#but the vast majority of people just have the basics of school clubs or maybe some internships or the usual job

[mitchmarner]

are canadian universities cheaper than american ones for law school? given what you’ve said it doesn’t..... seem like it (also because i think i want to apply to law school in the future- any tips for the process? what’d you major in?) (sorry for making your blog Extra law-school-y haha)

In a one for one full sticker price matchup, Canadian ones are generally cheaper (minus uoft). However, US law schools give a ton of scholarships so I have some pretty cheap US options whereas Canada doesn’t really do scholarships (they do a little but you basically assume you don’t get one). However, I want to move to Canada so I’m willing to pay a little more per year for a Canadian school— if you want to practice in the US, stay in the US. I was a political science major, but you should study whatever you enjoy most and think can maximize your grades. Schools don’t give a shit what you major in; you are just two numbers to them, so focus on getting the best GPA you can. Also, take the LSAT with enough time for one to two retakes before you send in your applications. You don’t want to take it late fall of application season and be scrambling for a retake in late winter if you don’t get your best score— I took mine in August so I could take October and November if I needed to and still have my apps complete before the new year, but I actually wish I’d done it even earlier. Getting your applications in early is an advantage because there are more available spots and more available scholarship money. If you’re in undergrad right now, just focus on doing things you enjoy, building relationships with professors, and then becoming absolutely neurotic and spending all your time on the r/lsat and r/lawschooladmissions reddits when the time comes (it’s an amazing resource for learning about study tips and applications, but do yourself a favor and log off it once your applications are turned in and interviews at schools completed because you’ll make yourself into a total mess just watching decision waves be released and overthink). Also, I took a year off after graduating and I’m really glad I did because burnout is real and schools will also love if you can get some work experience before law school. Be prepared to spend a fuckton of money on this process. It isn’t cheap. I had fee waivers for every American school I applied to and only bought LSAT prep books, no classes or anything, and had to spend approx $2000 on this process. LSAC makes it basically impossible to get need based waivers. TLDR; major in what you love, don’t focus on the process right now beyond some general thought to whether you think you might enjoy law (I joined a pre-law frat which was helpful in meeting lawyers and making sure I wanted to do law), and live your life until the time comes for you to apply.

[johnstibal]

Career advice for law students wanting to practice in international law

Hello,

I was recently asked by a law student for some career advice on how to get a job internationally, and particularly how they could get engaged in international (public and private) legal work.

While my legal background stems largely from doing multinational corporate work, particularly in the IT sector, here are my basic ideas outlining a few generic things to think about in terms of your career planning and some key approaches to pursuing these types of careers.

My background.  For the past several years, I have worked primarily in London, and secondarily in Paris, for a very large telecommunications company.  I was originally working for another one of this companies' affiliates in USA, and this enabled me to move internally to another one of their companies in the UK.  Making this move internally within a large company allowed me to move abroad far easier, especially in terms of sorting out work visas and professional qualifications, etc.

Three Career Principles to Never Forget.  In terms of general career advice, there are three principles which you must keep in mind to work in international law related field.  While I recognize the risk of sharing a 'firm grasp of the obvious' (and I can almost hear some cringing already) most law students do not receive this message framed in this sort of a utilitarian light.  So, here it goes:

The sole purpose of your first legal job is to enable you to get a better second legal job.

It is all about Brand.  Your CV / Resume is a personal marketing tool.  It is your personal ‘brand’.  The choice of your first job should strongly take into account the value which the ‘brand’ of your new employer will add to your CV, and your future ambitions.  This lasts for decades.

You cannot save the world if you cannot pay the bills.  Public international law has some of the most interesting legal work around.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, it also has a tendency to attract incredibly brilliant people who will work for a minimum salary.  If you are independently wealthy, then great, no problem.  If you have large education debts, please do not neglect the fact this will undoubtedly impact your choice of jobs in the short term, even if not necessarily in the longer term.

Your first Legal job.  Getting your first Legal job is always a nerve wracking experience at best, and especially if you want to take a track other than going directly into a large law firm.  Unfortunately, nearly all major law schools are set up to build a funnel for large firms.  For your interests, even if you do not wish to 'end up' in a law firm or major global corporation, it usually makes considerable sense for you to go out to find the best ‘brand’ firm which you can, either in the US, UK or elsewhere.  You will be able to extract the majority of the benefits during this time by working at a firm for exactly two years (or three years, if in New York City) doing whatever type of legal work - - of course, its even better if your firm or company has a public international law practice, but this is not required.  By the end of this time, you will have ‘checked the box’ on your CV, and you can happily move on to what you really want to do.  This is by far is the safest option for most, and also incidentally, completes one of the requirements enabling you to be admitted to practice in other common law countries (e.g. the UK).  I’m not certain whether this is as helpful in other civil law countries, but I suspect it would be.

There is no question that working at a law firm, and potentially billing in ‘6 minute’ increments gets very tiring.  Reviewing e.g. commercial leases is even less fun than watching paint dry.  But this said, you will probably be practicing law for a very long time off and on anyway.  Having a good initial first employer on your CV, who has ‘trained’ you is always a good investment for your CV even if not necessarily beneficial to you over the long term.

As a lawyer who has graduated from a US law school, you are able to come to Europe with a well respected professional background (speaking generally).  In terms of global perceptions, US lawyers are highly respected, maybe in a similar form of the admiration to being world-class in other professions e.g. French engineers, British accountants, or Indian mathematicians - - not to foster bad stereotypes…  But, needless to say, the USA legal professional qualification travels well around the world, particularly among global employers.

This being said, there is a particular area of confusion when you first come out of law school.  Legal training is not the same around the world, meaning in France, a jurist has may have only attended the equivalent of undergrad and not graduate school (in terms of USA style nomenclature, depending on their qualifications).  In the UK, while there are some permutations, most young associates at large law firms will attend around a year and a half or so of graduate school, followed by two years of a training contract to learn how to practice law.  In Germany, many associates hold an LLM, or a PHD, at minimum, staying in school much longer.  While you probably can research the differences in the number of years of schooling better than me, you should be particularly aware of this issue when you turn up to speak with a new potential employer in Europe.  There is a risk of being perceived as wanting to find only a training contract, which is not needed as a USA law school graduate.  After your first job, the timing issue goes away as you accumulate more PQE (Post Qualification Experience).  The same is true in France, as I understand it.

An alternative path in human rights / non-profit sector for law students.  This is an area where my knowledge is limited.  But, if I wanted to pursue a career in this field, I would adopt some of the following key approaches.

First, figure out who are the heavyweights thought leaders in your particular field of interest, either individuals or organizations - - and, do your best to somehow associate yourself with their organization or sphere of colleagues.  You want to try to figure out who these organizations interact with, and by extension, which of these organizations might hire you.  Linkedin is an extraordinarily powerful resource for this research.  To test your hypotheses, try calling up or meeting up with the General Counsel of any public interest foundation (if not possible to meet in person, then email / Skype also works  but is far less effective than in person).  Introduce yourself, and ask him or her for some general advice, in particular what ‘outside counsel’ their foundation typically uses - - make clear that you admire the work of their foundation, and look to gain relevant experience by doing similar work in the future.  Ask about their Legal department organizational structure (General Counsels - GCs) love talking about this stuff), and what skills they look for over the long term, but even if not necessarily immediately.  If it goes well, you might get some really good information, and maybe even a referral to a firm or sister organization.  Senior Executives are very used to people asking them for jobs on a daily basis.  But, they get asked for their advice far less often.  Use this to your advantage... but do not be a pest.

As an example coming from NGOs, from time to time, I have occasionally dealt with some of the affiliates of the United Nations as a supplier. There are probably 20 of these, e.g. World Bank, IMF, UNHCR, IATA, WIPO, Red Cross, Red Crescent, and Red Crystal.  Some of these organizations you are probably more familiar to you than others.  There are two consistent traits that I see when dealing with their personnel.  First, many of the staff are about to retire, and second, their staff have all consistently bounced around the world working in many different UN affiliates and national governments doing all sort of different roles, both legal and non-legal.  The first of these is a well known problem for the UN and its agencies, at least, at a macro level, which might be helpfully to you. While I’m not certain what formal hiring programs may exist in these orgs, you should check with them around world, and particularly in Geneva, Switzerland and New York.  Also, in terms of firms which advise this types of groups, you should also talk with McKinsey & Company.  They do some very impressive pro bono work consulting for non-profits, and like to hire people with diverse backgrounds often having law degrees.

