I'm taking a psychology class at the local community college. Just to get ahead, just to learn stuff.
Today, we are learning what "learning" is.
Learning: a relatively permanent change in behavior brought about by experience.
Classical conditioning: a type of learning in which a neutral stimulus comes to bring about a response after it is paired with a stimulus that naturally brings about that response.
Let me put this in a more understandable way. Eric Cartman has harassed me, hurt me, tried to kill me and belittled my people since I met him in preschool. I was born a level-headed, kind person. I am now irritable, hot-tempered and mean. This relatively permanent change in my behavior was brought about by experiencing the aforementioned Eric Cartman. I was conditioned, classically, to feel passionate anger, mild insanity and homicidal violence whenever Eric Cartman opened his fat, racist mouth.
Punishment: a stimulus that decreases the probability that a previous behavior will occur again.
Again, let me put this in digestible words. Eric Cartman punishes me. He makes my brain scream, "stop. Get away, don't ever speak to him again." So, why don't I do exactly that? Because it's hardly my goddamn choice.
"Hey, jew. Jew, psst."
I have already learned this lesson; he has punished me enough. I am going to prove my psychology textbook is correct and ignore him.
"…hey. Hey, fag. Fag, pssssssssst."
"WHAT?" I whisper harshly, turning to my left and glaring hard into his fat face. "What the fuck do you want?"
F-
"Are you taking good notes? I can't understand this fucker."
"Whisper," I sigh to him when the professor glares up at our corner of the lecture hall. "Why did you even take this class if you didn't want to learn? It's not like you need college psychology to graduate."
"This isn't learning," he tells me, full-voiced.
"Whisper!" I screech through my teeth.
"Gentlemen, if you'd like to talk, kindly step outside of my classroom."
"Sorry, professor," I mumble, slouching back in my seat. Cartman suddenly snatches my notebook off of my desk and I would reach for it if I didn't want to be kicked out of class. I assume he's trying to decipher my notes, but the throws the spiral notebook back at me relatively quickly. I glance down at his messy scrawl in the margin.
I'm here to keep an eye on my favorite jew-rat.
I could scream.
"Thank you, class. I'll see you next week."
I am out of my seat like it's the beginning of a race, and it kind of is. I have to get to the parking lot and in my car before guilt sinks it's poisonous teeth into my neck. Whenever I think about that fucker shivering at the bus stop, I end up offering him a ride. A ride full of anti-semitic jokes, cracks at how shitty my car is and complaints about this dumb psychology class. I am almost out the door.
"Kaaaaaaahl."
I freeze, sigh, and gesture for him to join me.
When will I learn?
"Fuck, your car is a piece of shit. Why isn't this heat working?" he bitches, pounding his fist on the temperature dial as we sit in park in the parking lot and wait for my fingers to warm up enough to drive safely.
Continuous reinforcement schedule: reinforcing of a behavior every time it occurs.
"Fuck you, asshole! At least I have a car. You don't have to insult me when I'm being kind enough to give you a ride just because I don't like watching your fat ass freeze to death at the bus stop when I turn the corner!"
Partial (or intermittent) reinforcement schedule: reinforcing of a behavior some but not all of the time.
He is suddenly silent, staring at me. His eyes are chocolate and bright in the dim lighting of the parking garage at night. I feel confused by his lack of response to my insults. It makes me shiver.
"What did you mean by 'this isn't learning' in class today?" I ask him.
"You don't learn by reading textbooks," he tells me quite simply. "You learn by experiencing."
I am still looking at his round face, cheeks pink from the sub-zero wind chill outside. There are a few snowflakes in his bangs, melting into the water they started as.
"You don't know—" I try to start, not even sure where I am going. He cuts me off.
"You know, Classical Conditioning," he says mockingly. "You learn by experiencing shit and seeing how you feel about it. If you feel good, you let yourself experience again. If you feel bad, you get the hell away from it."
My mouth forms the beginning of words that could not come to me if I wanted them to. He was paying attention? He knows what we're studying? I hate this fucker. I put the car in drive, tug my gloves off, and drive. I am surprised when he speaks again (and it's actually worth listening to).
"When babies are born, they know nothing, and they don't learn how to live by reading about it or being told about it. They learn that when you're hungry, you eat and it makes the pain go away, which feels good. When you're four, you touch the stovetop and learn that fire is dangerous because it hurts. When you're ten, you learn to rub your cock because it feels good, so on, so forth."
I am boggled while I listen to him. Eric Cartman is forming full, coherent sentences about a respectable, intelligent topic of conversation?
"Well, I don't know about you," he teases. "You may have learned to finger your pussy rather than rub your cock, but same concept."
Extinction: a basic phenomenon of learning that occurs when a previously conditioned response decreases in frequency and eventually disappears.
I laugh. He smirks at me. The smile, paired with sparkling chocolate eyes, melts me to my core, and I am left helplessly lost in the way that his smile makes me feel.
Wait, dude. What?
-
School at South Park High continues as normal and I suddenly feel irritated and confused around Cartman. He seems to be watching me. I am definitely watching him.
Observational learning: learning by observing the behavior of another person, or model.
He takes notes in class. He chews on his pen when he's thinking. He doesn't seem to eat as much as lunch as I always thought he did. He pushes mashed potatoes around the plate while he rips on me.
"Faggot."
I seethe.
"Kike."
I boil.
He turns his attention away from me. My heart is pounding so loudly I cannot hear. When he looks back at me, I'm sure he's calling me another derogatory name, but I don't hear it. I just smile.
He smiles back.
What the fuck is happening?
Shaping: the process of teaching a complex behavior by rewarding closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.
He doesn't pick on me for the rest of the day.
-
Two weeks later, I am sitting at home, writing a paper for our psychology class. Cartman is on speakerphone, asking me questions about the homework I know he knows the answers to.
"So wait, if you're born knowing nothing, and you learn from experiencing, what's it called when you don't know that you're learning?"
"Latent," I tell him.
Latent learning: learning in which a new behavior is acquired but is not demonstrated until some incentive is provided for displaying it.
"You learn by living, but you may not use a skill you have learned until later in life," I elaborate.
He makes a satisfied sound and hangs up.
-
He smiles at me. Chocolate eyes melt me even on the coldest of nights. I kiss him in the privacy of my shitty car.
I know nothing. No book could have taught me this. I feel like I have been born right here, and I am reaching into the fire to discover that is does not always have to burn.
I have a lot of learning, and living, left to do.