#and i know every grad student has that worry but what if its true. that i have a void behind my eyes and not enough depth of thought

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[caninecowboy]

24 days!

[sandsscales]

guardian alt. 1st meeting AU

You know the story about frogs and boiling water? He’s in a little too deep now.

When Shen Wei first ran into ZYL, it was somewhere innocuous. He rides the lack of suspicion, all the while choking on guilt. (ZYL’s Dixing bias does not help matters)

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves

It begins with both of our heroes being very true to themselves in the most mundane of ways: Shen Wei as an ever-helpful busy body who is simultaneously happiest when having to speak to people as little as possible… and ZYL being a disaster with horrifying sleep habits.

….

The beginning of every fall is inevitable marked by Shen Wei rarely seeing the inside of his apartment. In between the influx of new students, and the inevitable uptick in both Dixingren and monsters come the end of the rainy season, he has little to spare in the way of free time.

Despite the rise of responsibilities, Shen Wei always ensures he has an empty slot in his schedule on Saturdays at just before noon. He once portaled from a conference in neighboring city and then back. Having to endure 15 minutes of fussing from Professor Zhou about his bloody nose wasn’t ideal, but he couldn’t make himself regret anything. 

Cheng Xinyan is well aware of this routine, if a bit baffled by his devotion to visiting a local market that is largely indistinguishable from any other. She likes to tease him about his preference for older women, though Auntie Wu is at least 70 now and has grandkids their age. SW has never had much interest in women; He is, however, incredibly appreciative of her produce. Specifically, the annual harvests of wild forest mushroom that grow in the mountains around Dragon City.

Nominally, the unreliability of wild-grown crops and the trekking up and down mountains involved in harvest meant that the mushrooms did not frequently appear to be sold at the market. Fortunately for Shen Wei, he had tutored one of her grandchildren through Intro to Bio and had thoroughly cemented himself in her good graces. His eager attention to her proud spiel about the quality, variety, and unique characteristic of her foraged goods also earned him points. They have a longstanding disagreement about the cause of said fungal populations; she remains convinced that the mountain streams are responsible and complains bitterly about any redirection efforts by local famers for irrigation.

Shen Wei, who recognizes several of the mushrooms from his childhood, is fairly sure its not the streams at work here. He is also not about to try to explain dark energy induced mutation, or Dixing as a whole. He does bring the paper he co-authored with a mycology grad student about local fungus speciation, to reassure her that, yes, her mushrooms are something special.

Shen Wei’s aunt raised him, had not survived the devastation following meteorite.  Now, nearly two decades and some hundreds of years sleeping later, Shen Wei still sometimes gets to eat her mushroom dumplings, for the small, small price of some yuan tucked into Auntie Wu’s box when she’s not looking and acting briefly as a pack mule. Her husband runs a convenience store not too far away, and she like to send him both homemade lunch and some fresh vegetable to sell to customers. He’s also responsible for delivering whatever biting remark she has in store for Uncle Wu, scolding thinly veiling fondness.

This Saturday, blissfully oblivious to what is coming, Shen Wei heads down the familiar path.  He picks up a few other things at the market, and arrives at the Wu’s stand at quarter till noon.

“Professor Shen! You were 30 seconds late, I was worried you weren’t coming”

She is already snatching the basket out of his hand before she’s finished talking, using her foot to tug out her box of mushroom and ladling some out.

“I apologize if I made you wait, I was getting some fish for Hóngshāo yú 红烧鱼

“you got it from Old Chang right? That new stall isn’t as fresh!”

“yes Auntie Wu. How it your family?”

Auntie Wu gives her usually brisk recounting, as he hangs the basket over one arm, grab’s Uncle Wu’s tiffin, and carefully hoists the pallet. She readjusts one of the squashes, passes on particularly acerbic scolding for Uncle about his mistakes with the goats,  alongside a reminder rewrap his knee.  It is shorter than usual, which unfortunately gives her time for her favorite send-off: bringing up his love life and cackling as he flees.

 “Aiya you really need to find a nice lady to appreciate those biceps. you know, one of my nieces-“

“Oh look at the time I should really be going I wouldn’t want miss Uncle’s lunch break ”

He’s given up on being discrete, and Auntie Wu usually starts laughing at his abruptness long enough to buy him time to escape before she yells any more helpful advice after him.

The convenience store is about 15 minutes away, less if Shen Wei walks briskly.

But summer’s heat has been smothered under cool nights, the air crisp and the sun is warm on his shoulders, and he is ahead on his grading.  He takes his time.

……………………

The SID has been tirelessly working a particularly stubborn robbery case for over a week. Zhao Yulan, correspondingly, has spent far too many nights at the office and has been living on takeout, coffee, and stubborn spite.

They finally get a lead and grab the guy. irritatingly he turns out to be an unquestionably regular Haixing man, with an inside source. This upside of this is ZYL can just dump  both of them onto the regular police and triumphantly send everyone off with great ceremony.

His minions are less than enthused. Da Qing is nodding off. Lin Jing is vibrating with maniac energy that comes with being severely sleep deprived. His phone screen informs him it’s 4 am and technically Friday. Huh.

He staggers home, kick of his shoes, drops his jacket on the floor and faceplants into his bed.

..

There is sun in his eyes, and he feels like a freshly resurrected corpse, squinting into the light.

Da Qing makes rude comments about his person, one of the kinder of which is “you look like an alley cat that’s been living out of a dumpster”

He takes a deep breath to retaliate and realizes some of those comments may not be unfounded. He’s not actually sure the last day he was home. Staggering to his feet causes the world to spin a bit, but win some lose some.

He slips on his discarded jacket strewn on the floor and almost eats shit, which would be a fantastic way to start the day, but manages to make it to the shower.

He emerges a new person. He also remembers that thing eating? Seems like that would be a good idea.

Fortunately, there’s a little mom and pop convenience store not far from his apartment, which have sell two packs of bao and also fish snacks.

He is chewing on his second bao, and deeply contemplating the instant noodles section, only to jerk his head up when the doorbell chimes and a man walks in. He is hefting a stack of vegetables with one hand,  with a basket with forest mushrooms hanging off his forearm, a tiffin in the other hand, and looks altogether like something straight out of a Ghibli movie. He is also wearing round glasses and a sweater vest and  sleeve garters, and is absolutely, positively drop-dead gorgeous.  ZYL would not have though garters or a sweater vest were sexy but they show off the muscles he’s using to haul that vegetable pallet around effortlessly and hot damn.  ZYL is standing staring with his second bao in still gripped in his mouth, which he realizes only after Mr. Hopefully Single’s gaze lands on him. He decided to take a few judicial steps behind the shelf, swallow, and then  maybe go introduce himself.

..

Shen Wei steps through the doors at noon on the dot, does an ingrained scan of the store and pivots towards Uncle Wu, the usual quick ritual: hand-off, message, polite goodbye, flee. There are a few other customers, but the store is blessedly calm at the moment.  He is already a few steps on course before his mind processes and he rips his eyes back to where the man had been standing  by a shelf in a leather jacket eating a bao with a face Shen Wei has been thinking about every day for over a decade. Kunlun. He’s still there and Shen Wei can’t breathe can only stand frozen, drinking in the sight of him, the rest of the shop gone his world narrowed down, And then Kunlun steps back into the shelves and is gone. 

Shen Wei’s heart is hammering under his breastbone, limbs tense, eyes locked on the shelf- he becomes vaguely aware that someone is speaking, and its an effort to turn his head, to refocus on the present, the tiffin handle digging into his fingers.

“- first time in 50 years LaoPo didn’t have something to say! Was she distracted by another man??”” Uncle Wu is, unfortunately for Shen Wei, just as sharp tongued as his wife. He is faintly aware his ears are red, and he  stumbles slightly over his reply “ ah no sorry. Apparently she had to go fish a goat out of a fence in her best market clothing and for your knee”

He plonks his load onto the counter and resorts to flinging the fresh wrap and tin of ointment towards Uncle Wu as a distraction: his eyes flitting back to the shelves automatically and then back to catch Uncle Wu’s grin widens a hair in response. His desperate ploy works, he stops watching Shen Wei to unscrew the tiffen, blatantly ignoring the tin. Shen Wei enjoys a few moments of relief and surreptitiously tried to collect himself before his illusion is shattered. Without glancing up  Uncle Wu calls out: “you do know you’re going to have to pay eventually”

There is a rueful chuckle behind the shelf. And Kunlun steps back out.

…

Hot man seems to know Old Wu. Old Wu is predictably determined to be as much as an old fox as possible, but ZYL has swallowed and will emerge with a half-eaten bao for his own Ghibli entrance.  There is  audible music playing, somewhere. It’s idyllic and adorable.

ZYL decides it’s a brand new day, on the ups can only get better if I talk to the Most Attractive Guy. 

“Oh? ZYL are you finally considering about buying some of my wife’s excellent vegetables like the good professor here?”

God bless the old man

He once managed to bounce a lime off ZYL’s head into his basket. He also keeps miracle pork buns that are the perfect for an anytime meal which has prevented his ass from passing out multiple times and he’s forced far more one him and then refused payment so. ZYL is willing to accept the ribbing about the vegetables.

“Oh not unless Professor Shen can help me out here”.  zyl

They manage to get through a credible two minutes of conversation, then the old bastard produces an eggplant and a few zucchini with a wink. ZYL deeply regrets bringing his then boyfriend there and ever asking relationship advice that one time.

That old bastard

Shen Wei is bright red and trying to pretend he is above suggestive vegetables. ZYL’s mighty bravado is being tested.

ZYL still manages to ask SW out for coffee with some of his dignity intact

Da Qing is so busy laughing himself sick, he falls off a shelf. Blessedly out of view. He honors the long standing cat tradition of Pretending that didn’t happen and saunter out to introduce himself. and  Look okay DQ was also an older teenager when he met ZYL. Which is pretty obvious on a cat. Da Qing as a person hasn’t changed overly much, different hair and slightly older face. But where he once was a lanky adolescent he is a now a large black ball of fluff.  Still obviously himself to SW though.

SW will absolutely take that coffee date. Right now if you are so inclined

They just click. Coffee turns into a brief lunch and ZYL promising to call him, and leaving his own number on the table with a wink. Shen Wei has so many questions but is on cloud 9.

Zyl calls. Shen wei brings the mushroom dumplings.

Its getting dark before they realize it.

Shen Wei gets treated to the Suggestive Lollipop paired with a comment about eggplants. They are less than 10 minutes away from the teacher dormitories. He happy to comply

He makes it through breakfast the next day.

“ah shen wei shen wei how can I let you go”

ZYL is already having domestic fantasies wtf

Life is good, everything is perfect, it is the third date. Kunlun may not know him yet but he is beautiful and eager and SW feels like he’s floating.

They go on date number 3 and shen wei is smiling and then…

“I apologize talking so much about my research. What about you?”

ZYL is vague, but there is enough for Shen Wei to finally connect the dots.

It’s…. not good

Oh no. OH NO.  idiot he was, he had been firmly shoving down the faint niggling that he’d heard the name before, and the ring of uneasy that echoed faintly afterwards. But police and Zhao, and Zyl’s careful nonchalant evasiveness on the exact nature of his policework. ZYL is SID, Zhao Xinci’s son. Lao Chu at least hasn’t reported anymore of his people being shot while surrenign, but he hasn’t shown himself to actually view them as people either.

Oh This is Bad.

Also Shen Wei had been putting off meeting Kunlun for literally two years now. Two years has he known about ZYL and actively avoided him and why was this his life

Wow his stress levels are back through the roof. He manages to get off something polite about duties but he can feel the tightening in his shoulders and his smile is harder to summon than usual.  He manages to smooth over it, relax in his presence. This date is just as ridiculously perfect than the last. They just click and Shen Wei smiles and smiles and decides well the best way to judge a man’s character and to protect is to stay close to him. He’ll just have to be very very careful.

( he also is well aware those are paper thin excuses and the pulse of Kunlun at against his breastbone, just under the pendant is far closer to the actual reason)

He has yet to have an opportunity to meet with SID as HPS. Did he trace ZYL to work though? hell yes.

Well he gets one. It does not go fantastically. The stranger the Dixing power, the more the SID have always struggled them. This one involved an interesting skill involving animated ink, well fitting an aspiring career in graphic design, which might be more appealing if he wasn’t robbing rich houses in a fleet of foxes and weasels and animated clouds. Most witnesses assumed they were on an acid trip.

Zyl’s ass is saved from cartoon foxes by the grim reaper. This could have gone better. He doubles down on claiming the Dixingren so they can interrogate about robbery (and to save some face)

Shen Wei desperately does not want that. He does not want to have watch Kunlun kill one of his people

He drags Dixingren back to Dixing, gets him to cough up where the stuff is, finds the stuff, and then shows up at the sid to tell them where all the stuff is.

HPS:1 CZ; 0

ZYL is abruptly seeing why his father had referred to him as the thorn in his side.

He’s mildly delighted. But more annoyed than anything

The relationship remains tense but at least professional.

On it goes. They’re nearing two months when the hallows start to stir

But, Well its in excellent alibi for not being a murder because you were fucking him into the mattress when the murder occurred

Li Quan and Li Ruomei are his students. SWs visible upset over her death seems to fuel ZYL to capture the Dixing. Li Quan has the hallows. SW doesn’t want to call ZYL about explicitly Dixing things because he hasn’t been grilling him if Dixing were people. He fucking clocks it with a picture frame, gets Li Quan ahead of him and slams it hard enough with dark energy

Hps shows up to claim the Dixing, Professor Shen nominally went to make sure the building was clear (it was) and then to stay out of the way.

The 2nd dixing on campus (which had in cannon landed him with a heavy look of skepticism) does not try to kill him because she spots him kissing ZYL and realizes he is profoundly uninterested.

…

Shen Wei’s now in too deep

It works perhaps a little too well.  ZYL smiling at him from across the dinner table, kissing him, sleeping in his bed.

Shen Wei cannot trust him, not yet, not with his people

For HPS, ZYL’s careful veneer of schooled ease doesn’t waver. His eyes are cold.

The envoy is supposed to be honorable and dutiful, even when disagreeing with chief Zhao. Lying to him while sleeping with him would do just that. But Shen Wei is afraid.

 Standing there straddling the line,  waiting torn between hps and the prof. except he risks both by trying to reveal himself. If ZYL takes it badly, HPS coming to his bed and actively lying to him about who he was and what he was capable of. It could look a great many ways none of them good and SW definitely cannot come clean about the suspected Time Travel for fear of creating a paradox. In hindsight the best thing to do would have been to come clean immediately, or at least bring up his research on Dixing but he’s been studiously avoiding the topic. ZYL likely has no idea that SW is anything other or knows anything more than your average citizen. SW is very very fucked.

So he stands there. on a knife’s edge, or waiting for the boiling water to consumer him. He can't go forward but his heart, always too soft, won’t allow him to back away. He should, he knows. but he won’t. so eh waits with his heart and all his unspoken words caught in his throat to see which way Kunlun ZYL will turn.

[twstarchives]

Make the Most Out of Life

Card: Dorm Uniform - SSR Characters: Ace, Cater, Riddle, Deuce, Rook, Heartslabyul students

Chapter 1

—HEARTSLABYUL DORM - LOUNGE—

Ace: Cater-senpai, put the card you picked back into the deck and I’ll shuffle it well.

Now that they’re all mixed up, I’ll guess which one your card is. Hm~...

The card you picked… is a five of diamonds!

Cater: Ehh~! Wow! How did you know~?!

Ace: Hehe, I used mind-reading magic on you. …Just kidding.

This is a magic trick using the “key card” principle.

It’s one of the most basic card tricks to be able to guess which card your spectator picked.

Anyone can do it if they learn the trick. Well, I also think you kinda need to be good with your hands to do it.

Cater: You said that was really basic, right? So can you do any other tricks, Ace-chan?

Ace: Hm, aside from cards, I can do a few kinds of table magic using cups and coins and things.

Cater: Really? Show me how to do an easy one! Maybe something that could impress the ladies at parties~☆

Ace: Sure! ...Well, that’s what I want to say. But I can’t just show you one for free.

Cater: There’s the catch~ Ace-chan, you’re actually pretty underhanded.

Ace: Well, yeah. You gotta make the most out of life.

How about you take over hedgehog care duty for me one time?

Then I’ll teach you two card tricks and one cup trick, as detailed as I can ♪

Riddle: You two. You look awfully excited for some reason. Have you finished your homework yet?

It’ll be off with your head if you’re just messing around instead of doing your work.

Ace: Oh, Dorm Leader! Perfect timing.

Could you pick one of these cards?

Riddle: Hah? What is this all of a sudden?

Ace: C’mon, just go with it. Give us five minutes of your time.

A little recreation is important for students to bond more. Right?