To get the attention of any large organization, and not just the UN agencies, you will always want to first find a way to get through the door, even if you need to do the unsexy type of legal work.  Once you are inside, it is usually far easier to move internally.  For example, if you work for a big organization like the UN, they have a vast array of legal needs, ranging from the basic to the exotic.  It is undoubtedly the case that a large portion of the UN’s legal budget goes to HR and Procurement legal advice (e.g. doing commercial leases, procuring pencils and IT projects) (whether done in-house or by external firms.)  When a UN agency needs to lease a building in sub-Saharan Africa, some lawyer somewhere in the world needs to review and advise on the tender process (often in combination with other local lawyers).  Therefore, this is an opportunity to target.   Yes, this is not sexy work, but it gets you a pass into the ‘club’ to work on other more interesting projects in the future.

As a final thought.  Having outlined all of above, if you truly want to work in the non-profit / human rights space, it might be the case that being a ‘junior file clerk’ for Google.org or the Gates Foundation is equally beneficial (from a brand perspective to get your next job) as being a senior associate at Skadden Arps.

On the one hand, being at a big firm allows you to potentially develop a deep legal specialty, which might be later retooled for a good purpose.  For example, undoubtedly, at some point, a brilliant lawyer in some large law firm will figure out how to package up millions of ‘microfinance’ loans using mezzanine financing techniques (i.e. allowing Wall Street money to start funding billions of very small loans around the world) - - in so doing, they could indirectly create prosperity in Africa for a life time.

At the same time, NGOs have a potential to do great things too.  These are the people who are likely to generate the next generation of new legal concepts / quasi-regulatory regimes.  For example, a newer area which I am following lately relates to 'conservation services' and 'natural capital' (see Conservation International) (www.conservation.org).  These structures are, essentially, quasi-voluntary regulatory schemes to allow companies to share and manage ecological externalities (see Jennifer Morris's speech at Stanford).  For me, CI's approach is just a start of a major trend in this area: soon there will be ISO certificate schemes covering externality pricing, as well as voluntary business case weighting methodologies which hopefully over time will become a standard approach in global commercial activity - - yet, this said, few individuals in the world understand how these types of governance tools work in practice.  It simply cross too many intellectual domains, which so far has stymied adoption on a global level.  'Deep Greens' are not well suited to create these types of applied 'corporate' innovations around externalities, but maybe you are the one given your legal background.

Highly innovative organizations, such as the Gates Foundation, look great to onlookers because, in large part, by comparison, the other large global NGOs have tired ‘business’ models.  Often major NGOs have been doing the same exact thing for decades.  For me, I could see this as creating an opportunity.  It might be great fun to join one of these NGOs for the express purpose to reshape it, remake it, and help them to reinvent their bag of tricks as an NGO.  As a lawyer, you can have this level of influence within these types of organizations - - but, remember, always ask for forgiveness, never for permission when trying to affect major change within large organizations.

Keep in touch.  If you like this or have other items to add, please drop me a note.  I always enjoy hearing from people and what they think.  These are changing times!

Best of luck,

John

[robotpals]

hey! idk if you're still taking questions about mhc, but i'm committed to mt holyoke for this fall and still not 100% sure. i kind of have a lot, so answer as many or as few as you'd like lol they're in order of priority

completely honestly, how much do people still call it a "women's college"? it was a really big factor for me that mhc was gender diverse, and since visiting has been kind of funky this year, it's been hard to tell how committed the school actually is to trans allyship (full disclosure, i'm a cis girl) and how much the students try to respect that

related to how welcome men and nonbinary folks feel-- when i show up on campus, are like 99% of the students going to be women (trans or cis), or am i being overly pessimistic about the remaining emphasis on women?

sustainability is a big focus for me, and was a factor that actually had me leaning away from mhc (most of the other schools i applied to were shooting for carbon neutrality years before 2037, and had more options for composting and such). the actual question part is: how hard would it be to try to be low/zero waste on campus (esp. plastics)? would the dining halls be able to accommodate that (outside of COVID years)? are there any significant obstacles i might run across?

i'd also like to get more politically involved in college, are there a lot of opportunities for that? (like, protests, or mutual aid, or politically oriented clubs)

how hard is it to get the classes you want? how many classes did you personally take at the other consortium colleges? (or if you're not comfortable with that, what might the average be?)

thank you so much! i'm sorry if this is too much or my tone is weird, and feel free to redirect me for any of this

Hello! Congratulations to you as well -- whether it’s where you end up or not, you should know that I’m proud of you for applying and being accepted! I’m not sure how helpful I’ll be for some of your questions, but I can certainly try to answer them. I’m putting a read-more because I have a feeling my answers may be long!

As to your first question, MHC still is a women’s college -- though a gender diverse one (I know that isn’t a helpful answer, but I think it describes the culture best!). Maybe the best way to think of it is that Mt Holyoke’s history is deeply steeped in what being a women’s college means: a lot of the traditions and details of the school can be traced back to its days as a women’s seminary. The fact that it was a place for women to get an education in a time when typically women couldn’t is something to be proud of, and definitely something that students celebrate -- though of course the category of “woman” who could be educated in the college’s early days was very limited to white affluent women. Something that I appreciated about MHC was it felt like nearly all of my fellow students were as social justice oriented as I am -- so there were always discussions about recognizing the college’s failings and history of discrimination, as well as celebrating those students who pushed for diversity and opened the doors to students who wouldn’t have been admitted in the college’s early days. That doesn’t mean that mhc is perfect, and as a white woman I’m not the best person to talk about those issues, but in general I thought the student body was willing to have hard discussions and advocate for critically examining mhc’s past.

I think my years there were interesting because my first year was the year the college announced it would accept trans women (the first of the “seven sisters” / historic east coast women’s colleges to do so!), though prior to my arrival trans men (those who applied still closeted/questioning and then came out while a student) were enrolled. I should disclose that I, too, am a cis woman! So any thoughts I have on what it’s like for trans students is based entirely on conversations with trans friends and not personal experience. Basically, though MHC is a women’s college, I think the large population of lgbt students means that gender/respect for trans students is more at the forefront than it would be at some other schools. I’m currently a student at a Big 10 state university for a masters program, and I definitely think that MHC was way more accepting of gender diversity than here -- asking about pronouns and respecting people’s gender identities were totally commonplace at MHC seven years ago, but undergrads I know at this university have said that there are lots of students who treat discussions about respecting pronouns as a joke :/ -- I hope that MHC has only continued to improve its treatment of gender diverse students since I was there.

That being said, there are definitely transphobic students -- and unfortunately, old and bigoted staff members. I remember when I was a student, the college released a memo for staff/faculty that said that emails to the student body shouldn’t use gendered language (like saying “Hey girls” or whatever LOL) and while every student I talked was in support of that, there were definitely rumors of some older professors throwing fits about that. I don’t remember any terfs on campus -- thank god -- but there was a “young republicans” student group that was super obnoxious (they only had three members LOL but they complained CONSTANTLY about how other students telling them to shut up was infringing on their first amendment rights). 

I have no idea what the numbers are, but when I was a student, it definitely seemed like the vast majority of students were women/women-aligned (cis, trans, or nb) or nonbinary, so if you really want a campus with more men, MHC may not be a great choice.

As far as sustainability: I really don’t know. I know that a big discussion when I was a student was divestment from fossil fuels, and MHC refused to make any promises to divest. When I was a student, there were a couple student advocacy groups dedicated to challenging the college to be more sustainable, so if you want to learn more, I would try to find info about those organizations and ask them. Sorry I don’t know more! For some reason I thought MHC composted, but I don’t know for sure -- I know that when you finish eating, you just put your plate on a conveyor belt and there are dining hall staff who sort through what’s what. Again, you could reach out to dining and ask! And if you end up at MHC and they aren’t composting, I think that would be something they might be open to implementing -- advocacy is key.

