#being a school teacher is so difficult....

[gattmammon]

This is just the latest version of the ongoing a fundamental misunderstanding about what "going to school" means. MANY people (students AND teachers) approach school as the thing that will give them something that you can put on a CV. How you obtain that something is immaterial. The part that has been lost is this: the line on the CV isn't an end unto itself. It stands for "I spent several hours studying and training on X thing, I have been tested on X thing and I have proven that I am capable of doing X thing to a level of expertise that is superior to that of a well-cultured layman".

So many fucking words under this cut

Imagine your cat has to get life-saving surgery and you're asked to pick between two people: one is a veterinarian with a list of schools and accolades and PhDs on her CV as tall as her, but is from a rich family and there's the heavy suspicion that those titles were gotten thru bribery/paying someone else to do the coursework/some other form of using money to cut corners. The other is a veterinarian assistant with zero schooling but 20 years of experience on the field operating on cats. Who are you picking?

Capitalism has pushed this idea that schooling is only valuable as a way to get a job that makes you money. But the reason why a doctor makes money isn't because she went to school - it's because her job is difficult and school prepared her for it. An artist is successful not because she went to art school, but because her art is unique and interesting at least in some ways, and art school helped her learn the tecniques that help her create better art. School is supposed to teach you how to be good at what you do. But education as a field has been so devalued that people think of it just in term of the final product, that line of text they can use to prop up their CV and make money.

Algorithmically generated art (which is what we mean when we say "AI" here) has been a thing for decades. I have no doubt many of those art students are genuinely stressed and stuck and AI can help them get out of a rut, and I'm also sure many artists have and will do excellent work using AI cleverly and responsibly. Tragically there's also a growing subsection of people who genuinely have mixed up the result with the process - they equal being an artist with producing images to a prompt. Which, for sure, AI can do that - but like. Donatello and Michelangelo* did a statue on the same "prompt", David from the story of David and Goliath, and the two statues are incredibly different. Because being an artist is about the process. Which is also what school is about. Teaching you the process thru which you get from a concept to a work of art. AI is just the latest tool people have found to escape doing the work - without realising that the "work" is the whole reason why they're here. After all, if AI can generate images equivalent to an artist, then why would the world need them? A random CEO can type in a prompt as much as they can.

*ninja turtles joke goes here

I keep seeing AI shit in student work. I can't take it, sarge. Can't take it.

Why. Are you. Pursuing higher education in visual art. If you're just going to throw AI at your assignments.

It's not hard to tell. You know why it's not hard to tell? Because I've been studying this for almost a decade now. Yeah, the image looks 'complete', but it's not informed. There're weird artifacts that aren't from the creative process. Small details a real artist pays attention to, or overworks, or underworks? They're absent.

If it doesn't look bad to you, it's because you don't have enough knowledge about art to see that it's bad, which means that you REALLY should not be skimping on your assignments.

[yanderedrabbles]

What do you think about yan!Academic Rival who's obsessed with reader? Yan!Rival who has all the resources he needs to be the best but then there's reader who basically came from nothing/is a scholarship kid but is exceptional in her studies.

@casuallyanidiot did an amazing take on this! You can read it here.

Yandere Academic Rival x Reader

Yandere! Rival who comes from money and privilege. Who's been top of his class since grade school. Who has every resource at his fingertips - tutors for his difficult subjects, a heap of additional textbooks, teachers desperate to impress his parents with the attention they give him...

Yandere! Rival who's used to winning. Who expects to always be number one. Who's never had anyone even come close to being his equal.

Yandere! Rival who expects university to be exactly the same. So what if it's a tough school to get into? He didn't struggle in the slightest, so clearly he's already a cut above the regular applicants.

Yandere! Rival who gets a nasty shock when his class gets their first report back. He's not even in the top ten.

Yandere! Rival who feels himself unravel a little. This should have been easy.

Yandere! Rival who throws himself into his studies. Who spens every minute outside class with a tutor, textbooks and notes piled high on his desk. Who doesn't give a damn about making friends or going out to parties.

