TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

______________________________________________________________________________ BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: I had to go pick up a prescription before (unclear) and it was like a 20-25 minute walk, total, and it was like brutal.

(Pause): [00:00:22 00:00:35]

CLIENT: So I feel like one small victory for me today when Daisy tried to tell me that the gift certificate to Dunkin Donuts that she’d given me three months ago was going to be payment for me grading student essays on my own time. I told her that wasn’t going to work for me. (Laughs) Like, this is not how it works. (Laughs) I sort of had it in my mind, not sort of – I definitely had it in my mind to stay for the next three weeks, basically through the end of this SAT class. It’s unclear whether that’s going to be able to happen. Like sorry, Daisy, that’s not how it works.

THERAPIST: Yeah. That’s kind of sleazy of her.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah. She’s totally sleazy. The best part was I saw it coming. She gave me – she included a gift card in my paycheck for the first month. I had two thoughts – actually three thoughts. The first one was – ‘why the fuck would I want a Dunkin Donuts gift card? I hate Dunkin Donuts.’ The second one was, ‘well, that’s a nice gesture.’ And the third one was, ‘she’s totally going to use this.’ (Laughs) Sure enough.

THERAPIST: (Cross talk) donuts.

CLIENT: But she knows. Donuts are not that delicious. But, yeah.

(Pause): [00:02:29 00:02:37]

CLIENT: During the tutoring sessions I had just been in, one of the girls who I taught her in SAT II tutoring also and she’s very bright and I just like her a lot. She was saying that she wants to start working freelance or start working for an editor for other people. And she was like, ‘should I just work for free?’ And I was like, no you should not work for free. (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:03:16 00:03:29]

CLIENT: It’s unclear to me whether I will be able to get a good night’s sleep for the next week. I want to see how that goes.

THERAPIST: The heat?

CLIENT: No, no. Tonight I’m taking an all-night bus to the city. Taking an overnight bus. And then Sunday, Saturday night with Candace and Sunday night coming back.

THERAPIST: I forgot. Yeah.

CLIENT: There’s Monday night. And then I work on Tuesday morning. And I never managed – if I’m getting up –

THERAPIST: I’m sorry. (Unclear) because you told me about this.

CLIENT: Yeah, I told you about it. I’m not planning on missing any appointments.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: I’m supposed to substitute at 9:30 on Monday anyway. So (unclear). We’ll see how that works.

THERAPIST: Okay. All right. Sorry. I was just (cross talk).

CLIENT: I think that I just referred to it in the same way I just did.

THERAPIST: So you’re going to sleep on the bus and at Candace’s?

CLIENT: Yeah. I just have a real hard time going to bed before 11:30. I also have a real hard time without 8 or 9 hours of sleep. So, whatever. I’ve been doing this not sleeping for the three days a week that I work and then sleeping a whole lot on the weekends. And that sort of works but then sort of perpetuates (unclear). And then this week, can’t do that. I’m very good at sleeping in cars though.

(Pause): [00:05:33 00:05:56]

CLIENT: But I’m excited to see Candace.

(Pause): [00:06:02 00:06:06]

CLIENT: She apparently planned to brunch out on all you can eat cinnamon rolls which (inaudible). (Whispers).

(Pause): [00:06:16 00:06:23]

CLIENT: I’m always vaguely sad at all you can eat restaurants because all I can physically eat is not as much as all I want to eat. (inaudible).

(Pause): [00:06:33 00:06:49]

CLIENT: I took a nap this afternoon after tutoring. (inaudible) There was a non-zero chance I could have just slept right through this evening. (Laughs) Even though I got up an hour ago, but it was not easy. And now that James is gone there is nothing in my mind that says like I can’t hit the snooze button more than once because it will wake him up so I just keep on turning it around.

(Pause): [00:07:27 00:07:38]

CLIENT: I really, really, really (inaudible) weekend. The last couple of days were not so bad. Just feeling like I didn’t have the internal resources to do what I had to do. But yeah, it is, that’s okay. You know, at this point I know that every time I go to tutoring there is a high likelihood I’ll wind up having a fight with Daisy because she’s asked me to do something crazy and I have to tell her, ‘no, I don’t work for free.’ Or you know, in this case, she eventually said she’d pay me but she said, ‘could you stay and grade these papers now?’ And I was like, ‘no, that’s also not going to work.’ Like, ‘I have places to be now. You can’t spring that on me.’ I’m like – it’s so hard for me to hold onto what is reasonable. Like Daisy is kind of easy to deal with in some ways because she’s so out in left field, like it’s so clearly, sleazy as you said.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: But then some of the things she asks I think, well maybe I should just go ahead and do it. It would be easier to do what she asks than it is to explain why that’s not something that I wanted to do. Then I feel like it’s my own fault for being in the situation and I should have (unclear) beforehand and –

(Pause): [00:09:43 00:10:21]

CLIENT: It’s not so much that I’m afraid to stand up for myself in this situation as that I just get so tired. It becomes more than I – it becomes more than I can deal with.

