Seriously??!!

I'm taking a psychology class this fall as an independent study.  I'm pretty excited because it will be 100% self-paced.  However I'm less excited now that I've received the syllabus for the class.

One of the main assignments is to construct a family "genogram."  I'm supposed to interview various family members to learn about grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, siblings, etc.  For all these people I'm supposed to have age, place of birth, date of birth, date/age/cause of death if appropriate, medical illnesses, mental or emotional illnesses, eating disorders, chemical abuse/addictions, other addictions, marriage(s), divorce(s), children, abortions, affairs, separations, marital discord, strong bonds, careers, etc.

Ok first off I have no contact with any of my biological family and don't plan on it any time soon.  (Ok I have very limited connection with a few select people but still).  And second, holy fucking personal!  Even I did have contact with all these people...a list of all the issues of everyone in my family?!

Then there's a list of questions to answer along with all of this (I'll throw in some short answers in bold just for fun):

1. What were the messages that you received from your parents as you grew up (verbal and nonverbal)? You're a piece of shit, we wish you didn't exist, you're only purpose is our sick pleasure.  That was verbal and nonverbal.

2. Outside of your family, what other adults served as strong role models when you were a child? There were a few good teachers and such out there.

3. Discuss your family traditions, and the messages that you received from these traditions (holidays, special days, accomplishments, etc.). If my parents remembered to celebrate holidays very little good came from them.  Generally holidays made them angry.  I still despise holidays now and they really mess with my head.

4. Discuss some of the values that you hold today and the individuals you patterned these values after in your family.  Thankfully I didn't take ANY of my family's values.  Values I have have probably come from my foster family and friends.

5. Discuss family fears, loyalties, views on money and trust.  Family fears...yeah...there could be a lot in there.

6. Summarize your genogram (patterns, discoveries, etc.).  What did you learn?  Surprises?  Not much I can learn now about my family...not much I want to "discover."

The assignment description ends with, "Have fun with this assignment and I hope you learn a lot about your family."

This just pisses me off sooooooooo much.  It's bad enough that there's these kinds of assignments in elementary school, but in college?!  And what am I supposed to learn about psychology from this?  Like I said even if I had family members to ask, what am I really going to learn from prodding into the personal business of others?  That issues like substance abuse are genetic?  Check.  My parents are addicts.  Their parents are addicts.  Got it.

I figure I have a few options.

1. Do the assignment with what I know about my family, which is very little.  It would have a lot of gaps in it.  What I know is all pretty bad.

2. Write about my foster family.  That might work but I can't answer questions about growing up with them, and it probably doesn't get the answers they're going for anyway.

3. Make shit up.

4. Talk to the course instructor and ask for ideas or a different assignment.

I'm open to other ideas too.  Number 4 is probably what I should do.  But I'm not excited to start out the class by having to talk about how fucked up my family is, so I'd rather go with 3.  The thing that gets to me is that I feel like psychology is one of those fields that people like me with screwed up lives are drawn to.  I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who has a family history they'd prefer not to talk about.  Plus back to what I said before, I don't think anyone should be asked for a laundry list of their family's issues as a school assignment.  Oh and this is an introductory class.  This isn't some high level class in genetics where it might really be meaningful to study this stuff.  It's just a stupid pre-requisite.

I was getting excited to be starting school again since I'm feeling so much better than last fall, but now I'm back to stressed about it.  I know things will work out somehow, but it's really stressing me out and pissing me off right now.  The good news is that this is all online so I don't have to talk about any of this stuff face to face, regardless of what I decide.

Anyway...I'm still grateful to be starting back to school.  No matter how frustrated I am right now, I'm excited to be making more progress towards a degree.