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that-disabled-radfem · 3 years ago

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Happy back-to-school y’all

I’ve attended and worked at a couple of super liberal universities. I avoid the gender studies departments for obvious reasons and I still had a lecture in which the female prof gave a brief overview of TERFs and proclaimed her hatred of JKR. Being openly critical of gender ideology, the porn industry, kinks, and ‘sex work’ are the kind of things that can ruin your future in academia. Not to mention the fact that any speech or actions that could be labelled transphobic (ie. defining woman as adult human female) can get you a suspension according to many universities anti-hate-speech policies.

So, here’s a list of small and smallish (small in terms of overt TERFery, some may require more effort than others) radical feminist actions you can take as a university student:

(this is a liberal arts perspective so if you’re a stem gal this may not apply. but also if you’re in stem maybe you can actually acknowledge that women are oppressed as a sex class without getting kicked out of school. idk)

(Note for TRAs hate reading this: One of the core actions of radical feminism is creating female networks. This is not so that we can brainwash people into being anti-trans. This is because female solidarity is necessary for creating class consciousness and overturning patriarchy. It is harder to subjugate the female sex when we stand together.)

Take classes with female profs. Multiple sections of a class? Pick the one taught by a woman. Have to chose an elective? Only look at electives offered by women. When classes have low numbers they get cancelled. When classes are super popular, universities are forced to consider promoting the faculty that teach them

Make relationships with these female profs. Go to office hours. Chat after class. Ask them about their research. Building female networks is sooooo important!

Actually fill in your end of year course feedback forms. Profs often need these when applying for tenure or applying for a job at another university so it is very important (especially with young and/or new profs) that you fill out these forms and give specific examples of how great these women are. Go off about what you love about them! Give her a brilliant review because you know the idiot boy in that class who won’t shut up even though he knows nothing is going to give her only negative feedback because he thinks any woman who leaves the house is a feminazi b*tch.

(note: obviously don’t go praising any prof - female or male - who is blatantly racist, homophobic, etc.)

(Also if you have shitty male profs write down all the horrible things they have done and said and put it in these forms because once a shitty man gets tenure they are virtually untouchable)

(also also, leave a good review on rate my profs or whatever other thing students use to figure out if they want to take classes. idc if you copy paste your feedback from the formal review. rave about the class to your friends. do what you can to get good enrolment for that prof for reasons above.)

Participate in class. Talk over the male students. Say what you mean and mean it. Call out the boys when they say dumb shit

Write about women. If you have the option to make a text written by a woman your primary text in an essay, do it. Pick the female-centred option if you’re writing an exam-essay with multiple prompts. (Profs often look at what works on their syllabus are being written about/engaged with as a marker of whether to keep those texts the next time they teach the class. If there are badass women on your syllabus, write about them to keep them on the syllabus) Use female-written secondary sources whenever possible.

(pro tip: many women in academia are more than happy to talk to you about their papers. expand your female networks by reaching out to article authors through email and asking them about their cool shit)

Get your essays published! Many departments have undergrad journals you can publish in. This will ensure more people read about the women you write about and will demonstrate to the department that people like learning about women

Consider trying to publish your undergrad essay with a legit peer-reviewed journal. If you can do it, your use of female-written secondary sources boosts the reputations of the women who wrote those secondary sources. Also this helps generally to increase scholarship about women’s writing!

Present your papers at conferences! Many schools have their own undergraduate/departmental conferences that you can present at. Push yourself by submitting to outside conferences. Bring attention to women’s works by presenting your papers. Take a space at a conference that would otherwise be reserved for mediocre men

Talk to your profs and/or your department and/or your university about mandating the inclusion of female works in classes if this isn’t something they do already

Sit next to other women in your classes. Talk to them. Make friends. Form study groups. Proofread each other’s essays. Give each other knowing looks when the boys are being dumb. Just interact with other women! Build those female networks!

Be generous with your compliments. A female classmate and I were talking to a prof after class and the classmate told me (out of the blue) that I always have such interesting things to say. I think about that whenever I’m lacking confidence about my academic skills. Compliment the women in your classes for speaking up, for sharing their opinions, for challenging your classmates/profs, for doing cool presentations, etc.

Talk to other women about sexist things going on on campus. Make everyone aware of the sexist profs. Complain about how there are many more tenured men than tenured women. Go on rate my professor and be explicit about how the sexist profs are sexist

Be active on campus and in societies. If a society has an all male executive or is male-dominated, any women who join that society make it less intimidating for more women to join. Run for executive positions! Bring in more women!

(Pro tip: Many societies’ elections are super gameable. You can be eligible to vote in a society election sometimes just by being a student at that university — even without having done anything with the society before. Other societies might just require that you’ve taken a class in a particular department or attended a society event. (Check the society’s governing documents.) Use those female networks you’ve been building. If you can bring three or four random people to vote for you, that might be enough for you to win. Societies have trouble meeting quorum (the minimum number of people in attendance to do votes) so it is really super achievable to rig an election with a few friends. And don’t feel bad about this. The system is rigged against women so you have every right to exploit loopholes!)

(Also feel free to go vote “non-confidence”/“re-open election” if only shitty men are running. Too often people see that only candidates they don’t like are running and so they give up. But you can actually stop them getting elected)

Your campus may have a LGBTQIA+alphabetsoup society. That society definitely needs more L and B women representation. It may be tedious to argue with the nb straight dudes who insist that it’s fine to use “q***r” in the society’s posters and that attraction has nothing to do with genitals, but just imagine what could happen if we could make these sorts of societies actually safe spaces for same-sex attracted women and advocated for our concerns

Attend random societies’ election meetings. Get women elected and peace out. (or actually get involved but I’m trying to emphasize the lowest commitment option with this one)

Write for the campus newspaper. Write about what women are doing - women’s sports, cool society activities, whatever. Review female movies, books, tv shows, local theatre productions. Write about sexism on campus. We need more female by-lines and more stories about women

Get involved with your campus’s sexual assault & r*pe hotline/sexual assault survivor’s centre/whatever similar organization your campus has if you can. This is hard work and definitely not for everyone (pls take care of yourself first, especially if you are a survivor)

(If your campus doesn’t have an organization for supporting survivor’s of sexualized violence, start one! This is probably going to be a lot of hard work though, so don’t do it alone)

Talk to your student council about providing free menstrual hygiene products on campus if your campus doesn’t already do this. If your campus provides free condoms (which they probs do), use that as leverage (ie. ‘sex is optional, menstruation is not. so why do we have free condoms and no free pads?’)

If you’re an older student, get involved with younger students (orientation week and such activities are good for this). Show the freshman that you can be a successful and well-liked woman without shaving your legs, wearing heels, wearing make-up, etc. Mentor these young women. Offer to go for coffee or proofread essays.

Come to class looking like a human being. Be visibly make-up less, unshaven, unfeminine, etc. to show off the many different ways of being a woman

Talk to the custodial staff and learn their names. (I know there are men who work in this profession, but it is dominated by low-income women) Say hi in the hallways, ask them about their lives, show them they’re appreciated

Be explicit with your language. When you are talking about sex-based oppression, say it. Don’t say ‘sex worker’ when you mean survivor of human trafficking. This tip is obviously a bit tricky in terms of overt TERFyness, so use your best judgement

That’s all from me for now! Feel free to add your suggestions and remember that feminism is about action

#back to school #university #terf safe #terfs DO interact #feminist action

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hunxi-guilai · 5 years ago

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So sorry if you told this already but how did you learn all of this linguistic Chinese stuff? Like what course at university do I have to take, or do I just google ancient Chinese texts and go from there? Thanks for everything!

No worries! I haven’t answered this question directly, so unless you’ve read like, every single word on my blog, you might’ve missed it.

I straight-up majored in ancient Chinese literature at college and studied it for three years of undergrad (first year was figuring out how to make time for sleep if we’re being honest). I started out with pretty high-level proficiency in modern Mandarin, and then made the sideways leap onto the literary Chinese/classical Chinese train (the Chinese language department and the East Asian literature studies department were demarcated in my school for Reasons Unknown to Me).

From there, I did the two semesters of the intro literary Chinese course (I’d also done a teeny bit of 文言 on study-abroad the summer after my first year) and dove headfirst into ancient texts. And I really do mean headfirst; my intro literary prof asked me to take his graduate seminar during the second semester of my sophomore year, and the conversation went something like this:

prof: take my graduate seminar

me: what

prof: next semester, I’m teaching a graduate seminar, you should take it.

me: what.

prof: you said you like translations, right?

me: I’ve taken one semester of literary Chinese -- you should know! you taught me!

prof: I know. c’mon, take it, it’ll be fun. there’ll be lots of translation practice.

and then when I walked into the first class, he literally was like “so everyone’s read the Analects in the original, correct?” and I was like “prof plz I just finished half of the intro course last semester”

that prof ended up being my thesis advisor, if anyone was wondering

so! it doesn’t hurt to google ancient Chinese texts and go from there (gonna take a hot second to plug ctext because at this point, it’s my catchphrase), but I benefited immensely from being able to take classes in a structured environment with someone who actually knew what he was talking about. Taking classes on literary Chinese in English also gave me a lot more grammatical background for the language than all of my studies in modern Mandarin did, which is where all of my pseudo-knowledge in linguistics comes from.

I’d say check out your course catalog at your local institution of secondary education, and go from there!

#ask and ye shall receive #what a fun trip down memory lane!

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sarinataylor · 6 years ago

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Rushing to ask about your French philosophy AU SO FAST spill the tea or rather it being French spill the coffee and house red

oh thank GOD

right ok first off read this

so. roger has just moved into a new flat. for context he is a FRAZZLED masters student. it’s first semester and he’s ta-ing like. three classes as well? he wants to DIE. he’s doing a masters in philosophy because.... of course he is, he knows, he hates himself too. but he fucking fell in love with philosophy in undergrad and his supervisor has been grooming him since his first year and now. here he is. seriously considering a phd.

anyway so sometimes? sometimes philosophy just makes More Sense when you’re tripping okay, it just does. if you take notes? sometimes u wake up the next morning and realise you have New Insights that haven’t already been dissected to pieces

(his undergrad thesis was 1000000% written high like. almost all of it. he got a first. by a large margin. he’s still salty that the same technique doesn’t work with biology but whatever)

ANYWAY so he’s just chillin. tripping. and then he starts to get a lil para because this is a New Enclosed Space so he’s like right shit fuck i gotta leave im gonna go to the park all is good

anyway as he leaves his neighbour is letting himself into his flat and said neighbour (john) is like “oh, hi! i’m john. you must be the new move in!”