For political involvement, I think there are lots of opportunities! MHC is in a fairly rural location, but students on campus when I was there organized marches, walk-outs, and protests for the student body. There are advocacy groups for different interests, as well as cultural groups that organized events around specific issues. It’s definitely a campus where you can get involved with issues that are important to you. Again, I don’t know what the culture is like at other colleges, but in comparison to my graduate program, activism at MHC was far more robust.

For classes, I never had trouble taking the classes I wanted! But to be fair, my majors were uncommon enough that that isn’t too surprising (religion and ancient studies LOL). Among my friends, no one seemed to have trouble getting the classes they wanted -- the only class that I remember people having trouble getting into was a class on the history of witchcraft in the gender studies department! Which is SO mt holyoke LOL. 

I only took one class outside mhc -- which in retrospect I regret not taking more -- it was a class on Icelandic saga literature at umass amherst. It was a really fun class, and I enjoyed getting the glimpse into what life would have been like if I had gone to a big state school for undergrad! Overall, I thought the process for taking a class off campus was super easy and the only downside was the bus ride was like half an hour.

I hope my answers make sense! I feel like I should disclose that I’m finishing up my grad school program this week (!) so I’ve been particularly nostalgic for undergrad recently -- I’m stressed about exams, so my rose tinted glasses are ON 🙃 but I hope this has been helpful! I think that so many people make it seem like college is the most perfect wonderful time ever, but in actuality it’s pretty weird -- people living away from home for the first time, trying to figure themselves out, exploring their interests and passions, etc. ... so I would encourage you not to think of college as a perfect place, but a place where you will have room to grow! I definitely had times where I HATED being a student at mhc, but I certainly would have had those times anywhere I went -- and in the end, I’m glad I chose mt holyoke and I think it was a place I was able to grow and flourish into who I am today!

[thecousinsdangereux]

fic preview: over the wide skies up above (and the earth below)

Pairing: Blake/Yang (RWBY)

Playlist: On Spotify

Notes: This is a preview of a thing that I may or may not be something I actually finish post ski!au. Basically, it’s all for @twelveclara who wanted a Greek Gods AU. You’re lucky I adore you, you dumb bitch. I’ll fix this up and write more for you some day. Happy birthday. <3

                                                           — 

She was picking flowers: roses, crocus, and beautiful violets. Up and down the soft meadow. Iris blossoms too she picked, and hyacinth. And the narcissus, which was grown as a lure for the flower-faced girl by Gaia. All according to the plans of Zeus. She was doing a favor for the one who receives many guests. It was a wondrous thing in its splendor. To look at it gives a sense of holy awe to the immortal gods as well as mortal humans. It has a hundred heads growing from the root up. Its sweet fragrance spread over the wide skies up above. And the earth below smiled back in all its radiance. So too the churning mass of the salty sea

[From the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, translated by Gregory Nagy]

                                                            —

They meet on a Sunday morning, on the first day of Winter, under a cloudy and snow-filled sky.

It’s a collision only barely avoided; she swerves, but the white petals still brush against her cheek, sticking out every which way and thus not as easily dodged as the form carrying them (barreling around the corner without any particular concern or hesitation). The juxtaposition hardly stops there, because the resulting stream of expletives feels in direct opposition to what follows it: an apology that —  when directed at her — sounds soft and familiar, despite the lingering profanities.  

The thought doesn’t make any sense, but she hardly has time to consider its meaning when it first hits her; it’s quickly followed by a scent — floral and strong and overwhelming — that hits just as hard, turns the world over on itself, shifts the seasons, melts the ice around them. 

“Shit, sorry! I’ve got so many of these fucking things that I can barely see and I’ve got to get them to the greenhouse in like five minutes and I’m really running late and are you okay?” 

The flowers — she can see them more clearly now: long-stemmed and white with a brilliant yellow center ringed in red — obscure most of the woman’s face. But her long blonde hair spills outside of the boundaries of the dozens of stems barely contained to the two large buckets she holds in front of her chest. Blake finds herself briefly distracted again (distracted from a distraction), this time by the looping curls, the different colors of gold that glint among the strands despite the overcast skies. But then the woman shifts, trying to see around the stems, and with the movement, a new wave of the scent hits her and it’s all she can think about again. 

“What is that?” 

“What’s what?” The woman laughs and finally pokes her head through the flowers. The bright smile that appears is one that Blake cannot differentiate from the first bloom of Spring. “You mean like, the daffodils or — whoa.” 

She can’t pinpoint the reason for the change, but something makes the woman’s eyes (the color of the sky at 5:30 am in the middle of June) widen when they first meet Blake’s. The surprise steals her smile, but it returns almost immediately, stronger than before. 

“Whoa,” she says again. “Where have you been?” 

Blake’s a college freshman — one who got a fake ID at 16 and has been to frat parties and bars and clubs — and so she’s heard the line before (or something like it, ‘all my life’ tacked on at the end), but she’s never heard anyone say it like this woman does. The emphasis is in the wrong spot, the tone out of place, the emotion behind it incomprehensible. 

(Stranger than all that, her instantaneous thought — one she only just keeps from escaping her own lips — is waiting for you.) 

“I — what?” she says instead. 

“It’s the day before Christmas break! I’ve been here all semester and I’ve never seen you before. It’s not that big of a school. So, like, where have you been?” 

The girl shifts her cargo to the side — as though to give herself a better view — and the warm leather of her coat, the soft wool around the collar, belong on her frame as much as the dark gold belongs around her neck (a woven scarf, color deeper than her hair). 

“Not in the greenhouse,” Blake settles on. “I didn’t know we had one.” 

“Yeah, I could have guessed that.” 

It comes with a laugh and Blake’s not sure whether to be offended or not, but the woman quickly continues, before Blake can settle on any one expression.

“The Botany program is pretty small. Not too many people other than us visit the far field, let alone the Greenhouse.”

“Botany?” It’s not what she expects, but it feels right. 

(Blake’s not sure how she knows what feels right. But she doesn’t question it either.)

“Yeah. Plants are sort of my thing.” The girl lifts one of the buckets as though to prove her point, and Blake is once again reminded. 

“Yeah. What are those? They smell — ”

(Perfect. Like something she’s been searching for.) 

“Really good right?” She laughs again; a breeze, but one strong enough to bend the trunks of trees. “Yeah, people use it in perfumes all the fucking time. But I think I like the pure version of it best.” Leaning forward, the woman tips the bucket in Blake’s direction, allowing her to get another whiff. “Poet’s Daffodil. Narcissus poeticus, if you’d be into me showing off.” 

She’s leaning in, breathing in deep, but her surprise at the name is such that it nearly sends her rocking off balance and crashing face-first into the delicate stems.

“Oh, you are into me showing off.” The woman shifts again, but the flowers can’t obscure the brightness of her grin. “Hold on, let me take some notes for future reference. Is it the Latin, foreign languages in general, or the vast depth of knowledge that does it for you?” 

“No, I — ” Blake barely recognizes the laugh that escapes from her own lips. “No, it’s just. I’ve never seen it before. The flower version of Narcissus, I mean. But I’ve read about it a hundred times. The man, at least.” 

The woman’s head tilts in thought, but her expression clears quickly.

“Mythology nerd, huh?”

“Classics major.” 

“Oh, super mythology nerd.” She tips the bucket forward again. One of the flowers slides against Blake’s cheek. “You better take one then. You can show it off to all your friends. Spin it however you like. Something like, you got a mythological flower from a mythological girl.” She pauses. “Okay that didn’t actually make sense, I don’t think. I meant like, you got a flower from a goddess. Because I’m like -- uh, I dunno -- what’s the hottest goddess?” 

“The last person who answered that question got into an awful lot of trouble, in the end,” Blake quips, but finds her smile aches. (She also finds she has an immediate answer, though it’s not one of the three that Paris had to consider in the contest that lead to such trouble for the Greeks and Trojans both.)

“I think I remember the basics of that one. How about you take the flower and my number instead of a golden apple and we’ll skip the bad ending.” 

It’s sudden, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like Blake’s been waiting for a while. 

