#but like the major I wanted lead into a stem career that I am genuinely interested in and it guaranteed money too | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dailytomlinson · 4 years ago

Link

While many artists would jump at the chance to tell you how lockdown has been a fruitful opportunity for self-improvement, full of pseudo self-help books and pompous podcasts, former One Directioner Louis Tomlinson is adamant that he has done, well, nothing.

“I’ve just watched loads of s___ TV,” he says after a long pause. “The Undoing is decent, isn’t it?”

Twenty-eight--year-old Tomlinson from Doncaster was always the down-to-earth Directioner, frequently describing himself as fringe member who spent more time analysing the band’s contracts than singing solos, known for chain-smoking his way through several packs of cigarettes a day and swearing like a trooper. A rarity, these days, among millennials who’d rather suck on a stem of kale and tweet about their #blessings.

The gig means a great deal to Tomlinson, whose first ever tour as a solo artist, to promote his debut solo album WALLS, was cut short back in March after just two concerts in Spain and Mexico. It was an album he’d spent five years working on: a guitar-led project that ruptured with the preppy pop anthems of One Direction, inspired instead by Tomlinson’s love for Britpop.

No doubt he was anxious to get it right following a decade “grown in test tubes”, as Harry Styles once described the band’s formation on the X Factor, where they came third before going on to make a reported $280,000 a day as the most successful band in the world. The pressure, too, was intense: all four bandmates had already released their own solo debuts.

Was he left reeling, I ask, unable to perform at such a crucial moment?

“The thing that I always enjoyed the most about One Direction was playing the shows, so my master plan, when I realised I was going to do a solo career, was always my first tour. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for the best part of five years now. I got so close, I got a taste for it, and it’s affected me like everyone else, but I’m forever an optimist,” he says down the phone, with what I can only imagine to be a rather phlegmatic shrug.

Sure, I say, but the last year can’t have been easy. Didn’t he feel like his purpose had popped?

“You know what,” he says, reflecting, “maybe because I’ve had real dark moments in my life, they’ve given me scope for optimism. In the grand scheme of things, of what I’ve experienced, these everyday problems...they don’t seem so bad.”

Tomlinson is referring to losing his 43-year-old mother, a midwife, to leukemia in 2016, and his 18-year-old sister Felicite, a model, to an accidental drug overdose in 2018. The double tragedy is something he has been open about on his own terms, dedicating his single, Two of Us, from WALLS, to his mother Johannah, while often checking in with fans who have lost members of their own family.

It’s not unusual for Tomlinson to ask his 34.9 million followers if they’re doing alright, receiving hundreds of thousands of personal replies. It’s not something he will discuss in interviews, however, after he slammed BBC Breakfast for shamelessly probing his trauma in February this year. “Never going back there again,” he tweeted after coming off the show.

“Social media is a ruthless, toxic place, so I don’t like to spend much time there,” says Tomlinson, “but because of experiencing such light and shade all while I was famous, I have a very deep connection with my fans. They’ve always been there for me.”

In return, Tomlinson is good to them. Last month he even promised some new music, saying that he’d written four songs in four days. Does this mean that a second album is on the way?

“Yeah, definitely,” he says. “I’m very, very excited. I had basically penciled down a plan before corona took over our lives. And now it's kind of given me a little bit of time to really get into what I want to say and what I want things to sound like. Because, you know, I was really proud of my first record, but there were moments that I felt were truer to me than others. I think that there were some songs where I took slightly more risk and owned what I love, saying, ‘This is who I want to be’. So I want to take a leaf out of their book.”

Fans might think he’s referring to writing more heartfelt autobiographical content such as Two of Us, but in fact, he’s referring specifically to rock-inspired Kill My Mind, he says, the first song on WALLS. “There’s a certain energy in that song, in its delivery, in its attitude, that I want to recreate. People are struggling at the moment, so I want to create a raucous, exciting atmosphere in my live show, not a somber, thoughtful one.”

He sighs, trying to articulate something that’s clearly been playing on his mind for a while. “You know, because of my story, my album was a little heavy at times and a little somber. And as I'm sure you're aware, from talking to me, now, that isn't who I am.”

It must be draining, I say, the weight of expectation in both the media and across his fanbase, to be a spokesperson for grief and hardship. To have tragedy prelude everything he does and says.

“Honestly, it’s part of being from Doncaster as well, I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want.”

Too many incredible memories to mention but not a day goes by that I don't think about how amazing it was. @NiallOfficial @Harry_Styles @LiamPayne @zaynmalik . So proud of you all individually.

The problem is, says Tomlinson, he doesn’t have the best imagination. “I have interesting things to say musically, but what’s challenging from a writing perspective is that I write from the heart, and I can’t really get into someone else’s story. And right now, being stuck at home, you have so little experience to draw from. It’s actually quite hard to write these positive, uplifting songs, because actually, the experiences that you're going through on a day to day basis, you know, you they don't have that same flavour.”

There is something that’s helping, though: a secret spot near Los Angeles, where he divides his time. “It’s remote and kind of weird, and I’m going to go there for three days and write. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to it. I found it via a YouTube video. It’s got some very interesting locals who live there, it’s sort of backwards when it comes to technology. It feels like you’re going back in time when you’re there. But I don’t want to give it away.”

Another source of inspiration for his second album is the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ back catalogue. “I grew up on their album Bytheway. And during lockdown I've been knee deep in their stuff. I’ve watched every documentary, every video. And I find their lead guitarist John Frusciante just fascinating.”

Has he spoken to Frusicante?

“I f______ wish,” snorts Tomlinson.

Surely someone as well-known as Tomlinson could easily get in touch?

“No, honestly, I think he’s too cool for that. He’s not into that kind of thing.”

Tomlinson’s passion for all things rock is also spurring on a side hustle he picked up as a judge on the X Factor in 2018: managing an all-female rock band via his own imprint on Simon Cowell’s Syco label. While the group disbanded before releasing their first single, and Tomlinson split from Syco earlier this year, the singer is keen to nurture some more talent.

“I'm not gonna lie, my process with my imprint through Syco, it became challenging and it became frustrating at times,” Tomlinson says a little wearily. “The kind of artists that I was interested in developing – because I genuinely feel through my experience in One Direction, you know, one of the biggest f______ bands, I feel like I've learned a lot about the industry – they weren’t ready-made. So I had lots of artists that I took through the door that were rough and ready, but major labels want to see something that works straight away. I found that a little bit demotivating. I love her and she's an incredible artist, but not everyone is a Taylor Swift.”

Tomlinson spends much of his free time scouting new talent either on YouTube, Reddit or BBC Introducing – he’s currently a huge fan of indie Brighton band, Fickle Friends. His dream is to manage an all-female band playing instruments. “Because there's no one in that space. And I know eventually if I don't do it, someone else will!”

Before he drives off to rehearsals, we chatter about how much he's been practising his guitar playing, and how he can't wait to take the whole team working at his favourite grassroots venue, The Dome in Doncaster, out ice-skating after he performs there on his rescheduled tour. “Because I've got skills,” he says, and I can hear his chest puff.

And then I ask the question every retired member of One Direction has been batting off ever since they broke up in 2015, after Zayn Malik quit. Rumours that his bandmates saw him as a Judas went wild after some eagle eyes fans noticed they’d unfollowed him on Instagram. Payne, Tomlinson, Horan and Styles have barely mentioned him since. Recently, however, they re-followed him, and Payne has teased that a One Direction reunion is on the cards.

So: might 2021 be the year of resurrection?

“I thought you were going to ask something juicier!” say Tomlinson witheringly. “Look, I f______ love One Direction. I'm sure we're going to come back together one day, and I'll be doing a couple of One Direction songs in my gig. I always do that, so that's not alluding to any reunion or anything. But, I mean, look, I'm sure one day we'll get back together, because, you know, we were f______ great.”

#telegraph uk #press #louis tomlinson #241120 #its FULL of stunts as telegraph usually goes #stunt mention #Eleanor Halls

273 notes · View notes

louistomlinsoncouk · 4 years ago

Link

“I’ve just watched loads of s___ TV,” he says after a long pause. “The Undoing is decent, isn’t it?”

Far from aimless, however, today the singer is full of beans, cheerily shushing his barking dog as he potters about his North London home where he lives with his best friend from home, Oli, and his girlfriend, the model Eleanor Calder.

Was he left reeling, I ask, unable to perform at such a crucial moment?

Sure, I say, but the last year can’t have been easy. Didn’t he feel like his purpose had popped?

In return, Tomlinson is good to them. Last month he even promised some new music, saying that he’d written four songs in four days. Does this mean that a second album is on the way?

It must be draining, I say, the weight of expectation in both the media and across his fanbase, to be a spokesperson for grief and hardship. To have tragedy prelude everything he does and says.

“Honestly, it’s part of being from Doncaster as well, I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want.”

There is something that’s helping, though: a secret spot near Los Angeles, where he divides his time to see his four-year-old son, Freddie, whom he shares with his ex Briana Jungwirth, a stylist. “It’s remote and kind of weird, and I’m going to go there for three days and write. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to it. I found it via a YouTube video. It’s got some very interesting locals who live there, it’s sort of backwards when it comes to technology. It feels like you’re going back in time when you’re there. But I don’t want to give it away.”

Has he spoken to Frusicante?

“I f______ wish,” snorts Tomlinson.

Surely someone as well-known as Tomlinson could easily get in touch?

“No, honestly, I think he’s too cool for that. He’s not into that kind of thing.”

So: might 2021 be the year of resurrection?

#louis tomlinson #24nov20

121 notes · View notes

hlupdate · 4 years ago

Link

“I’ve just watched loads of s___ TV,” he says after a long pause. “The Undoing is decent, isn’t it?”

Far from aimless, however, today the singer is full of beans, cheerily shushing his barking dog as he potters about his North London home where he lives with his best friend from home, Oli, [...].

Was he left reeling, I ask, unable to perform at such a crucial moment?

Sure, I say, but the last year can’t have been easy. Didn’t he feel like his purpose had popped?

In return, Tomlinson is good to them. Last month he even promised some new music, saying that he’d written four songs in four days. Does this mean that a second album is on the way?

It must be draining, I say, the weight of expectation in both the media and across his fanbase, to be a spokesperson for grief and hardship. To have tragedy prelude everything he does and says.

“Honestly, it’s part of being from Doncaster as well, I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want.”

There is something that’s helping, though: a secret spot near Los Angeles, [...] “It’s remote and kind of weird, and I’m going to go there for three days and write. I don’t know why I’m so drawn to it. I found it via a YouTube video. It’s got some very interesting locals who live there, it’s sort of backwards when it comes to technology. It feels like you’re going back in time when you’re there. But I don’t want to give it away.”

Has he spoken to Frusicante?

“I f______ wish,” snorts Tomlinson.

Surely someone as well-known as Tomlinson could easily get in touch?

“No, honestly, I think he’s too cool for that. He’s not into that kind of thing.”

So: might 2021 be the year of resurrection?

#louis tomlinson #241120 #lt livestream #e and f mentions from the journalist removed where there is [...]#nothing altered from louis #stunt mention #at the link

101 notes · View notes

physicistdyke · 4 years ago

Text

Transed his own Gender

Dr. Harold P. Coomer is trans, he's worked his whole academic career to make his body just how he wanted it. Now, at age 46, he finally has an opportunity with his work at Black Mesa to get bottom surgery. But his colleague and friend Dr Bubby, who doesn’t know anything about gender besides the strict hetero-normative and patriarchal culture of STEM, objects to the new and risky procedure while questioning Coomers desires to put his own safety at risk all for a silly gen-dar.

rb >> likes!

Link to ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25611880

or read under cut

It was both viciously empowering and crumbled him to the core. He had a power over his own body, rare for the here and now in this space and time. Harold had felt this way many times before, an advantage that should be a right. He could relieve his own suffering, but at what cost? The lingering thoughts would stick with him, latching on like a parasite, a cancer. A hand on his shoulder brought him back into his body, a body he’s worked so hard for. He turned back to see his colleague, stoic in expression. Dr Bubby was not good at expressing emotions in a conventional manner, but other characteristics helped to convey what his face could not. Right now the pressure he was applying with his hand on Coomer’s shoulder mixed with how he avoided eye contact told Coomer that Bubby was afraid. Bubby was afraid for Coomer. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Bubby started. Coomer was about to reply, but Bubby’s own racing mind cut him off. “It’s a very experimental procedure you know, I was reading over the cybernetics reports-“ “Please Bubby,” Coomer turned and looked up at him straight on, he saw worry in his friend’s eyes, “I am fully aware of what I’m doing, I have done just as much research as you.” He said these words with confidence. He didn’t want to hurt his friends feelings more, but sometimes Bubby’s ego got the best of him. Bubby took a step back from the other man, as if the eye contact burned him. Harold was one of the few people Bubby could look in the eyes without that feeling, but now it felt like the island of experience between them was distant. He averted his gaze back to a corner of the room, reconsidering his own words and constructing a sentence most logical for the situation. “I just don’t understand your desire to keep going forward with this, you’re already well respected enough.” *** ____________________________________

This would be Coomer’s first procedure since he had met Bubby. The most recent before that was the operation on his chest, he had snagged that opportunity while working on his post doctorate. That was an experimental procedure at the time too, but Coomer’s endless tap of kindness and intelligence had been able to convince his friends in the medical department and their higher ups that this was an ethically sound decision. Even though Coomer himself never wished to study human anatomy, much preferring engineering and physics to biology, the circumstances of his life pushed him to learn more then he wanted to know. This study began the second he got to college, an unaware and afraid young man, he used his own body as test subject. Mixing concoctions that transformed his body and mind. By the time he was applying for his masters, he was a new man. All the insecurity and anxiousness of his younger years behind him, he now shone like the star he was. From there he made incremental and bolder steps in the process of his transition; first with the top surgery as mentioned before, and now, at the age of 46, he was arranging what would hopefully be his final procedure. Black Mesa did a lot of things, and apparently mechanical prosthetics was now one of them. The new cybernetics department had already made wondrous strides in terms of arms and legs, restoring ability to those in their ranks that needed it. These semi-mechanical, semi-flesh prosthetics fascinated Dr. Coomer to no end. About 8 months ago he had started wandering into the department more often. Finding himself asking passing questions to colleagues, asking questions from a genuine place in the heart. Dr. Coomer was open to talk about his experiences as a trans man, but a majority of his peers were always too uncomfortable to ask. They saw it as an oddity within a good man, he saw it as something that helped make him the good man he was today. The gap in that understanding stung Coomer sometimes, and the feeling of isolation sometimes crept up on him. But his smile and the passion for his studies often helped to bring him away from that space. It was about 2 months ago when he picked out a particular team within the cybernetics department, and started to have more serious conversations with them. From a scientific perspective, everyone involved was enthralled by the prospect. Combine that with Coomer's consistent fascination, confidence, and consent, they were fast approaching a place where action could be taken. _____________________________________