(john is working on social interaction with his therapist at the moment. she told him that he has to introduce himself to people and that waiting for people to introduce themselves while he gives off big Do Not Fuck With Me vibes is not conducive to the creating of lasting relationships. he’s trying.)

and roger who is tripping balls responds in french, because of course he does

and john? sweet john is like. oh oh i’m sorry i don’t speak french

so roger mumbles something vaguely french sounding under his breath and makes a run for it

and anyway he hangs out at the park, writes some insightful notes about philosophy in his notes on his phone and then heads back home where OF COURSE john is leaving his apartment again and greets him with a shy ‘bonjour’ to which roger replies with ‘au revoire’ and locks himself back into his apartment because he’s a high idiot

anyway the next morning roger is like. oh fuck. im a moron.

and he has two options. firstly: he can come clean to his nice seeming neighbour, laugh off that no he’s actually not french he was just... off his nut. or secondly: he can pretend to be french

and roger is a fucking idiot because he decides to go with the second option. it’s not as if he’s going to be running into this guy often, after all! they’re neighbours not roommates

except. john has been told by his therapist to be more outgoing. and instead of, idk, joining a club or a sportsteam to meet new people he has decided that the french guy next door is the Perfect Candidate. he is a) not going to understand half the shit john says and b) hot as fuck

so. john signs up for french classes. because, of course he does.

and he keeps???? running into roger???? and it’s fine at first because roger knows a bit of french? like he can read it passably but he can’t converse in it. his supervisor has been trying to get him to learn french for YEARS and he’s been refusing but he knows enough/can bullshit enough for the first couple of months but then he realises, to his horror, that john seems..... to be? getting better at french. he’s clearly actually learning french

and so roger. has to learn french. it’s been three months, it’s much too late for him to. come clean now, especially now that he has the world’s biggest fucking crush on this dude like. this is clearly the only option

(his tutor is dominique. she is living for the drama.)

and so the next like. 8 months? are just the two of them. learning french. john is learning french to converse with roger who is learning french at a slightly faster pace so that john doesnt realise he doesn’t know french while also pretending to slowly learn english to keep up the facade

it all unravels almost a year to the day it began

john enrolls in an intro to philosophy class? as an elective? and who happens to be leading his tutorial class but roger?

(”roger” is, of course, pronounced fucking horrifically because roger just..... said his name with a fucking awful french accent that first time he said hi to john in the hallway and it stuck. he couldnt undo it. it’s..... it’s so bad.)

and roger, seeing john walk in, is like. oh fuck. like. again he has two options? he can a) just. out himself and speak in english or b) teach the entire class, of english speaking students, in french

he chooses the latter.

he gets about five minutes in until a student he’s had in the past asks why the fuck he’s speaking french in a class about greek classical philosophy

john is clearly starting to catch on so roger has to give up the ghost

“and THAT is why you should all learn french. the french philosophical school is really so important--”

john just straight up opens his laptop, unenrolls, and walks out because... he feels like an idiot? this guy has clearly just been taking the piss out of him this whole time, probably laughing it up with his friends about how stupid he is. and it’s worse for the amount of effort john put in, like. it’s horrible and unfair, and he can’t believe that he ever thought someone like that would ever be interested in him in the first place, even just as a friend. he’s so stupid

and roger is freaking out because fuck fuck fuck fuck he really fucking likes john and he’s an idiot

(john’s therapist is mostly just confused at this point like. it seems unlikely that someone would have put in the time and effort to prank him in this elaborate manner but john’s like NOPE THIS IS PROOF THAT EVERYONE HATES ME ON SIGHT I CAN NEVER INTERACT WITH ANYONE AGAIN)

and so. john avoids the HELL out of roger who after a couple of weeks of trying to catch him just. gives up? bc yeah, he wouldn’t wanna talk to him either he’s clearly a weirdo. he doesn’t wanna be a stalking weirdo too.

anyway one day john opens his door to find some random (freddie) passed out on roger’s doorstep? bc roger went out the night before, as did freddie, but they did not coordinate their nights out and as such have ended up closer to one another’s apartments and decided to crash with one another except. neither is home.

and freddie wakes up when john opens his door, sees him, and screeches

and john’s like. ok im gonna go goodbye

but freddie is like!!!!! oh my god oh my god you’re john

and john puts two and two together (strange man at roger’s doorstep? probably knows roger) and is like fuck. ok like yeah y’all had ur laughs i’m an idiot lets move on now i have to go

and freddie is???? you’re an idiot???? roger learned french because he had a crush on you and didn’t know how to tell you he wasn’t french after he got so high he started speaking a language he doesn’t know

and john’s like right yeah whatever

but freddie is!!!!! you’re a legend. an actual Legend you don’t even know. everyone knows about you, they’re going to freak when they find out i met you!!!! roger wouldn’t let anyone around for a year in case we gave him away!!!!! i can’t believe this oh my god, will you take a selfie with me??? like we all stalked you on fb obviously but it’s not the same as meeting u in person y’know??

and john is like. uh. no i dont know. ive never stalked anyone on facebook which has freddie like yeah. obviously. if you had you’d have rumbled roger much earlier

and john’s like ok thanks for the reminder im an idiot. didn’t need it, but thanks

but freddie’s like dude i just think so highly of you??? i mean you just thought the blonde hottie across the hall was french and went for it y’know????? i’ve never learnt another language for a dick appointment but i appreciate craftsmanship when i see it and believe me when i say you, sir, are a god amongst men

can i shake your hand?

(brian, confused at the pub the week after the first incident: okay but. you know greek? why didn’t you just..... speak greek?roger: I DON’T KNOW BRIAN I WAS OFF MY FUCKING NUT OKAY?)

and anyway

roger’s thesis actually ends up being on 19th century french philosophy because. he knows french now

his dedication page reads[in english] to my supervisor, who i would not learn french for[in french] and john, for who i did not have to learn french for, but did anyway

#lo talks #joger hc's #headcanon ask #Anonymous

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otome--gokoro · 6 years ago

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Is there anything in your life that youd like to redo differently?

That is a really good question! I’ve been thinking about it on and off today.

For small things, sure - I had spicy chicken galbi ramen for lunch and in retrospect I think I should’ve gone with the beef.

When it comes to big decisions, I don’t think I really regret anything?

I’m not sure if I’ve said this clearly before on tumblr, but I’m actually 26 this year and only halfway through my undergrad. After secondary school, our ‘expected’ life trajectory is junior college -> university -> work. I broke away from that and studied music at a polytechnic for three years, worked a year at a record label, studied music in Japan in two years, worked another year teaching music, and then I finally decided to go to university. Let me tell you, my relatives are not exactly thrilled about this. Haha. (although idk what it has to do with them anyway). My sister talks to her colleagues about me as though I’m her child (I’m 11 years younger than her, her colleagues are much older than her and their children are in their late teens/early twenties, my sister’s children are like… 7 and 4) and most of them are just straight up like ‘wtf is wrong with your sister, she is wasting so much money’

So to an outsider it might look like I have a ton of choices to regret. But I don’t really think any of that was a huge mistake, in retrospect?

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to study music in the first place? But if I hadn’t, I’d always be wondering what if, and now I know for sure that music is something I enjoy as a hobby, but holy shit, not something I want to do for work. I’m reasonably decent at both the business and creative aspects of it, but good god, it is depressing and I don’t want it anymore.

Maybe then I shouldn’t have gone to Japan? But if I hadn’t, then my Japanese wouldn’t have improved, and then I might not even be here at all. Who knows what will happen next because of this decision I made a few years back?

I mean, 12 year old me decided on a whim to study Japanese. Because of that, I was able to study music in Japan, in Japanese (which is obviously not an option for people who don’t speak the language). Because of that, I decided to major in Japanese studies after I came home and enrolled for university. I qualified to take the advanced language classes, and managed to get a full ride scholarship to a summer language program in Osaka. Because of the extra years I spent doing other shit, I’m older than my classmates, and tbh I think I have an edge over them in prioritizing shit, knowing what’s really important, a better work ethic, etc etc.

So, y’know. Even decisions that don’t seem like a Great Idea can turn out okay in the long run. It has for me, anyway - so far. Haha.

#personal life on my tumblr???? IMAGINE THAT #Anonymous #sometimes i answer asks #i should also point out that i was able to do all this bc my parents were supportive #i mean... supportive after a while. LMAO

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obsessivelollipoplalala · 3 years ago

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Hi. This is sort of random and I don’t know if you do these kind of asks but I’m in the final year of my Bachelor’s degree and am thinking of applying for a Masters next year. I’m feeling a bit nervous and stressed out about it. I don’t know if I could handle the workload, I’m worried I won’t get accepted or if I do get accepted, I’m worried I might not be able to finish it. It’s a bit mysterious and honestly I don’t even know what it would be like. Could you tell me a bit more about your experience doing your Masters? We’re studying different things in different countries (I think, I’m in the UK), but I would like to know what the main differences are between doing a Bachelors and Masters, if it was hard to get used to or catch up with the teaching, whether professors treat you differently, what it was like writing your dissertation/research project (if you did that), etc. Does it take up all your time and leave you with no social life? I have depression, and some days it’s hard to even get out of bed. I barely scraped through my second year; my grades slipped with the lockdown worsening my mental health (I didn’t fail but you can see the dip in some of the modules) and I don’t know if I could cope with all the work next year (that is if I do get accepted). If you could answer some of these questions I would really appreciate it. Thank you 🥺🙏😭

The thing is that Master's programs vary a lot based on what the degree is actually in, and the university where it's being offered. My experience might not translate to yours, so keep that in mind. That said, I'll answer everything. I'm putting this under a cut because it got long:

So, I was in an accelerated program, meaning that I began to take graduate classes while I was in the spring semester of third year of my Bachelor's. I wasn't significantly more stressed once I took on those classes because I'd already taken the bulk of the requirements for my undergrad. I took one grad class per semester for two semesters in my Bachelor's, before I took two during my final semester of undergrad. Once I was fully in my grad program, I took 3 classes per semester. Honestly, I thought undergrad was more aggravating and stressful. I found that only three classes per semester were a lot easier to keep up with, despite the work being a little more intense, because I thought it was easier to stay on top of 3 syllabi as opposed to the ~5 I'd have during a typical undergrad semester. Besides, grad school couldn't compare to the trauma of my undergrad Japanese language class lmao. Those 4 semesters were brutal and everything seemed easy in comparison. My professors were pretty nice and a lot more chill than my Japanese professor lol, so they didn't really bother me. I was quiet in college, so my professors never had a problem with me. Since I went to the same place for my Master's as I did my Bachelor's, I didn't notice a significant change in my lifestyle as a student.

I do think there's more independent reading required in grad school, so you have to prepare for that. If you have a problem with deadlines, grad school will be tough; I'm just someone who never turned in anything late. Literally, I think I turned in fewer than 3 assignments late in my whole life because that's just how my brain is wired. If you're someone who can consistently turn in assignments on time, that's half the battle. If not, you'll struggle. But I found that there was less bullshit in grad school compared to undergrad. With my Bachelor's I had to take so many stupid electives I didn't give a shit about just because my university required like 30 non-major credits, and I was frustrated because I felt like my time was being wasted and I was stressing over syllabi for no real reason. In grad school, it's a lot more focused.

I didn't have a dissertation or thesis; I had a comprehensive exam at the end of my program. That sucked lol. It was a 10-question essay exam over the course of 5 hours. I was given access to the questions from previous exams and study guides from previous students, which were tremendously helpful, and I studied and answered practice questions almost every night for a month and a half straight. That was really tough. That was my only class/requirement, however, so I was able to dedicate all of my time to the exam. I passed, but if I'd put off studying, I definitely wouldn't have just because of how my specific exam was designed.