“Forward,” she says despite all that, because it’s almost as though she has to. As though there are steps to take that she’s not allowed to skip, lest she upset a balance she wasn’t aware existed before now. 

It’s a dramatic thought; she’d laugh at herself if — when she reaches into the bucket to grasp one of the stems — she didn’t feel the world sigh in relief.  

“I’ve never really seen the point of wasting time.” The woman shrugs, tone and words light, but only in the same sort of way (required, practiced lines). “There’s just not enough of it.” 

“You sound like you’re a hundred years old and on your deathbed,” Blake laughs, but oh, her heart is clenching. And she’s taking out her phone. She’s making a new contact. She’s already thinking about the first time she’ll text this woman and she doesn’t even know her name. 

(There isn’t enough time. Somehow, she agrees, and that makes her want to get all of it in now, while she has a chance.)

“Or I’m someone who is very late in dropping off some daffodils that don’t really like the cold much. Even if I have a very valid excuse in wanting to stick around.” She pulls away with several long strides backwards; it seems genuinely regretful, but she brightens a little, seeing the flower clutched in one of Blake’s hands (and her phone in the other). “818-815-6247. Let me know if you want to see the greenhouse. Or tell me about the prettiest goddess. Or do anything at all.” 

She takes another step back and Blake nods twice, before realizing she’s missing something. 

“Wait! I’m — ” It comes out sounding a little more desperate than she would have liked, but then, the woman turns back towards her quickly enough for a single petal to fall off of one of of the flowers, so maybe pretenses aren’t really something either of them are concerning themselves with. “I don’t know your name.” 

“Yang.” It’s not the name she expects, but it slides into place easily enough. 

“Blake.” (Somehow, that’s not the name she expects either, even though it’s her own.) “I’ll text you. Call you. Soon.” 

“Good.” She catches another flash of that smile before Yang turns away. “And I’ll be waiting. Or —  trying to. I’ve never been very patient, though you’d think I would have learned by now.” 

“A lot of practice?” Blake calls after her, takes a step towards her (doesn’t notice). 

“Too much, I think.” Her laugh carries, blonde curls whip in the wind as she walks off. “So try to have mercy on me this time.”

Afterwards, she smells of daffodils (of dark green leaves, of a meadow that stretches on and on and on, of mint and hay and dirt and weeds and the whole of spring), as though it’s coming from her pores rather than the flower she places in a small glass on her nightstand. The scent persists through showers and nights out and all the smells that come with living in a coed freshman dorm. It lasts for days (or eons) and stretches back in time, too; she finds it tucked away in memories where it has no place, couldn’t possibly exist. 

(She’s five and her mom takes her to pick blueberries, she’s fourteen on a field trip to the botanical gardens, she’s seventeen and trying to find a perfume that suits her, she’s nineteen and stepping out of her late night Byzantine history seminar. And it’s there — it’s always there — just out of reach: the field over, the next flower, a slightly different perfume, a whiff on the wind that she chases across campus for ten minutes before giving up.)  

(She’s older — ageless — and she doesn’t recognize herself, but it’s there too.) 

The scent of flowers lingers and Blake doesn’t mind. 

She also texts Yang before it can begin to fade.

—

They first meet on Helios’s Day, on the morning of the vernal equinox, under a bright and clear sky.

She watches from behind the treeline, but even from a distance, it’s obvious, the way the ground rises to greet her when the woman walks past: stalks lengthening, flowers unfolding, grass brightening into a more vibrant shade of green with each step she takes. The world is in bloom and it follows the unspoken instructions of only one creature that roams its face. 

Hesitation is not a trait often associated with the gods, but the god of the underworld feels it now, unwilling to interrupt the celebration that the very Earth seemingly wishes to partake in, but desiring it all the same. She is used to the damp, dark coolness of the world below, and the sun always seems beats down with an unfamiliar and uncomfortable heat, but today it feels indomitable and irresistible. 

Today, she wants to step out into the light. 

Vines wrap around her as soon as she does — nothing binding or restrictive, but welcoming — a soft touch that greets her in time with the smile of the one who controls them. She does not appear surprised at the intrusion, nor displeased, but when she walks closer and white flowers — fragrant and familiar — spring up all around them, certainty sprouts as well. 

“The receiver of many guests. Giver of good counsel. It’s not often we see you up here.” The tone is teasing, different from what she typically hears, and it warms her cheeks, places a shade of color there that others would not recognize. (She barely recognizes it in herself.) “What have you come to the surface for?” 

She has an answer to the question, but it’s an honest one, not one she typically gives freely. 

She gives it freely now.  

“Sometimes, I miss being around things that are alive.” 

The goddess doesn’t belittle when she responds — though her smile stays playful — like so many others would. 

“I may be able to help you with that.” 

The ground shifts again and one of the flowers at her feet lifts, stem lengthening to four times what would be natural, until it’s sliding between her fingers, depositing itself in her palm, releasing itself from the Earth when she lifts it to her nose and breathes deep. 

“Everything dies when I go below,” she says softly, and with regret. 

“Not this.” 

She stares into the goddess’s eyes (crocus, monkshood, bellflower, wisteria, lilac) and believes her words, impossible though they are. 

“I’m Kore.” The name doesn’t quite suit her, though the king of the underworld had known it before now. “You should call on me whenever you want to feel something that is alive.” 

“And what if I feel that always?” 

Kore laughs. The whole of the clearing blooms. 

“Then you should call on me always, Hades. Whenever you please.”

—

There’s no need for any pretense. No desire for it, besides.

They graduate from text to voice quickly — within the span of a week —  and when Blake calls, Yang answers on the first ring. When Blake asks if she wants to hang out, Yang rattles off seven different options without pause. 

(“I’ve been thinking about what we should do together since we first met,” Yang says, not really an admission, not when the truth is so easily accessible.

“That was four days ago,” Blake feels she has to add, but Yang just laughs.)

Yang — without flowers blocking her face — is more beautiful than anything Blake’s ever seen. It’s more than the sharp cut of her jaw or the muscles of her forearm or the way her eyes crinkle when she smiles; Yang is attractive and anyone would agree, but it’s more than that. (Something curls in Blake’s stomach and settles in place at the sight, roots growing quick and deep.) And maybe it’s more for Yang too, because her expression — when Blake steps into view, climbing up over the crest of the hill that marks the start of the far field  — holds more than Blake can measure. 

College is strange, and the relationships formed within it, stranger still. She’d met Sun at a freshmen karaoke mixer that she’d been dragged to by her roommate, and in the span of a few hours, they’d gone through every stage of a relationship imaginable: strangers (the awkward first meet), rivals (when he and Ilia had picked the same song and Blake had been dragged along in solidarity), possible partners (when mixer had become unofficial and the alcohol had come out), and (finally) best friends (when the awkward flirtation and intoxication was behind them).   

But this — Yang taking her hand and leading her towards the greenhouse — is different, and that must be apparent to both of them, because Yang hardly looks surprised when Blake doesn’t step away, even once they’re inside. 

“Why botany?” Blake asks, tone softer than the question merits.

Yang’s lips curl and Blake gets caught on the corner like it’s a hook; she wants to press her fingers against the indent, and then do the same with her mouth.   

“I like making things grow. Wherever I go.” Her smile is unabashed, even when she continues. “Cheesy, I know. But I like making things come alive.”

(Blake thinks of vines growing in places they shouldn’t be able to, thinks of flowers sprouting from the cracks in pavement, thinks of the roots of trees spilling out over and digging into rock. She thinks — most of all — of Yang’s hands on all of them and on her as well, a different sort of challenge that Yang never took as such.) 

“It’s not cheesy it’s — “ As she searches for the word, Yang’s gaze does something similar with the planes of her face (searching, though Blake doesn’t think she finds what she’s looking for, and finds herself coming up similarly short). “ —  sincere? Earnest?” She shakes her head; neither are quite right. “Whatever it is, the world needs more of it.” 

The honesty doesn’t sound as sweet coming from her lips, but Yang doesn’t appear to mind. She smiles again, wider this time, and the plants around them pulse with a soft sigh, a tangible exhale of oxygen. And when Yang walks along the rows -- running her fingers gently along the leaves and petals and stalks -- when she speaks each of their names, Blake could swear the vegetation leans into her touch. 