Riddle: Honestly… I suppose. …Alright. I’ve picked a card.

Cater: Riddle-kun, let me see which one you picked. ...King of hearts, huh?

Riddle: And what was the purpose of doing this?

Ace: Now I’m going to guess which card you picked.

Riddle: Oh, I see. You’re practicing clairvoyance magic.

Cater: Mm~ This is a little bit different.

It’s a magic trick. Ace-chan’s really good at them.

Riddle: A magic trick? Hmm… I’ve never seen one before.

Ace: Put your card back on top of the deck. Then I’ll shuffle it really well.

…Hey, Dorm Leader. Don’t look away; watch my hands carefully.

Now that the whole deck is shuffled, I’ll let you hold onto it.

Riddle: Okay…

Ace: I’m going to snap my fingers and focus on the cards. And then…

The one you picked will appear inside my jacket’s inner pocket!

Make sure to tightly hold onto the cards with both your hands so they don’t escape.

Riddle: …I don’t believe these cards have magic cast on them. How would they escape my hold?

Ace: C’mon, just go with it. …Ready? One, two, three!

Riddle: …Nothing happened.

Ace: Heheh! You’d think!

But inside my inner pocket… Look! One of the cards got away from you!

Riddle: !

Ace: This card is… the king of hearts! This is the one you picked, right?

Riddle: Yes. That’s correct.

Cater: Amazing! That’s way more advanced than the trick you showed me earlier.

Riddle: And… he didn’t use magic to take that card from my hands?

Ace: Nope! It’s just a trick.

Riddle: How does this work? And how did you know which card I chose? At what point did it get inside your pocket?

Cater: Ahaha! Riddle-kun, now you’re so invested in it~

Ace: I reacted the same way when my big brother first showed me this trick.

Riddle: Oh? I didn’t know you had a brother.

Ace: I never talked about him with you? He’s a Night Raven College grad.

And he was in Heartslabyul!

There’s not a lot to do for fun when you’re living in a dorm.

So he just played around with playing cards to kill time, and ended up building his magic repertoire.

Cater: So your brother taught you magic tricks?

Ace: Sorta… He didn’t just nicely teach me how to do them or anything.

It was more like, I watched him do them over and over again and learned by copying him.

Cater: I get it. So you’re the “skill stealer” type.

You’re super good at remembering things, huh, Ace-chan? And you’re a quick thinker.

Ace: I guess ♪ For most things, I can copy them after watching them a few times.

Unlike a certain clumsy goody-two-shoes, I’m pretty advanced.

Riddle: Since you’re so proud of your memorization skills, why don’t you show us?

By memorizing the rules of the Queen of Hearts and the timeline of magic history.

Ace: Gegh… That’s a whole different story! I suck at memorizing facts!

Riddle: Next week, the freshmen have a magic history quiz, don’t they? Deuce told me about it.

If you get any red marks, you won’t be having a seat at our Unbirthday Party next weekend.

Ace: Man… I thought I could distract you with a magic trick, but we’re back to talking about school…

Cater: Distractions don’t work against Riddle-kun, Ace-chan.

Riddle: Ace, what is your answer?

Ace: Yes, Dorm Leader!

Chapter 2

—HEARTSLABYUL DORM - HALLWAY—

Ace: Hm hm hmm~♪ Hm hm hmm~♪

Deuce: You look like you’re in a good mood, Ace. You’re humming to yourself.

Ace: Well, you know~ Today’s the Unbirthday Party.

They’re serving way fancier food than they normally do, and our demon dorm leader isn’t going to nag us if we don’t do our homework...

It puts me in a humming mood.

Heartslabyul Student A: Haha, you’re right. But we also have to focus on getting ready for it.

Ace: The freshmen are in charge of setting up for the croquet match and painting the roses, right?

Deuce: Yeah. First we should feed the flamingos and hedgehogs and clean their pens.

Ace: Okay, I’ll go take care of the hedgehogs.

Deuce: Then I’ll take the flamingos. When we’re done, let’s meet up in the rose maze.

—HEARTSLABYUL DORM - LOUNGE—

Ace: Alright, time to hurry up and take care of the hedgehogs.

C’mere, food!

Here, your water!

Cleanup next...

‘Kay, I’m done.

Heartslabyul Student A: Ohh, there, there, widdle hedgehogs. Make sure you woll as hawd as you can for the croquet game today, okay~?

Hedgehogs: Chee chee!

Ace: Egh, that’s weirding me out. Quit baby-talking to the hedgehogs.

Heartslabyul Student A: Oh! S-Sorry, force of habit... This is how I talk to my cat at home.

Ace: Hedgehogs don’t understand human language. Isn’t it pointless to talk to them?

I mean, you can’t communicate with animals unless you use their specific animal language anyway.

Heartslabyul Student B: But the dorm leader talks to them with human language all the time.

Heartslabyul Student A: Yeah. Well, he doesn’t use baby-talk like me, but still.

Heartslabyul Student B: Even if animals don’t understand your words, you can still get across how much you care for them.

Heartslabyul Student A: Yeah! The dorm leader even said, “It’s important to have good communication with your hedgehog and flamingo in croquet.”

“You should regularly take care of them to build up mutual trust.”

Heartslabyul Student B: I often see the dorm leader taking care of the hedgehogs even when he’s not on duty.

Ace: Our demon dorm leader really does that? Hmm.

That’s great he’s got a little kindness in him, but why doesn’t he ever show it to us students?

Heartslabyul Students: A-Ahaha...

Ace: Anyway, are you guys almost done cleaning? Next we gotta go paint the roses.

Heartslabyul Student A: Oh. I’m going to throw out the trash from cleaning those pens, so you can go on ahead.

Heartslabyul Student B: I’ll help you take it out. Ace, could you lock up the hedgehog cages?

Ace: Okay~♪

—HEARTSLABYUL DORM - ROSE MAZE—

Ace: (Alright. Now we have to hurry and paint the roses...)

(The dorm leader won’t see the back of the trees. So maybe I can just focus more on the places he can see.)

Riddle: Everyone!!

Deuce & Ace: Yes! Dorm Leader!

Riddle: Have you seen the hedgehogs anywhere near here?

Deuce: I haven’t... Did something happen?

Riddle: Every single one of them has disappeared from their cage.

Ace: Huh?!

Riddle: Whoever was in charge of taking care of them must’ve forgotten to lock it... Find the perpetrator! It’ll be off with their head!!

Ace: (No way, seriously?! The last person to lock the cages... was me...)

D-Dorm Leader! Shouldn’t our first priority be to find the hedgehogs?

Riddle: O-Oh... That’s true.

Hedgehogs are extremely cautious. It’ll be very difficult to track them down if they dug holes to hide in.

...What will I do if we never find them...?

Deuce: D-Don’t worry. We can find them... No, we will find them!

Ace: It hasn’t been that long since they disappeared, right?

Deuce: I’ll look around the croquet field!

Ace: I’ll try the other side of the dorm.

Riddle: I’m counting on you.

—HEARTSLABYUL DORM—

Ace: Crap... Is this my fault? No, I made sure to lock the cages... Didn’t I?

........

I don’t know! I wasn’t paying attention when I did it; I can’t remember...

If the dorm leader tries to figure out who the perpetrator was, he’ll find out I was in charge of locking the cages. And then...

Riddle: OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!

Ace: ...*shivers*

I-I have to find all the hedgehogs before Dorm Leader Riddle does!

Chapter 3

—HEARTSLABYUL DORM—

Ace: I-I have to find all the hedgehogs before Dorm Leader Riddle does!

...Or so I thought, but... where would the hedgehogs even be hiding?

I’ll search online using my phone... uhh, what does it say?

Hedgehogs are related to moles... They dig tunnel-like holes to nest in... Gegh!

So that’s what the dorm leader meant when he said they could dig holes to hide in!

They have timid temperaments... So maybe they ran somewhere without a lot of people. I’ll go try the woods.

—HEARTSLABYUL DORM - WOODS—

Ace: HEY!! ...Wait, would I put them even more on guard if I yell?

I remember at my friend’s house, their dog would come running at them the second it heard the sound of its food dish...

Well, I did bring some food. I’ll try making noise with the dish.

(Clatter clatter...) (Rustling!)

Ace: Ah!

Hedgehog: Chee chee!

Ace: That worked! I can’t believe the hedgehogs came out. I’m an absolute genius.

Now I have to catch it... Ah!

Hedgehog: Chee! Chee chee!!

Ace: Hey! Don’t run away!

Agh... It ran back into its hole in the ground! It’s so tiny, like a rabbit hole. I can’t even fit my arm in there...

Maybe if I gently poke it with a tree branch...

Hedgehog: Hiss~! Hiss!!

Ace: Oh no, it’s angry now. And it went further in!

C’mon, guys... Please? I’ll lose my head if I don’t get you to come back. And besides...

Riddle: ...What will I do if we never find them...?

Ace: Dorm Leader Riddle is really worried about you. He really loves you guys, you know?

So please, come back...

(They don’t understand human language. There’s no point in telling them this...)

(Rustling!)

Rook: You appear to be in trouble, Monsieur!

Ace: AGHH?!

Y-You scared me! Don’t start yelling out of nowhere! Anyway, who are you?!

What’s someone from another dorm doing at Heartslabyul?!

Rook: Hahaha, apologies for frightening you.

I’ve actually been behind you ever since you set foot into the woods. Perhaps I hid myself too well?

I’m the vice dorm leader of Pomefiore, Rook Hunt.

I had a reason for coming to Heartslabyul, but I’ve finished what I needed to.

I just thought I’d take the chance to watch the wildlife while I’m here, so I was in the middle of a stroll.

Ace: O-Oh, I see.

Rook: But then I encountered you—bent down on the ground, plagued by a grim resolve just screaming “Le miserable!”

Ace: So you saw everything... That’s embarrassing.

Well, I guess I don’t need to explain anything. I’m really busy right now, so could you go somewhere else?

Rook: Are you sure? I was hoping I could assist you with capturing those animals...

Ace: What?! Do you have any ideas?

Rook: Why don’t you try coercing them with animal language? Hedgehogs should be able to understand mole-speak.

Ace: You think I can speak an obscure language like mole-speak?!

You don’t even learn that unless you major in Animal Languages in university, let alone in high school!

Rook: I know a fair amount of mole-speak. I’ll teach you, so try to coerce them.

Ace: If you can speak it, please just do it yourself...

Rook: Non, non, Monsieur Heart. They’re very sensitive creatures.

Suppose I did get across to them—I’m still a stranger to them. They wouldn’t come out of their burrows for me.

Ace: (The party starts at 3PM. And it’s already a little after 2... Ahh, man...)

...Okay. I’ll do it!

I’ll try to learn mole-speak in one go.

Rook: Excellent spirit! Now, listen closely to how I pronounce them, and watch the way my mouth moves...

Chee chee! Jee jee chee! (Don’t be scared. I won’t do anything to you.)

Ace: (...He didn’t move his lips at all. That sound came from his teeth and tongue, like he was making a tsk! sound.)

——Alright, I memorized it. “Chee chee! Jee jee chee!” (Don’t be scared. I won’t do anything to you.)

How was that? Did I say it?

Rook: Marvelous! That pronunciation was truly wonderful. You really are capable of learning in one go.

Ace: I might forget it right after, so hurry and tell me what to say next!

Rook: Oui, the next phrase is...

Ace: Jee jeejee! Chee cheechee chee! (Come out. Everyone’s worried.)

Hedgehogs: ...Chee... cheechee.

(Rustling!)

Ace: I-It worked! The hedgehogs are coming out of the hole!

Rook: Oh, fantastic!

They could feel your passion in the words you spoke, Monsieur Heart!

Ace: One, two, three... Good, they’re all here.

Hah... Now I won’t be losing my head...

Um, Rook-senpai... right? Thanks a lot for your help!

Rook: Of course. Roi des Roses truly does have a fine servant.

—HEARTSLABYUL DORM—

Riddle: It’s already been two hours since the hedgehogs escaped... and we haven’t found a single one.

Ace: Dorm Leader~! Dorm Leader Riddle~!

Riddle: Ah...!

Ace: The hedgehogs were there! I found them all!

Riddle: Thank goodness...! You guys aren’t hurt anywhere, are you?!

Ace: They’re all safe. Ow, ow, hey! Don’t climb on my head!

Riddle: Hehe, they seem to like you very much.

I’m so glad you found them... Thank you, Ace. 

Ace: ...Hah. I wish he’d smile more like he’s doing now instead of always being nagging and angry.

Riddle: Hm? Did you say something?

Ace: Oh, just that... something like this is no problem if I’m doing it for you!

‘Cause I ace everything!

[flowerfan2]

Private Time

I’ve been reading and writing (and living with) so much angst lately, I decided to indulge in some silly, sexy funtimes with a fandom I haven’t visited in a while.  Enjoy.

Klaine, 2k, A03.

Summary:  Living with his grad student roommates in quarantine, private time is hard to come by...

Blaine is generally very happy living in the somewhat rickety four-bedroom house he shares with three other grad students.  It’s not too far from school, it’s got a workable washer and dryer in the basement, and the kitchen was renovated sometime in the past twenty years so it’s perfectly adequate for making whatever quick meals he manages to scrounge together after class.

But boy, are the walls thin.

This hasn’t been a problem until recently, when COVID-19 struck.  School has gone online, but unlike the undergrads, Blaine and his roommates have a lease and all of them decided to endure the quarantine here in Somerville, Massachusetts rather than go home.  According to Kurt, Somerville may not be where he wants to end up, but it’s far better than the Midwest town he grew up in and he has no desire to weather the quarantine back in Lima.

Thanks to the quarantine, Blaine has learned this and many more facts about his flatmates  �� and yes, they have all taken to calling it a flat, after an evening which started out with teasing Sam about how he likes to talk with a fake British accent turned into one of the most carefree nights Blaine has had in a long time.  Apparently all it took was a few bottles of cheap wine and a defrosted cheesecake from Star Market to loosen them all up.

 “We’re proper mates, now,” Sam had announced, waving his arms and nearly knocking over a lamp in the process.  By the time they had all wandered off to bed, Blaine had learned that Kurt’s favorite singer was Lady Gaga, that Rachel had taken a year off from school to film a television pilot, and that Sam played the guitar rather well, as long as it was country music.

 Blaine has liked Sam since they met playing intramural soccer in the fall.  So when Sam mentioned last month that they had a spare bedroom, Blaine quickly took him up on the offer.  Blaine’s previous apartment was lonely and smelled like something had died in the ceiling, so it was really a no brainer.

 What had caught Blaine by wonderful, wonderful surprise, however, was that Kurt Hummel was one of Sam’s roommates.  Blaine had seen Kurt perform in a production of Macbeth back in October, and had been mesmerized by the man’s performance.  It hadn’t even occurred to him that Kurt was a regular grad student just like he was, not until Sam gave him the tour of the house and Kurt waved to him from the kitchen where he was gossiping with Rachel over skinny margaritas.

 With just a smile and a nod and an agreement to take his turn putting out the trash, Blaine gained three roommates, including the guy he had been crushing on for months.  Not bad for a Wednesday.

 Much to Blaine’s dismay, simply moving into the house didn’t result in any quality time with Kurt. Between school and performances Kurt was hardly ever home, and Blaine’s schedule studying history and music theory was hardly better.  Since the stay at home order was put in place, however, it’s a whole new world. Now the four of them can hardly get away from each other.

 For the first two weeks of their enforced togetherness, everyone was on their best behavior, and the drama of it all gave them a shared sense of adventure.  Kurt sewed them all homemade masks, Blaine carefully organized grocery trips to minimize time in the stores, Sam tried to get them to adopt home fitness routines, and Rachel kept them apprised of the most interesting celebrity bits to watch on You Tube.

 But they are entering into week three of the quarantine, and the novelty is wearing off.  For one thing, Rachel has been getting more and more demanding about household details (she is constantly editing the chore wheel and claiming someone else did it), and while Kurt generally has acted as peacemaker when confronted with Rachel’s whims, even he seems to be getting tired of it. Sam hasn’t done his laundry at all since they got locked in, and Blaine is running out of hair gel.  Kurt has taken to cleaning the fridge so often that Rachel accused him of stealing cleaning supplies and rubber gloves from health care workers.

 They are all becoming short-tempered and irritable.  Blaine even catches himself snapping at Kurt, which is the last thing he wants to do. He’s worried that by the time the quarantine lifts, Kurt will never want to speak to him again, let alone date him.

 Blaine has a few tried and true strategies for when he gets like this, but none of them are working. Sam insists on running with him every time he goes out, and his well intentioned chatter prevents Blaine from finding any escape.  He can’t let off steam by boxing, because his gym is closed.  And as for the things he really knows would do the trick, especially after an afternoon of watching Kurt do ballet stretches in yoga pants, well… the walls of their apartment are very, very thin.