Bubby had noticed his friend's increased absence from their own department. Missing from collaboration meetings, not in his office or nearest break room for their usual chit chat. Coomer was an unlikely but much appreciated friend to Bubby. They had met about 10 years prior, when Bubby was nearly done the process of being titled 'a successful prototype'. Coomer was an unexpected ray of sunshine in Bubby's life. Showing him a kindness and understanding Bubby never had the luxury to live with. Being regarded as a test subject and experiment your whole life does that to you. ____________________________________

Bubby didn't know what being trans meant when Coomer first brought it up with him. Bubby, in reality, didn't even know what gender meant. He had a vague grasp on the fact that gender existed. The knowledge tubes his creators attached to him all those years ago mostly skipped out on all topics of liberal arts, humanity, sociology, etc, except for the most minimum required for him to be a somewhat functioning social life form. But what Dr Bubby lacked in those nuanced interactions and social rules, he well made up for in his ability to observe and form logical conclusions (according to his own account). He was aware of the fact that some people were referred to differently. Out of Black Mesas staff, a small minority were referred to as ‘she’. This group had a tendency to dress different from the rest of the staff, occasionally donning skirts and dresses, and varying from person to person on pigment applied to the face. Bubby viewed these people as his equal (or more so equally below him as the rest of his male co-workers, as he was still an egotistical jerk), but he couldn’t help but notice the trends surrounding this group. Bubby heard the back handed remarks, the passing jokes, the tone of superiority made by some of his male colleagues about the fairer sex. He saw the anxiety in his female colleagues when this attitude approached them. He noted the equal distribution of men to women in the ranks of visiting grad students and post docs, yet the stark lack of women in actual professional roles at Black Mesa. He saw the complacency in nearly all of his male colleagues regarding the generally accepted treatment words the ‘fairer sex’. Nearly all his male colleagues. Coomer and Bubby had been working together for a few years, and a friendship (or the closest thing to that someone could get to with Bubby) had started to really solidify. They were on lunch together, discussing the published panels from a recent convention on nuclear physics. Bubby was particularly fascinated in some newly publish findings on strange Beta decay experiments. He excitedly postulated the possibilities the results could mean for the future of the strong nuclear force. Dr Coomer was as supportive and thoughtful towards his friend as ever, but something else seemed to be occupying his thoughts. “Did you read over the notes from the panel on gender issues in STEM?” Dr. Coomer eventually interrupted when his lingering thoughts became too present. This caught Bubby off guard, but he quickly caught up with his colleagues present state of mind, “I didn’t because I saw it as trivial. I mean, it was a convention on nuclear physics, why waste time with trivial matters of progressing social etiquette?” Coomer furrowed his brow and Bubby realized he had perhaps chosen the wrong words, “Well Professor, if you had spent the time to read, you’d realize it was barely focusing on Progressing social etiquette at all. The man they chose to lead the panel was as backwards thinking about women’s role in science as the Pythagoreans were about irrational numbers.” Bubby shuffled in his chair with slight discomfort, he was never put up to the task of discussing matters like this, “Ah, yes. Well that is a shame. Pretty fucked up too… But I’m sure women will find a way to still contribute valuable findings.” “It’s difficult enough already, I’m sick of this two steps forwards one step back mentality.” Coomer was submerged in his own thoughts, barely acknowledging Bubby’s weak response. “Things have barely changed since my undergrad days. I’m lucky I managed to survive the few years I did in academia being perceived as a woman.” Bubby processed this as neatly and quickly as he could. Gender could be changed. ____________________________________

***“What do you mean by respect, Professor?” Dr. Coomer asked, cooling his own emotions. “You know what I mean, you’re already perceived as a man! You’re no longer are seen as a woman and you’re no longer discriminated against. I admire that you’ve figured out a way to jump the backwards system but-“ he was cut off by Coomer. “Bubby,” Coomer looked at his friend, trying to fathom what the hell had gone wrong in that ‘perfect’ brain of his. He finally gathered his thoughts, “I’m not, trans- because I wanted to be respected. I’m trans because I just am.” Bubby ruminated on his colleagues response, “Well fine, if not for the respect then it’s simply conformity! It makes complete sense Harold, science can be a real dog eat dog world. Anything that makes you separate from the norm is just a weight to be lifted.” “What the actual hell are you talking about professor” a tone of anger and disappointment filled Coomer’s voice, “This is some really problematic thinking you know.” Bubby gave a huff and deepened his gaze to the corner of the room, he mulled over his thoughts and tried to choose his words carefully. As much as he hated to admit it, he really knew very little about gender, but his drive to maintain the upper hand kept him from admitting that. He decided drawing from personal experience was the most logical argument to make, “I mean, that’s why I’m a man. I guess I just always assumed it was the same for you.” Coomer’s look of annoyance turned to one of intrigue, it was rare for Bubby to share his more personal thoughts and feelings. Coomer took this opportunity to prod his colleague, “Is that so Dr Bubby?”, he knew how to get Bubby in a more comfortable mindset, “Then tell me, do you feel like a man?”. “What the fuck is that suppose to mean?” Bubby sneered, “I don’t feel like a man, I just present like one. What the hell does feeling have to do with gender?” Coomer chuckled a little, realizing his friend wasn’t a complete bigot, just an idiot. “I say Dr. Bubby, it looks like your creators really didn’t connect any gender tubes to that brain of yours. Did they tell you the you were a man?” Bubby was feeling increasingly exposed and embarrassed but kept his composure. “Those bastards didn’t tell me anything! At least not directly. I popped out of the tube and they just started calling me ‘he’ and I just rolled with it. I thought that happened to everyone! Until I met you,” Bubby finally returned his gaze to Coomer. Slight tones of confusion, fear, and anger made up his expression, “I could tell that it sucked to be a woman, regardless of their extra freedom of expression with clothes and things like that. So it made sense to me that you changed your presentation to avoid the ridicule.” Coomer enjoyed pressing Bubby’s ‘think deeply about something other than science’ button, but refrained and decided to give some explanation. “Bubby, that really isn’t how gender works in the slightest! I mean for some people they’re content with what ever gender they were assigned at birth, but even then they have some sort of emotional attachment or sense of that gender. And for others, like me, they feel a stronger connection to some other gender and they make what ever adjustments feels right for them. With everyone it can be pretty fluid throughout their lifetimes, but it’s all very personal. What gender do you feel Bubby?” “I don’t feel like any fucking gender! I feel like a scientist, can’t I just be that?” Bubby tapped his foot and rolled the hem of his lab coat between his fingers. He was glad he was talking about this with Harold, but it still felt awkward as hell. “Of course you can Dr. Bubby!” Coomer beamed at his colleagues honesty, “Though I don’t think you could be considered trans though, you were assigned Scientist at Birth™.” Cooper laughed at his own joke, which in turn made Bubby relax and smile a bit himself. Coomer placed a hand on Bubby’s sholder, “Ah, but in all seriousness. It’s completely valid to not be a man or a woman. There are plenty of people like that! And it’s also ok to not have any gender at all! You can feel and express yourself however you want to Bubby, and at least I’ll be here to fully support you. I hope you’re willing to do the same for me.” Bubby looked to the side in a sheepish but calmer way, “Well, of course Harold. I guess I didn’t fully understand how much this meant to you. I’m, um, sorry for speaking over you about this.” A sorry from Bubby was a rare commodity. “It’s alright. You were worried about my well being and I’m grateful for that! You were miss informed and kind of stupid, but I’m glad you were willing to open up and have an honest conversation with me.” Bubby smiled and his gaze was finally able to align with Coomer’s again, the feeling of safety retuned and his anxieties took a back seat. “Well, if it’s alright with you, I’d love to help you and the cybernetics department in your research and development. Learn more about the cutting edge of gender confirming surgery and whatnot.” Coomer beamed at the support, “Ah! I’d be happy to include you in Project Black Mesa Super Shlong 3000! I can grab some of the blueprints we’ve been working on right now!” Coomer left Bubby’s office in an excited hurry and would return shortly. In that time Bubby reflected on the conversation. Not needing to be a man or a woman? Not needing any gender at all? That sounded really nice to Bubby. He still had a lot to learn about life outside of Black Mesa and the apparently fluid rules of gender, but he was glad he Coomer there to fill in the gaps.

#hlvrai #half life vr but the ai is self aware #coomer #dr coomer #bubby #dr bubby #bubby hlvrai #coomer hlvrai #this is a lil silly #Tried not to make it too angsty but also it has a lot of serious talk about gender identity #two fics in one year?#This is a new record #boomer #They're not explicitly dating but I gave their relationship the qualities of a real relationship so #Also don't dead brain come at me thinking I feel how bubby feels about gender #he's literally framed as wrong in his ideas but is shown compassion and capability to grow #like we all are

109 notes · View notes

marjanefan · 4 years ago

Text

Bewitched, bothered, bewildered- thoughts on‘The trial of Elizabeth Gadge’

’The trial of Elizabeth Gadge’ remains one of the most underrated and under discussed episodes of ‘Inside No.9’. However Reece Shearsmith has said on several occasions that this is one of his favourite episodes and there is much in the episode to enjoy and discuss

The episode concerns the trial of Elizabeth Gadge (Ruth Sheen- more of whom later) for witchcraft in the village of Little Happens at some point of the mid seventeenth century. The trial is overseen by local magistrate Sir Andrew Pike (brilliantly played by David Warner) who has summoned witch finders Mr Warren (Reece Shearsmith) and Mr Clarke (Steve Pemberton)

Please be aware this essay contains spoilers for the episode

NB spoilers for episode below

Before discussing the episode It is worth first looking at why the Seventeenth century was the peak period of witch trials in England, as it was in Europe (and North America later). The reason for this has been argued to be due to the religious and socio-political upheavals of the Reformation, counter reformation and resulting wars of religion and the beginnings of what we understand as the ‘nation state’ of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is worth noting witch trials in England became more common after James I came to power. James I as James VI of Scotland had a fascination with supposed witchcraft, setting up a royal commission into witchcraft, personally overseeing the torture of suspected witches and writing the Daemonologie in 1599 (As an aside-there is an interesting link here to another Inside No.9 episode ‘The Understudy’ which references ‘Macbeth’. Shakespeare included the characters of the three witches and references to witchcraft to specifically appeal to James I). It does not take a psychologist to read that James I’s fascination with /fear of witches may have stemmed from his issues with his mother Mary Queen of Scots because of her Catholic faith and her portrayal as a dangerous woman due to her alleged involvement in the murder of James’ father and the threat that she might one day try and reclaim her throne from James. There has been an argument that one of the factors in the amount of witch trials and number of women convicted in Scotland and England during the period was a result of anxiety around female power after the reigns of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots (and indeed Catherine de Medici in France). Almost 90 % of those executed for witchcraft in England were women- higher than any other European country. Of course it is no coincidence that witch trial numbers were at their highest during the period of the English Civil war and Commonwealth with their social traumas and religious disruptions. As someone with a keen interest in the history of witchcraft Reece Shearsmith would be aware of all of this and it shows in the care and attention to detail in the script. Shearsmith noted that it was predominantly women’s life that were on the line in a recent Guardian article about the inspirations for the episode where he also noted that the inclusion of Snowflake the mouse in the episode was also inspired by reading accounts of these trials.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/apr/24/inside-no-9-bbc-steve-pemberton-reece-shearsmith-inspirations

This may be why seventeenth century witch trials (and witch anxiety) have proved a fruitful source for art during periods of trauma and political repression in the twentieth century. There are the example of Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ which uses the Salem witch trials to explore McCartyism and Carl Theodore Dreyer’s ‘Day of Wrath’ which uses the backdrop of seventeenth century witch trials to explore the Nazi occupation of Denmark and oppression of women. The motives and attitudes of those who accuse and punish suspected witches are put on trial as much the accused. This tradition continues with recent films such as the extraordinary 2017 Zambian film ‘I am not a witch’ which explores the ways women and girls around the world still have to deal with accusations of witchcraft and the resulting violence and oppression (as an aside the film also uses humour and surrealism to tackle this topic).

Two particular films have undoubtably had an influence on ‘The Trial of Elizabeth Gadge’. The first is the 1968 Hammer film ‘Witchfinder general’ starring Vincent Price as the real-life witch hunter Matthew Hopkins. It is revealed Mr Warren’s first name is Matthew, which must be a reference to the film. Like Hopkins, Mr Warren enjoys his work as a witch finder both because it brings him great power over others along with financial gain. Indeed the whole episode pays tribute to the folk horror genre of late 60s early 70s British cinema which both Pemberton and Shearsmith have spoken of as a major influence on their work over their careers. Another film which also has an influence is the 1922 Danish film ‘Haxan’ which Reece Shearsmith has narrated live on more than one occasion. He discussed the film and it’s influence on the episode in a 2018 Guardian article (linked below). One interesting feature of this film is that it uses humour to explore the ridiculous nature of belief in witchcraft. Shearsmith picked up and comments on this.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/08/reece-shearsmith-league-of-gentlemen-interview

Elizabeth Gadge fits the narrative we have had passed down about who the majority of victims of witch trials are. She is an elderly woman who has become ‘surplus’ in her society and an inconvenience to her family , particularly her son in law Thomas Nutter (Jim Howick). She has had to resort to selling herself to Richard Two Shoes (Paul Kaye) in order to pay the rent her son in law insists on charging her. In spite of all this she conducts herself with great dignity during her trial and manages to stand up to Mr Warren making a joke about his beard resembling a woman’s private parts much to the amusement of the court room. Her pleas to both her daughter and Richard Good Shoes to try and save her are genuinely affecting. Ruth Sheen delivers a terrific performance. Reece Shearsmith related in the recent Guardian article she was specifically chosen for the part, and that her performance makes the audience care about her fate.