Yandere! Rival who feels more than smug when the next class ranking is out. Who rudely pushes his way through his classmates to see it firsthand.

Yandere! Rival who stands frozen when he sees the list. He came in second.

Somehow, someone managed to outdo him. Even with all the hours he poured in, even with the tutors and the one on ones with his professors. There's still someone better than him, someone smarter.

Yandere! Rival who looks you up the second he sees your name ranked above his. Who prowls your social media, hoping to find the secret behind your success.

Yandere! Rival who expects you to be just as dedicated to studying as he is.

Yandere! Rival who stares in disbelief at your profile. You're nothing like him at all. Parties on the weekends, extracurriculars, hikes, friends, boyfriends. He stares and stares, not understanding how you even have time to crack a book, much less beat him.

You're having fun.

Yandere! Rival who just doesn't understand it. Why does he have to work his ass off while you get to parade around, living life to the fullest?

Yandere! Rival who has never been so bitter in his entire life. Who has no idea how to deal with the way he feels. So he does the only thing he can. He studies you instead.

Yandere! Rival who starts sitting behind you in every class. Who takes the table right next to yours every time you visit the library or the campus café. Who listens to every conversation you have.

Yandere! Rival who needs just one chance to ruin your life. And foolishly, you give it to him.

Saturday night and Yandere! Rival knows exactly where you'll be. Who makes sure to arrive at the club extra early, just to beat you there.

Yandere! Rival who stalks you all night, waiting for his chance. The second he gets close enough, he's slipping something in your drink and slipping his arm around your waist.

Yandere! Rival who can't help the giddy feeling in his chest when you hang onto him to keep yourself from falling. Who loves the glazed look in your eyes, the way you're so helpless in his arms.

Yandere! Rival who keeps calling himself your boyfriend as you stagger out of the club, loving the way it sounds.

Yandere! Rival who keeps you locked away in his fancy uptown apartment. Why waste money on tutors when his pretty little girlfriend is twice as good?

Yandere! Rival who starves you for days until you stop fighting him.

Yandere! Rival who makes sure your assignments get turned in on time, but who always edits them just a little. Who let's you study as much as you want, but refuses to let you leave.

Yandere! Rival who focuses so much better with his head on your thighs and your fingers in his hair.

Yandere! Rival who promises he'll let you go after graduation. As long as you promise to always take second place.

[beemovieerotica]

Learning g you went to Catholic school explains so much actually. Also what the fuck was wrong with your psych teacher

he was genuinely a really cool guy, like for all the clownery he was a deeply compassionate person and I know that sounds SO wild after talking about him bloodily faking his death in front of his students lmao

I was getting lowkey bullied in one of his classes - there was a girl who sat next to me who would do shit like mime punching the back of my head whenever my back was turned to get laughs out of other kids. the teacher got her to stop without me saying anything or risking physical escalation - fucking difficult to do if you know the type of personality involved here. one time later though she straight up took an exam I just got back and started copying the answers off it since she had to do a make-up test. I was like. Ok. This could be bad for me. zero tolerance college prep school where I could be expelled for "providing answers"

I ended up going to the teacher and being like "hey...is the make-up test that some people have to do going to be the exact same questions?" and he's like "...why are you asking this?"

ended up dancing around the point for a while until it clicked for him and he's like oh. ok, is this about ____? I didn't say anything and he just kind of looked at me and went "ok I'll handle it."

he ended up staging this big talk with each and every one of his classes. he went on a rant about a "recent uptick in cheating" and during each talk he said "and I'm not doing this just for this class. I'm doing this because I saw [x y z] happen in my other period" and I know I said the man couldn't convincingly fake his own death, but he sold it to us, and the dumbass bully bought it and then laid low until the semester ended and I was out of there, and I didn't get penalized for her behavior

he did a lot to try to reach out to me when I was going through the trenches of being a high school closeted queer. he lent me CDs when I said I liked certain types of music and would always try to strike up conversation. I miss him lol

[barracuda-shark-games]

Progress Update 11/19/24

Hey everyone, apologies for my absence lately. (Posts have been coming from my queue.) I've had a lot going on*, personal details under the cut.

