Sometimes I wish I were a computer nerd

Since I work in psychology research, I spend a good deal of my time working with people. Usually, this is a good thing. I love meeting new people, learning their stories, feeling like I'm helping them, if only because I'm someone who will listen to what they have to say without making a judgment. Many of the people who do our study have had seriously bad things happen to them in the past, and we're often the very few people they ever talk to about their thoughts and feelings. So, in general, even when I'm bummed about all the horrible stuff people go through, I feel better knowing that I'm contributing to the healing process.

As with most well-designed studies, we have a control group. The control participants are healthy individuals with no psychological disorders whose data is used as a sort of baseline measure. Basically, we're asking how people with a specific psychiatric diagnosis differ from "normal" control subjects in the things we're measuring. The control tend to be easier to find, since the criteria are less restrictive. They're also usually better adjusted, emotionally, than the other group. This makes it easier to steer them through the admittedly complicated study procedures.

All of this is, of course, generalization...as I found out the hard way a couple of days ago. One of our participants, a very cranky lady, dropped out of the study after nearly completing all the procedures. What this means for us is that we can't use any of her data, since the end procedures are the critical ones. This is, literally, days of my time, gone down the drain. And why did she decide to quit? One of the staff members (nursing, not one of our staff) reminded her too much of her mother and, according to her, was condescending. Oh, man. Don't even get me started. We do everything for days to make her study process as seamless as possible, and all of a sudden, she quits, because she can't handle talking to one person for 5 minutes! You can imagine how I was feeling yesterday. Ha.

The lesson to all this? I really need to work on patience. I think I did a good job of being patient with her, and not rude or snappy or any of the things I was feeling, but I was still really angry. Later, I spoke to my mom, and she said, "Well, you were the one who wanted to work with people. What did you expect?" And that's so very true. I am the one who chose this career path, knowing full well that I would have to deal with lots of different people. Some will be wonderful, friendly, and cooperative, and I will be extremely glad that I chose this field. And some will be cranky and grumpy and hard to deal with, but they're also giving us their time and effort, and deserve my friendly attention as much as the nice people do. It would be great if the world consisted of all nice people, but it's unfortunately not the case, and if I want to be a psychologist and really help people, I need to be aware of this, accept it, and love it for what it is. It's a chance for me to learn and grow, to develop my people skills, and to become better at helping others. And so, it is a good thing.

But in the meantime, there are days where I wish I were a computer nerd, and not a people person.