While the tone of the courtroom scene are played as comic, the scene of Mr Warren’s interrogation are harrowing and illustrate that accusations of witchcraft, however ridiculous they are to us today, led to horrific violence against of thousands of innocent people (these scenes remind me personally of the scenes of the torture of Herlof's Marte in ‘Day of Wrath and of the elderly woman in ‘Haxan- a scene Reece Shearsmith commented on in the Guardian article).

The episode also suggests another reason, not often explored in scholarly literature, for witch trials. Namely entertainment and some sort of attention and distraction from the boredom and drudgery of life in these times. Sir Andrew Pike expresses delight that the trial has brought attention to Little Happens and that the neighbouring town of Much Happens will be envious. He also is pleased the trial could be ‘bigger than Pendle’ (a reference to the infamous Pendle witch trial of 1612). Sir Andrew takes an unhealthy pleasure in proceedings, lapping up the attention and the power he has been given over the life of an elderly woman. He even suggests extending proceedings by trying to accuse Elizabeth Gadge’s daughter. He goes from sentencing Elizabeth to death to advertising tickets for her burning without missing a beat. George Waterhouse, Richard Two-Shoes and Thomas Nutter are all shown to be selfish (and abusive) with their own reasons for wanting Elizabeth out of the way.

Reece Shearsmith obviously enjoyed portraying Mr Warren and he manages to show him as ridicious and vain while being incredibly dangerous and cruel that makes him a truly chilling character. His performance here is one of the most underrated in the series.

One question that I want to explore is why does Elizabeth Gadge kill Mr Clarke after he saves her. Steve Pemberton gives a tremendous performance as Mr Clarke, subtly conveying both his growing distain and concern about the system he is part of and at Mr Warren's behaviour (Reece Shearsmith gave particular praise for Steve's performance on the soundlcoud commentary of the episode and at the BFI screening with Steve returning this praise for Reeces performance as Mr Warren). Mr Clarke may come to realise that the work he is involved leads to the torture and killing of innocent people and how dangerous Mr Warren is. But he himself has benefitted from this system. as he notes. Rather than properly confront and address this system, he chooses to leave it in place and kill his colleague (who presumably was also a good friend at one point as his final words to Mr Warren reveal). He behaves in a highly self -righteous manner about it, asserting he has rid the world of a great evil. He also ensures he gets paid for the trial (I accept he gives Mr Warren’s fee to Elizabeth Gadge). It could be said he portrays himself as a ‘male saviour’ to Elizabeth, underestimating her agency. In his own way, Mr Clarke enjoys the power he has over Elizabeth’s life and sees her as someone who things are done to (even if it is apparently saving her life) just as much as Mr Warren and Sir Andrew. No wonder Elizabeth enjoys dispatching him.

But not only does Elizabeth Gadge avenge herself on Mr Warren and Mr Clarke, she also avenges herself on the village that put her on trial. Her final act before departing is to use the flames from Mr Warren’s pyre to set fire to the gathered crowd and the village. For me the end of this episode could almost said to be an act of vengeance not just on behalf of all the many accused characters (usually female) who usually end up killed in these stories but on behalf of all those killed in the witch trials of this period. This witch was not for burning.

Finally I just want to praise Yves Barre for his wonderful costumes for this episodes. He manages to convey the class system within Little Happens (with Sir Andrew and George Waterhouse being better dressed than most of the village) and his gorgeous costumes for Mr Warren and Mr Clarke convey how well they have done out of being witch hunters financially (their clothes are obviously well made with expensive materials and trimmings) while conveying their ideological commitment (their clothes are black and austere).

As has been noted 'The trial of Elizabeth Gadge' suffered from being the episode that directly followed onn from 'The 12 days of Christine'. However as I have hopefully shown it is an episode which continues in a fine tradition of exploring the witch trials of the seventeenth century and which brings something new and thought provoking to this tradition

#inside no 9 #reece shearsmith #steve pemberton #ruth sheen #david warner

10 notes · View notes

historicalemily · 5 years ago

Text

studying history at university

hi all!! I get a lot of questions about studying history at university! I’m really passionate about this - a lot of people told me when I decided to study history that it is useless, a waste of time/money, and irrelevant. Lets just say they clearly didn’t study history! I just finishing my BA and am about to start my MA in history and I’ve learned more about myself and the world we live in over the past four years than my entire life. I compiled some of the most frequent questions I get so hopefully it will help some people who are considering history :)

1. What’s being a history major like/what is the curriculum? (@we-all-become-stories)

I think the curriculum for each program is different, but I can talk about mine! My university (and most, I assume) encourage students to learn outside of their specific time/location, so in my program you had to do at least two classes in 4/5 areas offered: Modern European history, Medieval history, East Asian/Chinese history, American History, and transnational history. Obviously I went to a small school so we were sadly lacking in African history, south american history, and middle eastern history (though we did get a great islamic studies prof my last year who taught 1-2 islamic history courses a year). History programs also emphasize language learning - to graduate I had to do at least 3 semesters of a language - a lot of history students end up doubling in their chosen language.

2. Is it papers for every class, or are there other assignments? (@we-all-become-stories)

I’m not gonna lie - it’s mostly papers. This is what you’ll find with most humanities programs. I did have a few non-paper projects - I created posters for projects in my intro to medieval manuscripts class and my medieval book arts class. There are also quite a few presentations - the primary mediums for transmitting new historical arguments/information are through conference presentations and articles/books, so the curriculum mimics this!

3. What do you do with a history degree? (@we-all-become-stories)

This is probably the question i get most frequently - the mentality of college/university has turned into essentially job training rather than learning for the sake of learning. A history degree definitely falls more into the second category of learning for the sake of learning because it doesn’t lead directly into one career. If you go to school for accounting, you’re going to be an accountant. If you go to school for history, you most likely won’t be a historian. BUT that doesn’t mean that you can’t get a job with a history degree - just the opposite! History is one of the most versatile majors - you see a lot of history majors in museums and archives, in law schools, in politics, and in newspapers. It teaches you critical writing and thinking skills - you are able to process large amounts of information and synthesize it! These skills will serve you in whatever job you want after you graduate :)

4. What kind of extracurricular activities can I do in high school if I want to study history/humanities? Most extracurricular activities are STEM. (@supernct)

Honestly, this is not an easy question to answer... in high school, I didn’t do many in school extracurricular activities - I did a sport and was a part of a couple clubs, but nothing that stands out as being particularly history-related. Outside of school, however, is where I got history experience! I’m lucky that my hometown has a great history museum and when I was in high school I started volunteering there! If you are just going into high school, they probably won’t have you work with the historical collections, but you’ll be able to see history in action - how the displays are set up, how tours are given, etc. I eventually moved to work with the collections itself, doing annual condition reports on historical artifacts. If you are looking for a history-specific extracurricular activity, I would definitely suggest volunteering at a local museum!

5. How do you cope? I've been studying for 3 years but I still feel like I don't know anything and the essays are killing me. (@drunkwombats)

History is definitely not an easy major. It encompasses literally all of human history, so something that helped me ease the dread of not knowing everything is accepting that I won’t be able to know everything - it’s just impossible. And you probably know a lot more than you realize! Ah yes. The papers. They can be lethal. My best advice is, when possible, to write the papers on topics you’re genuinely interested in! When you take upper-level classes, usually you will be able to pick your paper topics - if you are passionate about gender studies, or economics, or wars, or whatever, write your final paper on that! The papers will still be a lot of work, as all finals are, but you will actually be interested in the topic, which make it feel less painful (at least in my opinion!)

66 notes · View notes

lt2archive · 4 years ago

Link

The former One Direction star and solo artist reveals his plans to manage woman rock bands, and tackles those pesky One Direction rumours

24 November 2020 • 4:05pm

“I’ve just watched loads of s___ TV,” he says after a long pause. “The Undoing is decent, isn’t it?”

He's getting ready to rehearse an exciting one-off gig that will be live-streamed from a secret London location on December 12, announced today exclusively via the Telegraph. The proceeds of the night will be split across four charities: The Stagehand Covid-19 Crew Relief Fund and Crew Nation, Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice and Marcus Rashford’s charity FareShare, to help end child poverty. Tomlinson will also be donating money to his own touring crew, many of which have been out of work since March. “I've been incredibly worried about them and felt incredibly powerless, so wanted to give something back.”

The gig also means a great deal to Tomlinson on a personal level. His first ever tour as a solo artist, to promote his debut solo album WALLS, was cut short back in March after just two concerts in Spain and Mexico. It was an album he’d spent five years working on: a guitar-led project that ruptured with the preppy pop anthems of One Direction, inspired instead by Tomlinson’s love for Britpop.

Was he left reeling, I ask, unable to perform at such a crucial moment?

Sure, I say, but the last year can’t have been easy. Didn’t he feel like his purpose had popped?

In return, Tomlinson is good to them. Last month he even promised some new music, saying that he’d written four songs in four days. Does this mean that a second album is on the way?

It must be draining, I say, the weight of expectation in both the media and across his fanbase, to be a spokesperson for grief and hardship. To have tragedy prelude everything he does and says.

“Honestly, it’s part of being from Doncaster as well, I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want.”

Too many incredible memories to mention but not a day goes by that I don't think about how amazing it was. @NiallOfficial @Harry_Styles @LiamPayne @zaynmalik . So proud of you all individually.

Has he spoken to Frusicante?

“I f______ wish,” snorts Tomlinson.

Surely someone as well-known as Tomlinson could easily get in touch?

“No, honestly, I think he’s too cool for that. He’s not into that kind of thing.”

So: might 2021 be the year of resurrection?

Tickets for Louis Tomlinson Live In London are on sale tomorrow from 4pm

#lt live from london #nov. 24 2020 #press #the telegraph #nov 2020

2 notes · View notes

jawdroppinq · 4 years ago

Text

helloooo , it’s bøffy again with bby #2 , who is . . . arguably much more established , so i’ll apologize for the length of this before we even begin ! with that out of the way , feel free to give this a “like” if you’d be interested in plotting , and i’ll msg you via tumblr or discord as soon as possible !

stats.

name: valencia montero méndez .

nickname(s): val .

social media username(s): valmont .

age: twenty .

gender identity: cis female .

pronouns: she/her .

sexuality: pansexual .

birthday: 27 december 1999 .

zodiac sign: capricorn .

myer-briggs: estp .

place of birth: madrid, spain .

height: 168 cm (5’6”) .

house: quinby .

major: business .

year: sophomore .

labels: the philophobic, the spitfire, the impecunious, the loose cannon, the firebrand .

positive: adventurous, coquettish, loyal, self-reliant, valiant .

neutral: blunt, furtive, introspective, pragmatic, skeptical .

negative: avaricious, cynical, irreverent, mischievous, reckless .

pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sundcynights/roleplay-boolies/valencia-montero/

aesthetic.

jet black faux leather jackets, tears of frustration, no-strings-attached hookups to distract from chronic loneliness, showcasing crimson manicures by extending one’s middle finger, becoming anti-love, numbing one’s pain with bad habits, lace-up combat boots, egotistical attitudes concealing low self-esteem, rebelling against authority, collections of sentimental photos, looks that could kill, midnight adventures, snapping photos to preserve memories, maroon-tinted lips and heavy eyeliner, holding grudges, impulsively cutting one’s own hair, showing unspoken affection through actions, insults diluted with sarcasm, 2 am drunken confessions, self-sabotaging one’s relationships, a bouquet of dead roses stored in an empty vodka bottle, firmly believing that rules were made to be broken .

biography.

TW: brief mentions of or allusions to death, grief, drugs, alcohol, panic disorder, and anxiety .

【𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔰𝔥𝔢 𝔠𝔬𝔪𝔢𝔰 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪, 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢'𝔰 𝔫𝔬 𝔰𝔞𝔳𝔦𝔬𝔯𝔰】

valencia montero was born on the 27th of december of 1999 in madrid, spain . with no older siblings to act as babysitters, she relished in the luxury of growing up an only child; nearly everyday was a “bring your child to work” event as she darted between the shelves of her father’s business: a small convenience store . with the family’s income boosted by her mother’s career as an attorney, it was a given that valencia would be supplied with whatever her heart desired . ultimately, she grew up with no need to differentiate between needs and wants .

while some parents wrote heartfelt notes on the napkins that they packed in their child’s lunchbox, valencia’s mother spoke to her daughter via copies of her favorite motivational poems . undoubtedly, her mother’s contagious passion for art easily spread to valencia . at the mere age of 4, her mother enrolled her in ballet classes, hoping to live vicariously through her as she was handed opportunities her self-made mother had only dreamed of . regardless of her mother’s selfish intentions, valencia fell in love with the art of dance, using it to express her joy and pain through much of her childhood .

shortly after valencia’s 13th birthday, tragedy would strike their household . her mother would become the casualty of a hit-and-run car accident . for days, valencia refused to leave her mother’s side, providing nearly round-the-clock care and attention until her mother was taken off life support . ultimately, she was hardly given time to grieve before she was expected to fill the gaping hole her mother left within the household by performing a juggling act in which she futilely attempted to balance the responsibilities of school with helping her father upkeep both his business and their home .