Now onto mental health stuff. I'll be real with you: I'm one of those people who benefited from the lockdown. I've always enjoyed working alone, so I didn't really miss classroom discussions and actually loved not having to commute to and from campus every day anymore. All of my classes were asynchronous and I felt my mental health improve because I was able to pace myself, my schedule, and have a lot more time for my hobbies. College was far worse for me in undergrad, and it honestly had some of the worst years of my life lol. I didn't make a single friend on campus until the end of year two, and I found being on campus with no friends incredibly depressing and isolating. Going into lockdown took that away, you know what I mean? You can't feel lonely if everyone is alone :'D Plus, since I'm such an independent worker, I wasn't hurt by everything going online since I was able to keep up with all of the material and deadlines pretty well. So, if your grades and mental health suffered during the pandemic, I completely understand, but that wasn't my situation. I enjoyed staying home. Since most of grad school was online during the pandemic, too, I can't say it took up all of my social life since I couldn't have a social life lmao. I was/am very strict with lockdown and social distancing, so it's not like grad school kept me from seeing my friends. But since there are typically fewer classes in grad school, anyway, you might find more time for your personal life. It really depends on the program and requirements.

tl;dr: you do need perseverance and the ability to meet deadlines in grad school. There's typically less margin for error (I think I couldn't get more than a couple B- in my program?), but it doesn't have to be terrifying. It's difficult to advise you since these things can vary so much, as I've said. But this is what college was like for me 🤷 I hope this helps in any way. If your depression is that debilitating, I do recommend going to whatever disability resource center is available at the university to get appropriate accommodations, if that's a thing over there. That can help a lot and there's no shame in it. My mom is a professor and receives letters informing her that students need accommodations on assignments and deadlines all the time.

#replies #Anonymous

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thepsychicclam · 7 years ago

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Could you talk a little about what being a professor/getting your PhD has been like? Do you have to constantly do research and publish, is it hard to find jobs, do they pay enough to relieve the doctoral debt? I know you’ve moved at least once and I wasn’t sure if it was to follow a job, or if it was for personal reasons and then, was finding a new job hard? Did you start teaching while getting your PhD? I’m just fascinated by it and you seem like the best to ask!

Yes! I can share my experience. Everyone’s experience is different, and mine is unique for a few reasons I’ll discuss below. It may also vary from field to field. My PhD is in literature/English, and from what I’ve gathered, your concentration can influence a lot of stuff, too. So, under the cut, I’ll try to share my experience as much as I can! This is VERY LONG, so be warned, nonny! :D

Before I decided to get a PhD, I got a MAT - a master’s in secondary education with a focus on English literature. My BA is in creative writing/english lit. I taught high school for three years, and for a lot of reasons said FUCK THIS NOISE and quit. I lived with my parents and they told me they’d help support me. I ended up with a college teaching job (you can teach adjunct in the states with a masters) and they told me to get a PhD if I wanted to do it full time some day. I love teaching, and I’m good at it. I especially love teaching literature. So, I decided to go get my PhD.

Choosing my specialization was kinda interesting bc I decided to go for medieval literature, which I hadn’t really studied up until that point. I had always done Victorian and Shakespeare/Renaissance, with a bit of dabbling into Native American and postcolonial literature. But I taught Dante’s Inferno to my seniors my last yr at HS and fell in LOVE. So, I thought, “Hey, there aren’t a lot of medievalists. Everyone gets a PhD in Shakespeare/Victorian lit, so I’ll do that. Maybe it’ll make me more marketable.” I have always loved medieval lit, so I figured lets go for it.

My original plan was to do something with romances, so late medieval stuff. I ended up with two professors in the dept, one who focused on Anglo-Saxon/Old English and one who focused on Chaucer/later medieval. I took multiple classes in both, and my second or third semester, I took intro to Old English. I fell in LOVE WITH IT. It was a linguistics course where we learned the Old English language (which is completely different than modern or even middle english) and translated. I was GOOD at it and took to it unlike anyone else in the class. It just made sense. I think probably bc I had a background in Latin and German (I was a German studies minor in undergrad until I realized I couldn’t speak German to save my life :P) and I took like 3 or 4 yrs of Latin in hs. Anyway, I was hooked and switched to Old English. I took a lot of postcolonial literature courses, like Indian lit, lit of SE Asian, and Native American lit courses, and through this I met another professor who I adored. I ended up working with her to do my minor/secondary specialization, which is literature of the indigenous peoples of America (Native American, Chicano lit, etc - mostly Native American). I ALMOST wrote my dissertation with her bc I loved her so much and I love Native American literature so much. However, as a white woman, I didn’t feel that I would make a good postcolonial/Native American scholar, so I stuck with Anglo-Saxon lit.

I used my class papers to start working on my dissertation ideas. I got obsessed with monstrosity and the narrow definition in AS lit, and connected that to ideas of reason, which I also became obsessed with, and ended up writing all my papers about some type of monstrous transformation and how it connects to the reason of the punished. Thus, my dissertation topic was born, which currently has the working title of Transformative Bodies and their Punishments as Social Control in Anglo-Saxon Literature. It’s a terrible title, but right now, at least it states the overall topic lol

My comps, which are the comprehensive exams you have to take, took me a year to read for. Most people take one semester, I took 2. I took mine in the spring and just read for two semesters. Now, to put it into perspective, the English dept standard was 40 primary texts and 20 secondary texts, so 60 texts. Mine was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY over that. I ended up with over 16,000 pgs of texts to read. Hint: I DID NOT READ THEM ALL. And remember, half of mine were in Middle English, so they took 3 times as long to read, and half were translated OE texts. But I read a lot, read the secondary stuff, and took my comps. Comps were supposed to be 2.5 hrs. The director of graduate studies handed me my comps and said, “You’re the medieval one, right?” And I was like, “...yes...” and he looked at me and said, “You get 4 hrs.” THAT’S HOW FUCKING LONG MY ADVISOR MADE MY COMPS. I HAD TO GET EXTRA TIME. So, 4 hrs I did nothing but type. There were questions on there that were not part of my 16k words, but I answered everything. I wrote 9 fucking thousand words in 4 hrs. I was PUMPED. Then, he gave me just a PASS not PASS PLUS. I’m a straight A student, valedictorian, graduated cum laude and magna cum laude, mortar board, scholarships, etcetc. I WAS PISSED :|||| I MEAN I HAD 4 HRS AND WRITE 9K ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?? It didn’t matter bc I still passed, but it was a pride thing lol

Okay, so that August I moved to Boston. My diss director was PISSED. I was ABD (all but dissertation, ie I had passed my comps), so I was going to work on my dissertation remotely. Many ppl do this. Well, he basically looked at me and said, “Yeah most ppl don’t finish who do this.” I cried for like 2 weeks. Then I got pissed and told myself I WILL FUCKING FINISH THIS IF IT KILLS ME. I regretted not doing the Native American diss with the professor I loved. My dissertation director is a dick. Hands down. I would be finished if I had a better director. I have had no support. Now, I did move to Boston, I procrastinated and took my time and had a lot of anxiety, but he didn’t help me at all. He made it worse. If you’ve followed me for awhile, you know I struggle with depression and anxiety, and at times it’s basically debilitating. So, it increased tenfold with the dissertation process. It took me a year to get my proposal submitted, finalized, and approved.

I started working on my dissertation, which thankfully I had drafts of chapters from my class papers. As of right now, I have drafted 4 full chapters of average 40 pgs each and am revising. My director takes forever to get back from me, and my comments give me MAJOR anxiety. Part of the dissertation process is being told “yeah this needs work.” It’s like, hey, your ideas are great! You have a good point! But here are 100 ways you suck. Or that’s what it feels like. So, it became a major source of crippling anxiety for me. When I was in therapy, it was like all I talked about. I have to spend a week or two just pumping myself to check my fucking email. I have been trying to make an inface mtg with my advisor for a freaking yr. He blew me off to go to the bar with his friends at a conference we attended last yr (I only know this for a fact bc I SAW HIM AT THE BAR WITH THEM when he texted me and said he had “fallen asleep.”) So, needless to say, that has been a huge struggle and conflict. However, I don’t think that’s normal. lol I’m just cursed.

Right now, I’m trying to learn how to push myself as an academic writer and researcher to the next level. Something I need him to teach me, but still trying to meet face to face! I’ve gotten to the point in my drafts that I need to improve the arguments and research in a few places, but I’m not sure how to break through my wall. I need guidance, you know? Bc I don’t live around the campus, I’m doing this alone. I don’t have a writers group or any friends in the program. I’m pretty alone and isolated, which sucks. It’s also not the norm either, I don’t think. So, I have to push myself and keep myself going and write in a vacuum. I’m the only medievalist in the Eng dept getting a PhD, so there’s not even someone else writing their dissertation in Anglo-Saxon lit or even Middle English. The medieval dept is small.

So, that is my PhD schooling experience. Let’s talk about work and loans. I worked at a different college as an adjunct while doing my classes. I did not do a graduate research or teaching assistant job at the university, which means I paid for my schooling out of pocket/loans. I had someone tell me once, “If you’re paying for your own PhD, you shouldn’t be getting one. If you’re not being paid to get it, you’re not worth anything.” Pretty much, I feel like I was told the entire way I was doing everything wrong. I couldn’t get a GRA/GTA while teaching at the other school. I was an adjunct with a 3 class load, so I made decent, though not much. I lived at home w my folks, so I was okay with money. I was extremely lucky bc of that bc most ppl live on their own and have to work multiple jobs. When I moved to Boston, that’s when I got the 239847239 jobs. (also why I used to write a lot of fic and now I don’t write as much lol real life, man). When I moved to Boston, I taught adjunct, 3 classes. I also did freelance writing and worked at a farm, mainly bc rent was$2000/mth and I didn’t get paid during the summer. When I moved to SC, I also ended up with a 3 class adjunct job, but continued with the freelance writing. I have always been incredibly lucky with getting jobs. I think it’s bc I have a lot of teaching experience (this is my 10th yr teaching) and I have a background in English literature instead of education. I also wasn’t picky where I taught. I wasn’t teaching at Harvard, Boston College, or even something like the University of South Carolina. I taught at a small state school to start with, a community college in Boston, and now another small state school. But all experience is good experience. One thing that will make you marketable is your teaching experience. Everyone I’ve every talked to who hired me was interested in my teaching experience.

For my career, right now I do a lot of conferences. I am doing 5 this semester, and I have done a ton of them. Graduate conferences, medieval conferences, lit conferences, pedagogy conferences, even library conferences. I give presentations/papers at each of them, bc I don’t see the point of going to a conference if you aren’t going to give a paper. I haven’t done any publishing yet. I have a few ideas for articles, but I’m terrified. It’s very hard to get published, so I haven’t tried yet :/ it is an expectation of all professors/phds to get published. At my current job, where I just got hired full time as an Visiting Assistant Professor, if I get a tenure track position, I have to have at least 1 publication within 5 years. That is a peer reviewed journal article or book. Getting published in English is SO MUCH HARDER than the sciences. I have a friend who works in Atlanta as a research assistant/lab technician/scientist (I’m not sure the title tbh) and she has like 3 publications bc she helped with these studies that they publish online that get published within like a month. My sister has a chapter in an art history essay collection, and it took 2 years to get published!! Academic publishing is the WORST. I’m hoping at least one dissertation chapter gets accepted as an article. I also did a project in my 102 class last semester that I have given multiple conference presentations and teaching workshops about, and I’m starting to work on turning it into an article. I want to be a teaching professor, not a research professor, so I’m trying to focus on the teaching aspect of my career. I just got a Brit Lit class for next semester instead of a sea of composition, so I’m trying to come up with a unique topical angle that I can use on my CV to show my teaching skills. So, part of my job is trying to find ways to increase my CV. Like, I run a panel at a regional literature conference (I kinda lucked into it bc my mentor used to run it, and now I do lol), so that looks good on my CV, too. So, it’s not constant publishing, but you are expected to do SOMETHING, conferences, publication, things like that.