 Blaine knows this because Sam apparently feels no shame in indulging in his own solo activities. It’s easy to hear him, even from across the hall.  Given that Blaine’s bedroom shares a wall with Kurt’s, there’s no way Blaine’s going to risk Kurt hearing anything of the sort from Blaine’s room.

 Towards the end of the third week, Rachel calls a roommate meeting.  Blaine has just finished an endless zoom call with his research supervisor, and he feels like his eyes are going to pop out of his head if he doesn’t get his contacts out soon.  But Rachel insists, so they all gather in the sitting room, Sam and Blaine on the lumpy brown couch, and Kurt sitting on the edge of an armchair, looking to Blaine like he could be posing in a fashion magazine.

 “Thank you for coming,” Rachel begins, as if they had any real choice in the matter.  She launches into an overview of their past few roommate meetings, and brings up an excel spreadsheet on her computer, on which she has apparently made further edits to the chore wheel.

 Blaine tries not to be distracted by the way the asymmetrical neckline of Kurt’s cashmere sweater drapes over his collarbone when he leans forward to look at Rachel’s chart.

 “So I decided on Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays,” Rachel says, looking around the room for approval.   Blaine realizes he has lost the plot completely, but luckily he’s not the only one.

 “Wait, what?”  Sam asks.  Kurt has found a nail file somewhere and isn’t paying much attention either, but his mouth quirks up at little at Sam’s question, so he’s probably glad Sam is taking the blame for this one too.

 Rachel lets out a long suffering sigh, and places an Amazon box on the table.  “As I said, I haven’t been able to use the practice rooms for weeks now, and my vocal production is suffering.  I need to be able to focus properly on allowing my voice to soar over my accompaniment at its expected volume, without having to censor myself.”

 Sam still looks confused, and Rachel glares at him.  “I need to listen to loud music, and sing loudly, ok?  So I got these for all of us.”

 Sam frowns.  “I don’t mind if you sing, Rach.”

 Rachel’s hands clench at her sides.  “It’s not about you, it’s about me.”  Kurt coughs not indiscreetly into his hand, but Blaine doesn’t quite catch what he says. “I need you all to wear these, for an hour, three times a week.  I’ve clearly marked this as private time on our schedule, from 11 to midnight, Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.”

 “But what if-“

 “Sam, let it go,” Kurt says. “We’re all missing <I>private time</I> these days.”  Kurt stands up and smooths his hands down his skin tight jeans.  “It’s fine with me, Rachel.”

 Blaine stands up too, and peers into the box, then takes out a set of headphones.  They are high end noise-cancelling models, clearly expensive, and probably quite effective.  “These are great, Rachel.  Thanks. But you didn’t have to do this. I’m sure we could have worked something out so you could practice.”

 Rachel glares at him now too, and tosses her hair over her shoulder.  “I <i>have</i> worked it out.  

Private time commences at eleven o’clock on each designated night.  I expect you all to go to your rooms, and wear the headsets.  It’s the least we can do to help preserve our collective mental health during this trying time.  Do I have your agreement?”

 They all agree, and Rachel smirks, satisfied.  Blaine chalks it up to roommate harmony and sets about seeing what he can make for dinner out of tortillas, one cucumber, and three apples (answer:  nothing,  they eat frozen pizza).

 Later that evening, he and Sam are on the couch trying to find something to watch on Netflix. Suddenly Sam leans over and slaps Blaine on the shoulder.

 “Ow, Sam, what was that for?”

 “I know why Rachel got the headphones for us,” Sam announces, grinning crazily,  “It’s so she can have a wank!”

 Blaine attributes Sam’s ongoing affinity for British slang to the amount of Sherlock fanfic he’s been reading lately, but now really isn’t the time to get into it.

He reflexively starts to deny it, but then he realizes with a flush of embarrassment that Sam is probably right.  Sam watches his face and his grin gets even bigger.

 “She’s kind of a genius, isn’t she?”  Sam grabs a set of headphones and bounds away up the stairs.

 “Sam,” Blaine calls out, wanting to remind him that it’s Monday, and therefore no private time is scheduled.  Not that it’s stopped Sam before.

 The next night Rachel reminds them all after dinner that private time will begin precisely at eleven o’clock.  After a group viewing of the first episode of Deadwater Fell (during which Blaine divided his attention between watching David Tennant, watching Kurt, and watching Kurt watch David Tennant), Rachel checks the time on her phone and orders them all upstairs.  At five minutes to eleven, she screams “put your headphones on,” and slams the door to her bedroom.

 Blaine thinks this is all fairly ridiculous, but he puts on the headphones anyway, and settles on his bed with his laptop.  He surfs around for a while, finding clips of some noteworthy Shakespeare productions (okay, fine, it’s Benedict Cumberbatch playing Hamlet), but then his mind starts to wander. Being cooped up with his roommates has been… constraining… for him too, and maybe he should go ahead and take advantage of the private time Rachel has arranged for them.

 Blaine makes himself more comfortable and slides a hand down his body, wondering if his roommates are doing the same.  Wondering, especially, if Kurt is doing the same.  He unzips his fly and takes himself in hand, letting out a long sigh at the sensation – and then freezing when he hears himself.  Blaine quickly realizes that as he got comfortable on the bed, the headphones had slipped off his ears.

 And if he can hear himself, what if Kurt can hear him too?

 Any interest in solo activities leaves him in a flash, and Blaine quickly zips himself up and plants his feet on the floor.  He makes sure the headphones are properly situated on his ears, and spends the remaining twenty minutes of private time organizing his sock drawer.

 The next morning his roommates seem downright cheery, and Blaine starts to regret his nerves.  It would have been nice to get a little relief from the stress of quarantine, even at the risk of potential embarrassment. Maybe he just needs to be quieter, next time.

 Thursday night Blaine fluffs his pillows and arranges himself on the bed face down, so that any noise he makes will be muffled.  This turns out to be a brilliant idea, and he has quite a good time imagining that Kurt is underneath him, writhing and squirming and rutting against him, all long lines and warm skin.  It’s not a pillow stifling his cries, it’s Kurt’s wet mouth…

 When Blaine finally comes to, he feels a little guilty, but he’s more relaxed than he’s been in weeks. Maybe he’ll get through this quarantine after all.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUP IN FOUNDERS TO MAKE WEALTH

Would it be useful to have an explicit belief in change. And I think that's ok. Mihalko seemed like he actually wanted to be our friend. Grad school is the other end of the humanities. Indirectly, but they pay attention.1 US, its effects lasted longer. Together you talk about some hard problem, probably getting nowhere.

Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas. Why? They got to have expense account lunches at the best restaurants and fly around on the company's Gulfstreams. Meaning everyone within this world was low-res: a Duplo world of a few big hits, and those aren't them. It's not true that those who teach can't do. Or is it?2 I think much of the company.

Part of the reason is prestige. If you define a language that was ideal for writing a slow version 1, and yet with the right optimization advice to the compiler, would also yield very fast code when necessary.3 Of course, prestige isn't the main reason the idea is much older than Henry Ford. The right way to get it. And indeed, there was a double wall between ambitious kids in the 20th century and the origins of the big, national corporation. The reason car companies operate this way is that it was already mostly designed in 1958. Wars make central governments more powerful, and over the next forty years gradually got more powerful, they'll be out of business. And this too tended to produce both social and economic cohesion. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys.4 This won't be a very powerful feature. Lisp paper.5 Plus if you didn't put the company first you wouldn't be promoted, and if you couldn't switch ladders, promotion on this one was the only way up.

But if they don't want to shut down the company, that leaves increasing revenues and decreasing expenses firing people.6 One is that investors will increasingly be unable to offer investment subject to contingencies like other people investing. I understood their work. Which in turn means the variation in the amount of wealth people can create has not only been increasing, but accelerating.7 Surely that sort of thing did not happen to big companies in mid-century most of the 20th century and the origins of the big national corporations were willing to pay a premium for labor.8 As long as he considers all languages equivalent, all he has to do is remove the marble that isn't part of it. I had a few other teachers who were smart, but I never have. And it turns out that was all you needed to solve the problem. You have certain mental gestures you've learned in your work, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly.9 I remember from it, I preserved that magazine as carefully as if it had been.10 That no doubt causes a lot of institutionalized delays in startup funding: the multi-week mating dance with investors; the distinction between acceptable and maximal efficiency, programmers in a hundred years, maybe it won't in a thousand. Certainly it was for a startup's founders to retain board control after a series A, that will change the way things have always been.

Which inevitably, if unions had been doing their job tended to be lower. They did as employers too. I worry about the power Apple could have with this force behind them. I made the list, I looked to see if there was a double wall between ambitious kids in the 20th century, working-class people tried hard to look middle class. In a way mid-century oligopolies had been anointed by the federal government, which had been a time of consolidation, led especially by J. Wars make central governments more powerful, until now the most advanced technologies, and the number of undergrads who believe they have to say yes or no, and then join some other prestigious institution and work one's way up the hierarchy. Locally, all the news was bad. Close, but they are still missing a few things. Not entirely bad though. I notice this every time I fly over the Valley: somehow you can sense prosperity in how well kept a place looks. Another way to burn up cycles is to have many layers of software between the application and the hardware. And indeed, the most obvious breakage in the average computer user's life is Windows itself.

Investors don't need weeks to make up their minds anyway. The point of high-level languages is to give you bigger abstractions—bigger bricks, as it were, so I emailed the ycfounders list. They traversed idea space as gingerly as a very old person traverses the physical world. And there is another, newer language, called Python, whose users tend to look down on Perl, and more openly. At the time it seemed the future. What happens in that shower? You can't reproduce mid-century model was already starting to get old.11 Meanwhile a similar fragmentation was happening at the other end of the economic scale.12 But the advantage is that it works better.

Most really good startup ideas look like bad ideas at first, and many of those look bad specifically because some change in the world just switched them from bad to good.13 There's good waste, and bad waste. A rounds. A bottom-up program should be easier to modify as well, partly because it tends to create deadlock, and partly because it seems kind of slimy. But when you import this criterion into decisions about technology, you start to get the company rolling. It would have been unbearable. Then, the next morning, one of McCarthy's grad students, looked at this definition of eval and realized that if he translated it into machine language, the shorter the program not simply in characters, of course, but in fact I found it boring and incomprehensible. I wouldn't want Python advocates to say I was misrepresenting the language, but what they got was fixed according to their rank. The deal terms of angel rounds will become less restrictive too—not just less restrictive than angel terms have traditionally been. If it is, it will be a minority squared.

If 98% of the time, just like they do to startups everywhere. Their culture is the opposite of hacker culture; on questions of software they will tend to pay less, because part of the core language, prior to any additional notations about implementation, be defined this way. That's what a metaphor is: a function applied to an argument of the wrong type.14 Now we'd give a different answer.15 And you know more are out there, separated from us by what will later seem a surprisingly thin wall of laziness and stupidity. There have probably been other people who did this as well as Newton, for their time, but Newton is my model of this kind of thought. I'd be very curious to see it, but Rabin was spectacularly explicit. Betting on people over ideas saved me countless times as an investor.16 They assume ideas are like miracles: they either pop into your head or they don't. I was pretty much assembly language with math. Whereas if you ask for it explicitly, but ordinarily not used. A couple days ago an interviewer asked me if founders having more power would be better or worse for the world.

Notes

The reason we quote statistics about fundraising is so hard to prevent shoplifting because in their early twenties. Auto-retrieving filters will have a definite commitment.

It will seem like noise.

It's one of the world. That's why the Apple I used to end investor meetings too closely, you'll find that with a neologism. I've been told that Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source projects, even if we couldn't decide between turning some investors away and selling more of a press conference. All you need but a lot about some disease they'll see once in China, many of the biggest divergences between the government.

Mozilla is open-source projects, even if they pay a lot of time. If they agreed among themselves never to do that. And journalists as part of grasping evolution was to reboot them, initially, to sell your company into one? Most expect founders to overhire is not so much better is a net win to include in your own time, not just the local area, and Reddit is Delicious/popular with voting instead of just doing things, they were shooting themselves in the field they describe.

My work represents an exploration of gender and sexuality in an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to get you type I startups. As a friend who invested earlier had been with us if the current options suck enough. MITE Corp.

The top VCs and Micro-VCs. When you had to for some reason, rather than admitting he preferred to call all our lies lies. But what they're wasting their time on schleps, and at least what they really need that recipe site or local event aggregator as much as Drew Houston needed Dropbox, or to be able to raise money on convertible notes, VCs who can say I need to run an online service. It's not a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of Explorer.

What you're too early really means is No, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniation as juicy except literally. In either case the implications are similar. But there are few things worse than the don't-be startup founders who go on to study the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, phone, and only one founder take fundraising meetings is that it's bad to do more with less, then add beans don't drain the beans, and they have to do that, in which practicing talks makes them better: reading a talk out loud at least wouldn't be worth doing something, but they're not ready to invest in your previous job, or the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written about them.

Philadelphia is a net loss of productivity. As a rule, if the growth is genuine. Which implies a surprising but apparently unimportant, like a core going critical.

In practice the first year or so. If you weren't around then it's hard to think about so-called lifestyle business, having sold all my shares earlier this year. Since the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but we do the right order. They're an administrative convenience.

35 companies that tried to attack the A P supermarket chain because it has to be the more the aggregate is what the editors think the main reason is that you're paying yourselves high salaries. What is Mathematics? Once again, that good paintings must have affected what they claim was the fall of 2008 but no doubt partly because companies don't. Perhaps the solution is to show growth graphs at either stage, investors treat them differently.

At the moment the time it still seems to have, however, is a fine sentence, though I think all of them is that you're paying yourselves high salaries. We thought software was all that matters to us. It's a lot about some of the business much harder to fix once it's big, plus they are to be something of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being a scientist. Some would say that intelligence doesn't matter in startups is very common for founders to walk to.

In fact, we try to be a special recipient of favour, being a scientist.

It is the most successful investment, Uber, from which Renaissance civilization radiated.

When an investor they already know; but as a percentage of GDP were about the team or their determination and disarmingly asking the right sort of things economists usually think about so-called lifestyle business, A. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and would not be surprised if VCs' tendency to push to being told that they probably don't notice even when I first met him, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them. There is of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what you write for your present valuation is the most promising opportunities, it is to get into the intellectual sounding theory behind it.

Innosight, February 2012. Ashgate, 1998. So it is less than a Web terminal.

This is why we can't figure out the same ones. Trevor Blackwell, who had been able to. We didn't let him off, either as an example of applied empathy. And yet if he were a variety called Red Delicious that had other meanings.

[realtalk-princeton]

To Maybach -- Anon 2023 again. Honestly, my other major option is Brown (and Penn, but that's out by now) and I'm concerned that I'd be sacrificing happiness if I choose Pton. "Happy" is a part of the Brown brand, whereas "ahhhhh" seems to be a part of Pton's. I want the name and the opportunities Pton would afford me. I suppose that's not a question, but how would you respond? Do you understand what I mean? Is it so awful to pick Pton 4 name/opportunity (in addition to the other stuff)

Sorry for the delay everyone, I just got caught up in a lot of obligations. Due to multiple popular demands from both pre-frosh and current students, I decided to structure my Brown and Princeton story in the following manner. In the first section, I’ll give my background context prior to starting college and my feelings throughout the years on the subject. In the second section, I’ll specifically address the above question in more detail with my many thoughts on key distinctions between the two schools. I think the combination will serve the purposes of everyone quite nicely. Lastly, if any pre-frosh ever want to talk to me, feel free to reach out and ask for my contact information. Or even better yet lol, I just remembered that PREVIEW started, so I guess it might be easier to just talk in person to me. I actually don’t even have class tomorrow haha. I just think that talking is sometimes easier than writing and also in these responses sometimes I have to speculate. For example, I can pretty safely state that if a pre-frosh is almost certain of being a pre-med, Brown is probably going to be a much less stressful experience, but I have no idea if this applies to you beforehand.