【𝔣𝔞𝔠𝔢 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔢 𝔞𝔫 𝔞𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔩 𝔟𝔲𝔱 𝔰𝔥𝔢'𝔰 𝔣𝔞𝔯 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱】

the remainder of secondary school passed by in a blur for valencia . she left the emotional outlet of dance behind, the memories of her mother all too fresh with each performance . thus, peer pressure and a general discontentment with her life left her resorting to alcohol or drugs to temporarily ease her emotional pain . unwilling to face her father in such conditions, she would avoid going home for days, crashing upon the couches of friends for multiple nights in a row . unable to maintain his gradually failing business by himself, her father had no choice but to close the small corner store and file bankruptcy .

the way of living that valencia had grown accustomed to throughout her childhood was seemingly uprooted overnight . with the two of them now relying on her father’s measly unemployment benefits to scrape by, lavish living was no longer an acceptable option. purchases were made on a need-by-need basis . valencia took a rapid tumble down the social ladder . it was impossible to maintain friendships based upon popularity and social status when she no longer had access to the financial means necessary to arrive at school in the trendiest outfits or with the newest iPhone .

as valencia observed the life of the wealthy elites from the sidelines, a small bug named jealousy bit her, injecting her with a resentful longing for their popularity, their material possessions, their mere comfort in life . thus, when the family’s pro bono attorney was finally able to reach a settlement (albeit, a disappointing one) regarding her mother’s death, valencia packed her bags to attend university in claremont, california . she saw an opportunity to reinvent herself in a different country, where nobody was aware of her background . she saw a flicker of hope that she could climb the social ladder yet again .

she arrived to the university as a slightly worse version of her old self . she was very materialistic and high maintenance, continuously expecting the best and nothing less out of herself and everyone else . she would only be seen in seemingly “designer” clothing and accessories, even if they were made of faux leather or were blatant knock-offs . she continuously sought to surround herself with friends of wealth, prestige, or fame . she had a role to play, and even if it was exhausting, she did everything in her power to showcase the image of herself that she wanted others to see .

ultimately, valencia’s one honest portrayal of herself in university was her academic plan . she declared a major in business with a minor in english . although it wasn’t uncommon to see her in class intoxicated by the effects of alcohol or drugs, she was making a genuine effort to graduate with a decent gpa . after feeling guilty and partly to blame over the loss of the family’s business, she entered university with the plan of someday opening up her own corporation, ensuring that she’d have the resources to take care of herself and her family without struggling .

personality.

unsurprisingly, largely surrounding herself with the wealthy while she’s tirelessly living as a double agent, desperately attempting to live amongst them while secretly attempting to stay afloat financially, has done nothing to tame her snappish attitude . ultimately, she’s prone to irritability, and exhaustion only exacerbates it . she lets small, insignificant inconveniences pile up until suddenly, she explodes, and whoever happens to be around at that moment becomes collateral damage .

she’s not one to back down from an argument or fight . she will stand her ground until her opponent merely gives up or walks away . always has an offensive remark at the tip of her tongue, and she typically can identify the telltale signs that she’s getting under someone’s skin . similarly, she’s prone to tears of frustration and/or anger . she will 100% shout at someone with tears falling from her eyes . embarrassing? yes, 100%, but not as much as forfeiting a conflict .

“'cause i feel like i’m the worst, so i always act like i’m the best” could describe her entire personality, honestly . she can occasionally have an aura of haughtiness and pompousness, but it’s mostly a self-defense mechanism to avoid actually having to confront her low self-esteem . ultimately, she’s continuously feeling as if she’s screwing things up and disappointing those around her, which leads to those lingering self-doubts concerning if anyone truly wants her around and truly loves and/or cares about her . despite the cold exterior, she’s actually a softie ? she just wants to feel loved and cared for .

she has a tendency to become absolutely panicked if she’s forced to acknowledge her insecurities . she has built up a whole wall of potential defense mechanisms solely to avoid having to cope with her problems – drugs, alcohol, sex, whatever . if someone blatantly makes note of her insecurities, she’ll be subjected to that heart-pounding, lump-of-anxiety in her throat, dizzying and exhausting sensation of just … pure and utter panic .

she doesn’t really express affection through straight-forward statements . frankly, hell will probably freeze over before you hear her speak the words, “i love you,” platonically or romantically . however, she does show affection in her own unique ways . directing playfully sarcastic quips towards someone, reassuringly squeezing someone’s hand, ensuring that someone gets home safely . ultimately, she’s an “actions speak louder than words,” type person, so if she cares about someone, she won’t waste meaningless words on them; she’ll prove it .

headcanons.

she drives a used 2007 toyota camry solara (claims it “has character”) . sleek red exterior, black interior, and a convertible top ? completely matches her aesthetic . furthermore, she’s the type of impulsive, reckless person you’d expect to drive like a speed demon, but she’s surprisingly cautious behind the wheel . that, along with a mild case of road rage, stems from the anxiety of not being completely in control of every situation occurring on the road . catch her cursing someone out every time she gets cut off and has to slam on her brakes .

red and black are her signature colors . every piece of clothing in her closet, every eyeshadow palette or lipstick tube in her cosmetics’ bag – it’s all red and black . her current style paints a stark contrast against her style choices growing up . catch her wearing every color in the rainbow in those old, sentimental childhood photos she keeps laying around .

she’s not a professional photographer by any means, and doesn’t even own a legit camera . however, she’s continuously reaching for her cellphone to snap photos, and always having to delete old photos to clear space for new ones . ultimately, she became a bit obsessed with preserving memories after losing her mother . so, her close friends can expect a minimum of one selfie or unexpected candid photo per visit . she has a box filled with nothing but photos and sentimental mementos at this point .

she speaks both english and spanish fluently . however, in the united states, she only uses spanish if she’s speaking to another native spanish-speaker, if there’s not a direct english translation for a word, or if she’s speaking too fast for her mind to truly catch up with what she’s saying . thus, unless one is a native spanish speaker, they’ll probably only hear her speak spanish when she’s angry .

her bad habits are definitely fueled by her bad moods . she’s definitely the type to attempt to drink her feelings away, end up feeling even worse, and send a plethora of embarrassing 2 am texts that she’ll probably have to give lackluster explanations for in the morning . similarly, she’ll attempt to combat loneliness with meaningless hook-ups . overall, she has no healthy responses to complex or negative feelings whatsoever .

wanted connections.

these are mostly . . . ideas that i thought of within like, 20 minutes ? so definitely not a comprehensive list or even a well-composed list ; it’s mostly just a few ideas to get us started ! that being said , i am very open when it comes to plots , so please feel free to approach me with any ideas you have as well ! ( also , just a side note , all of these are open to any muse (f/m/nb) !

give me those negative relationships ! ex: enemies , exes , a “will they , won’t they ?” that turned into a “definitely won’t” because one of them did something ridiculous . just . . . please, this girl is vindictive and petty and 100% will drag someone’s name through the dirt if she feels they’ve wronged her . also . . . flip the tables, give me friendships and relationships that she’s screwed up so now there’s just . . . anger on all sides ?

give me those platonic relationships ! ex: unlikely friends , someone who . . . tries . . . to be a good influence , some who she’s a bad influence on , old friends who grew apart for whatever reason , solely party friends . honestly ? she’s a loyal friend , but a frustrating & hard to handle friend . someone can give her the best advice and she’d still push it aside to do what she wants to do . probably comes up with wild plans and ideas that most people would raise their brow and ask “wtf?” in response to , but y’know , she can be persuasive . would and most likely has gotten into a fight or heated argument defending any of her friends in need .

give me those other miscellaneous relationships that we’re all in love with ! ex: flirtationships , friends with benefits , past hook-ups , unrequited crushes (on either side ! ) probably the closest things she’ll get to like a . . . real , committed relationship at this point in her life , but y’know , it’s cool , she’s got plenty of time ! give me those unrequited feelings that she’s totally oblivious to (or just takes advantage of & just . . . “unintentionally” complicates their whole life), those unrequited feelings on her part that just . . . give her a whirlwind of emotions that she ? has ? no ? idea ? how ? to ? deal ? with ? . similarly , give me those hookups & such that she just . . . calls up whenever she needs a distraction from whatever she’s feeling !

#hollis:intro #tw: death #tw: grief #tw: drugs #tw: alcohol #tw: panic disorder #tw: anxiety #i know this is a lot of triggers bt most of these topics are only hinted at or alluded to #that being said #if any of these topics trigger you feel free to message me for a brief description in which they are avoided altogether !

5 notes · View notes

hippocampus-studies · 5 years ago

Note

Hi maybe this is random but im in college and i am so stressed and anxious. How do you overcome study anxiety and the fear of failing. I feel so scared of doing badly and being stupid that i cant do anything sometimes. It feels like a self fulfilling prophecy. Any advice would help thanks✨

Hey!

I’ve dealt a lot with study anxiety over the years, and I know what if feels like to be paralyzed with the fear of failing. It seems like the cycle is pretty universal: you’re scared that you’re going to fail so you have trouble starting whatever you need to do which just makes you more scared and anxious than before. It’s something I’m still trying to work through, but I have some things I’ve picked up that have helped me.

Have realistic expectations of yourself

Fear of failing has a root in perfectionism. I think college is especially rough for perfectionists because the unfortunate truth is just about everyone fails once or twice in college. I’ve done so more times than I care to admit, and what I’ve realized is that it’s really easy to fall into all-or-nothing thinking about classes. Being 100% perfect and “on” all the time is not realistic, nor is it helpful to completely shut down when things begin to get difficult. Finding some sort of middle ground is not always easy, but I promise it’s achievable. For example maybe you have a bunch of things you need to get done today but they’re all difficult and you can’t figure out which one to do first, and the next thing you know it’s 8pm and you’ve gotten none of them done. Next time that happens, try to rank your to-do list in terms of what needs to get done right away, and what tasks are easiest/fastest to do. Start with the easy tasks to get momentum and then try and do at least one of the urgent tasks. That way even if you only get half of your to-do list done that day it still ends up being more than if you hadn’t started, and it’s likely that it’ll seem more manageable at that point.

Reach out for help

College has the deceptive ability to make you think that everyone around you is doing fine (especially if you’re in a competitive major or program) but I promise that you’re not the only one of your friends or classmates that is feeling this way. If you have peers in your life that you feel comfortable talking to about this, it can be extremely helpful to know that you are not alone in how you’re feeling. My only caveat is not to fall into what I call the Stress Olympics, which is where you and your stressed-out friends go around and try and compete to see who is the most stressed/under the most pressure. It’s not a helpful thing to do, and while venting to a trusted friend or friends can be great sometimes, if you catch you and your peers trying to one-up each other to see who is the most busy or who has had the least amount of sleep, you’re just going to end up making all of yourselves more stressed and worried than when you started.

It’s also worth it to talk to professors or school counselors. A lot of colleges offer counseling/life coaching, and most of them have been trained specifically to help with student-oriented issues (test anxiety, overcoming perfectionism, etc.).

Talking to professors can also be helpful! Most have had students that have felt overwhelmed by the workload or the subject matter, and most are also much more likely to work with you in terms of extensions for papers, extra tutoring, etc. if you go and talk to them in person. I know it’s really scary, (I still get nervous every time I go to office hours if I’m being honest) but most professors genuinely want to see you succeed in their class, and the more you’re open with them the more they’re willing to work with you.

Organization!

Okay I know there are about a million organization masterposts on studyblr so I won’t go too much into it, but there a couple things I’ve found to be very helpful. I’ve noticed that I end up getting more overwhelmed when I find dates for exams and projects creep up on me unexpectedly, so I have a set of calendars printed off (just from google, nothing too fancy) and the only thing I put on them is when all of my quizzes and exams are, when my projects are due, and other relevant dates for the semester (holidays, days off, etc.). I check it once a week when I put my weekly schedule together so I’m never caught off-guard by quizzes and exams that are a couple weeks down the road.

The other thing I do is make sure all my papers for my classes are organized. I have a pending box on my desk, and every couple of days I go through the papers in them and either recycle them or put them in a binder for the respective class. That way all my study material is in one place, and I’m not sifting through other classes when trying to study or work on a paper, nor do I lose papers at the bottom of my backpack.

Take care of yourself

Another thing that can lead to the paralyzation of procrastination is burnout. Taking care of yourself is incredibly hard in college, but it’s also one of the most important things you can do. Self-care usually falls into three broad categories:

Physical—this is usually what people think about when it comes to self-care: eating right, exercising, and getting enough sleep. The important thing to remember is that physical self-care looks different depending on the person. Not everyone has the energy to work out every day, and some people need more or less sleep than others. The important thing to do is listen to your body, especially when it comes to sleep—neuroscientists have shown that sleep is imperative for cognitive function like memory, so I would always advise getting the extra few hours of sleep instead of trying to cram in a little more studying.

Mental—taking care of your mental health is one of the most important things you can do to avoid burnout, but I also think it’s one of the hardest things to do. Humans are not machines; we cannot be switched on 24/7, and we need time to do things beside studying or working. My advice is to try and do at least one thing a day that you would classify as taking care of your mental health, whether it’s taking a 20 minute study break to watch rip vine compilations on youtube or taking an unplanned nap in the middle of the day. If you have some sort of a creative outlet like drawing or singing or cooking, it’s a great idea to try and carve out a little bit of time every week (even if it’s just half an hour) to express yourself creatively.

Social—whether you consider yourself to be more introverted or extroverted, spending time with people you care about is imperative to avoiding burnout. Finding friends in college can be hard, but I know that a great way to find people with common interests is to join clubs—specifically clubs that aren’t about your major or career. I’m in a voter advocacy club despite the fact that I’m a STEM major that will not academically benefit from being in the group. What’s infinitely more important is that I have a time once a week where I get to talk with friends about a subject that brings me joy and passion without ever bringing up my major or classes. Finding a group like that, whether it’s a friend group or a club or an intramural sports team, is going to help you in the long run far more than that extra hour of studying a week.

Just get started

This is the hardest thing on the list, in my opinion. The reason that studying anxiety can lead to procrastination is the mindset that you have do whatever you’re doing perfectly or it isn’t valid at all, and I can’t put into words how important it is to try and break that mindset. Just starting something, even if it isn’t perfect, or even if it’s starting to study later than you’d rather, is so, so much better than doing nothing. The moment you try and start doing what you’re doing, even if it isn’t perfect, is the moment you start to beat the perfectionist/procrastination mindset.

It’s easy to fall into the anxiety➡procrastination➡working too hard to make up for what you missed➡burnout➡procrastination cycle, but one of the best ways to break out of it is to not be too hard on yourself if you get anxious or procrastinate. Remind yourself that you’re human and you’re allowed to be imperfect. If you make mistakes or procrastinate along the way, make sure to speak gently to yourself—being unnecessarily harsh with yourself is only going to hurt you in the long run, and one of the best things you can do for yourself is to do your best to be kind to yourself.