The thought is less strange when coupled with her own: that she wants to do much of the same. 

She searches for patience, then. 

She’s had practice with it too. 

(She used to have more of it.) 

—

She doesn’t last long. 

But then, how could she? 

Only a week later, one of Yang’s friends throws a back-to-school party and Blake gets pulled along, as seems to be the new trend. 

(“It’s weird,” Yang says, much in the same way she always does, with a grin lighting her face. “She’s normally a lot more particular about her guest list.”) 

There’s alcohol waiting for them as soon as they walk in, and they each throw back a shot before moving any further, though the (surprisingly) fancy cocktail Blake picks up shortly after is one that she nurses for the rest of the night, at least until her hands find better uses. 

Yang’s hands find them more quickly than Blake’s; she’s tactile and gregarious and fun and she touches people as she greets them, throughout conversations, when she says goodbye. But she touches Blake most of all: her hand on the small of her back, her fingers threading through the hair that rests at the nape of her neck, her chin resting on Blake’s shoulder. 

It builds and builds and there’s not enough time and so Blake reaches down, tugs on Yang’s hand and pulls her outside. It feels like the only place they can be — tucked into the corner of the balcony of Yang’s friend’s lavish apartment with the night sky overhead — when she kisses her. 

There’s no surprise in the action, but there’s plenty of everything else. 

(Blake considers all the Greek words for affection, for feeling, for lust, for every form of love known to the poets, and disregards them all.) 

Her lipstick is dark, and it’s smeared over Yang’s mouth when she pulls back (later — that night and in the upcoming weeks and months and years — she’ll find it in other places: Yang’s neck, her thighs, her sheets). The stains Yang leaves is of a different sort, but Blake first notices it in the taste left on her lips. She runs her tongue along it, brow pinching in thought, and Yang laughs as she watches her try to figure it out. 

“Pomegranate,” she explains. “It’s the lip balm.” 

Blake can’t see how that accounts for all of it and kisses her again, just to be sure.

—

The first time they kiss, the world springs into revelry.

The humans flourish under the bountiful harvest; their yields triple, they write songs about the season, they throw feasts without excuse, and each of the gods benefit from an upsurge of tributes, from the smallest villages to the largest city-states. 

She hardly notices. 

Instead, she focuses on memorizing the way Kore tastes. 

 —

She meets a boy in her Ancient Greek Lit class, finds his translation of the first line of the Odyssey to be interesting. The word polytropos, he argues, should be taken as an active description; Odysseus is not controlled but in control of his fate. ‘Sing to me, Muse, of a compelling man; sing through me the story of a man who could shape the world around him’, the boy writes, and Blake gets caught on the intensity in his expression as he reads it, is taken by his confidence and passion (forgets to argue against the lengthiness and the clear liberties he takes). 

He greets her after class, suggests they study together sometime, and that’s what Yang finds them doing a couple days later, tucked away in a corner of the library, pouring over words translated a thousand times, Adam finding a way to disagree with every previous version of them. Yang slides into the conversation and the seat next to Blake without needing to be invited, her warm smile at ease even when Adam switches to Greek, speaks fast and condescending. 

“Well I don’t know anything about any of that,” Yang says easily. “But Blake told me that myths were supposed to be enjoyed by everyone, right? That they were passed on from generation to generation, like bedtime songs or campfire stories. Seems like getting all wordy and pretentious doesn’t really fit that idea, right?” She smiles, and Blake’s gaze shifts towards it, away from the clear ire in Adam’s eyes. “I’d go with Blake’s version.”

In the hour they’d been at the table, Blake hadn’t offered her own translation (hadn’t been asked), but it’s scribbled there, within the margins of the pages of printed out Greek, and Yang’s fingers brush against the pen strokes as she leans in, their shoulders brushing against each other. 

“Tell me about a complicated man,” Blake reads, voice soft. 

“Yeah.” Yang nods and completely ignores Adam’s glare. Blake finds doing the same to be easy, his magnetism fading away, swept aside by stronger forces. “Sometimes you’ve got to admit that something like that can’t be totally summed up in a word or even in a sentence. There’s something kind of beautiful about that too — I think — admitting the complexity in such a simple way.”

“I… think so too.”  

Adam doesn’t last for much longer, quickly tiring of not being the center of attention. He slams his books shut and shoves his chair out with force when he stands and Blake can’t remember what it was about him that appealed to her in the first place.

“I don’t like him,” Yang says after he leaves, a simple declaration as she steals a sip from Blake’s water bottle.

Blake blinks. Considers. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ll be studying with him again.” 

And she doesn’t. 

(It’s not normally that easy, she thinks, later on, and isn’t sure what she means by that at all.)

—

The humans tell tales about them, before their story is finished. 

Time is odd like that when you are immortal and infinite. Beginnings and ends and middles get jumbled in a way that they never do for those who have a life to live in a linear manner.  

It starts small: maidens whispering to each other, children making up rhymes, mothers telling stories to put their daughters to sleep. There’s a soft reverence in these traditions, and though she does not catalog the words they use, she picks up on the meaning. It settles in her chest — the warmth of it — different from the sort that presses at her heart when Kore is near, but significant in a distinct way. 

The tales change over time, warped by the teller and the listener alike, move further from the truth. But the humans could hardly know of the color of Kore’s hair, the tone of her skin, the color of her eyes, and what did it matter when the genders were confused or the courtship was pressed into a single day? The meaning persisted, the good intentions enough to sate the both of them. 

The stories lengthen, turn into poems, turn into songs, turn into performances, turn into epics. And one day Hermes tells them — amusement in his voice — that they have started to record them, to actually write them down.

But they carry on, much in the same way. 

What harm could human words -- written or no -- have on the lives of the gods?

[thestudyfeels]

🎨 Graphic made by @indiaisstudying​: India is brilliant my pals, and I recommend checking her out for studyblr/artblr inspiration. My girl tHIRIVES.

The singular takeaway from this post: Do a creative binge. Much productive than a Netflix binge. Period.

Two months ago, I reached my peak when I coined the term ‘bood day’ (a bad to good day, in my article How To Flip A Bad Day By 180°). Today, puppies and kittens, I present to you— a creative binge.

*crickets chirping, that one dude in the audience scratches his nose and turns away* 

…This one actually works but okay, we get it, y'all are bitches. But gonna do my job anyway– if you're a creator reading this, please do a creative binge at least once every two weeks.

I started doing these binges two months ago, and I've seen a VAST improvement in my creative energy. I feel my commercial voice coughing and saying hello to the mic, so before I start listing side-effects for a sponsored pill, let's dive into the basics. 

🍵 Quick PSA — 

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Ever questioned your life, experienced writer's block, painter’s pain or blogger’s… block? (Narrator: aaaand she's back to advertising.) A creative binge helps deal with fixing exactly that.

“A creative binge is based off the equation of quality in = quality out.”

A lot of creators feel that they're supposed to magically create out of their head, and that's just ridiculous. It's ludicrous considering you don't know shit, read shit, do shit and watch shit.

Even to write fiction, my pal, you'll have to expose yourself to the world to know its ways, read great books and take tips (not to mention stock up on coffee, and prepare to cry a lot) before you start cranking out the pages. Everything you create is ultimately inspired by the Ways Of The World. (And that's a fantastic novel title)

So in short, you’ve got to consume content, to make content. And in a creative binge, you conscious choose content that'll help you create. Genius, I know!

Okay, but what if I'm not a creator?

Brilliant question! Wanna become more valuable and leave the people you interact with better? Take a creative binge.

Allow me an elaboration: Take a janitor and a neurosurgeon. The said janitor is paid much less than the neurosurgeon. Why is that? Is the neurosurgeon a better person? That's debatable. Is the janitor less efficient at his work? Again, debatable. The primal reason lies in the neurosurgeon acquiring more valuable skills than the janitor. Society rewards them by paying more since there are less folks who can do what the neurosurgeon does.