So anyway, even though it was four years ago, I still remember it like it was yesterday. Boy time flies. I was not the most studios or stand-out HS student. I wasn’t the valedictorian or salutatorian of a rather small school far away from major cities. While some Princetonian HS students spent summer doing lab research at universities, I spent mine goofing off with friends and traveling. We used to actually have a bonfire at the end of the school year and burned stacks of our HW up to 4 feet high lol. When it came to applying to college, I did not actually even again acceptance to NYU or BC lol even though my stats were more than up to par. I guess maybe they were concerned that I wouldn’t be a very hard-working student. Luckily, I am very fortunate that despite coming from an extremely educated family (grandfather and mom went to Columbia, Dad went to Berkeley, etc.), my parents never put that much pressure on me. So as you can imagine, I was super excited when I heard that I got into Princeton, Brown, Cornell, and some other schools. For a period of time, I was actually getting ready to go to Brown. My SO at the time had committed to URI and I was psyched by the super expressive culture of Brown. Students prided themselves on being true to themselves and also took full advantage of freedom with responsibility. The location was close enough to NYC and some kids from my HS were already there. I always hated excessive structure and authority growing up and the prospect of 70%’s A’s granted, no +/I’s, and pass/failing anything was totally alluring! On a side note, I always laugh when they say that people don’t abuse pass/fail and use it only like 10-15% of the time. Well, maybe that’s because they’re already handing out A’s like it’s water and all A-’s become A’s haha. But anyway, I was psyched. Who wouldn’t want to live at camp Brown and take it easier than HS, but still be guaranteed a legit degree on your resume? However, after I visited Princeton, connected with a large number of alumni, and actually started putting real thought into my education, my perspectives slowly, but surely started to change. I think what I really underestimated was the power of the Princeton degree and how impressive our alumni network truly is. The people I met and still meet to this day are absolutely brilliant in several respects (e.g. they aren’t just nerds in one subject) and many are focused on maximizing their impact and allocation of influence in this world. The alumni donation rate is nothing short of incredible and the chance to be part of this network was alluring. I remember meeting a guy actually who got waitlisted and was already attending Duke when he got the chance to go to Princeton. He lived every moment to the fullest with his academic pursuits, the social network of brilliant, but diverse persons, and solid career plans. Anyway, it just became more clear to me over time that while Princeton was rigorous, it’s academic qualities could be much more intimate and engaged than Brown and the intellectual horsepower of its students (mostly) created truly incredible and impactful people. Jeez lol I forget sometimes how many alumni we have on the SC, in politics, business, arts, etc. At Brown, all they do is gush over Emma Watson in an almost cult-like way (sarcasm). But anyway, I was getting pushed as you can imagine, but I was still worried as I wasn’t the best HS student and grade deflation had literally only ended the year before. But eventually, the offer was just too good to pass up. Once you become a Princeton student, your life truly does change and people will treat you give you credit solely based on this fact (whether it’s right or wrong is another story). I remember before I even committed, I was hanging out at the Princeton Club in New York and a few days later some of the guys (who literally knew me for like a few days), invited me out and basically paid of lunch at Smith and Wollensky and lauded me on my “accomplishments” lol and how they could always be resources to bolster a Princetonian. Pretty soon after I committed.

As for answering your specific question, I’m already seeing red flags. Whenever you choose a school for the name, that’s setting yourself up for a bad time. Yes, our opportunities are better. Look at the difference in endowments lol. It’s like that for a reason even though they have way more students and more grad schools. It’s also reflected as well in our post-graduation salary averages. Brown is more creative with RISD and it’s curriculum, but that doesn’t always equal more opportunities. Princeton has the most power and resources of any university on a per-student basis and gives us an incredibly powerful brand and network. That said, you should probably explore why you want to go to Princeton other than the name and brand. One of the miserable people I know picked Princeton over another school because it was the “Best” school she got into and that’s just not fun when you didn’t research enough beforehand. By contrast, I know someone who turned down Harvard for a small liberal arts school in the middle of nowhere and she had an amazing time. If you feel like and click with Brown’s social scene, that’s another reason for not going to Princeton. Academically, Princeton is better for people who want rigor and want to truly maximize their learning in a short period of time and be around amazing minds. Our depth is much better than Brown’s and it shows with how strong our students are in critical thinking skills both inside and outside of their majors. However, there is a downside to this. For example, if you want to major in physics at Princeton, you better adapt fast or be damn good at it. You can’t just “love” physics and be relatively bad at it (compared to your peers) to succeed here because we teach you to be the best students possible from professors who literally wrote your book. At Brown, sure you don’t learn as much or go as deep, but you can major in almost anything because you just aren’t held to the same standards. So there’s a tradeoff. If I majored in Brown’s business program, let me just say that I would not NEARLY be perceived by others to be so intelligent (even though I’m not lol). I know the kids in the degree, it’s not like they are dumb, but jeez lol is it a joke a bunch of the time. Relating sociology to business for example on the surface can seem like a good idea that teaches people until you actually see what they’re writing and working on. I would probably have a 4.0 without working as hard too. And I don’t mean this to mean I’m like super smart or anything. It’s just not comparable to Princeton. However, I am super blessed and thankful that I did take Economics here seriously. The kinds of critical thinking skills and the ability to analytically dissect complex multi-faceted problems that I have developed serve me very well and I feel so rewarded. I literally got a position at a hedge fund with no experience at all because the interviewer liked how I wrote a research paper on guns an applied rigorous statistical analysis in many novel ways to answer new questions. This is no different in many ways than using public information using novel techniques to find value where nobody else sees it. But overall, I think that I’m feeling Brown for you unless you are willing to work harder here for greater depth of learning. I just want to say too though that despite me working hard, I still don’t pull-allnighters almost ever and I still have achieved very high grades. You don’t have to be a genius to do well here. Take it from me. I had piss-poor test scores (by Princeton standards) and was not a valedictorian, but if you are strategic and work reasonably hard and are disciplined, the work is more than doable. I don’t want to brag because I think it promotes bad culture, but you ought to know that a student like me can succeed academically and perform at the top of their class without working in the library all the time. So you should really evaluate what kind of learning experience you want and where you will be most likely to be happy and healthy. Some people just want a break after HS and don’t care about going super deep into their learning development. That’s totally fine, but then Brown is probably better (assuming you also like the culture). Some people would really abuse Brown’s system, not really learn, develop unhealthy and bad habits, and be kind of bored. In that case, Princeton is better. It really depends on you, but if all you see here for you is a name, you’re probably shooting yourself in the foot coming here.

Anyway hope that all helps. I can answer specifics if you have them too.

Edit. also I realized how long this all is and noticed that maybe some of you should just call me or I can connect you with people I know who love Brown lol. It’s sometimes harder to write these things and express everything properly compared to like a 30-minute dinner conservasation. Just putting it out there. I’m also exhausted lol from staying up until 4am the past few nights for this huge deal coming up. I did this tonight so that I wouldn’t mess up my sleep schedule any further and avoid taking a nap lol.

[echodrops]

Hi! I'm a high schooler considering majoring in creative writing, and I was wondering if there are any tips, pros and cons, advice, etc. you could give since you teach it? :3

Ahhh, I’m excited to get asks like this because I love to hear that people want to major in creative writing–nowadays there’s such a heavy emphasis on STEM careers, and poor English is so often ignored… But I hope I can do this response justice. Please keep in mind that I can only share my own experiences and that the path I’ve taken may not work for everyone!

I guess if you’re in the “considering” stage, the number one thing I would suggest is that you ask yourself two things:

1) What is my “absolute” goal? If I could score my dream job at the end of college, what would that look like?

2) What am I willing to consider doing instead if I don’t score my dream job at the end? What other related careers could I enjoy?

If you’re considering creative writing as a career, your likely end goal is to become a professional writer and make a living off your writing, right? (Some people treat that like a pipe dream, but it’s no less likely, and in fact sometimes far more likely, than any other creative career.) But becoming a writer who is well-known enough to live off your advances and royalties will likely take you a significant amount of time–even if you are published, especially in the early years, you may not be earning enough from your books to pay the bills all by yourself. (If you’ve got a supportive significant other that has a high-paying job, by all means, get them to pay the bills while you build up your writing fan base–then you can repay later when you’re rolling in royalties!)

But you will, at least at first, very likely need to ask yourself: What am I willing to do as a day job?

And I think the answer to that question is really what determines whether or not you should pursue a creative writing degree.

A degree in creative writing is one of the most versatile college degrees you can get. (Certainly I’m biased, but there do seem to be certain degrees that are simply more applicable to a wider field of career options–someone who gets a degree in sculpting can sculpt, for example, but I’m not sure about its applicability beyond that.)

English, like math, is a broad enough type of degree that it achieves some “universality.” A huge, huge number of careers require strong writing and communication skills. English degrees can get you into law school, into marketing and content-writing careers, into teaching careers, into office jobs, into HR and PR positions, into management, and essentially into any position in which writing will be a major component. Demonstrated ability to write well and clearly is a golden ticket to many jobs because it is a skill that many people lack. Even people who might otherwise be better qualified for a technical position can still end up rejected in favor of people who are able to express their skills in a more professional manner!

So getting an English degree/having creative writing for your emphasis is a far, far safer career choice than many people will lead you to believe.

But just because the degree can apply to many fields doesn’t always mean it’s the best degree for those fields–the “jack of all trades” saying is applicable here. There are certain careers that English degrees feed into very well, and others where you’ll have to stretch things a little. So, another question:

Are you interested in any of the following?

Teaching

Writing content/reviews for products or websites

Handling correspondence, such as managing emails for a business

Creating and managing social media accounts

Tutoring/Proof-reading for pay

Technical writing (someone has to write all our user manuals after all)

Managing records or handling public relations

If so, you can probably sign up for a creative writing degree with no real worries. Case closed, problem solved. XD

But if none of that stuff looks remotely interesting to you, you might want to take a deep breath and think about your other options (of which the following are just some):

Skip an undergraduate degree in creative writing specifically, but plan on studying writing in graduate school, such as through an MFA program (a bit difficult but not uncommon)

Double major in creative writing and another field where the day jobs interest you more (difficult but very useful)

Skip formal education for creative writing entirely and go it on your own to become a great writer (not ideal, but also not totally impossible)

Having a creative writing Bachelor’s degree can help you on your way to becoming a professional writer. But it isn’t a requirement to become a great author–in fact, many authors never formally studied creative writing before writing their great novels (Kurt Vonnegut was in science; Ernest Hemingway was a journalist before a novelist, etc.). If day jobs in other fields interest you more, pursuing a degree there doesn’t mean you’ll never write and publish your great novel.

Nor will skipping a creative writing Bachelor’s degree block you from ever studying creative writing later on: in my MFA program, only three of the seven of us in the poetry track had undergraduate English degrees. It is possible to earn an undergraduate degree in a totally different field and then still go on to study creative writing later if you decide that writing on your own isn’t working.

Furthermore, you’re not locked into certain classes at most colleges–you could take a creative writing minor or simply take writing classes as part of your electives, and still get the benefits of the education, while earning a different degree where the day jobs interest you more.

As a personal aside, when I was an undergraduate student, I was very nervous about my ability to succeed in the writing field, and so I decided to go the double major route, with English as my “fun” degree and criminal justice as my “pay the bills” degree. Ironically, almost a decade later, here I am, paying my bills with my “fun” degree. I rarely use my criminal justice degree as anything more than a party trick (people really love to talk about murder). But studying two subjects gave both myself and my family relief, and I did learn many, many things that would later appear in my writing, so I have no regrets.

Basically, what I’m getting at here is: When you think about how you’re going to be paying your bills for 5-10 years after college, what careers can you see yourself doing other than writing fiction/poetry? If none of the things you imagine line up with the “easy to get” English degree careers, that’s a sign that maybe you should at least consider studying something else and just take your writing classes on the side instead. (Or double major, if you’re a masochist like me lol.)

Ultimately, I’m not enough of an optimist to tell you that you should blindly follow your passion for writing and assume it will all work out–the basic fact is you’ll almost inevitably need a day job, at least for a while, and that’s what I think the deciding factor in your major should be.

Nevertheless, one of the biggest hang-ups I hear from people thinking about majoring in writing is that they are worried the degree will be worthless, and that simply isn’t true. Almost all my friends from college were English majors (we flock together) and all of my English major friends are gainfully employed–none of us are homeless or starving or still living off our parents. Some of us might have better jobs (I’m not going to brag–lol jk yes I am–with my professor’s salary I own two houses and am two months from completely paying off my gorgeous 2SS RS Camaro), but essentially every English major I know is doing well for him- or herself. (This may not be everyone’s story though–I’m sure some others have struggled; I just don’t know them.)

The longest time I was ever unemployed since earning my creative writing degree was a period of four months after grad school, when I moved back to southern California and realized the job market there was horrific. THAT SAID, even during my four-month job search, I took an internship at a refugee and immigration center and got the opportunity to help people literally escape human trafficking rings and modern-day slavery, so that was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.I haven’t always liked the jobs I’ve had, but I’ve never felt afraid of not having enough money to feed or house myself since leaving college with a creative writing degree.

You can do perfectly well for yourself with a degree in writing. I wouldn’t even call it a risky choice, at this point. So if that’s the sticking point in your decision to major in writing–that part I wouldn’t worry too much about.

As for advice… ah, this post is really long already. If you want some advice about what to look for in schools you apply to, or what to do if you do decide on creative writing as your major, send me another message and I’ll try to whip something up.

Hope this is what you were looking for!

[sneakywitch-thief]

Andromeda OC: Henri Ryder

So I finally got to playing Mass Effect: Andromeda.  I dove into this game with the expectations of it being a turd of a game as the reviews said.  I was convinced it would be horrible.  EA Bad.

Nope. 

While it’s got its flaws it’s fun as hell.  Especially playing as Ryder, who I love nearly as much as I do Shep.  I’ve only played female Ryder so far but it’s certainly been a good time.  Looking forward to playing as a male next time around, though since I’m 100%-ing everything I’m definitely taking a break from this game!  Things get, um, kind of repetitive after a while.

But I’m finding myself writing this post because my Ryder ended up becoming one of my favorite OC’s I’ve ever created.  I’d write a fic to do her justice but I’ve already got a full plate.  So I’m writing this instead.

Meet Henrietta “Henri” Ryder.

She’s adorable.  And looks so dang young.  Still losing that babyfat, almost.  But those cute cheeks are scarred forever by her crushed helmet, to always remind her of the ultimate sacrifice of a father she had never really known.  A horrible reminder as twisting as ugly as the Scourge, each and every time she looks in the mirror.

It had almost been her who had died... and perhaps it should have been.  

Henri was a young and awkward grad student looking to gain her doctorate in xenoanthropology.  Studied Prothean artifacts before her estranged father went and ruined her chances in achieving her dream.  Or any, for that matter.  So she joined up with the Andromeda Initiative as a sort of field science officer on the Pathfinder team.

Henri had not seen combat before Habitat 7.  She wasn’t a peacekeeper -- she was a scientist and a scholar.  Her twin Scott was the soldier, the beloved child of Alec.  She still loved him dearly, but still felt lesser for having been born a Henrietta and not a Henry.  Never really knowing Alec as Scott had.

She felt she was made Pathfinder simply because she was the only one around at Alec’s death.  After all, it had been her fault he had died.  And she was no soldier, no real explorer -- just a scholar.  Of Protheans.  She had likely only been admitted into the Pathfinder team in the first place due to her being the Pathfinder’s daughter.

All she had to defend herself against the kett was a pistol.  She never strayed much from that, even as Pathfinder.  And to stay true to this, I stuck with ONLY tech abilities and two pistols for the entirety of the game.  Overload, Shield Drain, and my frisbee turret.  Engineer 6, baby. (ended up being a bit OP, actually)

So with this initial handicap of sorts my game took a long, looooong time.  In my opinion, and with all the wild goose-chasing and colonization you have to do all over the cluster without relays, the main questline of Andromeda alone would take months, if not years.  Space is huge.  And Rome wasn’t built in a day, so a colony on a hostile planet?  Several?  I tried to reflect that.

As the Initiative gained a better foothold in Andromeda over months of exploring and building, Henri started to grow in confidence in herself and her role as Pathfinder.  She was good at it.  

Or maybe it was just SAM who was good at it.

She grew her hair to hide the scar that reminded her of her failure, her guilt.  She felt better for a time, keeping this from her mind.   However, she still felt as though she was the cause of her family’s deaths -- and Scott’s coma -- and felt uneasy about herself.  As if growing too comfortable would bring back ruin and tragedy back down upon her.  

Her burning passion for discovery and science, as well as her know-how of foreign and alien cultures in defusing the Angara, enhanced her abilities as a successful pathfinder, though perhaps not the Pathfinder.  Trailblazer, perhaps.  Hopelessly lost person stumbling off a cliff and miraculously surviving, definitely.  But still, she was surviving.  They weren’t all dead yet, and the outposts built were, actually, thriving.

Enter Reyes Vidal.

To say Henri was swept off her feet was a vast understatement, as she had never really felt real affection before from anyone other than her mother and Scott, whom she had both lost.  This shady smuggler in Kadara, he changed things.

He made her feel like someone worthwhile, not just as the human Pathfinder but as Henrietta Ryder.  A lonely young woman in a galaxy full of horrors and terrors, it felt easy to be around him and to be herself instead of this bigger figure she had not the slightest idea how to be.  She could be a young woman in love.  With him, extinction and certain annihilation could be forgotten for a while.  For fleeting moments, happiness.  

Comfort.