Is it hard to find jobs? I’d say yes. Like I said, I have been incredibly lucky to always have a job. My dissertation director told me last yr after I got my job in SC, “Well, I guess you’re doing something right. I mean, you always seem to find a job.” (thanks asshole for that BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT) I am not picky. Experience is experience, and you’re not going to find your dream job immediately. That sense of entitlement limits you and keeps you from finding a job to start. Right now, I teach 5 fucking composition 101 classes. I was bitching to my sister today about how I was teaching fucking TOPIC SENTENCES and my students don’t get it!!! It sucks!! But, it pays a full time salary, and it gives me experience. Do I want to teach how to write a FUCKING TOPIC SENTENCE?? NO!! I can translate Old English and have studied medieval and early British literature for almost a decade. THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO FOCUS ON. But, I’m not an entitled asshole and realize I have to work my way up. When I finish my PhD, will get the perfect medieval/early British job? NO. I hope to get a job as an early British person somewhere (not my current school, who has no need for a medievalist really), but I know it will take one to two jobs before my dream job. Everyone I know has done 1-3 jobs before their perfect tenure job. Of course, there are always people who have the magic CV or whatever who will get that perfect job right out of grad school. I have no delusions. That’s not gonna be me. I’m an okay researcher and scholar and a damn good teacher. The first part means more than the last part for colleges. I just hope to eventually find somewhere I can teach Medieval lit to undergrads, and maybe do a course on monsters in pop culture.

Money wise, professors make okay but not mega bucks. I make pretty good for my area. But, I grew up poor, so having a full time job is like WHOO. I’ve learned how to live a great life on a lower salary. If money is what you want, this is not the career for you unless you’re teaching business or accounting at an MBA program. However, I go to work at 10 am, I leave some days at 1 and others at 3, I get from May-August and all of December off, and I make a full time yearly salary. So...I chose my profession for the time off. lol That’s exactly why I became a teacher XD I’m in a lot of student debt, but I worked out a payment plan with the student loan ppl and pay my loans every month. I’ll be dead before they’re paid off, but oh well :P

What other questions did you ask...yes, I worked the entire time teaching while getting my degree. At one point I was working 5 jobs lol but not while taking class, during comps/dissertation stuff. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask! Like I said, I have a unique circumstance, with a dick dissertation advisor, moving between 3 states and teaching at 3 different places, though I finally have landed a full time college teaching position lol When I finish my dissertation, I will be very happy with my career path. Right now, with it looming over my head and making me feel like the fucking biggest idiot and stupidest person on the planet, I regret my life decisions XD But really, I don’t bc, you know, I work like 20 hrs a week XDDDDDD

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universi-tea · 7 years ago

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With so many people from around the world talking about there experiences in school, it can be a little confusing to figure out what it all means. All states have different standards so things can vary a lot, but here’s a general guide to help you figure out what the heck your American friends are talking about.

Read on after the cut to learn more about grade levels, classes, high school, college, and a lot more!

Grade Levels and Ages

Preschool is optional, but many children attend. It teaches basic skills like shapes, colors, and numbers, plus helps to develop social skills and prepare children for school. It often only lasts until lunch, depending on the parent’s schedule.

Kids typically start the first year of school, kindergarten, when they’re five years old.

Grade level + 5 is a pretty good estimation of someone’s age.

K-5th grade is considered elementary school.

6th-8th grade is considered middle school, but 6th grade classes are often still held in an elementary school building.

9th-12th grade is high school

Freshman year = 9th grade, Sophomore = 10th, junior = 11th, and senior = 12th

Types of Schools

Public schools are where the majority of students go. They’re free to attend and government funded, so depending on the funding they vary in quality. These schools do not require uniforms but do have dress codes.

Private schools are, you guessed it, privately funded. Student’s must pay tuition or receive scholarships to attend, and some schools require admittance exams. They may be religion-based, and may also have a more rigorous curriculum. Uniforms (or strict dress codes) are usually, but not always, required.

Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated. They often act as an alternative to under-performing public schools in the area, and may offer a specialized curriculum.

Magnet schools, much like charter schools, are publicly funded but offer specialized a curriculum which draws students from across districts (like a magnet) to attend. They usually offer a focus in a certain subject, like science, for students with special interests and aptitude for that field.

Home schools, are exactly like they sound. Students learn at home, but still must follow state guidelines for class requirements. A special license is required in order to teach your children at home, and students must take yearly standardized exams to show they are on track. Classes may be taken through special homeschool work books, videos, online, or classes offered at churches, community centers, or colleges.

Schedules

In elementary school, students typically stay in the same classroom with the same teacher for all of their core subjects. They’ll leave to go to recess, gym/PE (physical education), lunch, and sometimes electives like music or art.

Middle and high school classes are taken in seperate classrooms and students get to choose their schedules relatively freely.

The school day typically starts around 8 and ends around 3.

Depending on the school, students may take either four classes for a semester and switch after winter break or eight classes all year.

The same classes meet everyday with these schedules.

There’s also something called block schedule where block ‘A’ will meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with block ‘B’ on the others day, and then switch the next week.

Classes

Core classes are considered English, math, science, and social studies. Students are required to have a certain number of classes in each to graduate.

Students are also required to take a certain number of electives, some of which must fit certain requirements like foreign language and fine arts.

Every state is different, but as an example the high school graduation requirements for North Carolina are, as taken from the NC site: 4 credits of English (I,II,III,IV); Foreign Language not required for graduation, but 2 credits required for admission to a state college; 4 credits of math (Algebra I, II, Geometry & one beyond Algebra II), 3 credits of science (A physical science, Biology & Earth/Environmental Science), 4 credits of social sciences (Civics & Economics, World History, American History I and American History II), 1 credit of health/physical education, and 6 elective credits (chosen based on student’s interest and availability at their school).

Especially in high school, students have lots of electives to choose from. Anything from interior design to baking may be offered, depending on the size of the school and funding.

Students may also take advanced placement (AP) classes. They’re more difficult, and last the entire academic year (even if other classes are on a semester schedule). They also count for college credit.

Honors classes are also more rigorous courses, but do not count for college credit.

Students and their advisors choose classes together that fit the student’s future goals.

All classes have some sort of exam at the end of the term.

Grades

GPA (grade point average) is used in high school and colleges. Each grade is given a corresponding number -- 4 for A, 3 for B, 2 for C, 1 for D, and 0 for a failed class (add one point for AP classes). These are averaged together, leaving you with your GPA.

Grading systems vary, but a pretty standard scale is the 10 point. By this, 90-100 points is an A, 80-89 is a B, and so on.

A pretty common question was if it was actually possible to get straight A’s all through high school, and as for grades in the overall class -- totally possible. Not a breeze, but possible. It’s unlikely that someone would make an A on every assignment in every class all four years, but that’s not out of the question either. It all depends on the person!

SAT and ACT

These are standardized tests meant to gauge how well a student will do in their first year of college. They are not the same as end of year exams. different colleges prefer different tests, so students may take one or both, depending on where they're applying. The SAT covers writing, critical reading, and math. The ACT covers English, mathematics, reading, science, with an optional essay.

Extracurricular Activities

Having extracurricular activities that show your interests, talents, and ability to manage your time well is a really important part of college applications. This is why nearly every American student is involved in multiple extracurricular activities.

High school sports can lead to college scholarships, which is why they’re a popular option. If you’re really talented, colleges may recruit you and give you a ‘full ride’ (pay all of your tuition) to get you to play for them.

Other popular activities are special interest clubs, yearbook, choir, debate, after school jobs, and volunteering.

College

College is the term used conversationally for what is called ‘university’ in most other countries.

Community or junior colleges allow students to earn an Associate’s (two year) degree for a much lower cost.

Traditional four-year colleges typically have “university” in their title, and students earn their Bachelor’s degree from these.

After undergrad (earning a bachelor’s degree), some students go to grad school. For professions in the medical and law field, students must go to med or law school right after graduating because, well, would you want a 22 year old doctor?

For other fields, grad school ranges from basically required to find a job to totally unnecessary.

Programs can take anywhere from two (master’s) to five or more for a doctorate degree.

In college, students will always have a major and often have a minor.

A major is your major field of study, which will usually be listed on your degree (ie, major in biology to earn a Bachelor of Science in Biology), though sometimes a more general department (major in advertising for a Bachelor of Art in Communications) will be listed instead. All schools and programs are different as far as what will be listed on a student’s degree.

A minor is another area of interest which is used to fill other hour requirements for graduation. This will not be listed on the degree, and may either support and help refine a major (fine arts minor + elementary education major = art teacher), or may just be to explore interests outside of a student’s field. Minors are not required at all schools or in all programs; students may choose to double major or simply take independent electives to fill hour requirements instead.

At many schools, students aren’t required to declare a major until their junior (third) year. The first two years of classes are typically general education, like math and English, that are required for all degrees.

Hopefully that cleared up some of your questions, and if you have any more I would be happy to help!

#mine #studyblr #study #study tips #school #studyspo #academlets #medblr #lawblr #new studyblr #elkstudies #heysereena #us #school system

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sage-nebula · 7 years ago

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For the autumn asks : Pumpkin, Cinnamon, Crow.

Crow: Which school subject do you wish you had an aptitude for?

Math.

Truth be told, it’s less that I even wish I had an aptitude for it, per se, and more that I wish that it was possible for me at all. I can do basic math, and I memorized my multiplication tables because I wasn’t allowed to eat until I could recite them, but I still don’t know how to do long division (does that count as basic?), and I have a diagnosed learning disability as it pertains to mathematics. It’s difficult for me to gauge distances, time management is a real struggle, and all of this goes back to the fact that my brain is wired in such a way that holding numbers in my head and understanding mathematical concepts is nigh impossible. I had to have my math general education credit waived during my undergrad because I tried to get it four separate times, in different courses, and just could not pass with a grade high enough in a course that qualified to get the credit. I gave myself stomach ulcers to get a C in Basic Math, only to have that not count. When I took College Algebra, I would understand the lesson all right when I was in the class, but when I’d try to do my homework at home, I’d have to re-teach myself the material using the book. Ten problems would take me two or three hours to complete, and you can’t use the book on the exams, so I was basically screwed. How I ever managed to get through math in K-12 is a wonder, but the fact that I did fail geometry junior year and had to attend summer school for it isn’t a surprise at all, in retrospect.

All of that said, not only do I wish that I didn’t have a learning disability because of the sheer Hell it put me through, but I also wish that I had mathematical ability because a lot of the fields I’m interested in require it. Anything pertaining to space exploration or travel is barred to me, because the sciences that go into that field are math-heavy. Computer programming not only requires some mathematical ability, but programming itself is heavily rooted in a type of reasoning that leans heavily into the mathematical portion of one’s brain. It’s something that my brain just cannot process, no matter how much I would love to learn (and believe me, I would love to learn, and I have tried to learn, but it’s like there’s a block there I just can’t get past). My brain just will not hold or process those numbers.