These are just some things I’ve picked up over the last couple of years. If anyone else has something I missed please feel free to add it, but otherwise keep ur head up bby!! College is hard but I promise you’ll get through it 🌱

#i know how ur feeling anon i've been there before #but you're not alone and you can get thru it !!#my stuff #study #studyblr #studyspo #motivation #study motivation #studying #college #university #mental health #also I'm always around if you want someone to talk to :)

8 notes · View notes

lepetitebouchon · 5 years ago

Text

AN OPEN LETTER TO MY CURRENT EMPLOYER.

Greetings, Globe Spanning Company That Has Cult-Like Ideas, Language and Behavior (said with love, for those of you who know just how genuinely thankful I am for the job I have today).

I’ve been with you for over four years - 2020 marks entry into my fifth, but I won’t be getting to that milestone. I’m finally spreading my wings. I want to start this off positive: I have always felt thankful, grateful and blessed to have this job. As a company, you really do try to lead by example. You really do try to not treat your employees as numbers. You are generous (at times), inclusive (always), and provide some amazing benefits and perks for all employees.

I joined you at the end of my first career path, hired on precisely because my background was what you needed: an experienced fine dining pastry chef to bring professionalism and class when you all were trying something a little funky with how your company operated at night. I was promoted almost immediately to a supervisor. My management helped me through some of the worst experiences I had in my personal life, your company helped me get back into college, you provided a path to growth and development into upper management.

Even today, despite my grievances, I would recommend people to work with you...although, I will always be honest about the ups and downs I’ve both seen and experienced.

But let me tell you why I’m leaving. No one comes to my blog, so this won’t get far, it’s my own personal catharsis. I’ve tried to air these same thoughts to my current manager and district manager and it’s like talking to a wall. The gloves are now off and language filter switch has been flipped. This is long, so strap in.

When I said my previous career path was “experienced”, I wasn’t fucking joking. I’ve worked a myriad of jobs: I’ve managed millions of dollars for businesses and the professionals that run them as a merchant banker (meaning, I counted their cash, advised when appropriate, and made sure they spoke with the proper team member to further their ventures). I’ve worked in retail for a combined total (past and current) for probably 5-6 years. And more importantly and relevant to your company: I have roughly 8 or 9 years of kitchen experience, most of those as a pastry chef. I have worked as a team and solo, I have designed dessert menus for some locations, and managed small kitchen teams, I’ve worked for celebrity chefs and kitchens ranked in the upper 10 and 5, respectively in their style/region of cooking in the nation.

I graduated within the top percentile at my pastry school of choice, with honors.

With a brief rundown of my resume out of the way, let’s talk about “development”.

My path to upper management has been rocky. When originally approached about having my own store, it stemmed from my involvement in solving two monumental problems in my original store. Sadly, during this time I was going through a major life problem and couldn’t wait in line for my promotion. Our store was training a new store manager, a girl who started at a similar time as I was selected to be trained next, and I would come after her. I needed a pay raise, so I opted for transferring to a team that would be making in house baked goods at your headquarters, guaranteed to pay me a few dollars more, but it was enough for me to survive moving forward.

My background made me eligible for a “leadership” role is this new team. I should have known something was up because I could never get confirmation on my title, no matter how hard I pushed. I was whisked off to corporate as an “assistant” chef. Your company was asking for upwards of 5-8 years of experience for “assistants”. What would I be making, pray tell? Loaf cakes, cookies, tarts, muffins and other basics. Recipes someone with minimal experience could make. I was not in the promised leadership role.

Unhappy and frustrated, I transferred to your storefront when it opened in their version of a supervisor at my initial beginnings. I would be one of a few supervisors in the bakery area and we were not treated as equal to your retail side. Despite being a supervisor I was inexplicably not given keys, a safe code or the ability to problem solve at our own point of sale devices - I had to get a “retail” supervisor. Those in the bakery would ONLY be given these rights if they had “retail” experience - which I had.

I yearned for an assistant manager role, so I worked tirelessly for another six months before broaching that subject.

I was not the only experienced employee there: there were a handful of us with up to ten years of company experience - this detail will be important momentarily.

When I sat down with two of the assistant managers for a “development talk” and told them my story of how I turned down a “core” store manager role to be there due to outside circumstances...they laughed at me. They said that any experience I had before coming to this particular team was irrelevant and I would need to start at the bottom all over again and had “so much to learn” and that my resume “didn’t have weight” and that my prior kitchen management and schooling basically were useless.

I was devastated. I cried. I walked away from that meeting feeling ashamed, embarrassed and it demolished the respect I had for how you as a company have when you boast about how to treat your employees.

The assistant manager role you filled did not go to one of the more experienced employees who had been supevisors or store managers who stepped down to regular retail grunts to be there.

No.

You transferred someone from the opposite coast and stomped on the hopes and dreams of a half dozen hopefuls. So, armed with newfound cash I left to go back to your more traditional storefronts thousands of miles away.

They wanted me to become a store manager as well, but I was facing a surgery with lengthy recovery. They promised as soon as I was back on my feet, they would begin the process of peer review and interviews. However, another horrific speed bump occurred. A major snafu involving my benefits sent me packing back across the country. It was cheaper for me to move back and “reset” my benefits than lose 300 bucks a month in insurance costs over a period of seven months.

Are you still with me? Good, we’re almost there, I promise.

I won’t get into all of the specifics of what happened when I landed in my current location. My initial start was rough, I wasn’t given my full time hours, we were short staffed for a huge chunk of time. It was so bad in the beginning I started looking for new employment in the field I’d been studying at school. By now I was two years into college, it felt right.

At the same time, my manager and I went through a lot of growing pains. Eventually, yes, I was once again put back on my store manager track. I was hesitant - it had never worked out in the past.

Only to be told, again, I had to work on some things. I was willing to put in that hard work, but ultimately, I was given an offer that I couldn’t refuse.

And I’m sorry, corporate, but your stores are NOT that fucking hard to run. My current manager has ZERO food experience. He sold fucking shoes before this (no disrespect, I adore my manager and we have the best time working together).

I would not be looking for other jobs if you as a whole wouldn’t patronize me and other supervisors, and hold your store managers up on some goddamn pedestal.

I have YEARS of retail experience.

I have YEARS of kitchen management experience.

I have YEARS of food service experience.

If I were to apply to this as an “outside” hire, I meet and exceed all of your requirements.

I have admiration, love and respect of every employee I have lead within your company. In EVERY store I’ve been in my store manager and the peers below my level ask me why I don’t have a store. My peers in multiple stores across states have asked me to tell them when I’m promoted because if they’re still with the company they want to work with me.

I help my own manager with decisions. He asks for advice because I’m like a breathing encyclopedia of your companies policies and procedures because I gobbled down every bit of information I could to better my understanding of your stores so I WOULD be prepared some day.

I’m not asking for a promotion now. Or this week. But I think if someone who sold shoes can run a basic cafe, it might be okay to at least offer a mock interview for someone who has a resume shiny enough to get into very respected kitchens in any state I want to go to.

I have bent over backwards and given just about all that I am. Every manager I’ve been with in your company has already told me I could do their job and that I would be an excellent choice.

But no.

I’ve been nothing but loyal and devoted. I’ve asked for opportunities. And this would have been the year, my district manager and store manager were committed to getting me there, finally. I would just need to wait until “later this year”.

But it’s too little too late. I have an opportunity right in front of me, that has acknowledged my skill sets and asked me to join their fold.

It was honestly a hard decision at first. I was thrilled to finally, finally, finally being given the opportunity to lead my team in a much more meaningful way.

I felt like I was going to be betraying my team and my upper leadership.

And then I realized the power of the words, “I’m better than this and I have the track record to prove it”.

Then I packed my proverbial bags.

I’ll miss my store, but I won’t miss you as a company.

Cheers.

#personal #life

2 notes · View notes

relationshipsandpolitics · 5 years ago

Text

How I Alienated My Potential Readers Part #2

And we’re back. Here’s how we are looking after Part 1:

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Beto O’ Rourke, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, John Delaney, Pete Buttigieg

Well, some things have changed so we can just go ahead and remove Beto, which is a shame because I had a good rant about him sucking. Alas, my genius will have to wait.

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, John Delaney, Pete Buttigieg

I debated where to put climate change in this breakdown. For me, climate change is issue #1b for me. If a candidate denied it, that would be an automatic disqualifier. It should be for every voter. But I am surprised about how we all agree this is a dire issue that needs to be dealt with immediately, but the only candidate who made it their chief issue, Governor Jim Inslee, got virtually no support and was one of the first to drop out. We really talk out of both sides of our mouth on climate change. We all agree it is going to kill us, but we don’t seem to prioritize it, do we? I have some thoughts about that, but I digress.

The good news is all remaining candidates agree climate change is happening and that we need to act. The bad news is many of the candidates do not appear willing to take those drastic steps needed to stave off the worst outcomes. This is a problem. Even the remaining candidates who are best on this issue leave a lot to be desire. As it stands, I’m not removing anyone because no one is Republican levels of awful on the issue, but also no one meets the bar that needs to be set on genuine change. But seriously, we are all awful on this issue, me included. We need to be taking steps in out personal lives to cut back on carbon emissions, and we need to be willing to pay more to save our planet. The truth is if the leading scientific minds announced that to save our planet, we needed to raise taxes by 2% on everyone, we’d instead spend double that to buy front row seats to the end of the world. We as a people truly suck.

Now let’s finally get into the issues that differentiate the candidates. This is really the whole game for me. Because there are certain issues I care about tremendously, issues that I feel we need to address if this country is going to survive or if we will slip fully into the oligarchy we seem destined towards. I’m talking about corporate power and workers’ rights. Look, we all know the stats. Income inequality is worse now than at any time since the Gilded Age. That preceded the Great Depression. Billionaires and corporations hold more power than the bottom 95% of the population combined. They can write a measly $5,000 check and get face time with the most powerful politicians in the country, and another $5,000 check gets them their full support. I know this because part of my job is to write those checks. I don’t try to get into too much about what I do, but suffice it say I work within politics very much behind the scenes. I don’t like what I do, even if I believe in the interests I advocate for. People like me should not exist, but our corrupt political system not only enables me, but empowers me.

We all want a candidate we can trust to act in the average American’s best interest. But we so willingly elect people who knowingly fuck us over in favor of the rich and corporate interests that it’s a wonder they even bother going through the motions trying to appease us. And what have we got for it? Unions have been decimated as lawmakers pass corporate-sponsored Right to Work laws. Wages have stagnated while wealth for the top 1% has skyrocketed. Americans are more productive than ever but seeing a smaller share of that productivity. Compared to all other industrialized nations, we offer no guaranteed paid vacation, family leave, or health care. This is despite being the richest nation in the world. College is a necessity to obtain a well-paying job, yet it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain, meaning anyone graduating with loans will be paying them off until they retire. Or die.

These developments are not a coincidence. They are the results of deliberate efforts by monied interests. Next, they will come after Social Security and Medicare, claiming we need to reign in the deficit. And both Republicans and Democrats will heed their call, and we will buy their sudden concern about deficits. They’ll vote to raise the retirement age and cut benefits, we’ll get mad, and then re-elect them anyway.

How does this rant relate to the upcoming 2020 elections? It relates because the next decade will mark the point of no return, in my estimation. Either this country will wake up to getting screwed and finally vote to do something about it, or it will cement its acceptance of the status quo. Our descent into oligarchy has been relatively gradual because even the Democratic administrations have done little to stem the tide. They’ve just slowed it down by promoting policies benefiting the rich while throwing tokens of support to the working class, which is everybody else. They bump up the income tax rates slightly while ignoring the ways the rich really make their money. They threaten anti-trust lawsuits but never follow through. They bail out the banks and refuse to prosecute the heads of those banks. Then they appoint them to run the Treasury Department. Republicans do these same things; they are just more brazen about it. Whereas Democrats will announce tighter regulations on businesses but include weak enforcement and huge loopholes, Republicans simply get rid of the regulations. Republicans cut the taxes of the rich, Democrats keep them at the status quo.

The next president has a unique opportunity to finally right the wrongs of decades of neo-liberal fiscal policy. They can bring the country in line with the rest of the democratic world by pushing policies that help the poor, working and middle classes. Young parents would be able to afford to have a child. College graduates would be able to afford to buy home and have a crazy thing called disposable income because their college debt was wiped out and college itself became affordable. People would stop fucking dying because they don’t have health care. Seriously, on this last point, what in the ever-loving fuck is wrong with people for not being willing to raise their taxes to fund universal health care?

We need to begin assessing potential candidates by what they want to accomplish to fix this issue. And we can best determine if they will remain mired in the status quo of empty gestures and corporate checks, or if they will fight for us, by their words and actions. With that in mind, I’m going to base my choice on whether the remaining candidates can be expected to support the fundamental restructuring of government and wealth equality. I think you all know where I’m going with this one.

Corey Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, John Delaney – The Technocratic Legislators

Here you have some good moderate Democratic legislators. Booker, Harris and Klobuchar are sitting U.S. Senators while Delaney is a former Representative. I don’t really have an issue with any of them, save maybe Delaney. They all are effective legislators, even if they may be more moderate than I’d like. I particularly like Booker and Harris as people if not politicians. But at the end of the day, I can’t really rely on them to push the things that need to be front and center. I don’t exactly know what their broad policy even is. Sure, they will come out with a good sound bite or a good proposal on some smaller but still important issue. Booker is doing great things on tackling issues facing inner city youths. Harris is good on gun reform. But Booker is way too closely tied with Big Pharma. Harris has an awful record on criminal justice and did nothing to help homeowners defrauded during the housing crisis.

They both illustrate a major concern we should all share. When you have a record of being too cozy with some terrible industries, it shows that the voters can’t truly trust you to have their back. Campaign contributions are par for the course. You need them to win elections. But when you take a disproportionate amount of money from very specific industries, it means you are probably bought by them. Don’t be surprised if Booker nominates a Pharmaceutical lobbyist to head up CMS. And when private equity managers donate to Harris, as Blackstone’s Tia Breakley did in March, 2019, they are doing so because there is a reasonable belief that Harris and others won’t come after them.