To recap: In order to be indispensable in the role you play (whatever it is, a student, calligrapher, CEO of the Janitor Club), you HAVE to become valuable. Grow your curiosity & know more than yo’ buddies (also bring more value than anybody else). And to become valuable, you consume value. Tada!

(And if you still ain't convinced, I'll pull out the Netflix card. You'd really rather watch shows? Or binge YouTube? Than learn a new skill, or develop existing ones? Question your priorities, my friend. Victims love entertainment, victors love learning.)

Cool, you're joining in then! Not that creative binge is NOT an entertainment binge. It's a value providing binge. What you ‘consume’ has to bring you something in return— whether that's creative inspiration, motivation or skills. *Swing arms* yup! We’re one gay, productive household. Someone remind Hallie to buy the groceries though, the Cheerios are going mouldy.

By my dictionary, a creative binge is a slot of time, 1½ to 3 hours I'd say, when you watch/read/listen to some good stuff.  Basically, binge content. 

THE 101 OF A CREATIVE BINGE 

🌿 Basics:

I conduct one every week (usually Wednesday mornings), lasting around 1½ to 2 hours.

I'll also keep a notepad and a pen nearby, to take notes and jot ideas as they come. Again, this is NOT an entertainment binge, even though it's a chill job.

Sometimes I'll get passive things done (like wiping my desk, eating breakfast and taking out textbooks) while watching. We maximize our time. 

🌿 What Do I Watch: 

The stuff I watch falls into 3 categories: creative/humor (for inspiration), business/skills (for skills) & motivation (for, um, motivation). Fair warning though, a lot of the stuff these folks make overlap, but that's alright. This is just a rough demarcation. 

Creative/Humor: some YesTheory, maybe some MacDoesIt, sprinkle in some Ryan Higa, perhaps an episode of a show with an amazing script, some stand-up comedy from my favorites. Or maybe trash that and just watch Sherlock. (Geez, Netflix, I hate you, I love you.)

Skills: Gary Vee, some artist channels, that random video on how to thrift shop even though I don't shop.

Motivation: Be Inspired, Tom Bilyeu, Mel Robbins and random videos which look nice.

🌿 What Do I Listen To: 

Oof, I love music tremendously! If you're a pal, you know it's time to RUN when I come around being like, “soo, I was wondering what's your favourite–”.

Yet, during a creative binge, I'll only listen to stuff that 1) inspires me, or 2) is creative in a way I can't explain. Some recommendations! 

Hype music:

The Score

NF

Imagine Dragons

Creative music:

Billie Eilish

Lana Del Rey

Sleeping At Last

Lorde

Conan Gray

Harry Styles 

🌿 What Do I Read: 

Usually the book that I'm reading at that point if I'm being lazy.

POETRY: It's my belief, but poetry is a writer's most powerful device. There's a novel to be said in a simple sonnet.

FICTION: I dig great fiction. PS, please read (and sob over) Away Childish Things, by @letteredlettered. It changed me as a person, changed my entire perspective about kids. I'm much kinder and softer now, and my pimples are gone. I'll literally never get over drarry too, so thanks lettered, love you.

ARTICLES: Bookmarked psychology, productivity & fitness articles on Medium. Maybe check out James Clear's & Gary Vee’s blog for new posts.

Because I wanna drive this home, here's what I did in my last creative binge as a concrete example —

Care to Note that:

All of the stuff I consume is pre-planned.

I add videos throughout the week to my Creative Binge playlist on YouTube, download albums from Amazon Music and articles for offline reading.

DON'T leave this to the last moment, you'll more likely pick entertainment vs learning then. 

Watched–

Why I'm done trying to be "man enough"

Redecorating my room 2017 (I wanna decorate my room this year so)

How to Squat Properly (I’m trying lmao)

Giving a 9-Year-Old Her Dream Job for 24hrs!! (I stan YesTheory so much)

How To NOT Be A Starving Artist (A mood. I love Sorelle)

Couple more, I could go on & on, but you get me.

Listened–

Every song on YouTube by Bruno Major

Born to die: paradise version (album) by Lana Del Rey 

Read–

Articles from James Clear's blog — (x) (x)

Articles from Gary Vee’s blog — (x) (x)

HIIT workouts for beginners

All of this birthed–

Ideas for future articles, titled: How To Be Great & Solomon Letters #2: Question Your Faith, Not Your Dreams, among others.

A small poem about faith– posted on my IG, check it out!

New content ideas, like value chains (upcoming!)

Bunch of other small rants for everyday posting

Some business and life advice that might be useful later.

Gotta say goodbye now! (literally too... but post about it coming on 12th so wait for it) Try this one out, and let me know how your binge goes (tag it with #team conquer). Mine usually end with a bucketful of philo notes, a recharged left (right? psychology? idk) brain, and a fresh perspective towards the rest of my week. 

This is the #1 strategy I've adopted to sustain creative energy when it's sapped all around by negativity and school & I promise it helps. No side effects, no sponsored pills needed. Thanks for reading!

Related: How To Get Back Into The Creative Process (if you're in a blogger's block or experiencing painter's pain)

Have something to say? I treasure all feedback! If this post inspired you to do something, or you wanna throw some love/constructive criticism at me— hop into my ask box, or reply to this post itself!

Thanks for dropping by! Major articles, like this one, come out every Thursday! Join my taglist by to read them when they do. I also post daily wins, journal entries, rants & photos of my plant babies throughout the week, so follow me if you’re into conquering life. I vow to be the loudest cheerleader. ✧

Sending you love and good energy, talk soon. 

Nandini 💌 (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ��� 

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[faithnolan18-blog]

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[prorevenge]

Teacher tells me I am lying about my mother having cancer.

This is a long one with TLDR at bottom

This was in my grade 11 year of high school, My computer class had a year long substitute teacher because our amazing teacher was out for a year working on a government contract. Our previous teacher was outstanding. He had six different classes in our classroom all happening at the same time which were: computer repair, programming lvl1, programming lvl2, networking lvl1, networking lvl2a and lvl2b. He would give a lecture for each of the classes on a specific day of the week, programming on Monday, repair on Tuesday and so on, we would all work in our own groups and everything went quite well.

The next year came around and I found out that we had a sub for the year I had two back to back blocks in this class cause I was doing two courses, I wandered up to the class to see what kind of teacher we were dealing with, mainly interested because i was almost certain whoever they found did not have the credentials to teach at least half of those classes. The new teacher was a foreign woman that none of us have ever heard of before, for the purpose of the story we will call her Mrs. S.

I went and found my friends to tell them what I had seen. We were all optimistic cause from a very short conversation she seemed quite informed and had a good background.

It didn't last long, on the first day of class Mrs. S introduced herself as a programming teacher who had been in school for four years. She went on to tell us about her programming experience in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access. She then told us that the programming students would not be doing the Java and C++ course we had signed up for and would instead be doing database and Excel because those are what she learned and she said and i quote 'they will be more useful than C and The Java'. She also went on to suspend all at lunch clubs because she didn't think high school students could be trusted with computers alone.

Understandably some of us were quite upset about that considering that we came there to program. She also did not give the repair people or the networking people any kind of support and completely stopped their lectures as well, preferring to let them figure it out themselves and 'self teach' without giving any of the resources to do so and occasionally throwing out a test pre-written by the last teacher for her.

This continued for about two weeks till one day she came in and said quite irritated that we would actually be doing 'The Java' now unless we wanted to keep doing database, so we switched to Java and she basically left us out to dry from there. because she wasn't teaching Database anymore she came to harass people in computer repair. First she told us the shop room was too messy and made us throw out 90% of our training workstations and equipment because they were not important in her eyes. Equipment that did not belong to the school but actually belonged to the other teacher. We took home what we could steal for safe keeping but she did end up throwing out a few thousand in equipment.

Then she started imposing stupid rules on us such as;

"You can't have the computer on while you are troubleshooting inside cause you could electrocute yourself"

Or

"You don't need the case open to troubleshoot motherboard lights"

Or my personal favorite and the most scary

"maybe you should change the power supply to 240v if you aren't getting enough power"

We followed most of her stupid requests as much as we could because she threatened to lock us out of the lab room and give us only textbook work if we didn't. Needless to say it was a challenging time. One of the students in the networking area got fed up and started doing up his own course work and lecturing to us so that we could at least get some kind of use out of the courses. To his credit it was all very good but Mrs. S had the balls to force him into doing it from there on out and then turn around and give him low grades for not getting his own work done on time.