He saw something in her that was beyond the Pathfinder, beyond SAM.  Henri was there too, and he LIKED her.  He knew and recognized that, and most shockingly to her, he actually wanted to be with her.  Every instinct within her told her to run, he’s a thief, he’s a criminal.  But she felt the same about him.  They wanted to be people who mattered, and most of all, who mattered to one another.

It felt almost too good to be true when she gave herself wholly and heartily to him.

And what a charlatan he was.  Lies.  Manipulated into bringing Sloane to her ultimate death, Henri was too shocked to save her during this mockery of an honorable duel to save Sloane.  The feeling of utter betrayal was crushing, and despite what he said, Henri knew she could never trust him again.  He was a dishonorable man, a criminal, and for all she knew his feelings for her had all been a ruse to gain her trust.

Perhaps he was sincere, but to Henri, the idea of that made it all the more horrible.  No matter what he said or what she told herself, she felt used.

She left him then as King of Kadara port, all that he had wanted.  But she took her heart with her.  In pieces, but out of Vidal’s hands before he could go and break it again.

Back on the Tempest, between FTL jumps, she lingered and ruminated on her failed romance with Reyes.  Reyes, who despite her better judgement and sense of honor still very much liked.  Gradually, these thoughts of betrayal and heartbreak turned on herself.  Had she not been enough?  No, she would never be enough.  Alec deserved to be Pathfinder.  Scott.  Cora.  

People even told her so, multiple times, directly to that scarred face of hers.

Literally anyone but her should be Pathfinder.

So Henri sheared off the hair that had made her feel good about herself.  All that progress that had made her feel worthy, all that she felt had brought the heartbreak of Reyes upon her.  Gone.  She never got the facial reconstruction surgery urged for her by Lexi, who recognized the dangerous spiral Henri was going down.

But she needed to see that scar, let everyone see it, to remind her of all she wasn’t.

She threw everything into being a Pathfinder, running herself ragged for the sake of the Initiative.  She gradually became more and more reckless in combat and exploring, almost with disregard to her own safety if it meant the completion of a mission or saving just one more civilian.  (Her best friends Liam and Peebee were not good influences.)

She needed a victory after so much complete and utter failure at being someone.

However, her passion for alien culture and history earned herself a loyal friend and subject of study, Jaal Ama Darav.  With Liam and Henri’s constant badgering, the three became thick as thieves.  Then, to Henri, the unthinkable:

She attributed it to typical Angaran affection and blunt honesty; flowery words of politeness and friendliness, nothing more.  Perhaps her interest in diplomatic relations and studying the Angara had been mistaken for romantic interest -- something that was not in Ryder’s particular set of skills.  She didn’t want it to be.

So she distanced herself.

Hint not taken.  Instead, he sent poems and e-mails, words of “I love you” and “dear one”, words that were to painful for her to ever hear again -- not after Mom, Dad, Scott... Reyes.  People you love were people you lose.

It’s just culture clash, it’s just alien curiosity.  Henri assured herself again that it ultimately meant nothing.  At least, not until Havarl and the Roekaar.  Jaal’s eagerness to show off his beloved new human friend to his turncoat siblings, his bravery to show down Aksuul with a gun held to his head -- perhaps there was more to learn about Jaal than about his species.

Jaal was more than just an Angaran ally, and to him, Henri was more than a human leader.

And so utterly enthralled with his human friend, or something more, Jaal brings her to meet his family.  A huge family full of love and kindness and generosity.  The likes of which Ryder has never known.  She doesn’t know what to do in such a thoroughly alien situation.  To be so readily accepted by strangers, in many more ways than one, to be known as Jaal’s “someone special”.

She’s overwhelmed.  And Jaal brings her to his “tiny sanctuary” and opens up about himself, what he did as a child, stories of who he was.  How she makes his heart sing, how he wants to be with her.

Henri doesn’t know what to do.  She feels that Jaal is misguided, she’s an alien to him -- she’ll just end up destroying his loving family as she destroyed hers.  She has to ruminate on it for some time, likely worrying Jaal terribly as he patiently waited for an answer.

Love could mean another Reyes, used for greater goals, but Jaal -- he wore his heart on his sleeve.  And it was a good one.  He was honorable, he was courageous, he was loving.  Lies and trickery, those horrible things had belonged to Reyes weren’t anywhere in Jaal.  And she felt now, realizing in his tiny sanctuary with this man who was just as curious and enthralled with her and she was about him, that he was safe -- no, that she felt safe around him.  That she could.

So she said yes.

After acceptance by Jaal, her crew, even those at the Nexus who had doubted her -- Henri became a formidable and competent Pathfinder.  Confident and strong.  Literally forging her own path where there was none, damn all who stood against her.  At this point she knew what she was doing.

While a peerless diplomat and cultural expert, she most certainly needed a few combat pointers.  Still reckless and hopelessly inexperienced in a firefight, squadmates have to yank her down from an overly aggressive hover blast or pushing her reckless butt back into cover.  Jaal and Drack admired her boundless courage, as thoroughly stupid as they admitted it might be.

Though Pathfinder and a brilliant scientific mind, she filled much more of an active support role in the squad than any sort of leadership role.  She knew that she could never stand on her own as Pathfinder, something that she had been struggling with her entire time in Andromeda.  But now she could accept that, that she didn’t have to stand on her own if she had a team, a family, to stand beside her.

And if I would have to pick a face claim for Henri, it would have to be the lovely and talented Alison Pill.

[rewolfaekilerom]

dear diary #2

//NOTE: This was originally posted to Wordpress on 07.02.2021//

I haven’t posted in, like, a month or something. I’m sorry, but I’m also not all that sorry. I had a super negative interaction with a client at work that just . . . completely put me in a funk. I feel like I’m only just getting out of that funk, and I’m trying to accelerate the “getting over it” stage of that process by writing in here–even if it’s just a small little nothing of a post. I don’t really want to talk about the work thing, but I will talk around it.

Something I think a lot about–perhaps even something that’s coalescing into a life motto of sorts–is how we interact with other people and the role(s) each person plays in their corner of the world.

As a grad student, I often worried that my PhD in literary studies was a degree that wouldn’t do anything for the world. That concern hasn’t gone away since I entered the workforce, but it has evolved. My thinking on a lot of things has evolved, but this is at the front of my mind right now. Anyway, I worried that a literary studies PhD–and, more specifically, the work I was doing and the outcomes of that degree–weren’t having, and wouldn’t ever have, a tangible impact on the world. The older I get, the more concerned I am with having a positive impact on others’ lives. I could see how my community engagement and outreach work helped people, and I understood how teaching benefitted students, but I couldn’t understand how the scholarship I was producing would change anything substantive and in a substantive way. I’m still not sure I’ve settled that concern, perhaps in part because that’s just not something I’m doing anymore. Without getting specific, my day job has me doing a lot of different types of work, but one of the things I do is making sure other people’s ideas get out there, wherever there might be. Those people’s ideas are often more clearly related to improving the real world, so I feel a bit more like I’m accomplishing things, though I do worry that the industry I’m in has its own bag of problems and negative effects on its participants. All this is to say that I want to do good in the world–to do things that will, in some way or another, make someone else’s life better. But I’m also bound by the decisions I made as a teenager and in my early twenties, so the skills and experience I possess aren’t exactly compatible with a career as a social worker or some other role that has a more “hands on” influence on society. I’m also aware that those types of careers play their own problematic roles in systemic issues. There are problems everywhere.

Anyway, a few months ago, as I was doing some sort of frivolous task, I had the ~brilliant~ thought that every person on the planet serves a different function (not in, like, a religious sense but in something resembling a hippy-dippy “energy” sense)–that some people put positive energy into the world, people absorb that positive energy, and still other people put negative energy into the world. It’s a half-fleshed theory, and it’s not something I really think is worth pursuing much further than that except to say that it helped me formulate something I’d been thinking for a long time, which was that I want to be someone who puts positive energy into the world–again, someone who improves others’ lives and who doesn’t just absorb others’ positive energy like a black hole. I’ve met people like that, and I’m determined to be the opposite.

This little 15-minute mental diatribe brought me to the realization that there are a million ways to be a person who does good and is positive. Some of those ways are intangible, and some might argue less meaningful, while so other ways are very tangible. There’s of course a sliding scale of positive impacts we can have on the world, but I’m also of the mind that every little bit helps. There’s so much negativity and hurt and hate in the world that simply thinking positive thoughts and telling someone else that you’re thinking positive thoughts about them can go a very long way. Thoughts won’t feed hungry families or stop domestic violence, but expressing those positive thoughts can improve someone’s day, even if only marginally. That’s something.

This all brings me to my larger point: Why the hell would you want to be a person who–deliberately or not–negatively impacts someone else’s life? What do you, the negative person, get from playing that role? Does it make you feel powerful, and if so, is that power worth knowing that you’re the reason someone else’s positivity has been crushed, even if only temporarily? It feels good to make someone else feel good, but is the reverse also true? Given the number of people who seem to pride themselves on–or, at the very least, seem to revel in–being negative or trampling other people’s happiness, there must be a certain type of person who feels good when they put negativity into the world.

Anger and hostility and grudges make me feel sick. I feel awful when I’ve unintentionally hurt someone else’s feelings, even if it’s only a minor slight. That doesn’t mean I don’t prioritize or value myself, but it does mean that I’m aware (maybe too aware) of how my actions impact other people, and I will sacrifice some happiness for myself if it means making someone else happy. So, even when I’ve definitely been wronged, my response is really never retaliation or negativity in equal measure. My response is to cut that person or thing or situation out of my life, to avoid it, to no longer give it space to exist in my world. The older I get, the more comfortable I am with the prospect of choosing my battles. I find that, to continue that metaphor, I’m hardly ever at war, and when I am, it’s usually because I want to avoid that thing happening to someone else. Did I always think that way? Hell no. I’ve retaliated and fought fire with fire, but responding in that way in the past taught me that it’s not how I would choose to respond in the future. Sometimes we don’t have the option to opt out of a battle or cut negativity out of our lives, but we usually can choose how we fight that battle or what we do with the negativity we encounter.

And, I don’t know, I just think it’s easy to be kind. Honestly, I think it’s easier to be kind and positive than to be negative. And I’m not talking depression or anxiety here. Those are legitimate challenges that people face, and I don’t think that having depression or anxiety or any other mental health struggle precludes a person from putting positive energy into the world. I don’t think those things mean that a person is a sponge who absorbs others’ positivity and turns it into negativity. I don’t think things work like that.

In a lot of ways, I think that being a positive, kind person is a choice. It’s not who we are but who we choose to be and what we choose to do. And I think it’s often easier to choose to be kind, understanding, compassionate, welcoming, supportive, and encouraging than it is to choose to be cruel, angry, hateful, unaccepting, and unsupportive. And when it’s not easier to choose to be positive, the benefits–that good feeling you get when you see someone else feel good, for instance–makes up for whatever challenges you encounter along the way.

Thankfully, the older I’ve gotten, the less cruelty I’ve encountered. Maybe that’s because things affect me less or I’ve learned to spot someone who’s going to be cruel. Maybe it’s because, as that saying goes, kids are cruel, and I’m no longer a kid. Or maybe it’s because I’m less aware of cruelty because I’m more focused on what I think about myself than what others do or say or think about me. I don’t know. What I do know is that when I do encounter cruelty now, it’s jarring. I can’t say it’s more or less jarring than it was in the past, but I do know that my thoughts and reactions are different. I still internalize that cruelty to a certain degree, wondering what I did to inspire that type of reaction in someone else and feeling a bit like I’ve failed. But I also try to contextualize that cruelty, to wonder if, perhaps, that cruelty could’ve had little or nothing to do with me, or to ask other people for their opinions of that cruelty to figure out how much I need to consider its source. And I usually don’t react to that cruelty, or at least, I try not to react to that cruelty with cruelty in equal measure. As I said, I pick my battles, and I usually don’t pick a battle with someone who’s being cruel because that’s often all they want to do–that’s their end game, so nothing I do or say will change that. It’s often easier–that is, less emotionally and mentally exhausting for me–to not engage than to try to snap the other person out of it.

As I’m writing this, I’m thinking of one of my former friends. She and I are, I think, of opposing viewpoints on this, and I’m not sure if one way is better than the other, though I am partial to my way. I’ll explain why.

This former friend, I’ll call her S, will fight absolutely every battle. She will tell someone off at the drop of a hat, take another’s cruelty personally and then dish it out in equal measure, and call out any slight she feels has been made against her. Sometimes I admire this about S because she’s so quick to identify and then call out bigotry. I wish I could formulate the types of articulate responses she does in these situations; I call them out, but I often don’t have the same force that S does, and it usually takes me a few seconds to get the words out. She just does it, and it usually has the intended effect.

That said, I think her general hot-headedness–her tendency to tell someone off for an offense or to hold a grudge forever (these are not the same as her skillful ability to dispense with bigots)–causes more problems than it solves. I think it can push people away, even people who aren’t involved in the offense. It’s emotionally and mentally exhausting to be on the sidelines of these exchanges, either as a firsthand observer or as a friend who helps her cope with the emotional aftermath of a blow-up. I also think that, though S feels empowered by responding so forcefully in the moment, she often later feels the same gross, icky way I do when I express anger. I guess I’m not sure it ultimately does her any good to respond in that way. In those lesser situations (so, not bigotry or something equally offensive and deserving of being called out), that type of reaction definitely doesn’t make the other person feel differently or respect her any more, and I’m not really sure it makes her feel better or more powerful either. But I don’t think she’d see it that way. I think she’d see it as her having made her point and put the other person in their place, in turn teaching them that they can’t interact with her in that way.

But I’m of the mindset that there are other, simpler, less explosive ways to make a similar point. I’m a big one for just cutting someone out of my life when I feel they’ve done me wrong. In the past, I’ve occasionally responded to cruelty by calling it out with shouts or angry words, but I never feel good after those exchanges. As I’ve gotten older, though, my response has more often been to call that cruelty out in plain language and then remove myself from the situation. I’m talking something simple like, “I really don’t appreciate being spoken to that way, so please do not contact me again. I’m done.” And if that person tries to contact me again, I don’t respond. I don’t engage, I don’t send a petty message, I don’t pick up the call to rub their loss of me in their face, nothing. I just don’t participate. Is that easy? Hell no. Sometimes I desperately want to make the other person feel how they made me feel, but I don’t because it doesn’t do me any good to drag that negative relationship (or whatever sort) on any longer.

And, anticipating someone’s snarky response, I’ll say that this isn’t because I can’t hack it with these types of arguments or whatever. I verbally sparred with my mother for the entirety of my teenage years (and some of my twenties); I picked fights with her, often (without knowing) simply to test out some new snotty response. She’s a tough cookie–a loving, supportive, incredible cookie, but a tough cookie nonetheless; she doesn’t take shit, and she didn’t take my shit. Years of being a brat means that I’ve mastered the snotty, better-than-you, belittling response–Emily Gilmore would be proud. I’m probably a little out of practice, but I’m pretty confident I could still do it if pressed. But I’ve learned that there may be some truth to the saying “you win more flies with honey than vinegar.” Maybe picking your battles is a better way to engage with the world. The people in my life know this about me, and they know I will stand up for myself and demand respect, but they also know (I hope) that I’m not out to fight every battle that comes my way. Sometimes I wonder if I would even have the energy to fight every battle.

So, this is all to say that bearing no ill will toward an ex with whom you’ve had an especially messy breakup or letting go of a grudge against a friend who betrayed you is no easy thing (and these are the types of “lesser” battles I’m talking about here, not series battles related to systemic racism, abuse, etc.), but trying to work toward that is usually worth it. Trust me, I have exes I never want to see again and would definitely not recommend to a potential employer, but I don’t actively hate them or feel anger toward them. And the same goes for friends who I feel have done me wrong (or even friends with whom I just don’t share anything in common anymore). I don’t wish them harm and I wouldn’t be cruel to them; I just hope to never have to interact with them in person again. Simple as.

I know that this isn’t the case for S, though. Any mention of a particularly shitty ex partner or ex friend is accompanied by an only slightly-less-diminished anger than one might have observed when the relationship first ended. And maybe that’s not so bad, maybe that’s a way for S to avoid slipping back into that type of negative relationship or entering into a future relationship that shares many of the same negative features. I don’t know, though. I’m not convinced that it makes her life any better or less emotionally exhausting. I really do think it actually does the opposite.

This brings me back to the start of this post. When I experienced cruelty a few weeks ago, I faced a bit of a quandary: I couldn’t cut that person out of my life, but I could seek others’ opinions of the cruelty in order to contextualize it and I could respond in such a way as to deescalate the situation so we could just move on, effectively cutting the anger out of my life, if not the person too. Did I still cry about it and take a few days (okay, weeks) to process it? Yes. Do I still think it was an unnecessary way to interact with another person in a professional setting? Absolutely. But am I glad I didn’t fight fire with fire and respond in kind? Yes, completely. Did I learn something from this? Yes, a lot of things, actually–that sometimes people are cruel when they don’t need to be, that going into every interaction with the intention of being kind is what works for me, that sometimes another person’s anger has more to do with them than it does with you, and that I’m a giant fucking crybaby.