Again, I think Harris and Booker are good people and good legislators. And the critique about money is not limited to them, as I plan on thoroughly ripping into Buttigieg and Biden on it. But when you take these facts along with the truth that neither candidate is pushing the sort of structural reforms needed in this country, I think it’s fair to say their presidencies would be rather unremarkable.

Amy Klobuchar and Jon Delaney share the money problem, but they have so much more going for them! Klobuchar treats her staff like absolute shit, which only matters when you remember that we are relying on her to protect all low-level workers. She clearly has contempt for people beneath her on the career ladder, and a wise woman once said “when a person shows you who they are, believe them.”

Klobuchar and Delaney have spent their entire campaign advocating not for what they believe, but for trashing other candidates who dare to dream. Klobuchar and Delaney come from the school of Democratic politicians who believe things are too hard to try, and we might lose Republican voters by trying to be Democrats. The Klobuchar’s and Delaney’s of the world would be happy to adopt every major Republican fiscal position if it meant they got to be President. Also, Delaney is the moron who thought it was a good idea to trash Medicare for All at the California Democratic convention.

I would vote for Harris and Booker and not feel bad about it. I’d feel weird about voting for Klobuchar, and Delaney has as much chance of the nomination as Scott Baio. They are out.

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Julian Castro, Pete Buttigieg

We’re going to go after the young guns now. The candidates we all secretly wish were just a bit better so that we didn’t have to choose from three candidates in their 70’s. But these candidates are ultimately empty shells of better candidates who seem too concerned with appearing like the rational voice in the room to have a vision for our country.

Let’s start with Mayor Pete Buttigieg. I was talking with my mother about who she was going to support in the primary. Let me be clear that I did not initiate this conversation. I’d literally rather talk to my mother about our respective sex lives than politics. But my mother has a bit of a control issue, and this blog was cheaper than therapy.

Anyway, my mother said she was supporting either Biden (shocking, I know) or Buttigieg. She said she liked that he was young, and it was great he was gay. I asked my mom what positions of his did she support, and she couldn’t really name any except that he didn’t support Medicare for All. This was a selling point for her. See, my mother represents a huge segment of the Democratic base that is upper middle class, socially liberal (except Kaepernick should’ve stood) and fiscally moderate (aka conservative but they swear they have homeless friends). What this really means is they are Democrats when it doesn’t hurt them to be. They think what’s going on at the border is abhorrent, but they know someone who was mugged by an “illegal” and we need a wall. And they support the idea of everyone having health insurance, but no way will that mean they have to pay more in taxes. They agree housing is too expensive, but then they’ll oppose affordable housing development in their neighborhoods because they attract a “bad element.” For these people, Buttigieg is the ideal candidate. They get to keep their money and nice gated communities, but because he is gay they can call themselves progressive. Plus, we know Buttigieg won’t do anything monstrous like keeping refugees locked up or denying basic rights to LGTBQ people, so how could anyone not support him?

Well, let me be the first to say that Pete Buttigieg is awful. First, keep in mind this guy is the Mayor of South Bend. That’s less a city and more a place for Notre Dame fanboys to “romance” the gold helmets in a sleazy motel. He won his last election with 8,500 votes. And he still managed to piss off a sizable number of his constituents by botching police relations with the black community. And now people think he can run a country. But he’s taken seriously because he raised a boatload of money and the pundits (also rich white people generally) like him. Never mind where that money is coming from and what favors he now owes to those people, right?

Mayor Pete came out for Medicare for All but decided when it was political opportune to trash it using Republican talking points. His actual healthcare plan is truly awful. Pete Buttigieg is the darling candidate for voters who don’t want anything to change, like my mother. They have good health insurance. They own their house and see it as an asset, not a noose. They don’t have any student debt, mainly because they attended college when it cost the equivalent of an iPhone. Buttigieg is a technocrat with a nice haircut. He is a lot like Obama, minus the everything. But his message is one of comfort to the people who own vacation homes in upstate New York and tie rainbow bandannas around their dog’s neck for Pride Week. Under a Buttigieg administration, civility will return and nothing else will change. If the biggest criticism of Sanders and Warren is they have pie-in-the-sky ideas, then Buttigieg’s biggest critique is he has no ideas. It’s just sad how little that matters to the people who will decide this election.

Julian Castro: you’re next. Here’s someone I kind of like. He is great on housing, one of the core issues keeping Americans from feeling secure. I live in an area once considered cheap for housing. But that’s changing. They keep building and building but rents still shoot higher and higher. Sometimes I feel the laws of supply and demand don’t work with housing. I mean, it works when there is low supply and high demand like in Los Angeles and San Francisco. But where I live, there is plenty of supply, yet rents are increasing as much as 10% year over year. Likely this is because demand is still high to live near an urban center. It doesn’t matter if there are tons of vacant units. Renters are willing to pay the cost and don’t do a good job shopping around. Also, as rents continue to soar while jobs continue to navigate towards major cities and people continue to need to live near those jobs, our commutes will get longer and longer. This means more cars on the road, more pollution in the air. Solving the housing crisis means putting a huge dent in climate change. No one seems to understand the impact of not having affordable housing, but Castro comes fairly close. I think I would go for him if he wasn’t so milquetoast on every other issue. He gets completely lost in the shuffle. I think Castro supports Medicare for All? I mean, I do know where he stands because I follow this stuff closely, but it should be clear to the average voter. Castro is young, attractive and is relatively progressive compared to the field. But he isn’t charismatic. He doesn’t articulate his message clearly enough, and my big concern is whether he can create a narrative that gives his administration a chance to pass meaningful legislation. It’s not that I can’t get on board with Castro based on policy, but I just don’t think he has the chops to get it done. Castro’s other problem is he doesn’t speak to workers’ rights issues enough. He pays them lip service, and I’m sure he believes in increasing union membership and raising the minimum wage. I just can’t envision him fighting hard for those issues once in office. I, quite frankly, see him as another politician pushing incremental change on some areas and tackling the low hanging fruit issues of the Democratic base rather than swinging for the fences.

Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders

And then there were three. I think we all knew it was coming down to these three. Let’s not kid ourselves here. We know who is getting the next ax, but the bottom line is these are the three true contenders and until things change, they are the only horses in the race. So we will tackle them together in Part 3, which is hopefully coming soon.

#politics #2020 #bernie sanders #pete buttgieg #elizabeth warren #joe biden #kamala harris #corey booker #elections #2020 election #democrats #julian castro

2 notes · View notes

asexual2019 · 5 years ago

Text

A Story of Asexuality and Recovery from Resentment

After reading other stories, I felt a strong desire to contribute a narrative about my own experience with asexuality, partly just for self-expression and partly to aid in the visibility of different types of asexuality and the different social and psychological effects people can experience from it.

My Sexual Orientation

My own asexuality is not absolute and not apparently the most common kind, as far as I can tell. I would probably identify as something like 95% or 98% asexual. While predominantly I experience no physical attraction to others, I think in a very weak way I’m capable of experiencing it—just extremely rarely. I mean this in a few ways. First, and most simply, I’ve been attracted to extremely few people in my life; genuine physical attraction of any kind, beyond a fleeting feeling of being impressed by someone’s objective attractiveness, has happened to me only a handful of times in my entire life. Second, there have been only a few periods in my life where I experience any sort of physical attraction at all; it seems to come in waves. To make this concrete, there have been only three or four periods of more than a month in my life where I could consistently feel any sort of attraction to people; I have no idea what caused those three or four periods to be any different from the rest of my life, but I experience it as a weak kind of sexual-orientation fluidity. My attractions have not ordinarily been consistent or durable enough for me to act on them. (This part of my experience could possibly sound like a medical issue, but partly out of curiosity and partly to address an unrelated minor medical concern, I’ve ruled out that it’s anything that modern medical science understands—for example, with hormonal testing at the Mayo Clinic.) Third—and the hardest thing for me to figure out and for others to understand when I explain it, mainly because simple vocabulary in English is not clear on this point—I don’t believe the scattered physical attractions I’ve experienced are “sexual.” Though they can lead to arousal or fantasies, they don’t result in a desire for me, personally, to have sex with the person that I’ve experienced the attraction toward. (Some have called this aegosexuality, anegosexuality, or autochorissexuality—three terms for the same distinction, so far as I can tell, between conceptual arousal and the desire to have sex with the person who inspires the arousal.) The best way to explain it is that I can (rarely) be drawn in some weak but nonnegligible way toward the idea of sex, but not toward sex itself.

To people who haven’t experienced it, this last characteristic may be hard to understand, but it appears not to be uncommon in the asexual community. And I have a pet theory, based on reports from people I know, that it’s actually not that uncommon even among conventionally sexual people and that a fair number of people seem to have sex more because of social (or other) pressures than because of an internal desire for sex.

Anyway, that’s how I perceive my sexual orientation. I’ll talk about any possible romantic desires later.

Social and Psychological Effects

I’ve recently gotten interested in exploring the effects of social pressures on asexual people, possible to increase empathy among the different parts of the LGBTQ+ community and partly just out of curiosity. So I thought describing the problems that it’s caused for me socially and psychologically might be interesting or maybe even helpful to others who face various types of pressure. As background, I should say that in pretty much every other way, I’m extremely privileged. I’m a cisgender, white man. I have an exceptionally good professional career, in a supportive and positive environment, in which I’ve been very successful and have been able to help many people. (Because of how personal some of this narrative is, I don’t want to disclose too much about the specifics of my professional life, but you can picture me as something like the head of a good think-tank.) I’m rich; I’m in something like the top 0.1% by wealth. I’m respected in my local and national professional communities, and while in most groups I haven’t come out publicly as asexual in any explicit way, it’s not a secret to my friends and colleagues. It’s important to point out that I don’t say any of this specifically to emphasize career or money; I don’t think either is as important as most people seem to. But I do think it’s important to add to visibility about how significant discrimination and pressures against LGBTQ+ people can be, in emotional and personal terms, even when those people are extremely privileged in other ways. It’s very nearly accurate to say that the only big problems in my life so far have stemmed from asexuality in one way or another. I realize how lucky I am for that while at the same time recognizing how significant those problems have been.

There are basically two problems that I’ve worked through over the years and understand far better today than I did in the past. First, most basically, my sexual and romantic orientation makes an affectionate, companionate personal relationship extremely difficult and unlikely for me. Much of the time, this doesn’t bother me; I’m busy and pretty independent (and the nature of my career is very social in the sense that it involves working with a lot of other people, so I’m rarely isolated), and in those periods I don’t perceive anything missing from my life. In fact, in some conventional sense, particularly for large periods of my life, I very easily identify as “aromantic”: I don’t flirt and never learned how to do it, don’t have the impulse or experience to do conventionally romantic things, don’t usually desire a conventionally romantic relationship, and so on. But I love human interactions and certainly have the capacity to feel lonely on a personal level. And particularly in some periods in my life, I have craved companionship and closeness but have never seen any way to have a lasting “relationship.” To elaborate on that, with attractions and a desire for companionship that are never durable (that is, stable over time), I don’t see it as even fair to another person to begin what’s supposed to be an ordinary relationship, even in the periods of my life where I crave it and where I wouldn’t mind the sex. That drive to companionship, and that tolerance for sex, have always ended abruptly for me, in a way that I can’t control—usually within a few weeks, and even in the longest cases in less than a year. You can think of this almost like an extreme, intrinsic aversion to commitment in a relationship, but’s not the commitment itself I’m afraid of; instead, it feels like a straight man marrying a women knowing that, while he’s at least within the (distant) realm of being straight at the time of marriage, he’s likely to become gay within a few weeks (or vice versa). That’s how fluid I am between (weak) attraction and the complete absence of it, with the complete absence being far more common throughout my life.

So at times that’s a pretty big disappointment, because I feel like I’m missing out on something that I could understand and grow with if I had the opportunity. I’m 42 but have had maybe a total of four adult years, scattered throughout my adult life, where I had a strong desire for companionship. But with attractions (and romantic desires) that are never durable and without a drive toward sexual interaction, I don’t see how a meaningful relationship could work. I’ve more or less learned to accept that as simply bad luck. Maybe I just really want very close friends, but the world doesn’t feel like it’s set up well for the closeness I want without romantic attachment.

The second major problem resulted from my first attempt to come out as asexual when I was 21 or 22. The first time I consciously realized I was asexual was shortly after college. Before then, sex wasn’t even really something I thought about in any way that applied to myself. Through high school, I imagined it was perhaps something that would become more important to me as I got older, much as I did when I was a child; the people I knew who had sex at younger ages were unlike me in other ways (for example, most of them were also drawn to illegal drugs and to less-safe sex), so I didn’t feel any meaningful pressure to be sexual in high school. I don’t mean that as a judgment of those other people, just that I saw it as “That’s what they like to do, and I like other things and am different in other ways.” In college, I processed it as simply not being attracted to anyone; of the handful of lifetime attractions I’ve had, no more than one or two were people I knew in college, and those attractions were particularly fleeting and led to no hint of desire for sex. (The best way I can explain that is that they might feel similar to a sort of very passing interest that an open-minded straight man might have for a man, or that an open-minded gay man would have for a woman. They didn’t cause me to want to act on them, distress me, or make much of an impact in any way.)

But when I was 21 or 22, I realized consciously that I was different. The initial recognition caused me a little concern, but it was nothing distressing or urgent. I had always been pretty resilient, curious, and even-tempered, and I processed it the way I would deal with anything else. The concern wasn’t even particularly about sex; I accepted my own lack of sexual desire and experience of sexual attraction rather easily at first. Instead, my main concern was about the pressures from others that I was beginning to feel—essentially just a growing fear of exclusion and disrespect. To address these and seek a positive recognition of what I had just started to think of and understand as an identity, I turned to a close friend who had presented himself, in general, as very open-minded about sexuality and had claimed to support gay and lesbian friends in the past. I think that in planning to “come out” as asexual to this friend, I was looking for reassurance and respect. I was a little older than him and had been helpful to him educationally and professionally, and that plus his claimed open-mindedness made it feel like a safe environment. I think I was also especially looking for close friendship at that time, perhaps more than I had usually done on purpose earlier in my life, because I had come to realize that that was probably the only sort of close personal human interaction that I was wired for.