So when I say “I hate math,” it’s not so much that I hate math itself as much as it is that I hate all of the time I spent crying because I felt like I was too stupid to do understand simple math problems. I hate the stomach ulcers I gave myself in university, and the emotional breakdowns I had because I thought I wouldn’t be able to graduate with my creative writing degree because I couldn’t pass a math course. I hate the fact that there are so many beautiful parts to math, such as the fact that it’s the universal language that everyone theoretically should be able to understand and learn, but that I can’t because my brain simply won’t process it. And to be honest, I hate people when talk about how, oh, yeah, math is frustrating, but they can at least still learn it, their brains can still at least process it if they try, whereas I can’t. It’s not just that I don’t want to, or that it’s a bit hard but I can do it, it’s that I have tried, and tried, and tried for hours straight, to the point of making myself physically sick, and I cannot.

So I don’t hate math. I hate my learning disability which has made math cause me actual, physical pain, and has barred me from subjects I otherwise have vested interest in (and has made some things, like science, insanely difficult). I really wish math and I could be friends. I really, really do.

Cinnamon: If you had to live in a time period different than the present, which would you choose and where?

THE FUTURE!

It’s hard to be more specific than that, because I’m not sure what the future holds. But whatever it holds, I’d like to think it’s better than the present, and it can’t be worse than the past. Honestly, so many people want to travel backwards in time, and I just---why? What is appealing about the past? Technology is worse the farther back you go. If you go back far enough, there is no indoor plumbing, and showers might not be commonplace. Public transportion is worse. Like . . . the past holds nothing of value. We can learn from the past, absolutely, but why would anyone want to live there? It’s gross and inconvenient. Let’s leave the past in the past where it belongs, and look instead to the future.

Think of how many incredible things the future could have. Technology could be so advanced and commonplace that universal translation devices might be $30 at most. Language barriers would be a thing of the past---we could all communicate. What if we have teleportation machines as a means of public transportation? What if we have luggage and bags that are Bags of Holding, that are their own personal, pocket dimensions that can store anything? There are so many cool inventions that are in the process of being made, and this is all technology that will make our lives better. New medicines, vaccines, and antibiotics are being discovered on the daily. Our space exploration programs are discovering new planets, and are discovering new things about known planets that could, potentially, get us off this wretched planet and into space one day. The future is where it’s at. The future has to be better than this. Or even if it doesn’t have to be, I hope it is, and we know for a fact that the past is not, so that needs to just be discarded and swept away.

I want the future to be better. And if you ask me if I prefer the future or the past, I’m going to pick the future every time. Get me a world of tech and innovation, where everyone can live freely and happily, where we’re actively striving to make each day better than the one before it. That’s the world I dream of. That’s the one I want.

Pumpkin: Do you think that humans are inherently good or bad?

That’s a complicated question, and . . . I think it depends on the individual.

I think the word “inherently” is the main rub here. What does that mean, precisely? I think it dials down to the nature vs. nurture argument. Are we who we are when we’re born? Or are we who we are based on the environment we’re raised in, and how we’re raised within that environment? In other words, does the tabula rasa theory hold water, or not? And I think that it’s a little bit of both. I do think there are some innate qualities that we, as individuals, have, and would have no matter what. The fact that even infants can be different in terms of temperament and demeanor (e.g. I was apparently very, very quiet as a baby and didn’t cry much at all, but my older sister was apparently much fussier and more high maintenance) shows as much. Some people are bound to be more naturally determined, or more naturally shy, than others, regardless of the environment they grow up in. Some people simply are. But I also think it’s undeniable that our environments do shape us. Things like ethics, morals, virtues---these are things we’re taught to believe. And it isn’t just that. I’ve talked before about how I have C-PTSD thanks to my life expereinces, and C-PTSD is something that shapes how you behave, and how you view and interact with the world. It shapes you as you grow. I’m not sure who I would be if I didn’t have C-PTSD affecting how I see and interact with the world, and though I’ve attended therapy in an effort to recover (and though I’ve been practicing things like CBT to try and help myself heal), that doesn’t change the fact that my life experiences did shape me as a person, even though C-PTSD manifested in my psyche. (And to give an idea of how much C-PTSD affects a person, it’s sometimes recognized as a personality disorder, and can sometimes resemble BPD. So, yeah . . . it really does shape how someone develops.) How we’re raised does affect who we are as people. Our environment does shape us. So while I do think there are certain parts of our personalities that are innate, I also think that our environment plays a part in that as well. It’s not nature or nurture. It’s nature and nurture.

So to get back to the original question, what does that mean in terms of being good or bad? Well, first we must remember that “good” and “bad” are subjective. While there are some things that we as a society can generally agree upon as being good or bad (e.g. it’s good to be generous and charitable, it’s bad to murder), even then there are often qualifiers that vary from person to person. Is it wrong and bad to take a life no matter the circumstances? Or is it justified if it’s in the defense of yourself or others, or punishment for especially heinous crimes? Is it always wrong to steal, or is it justified if it’s to feed your family? Things like that---questions like that all come down to subjective beliefs and ideals. It’s why, to use a fandom example, Gryffindors are not always heroic. Gryffindors are driven by the question of Right or Wrong, but what is Right and what is Wrong varies from Gryffindor to Gryffindor. Even if a Gryffindor maintains that their ideal of Right is objectively Right, in the end it is still subjective. It’s something you feel in your gut, in your heart. There is no one answer that everyone in the world will agere with, even if many do.

So at the heart of it, what we’re dealing with is subjectivity, and even then we’re dealing with subjectivity in a nebulous area where it’s difficult to ascertain what is inherently true of an individual. Does it still count as inherent if some of their worse behaviors or beliefs are a result of the environment they were raised in? Does it count as inherent if they could potentially be swayed from these things? It’s difficult to say, and I feel that everyone would have a different take on it.

As for me . . .

At the end of the day, I think that trying to make blanket statements about humanity like this one way or the other is a mistake. As I’ve said, it depends on the individual. Yes, I do believe that there are some people---some human beings---who are simply evil. I know that people rail against this idea. You have people who try to appear “enlightened” in fandom maintaining that characters who are simply evil and awful are unrealistic, because everyone has some tragic backstory to explain their actions, or some shade of grey that makes them better, and you also have people who try to be enlightened in a different sense pointing out how all heinous people have loved ones and soft interests, and therefore it’s wrong to label people as monsters. I think that both of those so-called “enlightened” opinions are wrong. Even if someone has a tragic backstory, or even if they have some reason that they believe justifies their actions, there are some heinous actions that simply cannot be excused or sympathized with, regardless of the reason. And even if those heinous people have loved ones, that doesn’t matter. Being nice to your significant other doesn’t excuse the dozen children you raped and murdered. Liking dogs doesn’t change the fact that you believe in the systemic slaughter of millions. And even going away from extremes like that, there are people in this world who simply enjoy causing others pain. Dolores Umbridge is a horrible, horrible person. She is, at her core, evil, even if she doesn’t commit acts that are as outright heinous as, say, Voldemort (at least on the surface, because let’s not forget her willing service when the Ministry was sending muggleborns off to Azkaban for the crime of “stealing” magic). And she’s such a reviled villain in the fandom because of her realism, because for as many heinous and awful things as she does, we’ve still encountered people like her in real life who enjoy making life difficult and painful for others. People like Umbridge, who have no redeeming qualities on the surface (aside from maybe liking cats) exist. There are people like that. There are people who like to see others suffer, who are selfish, malicious, wretched people. We have political leaders in our history---in the world’s history, from pretty much every country---who have passionately believed in the horrid things they did. Practically every country on this earth has a bloody history because, at some point in time, heinous people believed that they were justified in their atrocities. And yes, I do believe that those people, however justified they felt they were, were evil. There is a saying that crops up again and again in JRPGs, and that saying is, “If there is evil in this world, it lurks in the hearts of men.” And I believe that’s a saying for a reason. I think it’s true. I think there are people out there who are, at the heart of it, evil, regardless of how justified they believe they are.

But on the flipside, there are people who are good, too. There are people who dedicate their lives to charity, to saving others, to protecting those who can’t protect themselves. Just as there are people who are, for whatever reason, evil, there are people who are good, too. The history of the world is bloody, but when atrocities happen there are those who oppose them, and those who oppose the atrocities are good. Those who gain true joy and fulfillment from helping, rather than hurting, others are good. Those people exist, too.

Again, I don’t like making blanket statement about humanity. I do think that visions of the future where everyone shares everything out of the goodness of their hearts are idealistic and unrealistic. But I also think that visions of the future where everything is bleak, and everyone hates everyone else are pessimistic and unrealistic. It all comes down to the individual. It’s our actions, and how we feel about those actions, that ultimately defines who we are. I do think there are some people that are just evil. But I also think there are some people that are just good. And I think that there are a lot of people who waver between the two, who simply are, who are doing their best, the best they can.

It’s a really complicated question, but that’s where I’m at with it right now.

#autumnal ask meme #starlightprincess17

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realtalk-princeton · 6 years ago

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so lots of people say academia is a hard career path and such, but lets say someone is really amazing in that field and might actually have a shot at being successful... can that offset the difficulties of working in academia to the extent that it would be less stressful and difficult than, say, a standard corporate job for that given person?

Response from Sulpicia:

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on this. This information was sourced from conversations I have had with my professors as well as grad students since coming here, so it is biased towards the humanities.

I don’t know that we, a bunch of undergrads, can answer that. I can say that academia is challenging because even if you’re very smart and work hard, there are very few jobs and you have to be lucky enough to have a one of those few jobs line up for you, which is hard to predict (this is coming from an RGS I know). Universities create well-rounded departments by hiring professors which a variety of research areas; for example, a history department will have its preferred mix of ancient and modern historians specializing in whatever continent/language. When you apply for a PhD, you pick a professor to work with, and so while your dissertation topic will likely evolve, it’s have a similar “flavor” to whatever your professor is doing. So, if you did your thesis here and decided that you loved studying ancient South America, then you’d spend many years becoming an expert at ancient South America, and while you may learn a little about other ancient cultures, or maybe different periods in South American history, you’re really only “qualified” in the eyes of a university to teach this one specific thing. This is obviously a small community, and so you have to impress all your professors so they’ll write you letters and talk you up to their colleagues at other universities who can read your work and hire you. It’s often a case of who you know rather than what you know.

So you graduate with your PhD, and you find that while ancient South American history was a hot topic when you entered your program, the job you were eyeing in a prestigious department was taken by somebody the year before you finished your dissertation. A History RGS actually told me that Princeton’s prestige can work against you when applying for jobs. Ivy League PhDs are excellent training for Ivy League teaching jobs, but these come about very rarely depending on your specialty, and smaller private universities or public universities may actually not want to hire you because they think you’ll not take their offer and go somewhere higher-ranked, like how some universities will reject students whose test scores are much higher than their average. You may also find that nobody really “needs” somebody in your area of specialty at the moment, which is challenging. Of course, you can sometimes be hired in a different area (this is especially true in language departments where you can be more of a generalist lecturer) or get lucky and have your specialty become highly in demand.

Tenure-track jobs are also often preceded by a lot of fellowships or temporary teaching jobs that can take you all over the country with no promise of job security and little pay, all while you have to continue proving yourself to build more connections to get more highly-competitive jobs. This can be a challenging element of academia because it means you don’t get to establish roots a lot, and may even have to live apart from a spouse. Universities do sometimes purposefully hire couples, but you may also be forced to be long-distance permanently or break up, especially if you’re both academics.