That’s all for now.

xoxo, you know

[peacefulwriter88]

Space in Between - Part 6

A/N: This is a slow burn but I promise you the next part will be worth it ;) 

Catch up with the series here

Monday comes too soon. After partying way too much over the weekend, you’re woken up to your head pounding heavily and your stomach mildly churning. you felt terrible. And on top of it all, Mara is stomping around the apartment, making it impossible to fall back asleep. Its only minutes later that she’s knocking on your door, before she opens it and mutters, 

“We gotta go to Beck’s class.” 

You moan in response, hiding your head deeper in your pillow and you hide your face deeper as you hear her near.

You didn’t want to see Beck. No way. Not after you had shamefully flirted with him. Almost got him in trouble with his guy friends – in front of another professor and two well-known astronauts. So you did what any grad student shouldn’t do. You drank the distraction away. In return, you didn’t get around to your paper and that stress compounded with the idea of facing Beck made you want to stay in bed forever.  

“Listen,” Mara flops beside you, pulling the pillow from your face. “Beck got all weird cause his friend called him out but he’s into you girl. Just like, be cool and chill about it. Act like it was nothing. You only both just flirted.”

“He asked me out on a date.” You mumble and her eyes widen, before she slams you in the face with your pillow.

“Ow! What the hell was that for.” You wince, rolling away from her and she huffs, crossing her arms.

“This whole weekend we were together and you don’t mention once that he asked you out!?”

“It was before we ran into his friends and it got weird and I was confused because he got cold all of a sudden…..”

Mara scoffs,

“He got cold to cover for you both. Technically, its super bad to be dating a student, grad or not.”

“I know! I just wanted to forget for a while. Now I have to go to class and confront him.” you turn to her and she gives a slow nod.

“Indeed, young grasshopper. Indeed. So get dressed and head over. We didn’t do shit for that paper so we gotta be on our A game. Which means, cry it out or whatever then get ready to focus. And afterwards we can get eat all the ice-cream and fries while you lament over your almost lover.”

You hated Mara when she got this way. Her left brained, compartmentalized brain was telling her that despite all the other emotions, you had to get it together to move forward in your life. It was easy for her to  separate school and her personal life. She was willing to empathize but only to a degree because Beck wasn’t the end game you had laid out for her. Graduating and NASA was.

You tried to remind yourself of that as you followed her into the classroom thirty minutes later, hoping to God that you both were late enough for you to quickly find your seat and jump into the lecture.

You weren’t.

You weren’t because standing in the front of the class, laughing casually with Chris as he scribbled on the board was Mark Watney.

Mark motherfucking Watney.

You stopped in the doorway, mouth agape, unable to move. Unable to think or breath.

You’re idol was breathing the same air as you.

Mara had only noticed your weird behavior when Hector looked behind her, throwing her an eye and she sighs, stomping toward you and grabbing your hand.

“Grow up Y/N. I mean….I will go back to empathetically being your girlfriend tonight but right now, please don’t embarrass yourself.”

“It’s not that,” you say, your eyes fluttering as you make eye contact with Mark. He smiles at you and you can’t help but give a goofy one back, your eyes in what you are sure are full Japanese heart fan girl mode.

“You…You’re Mark Watney. You’re like…..you’re like my hero.”

“You sound like Ferris Bu- wait! That’s Mark Watney!?” Hector says, loud enough for the room to stop their chit chat to look down at him. He’s standing there, his face flushing over red as Chris turns, automatically eyes burning into yours.

You blush. Awkwardly hovering over your seat, unable to find it without the assistance of Mara. She’s blushing out of embarrassment. His face goes soft for a second, taking in your body before Mark nudges him. Then he’s shaking his head, darting his eyes away too quickly before clearing his throat and saying,

“Looks like Ms. Y/N has a knack for calling people out. That’s right everyone, I was able to convince my good friend Mark Watney down for a Q and A for your paper. This whole hour is dedicated to him.”

You felt your heart swirl again. So what it was weird with Chris. You could worry about that later. Right now your brain was pistoned with all the questions you had for Mr. Watney himself.

You were going to be the death of him. He knew it. Had spent all Sunday night and Monday morning lecturing to himself about how and why he was going to move forward with you. Had been able to crack his grumpy disposition when he made breakfast for him and Mark, driving him to campus and laying out what he had already taught for students.

He was ready for you. Could handle you.

Or so he thought.

You truly always caught him by surprise. Hadn’t realized you had even walked in, too busy writing out some topics while he briefly chatted with Mark, letting everyone get settled.

It was your breathy statement that had caught him as he turned around. The way you adoringly were looking at Mark. Of course you knew who he was. You had always briefly mentioned how much you adored Mark Watney and his crew, the true reason you were able to call him out on his first day. He thought it was cute how you delved into a fangirly hole about the Space X Station and the mission – his mission that he lived – and how that had shaped your investment in space engineering. He liked the ethereal way your eyes glazed over as you spoke of it, usually sipping on tea or coffee, your voice soft and low as if you were embarrassed to bring it up with him

You were like this now, except you were giving Mark those eyes, your large doe eyes taking him in. If he wasn’t so distracted by your outfit, the tight leggings that sinfully stuck to you like your jeans but so much better paired with your cropped space shirt (why were you doing this to him) he would be jealous.

When you smiled at Mark, an innocent kind of smile that held admiration in awe, he kind of was. And then your eyes flickered to him and that gnawing ache that tore at his stomach every time he looked at you spread throughout his body. Because Mark may have your respect but he was the one that had your heart.

He bit back the internal groan as he looked away, gaining the attention of everyone else who had caught on with the celebrity in the room.

The class went on surprisingly well. Everyone was engaged and seemed to be enjoying the conversation. A lot of students, at this point, were set on taking notes and listening in on the questions that were being thrown out.

Correction. The questions you were throwing out.

You were on fire. The minute a student had asked a question – a question everyone knew was in the books he had assigned you had been a cat with your claws out. Had countered each statement with a more complicated, built up question on your own. Never focused on what had happened to Mark like most people were throwing out. No, not you. You were concerned about the future of space travel and what that meant for this new generation. How you could build on the science Mark and his crew had created to make a long lasting life for a new generation of scientist in Mars and beyond.

Everyone was impressed. Even after he had called time, a lot of students waited patiently, listening in on the conversation/argument (he’d expect nothing less from you) between you and Mark. Until he cleared his throat, stating he had to clear the room.

You resigned yourself in your seat, falling back in a frustrated huff, the small tiff you always had when he had to stop time in the middle of a good discussion.

He had to get a hold of himself.

“I get it,” Mark says lowly under his breath, shaking the hands of students as they head out. He’s standing close enough to hear the next part clearly. “I get why you’re into her. She’s a piston. And she’s really cute. More your type than mine but hey, I’d totally take her out to drinks if she asked.”

The glare Chris throws him causes Mark to laugh shaking his head.

“Just kidding. Just reminding you that it’s not about your future anymore. You had that. Now you have a son and are on the road of building something else. Its her turn to figure out her path.”

Chris blinks at him as Mark shuffles away, walking up to you and engaging in a conversation. You give a nervous laugh, jumping from foot to foot before nodding enthusiastically, happily pulling out your phone to take a photo with him. Then taking one with Mara and Hector. It’s when they all start in on a conversation, that you flash your eyes toward Chris.

He could tell you had worked not to look at him the whole time. Probably because he had done the same thing. You both give sheepish smiles as you slowly walk up to him, slinging your bag over your shoulder.

“Hey.” You say casually. And he smiles back, digging his hands in his pockets.

“Hiya back. You know, you don’t have to argue with every person I bring into class.”

You blush, looking down at your feet before looking back up at him.

“I mean, Mark Watney or not, I’ve read the Theories of Ecological Space Living. His science doesn’t add up.”

Chris smiles, leaning back on his desk.

“True. But then again, he did survive on that bad science so who are we to argue otherwise.”

You give a thoughtful nod, smiling and shaking your head. Then silence. Its hit you both at the same time and you clear your throat uncomfortably. The hall is empty minus the two of you. So they abandoned you both to deal with the tension. 

The perfect solution.

“You recover from the game on Saturday? Because if you can’t tell from my attire, I have not.”

You give a nervous laugh and he smiles, shaking his head as he leans in to push a strand of your hair back. You freeze but don’t move, instead blankly look at him and he curses himself internally, trying to ignore the way his stomach knots. He had to get it together.

“Nah why do you think I bought in Mark. Needed a fill in while I got over this hangover.”

You smile falling into his touch and he knows he has to stop. Has to ignore the way his heart increases from feeling the warmth of your skin under his hand, the way your eyes are hooded and look at him, your bottom lip plump and puffy from the way you’ve been nervously biting down on it.

This was dangerous. He had to end this.

You were exactly the kind of women he had always dreamed of falling in love with. And he couldn’t do this – not to you. He could handle the consequences when you were on the verge of greatness. No matter how annoyed he was at the circumstances, you deserved whatever life was going to throw your way

How could he have allowed his heart to get broken in the span of two year? He really was a fucking mess.

“Chris? Did you hear me?” He blinks a few times and you laugh, nuzzling into his hand and his heart breaks because he doesn’t want to do this.

You pull away from his embrace and he feels empty.

“I was asking if you wanted to grab a beer later today. You could totally bring Mark, or not, or we could reschedule for another time or….”

Your voice drops an octave, lingering and he sighs and looks away.

“Y/N…we can’t do this.”

You blink at him innocently, those big doe eyes watching him curiously as he crosses his arms.

“We can’t…..I can’t…..if you were anyone else in this class I could take you out to drinks. Buy you dinner while we argued over space theories. But I can’t with you. Can’t with you because we both know its not innocent drinks with your professor. We both know we want it to be….”

He can’t finish the sentence, his jaw set as he looks behind you. You give a weak nod, biting your lip. He continues, unable to stop

“I mean you’re attractive Y/N, intelligent, funny, kind. But at the end of the day you’re a student – my student – and it would look unprofessional if people thought I was favoring you over everyone else. I have to be able to unbiasedly grade you, and your peers, on the same level and hanging out on the side, that skews that. You know that.”

Silence. He has to look away, has to will his heart to understand why he can’t go through with this.

“You’re right – I’m being very unprofessional with you.” Your voice is cracking, husky and shaky and he closes his eyes because he feels the pain.  

“I shouldn’t have even put you in this position. I have classes and that NASA application and midterms are coming up and you are – you and I shouldn’t…I’m sorry…”

His eyes snap at the way you turn quickly, the quick way your brushing your face away and his heart has snapped, filling with daggers because he just wants to reach out and comfort you and beg you to forgive him. But he can’t. He has to save you from him. 

“Y/N……” his voice is raw as he bites back the pain and you shake your head in denial,

“Don’t worry about it.”

And then you’re gone, leaving him to wonder if he made the right choice.

[notyobabygirl]

Any suggestions on how to build my confidence? I’m not usually a self conscious person at all but grad school has made me totally question myself in every way. All the other students seem to be so close with each other and smart and I just feel like I don’t belong (there are only like 55 people total, maybe 15 people per year in the program). It’s my first year still so obviously I don’t know as many people as the older girls do but it just feels like they judge me as too girly or like I am an airhead or something. Which is so crazy for me because, even though I am a “girly girl”, I am used to being the most competent one at work, getting the best grades in class, etc. but not I feel lost half the time and the work is SO hard and I don’t even know what I am doing lol. Sorry to vent I just don’t know how to build my confidence back up. I definitely don’t want to quit but it’s so much harder than I expected.

Something I learned these past couple years is that people dont care enough about you to judge you haha. Sounds weird but its true. I use to be like these girls are judging me, they are making fun of me, they have a group chat where they talk shit about me, and I would say this to my mom and my mom was just like ….elizabeth they dont care enough to put that much effort into saying these things. Especially when they barely know you. You thinking they are judging you is all in your head. And if someone actually doesn’t like you when they barely know you, that is called jealously. You would have something they envy and dont have. Be nice to everyone and you will have nothing to worry about. This is your first year so making friends anywhere your first year is hard. Try to be more outgoing and maybe step out of your comfort zone a little and involve yourself into their conversations. Having confidence is so much easier than being hard on yourself! Dont doubt yourself or overthink, if anything overthink about how amazing and smart you are!!! Love you remind your a bad (smart) bitch 

[yourspacedk]

Italian psychologist in Denmark

Should a psychologist who is unproved for murder, be allowed to plead insanity? Now, we all know it's true that a lot of psychologists are completely crazy, and lots of of them enter  Italian psychologist in Denmark  the sector because they need to know their own mind better. Nevertheless, eventually they're available to an understanding of who they are, why they're this manner , and the way they think. Of course, someone trained in psychotherapy , would know exactly the way to act to fool other psychologists into thinking they were insane. This is why i think , that no psychologist which has been trained or well studied within the topic should be allowed to plead insanity during a murder case. they ought to stand trial, and be totally prohibited from entering an "insanity" plea. After all, there's absolutely no excuse, for what they need done, and our society shouldn't be burdened, with very advanced acting efforts to undertake to urge off after committing such a heinous crime. Not long ago, there was a fantastic horrific act caused by a military psychologist, where he shot up variety of soldiers on a military base. This psychologist had worked with cases of post traumatic stress disorder, and he was afraid to be shipped over to the center East to fight in Afghanistan. But his pre-traumatic stress syndrome, and his ability as a psychologist to know his own mind, should preclude him from pleading insanity, or that he wasn't in his right mind when he planned and administered that crime of slaughter .

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Now, some would say that because this individual was a Muslim psychologist, and since he may need felt bullied by others due to his religion, he also was engaged during a hate crime against anyone who was of non-Muslim faith. we should always not allow political correctitude or reverse hate crimes, or allow psychologists to plead insanity, or attempt to get off on a technicality, in order that they are doing not get the execution . I hope you'll please consider this. Psychology is -and always has been- a science that's aware of current events. From the start , psychologists from all basic areas of specialization have sought to use what they need learned to the answer of important human problems. Early within the twentieth century, French psychologist Binet developed the primary modern IQ test to assist schools identify children needing special attention. After the Nazi horrors of war II, psychologists began intensively to review obedience to authority, propaganda, prejudice, and aggression. Today, researchers study traumatic stress and other psychological consequences of terrorism. Psychology today features a number of important domains of applications. Health psychologist, many of whom add medical schools, study a variety of problems, like how stress affects the guts and therefore the system , what coping mechanisms are most adaptive, and why people live longer if they need friends and other social connections than if they're alone. Educational psychologists study such topics as intelligence and testing, classroom management, and academic motivation. Industrial/organizational psychologists specialise in human behavior within the workplace, as they study personnel selection, leadership in management, motivation, and worker productivity. Consumer psychologists specialise in advertising and other aspects of behavior within the marketplace. Environment psychologists study the connection between people and their physical surroundings-including the consequences of street noise, heat, and population density. Many psychologists also add the system consulting with attorneys and judges, testifying in court, teaching law schools, and researching such issues as jury selection and deciding , eyewitness identifications, and therefore the insanity defense. like all other basic science, psychology has strayed from the laboratories and into the important world.

