Exhausted

Went to bed around 12:30-1am last night. Fell asleep around 5:30-6am. Major tossing and turning, compounded by a) the idea that I am going to miserably fail the exam, b) an idea I had for my first lecture in SOC 101, whenever that day comes, and c) I hate the heat and I hate early meetings.

So, today was bad.

Did some grant stuff, but I didn't do as much as I could/should have done because by 11:30 this morning, I was dead on my feet. Driving home from campus, I zoned out for about 5 miles and then suddenly realized I was driving 20mph under the speed limit. Got home, wound up sleeping for about an hour, and then loaded up on caffeine and tried to read my notes on strain theory. The treatment strain theory has received in the literature is fairly consistent -- people agree that it applies, they've shown it applies in different circumstances (i.e., one study focuses on the homeless, one focuses on an incarcerated population) and it's shown both economic strain (I want money but I can't get it legally) and emotional strain (This sucks, so FTW) are both real. But, like every other theory, they explain some portion of the variance, but not 100% of it, and there's one article that shows how strain interacts with other factors. Interestingly, the articles I read today barely overlapped with the articles I've read previously -- so these don't include Broidy and Agnew (date? I forget) which shows men and women experience different kinds of strain or Thaxton and Agnew (date? I forget) which shows strain resulting from poor relationships is a better predictor of crime than not being in positive prosocial relationships. So, similar to the effect of parents piece I wrote about earlier, there's this recognized effect of strain, but it doesn't apply in the exact ways that the authors (Merton, 194X; Agnew, 1992) actually stated.