I have taken roughly four psychology classes. Yes, they have all been introduction classes. Two I withdrew from, one I flunked and one I am currently taking. Don't judge me. That's not what this post is about. What this post is about is how teachers can teach things they don't completely understand or how they can justify standardized testing in America. I just don't get that shit.
A multiple choice test or a short answer test that ask me the definition of 'depression' will always baffle me. As a psychology professor you should know that I cannot define depression in a sentence or a short answer or even a short essay. You want me to define depression? Really? What, exactly, would you like me to define about? Would you like me to tell you how it feels to have the motivation sucked right out of you? To feel as if you are the biggest failure on Earth, as if you have disappointed everyone that has ever loved you or met you? Or would you prefer the feeling of depression? The feeling of the world on your shoulders? Or the feeling of every ounce of love leaving you only to be replaced by a gaping nothingness? Or better yet should I define how depression looks to others? The vague stare? The hollow eyes? The helplessness? Or the laziness that it is often mistaken for? Or how about the sayings that go with it? Like "SNAP OUT OF IT!" "What's your problem?" "I don't know what's wrong with me!" "Just go away!" "Leave me alone..." "I hate everything."
A professor who asks me to define depression ranks right up there with a professor who asks me to define anxiety or addiction or love or motherhood or imagination. Somethings cannot be defined, somethings have to be felt or experienced. I cannot explain to someone what it feels like to give birth, its impossible, only someone else who has given birth can relate. Men will never know what it feels like to have a child grow inside of them, kick inside of them, eventually emerge from them and suckle from them. (Side note: suckle is a weird slightly gross word) I have been asked more than once what panic attacks feel like. I've tried to explain the shortness of breath, the way my stomach drops and chest tightens but the words are nothing compared to the experience. In the same sense I cannot tell another person what it feels like to be an alcoholic or an anorexic. I can't tell you how it felt to be raped. I cant tell you how it felt to give birth. I can't put into words how it felt when I nursed my son for the first time. And I can't tell how how it felt when I found my soul mate.
I don't like definitions, if you couldn't tell by now. I feel definitions are a lot like labels, they confine things, words, people. Definitions, like labels, put boundaries on people, fence them in, put them in constrictions. Psychologists can define depression all they want but a student can never truly and fully understand what it is until they have succumbed to the disease so deeply that the only music they can listen to is Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence.
The point of this whoooole rant and rave is this: you can't understand something until you experience. Yet here I am studying history planning on teaching others about a ton of events I have never experienced. Hello, pot? This is Kettle, you're Black. Ugh. I know I know I know...so maybe the moral is this: we can never hope to understand everything in this crazy mixed up world, the best we can hope for is the ability to empathize and the drive to want to understand...and mainly, the knowledge to know we will NEVER fully understand unless we have fully experienced because, really, nothing is worse than ignorance.