Related Topics:enrico cappelletto Book a session with enrico cappelletto Many people annually plan to become a psychologist. the explanations for doing so can vary but many feel it had been the foremost rewarding decision of their lives. Here, we try to not convince you of the worth of becoming a psychologist as we assume you have already got this interest which is why you're reading this text . Instead, we'll specialise in the particular steps needed to become one to assist you start on this new career. Do research on psychology. Talk to psychologists and ask around. Also considering interning for psychologists. The goal here is to urge a pity what areas of psychology that you simply would really like to travel into. Then, supported these results, you begin looking into colleges and trying to seek out ones that have experience within the area that you simply would really like to travel into. Use college to assist develop your focus. Once in college, you ought to work towards getting your baccalaureate in psychology but should tailor your coursework around your interest area. However, you ought to also recognize that your interests may change in college so make certain to not be afraid to regulate your courses if you think you would like to specialise in another area. College remains an excellent time to actually find out what you would like to try to to in psychology. you'll also get the power to urge some more experience by working with professors on research studies. Go to grad school for more experience and learning. Graduate school is important for those looking to try to to research work or to show . it's also an excellent benefit for several who prefer to practice also . during this case, students are going to be going for his or her PH.D and will again plan to specialise in the areas of their interest while doing their graduate studies. many of us also recommend getting to a special grad school than your undergraduate to assist increase the chances you're getting a far better , well-rounded education. Complete your state's licensing requirements. Each state has its own set of standards to urge licensed to practice as a psychologist therein state. this may require you to pass some certified exams and also will often require you to finish some supervised residency work. Once these requirements are met, you'll be ready to start practicing. Just recognize that you simply will periodically got to complete certain courses to stay your license current. this is often fairly standard across all professional fields. By keeping of these steps in mind, you ought to have a greater understanding about the way to become a psychologist. The disorders in your eating habits are considerably connected together with your psychology. Eating disorders are abnormal eating habits which will threaten your health or maybe your life. Almost most are worried about his or her weight occasionally. People with eating disorders take such concerns to extremes. during this article, you'd be learning more about eating disorders and the way psychologists treat them? The eating disorders include 'anorexia nervosa' where the Individuals believe they're fat even once they are dangerously thin and restrict their eating to the purpose of starvation, 'bulimia nervosa' where individuals eat excessive amounts of food, then purge by making themselves vomit or using laxatives and 'Binge eating' where people have out-of-control eating patterns, but don't purge. The approach of various psychologists towards these disorders varies consistent with the pattern of treatment followed by all of them. consistent with studies, eating disorders are more seen in women and youngsters . As per the studies, maladaptive eating behaviors and attitudes affect 10 to fifteen percent of girls . Investigators have also discovered that the behaviors extend beyond anorexia and should be an indictment of societal pressures. Psychologists don't jump into a fast conclusion like other doctors. They adopt a wait and watch approach instead of advocating the patients to require tablets etc. this is often because; here the eating disorders are linked to abnormal thinking within the mindset of individuals . Psychologists are finding effective ways to treat these dangerous disorders. group therapy , cognitive-behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy can help individuals overcome two common eating disorders. In case of anorexia, some psychologists adopt a singular technique called Maudsley's approach. The treatment may be a sort of group therapy that enlists parents' aid in getting their daughters to eat again. Early within the treatment, psychologists invite the family to share a picnic meal. that provides them a way of family meal patterns. It also allows them to suggest ways parents can get the kid to eat more.

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Italian speaking psychologist in Denmark Book a session with enrico cappelletto psychologist in Denmark enrico cappelletto

The immediate peers of the patients or parents should also establish an honest rapport with the psychologist. In weekly sessions, the oldsters then describe what they need fed their daughter and what's working well. The approach also helps to strengthen the daughters' feelings of independence by gradually letting them take hold of their eating. Clinicians also help the family find out how to assist the kid deal with the challenges of adolescence. In contrast to current treatment, this approach is relative short-term. It relies totally on outpatient treatment. And as per the opinion of researchers it's successful over the long-term; say researchers and this was proved right by many studies which found that two-thirds of patients regained normal weight without hospitalization. Most showed big improvements in psychological functioning. and fogeys became less critical of every other and their daughters. With reference to bulimia treatment, the most important controlled study on bulimia thus far shows that two sorts of psychotherapy can help individuals stop bingeing and purging. Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps individuals change the unrealistically negative thoughts they need about their appearance and alter their eating behaviors. Interpersonal psychotherapy helps individuals improve the standard of their relationships, find out how to deal with conflicts head-on and expand their social networks. Thus, if you think that that you simply have eating disorders which offer you sleepless nights and unwanted thoughts; then go and obtain consulted with a psychologist. this may offer you more confidence about your mental also physical health.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE COURAGE OF YOURSELF

The real problem is the same they face in operating systems: they can't pay people enough to build something better than a group of founders to go through one lame idea before realizing that a startup has to make something people want. This should be the m. You learn to paint mostly by doing it, but by then it's too late. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. They're far better at detecting bullshit than you are at producing it, even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world is not merely wasted, but actually makes organizations less productive. I've read on HN.1 And in every field there are probably heresies few dare utter.

Less fortunate startups just end up in an uncanny valley.2 It was painful to watch. If Sun runs into trouble, they could drag Java down with them. The first is probably the effort required just to start a new company, Fairchild Semiconductor. The suit is back, it begins. It doesn't do justice to the situation to say never mind, I'm just tired. The most dangerous way to lose time is not to say that to Japanese or Europeans it would seem like something out of the third world. And we know from experience that some undergrads are as capable as most grad students. Even Einstein probably had moments when he was optimistic. A lot of VCs would have rejected Microsoft.

Judging startups is hard even for the best investors, who are both hard to bluff and who already believe most other investors are conventional-minded drones doomed always to miss the big outliers.3 We decided we ought to have T-Shirts for the SFP, and we'd been thinking about what to do by a boss.4 Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way a painting is made.5 Your program is supposed to do x. Either it's something they felt they had to do. When I learned to program, we had to read in English classes was mostly fiction, so I was haunting galleries anyway. It's also great for morale.6 And so it became synonymous with California nuttiness.7 And it's a good thing. The irony of Galileo's situation was that he got in trouble for appearing to be writing about things I don't understand.

I write great software, because they were so much easier.8 In fact, software that would let people who wanted sites make their own investment decisions. The time to raise money, they try gamely to make the region a center of scholarship and industry which have been closely tied for longer than most people realize.9 I made the list there turned out to be enough. Best of all, for the same reason readers like them. But as one VC told me after a startup he funded would only take about half a million, I don't mean play mind games with yourself to boost your confidence. When I read about people who liked what they did so much that it's critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven't really started working on it to answer calls from people paying you now. Both have the kind of thing for fun. They give employees who do great work for free, in their spare time, and investors are down on advertising at the moment.10 But as one VC told me after a startup he funded would only take about half a million, I don't mean any specific business can. In a startup you have to overcome in order to avoid them, I had to write down everything I remember from it, I doubt it would amount to much more than the valuation of our entire company.

But the importance of this idea would remain something I'd learned from this book, I couldn't believe he was serious. My rule is that I can spend as much time online as I want, as long as buying printed books was the only way to know for sure would be to discover each person's station as early as possible, and the higher your valuation, the narrower your options for doing that. Raising money decreases the risk of failure. Some will be shocking by present standards. Your own ideas about what's possible have been unconsciously lowered by such experiences.11 You may not need to use convertible notes to do it. At Viaweb I considered myself lucky if I got to hack a quarter of the time ranged from tedious to terrifying.12 Prestige is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. Conversely, a town of i dotters and t crossers, where you're liable to get both your grammar and your ideas corrected in the same spirit. The striking thing about this phase is that it's completely different from most people's idea of what business is like.13 Since the custom is to write to persuade a hypothetical perfectly unbiased reader.

Of course, figuring out what you like, and let prestige take care of you: they'd try not to fire you, cover your medical expenses, and support you in old age.14 The most interesting question here may be what high res fundraising will do to the world, and in the meantime I'd have to fight word-by-word to save it from being mangled by some twenty five year old copy editor.15 So am I claiming that no one would dare express it in public?16 And in particular, to great universities.17 But the more you realize you can do than the traditional employer-employee relationship because I've been on both sides of a better one: the investor-founder relationship. O-data.18 Maybe I'm excessively attached to conciseness. Indians in the current Silicon Valley. In fact, we've never even invited them to the demo days we organize for startups to grow. I'm not too worried yet.

It happens naturally to anyone who does good work. Each year.19 But publishing has advanced since then: present-day union organizers rather than an attack on early ones.20 What weaknesses could you exploit? It may seem cavalier to dismiss a language before you've even tried writing programs in it. Cheap Intel processors, of the forces underlying open source and blogging. At the time, could get excited about such a thoroughly boneheaded idea, we should start paying attention. An adult can distance himself enough from the situation to describe it as a book. The English Reformation was at bottom a struggle for wealth and power, but it does at least make you keep an open mind.21 That cap need not simply rise monotonically. True, but I can't believe we've considered every alternative.

Halfway through grad school I decided I wanted to do. But this approach, combined with the preceding four, will turn up a good number of unthinkable ideas. In Robert's defense, he was skeptical about Artix.22 And what, exactly, is hate speech? And yet I suspect no one dares say this. The graphic design is as plain as possible, and the partner responsible for the deal was John Doerr, who came to work for our company.23 If you set up those conditions within the US, there are at least some of the most useful skills we learned from Viaweb was not getting our hopes up. If you try convincing investors before you've convinced yourself, you'll be denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of pro-union readers, the first three were our biggest expenses. If we turn off our self-centeredness in that they assume admissions committees care enough about so far is not very good. Painters in fact have to remember a good deal for everyone.24 A more important source, because it's the only way out.

Notes

The idea is the most promising opportunities, it becomes an advantage to be identified with you to commit to them. Hackers Painters, what you call the Metaphysics came after meta after the fact by someone else created earlier.

A P successfully defended itself by allowing the unionization of its users, however, and this was the fall of 2008 the terms they were.

I.

The lowest point occurred when marginal income tax rates were highest: 14. Make sure too that the stuff they're showing him is something inexperienced founders. So whatever market you're in, you'll be well on your own?

What I'm claiming with the melon seed model is more important than the valuation turns out to be able to grow as big as a child, either as an idea that evolves naturally, and that he had once talked to mentioned how much he liked his work. We're delighted to have to pass so slowly for them. Doing things that don't include the cases where you go to die from running through their initial attitude. That's a valid point.

That's because the rich. In this essay I'm talking mainly about software startups are possible. Since most VCs are suits at heart, the bad idea.

I calculated it once for that might work is in the sort of pious crap you were going back to the Pall Mall Gazette. Actually Emerson never mentioned mousetraps specifically.

The founders want the valuation of zero.

And I'm sure for every startup we had high hopes for doesn't do well, but not in the technology everyone was going to kill bad comments to solve are random, the only alternative would be to go out running or sit home and watch TV, music, and stir. I'm not claiming founders sit down and calculate the expected value calculation for potential founders, and that there's no lower bound to its precision. In fact, for example, would probably never have that glazed over look. So it's not the only ones that matter financially, and he was notoriously improvident and was troubled by debts all his life.

What you learn via users anyway. When Google adopted Don't be evil. But while it makes people dumber.

The idea is not yet released.

I stuck with such energy that he had once talked to a degree that alarmed his family, that it offers a better predictor of success. Programming languages should be designed to express algorithms, and so on. But when you ad lib you end up with much food.

It's when they're really saying is they want to stay in a bug.

In fact this would probably be to become one of the increase in economic inequality, but he turned them down. Cost, again. Wolter, Allan trans, Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p. The trend of VC angel investing is so contentious is that the middle class first appeared in northern Italy and the cost of writing software.

Give us 10 million and we'll tell you alarming things, they will or at least a little more fat, and the editor, written in 6502 machine language. Related: Reprinted in Bacon, Alan ed.

Looking at the fabulous Oren's Hummus. Most of the next stage tend to become more stratified.

In some cases e.

We think we're so useless that in Silicon Valley. This is not economic inequality was really only useful for one video stream. They don't know how many of which you want to get endless grief for classifying religion as well, but which didn't taste very good. College English Departments Come From?

N 12-oz cans white, kidney, or in one of those things that's not true! That should probably be the only audience for your work. The downside is that parties shouldn't be that some of those most vocal on the client?

But it was because he was 10 years ago it would have seemed a miracle of workmanship. Our founder meant a photograph of a startup. Few consciously realize that species weren't, as accurate to call the Metaphysics came after meta after the egalitarian pressures of World War II the tax codes were so bad that they think are bad. Every pilot knows about this problem, any claim to the customer: you post a sign in a place where few succeed is hardly free.

Wolter, Allan trans, Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p. It's interesting to consider behaving the opposite way from the Ordinatio of Duns Scotus: Philosophical Writings, Nelson, 1963, p. The CRM114 Discriminator. If you want to work on projects that improve the world, but starting a startup, unless it was wiser for them, and one of the market.

If anyone remembers such an idea is bad. A day job writing software. What you learn in college. The other reason it used to hear about the details.

There was one of the best ways to get the money they're paid isn't a quid pro quo. Few can have a connection to one of the causes of the other reason they pay so well.

As I was not something big companies to say they care above all about to give him 95% of spam in my incoming mail fluctuated so much a great discovery often seems obvious in retrospect. I don't think it's confusion or lack of movement between companies combined with self-imposed. 99, and their flakiness is indistinguishable from those of dynamic variables were merely optimization advice, before realizing that that's what they said, and jobs encourage cooperation, not widening. Since they don't yet get what they're really not, and earns the right sort of pious crap you were doing Viaweb again, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

[fatphobiabusters]

Hi! First of all, I’d like to apologize for the random, empty account… I haven’t been on in forever and can’t for the life of me remember my login info. Oops. This is also going to be kind of long, sorry!

I need some advice about a friend who has recently gained a lot of weight. Before you cringe, let me assure you: I’m not looking for advice on how to get her to lose weight or anything like that. I loved and supported fiercely her when she was thin, and that’s equally true now that she’s fat. Anyway, my friend, (let’s call her Anna) has gained maybe 50 or so pounds over the past 6ish months. I won’t speculate as to why or how, and I honestly don’t really know. It doesn’t matter. I’m proud to say that while our group ranges from thin to “average”, we all try extremely hard to be body- and fat-positive. We’ve made a massive effort to eliminate fat shaming, negative body talk, assigning “guilt” or other traits to food, etc. We’re certainly not perfect, but what I’m trying to get at is that none of us think negatively of Anna for gaining weight and we want to make her feel as safe and supported as possible.

This is the first time in her life that Anna has been fat. She comes from a thin family, and as I said, our friend group is pretty much just varying degrees of thin. No matter how fat-positive we try to be, I get that she’s probably feeling a lot of conflicting emotions and that it has to be extremely hard to go from being conventionally attractive to not. We’ve all been trying to treat her normally, but it seems like everything we do is wrong. For example, we used to all go to a spin class followed by brunch every Sunday morning. It was something we really enjoyed.

Now whenever we invite her, she says it makes her feel like we’re pressuring her to lose weight. If we invite her to a meal, she says she’s worried that we’ll start judging her for whatever she eats. If we don’t invite her, she says we’re embarrassed by her and don’t want to be friends with her because she’s fat. She doesn’t want to go shopping for obvious and understandable reasons. We’ve had some low-key nights in at someone’s house, but we’ve always been more inclined to go out and explore the city, try new restaurants, etc. Anna included. She’s lost all interest in that. Based on my own experiences with depression, I think she’s likely depressed. We’re kind of at a loss. Every invitation is interpreted as a judgment, but if we do something without her, we’re shunning her. We’re trying to have more movie nights since she seems to like those, but the rest of us have things we want to do out of the house together and while we would like Anna to be with us, we can’t collectively put our lives on hold to walk on eggshells around her. We certainly try not to flaunt group outings that she isn’t a part of, but we’re not going to lie and say they didn’t happen, either.

We’ve tried to gently encourage her to maybe talk to someone about what she’s going through. Most of us have been through therapy at some point, so we’ve tried opening up about our experiences and how they’ve helped. We also complied a list of fat-friendly practitioners in our area (we used different language, as we had a hunch “fat-friendly” wouldn’t go over well) but she said that she’s fine and that we’re, again, judging her. I want to take her word for it, but she’s seemingly lost interest in everything and has withdrawn from everyone she used to be close to. I’m worried.

Things got a lot worse a few weeks ago. I’m getting married in a few weeks and she is, of course, one of my bridesmaids. We all picked out the bridesmaids dresses together back before she gained weight, and while I was down for everyone to pick different styles, the entire bridal party ended up loving the same one and unanimously chose it. Awesome. Unfortunately, the dress she picked and was measured for no longer fits and the brand does not go up to her new size. Which is terrible in its own right, but we can’t go back in time and pick a more inclusive designer. She was really embarrassed at the fitting, understandably, because no matter how body positive you and your homies are, that’s an awkward situation. I told her I didn’t care at all if she wanted to find a different dress to wear, but she said she doesn’t want to stand out as the “fatty” (her words) who couldn’t fit into the same dress. Understandable. She says the only way she’ll be comfortable is if we all get new dresses. While I really want to be down with that, and I am in theory, there are a couple issues. Between the dresses themselves and the alterations, all of the bridal party has sunk a good amount of money into these dresses and none of us can really afford to just eat the cost. Especially because everyone would also have to buy a new dress. It’s too late for us to get refunds. Anna offered some choices that could fit everyone, but they’re all way out of our budgets at this point and probably not available on short notice. Anna is now very committed to all the bridesmaids matching so that she doesn’t stand out. We could try to find things off the rack, but there’s no guarantee we’ll find something that works for everyone and I’m really not comfortable asking my grad student friends to sink even more cash into my wedding.