Writing has been difficult due to these circumstances, so I think the best thing I can do to move forward is just write what comes to me first or what comes from prompts. Coding is the biggest obstacle without my ADHD meds, so I might be restricted to writing snippets and scenes for now.

For example, I've been able to write the first meeting with the knight because it's something I really wanted to put down. But that doesn't happen until the end of chapter 1, so I haven't written most of what leads up to that meeting yet.

I was going to hold off on creating a patreon until I finished chapter 1, but I'm strongly considering starting it now so I can share these snippets somewhere and have that external motivation to continue. (Ngl, money has been really tight especially with medical bills piling up, so this would help in a lot of ways.) I might put out some polls to see what kind of content readers would be interested in.

Anyway, that's where I'm at right now. I apologize for the delay, and appreciate everyone's patience and understanding. <3

-Janus

*I have a super painful ear infection that hasn't gone away after over a week of antibiotics, found out one of my parents might have cancer and it will be a while before we can confirm because appointment wait times are ridiculous, and one of my siblings is a teacher and has a student who wants to kill them (and has other behavior issues) and the school district isn't being much help. On top of that, my ADHD meds have been out of stock for over a week with no news of when they'll be back in stock, so it's been rough, to say the least.

[gardenwalrus]

Mr Pobjoy’s first year at the school was Lennon’s fifth and final year, so by the time he took up office the mould of John’s irreverence and the troublemaking Lennon-Shotton axis was hard to break. [...] But he faced a major thorn in John Lennon. ‘I inherited an extremely disruptive boy, the legend of the school. He was presented to me as my most urgent problem, he and his friend Shotton,’ recalled Mr Pobjoy, a palpably kind but firm man who tried hard to get to grips with Lennon as a person rather than confront the problem with force.  [...] 'Eventually [Lennon] was brought to me as headmaster as a last resort. On that first and one occasion I gave three strokes of the cane, the ordinary thing to do in those days.’ Shortly afterwards, Pobjoy abolished corporal punishment at Quarry Bank, and it has never been reinstated. ‘Caning never stops misbehaving. I quickly realised that. And with or without the cane, John didn’t stop misbehaving. ‘Missing detention and all the other things John did might be regarded now as ordinary schoolboy pranks, but there was another side to it all. He did take advantage of anybody who was weak. He was extremely cruel.’ There were incidents between John and some teachers which horrified them all in the staff room. Lennon was often brutally tough on teachers who did not know how to handle him. He raised his fists and flatly refused to obey instructions.

[...] ‘I saw his guardian, Mrs Smith, frequently. She has him as not her problem but the school’s. I recall her saying: “The school should do something about it.” Well, with John’s early history and parental background it’s not easy in difficult family circumstances to get a boy to behave well - or even to work well.’  Mr Pobjoy’s worst moment came when he was at an afternoon football match at Goodison Park, home of Everton football club. An announced message called him to the telephone, and a distressed deputy headmaster told him of yet another Lennon problem. I said: “Oh, suspend him.” John was suspended for a few days and I saw his aunt again, but he survived right through that day in February until July, coming to the natural end of his five-year course at the school.  ‘I recall talking to him about his ability and saying he could achieve a great deal if he set his mind to it. But he was only a failure at school because he attached little importance to academic work. He failed each of his O-levels by a single grade, and could clearly have passed if he’d wanted to. It simply didn’t matter to him. He was particularly fond of an English master, Philip Burnett, who was rather advanced in his approach, his ideas, and his own way of life. John was very interested in poetry and wrote it. [...] [John] resented any kind of constraint or discipline. He had no intention, even at Dovedale junior school, of being organised by others. He set out to cock a snook at authority and discipline from early childhood.’