(Pause): [00:10:40 00:11:00]

THERAPIST: I’m not sure why that is. It’s like it becomes tiring just to remember that I need to stand up for myself.

(Pause): [00:11:11 – 00:11:29]

CLIENT: (inaudible) surprise.

(Pause): [00:11:31 00:12:21]

CLIENT: It’s sort of amazing to me like how little people know – totally different type, how little people like teenagers and their parents seem to know about the college admissions process. Like we kind of devolved into a question and answer period today and like some of these questions I can’t answer because I don’t know and some of these I’m sort of amazed they’re even asking like – what is the (unclear) to –

THERAPIST: This is in Fredericksburg?

CLIENT: Yeah. Or like – I’m not sure the kids live in Fredericksburg.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: Or like is it better to take – like is it a good idea to take AP classes? Like where do AP classes get you?

THERAPIST: How old are the kids?

CLIENT: Oh, they’re sophomores. So they’re not like in the really serious – well, like – you really should talk to your college counselor about this. And they’re like – what’s that? And I’m like, guidance counselors? That sound familiar? Yes. We have those but they don’t really do that. I’ll bet they do. That’s sort of their job. But

THERAPIST: (inaudible) private college advisor.

CLIENT: (inaudible) I just didn’t know that that was going to be my role and so I’m not necessarily prepared for it. I can tell you what I think. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I told them to take APs. I told them not to worry that much about that. To take AP s – not so much because it looks good but then when you get to college you have a lot more flexibility if you have AP credit. But I don’t know. Yeah, I guess college sounds like one of those places where private schools really differ from public schools in ways I hadn’t really expected and like seem obvious so we had two dedicated college counselors.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I was just a (unclear).

THERAPIST: Yeah, I think the guidance counselors see some of that, but in that sort of town or a lot of towns around here they used to get a lot of the kids would also arrange their (inaudible), read their essays, and also make their lists and –

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. I think like even just knowing how it works. I don’t think that’s something I really want to get into.

(Pause): [00:15:54 00:16:02]

CLIENT: It’s such a racket. (Laughs) I just, I can’t pretend to be enthusiastic about it. You can’t tell them that it’s not a racket. I don’t think it does them any good, I don’t think it does them a service to act like it’s not. (Pause): [00:16:32 00:17:06]

THERAPIST: What I guess (unclear) is that you’re feeling rather besieged by –

CLIENT: Yeah, that’s a good word.

THERAPIST: And that thing about the kids. Like you’re trying to protect them from being besieged in a few years, a little bit.

CLIENT: Yeah, or wishing they could (inaudible) trying to. Yeah, some of the biggest things I’ve seen working with them is that they’re so (inaudible).

(Pause): [00:17:45 00:17:57]

CLIENT: And I have opinions about all these things but it’s not even clear to me that mine is the help that they need.

(Pause): [00:18:10 00:18:22]

CLIENT: Yeah, in some ways I feel like I was really unprepared for – like I didn’t have a very clear idea of what the purpose of what undergraduate education is. Or, in some ways I had a very clear idea of what the purpose of an undergraduate education is, I just didn’t – I was here to learn things to eventually make a living. And that kind of screwed me in some ways. Not that I’m sure I would have made decisions differently, but it made things much harder.

(Pause): [00:19:08 00:19:41]

CLIENT: Yeah, this girl, June, really looks up to me.

THERAPIST: The one who has (inaudible).

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. I’m not really sure what she wants to study. I think from what she described, I think she really wants to write.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And like that’s really nice and she’ll be really good and it’s also like, you know what? I’m not the person you want to be looking up to. Like (unclear) want that like, yes, I will like talk to my friends who are copy editors because I have a disproportionate number of friends who are editors. (Laughs) But at the same time I’m like I don’t feel like I can do that.

(Pause): [00:20:27 00:20:57]

THERAPIST: I can imagine in (unclear) sense it’s painful the way she admires you.

(Pause): [00:21:05 00:21:28]

CLIENT: Yeah, I feel like if she admires me I must be giving a false impression of myself somewhere.

(Pause): [00:21:36 00:22:05]

CLIENT: It’s often the difference between a sentence of two independent clauses directly coordinating in conjunction with a compound verb. I feel like I did good work today. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:22:16 00:22:39]

THERAPIST: You didn’t talk about diagramming (unclear). Didn’t we joke about once about diagramming sentences?

CLIENT: Possibly?

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: I did like draw some arrows.

(Pause): [00:22:54 [00:22:58]

CLIENT: I need to find a better way of talking about that because both are like so important and if you start using the technical language, kids eyes just glaze over, but I don’t know how to explain why there is a comma in one and not a comma in the other without using the technical language.

(Pause): [00:23:17 00:23:55]

CLIENT: Maybe I am talking about grammar so much because that is one thing that I’m genuinely good at that I can genuinely (unclear) for people (unclear). I would not know about it but be able to do it like I think we’ve done them more harm than good like to teach the grammar in traditional ways because they get (unclear) and feel that they have to parse every sentence instead of just being able to know what looks right. But yeah. If the thing that feels right corresponds with the thing that’s actually right, then (inaudible).