A few months of this very uneasy balance go by and my mother comes down with Colon cancer. I have already had a handful of other family members suddenly taken from me by cancer so understandably this is a very stressful time. I was joking with my friends and trying to not break down over the whole thing. I had a very unstable laptop running Linux that would crash if looked at funny and had a horrible habit of corrupting the OS when the battery died because the reserve shutdown sensor didn't work anymore (battery always read 0% but would go for an hour or two). while I was working on the school desktop computer I had a few pages open that I was taking notes in and a facebook tab so I could keep in contact with my mother cause she was in surgery and I was waiting for her to come out. I look over and the teacher is snooping through my laptop opening folders and closing windows and eventually pushes the power button in till it shuts down (which also usually corrupts anything I was doing). The following happened.

M: What the hell do you think you are doing?

S: You shouldn't be on facebook or writing notes on a personal computer during class time, especially when your grades are slipping.

Thanks for bringing that up in front of everyone...

M: That gives you no right to touch my stuff! You better hope you didn't just corrupt everything! this laptop breaks easy.

S: Then you shouldn't have it out during class, keep that tone up and I'll see you get a detention.

At this point I am trying just to keep calm because if I get too emotional I have a tendency to explode. This is often made worse because of my mild autism. I took a second replied in a calmer tone.

M: I'm sorry, I'm just having a hard time at home right now... My mother was diagnosed with Colon Cancer and I am waiting to hear back.

And this is the part which REALLY set me off.

S: You don't look like a kid who's mother has cancer, quit making sob story excuses.

are you FUCKING kidding me‽

It took every fiber of my body not to stand up and slap the bitch right there. I gave her the dirtiest thousand yard stare I think I have ever done while also trying to not burst out crying. I spoke to nobody for the rest of the day till I got home, people kept asking if I was okay and I ignored everyone. My mother was out of the hospital and home by the time I got there. I broke down crying and told her about my day, her face was comforting but you could see the fire of an angry woman behind her brown eyes. She told me not to worry and that it'd be okay.

A few weeks passed and I was called into the office for a one on one parent teacher conference someone forgot to tell me about. There were all the teachers I had that year, good and bad, my Learning assistance teacher the VP and the principal herself. They told me that we were there to discuss my grade slippage as soon as my mother came. My mother was about 10 minutes late, leaving me to awkwardly sit with all these people. She comes in and is all smiles,

M: Sorry I am Late! I got held late at the hospital.

Someone but i'm not sure who asked her why she was at the hospital and if everything is okay. My mother answered in her happy way.

M: I was just getting my C̭̟̦̤̕A̰̣̰̼Ń͕̝̬C̵͕E̯R̥̫͇̹̳͝ checked on, Because I have cancer.

The room went cold and her voice seemingly dripped with blood when she said it, my computers teacher went pale and everyone in the room was giving a confused 'what on earth did you do' look

My mother proceeded to relay me coming crying home about how I was treated to everyone present while Mrs: S tried to become one with the wall of the small meeting room. She kept it short but to paraphrase added the following.

M: How dare you say something so careless to my son, I hope you are ashamed and I hope you don't get invited back for another year.

She then returned back to her normal happy self and discussed my grades like nothing happened whilst half the teachers were still trying to figure out what just happened and told them that now she was out of the hospital my grades should improve again. I just sat quiet the whole time and tried to suppress bursting out laughing.

After that day she never directly spoke to me again, had instructions relayed through other people or gave them to the class as a whole, she did her damnedest to be nowhere near me and say nothing to me. My grades improved quite a bit and the year ended with me passing.

Mrs. S was previously offered a job at the school as a secondary computer teacher but after all the trouble the job was pulled back. The next year when our first computer teacher returned he was furious to learn most of his equipment and personal books had been thrown out, we returned the things that we snagged during the purge but he still lost a few thousand in personal teaching stuff. The school payed him back with 10,000 but he says he lost so much more than that in time and pre-set hand made equipment. We told him all about the horror show and he gave us all an extensive test normally given at the end of the year which the vast majority of us failed, we ended up redoing all the computer courses from the previous year because in his words she didn't even teach us the basics. that sub can no longer teach in this or the neighboring districts

TLDR: Shitty year long sub fucks us all over, tells me i am faking my mother's cancer and destroys another teachers personal property. Gets ripped into by mother with all my teachers and VP and P present. looses opportunity to work in my district or any surrounding for being unprofessional and not knowing her subject forcing everyone in her class to retake the next year.

(source) (story by flanigomik)

[child-of-lightning]

road trip

we’ll start in delaware, and I will love you more and more with each mile. 

you’ll drive first, because I know you’ll insist on starting the trek behind the wheel. you’ll drive, and your hand will be on my thigh or holding my hand, and I’ll watch you and admire your focus. 

our first stop will be in maryland, we’ll pass your hometown and you’ll take me through the back roads like you always do, and then we’ll get to destination number one. we’ll have some good crabs and share the sunset before trekking again, and this time I’ll drive. 

we’ll keep working our way through maryland until we get down to virginia. there, we’ll visit several landmarks and spots, big and little cities, and we’ll pass my college. 

but of course, in between all of these stops and the future stops, we’ll switch drivers, we’ll cook and buy meals, and I’ll get to fall asleep in your arms under the stars when we sleep. 

and we’ll keep trekking. after virginia, we’ll head down to north carolina. we’ll have some delicious southern food and talk to the locals in each town we go through. we’ll buy some postcards and send them to our family, letting them know that we’re having a great time on the trail. 

after north carolina, we’ll head down further to south carolina and check out some historical spots. we’ll stop in fort sumter and laugh remembering our high school american history teacher and all of her stories and antics.

when it gets dark and you’re driving, you’ll look over at me and I’ll be fighting sleep in the passenger seat, and you’ll know by my drooping eyes that I only fall asleep while you drive because I trust you and I know you’ll never let me get hurt.

but when we switch drivers and I continue, we’ll be on our way to georgia. there we’ll eat some delicious peaches and we’ll do some paddling. but we’ll be so excited to get down to florida, that we’ll leave shortly after. 

we’ll leave for florida in the morning. you’ll cook us breakfast in the back of the rv, and we’ll stop just past the florida line to enjoy it. we’ll spend several days in several parts of florida, because we have family there who needs to be updated about our trip so far. we’ll see your family and then my family, and we’ll spend a day at the beach and a day at disney and maybe even more. when we’re there, it will remind us of the trip we took to florida when we were teenagers. 

when we eventually leave florida, we’ll head to the southern part of alabama. we’ll get into even more of the southern life, and visit the uss there. we’ll pass through and work our way to louisiana. we’ll spend some time there, partying whether it’s mardi gras time or not. with any luck, we’ll have forgotten what we even did there by the end of all our celebrations.

but we’ll sober up and get to mississippi after. there, we’ll see some national parks and enjoy the clear southern sky. from there, we’ll go to the music part of tennessee, and we’ll see the museums and stores dedicated to recording and producing music. 

after stops for gas and checking on the rv, which we’ll obviously be doing throughout our entire journey, we’ll venture on to arkansas, pronounce it like “ar-kansas” the entire time because that’s the kind of humor we thrive on, and we’ll see the toltec mounds at a state park (they’re cool!). after that, we’ll drive west to oklahoma, and we’ll see some historical towns.

we’ll get down to texas, and we’ll pass through dallas and san antonio, getting to know some of the people down there while we drive through. we’ll hold hands every time we get out to explore a city or town, and I’ll be shocked that we made it all the way to texas without running into any major problems on the drive!

