Author Archives: Kevin Wood Bearse

Bipolar Disorder

I had waited all semester to learn about psychological disorders and was finally met with that desire last week. We finally started talking about mental health disorders, and I am very happy to do so because it was something I wanted to really get another take on. For me, all I’ve ever heard were doctors telling me how much was wrong with me, and employers telling me I’m a liability to them if hired. To speak frankly, I think it’s a bunch of garbage. I was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, something that’s been in my family since its been called manic depressive. I have intense anxiety sometimes, and waves of depression. This is then followed by “manic” states, and the best way to describe that would be using an analogy. The manic states are like if you went to Columbia a very rich man, came back with a different valuable product, took it all and then tried to do everything you put off for so long. So yeah, it’s basically a huge cocaine binge. The thing you have to remember is that I am not in control. If you really think I like the times where I’m so depressed I can’t even get out of bed, or the times I’m doing laundry while reading a book and typing a paper all the same time. It’s hectic, and it sucks, but that’s not even the worst part. A few months ago, an absolutely gorgeous girl, track star at UPenn, amazing grades, wanted to be a doctor or something good in the world. She was absolutely a stunner, a girl I’d never  be man enough to court. She jumped off a center city parking garage, because she couldn’t deal with the stress and pressures she was facing. She was facing such serious depression and nobody truly came to help her. That is the hardest part. The part where nobody can truly understand until they listen. A doctor will listen and tell you what’s wrong with you, an employer will listen and tell you why you aren’t good enough to be where they are, and a mother will listen and tell you it will all be alright. But aren’t they all liars? Those people told that to that beautiful girl, and now she lay with the worms and dirt. The stigma needs to end. More and more people are being diagnosed with mental disorders, and they are being shunned just as quickly. Not only do we need to start opening our eyes, we need to start opening our ears and our hearts. We may all wear the masks of Carcosa by day, but by night weep into the empty hands of self-loathing. The next time you hear a cry from the woods, take the path that leads you there. Help guide someone from the darkness and into the light. I know this sounds crazy, and pretty deep, but I’ve traveled into the woods enough times to know how scary it can be in there alone.

I Don’t Study, I Learn

I wanted to take this blog to talk about something I’ve dealt with most specifically through college. To reiterate, it’s all from college because I didn’t study a lick in high school, which is important to note because I had to learn how pretty quickly. I started out my freshman year with the “read the book, take notes during lecture, retain information for the exam.” After getting a solid 60 in my favorite subject (no sarcasm), calculus, I decided I really need to change things up. So what I started to do was not just read the book, and not just practice a problem trying to memorize it. Instead of what most people would considered studying, I started to learn! Go figure, we pay thousands of dollars of our parents hard earned money so we can become zombies and spill out useless, short term memory facts that will fade into the abyss for an exam. So after I adapting my learning lifestyle, the next exam I popped out a 100. Fast forward two years to junior year of a business student’s life. It’s hell. Every week is an exam week. Every month you have a project that takes a month. Every day you wake up and cringe at the fact you are now on the fast track to adulthood. Now that you have a grasp of how hard some of the classes are, there was one in particular that really stood out as a huge burden on my soul, Finance 406. This particular class wasn’t the run of the mill finance class, which is already a tough subject. For someone to do well, you couldn’t memorize, you couldn’t make flash cards and expect to do well. You couldn’t even photographically remember the book and do well. The material had to be semantically encoded, meaning the memory will be deep into the mind. You are able to read the text and take notes from the lecture, but then apply it to complex situations in a real world application. The beauty of the class though, truly taught me why we go to college. Aside from the booze and the connections, this is really what it’s all about. What we need is to take that textbook, take those lecture notes, and apply it to what you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. My roommate got a 28% on the first exam, compared to my 84%. I’m not bragging here, but I’m trying to display the value of encoding memories that deep. We both knew the equation R(e)= Rf+ B(Rm-Rf) of the capital asset pricing model, it’s simple to keep in your mind for a day or two before an exam. But compared to my roommate, I could explain it. I could tell you why the risk multiples the spread of the two market rates. I could manipulate this equation and add variables to give you the return of a portfolio, with a standard deviation, and accurate projections of returns. Why? Because I didn’t just study. I learned.

Superstition by Kevin Bearse

Growing up in a household that has generations of baseball players, including my great grandfather, my grandfather, my father and my brother, it was almost impossible not to follow suit. I remember back to when I was 6 years old, I was sitting in front of my dad playing with my toys and he told me today was the day I started my baseball career. I’m pretty sure I was more excited that day than I was on Christmas which seems nearly impossible. My father lived towards one goal in his life; he wanted to be drafted by the Atlanta Braves. He never did achieve that goal, but he surrounded himself with baseball his entire life and I instinctively followed suit. So to sum that all up, my life revolved around baseball for quite a while. Fast forwarding to later in my career, I was playing some summer ball and really started to slump badly. For those of you confused, a slump means when you couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn if that were how big a baseball was. Then finally, I smacked a pair of triples and a double, scored 3 runs and batted in another 6. It was one of the best games of my career. From then on, for the next week or so, I was on a tear, ripping everything that was pitched to me. Now, if you haven’t played baseball, or don’t know the secret to baseball greatness, it is all superstition. After that first game, I didn’t wash my jersey, wore the same compression shorts, and socks, and glasses, and wrist tape, and wrist band, and used the same bat. You can get the picture. In a baseball player’s mind, wearing the same clothes, using the same EXACT routine, or using the same equipment meant you would be successful. This is a classic case of illusory correlation, when someone believes there to be a relationship between two things when no such relationship exists. In my mind, it was not washing my clothes and using the same routine that allowed me to break the slump. Do you really think that the dirty socks I’m wearing has anything to do with how I perform at the dish? Probably not, but that is how our mind works. Just as is the case of illusory correlation, our mind is making connections between two very arbitrarily irrelevant things. Much of the time, we like to see things that aren’t really there. Taking this one step further, it’s also a case of correlation, not causation. That is, although my performance may have been better during the time I wore the same clothes, but there is no physical evidence, or logic for that matter, proving the socks gave me some special power to hit the ball better. Most experts will tell you that slumps are entirely in your head, a mental block if you will. But being born and bred a baseball guy, I don’t believe in explanations. I believe in the socks.