(Pause): [00:24:35 00:25:13]

CLIENT: It’s like I have to work myself up to have these talks with Daisy where I basically demand to be treated with respect. But – like I don’t believe it or in some ways I really do, but in other ways I really don’t. (inaudible). I’m much better about it than I used to be (inaudible). (Pause): [00:25:57 00:26:35]

CLIENT: In some ways working with kids is like the best job. It’s such a good job. But it’s so hard. I feel like I’m never going to be able to be good enough at it.

(Pause): [00:27:01 00:27:11]

CLIENT: Or even if I am good at the part of my job that I do, like they’re actually going to help them anyway. I’m never going to be able to help them.

(Pause): [00:27:25 00:28:16]

THERAPIST: (inaudible) that (unclear) wasn’t ever going to be able to help you.

(Pause): [00:28:39 00:28:47]

CLIENT: It’s more like I always expected people to be able to help me (inaudible).

(Pause): [00:28:55 00:29:56]

CLIENT: Oh yeah, you know (inaudible).

(Pause): [00:29:59 00:30:06]

CLIENT: I’m thinking like when things got really bad in my senior year in high school like how remarkably poorly the school handled that as a whole. Just everybody dropped the ball there.

(Pause): [00:30:24 00:30:42]

CLIENT: The counselor at school dropped the ball. My theater teacher, Liam, who was like a mentor to us, dropped the ball and Bryan’s parents dropped the ball and my parents were not really sure what to do about it. Which tells me something. (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:31:09 00:31:21]

CLIENT: Like they told us we needed to spend some time apart, like not talking to each other. I was like that sounds like a great idea. Which would have been fine but then nobody insured in fact, that he would leave me alone. And shockingly enough, he did not leave me alone.

(Pause): [00:31:40 00:33:07]

THERAPIST: I think it’s very important that again, like, in addition to being literally true, which was the way it felt then –

(Pause): [00:33:17 00:33:24]

THERAPIST: I think there is something about it that is halfway true or very often true for you where no one’s really in there dealing with the more kind of girl parts of yourself and kind of like (unclear) between that and the rest of you.

(Pause): [00:33:49 00:34:16]

CLIENT: Yeah, but in term of, I guess like to make kind of an easy analogy, it didn’t really occur to me that it could be anybody’s job. But like that it was only in retrospect that I started to see that here were all these people whose literal and figurative job it was to protect me from the situation who did not, in fact, do that. I still don’t see how it could be anybody’s job to help get between (inaudible).

THERAPIST: (inaudible) you feel now how you felt then.

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess so. Of course, (inaudible).

THERAPIST: Uh huh.

(Pause): [00:35:28 00:36:26]

CLIENT: (inaudible) like the only way I can stop self-injuring is to stop trying to hurt myself.

(Pause): [00:36:36 00:36:52]

CLIENT: And I wish that that were actually the case because it seems impossible.

(Pause): [00:36:54 00:37:09]

CLIENT: I haven’t in a long time but I still kind of – I still want to. I still like make the motion to and then stop by say like, ‘that’s not what I do anymore.’

(Pause): [00:37:17 00:37:39]

CLIENT: I guess it’s maybe easier for me to think, ‘no, like kind of melodramatically, nobody can help me with this at all, than it is to think well, some people can help me with this some, but not actually all that much.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:37:57 00:38:20]

THERAPIST: (inaudible).

CLIENT: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:38:21 00:38:48]

THERAPIST: I’m not saying it’s not still a struggle or that a lot of it is not you.

CLIENT: Yeah, but it’s not the kind of narrative that says, “it’s all on me,” is also not right.

THERAPIST: Right. (Unclear) Yeah.

(Pause): [00:39:08 00:39:18]

THERAPIST: Right, and it seems akin to other narratives you have had at times that have also (inaudible).

(Pause): [00:39:30 00:39:55]

CLIENT: But I’m not sure (unclear) to say other people (unclear) help.

(Pause): [00:40:04 00:40:08]

CLIENT: I don’t know. I feel like maybe I – I feel like then other people are invested in my success and then because I do have help it’s like I guess I just have to get it right or be better or some of those things. Or I can be more tolerant of my own failure if I feel like I’m in it by myself.

THERAPIST: I see.

(Pause): [00:40:44 00:41:20]

CLIENT: I read an article (inaudible) about a province in China. They were cracking down on cheating on these like analogs to SAT in China. And after the exam had been administered there was a riot from the students, but also from their parents who like besieged the building, stoned people. (Laughs) I don’t think anybody died but you know.

(Pause): [00:42:06 00:42:09]

CLIENT: I shouldn’t be (unclear) prep. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:42:11 00:43:08]

CLIENT: I think deceit is a good word for (unclear) tolerance for syntax and (unclear) except this feels like a lot to be handling. I don’t think it’s actually that much. Particularly when I look at my life in high school.

THERAPIST: We should stop.

CLIENT: Okay. Have a good evening.

THERAPIST: Thank you.

END TRANSCRIPT