Instead, I was met with the most surprising and hurtful scorn and exclusion in my life. My friend’s reaction to just my initial revelation that I hadn’t ever dated and had never had sex at age 22 was itself so negative that I didn’t even have the emotional courage to progress beyond it toward a discussion of what I perceived as my innate asexuality in the first place. In other words, I had planned to “come out” but, because of the harsh reaction to even the buildup to it, failed to get that far. The scorn came in three different ways, all of which were more painful than anything else I’d ever experienced. First, there was just outright shock, disrespect, and the inability to empathize; my friend claimed that my lack of history of dating through college, on its own, was “bizarre,” that I was “repressed,” and that it all would be a significant barrier to my ever being happy. Second, there was a kind of social exclusion; this wasn’t immediate, but as I sought further reassurances from this friend shortly afterwards, he told me that I’d never understand him because of my lack of dating and sexual history, and that we could never be “absolute” friends (his word) in the future because of it. Third, there was almost a sort of comparative or competitive belittlement; my friend started drawing distinctions between us on a variety of dimensions, all of which played himself up (mainly sexually and physically) and diminished me. I felt as if I’d become a joke to him.

My reaction to this is hard to explain rationally, or even in terms of healthy mental functioning. A decent reaction would have been to consider my friend hurtful but immature and to ignore his views. An understandable harsher reaction would have been to cut him off entirely. For some reason, I was unable to do either. Instead, my reaction was uncharacteristically harmful and led me to behave very badly toward this friend and toward myself. Today, I consider my reaction not to be a mentally healthy one; it led to a sort of resentful obsession for an inexplicably long period (10 or 11 years end to end, with only intermittent effects—but still!). It also led me, as I describe below, to deny my asexuality for just as long, including to myself.

German psychologist Michael Linden discovered about 20 years ago that reactions like this—longer-term than they should be and obsessive in nature, characterized by feelings of injustice but also weakness and helplessness in response to a personally traumatic social event, and focused on that specific harmful event and the person who caused the harm—are actually quite common (affecting 2-3% of the population). He called it “post-traumatic embitterment disorder” in English (you can find his academic articles under that name, and there’s a mediocre Wikipedia page about it), but a more explanatory English name for it might have been “social post-traumatic focused-resentment syndrome.” He’s had remarkable success in defining and treating it in the last 15 years. I don’t know if I suffered from “PTED” literally and clinically or not, but I definitely had some echo of it or some similar reaction, and it caused me to react very badly in a variety of ways.

As a partial explanation for this unusual fragility, at the time I tried to come out to my friend, I was in a time of transition myself, having just graduated from college, and had just realized I was “different” in terms of sexual and romantic orientation and interest. I had come specifically to value friendship as the closest interaction I thought I could have. I had, as I described earlier, considerable success and self-respect in other areas, and perhaps because of that I had little experience with being sharply scorned or disrespected. My friend’s reaction was shattering to me. As I said, I couldn’t even complete my attempt to come out. What followed was an almost obsessive and extremely unhealthy attempt to regain the friend’s respect by forcing myself to try to be more sexual. I mostly did this because I didn’t feel I could “admit” to him or others, after his initial reaction, that I was asexual, and because of my reaction to this rejection I stopped even admitting it to myself. I also perceived a very heavy social stigma against it, magnified perhaps beyond the actual stigma. And when in a moment of strength I tried tentatively to come out as asexual again, a few months later—along the lines of “Well, maybe I just don’t date because I have other priorities and don’t need it as much as you” and “Why couldn’t I just desire it less than other people?”—he told me I’d “snap” one day if I wasn’t sexual. It all led me to a very unhealthy and destructive anger and resentment, along with feelings of injustice, envy (at the simplicity I imagined he experienced in his straight male life), and helplessness, focused specifically on this friend.

It’s hard in retrospect to see how it could take me a decade to get over this. Possible partial explanations are that I didn’t know what it was and didn’t know how to seek treatment or to address it properly. I had never experienced anything like it before. Also, because of the stigma I perceived toward asexuality (some of which is of course real), I wasn’t clear on avenues to get help. And certain things my friend had said undermined other people’s more helpful advice; he had hammered in, and for some reason I believed him, that he was being more honest than other friends who were actually being supportive to me. According to him, only he was telling me the harsh truth; only he was sufficiently emotionally aware to give good advice; he was the only one who cared. That I accepted all this and let it affect me for so long is, again, hard to explain in retrospect, particularly for someone who ordinarily isn’t naive or self-destructive.

As a result of all this, my friend became partly evil in my eyes. It was mainly the belittlement and exclusion I dwelt on: "We can't be complete friends because there are things I'll never want to talk you about, given that you have no history of dating. That's bizarre and you should realize how much of a problem it is and that nobody in my whole social circle knows anyone even slightly like that. You will 'snap' one day if you don't become more sexual. You are insecure and repressed, and if you don't believe that then you're lying to yourself. Your friends who are telling you you're okay don't care about you and would just as soon let it drop rather than help you." I couldn't let go of his physical/sexual comparisons between us either, along lines like, "I suppose I have much more of what women want than you do, so I can't exactly relate. I've always had 'fan clubs' of girls. It's going to be much harder for you, and you have a very late start too." As I started to deny my asexuality again, those comparisons (which today I interpret just as routine young-male bravado) started to sting. Even though I understand today that his original reaction to my attempt to describe myself as asexual was mainly immature and ignorant—probably reckless in its arrogance and belittlement and insensitivity, but not malicious—it felt so inexplicably spiteful and hurtful at the time that I acted out against him in ways I regret now, and I treated him worse in the following decade than I’ve ever treated anyone. I hounded him with endless discussions asking for advice on dating and romance that I didn’t even really want, internally, because it seemed like the only way to get him to understand the pain he caused by his belittlement and exclusion (and also, at the same time, the only way to deny my asexuality to get him to respect me). I occasionally tried to turn others against him. I belittled him when I could in other ways (on intellectual matters that arose or what not); I bragged to him too much of my successes in non-romantic domains, expressing an out-of-character intentional smugness as a way to feel like I was building myself back up. I even violated his privacy once or twice because of my unhealthy need to learn what he was saying about me, given that my sensitivity to his earlier treatment of me still lingered. I tried to make him feel bad about my relationship prospects as the straight person I was purporting (probably even to myself!) to be, rather than about my genuine concerns of loneliness as an asexual person. Overall, I was unhealthily eager to make him see the pain his scorn had caused me, and I couldn’t let go of it for an extremely long time. All this was out of character for me, and there’s nothing that remotely resembles it in my personal history. I do still think that it’s objectively understandable why the things he said were traumatic for me, when I was vulnerable and just looking for friendship and understanding for being different -- but I have a hard time explaining why it all stuck with me for so long and why I held a grudge about it for years afterwards. I don't think there's any justification for that. It exposed a side of myself that is unfamiliar to me and that I don't like: one that's willing to act intentionally to hurt someone.

It was only around a decade after the initial interaction that I started to understand it and let go of the resentment toward this friend. To be clear, my reaction wasn’t continuous; for most of my life I was happy and unaffected by it except perhaps in small, latent ways, but particularly during the intermittent periods of my life when I craved companionship, it flared up and hurt both me and my friend (who I continued interacting with frequently because I still felt like I needed his attention and approval during those periods, as if to claw my way out of a hole in his view of me). So it wasn’t 10 years of a continuous reaction, but from beginning to end it lasted at least that long. Obviously that extreme length has more to do with my own problematic psychological reaction than my friend’s original rejection of my attempt to come out, and the length of my reaction (versus the harshness of what I was reacting to) clearly was my own responsibility rather than my friend’s. Once I realized the pattern, I felt pretty guilty about it and clearly saw my own role in failing to correct my own behavior—something that I couldn’t see earlier. It helped me treat myself compassionately when I realized that “PTED” is, according to data, actually a fairly common type of reaction to something that’s perceived as a traumatic social event. I wonder if “PTED” researchers would benefit from focusing some attention on the LGBTQ+ community, as I’m certain this community has a higher pool of potential social trauma than the general population.

The upside for me is that my reaction (as is typically the case for “PTED”) are fairly targeted; for me, it harmed me and my friend, but it fortunately didn’t cause me to harm others. Many people with social trauma can’t cope with ordinary life stresses, but I never found that to be a problem; my reaction was extremely focused. The downside is that, at least within this focus, the reaction was long-lasting (though intermittent) and caused me to act very badly to this friend in ways I now regret. At least as an adult, and probably further back, I can’t recall ever purposely harming another human being in any significant way or even really acting particularly badly to others; I’d like to think that most people who know me would regard me as a notably helpful, honest, and positive person. My interactions with this one friend have been an exception to that and amount to the most significant mental-health problem that I’ve ever faced.

Sex

People often ask if being asexual means I’ve never had sex. I didn’t until I was 26, during a period when I wanted companionship. I don’t think the “relationship” was particularly (or really even slightly) companionate rather than just sexual, but I was still under the spell of the reaction I was describing and was looking for ways to be more “normal” and deny my asexuality. I actually had a variety of sexual experiences, some of which were the sort of thing that some sexual people very much enjoy—small intimate groups, or having a partner’s roommate watch me and the partner have sex.

I didn’t appreciate it the way others would, though. As an almost silly but possibly helpful analogy, imagine that lots of other people are extremely interested in tickling gerbils. You don’t see why this would be enjoyable for you to participate in, though it can occasionally be fun for you to watch. You’re not disgusted by the idea of tickling a gerbil now and then—perhaps sometimes you are, but sometimes it doesn’t seem so bad—so you’re willing to try it as a way of feeling more normal. I like this analogy, apart from the frivolousness of it, because most people wouldn’t get any sexual excitement from tickling a gerbil, but they could picture doing it and sometimes (but only sometimes) not being repelled by it. Also, if you feel compelled to participate in tickling a gerbil because of social pressure, you can treat it as almost something like a fun, interesting puzzle: you see that the gerbil enjoys it, so you start to think, “How can I tickle this gerbil really well?” Sex for me, when I was willing to engage in it, became a sort of problem-solving effort about how to give others pleasure, which itself isn’t so bad because it’s producing pleasure and feels like the development of expertise in a skill. But I couldn’t particularly experience pleasure in the same way myself, and I’m not drawn to those interactions. It wasn’t “loving” or even affectionate in conventional terms, and I realize I was more or less training myself how to be an expert human sex toy. The best way to explain it would be to compare it to an open-minded gay man having sex with a woman he saw as objectively attractive. All of it was really just to try to adapt myself to social pressures, under the spell of my unhealthy mental state at the time. I think my goal was to deny my asexual orientation and to try to induce a sexual one, but obviously that doesn't work.

But while I could have sex, I couldn’t really emulate the more traditional romantic things like flirting and dating, even in the periods in my life where I craved companionship. It felt too artificial and dishonest to me, and I had no experience with it. As a different analogy here, it would be like feigning an extended interest in ballet if you aren’t at all moved by or interested in ballet; without a significant effort that felt dishonest, flirting or conventional dating weren’t natural things for me to do. I could perhaps have learned how to do them as a classical actor might, but that felt like it would be manipulative (or at least impersonal) and largely pointless. For a while I became very sensitive to the perception among others that I was asexual and went out of my way to deny it. I suspect at least some of this pattern is familiar, in different ways, to many LGBTQ+ people, particularly those who grow up in intolerant communities.

The Present

Then, as always seems to happen in my case, all the desire for companionship went away, and I focused for years on other things. I had a ten-year period without a hint of desire for a relationship or for sex. During that period, basically since I was 32 or 33 until today (I’m 42 now), I finally grew to admit again—first to myself, then to friends and coworkers—that I was asexual. The only real problem that remains for me is what I should do when the strong desire for companionship comes back, as strangely it has recently—again, for no reason I can discern, and not as if it’s under my control. Of course, it has never lasted very long in the past, so we’ll see what happens now.

1 note · View note

hiraethhalcyon · 5 years ago

Text

Commencement Speech

First, I would like to thank my family, my fellow honorees, my faculty advisors, Dr. Rado, Dr. Battista, and Dr. O’Malley, President Wiscott, distinguished guests, and all the loved ones here to support the class of 2019, I am honored to be in front of all of you speaking.

I am honored to be the first woman of color to deliver the commencement speech ---- I am honored to be the first applied psychology major to deliver the speech ---- I am honored to be the first honors college student to deliver the speech ---- And I am honored to be the first JWU woman’s soccer player to deliver the speech (shoutout to my amazing teammates who dealt with the annoying crunch of me eating rice cakes in the middle of warm ups at 6:45am every morning)

Fellow graduates have you ever wondered why as a big transition approaches, your discomfort arises, and your anxiety may go up? ---- I am inspired by African American author and poet Jason Reynolds who speaks candidly about the growth that's available in spaces of discomfort. One of my favorite quotes by him reads, “Be not afraid of discomfort. If you can't put yourself in a situation where you are uncomfortable, then you will never grow. You will never change. You'll never learn.” The discomfort Reynolds is referencing is something a lot of us may be feeling right now as we receive our undergraduate degree, and our future stares us directly in the face.

I came to JWU already holding the unease of moving to a new state and starting college at only 17 years old. I knew I’d have to make a new group of friends, learn how to live in a new atmosphere, and find my place in what I consider a small world full of young adults who think they have it all figured out, but they don’t really. A lot of us carried these initial worries about starting college, but here we are about to walk across the stage and earn our degrees.

I am more than grateful that I stuck out these last four years. JWU has given me the opportunity to get an education from professors that genuinely care about each and every student (thank you Dr. O’Malley). Professors that supported me on every random research endeavor I decided to embark on (thank you Dr. Abrams). Professors that gave me the language to verbalize the injustices and discomfort I experience. Professors that gave me the tools to critically think about the world around me and eventually have my research touch the lives of so many people in the future (Thank you Dr. Battista). Yet, my positive character development in college didn’t truly take off until I became comfortable in my own discomfort.