- William Ernest Pobjoy, headmaster of Quarry Bank, in Ray Coleman, John Winston Lennon: 1940-66 vol.1 (1984)

PAUL: I remember the great excitement at 20 Forthlin Road when we had the phone put in. I still remember the phone number: Garston 6922. George still remembers it. It's ingrained. John and I used to play pranks with our tape recorder: record stuff, then ring up people and play the tape recorder to them and record their answers on another tape. We were supposed to be making demos. We made one for Mr Popjoy, who was one of John's teachers from Quarry Bank. We had a message that said, 'That Mr Popjoy?' then there was a wait for some reaction. I’m calling about the bananas.' Then there was another pause. We'd put that to the speaker, call his number, and the minute we heard him answer we'd switch our recorder on and it would talk to him. We had a mic at the hearing end and we would record that, so we didn't know quite what he'd said until it was all finished but we could hear something going on. Then we'd just cut him off and listen back to it. It was great 'Popjoy here. Yes? Can I help? Bananas? What bananas? I haven't ordered any bananas!'

- Barry Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now (1997)

[yasmeensh]

Story update

I got to write a good chunk of the opening these past two days. Excited to get more work done over March break. And I can't wait to get to writing more about my daughter T-T But she comes in a bit later in the story. Still in the first act, though.

Some more character design doodles:

[fantasy-costco]

Thinking about when a "professor" on the Harry Potter role play website I used to hang out on when I was in middle school genuinely reached out to me to recommend I get tested for adhd/dyslexia because of the dogshit quality of the work I turned in for like. Potions class or whatever. I mean they were right but still.

[seth-the-giggle-fish]

wow

I sure do love signing into a class and getting a video from my instructor aggressively insinuating that myself and my classmates are idiots because he was using a very specific definition of the word teamwork, that was not ever in the book we're reading from, for our last assignment. So far the course has been us independently reading parts of the book, uploading our presentations that are based on a bare-bones rubric then the instructor boomer yelling at us in a video about how we're idiots for not understanding the exact and unspecified definitions he has for things (oh and it all has the underlying flavor of that kids these days need to be more independent and to stop being 'soft' ignoring that this course is supposed to be teaching us things rather than confirming that we know things)

[poptartmochi]

very lalalala day... I must savor it before I go to the trenches tomorrow

[imsaunteringvaguelydownwards]

Tfw when the teacher’s get to know you questions are getting a littleeeee too personal, is this a mental health screening or getting to know me pick one.

[in-tua-deep]

man i have really been thinking about worldbuilding and exposition in books recently

when i was like, i don’t know, twelve-ish, I picked up this book about a teenage girl in a spy school. and i absolutely fell in love with it - I thought it was incredibly neat how the book just seemed to drop me into the middle of the story, even starting in the girl’s second year. in fact, the main character frequently referenced events from her first year (falling in love with a civilian, things ending badly, finding secret passageways, losing her mother’s trust etc.) 

and I actually really enjoyed the fact that the character had a rich and vibrant life outside of what i had read and that the book didn’t go out of its way to explain her past in flashbacks or anything. i understood the main takeaways and why she was reacting to things based on what i gleaned, and more than that i understood the growth of the character, why she was cautious in certain places but reckless in others, etc and i felt smarter for not being handed the answer on a silver platter

anyway it wasn’t until i finished the book and realized there was a sequel that i looked it up and found out that. in fact. i had started with the second book in the series.

oops.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[be-gay-do-crime-ahaha]

Holy fucking shit the dysphoria is dysphoria-ing right now. I feel physically nauseous oh my fucking god. I’m gonna fucking kill someone maybe myself rn I’m gonna lose my shit holy hell.

Doesn’t help that I’ve been incredibly overstimulated the past few days every sound is like a fucking cheese grater in my ears oh my god.

[oceanmoss]

today sucked sooo bad i brought my grandma's plant to class to show them plant parts and i broke her fancy plant pot and started sobbing in front of whoever was left of the kids after the class was over literally embarrassingggggggggggggg . :|||||||

[just-rogi]

I’m moving out in five weeks and last night I snapped at my roommate who had been a dick to me all year (for something reasonable and justifiable) and ik I shouldn’t feel bad but I totally do lol

All year has been the oppression Olympics any time any of us is upset about anything and like.. I reminded him last night that he isn’t the only minority in the apartment and he was pissed

[aahsoka]

i am getting paid very little to sub but i very much do care about whats going on with these kids and i wanna leave them all with something good