The Further (Mis)Adventures of Yu

Ok, Blogger hopefully won't end up deleting this post. A lot has happened to Yu in the past few weeks and none of them are really good. In fact, it has gotten a bit ridiculous and I'm not sure how much of it is true. But I'll let you decide for yourself. Posts about Yu are here and here.

Where to begin? Well I think we should start with Yu's recent re-hospitalization. From what I heard, he suddenly passed out during a final and had to be carted away in a stretcher to the hospital.

This is not surprising. The kid brags about how he sleeps in random places on campus instead of going home, fueled on Red Bull and other energy drinks. And then when he's feeling stressed, he takes double if not triple the dosage of whatever prescription anti-anxiety drugs he currently has.

The outcome was never really in doubt.

He claims that the reason why he was in the hospital was because not only did his stomach ulcer re-open, but also because he had an aneurysm. That's right, an aneurysm.

Yu, I'm fairly certain that we would have noticed signs of this much, much sooner if you had actually had an aneurysm. Also, I don't think they'd let you out of the hospital only after a day or two had this occurred. Of course, if anyone out there is more knowledgeable about these things, feel free to share.

So, Yu comes out of the hospital. Do you think he's learned his lesson?

Of course not.

Looks like the guy is only school-smart.

This is further confirmed during one of our study sessions. I see him guzzling more energy drinks as he tries to stay awake long enough to read through his notes. He fails, crawls under a table and tries to sleep. Maybe he was tired of me telling him that energy drinks are bad, and that he should go home and get some proper rest.

Then he gets up, tries to study again, drinks more Red Bull, mutters random incoherent messages to himself and then start shoving cigarettes up his nose.

Followed by "Yo man, my cigarettes are wet".

I WISH I COULD FACEPALM THIS HARD.

But the other day I get a message from Yu and it looks a bit odd. A bit of backstory first, he had recently found some other drug that was supposed to boost your memory. To give you an idea of how suspicious it sounded, my girlfriend Theresa didn't recognize the name, and she's getting close to graduating from the top of her  Pharmacy class.

Yu decides to take triple the recommended dosage the day before his last final.

And the message he sent me went something like this:

"Hey man, I don't feel so good. I should have listened to you. I don't think I should have taken so many of those pills. I haven't even covered half the material yet".

Off the charts.

And where is Yu now? Not sure. He's been fairly quiet. But now that we're done classes maybe he'll start taking better care of himself.

Hopefully.

The Final Week

I'm still alive. By some stroke of luck I haven't collapsed or gone insane like some of my fellow peers but more on that later.

So, from these two posts you can tell I've had my work cut out for me. Well as I mentioned before my workload had suddenly tripled. Some of you may remember my research problems, numerous technical errors and other small problems impeding the project. Good news is that I finally fixed everything and was able to start running people through it.

The bad news was I had 4 days left until the end of the term and I still needed 15 hours worth of data to go through. This required me to stay on Campus until 8PM several times. Plus there was the day that I forgot my key, and the day that the printer stopped working. Tons of fun little disruptions.

This also stole time away from the rest of my work. And if you know anything about me, I compensate for less time, by not resting.

And babies and dead people.

But that's not all! I realized that on the same Wednesday my papers were due I had not only a presentation to prepare for, but I was also expected to lead a discussion on a paper for a seminar. Things were not looking good for me.

I am pretty good at BS'ing my way through things. It's one of my few talents. But there's a limit to how much I can pull off. And on that cold Wednesday morning, April 11th, I was staring at a computer screen and realizing I had hit that limit. There was no way I could prepare for both presentations and papers even if I pulled another all-nighter. Scrambling for a solution I began reading through syllabi, hoping for some of salvation.

And then I saw it.

Developmental Paper Due Friday April 13.

Friday 13.

Friday. 

 

This was pretty much my expression.

I had got the due date wrong, I had more time than I anticipated. And with this new information I focused on my other work. It gave me enough time to focus on my other paper and the two presentations. All in all, I thought that Wednesday went fairly well. Well, as well as a day can go when you have that many things to do and turn in.

At the moment I'm finishing up my last paper. I have everything planned out it's just a matter of putting it altogether in a coherent fashion. If I'm lucky, I might be able to go to bed soon and sneak in 2 hours of sleep before class.

But another unexpected problem popped up. Who remembers the friend that I had that probably had some form of mental problem? The guy who was possibly doing and saying a lot of things for attention seeking purposes? Well he's back and crazier than ever. And not in a good way.

Seriously dude, go back to your therapist. There's nothing I can do for you anymore.

So I walk into class, Yu comes to sit beside me and goes "Hey man, Damian look at this."

He rolls up his sleeves and all over his arms are these cuts and slashes. He's written words like FOCUS and A++++ all over his forearms. And I'm sitting there in disbelief, I mean, this is what Junior High kids do to themselves, not 4th year University students ready to graduate.

And when I ask how he's doing it, he reaches into his bag and pulls out... 

A scalpel. Like, the kind of scalpel that a surgeon would use.

And then here's where it gets even better. He starts cutting himself. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LECTURE. 

Just. Why.

So I'm sitting there, trying to concentrate on what the prof is saying while Yu is sitting beside me, wincing in pain as he's slicing his arms up. At one point he even goes "Hey man, here you go." And dumps a chunk of skin in front of my laptop.

I tried my best to ignore him but inside I'm starting to panic a bit. I half expected him to go feral and start stabbing me. And I hope no one dares ask why I didn't try to take the scalpel away from him (which he claims came from his Anatomy class). Would you want to try and wrestle a sharp object from a potentially deranged person? No? Neither would I.

For whatever reason, he also decided to make a Facebook status update inbetween his cutting sessions. Something along the lines of "SOS, someone on campus help me please!". And well, he got his help. Some people responded and due to mutual friends I managed to get a group of people to escort Yu to some mental health clinic. I couldn't go with him, I had research stuff to do.

But what really caused me to shake my head was as Yu left, he turned to me and said:

"Yo Damian, my arms really hurt.".

GEE. I WONDER WHY.

(I cannot wait for this term to end.)