My anxiety was high walking into my first college English course, as I opened the door of the stadium class of ACA 187, I realized, this is not high school and there is no assigned seating. As I stared down at the room full of strangers, my mind began to race. Should I sit in the front? No, I couldn’t sit in the front or I’d look like a suck up. Alright, I thought I would sit in the back. But I panicked at that thought because if I sat too far back the teacher might perceive me as a slacker. Luckily as I was having this first day of school seat crisis, two of my teammates walked in, and eventually the three of us decided on sitting directly in the middle of the classroom. The discomfort I felt in that classroom stemmed from multiple things. First I was the only black person. Second, I was younger than all my peers. And third, I wasn’t confident in my abilities to be taking a college course, and when I received my first ever C on an essay, if you know me you know I cried (thank you to Dr. Rado) and this only confirmed I didn’t belong in this space. Yet, I didn’t let my first C completely discourage me, instead it awoke a drive in me to succeed academically despite the discomfort and unease I was facing. I had to realize that if I truly wanted to be a better student, I would need to willingly take the help and services offered by our campus.

I eventually got an A on the revised version of that essay and that class, thanks to the help of Dr. Rado... and the support of the JWU writing center. The big lesson I learned was that confidence could only be attained through challenge... through discomfort. And a kind of confidence that helped me realize I am worthy and capable of retaining the information given to me however difficult it may be, or how uncomfortable I perceive the environment.

Over these past four years, I have found that the minute I became comfortable, the discomfort would creeps back in. This discomfort came up multiple times during my undergraduate career, causing me to question my own abilities. It was present when I walked into my first couple of honors courses; it was present when I went out on a whim and decided to take on leadership positions in student organizations; it was present in my final season of college soccer and I was elected captain (shoutout to Molly Moo and Tash we rocked it, as Vegas girls always do). And fellow honorees: its present as I stand up here thinking about starting graduate school in the fall. Graduates, you know this discomfort, this is when you’ve hit Week 11 in a trimester and you are finally comfortable with a professors’ grading style, then you’re hit with a final and pushed off to the next trimester. As students who have been on trimesters, we’ve become accustomed to new transitions. The point is that, class of 2019 we’ve all felt uncomfortable or out of place during the last few years. Yet, we’ve succeeded in those situations or environments, and that is why today we are here walking across the stage receiving our degrees.

I understand that leaving the confines of the Johnson & Wales campus community is a big transition, a transition that may stir up anxiety just at the thought of something or somewhere new. To that I say, look how far we’ve come.

At the end of our four years we’re expected to be in complete control, ready and equipped with the skills to go out in the world to do “adulting.” Yes, that may sound scary, but it's not. In fact, this should be exciting, because now we can look back at the few years and see that we’ve succeeded in new environments, we’ve met amazing individuals who taught us life lessons, and we have memories to cherish and guide us throughout our future. This is our moment to step back and reflect: on our memories; on our experiences; on the tough lessons we’ve learned. This is our moment to account for how much we’ve grown as students and professionals and take this leap into the unknown.

There’s discomfort associated with leaving the guidance of our friends, advisors, and the safety net the JWU campus provides. Luckily, now I see there’s comfort in knowing we have been through large transitions and small ones, handling them with ease. So yes, it may feel uncomfortable as we walk into our future, but rest assured, we’ve been able to handle it up until now and we only continue to develop to handle even bigger transitions, which will lead to even bigger successes. I am honored to walk across this stage with all of you and embark on a journey into the unknown. Even though we’re all about to go in different directions, I have no doubt we’ll all succeed... because of the wisdom we’ve attained through embracing discomfort.

Written by: Asianna Harris

Johnson & Wales University ‘19

Applied Psychology, Research Studies

[email protected]

Insta: @Asiannaharris

1 note · View note

crowcronut · 4 years ago

Text

Lessons from the river 10/20/20

I put some mini pumpkins on my alter on Mabon as offerings. In the last few days the biggest one started to rot. Took that as the offering had been taken, and took all 3 down to the river behind my house - a border between two towns, and tossed them in to be consumed by the birds and fish and the like. Part of my druidic practice is leaving my offerings in nature for animals or fungus to consume. (as such, I like to make sure that whatever I offer wont be damaging to the local wildlife. Pumpkins are something that animals would regularly eat from people’s porches this time of year anyways so they seem to be a good bet.) Offered my intentions to the Morrigan and Brighid, and watched the pumpkins float for a bit. I threw them in at a sort of spot that i think is technically my neighbor’s property, but is right on the property lines. Its a good spot to stand close to the water because theres a bit of concrete and stone there, as opposed to my own parents’ property which is mostly an awkward thicket of trees where you cant get too close. The current of the river would bring them past our entire property and i decided to watch them until they had completely passed us. Behind my other neighbor’s house the current speeds up a little and the water has more rocks and debris in it. I decided I would go back inside when they all got to that point. The river is really small and pretty slow and i probably watched them for 10-15 minutes. At first they landed in a triangular pattern, the large, rotten one in the lead, then the small one with the tall stem that sat on top of the rotten one on my alter, and then the medium sized one was in the back. after a few minutes they stretched out more in a line, the large/rotten one still in the lead, but after a bit the medium one passed the small one with the tall stem, which fell far behind the others. It was really a matter of luck and what part of the current the pumpkins fell into. Maybe size played a small factor, but i’m no physicist. After a bit i found myself somewhat rooting for the little pumpkin. Eventually, I somewhat lost track of the largest pumpkin but saw up in the rocky/faster current part of the river a bright orange thing that was approximately the size of the pumpkin stuck against a rock. Shortly after, I saw the medium pumpkin also get stuck on another rock not far behind the big one. eventually the little pumpkin caught up to the other two, the medium pumpkin managed to be freed from it’s rock as the small one passed and they moved upstream together, but the large one remained stuck. Obviously, the fable of the tortoise and the hare came to mind: slow and steady wins the race.

This seemed to reassure me of 2 things.

1. I’ve been out of school for a year and a half now and have had limited luck with finding work in my career field. I’ve seen my peers go on to be hired by major studios i’d love to work with, while i have been struggling with job applications while working freelance with a small, indie, company (which i do genuinely love and I am thankful for this job, but it doesnt pay the bills and isn’t giving me much of an opportunity to move out of my parents house and have some sovereignty). I’ve been outpaced by my peers, and it really often feels like i’m going to be left behind and have to eventually give up on my dreams. But it also reminds me of my cousin and her roommate - both ballerina/o’s at the same company. Her roommate at the beginning of his career was offered promotion after promotion and even now is one of the company’s soloist dancers. He does have the advantage of being a talented ballerino, and male dancers are far more scarce than female ones, and as such are more often considered for promotions/lead roles. at the same time, at the beginning of her career she sustained a good few injuries and for a while it looked like she would have to retire in her mid-20s. She stuck with it, however, and ended up getting promoted to soloist as well. Pre-covid, she really started to thrive in her career (covid also gave her a much needed break so she could get a much needed surgery that would add a few years to her career). I might be reading to much into it, but it felt like the universe was telling me that just because my career isnt moving at the speed i wish it was, as long as i dont get caught in the branches and weeds on the side, I will get to a place I want to go, and even surpass the people whose careers accelerated before mine did.

2. taking things at your own pace isnt a bad thing. Going too fast might get you stuck later. burnout is real, and it will inhibit your ability to move forward. Dont move faster than you are able to. The slow current is taking you to where you need to be. The fast current might just kill you.

I did follow the pumpkins along the river from one edge of the property to the next. at the other edge of the property theres another sort of clearing that does actually belong to my family. Unlike the other one that lies on the property line, I couldnt get close to the water, but i could get a very good view of it. Where i stood, the ground was soft, and beside me was an almost completely decomposed stump of a tree. I think the one that had been there was either dead or dying when we moved in, and my parents cut it down to reduce the risk of it falling on the house in a storm. The soil looked and felt rich, like it was waiting for something to be planted there, and I imagined roots extending from my body into that soil and growing into the earth, Imagining what it would be like to be a tree on that river - watching leaves pass down the stream every day, watching ducklings hatch in the banks in the spring, and maturing in the summer.

I really love druidic paganism for that reason. I love that feeling of being connected to the nature around you. Standing by the water and among the trees is such a calming, meditative experience, and I always feel so focused and refreshed afterwards.

0 notes

overthinkingkdrama · 7 years ago

Text

anonymous asked: are you watching Go Back Couple? if so, what are your thoughts? on the male lead, especially?

Oh yes, I'm absolutely watching Go Back Couple. I'm really enjoying this show. Leaps and bounds more than I was expecting to, tbh. But Jang Na Ra is an absolute fave of mine so I should have known she wouldn't let me down with her latest project.

Big Picture Thoughts

First things first, I absolutely adore Jin Joo. She is a treasure. I love how much depth and complexity she has. I love the way the handle her identity as a mother, her nurturing nature, and balance it against the fact that she still has an identity and interests as a woman outside of that role. I love watching her scenes with her mother, they absolutely strike me to the heart. And her look at young self from her adult perspective and realizing how much she has changed and matured since she was 20. It's all so nicely done. And Jang Na Ra is just bringing everything to this role.

I have a lot of wild hopes and dreams for Jin Joo and where her story will go. Not sure if any of them will be fulfilled, but that's kind of the nice thing about this drama. I don't know where all of this is going. Despite a premise that could easily come across as "we've seen this a million times" it's rather unpredictable. I mean, obviously I expect our main time-traveling pair to eventually find love again, but how they are going to do it is something of a mystery to me.

I think the biggest selling point of Go Back Couple is the way it handles our two middle-aged, divorced, parents gaining perspective and growing as people by being suddenly transported back to their 20-year-old bodies. GBC, in some ways, has more in common with a body-swapping drama than a time travel romance. Although, clearly, there are elements of both.

I love the way that this drama emphasizes how Ma Jin Joo and Choi Ban Do are such completely different people at 40 than they were when they met at 20. They've been through trauma's together. They've given up on certain dreams in the service of making ends meet. They've lost loved ones as well as their sense of self. They've forgotten why they fell for each other in the first place, both basically just living for their son, Seo Jin. And that's just not enough to keep a marriage together. So now their 40-year-old selves are looking out at the world through their 20-year-old eyes and they are getting another change to understand and enjoy themselves and rediscover their passions. As well as work through some major relationship baggage that they have never been able to address in their original timeline.

I think that's great. Because even thought he majority of the drama focuses on this college setting and college age characters, the perspective is very much one of middle-age looking back. In some way it's pure wishfulfillment fantasy: Many, I wish I could go back knowing what I know now. It allows the main characters to change, or attempt to change, things they wish they had done differently: "I wish I could go back and see that person one more time. I would have treated them so much better." But maybe in the process discovering that even given the chance to do it over again, there are certain things they would never want to change. (Such as the existence of their son...)

Despite the fact that GBC is genuinely and frequently funny, I think what I like about it is how serious it is, and how adult. Maybe it's because I personally find a lot of the stuff they're talking about relatable. I don't have children, but I do know what it's like to go through a divorce and to lose a loved one you were very close to. I also very often feel much older than my actual age. So chalk another one up for painfully relatable dramas that have made me cry this season (Because It's My First Life being the other one.)

Thoughts on Ban Do Specifically

Ban Do is a complicated character for me, because I don't see him as a very nice person, in many ways a poor partner to Jin Joo and often morally dubious in his actions. And yet I generally like him and find him sympathetic. Maybe it's because the writing in the show is so good, I understand how someone gets so twisted up and defeated like he is at the beginning of the show. I understand his desire to relieve his glory years, his shame at being humiliated and used in his professional life and his sense of isolation. Not that any of that excuses the fact that he is dismissive, neglectful and often willfully hurtful toward his wife.

I am kind of relishing his rediscovery of Jin Joo as an strong, beautiful and fascinating woman outside of her roles as wife, homemaker and mother of his child. Although it's a bit frustration that it takes the interest and acknowledgement of other people for him to come to a realization of her merit. But now that the process has begun I'm a lot happier with the way he's treating and viewing her.

One of my biggest reservations about Ban Do, but also one of the things that makes him interesting to me, is his relationship with Min Seo Young. We seem him mooning over her in some of the flashbacks to their marriage, worrying about her and learning about her career ending injury. We see him boasting to his friends that he would be able to seduce her handily if he could go back in time, knowing what he knows now. And then we see that boast turns out to be entirely true, when he does go back and puts his plan into action. I can't help but feel terribly sorry for Seo Young. Because she is falling more and more under Ban Do's spell, his very strategic moves are working for him flawlessly, but at the same time clearly he isn't in love with her. He isn't entirely indifferent to her, clearly, but he doesn't have feelings for her on the level of what he felt for Jin Joo (in the beginning and even now) so much as he is hung up on this idealistic view of first love, and is getting off on his ability to make her fall for him. But he's not falling in response.

To some degree I think (I hope) that Seo Young is becoming conscious of that. That Ban Do doesn't look at her as one looks at a lover, but as one looks at a child. He feels a fatherly kind of regard and concern for her. His desire to help and protect her isn't based on romantic feelings. But I worry that he is going to hurt her really badly when he realizes that he doesn't want a future with her, but that he wants to try to make things work with his ex-wife instead.

I think the thing that keeps me interested and invested in the main couple getting back together instead of getting with other people who make them happier, is because there are problems on both sides. Ban Do isn't entirely responsible for the failure of their marriage. Jin Joo had her part to play too. They both allowed communication between them to break down to the point that they became strangers to each other. And although Ban Do helped to destroy Jin Joo's self esteem and truly took her for granted, Jin Joo could also cruel and unreasonable.

Obviously, we don't understand all of the circumstances surrounding her mother's death yet, but to place the blame squarely on him for now allowing her to see her mother one more time seems unfair to me, especially since a lot of her anger probably stems from the a sense that she didn't treat her mom as well as she wanted to when she was around. She has reason to feel the way that she does but saying things like "you've never been there when I needed you", "I should have expected anything" can be really damaging as well.

While I definitely understand the SLS people are feeling (for both the male and female second leads, honestly) but I'm not really feeling it myself. Or rather, only in the milder form. I like both Seo Young and Nam Gil and I want them to be happy, but I'm still sincerely rooting for the main couple more.

Wow that got really long winded, I'm sorry. Anyway. I hope that answers your questions

Jona

#I accidentally deleted the ask #because I'm the worst #go back couple #jang na ra #jang nara #seriously #it took me forever to respond to this #I got it like 3 episodes ago #sorry I'm like this #spoilers

46 notes · View notes