Even if you get a job, with luck you rocket up the academic ladder but usually you wait years for a higher-ranked professor to retire and rely on colleague and student recommendations to get promoted. You may also find yourself burdened with a heavy workload while you’re expected to do your own projects without the opportunity to design your own classes while your colleagues get a lot of flexibility because of their seniority. Plus, regardless of your other responsibilities you have to keep up with the barrage of books that come out in your discipline, go to lectures/lunch chats/department events, and (in many departments) deal with harassment if you’re not a straight while man. Even with the many strides made in recent years to encourage diversity within universities, there is still a lot of ugly discriminatory behavior even in graduate programs, as in Princeton’s own German department.

In short, academic requires a lot of the same skills as a “real” job, like networking, constantly looking for opportunities for self-advancement, and the ability to be constantly evaluated, while you are lacking job security. This is based on my discussions with professors and grad students mostly in the humanities. Obviously if you’re getting like an Econ PhD you can go work at a think tank or something, or go into industry if you get a science PhD, but becoming a professor does require a lot of work and a lot of luck, even if you’re brilliant. I mean if you like figure out one of the enduring problems of your field then you might not have trouble getting a job, but those one-in-a-billion people are hard to come by.

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firewoodfigs · 3 years ago

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*clears throat* not to be a sap but. I woke up this morning was so so overwhelmed by how kind everyone was towards the song I posted for royai week 🥺 It was the first song I’d ever written in full and properly recorded, so it really meant so much to me (did I tear up? No...)

Music has always been an instrumental (pun intended) part of my life. It was how I coped (along with reading) with my parents’ failing marriage, and it was also something that I’ve always felt terribly insecure about. I wanted so desperately to go for piano lessons when I was young — and I would beg my parents to sign me up for piano or whatever music classes each year on my birthday.

Each time, the answer was no. It was either a waste of time or a waste of money, and they didn’t have much of both to spare, so I accepted it soon enough and just... moved on. I tried to pick up music by listening to songs, over and over, and I was so freaking excited when I first laid hands on the Fearless album as a twelve (?) year old. The music was beautiful, the lyrics masterful, and everything about it was magical. I think it inspired me to pick up guitar from a few church friends, who were offering to teach back then. It also inspired me to try my hand at songwriting, but whatever I wrote was honestly and objectively a mess, and I have no idea where it all went haha.

Fast forward to middle school; it was compulsory for everyone to pick an extra-curricular, and I remember I wanted to join the school choir so badly. I signed up for auditions, showed up, got asked to sing scales, freaked out, and promptly ran away LMAO. Needless to say I didn’t get in hahaha (I have terrible stage fright even to this day and the mere thought of someone scrutinising me while singing scares me like nothing else). I ended up joining guitar ensemble, which wasn’t altogether bad, because I did have fun and did make some lovely friends who I’m still in touch with even to this day. It wasn’t exactly my first choice though, and it wasn’t always a carnival, either. Most of the time we were just playing the same songs over and over and/or preparing for this biannual competition.

Long story short, I felt like I didn’t learn much. But it was cool, because I somehow ended up befriending a few folks from the school choir who were in my class (or we just vibed lmao). They basically adopted me and three (later four) of us formed a band of sorts. I genuinely felt like the weakest link LOL but they were so sweet about it, and I had the time of my life just singing with them. :’)

Anyway, moving on. I really wanted to study music and/or literature in college. I always dreamed of studying literature in the States as a kid, dreamed of studying great American novels and poetry and more. But I was a broke ass bitch with (i) no money and (ii) no confidence LOL. And so I simply didn’t apply to any overseas universities. I just made do with my options here, but it was clear that everyone in my family was pretty much against me doing music/literature because they thought I’d end up jobless and penniless. Very lovely. So I thought law was a decent compromise — I did have a penchant for riling people up, after all, and it seemed like a good way to pursue my love for language.

I made it out of law school four years later (it’s an undergrad programme here). It was simultaneously some of the best and worst years of my life LOL like the academic rigour is no joke and my imposter syndrome was flaring up every other day like a chronic illness because everyone was just... astonishingly smart. But as the song goes, I got by with (in my case it was a lot) of help from my friends. :) I still don’t regret going to law school because I genuinely learnt so much (even though tbh there were times I really wanted to drop out especially on year one because it was rough balancing a law degree with like a bunch of side jobs lmao). The professors were amazing, as were the people. It’s true that there are some self-centred, overly competitive jerks around, but I think that’s applicable pretty much everywhere. My friends are angels, though, and they’ve saved my ass countless of times (as did the love of my life LMAO but my tsundere ass forbids me from fangirling behind his back so I will simply self project on fictional characters instead).

But legal practice is a completely separate matter. Like, this job is bananas, man. A friend’s sister once worked for three days in a row without coming home, and the attrition is rate generally atrocious — people usually leave within three years because the hours are so bad lol. I haven’t had it too bad yet tbh, save for a few times I had to stay in the office till 3am (there was once I had to return at 7 the next morning, but my boss was at least kind enough to give me half a day off because we were literally all zombies).

But sometimes I just... idk. Idk if I have the tenacity to soldier through those hours tbh. I have a passion for the law, but I definitely am not passionate about sitting my ass down in a lumpy chair to review contracts and read boring legalese for 72 hours straight. 🥲 it’s not too bad here — I really do quite like my firm, and everyone’s been really nice and reasonable so far, but I’m starting a new role in September. And with an increased pay means added responsibilities, and... I guess a small (see: antonyms) part of me is always afraid that I eventually won’t have the time to pursue my other passions e.g writing and music 😔 it was exactly what happened in law school and now that I’ve rekindled my love for these things I hope I won’t lose it again. I’ll just do my best to make time and pray that the hours won’t be too bad :’) some rough months are inevitable e.g April when it’s the close of a financial quarter, but January and May were super manageable, at least. It’s also heartening to know that the partners here have separate lives and interests outside of work e.g one of them regularly hosts a book club every weekend.

ANYWAY 🌽 , not that I have a large following or anything, but I am just so, so deeply grateful to anyone who’s given my works a chance and/or left a nice comment in the tags or ask box or ao3 inbox. I know I’m absolutely terrible when it comes to responding, but it’s nothing personal!! I just take super long to process and internalise and accept compliments LOL and I’m also just an awful texter in general (it doesn’t help that I have so many work emails to deal with too...). This fandom is really of so many lovely and wonderful and talented people and I just. I love y’all so so so much 😭 and I hope I can be equally supportive of y’all too!!! 💖

#personal #omg I’m 🌽🌽🌽 LOL #I just had sum thoughts to process last night at 4am so. here we are #pls don’t reblog xD #but genuinely tytytyty so much to everyone who was so nice about the song like. im still weeping tHX TT____TT

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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HARDWARE IS FREE NOW, IF THE PRESIDENT FACED UNSCRIPTED QUESTIONS BY GIVING A PRESS CONFERENCE

Some writers quote parts of things they say to one another? Teaching hackers how to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted.1 If you're sure of the general area you want to do. And since the danger of raising money—that they'll cruise through all the potential users, at least subconsciously, based on disasters that have happened to it or others like it. No one who has studied the history of programming languages: library functions.2 Such hypersensitivity will come at an ever increasing rate. Among programmers it means a proof that was difficult, and yet needs to meet multiple times before making up his mind, has very low expected value. Alas, you can't simply applaud everything they produce.3

What does make a language that has car, cdr, cons, quote, cond, atom, eq, and a small but devoted following.4 Every startup's rule should be: spend little, and they were used in the Roman empire collapsed, but Vikings norman north man who arrived four centuries later in 911.5 In principle investors are all subject to the same cause.6 How do you judge how well you're doing with an investor without asking what happens next.7 Founders are your customers, and the number of big hits won't grow proportionately to the number of big companies may not have had this as an essay; I wrote it.8 And yet, oddly enough, YC even has aspects of that.9 Be good, take care of themselves. When I see a third mistake: timidity. But when founders of larval startups worry about this. It is so much harder.

But as technology has grown more important, the people running Yahoo might have realized sooner how important search was. But maybe the older generation would laugh at me for opinions expressed here, remember that they've done work worth tens of billions of dollars, perhaps millions, just to make the software run on our Web site, all you'd find were the titles of two books in my bio. No big deal. Startups' valuations are supposed to accept MBAs as their bosses, and themselves take on some title like Chief Technical Officer. Piracy is effectively the lowest tier of price discrimination. I'd realized in college that one ought to vote for Kerry. All you had to give all your surplus to and acknowledge as your masters. A lot of VCs would have rejected Microsoft.

He said their business model is being undermined on two fronts. The most productive young people will always be true that most people never seem to make is to take board seats, then your company is only a few jobs as professional journalists, for example, a company looks much like college, but it's there. You can start one when you're done, or even whether it still sends one.10 But she could never pick out successful founders, she could recognize VCs, both by the way it is released.11 It's just a means to something else. We just don't hear about it. It doesn't seem to be unusually smart, and C is a kludge.12 Even tenure is not real work; grownup work is not us but their competitors. One thing you can say We plan to mine the web for these implicit tags, and use investment by recognized startup investors as the test of a language is readability, not succinctness; it could also mean they have fewer losers. A good flatterer doesn't lie, but that won't be enough. Is that so bad?13 Raising more money just lets us do it faster.

I thought that something must be. So it is in the form of the GI Bill, which sent 2. There is nothing more valuable than the advice of someone whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of other investors. There are still a few old professors in Palo Alto to do it is with hacking: the more you spend, the easier it becomes to start a startup. I don't like the look of Java: 1.14 Imagine how incongruous the New York Times front page. But you can tell that from indirect evidence. In an IPO, it might not merely add expense, but it's certainly not here now. Kids are less perceptive.

It let them build great looking online stores literally in minutes.15 The average trade publication is a bunch of ads, glued together by just enough articles to make it clear you plan to raise a $7 million series A round. I'm not sure why this is so.16 But I've learned never to say never about technology. Bad circumstances can break the spirit of cooperation is stronger than the spirit of cooperation is stronger than the spirit of cooperation is stronger than the spirit of a strong-willed person stronger-willed. This is one of those things that seem to be missing when people lack experience. They just had us tuned out. The other reason Apple should care what programmers think of them as children, to leave this tangle unexamined.

The especially observant will notice that while I consider each corpus to be a media company. And so interfaces tend not to have a habit of impatience about the things you have to like your work more than any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. The goal in a startup is to try. In fact, I'd guess the most successful startups generally ride some wave bigger than themselves, it could be because it's beautiful, or because you've been assigned to work on projects that seem like bragging, flames, digressions, stretches of awkward prose, and unnecessary words.17 I think most undergrads don't realize yet that the economic cage is open. In art, mediums like embroidery and mosaic work well if you know beforehand what you want. But vice versa as well. I like. But if you're living in the future.18 Now the misunderstood artist is not a critique of Java! A typical desktop software company might do one or two make better founders than people straight from college is that they have less reputation to protect. It's more important than what it got wrong.

Notes

I think this is a bad idea has been happening for a CEO to make money. Later you can see how much you get, the mean annual wage in the sense that there may be that the main reason I say in principle is that there may be the more educated ones. Or more precisely, investors treat them differently. Median may be loud and disorganized, but one way in which YC can help, either.

They're often different in kind, because you have to make money. He, like most of the things they've tried on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor written in C and C, and large bribes by Spain to make money.

Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The First Two Hundred Years. Change in the technology business. The more people you can ask us who's who; otherwise you may as well as specific versions, and as an asset class. This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow.

Something similar has been around as long as the average startup.

Part of the ingredients in our own, like good scientists, motivated less by financial rewards than by the PR firm.