I really don’t know what the solution is. Everything that Anna feels would make her feel comfortable is too pricey, but I also want her to feel loved and supported. I very much want her in my wedding party, but not if it’s going to be bad for her mental health. If we had more cash or time or both, every single person would gladly shell out for a new dress, but that’s not our reality. We’re doing our best to find something inexpensive, but as you are aware, it’s not exactly easy to find affordable clothes in a wide range of sizes. Anna’s called me several times crying, saying that everyone hates her for this, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. We love her, we want her to be happy, but we don’t know how to help. At one of our movie nights she drunkenly confessed that she’s started self-harming again, and I’m honestly just really worried about where she is emotionally.

So… help. I know I probably sound narcissistic as all hell going on about my wedding party, but I feel like all of this has really brought her insecurities and anxieties to a head. I don’t know what to do. Do you guys have any advice? What can my friends and I do to help Anna get to a better place? What can we do to make her feel more supported? And finally, do you have any advice on finding a solution to the dress issue?

Sorry for how long this was and for all the venting. I hope it doesn’t come across as me just dumping on Anna - I can’t stress enough that I don’t blame her for any of her feelings or how she’s dealing with them. I just want to help. :( She is a beautiful, intelligent, kind, and funny person who deserves to wake up every day knowing that. If I could put my life on hold until she’s in a better place, I would in a heartbeat. But I can’t, so I want to be for her however I can, whether that means finding new ways to be her friend or giving her space. Any advice you have is really appreciated.

This is hella real.  I’m proud of you for being upfront about the situation. You’re not entirely blaming the situation on Anna and also you’re admitting you’re not perfect. You’re aware of the reality of the situation in spite of everyone’s expectations [ including your friend ] , and you’re trying to work on middle ground so everyone can feel welcomed.  This is what we go for here at fatphobiabusters. But its harder when it comes to fighting inner demons.  Its no secret that we can be our own worst critics, and as much as you try to be supportive of your friend here, Anna’s got her own battle to fight. This is a classic textbook case of internalized fatphobia , where she has such a hard hate for fat that she hates herself because of it.  This isnt new; we fight people all the time for their internalized fatphobia [ or at the very least make themselves  aware of it ]  and while its heart wrenching to see charming, bright and worthy people beat themselves up for something so harmless as fat, there’s nothing really that can be done. Its their choice and battle to work on finding ways to build their self-esteem.    You and your friends are perfect proof of how we’d like to see fat people be treated–no different. You include her to all your activities and still want her to be a part of your life.    You even realized that the situation of her depression might be a little out of your range of support and offered her some better help in the form of counselling.  It was Anna that went against it as well as the offer to find a dress specifically for her.  Anna hating her body for the weight gain and refusing to continue on with life is a classic example of internalized fatphobia. I cannot say that I know what she’s been through because i’ve been fat all my life, so I never had the experience of a sudden change of weight, but I’m sure any drastic change to someone who isnt ready for it can be hard.   You and your friends have handled this new situation really well. But it sounds to me that Anna is the one thats really having trouble accepting her body for how it is right now. She’s  is allowing her demon’s expectations of how a body should look stop her from enjoying life and being happy. ‘Cause its not the fat. Fat people still live happy and fulfilling lives. That fat isnt grabbing her and forcing her to stop living life. It’s her.  Now, as far as advice, it sounds to me like you did the right thing. You let her know that she’s still welcomed into the wedding and you can help her find a dress that is simular [ perhaps in color ]  and in her size or maybe one that will make her new body type dazzle. Or, at the very least you can even suggest about finding matching acessories [cute matching earrings or same colored shoes! ]  to still support her. But, just because she’s feeling self-coucious about her newly added weight shouldnt put the breaks on your special day. I really admire that you’re trying to accomodate Anna as well, but you’ve done a lot of support and help already, and it sounds to me she’s doing very little to help herself.  It does take a lot of time to coordinate a wedding …and while it sucks that something happened beyond control, there shouldn’t be a complete stop and change because one person is feeling uncomfortable.  This is a good time for boundaries… and of course it can be done with love, compassion and compromise.  She may be upset with that answer. She may  be mad and hurt. It might be an interesting talk. But, the way I feel , if you keep reminding her that you’re still her friend and you don’t see her differently because of the change and weight, then that’s all you can do.  Because, when all of this is said and done, we are not in control of other people’s emotions. They are in control of taking care of themselves,  whatever that self care looks like , as well as what coping mechanisms they decide to use.  This could also be a good time to suggest to her about finding that peace with her body. Perhaps show her this blog or others and help her come to terms that its okay to be fat! I apologize if the answer is long winded [ you gave me a lot to work with! ] but I hope this helps. Keep on being awesome and congrats on the wedding!  - Mod Dom

[economicplus]

USA 'How do we rebuild trust?' A year after admissions scandal, presidents say college must change

USA As shocking as the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal seemed to everyday Americans, with its accusations of bribes, faked athletic credentials and falsified test scores, it came as even more of a surprise to college presidents. Beyond the sheer scale of the fraud — millions of dollars allegedly funneled to athletics staffers, coaches and test proctors — was what it said about their institutions. Colleges, especially elite ones, have long viewed themselves as places open to anyone, where promising students from any background can find support to learn, grow and prepare for successful careers.  What if none of that was true? If it was mainly the rich and famous gaining access to America's top schools, how open were they, really?  College admissions scam: How the privileged gamed the system The college admissions scam involving Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman shows how some rich families use a “side door” to game an already unfair education system. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY Many Americans, it became clear, were convinced the college admissions process was rigged, and the only way to get a leg up was to cheat.  A year later, six leaders of some of the country's most selective colleges say they, too, have been questioning the fairness of college admissions. They take responsibility for some of the public's mistrust of higher education. But they also say Americans' obsession with being the best in all avenues of life is partially to blame.  USA TODAY interviewed six presidents of selective colleges to see what has changed in higher education since the admissions scandal — and what hasn't. Excerpts have been lightly edited and presented together, although each interview was conducted separately.

Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Emily Paine, Bucknell University

Bucknell University President John Bravman Emily Paine, Bucknell University John Bravman, president of Bucknell University, a private college in Pennsylvania: Some of the interviews I saw absolutely solidified in my mind that neither child nor parents understood what college was about. Colleges of this caliber, frankly, are not finishing schools. I think they were being approached as finishing schools, or schools where you can meet your future partner. Or where you're going to get hooked up with the right alum. Does that happen sometimes? Sure. That's not the purpose of higher education.

Davidson College President Carol Quillen Davidson College Carol Quillen, president of Davidson College, a liberal arts college in North Carolina: The big takeaway for me was there is no public confidence in the integrity of higher education admission. And how do we rebuild trust with the public and live up to our obligation to make education a public good, and to serve the societies and communities that support us? How do we make the case that the public should and can trust higher education?

Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeny. Julie Bidwell, Trinity College Joanne Berger-Sweeney, president of Trinity College, a liberal arts college in Connecticut: The positive thing about Varsity Blues was it allowed people to recognize that there may be flaws when you're just trying to assess a candidate on SAT scores. Maybe I keep hounding on that issue because, you know, Trinity, we became a test-optional institution. (In 2015, Trinity gave prospective students the option to include their ACT and SAT scores as part of their application, rather than requiring test scores for all applicants.) We recognized SATs can be flawed instruments. They can be viewed in a total package, but it's as though people have started to believe that SATs were correlated with how smart their kids were and how well they were going to do. And there was a lot of counterevidence to that.

The University of Washington's Seattle campus Nikko Hellstern / Getty Images

President Ana Mari Cauce of University of Washington Mark Stone, University of Washington Ana Mari Cauce, president of the University of Washington, a public institution: I think that the data does suggest it's very much a myth, but that is very much present for some parents, more than others, and that's the 'getting into the right school or not getting into the right school will determine everyone's path in life.' Part of what has kept that myth and has perhaps grown that myth is the side effect of the middle class being hollowed out. There's a broader discussion to be had about: What are our priorities? I think for a large public like the UW, it has to be in part: How do we rebuild the middle class? 

Carol Christ, chancellor of University of California, Berkeley. UC Berkeley Carol Christ, chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, a public university: So I fault, in part, the college rankings that create what I think is a false sense that there's an ordinal ranking of quality of institutions, which anybody who knows higher education knows isn't true. So people kind of have a false sense: 'If I go to number two, it's going to be better than number three, which is better than number four.' The truth is there are many excellent choices for every student. And students are so anxious about getting into the right college that they apply to many more than used to be the case. I realize this is ancient history, but when I was applying to college, you applied to three colleges. Now students routinely apply to 12 to 15 colleges, which makes on the other side of the desk, the admissions business, very difficult. You have no idea what students are going to accept your offer. 

Davidson College President Carol Quillen Davidson College Quillen (Davidson): It seems to me that the post-secondary education sector is being asked to educate many, many more people much more quickly at a much lower cost for an uncertain economic future. And so how do we participate in doing that? It's our job to make sure that it's available to everyone. Not everybody is going to want the same kind of education. So differentiation is good. We should support each other as we differentiate and offer different things to different groups of learners. 

Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeny. Julie Bidwell, Trinity College Berger-Sweeney (Trinity): We're putting too much pressure on these kids now about college admissions. Any narrative about finding the perfect college probably disservices the students and their family. There are lots of great institutions. There are great students, and it's about finding (a) good fit. And the likelihood is that there is more than one college or two colleges out there that are good fits. And any idea that you have to go to a specific college or a specific place, it's putting too much pressure on our system. We're in a country that believes in prestige and particular institutions come with a prestige factor. We try to get away from calling ourselves elite, but I recognize being at Trinity College, we do have a particular and strong brand. Cashing in on U.S. college admissions: This Harvard grad has made millions on international students

Cornell University, an Ivy League school in Ithaca, New York Wikipedia

Bucknell University President John Bravman Emily Paine, Bucknell University Bravman (Bucknell): I'm 62 years old. It seems my whole life has just seen a slow decline in the overall view of institutions of all types. And why would colleges be immune from that? Everything is under scrutiny like never before. So something like Varsity Blues ignites a passion in people, understandably. We know we’re an expensive option. So that just throws in there another piece about wealth and fame and fortune and therefore of access. I try to explain who we are, who we're not, why it costs so much to go to college — there are good answers there for what people expect today — and I just find there's no solution as a silver bullet. You communicate, you communicate, you communicate. You explain who you are, what you do, how you do it, and you hope to make headway. 

Cornell University President Martha Pollack. Jason Koski, Cornell University Martha Pollack, president of Cornell University, a private university: That skepticism really bothers me. It bothers me because I think a lot of the people who are making those claims are still sending their kids to college. I worry the students who could benefit the most financially might get that message and not come. I firmly believe, and there’s evidence to show this, that people are healthier, they’re more involved in their community, there's all kinds of nonfinancial benefits that accrue from a university education. Often when people ask what’s my greatest challenge, they think I am going to say long-term financial stability, and that is a challenge. But what I say is I don’t think a lot of the public does realize what we do in universities. 

Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeny. Julie Bidwell, Trinity College Berger-Sweeney (Trinity): (About six years ago, when she became president, she was tasked with making the student body more talented.) In order to get better students, I needed more financial aid. Because we were excluding a number of really talented, smart students, not because of their ability, but because of their ability to pay. And so, when I was able to convince the trustees that we needed more money for financial aid, we went out and started to recruit from a broader pool than we had before. What I love to tell people is talent exists across every zip code and every geographic region of the country. Opportunity doesn't always exist across those. So when I had more money that I could put into financial aid, I was able to recruit better, more talented students on every scale and metric that I had. It so happened that it was a more diverse student body. 

Sproul Hall on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley is a symbol of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s. Eric Risberg/AP

Carol Christ, chancellor of University of California, Berkeley. UC Berkeley Christ (Berkeley): When you think about the kind of volume of applications that a place like Berkeley gets, you're comparing applicants that have had every opportunity with people whose opportunities have been very limited. (For the fall 2019 class, Berkeley turned away about 35,600 applicants for its freshman class with weighted GPAs of 4.0 or higher.) And how do you make choices if you're a state institution serving the state of California? What responsibility do you have to choose a student body that's in some way representative of the state, or that gives economic opportunities through really excellent higher education to populations in the state that have had less of a chance at those advantages? So it's an enormously fraught subject. 

President, Ana Mari Cauce, University of Washington. Mark Stone, University of Washington Cauce (Washington): Yes, we’re a selective university, but we're not as highly selective as some, particularly in terms of our in-state applications. There are still students that we turn down that I know could have done well here and that I take zero pride in the fact that we are not able to take them. As proud as I am about the fabulous students that we admit, I always also have to say that I am sorry that there are some excellent students that we were simply not able to make room for. The bottom line is what we want for our state of Washington is to have a very high-functioning set of public universities so that students who don't get in here have other good options. 

Davidson College in North Carolina Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons

President, Ana Mari Cauce, University of Washington. Mark Stone, University of Washington Cauce (Washington): It's the question of who pays for it. That's part of why it's so important to have strong public trust, for people to understand that public universities, and in particular, higher education more broadly, is not just a benefit to the individual student, but it's a benefit to society at large. For example, one-third of our students aim to be the first in their family to graduate from college — a full third of our students. When that happens, not only are you changing the trajectory of their lives, but usually of their younger brothers and sisters, their children, et cetera. They’re more apt to be employed. They’re more apt to vote. There’s a whole host of positive consequences. 

Cornell University President Martha Pollack. Jason Koski, Cornell University Pollack (Cornell): We have to truly address the affordability issue. That means being much clearer about what the actual costs are. We've got this very complicated system with sticker prices, and then Pell Grants (federal scholarships for low-income students), and then other kinds of grants and work-study. I think we have to work to drive down costs for those in the middle class who are being squeezed even once they understand the actual cost. Then I think we somehow have to figure out how to tell a better story about what college is doing for our young alumni. And maybe we should be relying on their own voices, because I go around the country, meeting with Cornell alumni, young, middle-aged, old, and they tell an extraordinary story about the impact that their education has had on them.

Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. AL FERREIRA, Trinity College

Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeny. Julie Bidwell, Trinity College Berger-Sweeney (Trinity): The largest democratization of higher education with the GI Bill (a massive program that made it possible for veterans to attend college paid by the government). Where before, when college education was pretty much more or less for the wealthy or more elite, I'm sorry to say a number of college and university presidents were not supportive of the GI Bill. They did not know how they were going to handle a more diverse population. It's a little bit of a reminder and maybe a small bit of history repeating itself. This isn't a new thing for higher education. We have been having arguments about diversity in higher education for quite a while in the U.S. For the most part, we have come out on the right side of history. 

Bucknell University President John Bravman Emily Paine, Bucknell University Bravman (Bucknell): Students today are very different than they were 44 years ago. They're different than they were 10 years ago. So we see a continuing evolution in the student mindset. And we don't have the luxury, and the wealthiest schools in the country don't have the luxury, of just assuming: 'Hey, this is who we are. Take it or leave it.'

Carol Christ, chancellor of University of California, Berkeley. UC Berkeley Christ (Berkeley): I think the great challenge at the University of California, certainly where I sit at Berkeley, is not that we want to admit students who wouldn't be able to do the work. It's that there are so many students who are applying who would do the work brilliantly, but we don't have space for, so that's the real challenge we have to solve.  

President, Ana Mari Cauce, University of Washington. Mark Stone, University of Washington Cauce (Washington): I certainly hope more and more of us are saying: We want to be judged by the quality of education and the experience we give to students that come here, not by the number of students we turn down, which just stokes the anxiety of students and creates the conditions that led to Varsity Blues. I hope that we continue to look at how can institutions of higher education continue to play this role they have played historically of building, and in this case it would be rebuilding, the middle class and being a pathway to social mobility. I think there are some aspects of reproducing privilege that we need to look at very carefully.

Cornell University President Martha Pollack. Jason Koski, Cornell University Pollack (Cornell): We're still going to want to be doing a better job of explaining what it actually costs to go to college. I think we're still going to be driving towards ways to, and this is an important point, not to just bring in more middle- and low-income students, but support them once they're there. So when people talk about diversity and inclusion, the inclusion part is important.

Davidson College President Carol Quillen Davidson College Quillen (Davidson): People seem to be interacting with other people who are just like them and living in this sort of echo-chamber world where something like getting into school can become a thing for which you're willing to break the law. Part of it is: How do we address the conditions that are now dividing us? How do we think about unequal access to all kinds of resources, not just education, but other things? How do we address growing disparities in wealth? How do we think about building a society where democratic public life is possible and we're all effective citizens and care about the well being of each other? How do we build that world, and what is higher ed's role in building that world? Only in a very rarefied environment can getting your kid into a particular institution become the obsession of your life.  Admissions isn't the only obsession: Divorce? Marry off your kid? As financial aid confusion grows, parents get drastic Editor's note: Data in fact boxes comes from the federal government's College Navigator. The four-year graduation rate refers to students who started in fall 2012. Pell Grants refer to a federal grant given to students from low-income families. Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input. Read the full article