were actually such a small school that we didn’t even have any organized sports. In our bookstore, we sell these mini footballs with STILES COLLEGE: UNDEFEATED SINCE 1952 printed on them. Get it? Because we’ve never even played a game? It kills me every time.

  The lack of sports was a huge reason I applied, in addition to the lack of any Greeks. Not Greeks as a people. I mean Greeks like fraternities, sororities, or their incestuous love children, the “frororities.”

  And yes, the Toad’s Monocle does feature a very large mural of a toad holding up a monocle. It’s totally bizarre, but everyone pretty much just accepts it because the café also has the best smoothies ever.

  I was ordering my favorite—a Bee’s Knees, which is like heaven mixed with honey in a glass—when I heard the familiar voice of my academic adviser rasp behind me.

  “Leigh Nolan,” she said. “Just the psychologist I wanted to see.”

  I sincerely hoped that Dr. Harland was seeing a psychologist—and a real PhD, not some kid who still thought Hell Date was quality television. Dr. Harland is so old she could have attended one of Gatsby’s famous parties, and so senile she probably thinks she did. That’s why what she thinks is a funny joke—calling me a psychologist when I haven’t even passed Intro Psych yet—seems a lot more sinister when it’s not clear that she’s joking. If she called me a cosmonaut, I would have to wonder if, deep down, she really believed that I was one.

  “Dr. Harland, hi,” I said, pinning an awkward smile to my face. “Just the professor I wanted to see.”

  “Come, Leigh.” Dr. Harland is one of those people who use your name constantly. “Sit with me and we’ll discuss your academic career.”

  After my evening with Andrew, the most gung ho college student ever to matriculate at Stiles, the last thing I wanted to do was discuss my future. But obviously I had no choice. There was no way that I could tell my academic adviser to buzz off and leave me to my Bee’s Knees. Besides, she had the power to make som
e pretty crucial decisions in my “academic career,” as she called it.

  Stiles College operates on the contract system, which means that, each semester, you sign a contract for the number of pass/fail classes you plan to take and how many you need to pass. This inspires insane jealousy in my friends from high school who ended up going to Arizona State. My grandparents think I won’t be able to do anything with the “novelty degree” I’m getting here, while my mom is disappointed that I didn’t go to this goddess school she found in the mountains where you could major in Reiki or holistic thinking.

  Let’s just say that this past summer was an exhausting whirlwind of “Yeah, not having a GPA is totally awesome” and “I promise it’s accredited.”

  “So,” Dr. Harland said, taking time to adjust her long skirts over her runny panty hose. Her panty hose always had runs in them. I wondered whether she didn’t notice or just really didn’t care. “Psychology. It’s a fascinating subject.”

  “Sure is.”

  “Have you given any thought to what area of psychology you want to study? I know it’s early, but you might even start to consider what your thesis topic will be.”

  I was seriously beginning to worry that there was some hidden thesis deadline (like, THIS SEMESTER) that I didn’t know about. What was with everyone? “Actually, I have thought about it a little,” I lied.

  “Oh, that’s right—adjective usage on Internet personals sites.”

  Not even close. “Close,” I said. “Body image disturbance in adolescent girls.”

  She nodded sagely. “Right, right,” she said, taking a sip of some extremely aromatic tea.

  For some reason, I felt the need to explain. “See, I just think that it’s hard being a girl nowadays. Like, if you pick up any teen magazine, there are conflicting messages. Some articles tell you to be yourself, but then there are celebrity features and advertisements and advice columns that tell girls that they’re not good enough as they are. You need to be thinner, cuter, flirtier, and more fashionable.”