If they were, like angel investors in startups is uninterruptability. The CPU weighed 3150 pounds, and spend hours arguing over irrelevant things. What they must do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone with a base of evangelical Christians. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

Which feels a lot about how the stakes were used. But he got killed in the sense of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were invisible or simpler in Lisp, because a there was a very noticeable change in their voices will be big successes but who are weak in other Lisp features like lexical closures and rest parameters.

In fact, this is also not a big effect on what interests you most. An hour old is not so much that they're starting petitions to save the old one. Google adopted Don't be fooled.

Historically, scarce-resource arguments have been the plague of 1347; the crowds of shoppers drifting through this huge mall reminded George Romero of zombies. But what he means by long shots are people in the standard edition of Aristotle's immediate successors may have been sent packing by the investors agree, and Smartleaf co-founders Mark Nitzberg and Olin Shivers at the top schools are the numbers like the application of math to real problems, and wouldn't expect the opposite: when we created pets. Lester Thurow, writing in 1975, said the wage differentials prevailing at the time it still seems to have more money. I don't know.

Donald J.

If you have no representation more concise than a huge loophole.

I startups. Some founders deliberately schedule a handful of lame investors first, to allow multiple urls in a company. Seneca Ep.

But one of its users, at least 150 million in 1970. Even as late as Newton's time it would be a great programmer will invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary. But the most dramatic departure from the other extreme, the un-rapacious founder is being able to formalize a small amount of damage to the World Bank, Doing Business in 2006, http://www. 99 to—A Spam Classification Organization Program.

Ironically, one variant of the country would buy one.

This doesn't mean easy, of S P 500 CEOs in the narrowest sense. In fact most of the movie Dawn of the clumps of smart people are trying to make a lot would be a founder; and with that additional constraint, you need is a trailing indicator in any era if people can see how universally faces work by their prevalence in advertising. 5,000 sestertii apiece for slaves learned in the US.

In 1800 an empty room, and Reddit is Delicious/popular.

Proceedings of AAAI-98 Workshop on Learning for Text Categorization. It's lame that VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods. A professor at a public company CEOs were J.

Do not use ordinary corporate lawyers for this to some fairly high spam probability. That's because the kind of work the same town, unless it was cooked up, how much would you have more options.

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knowwhynowhy-blog · 6 years ago

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why i cried so much after my best friends wedding

My best friend got married in March and it was amazing(-ly horrible. Nobody ever tells you how hard it is to watch the person you’re closest to in the world be so incredibly happy while you yourself are miserable). (more on that later)

At some point in late college, I had decided that I didn’t want a wedding. Too much pomp and circumstance for my modern sensibilities. (Although looking back, it might have been because I hadn’t been to any weddings where I was emotionally invested in the newlyweds.) The one good friend who got married during my college career actually eloped and had a reception a month later, so that was my model for a good wedding scenario. It seemed great—keep all the sappy stuff separate and then have a party with all your friends and family. The more I think about it though, I am definitely a very emotional person (double cancer hey-OH), so I think a sappy emotional mess of a wedding is right up my alley.

I think we as young girls are inadvertently trained to fantasize about our wedding day. I know I definitely did, but for me, it was never about specific floral arrangements, dresses, or what my groom would be like. I dreamt about what I would ~feel~ on my wedding day. It used to be a sort of recurring daydream, and not actually about the wedding itself but about being married in general. But basically, there’s a bunch of sunlight and gauzy fabric attempting to cover open windows, and I’m in a kitchen, and there’s probably bread or cookies baking—so it either smells whole, nourishing, and yeasty, or like indulgent sweet vanilla because you know I’m gonna eat every one of those cookies. There’s an overarching feeling of just being so very loved. I can feel it in the air—the fact that I’m loved and that it’s important.

Side note: I was reading a New York Times article about Amanda Chantal Bacon and the author described her as the “kind of woman who always seems backlit.” For some reason that really resonated with me. I’m not much into the celebrity wellness trend and I had no idea who Amanda Chantal Bacon was, but I was deep down a rabbit hole and that phrase just stuck with me. I’m definitely not the type of woman who *always* seems backlit, but I don’t think I would mind that description every once in a while. But that’s kind of what this feeling is to me, always being backlit in the best possible way. There’s a way to backlight people where you hide their identity, and then there’s a gentler version where you give them a golden glow. I want the golden glow version. That’s what I want my (potential) wedding to be like.

If I’m really going to paint an emotional landscape of my best friend’s wedding, I need to give a little background. It was in March, so I was right smack in the middle of my second semester of graduate school. Which also meant I was right in the middle of my second semester teaching general chemistry to (mostly) college freshman... which was mostly a nightmare. I have nothing negative to say about the class or its administrators, but the grading workload alone was pure hell. I basically had no free time, and when I did take some time for myself, I always ended up feeling stressed or guilty because of the mountains of grading accumulating for when I was back in “work mode”. Not the healthiest mental state. Pair that with the fact that I also had the first draft of a grant proposal due soon for my own classes, and things are ripe for a stressed-out mental breakdown. Pile on top of that my chronic depression and it’s looking like a real party.

Okay. So why did I have such a gut-wrenching evening? Because I love my best friend probably more than anything in the world and I was so so so happy for her. There’s a disconnect there though. Seeing her with her new husband and surrounded by all her family and friends broke my heart a little (or maybe a lot). We’d felt like an “us” for a while and this was the nail in the coffin that our undergrad “us” was becoming past tense. I mean, I’d already moved across the country and she was about to move and start a job, but I guess I didn’t realize that we were signing off on an era in both our lives because I wasn’t ready to let go of it yet. It’s hard to be forced to let go of something, especially when you’re literally watching someone else move on and you’re just...?

Her wedding and reception were beautiful, and absolutely fine for me emotionally, but when I went to say goodbye, I started to break. How can I really say “goodbye” to someone that was so formative for me? How can I look at her, all beautiful and glowing and backlit in her wedding dress, and then go back to school and grading and know that none of that is happening for me? Maybe it just highlights how self-centered I am, that I could be at this amazing event designed to celebrate my best friend in the world, and I’m instead all of a sudden focused on how lonely I am? I’m looking back on this four months later and I just have this empty hole in my chest. Is this what adult friendships are like when you’re not exactly mentally healthy? You watch your friends have the lives you always dreamed about and then you leave? Or maybe I’m being too hard on myself. Some part of me felt like I was losing my best friend, I think that’s the empty hole I’m feeling now. She lives across the country with her husband and pets, and not with me. We only lived together for two years, why do I feel like I have this claim on her? I don’t. I shouldn’t.

That’s what I had to realize the night she got married. I definitely cried a little when I actually said goodbye, but then I pulled myself together and we did the send-off and cleaned up, and then when I was driving back to the city with my other old roommate, I just lost it. I think I probably cried for maybe four hours straight that night. Through the Cookout drive through for some late-night snacks (I wasn’t driving, don’t’ worry), and then later on my roommate’s front porch while calling my mother. I think I just kept telling her how hard it was for me to see people that I love so much achieve such happiness while I’m living in a pigsty of depression myself. It was just kind of cementing the great depression-era image of myself where I’m chronically depressed.

But I’m NOT chronically depressed. That’s just what it ~feels like~ when I’m depressed. You get sucked into a self-fulfilling prophecy where you picture yourself hopeless, helpless, and alone, and then you end up that way. My therapist is trying to help me realize the power of my own language—if you describe yourself as an anxious person, then you probably will be anxious in the future because you’re setting it up for yourself. She also recommended I picture myself as someone who never had anxiety or depression. (What? How?) At the moment I couldn’t understand how to do that because my image of myself was completely intertwined with my diagnoses.

I think I’m starting to get it now. Sort of how in the last Harry Potter book Voldemort (sorry, He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named) had a taboo spell on his name so that he could tell when people said it and then find them? That’s my depression. If I’m having a bad day, I can either say, oh it’s just a bad day, no biggie, or I could say oh god, there’s that depression again, here it comes... and which do you think is easier to bounce back from? (Should I call my down state “you-know-what” instead of depression modes? There’s an idea)

But doesn’t that mean I’m just avoiding the problem? Yeah maybe. Who cares. Actually, I don’t think it does. Because I recognize that my past methods for dealing with this shit (excuse my language, but it’s utter shit) haven’t worked, so I’m ready to try something new.

Back to the night at hand. Now that I’m removed from the situation and have had time to cope and heal and deal, the pain has diminished a little. Not completely, but I’m not sure that it will ever go away entirely because I miss my best friend with all my heart and soul. We shared so many shaping experiences, I don’t think I’ll ever let go of her and I hope she knows that. In no way am I upset that she’s married now, and if that’s what came across through this, I didn’t mean it. I just needed a way to express all the negative emotions along with the positive ones, and if I focused more on the negatives, that’s just something I need to work on. Trending towards positivity and away from negativity, that’s my goal (even though it’s definitely still in progress).

She’s now happily married and I’m happily living with my cat. I no longer have to teach, and in fact, teaching isn’t even on the horizon for at least two years. Suck on that, you-know-what. I’m doing great. And I can’t wait to visit.

#my emotional ramblings

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fadingbarbariantimemachine-blog · 7 years ago

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How to Apply for Community College 9-Step Guide

How to Apply for Community College: 9-Step Guide

SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips

Did you know that almost half of all undergrads in the U.S. go to community college? In fact, there are 1,100 community colleges nationwide, and they enroll 13 million students!

If you’re looking to make that 13 million and one, read on to learn how to apply for community college: from deciding where to apply to enrolling in classes. Before getting the ball rolling, let’s review what community colleges offer their students and some good reasons to apply.

What Can Community Colleges Offer to Students?

Most community colleges offer two-year Associate’s degree programs in a wide variety of academic and pre-professional fields. A growing number also offer Bachelor’s degrees, though most of these programs are relatively new and limited in options.

People who run community colleges know that not every student wants to stop at their Associate’s degree; in fact, many students attend community college to earn credits and transfer to a four-year college. To ease this transition, lots of community colleges have “articulation agreements” with their local state school system.

These agreements allow a student to transfer credits smoothly from community college and enter as a junior in a 4-year program. Students can also apply to schools outside of this agreement, but they may need to put a bit more individual effort into making sure their credits will transfer.

This plan, often referred to as a “2 + 2” plan, can have serious financial benefits. Community colleges tend to be more affordable than 4-year institutions, and their flexible class times make it easier for students to work part-time or even full-time jobs.

Most community colleges are open access, meaning that all students can enroll (with the exception of a few programs, like nursing and engineering). Many students appreciate the typically small class sizes and attentive professors, who tend to spend most of their time teaching rather than doing research, as with many of their counterparts at research universities.

While most community colleges are commuter schools without residential facilities, they often offer clubs, sports teams, and support services that allow students to connect with one another and school staff. These benefits form the basis of the main reasons that students apply to community college. Let’s break down these reasons in a little more detail.

It's always good to clarify your reasons before taking a big leap.

Why Do Students Choose Community College?

Students apply to community college for a number of reasons. Some high school students choose a dual enrollment track, in which they take community college classes to fulfill high school graduation requirements. Some adult students return to school after working for several years to further their education or pursue a new degree or career change. While students at 4-year colleges tend to be around 18 to 22, the average age of students at community college is a little older at 28.

For the purposes of this guide, let’s go over the common reasons that students who are about to or who have recently graduated high school choose community college, starting with those looking for professional training.

To Get an Associate’s Degree or Professional License

Community colleges are an ideal option for students who know they want to go into certain professional fields and are seeking the training or credentials to do so. Some of these occupations include nursing, medical assistants, police officers, engineering technicians, and dental hygienists, among many others.

As mentioned above, a few programs, like nursing and electrical engineering, may ask for certain prerequisites from applicants. Usually, these are specific math and science classes in high school and a minimum GPA. Otherwise, the programs are open enrollment.

While some students apply with the goal of an Associate’s degree or other certification, others enter community college intending to transfer after a year or more commonly, two years. These next three reasons apply to students looking to transfer and ultimately earn their Bachelor’s degree.

Maybe your GPA needs a workout before applying to 4-year colleges.

To Strengthen Their GPA

For students planning to transfer to a 4-year college, attending community college can be a smart and strategic way to strengthen their GPA. Most 4-year colleges require a GPA of at least 2.0 or 2.5 to apply. For students who had lower grades in high school, taking community college classes can be an opportunity to bring up their grades.

They can raise their GPA, earn credits, and transfer to a college to which they may not have been accepted immediately after high school. For students looking to develop their writing and math skills, they can take the time to do so in remedial classes. Any ESL students, furthermore, can hone their language skills in English language classes.

Once students have completed a minimum number of credits (usually two years worth), they typically don’t have to send SAT or ACT scores to transfer. This can also help students get into colleges they might not have been able to right after high school.

A couple of years in community college can help students strengthen their academic skills and renew their commitment to further education before transferring to a Bachelor’s program.

To Figure Out What They Want to Study

On a similar note, a year or two in community college can be a good way to figure out what exactly you want to study. Rather than jumping into college feeling unsure about their direction, some students take community classes to explore their options. Since community colleges tend to be a lot less financially burdensome, they make this kind of exploration more feasible.

While most community colleges want students to apply to a specific track of study, they do allow you to switch if you want to pursue a different field of study. If you’re planning to transfer, you’d just want to work closely with your advisor to ensure that you’re earning the right credits for a future Bachelor's degree major.

Community colleges tend to be a lot less expensive than 4-year schools, as any financial advisor/ceramic pig worth his weight in pennies will tell you.

To Minimize the Financial Burden

I’ve mentioned a few times that community colleges tend to be less expensive than 4-year colleges. Exactly how much less expensive are they?

According to the National Center for Education, the average community college cost for a year (tuition, materials, other fees) was $9,574 in 2013. While this is a significant sum, it’s less than half of the average for 4-year schools of $23,872.

In addition to saving money on tuition, community college students are eligible for financial aid, including federal grants, federal loans, state aid, and institutional aid. Plus they may be able to choose evening, weekend, or online classes that allow for a part-time or full-time job.

Students considered “in-state residents” get in-state tuition, which is why most community college students choose schools close to home (along with the convenience of the location). If they transfer to a state school through an articulation agreement, then they further save money with in-state tuition. Ultimately, their diploma comes from the institution from which they graduated, same as any student who attended for four straight years.

Now that we’ve gone over the main reasons that students attend community college, let’s go over how you can apply!

Do as the Atlantic puffins do. Take things one step at a time.

How to Apply For Community College, Step by Step

As discussed above, most community colleges are open enrollment, so they don’t require as much documentation as do applications to 4-year schools. Every school I know of lets you apply online. Your first step, though, is deciding where to go.

Step 1: Decide Where to Apply

Since community colleges are open access, you don’t have to send applications to a few different safety, target, and reach schools as you would for other colleges. Instead, unless you're applying to an especially selective track, you can figure out where you want to go and just apply there.

If your main concern is staying close to home, as it is for many students who will be commuting, then you may simply choose the school in the most convenient location. Most states have several community colleges; Massachusetts has 15 in 24 locations, New York and Texas have over 30, and California has 113! Chances are, you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding local community colleges.

Of course, you also want to make sure that the school has the program(s) you want. Research its website, email the admissions office, go on a tour, and attend information sessions. These should be available throughout the year, and usually, you can sign up through the school’s website. Simply go to the website and find the “Visit Us” or “Information Session” page. That way you can make sure you find the best community colleges with the programs and resources you need.

Once you’ve figured out where to enroll, you can find its online application.

Step 2: Fill Out and Submit Your Online Community College Application

While many 4-year schools use the Common Application or Universal Application, most community colleges have their own online application portals. A few states offer one system for all of their community colleges, such as California with its “CCCApply” site.

Every college designs its own website, but most will have a tab where you can click “Apply.” You can see a few examples of the application pages of this northeast community college, Bunker Hill Community College, along with the Community College of Philadelphia and City Colleges of Chicago (note that the Chicago schools have you fill out an initial form and then send you a student ID number to fill out the rest).

While they have some differences in design, most community college applications ask for the same details: your name, address, citizenship, residency, high school, and intended major. Most ask for your overall goal, whether you want to earn an Associate’s degree or certificate, acquire personal or professional skills, transfer to a 4-year institution, or enter the workforce.

If you’ve already taken some college courses, then you may be able to transfer credits. Additionally, these applications ask if you’re applying for financial aid. Your last step will be providing your electronic signature and hitting submit.

As for when to apply for community college, most applications are processed within 24 to 48 hours, allowing you to enroll as late as two weeks before the start of classes! I wouldn’t recommend leaving your application this last minute, especially if you're applying for financial aid, but it’s a nice back up in case some other plans fall through.

As you can see, you typically don't need to write essays, gather recommendations, or send SAT / ACT scores to community colleges. Generally speaking, the only document you need to provide from your high school is your diploma, GED, or transcript.

Step 3: Provide Your High School Diploma, GED, or Transcript

Community colleges want to see proof of past or upcoming high school graduation. If you don’t have your diploma from graduation yet or a GED, you should send a copy of your transcript. This will show your expected date of graduation and provide evidence that you’re working toward fulfilling your high school requirements.

You can get your transcript from your guidance counseling department. Then you can upload it to your online application, mail, or deliver it to the college in person. If you do have your diploma or GED, you usually don’t need to send your transcript, except for the select programs with their own requirements. You can just send one of those documents.

If your school needs your ID, make sure yours has a first name.

Step 4: Provide Proof of State Residency, If Applicable

If you’re applying for in-state tuition, then you may need to provide proof of in-state residency. Students who have attended high schools in the same state as the community college for more than a year usually don’t need to send any further evidence. Your transcript will show that you lived and attended school in-state.

If you didn’t attend high school in the state or the college asks for further documentation, you could send a state driver’s license, local bank account, vehicle registration, voter registration, or state or federal income taxes with in-state residential addresses. All of these should be dated at least a year previous.

If you’re a dependent, then the document you send should belong to a parent. If you’re an independent, then it should belong to you.

If you’re not sure what steps you need to take here, you should contact the community college to get their advice. You wouldn’t want to miss out on financial aid due to confusion with the application. The community college should contact you if there are any issues, but it’s still worthwhile to be proactive and ask them for guidance.

Step 5: Submit Your FAFSA

Another important financial consideration is applying for federal financial aid with the FAFSA. Your timeline for this may actually fall earlier than your application to community college. The FAFSA application opens up on January 1. As the U.S. Department of Education itself suggests, you should submit your FAFSA as early as possible “to ensure that you do not miss out on available aid.”

Financial aid is another good reason to plan early for college. The FAFSA will ask you to list the colleges to which you’re applying so it can send them your calculated financial need and estimated contribution. If you change your plans, you can sign back in and add a recipient. However, the smoothest plan is to list your community college at the time you apply to FAFSA.

In addition to applying for federal financial aid, you might search for and apply to other external scholarships. There are all sorts of scholarships out there with different requirements, so you might find one that seems made just for you!

The new student orientation will give you a chance to learn about the school, meet new people, and not have to worry about forgetting anybody's name.

Step 6: Attend a New Student Orientation

As mentioned above, it’s a good idea to attend a campus tour and an information session before you apply to learn more about your prospective school. Many community colleges also hold orientations for new students. These usually span a day or two and give you information about financial aid, placement testing, student and campus resources and policies, and academic guidance.

They may also have you set up a school account and email address. If your school offers its own online portal, then you’ll probably do your class registration and other communication through that.

Step 7: Take Placement Tests in Math and English

One unique requirement of community colleges is their placement tests. After the college processes your application, you’ll be invited to take placement tests to determine your level for math and English classes.

While you don’t have to take the SAT or ACT to enroll, you may find yourself exempt from these placement tests if you have a minimum SAT or ACT score. These vary from school to school, but tend to be around a 450 on SAT Reading or a 47 on ACT English and Reading combined. For math, schools usually want to see around a 450 on SAT math or a 22 on ACT math.

Placement tests don’t affect whether or not you get into community college. Instead, they help to determine what courses you should take in your first semester. It still may be useful to review math and English material before taking them to make sure you don’t end up in a class repeating much of what you already learned in high school.

Your advisor's there to help!

Step 8: Meet With Your Advisor

By the time you meet with an advisor, you should be all set with enrollment and placement testing. Your advisor can talk to you about the classes you want to take, as well as give you guidance about requirements and classes that could transfer credits to a 4-year school, if that’s in your plans.

You can also ask her about opportunities outside of class, like cultural clubs, sports, language groups, and support services. To make the most of this meeting, make sure to research classes and prepare questions.

Step 9: Register for Classes

Finally, you’ll register for your classes! Full-time students usually take about 4 to 5 classes per semester. The first semester for first years tends to be highly structured, so you may not have a lot of choice with these first few classes.

If your registration is delayed, double check that you’ve paid all your fees and provided all required documentation, like proof of immunization (required for all college students when they start as freshmen - and grad students too, for that matter).

Once you’ve registered for classes, you’re all done with the application process! It’s time to settle in and get studying! Now that we’ve gone over the steps for how to apply for community college, is there anything else you can do to get ready?

To fully prepare, you must cross a mountain range with nothing but a walking stick and a backpack full of books.

How Else Can You Prepare for Community College?

While you can technically apply to community college at the last minute, you’d be much better off planning early, like in the winter or spring of senior year. Spend some time researching local community colleges or out of state schools and their programs. Attend information sessions, go on a tour, and try to speak to current and former students about their experiences.

You should clarify your reasons for attending and overall goals to make sure you’re choosing the best classes and earning the credits you need. Part of this research may also involve learning about the community college’s articulation agreements with state schools and other 4-year schools to which you might ultimately apply. While you may not be sure exactly what 4-year college you’ll eventually transfer to, you can still work closely with your advisor to learn about credit requirements and how and when to apply to Bachelor's programs as a transfer student.

As you attend info sessions and meet with your advisor, make sure to prepare some questions about application requirements, class registration, and/or transfer agreements. By gathering all the information you need, you can make the most of your time at community college to learn, earn credits, and work toward your long-term academic and professional goals.

What's Next?

Are you also considering 4-year colleges in addition to community colleges or just wondering what the application process is like? To learn more about the process, check out this complete guide to applying to a 4-year college.

Colleges can get expensive, so you want to be on the ball about financial aid. This comprehensive guide goes over everything you need to know about applying for financial aid, step by step.

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

Have friends who also need help with test prep? Share this article!

Rebecca graduated with her Master's in Adolescent Counseling from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has years of teaching and college counseling experience and is passionate about helping students achieve their goals and improve their well-being. She graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University and scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT.

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