I will admire you while you admire the landmarks and towns. I will look at your face, curious and smiling, and know that there is no one I would rather spend those weeks/months with, no one else I would rather explore it all with. 

after we finish up in texas, we’ll work our way back up to new mexico. there, we’ll see some national parks and enjoy some delicious food. we’ll go through that state and drive up to colorado, where we’ll stop in colorado springs to see the incredible vastness of the land in pikes peak. it will be just a glimpse of the wonderful hills and mountains we’ll be seeing on the west coast, which will be a lot different from the flat land in our own state. 

we’ll then hike up to wyoming. we’ll see yellowstone, and check out how cool the land is and how different it is from what we’re used to. we’ll go west to idaho, and eat potatoes the entire time. 

I haven’t even mentioned one of the most important parts of all this. the rv will have an aux cord, and we will alternate being DJs through the entire trip. we’ll listen to new music, albums that we’ve loved since we were teenagers, and we’ll introduce each other to new music. singing in the car with you is one of my favorite things to do, and I can’t wait for us to sing in the car across the country. 

we’ll bop our way down to utah. we’ll see some national parks there too, and we’ll drive past the place I took my first very far ski trip. before entering arizona, we could maybe even stand in the four corners. even better, we can kiss, and say we kissed in four states at once. 

we’ll see the grand canyon in arizona. we’ll reminisce on the trips we took with our own families when we were young, and remember the feelings of seeing those breathtaking views for the first time. 

then, we’ll hit the bright lights and excitement of las vegas, nevada. we’ll go zip lining over fremont street and check out all of the clubs and parties we can get into. when we’ve had our fill of the busy city, we’ll head to california. 

there, like florida, we’ll spend several days. we’ll see san francisco, sacramento, and los angeles. we’ll walk the streets they put in all the hollywood movies and we’ll hold hands and we’ll show everyone just how much we really love each other. we’ll have mini existential crises that we’ve already made it all the way across the country! we’ll walk on the california beaches and swim in the clear pacific waters and reminisce on all the beach trips we took in high school and college. we’ll walk the streets looking for famous people, and we’ll go into the most expensive stores and pretend like we can afford all of the things they sell. we’ll hit some high-end clubs if we can get in, and we’ll explore the wilderness during the days. 

but of course, we’ll eventually have to get back on the road to the next state. we’ll ride up to oregon, and admire the beautiful land and how different it is from what we’re used to. we’ll explore, and spend some time in small towns there. we’ll soon work our way up to washington. 

in washington, we’ll go up to seattle, visit the downtown area, the fish market, and get a good meal in town. we’ll check out some ski slopes and see the mountains (mount rainier!) and we’ll visit my family while we’re there. when we have had our fill of the northwest corner, we’ll head back east towards montana. 

there, we’ll there, we’ll see some more national parks and admire the night sky from all the way over there. we’ll eat some different foods and explore all of the land, maybe go on a few hikes. as we’re seeing all of the various landmarks and differences between where we live and where we have gotten to, I will love and admire you for making it this long with me, and for being a much more precious work of art in this world than any of the sights we’ll have seen by now. 

next we’ll head to north dakota. I’ll tell you all about how I once did a middle school project on north dakota, and how I’m the “expert” of the state, even though I secretly don’t remember anything I wrote down. we’ll see fort union trading post and drive the roads with the rv, listening to some good travel music and podcasts.

we’ll shoot south towards south dakota, and make our first stop at mount rushmore! we’ll send mount rushmore postcards to all our family and friends and take pictures imitating the faces of the carved men. we’ll sit and talk politics for a while, and we’ll see badlands national park in honor of the name of halsey’s first album. 

after south dakota, we’ll go down to nebraska, and we’ll investigate some of the older land and great plains historical areas. we’ll see all of the rock formations and be truly living the southern lifestyle- as long as we’re both wearing our big floppy hats. 

after that is minnesota. we will keep alternating drivers and having deep conversations about life. during these drives, we’ll have to keep each other busy, of course. we’ll try to guess the songs that come on shuffle in an album, listen to weird videos, try to alternate singing lyrics in songs and end up in complete laughter, and wave/make faces at the people who pass us on the road. 

in minnesota, we’ll see fort snelling and how busy minneapolis could get. we’ll do some shopping and sightseeing there, and then continue. we’ll then drive to wisconsin. we’ll see some national parks there and check out all of the local shops, scenery, and general lifestyle. 

iowa will be next. there, we will see some art in des moines and explore the capital city. we’ll go into some museums and see the wildlife of the mississippi river. we’ll try some of the food there, and cook some of it ourselves in the rv and have our own fancy dinners within the rv itself. because I don’t see us struggling with finding entertainment in the simplest things- that’s always been something we’re good at. we can have a good time doing anything, as long as we’re with each other. 

then, before we know it, we’ll be in kansas. we’ll listen to songs by the band with the same name, and we’ll drive through while looking at the bigger cities along with the smaller towns, and enjoying some great food and drinks.

we’ll go to missouri next, where we will see the super cool gateway arch and take super basic pictures under it. exploring the towns will also be very fun, and we’ll pick up some souvenirs for those at home.

illinois is next. we will trek over to there, and see abraham lincoln’s house, along with downtown chicago. we’ll keep driving through, and every time you turn the wheel and sing along to the songs I’m playing, I will look at you and think about how much I absolutely adore and admire you. 

we’ll see indiana and all of the art and gardens in the areas there. we’ll keep going, and reach kentucky, and drive north a bit more to ohio. we’ll drive through all of the little towns and try the food delicacies in each of the places. we’ll make a list of our favorites, and compare them when it’s all over. 

we’ll go to michigan, and have some cool views of the great lakes. we’ll then drive up and see the amazing atmosphere of vermont, and admire the smaller, cuter towns. and yes, we will drive through pennsylvania and new york and on the way up, but we will reach them after. 

we’ll check out some places in new hampshire, and then go all the way up to maine! it will all have gone by so fast, we’ll be shocked we’re back on the east coast already. because time always goes by so quickly with you. 

we’ll go to massachusetts, and we’ll see the historical parts of boston, and see some museums in the area. we’ll walk around the city, and the parks within the city, and we’ll feel bittersweet that we’re already almost to where we began. 

next will be rhode island, and we’ll talk and relate with the locals about what it’s like to live in such a small state. 

we’ll visit connecticut after, and see the mark twain house, and compare life in the small eastern states with the large western states. 

we’ll make our next stop in new york. if we aren’t completely out of money, we’ll see a broadway show, but if we are out of money, we’ll just walk the streets of times square and reminisce on our visit to new york as teenagers, and how we love each other just as much and even more now. we’ll take pictures and pop into some stores, and maybe walk all the way down to central park and take a stroll there, too. 

we’ll go to pennsylvania and see the liberty bell, right in the middle of the city, and get some good cheesesteaks. we’ll be so close to being done by then, we’ll be antsy to shower and sleep in something that’s not an rv! but at the same time, we’ll be wishing it wasn’t over so soon. we’ll be so happy and grateful for the memories made across the country. and i know for me, at least, i’ll be wishing and hoping for the same kind of wonderful memories across the world. 

and i will love you more and more with each mile we drive, each step we take, and each memory we make. 

[allbeendonebefore]

ahhh I love the OC ask thing!! Would you mind doing 9, 15, 17, 26, and 34?

9. Do you have a faceclaim / voiceclaim for your OC?

Not at all (beyond me creating them in a time I was voice acting for IAMP and I vowed I could not be the one to voice them because I was already using up all my voices for other characters lmao)

and no calvin doesn’t have the Rural AB High School Boy voice EVEN THOUGH he was inspired by rural ab high school boys i knew. maybe mac does

and i don’t have face claims but sometimes I randomly encounter people that look like my ocs like that time it was a hot summer day and I was walking home from the grocery store unintentionally following this guy like ‘is that ed’ (AND SOMETIMES they interact with me and I die like that time i accidentally met IRL calvin on a plane)

15. If your OC could have any pet, what would they choose? Why?

Edward has been a dog person since birth. Aside from the passage in Cecil E. Denny’s memoir that I based this comic off, I was recently reading a passage from Alexander Ross’ accounts that was basically like “the wife doesn’t need her blanket but GOD FORBID the husband doesn’t have his dogs and the dogs don’t have their ribbons and bells” and thats ed lmao. However, he doesn’t have dogs at the moment because he no longer has the excuse that dog sledding is a Necessary and Important activity, so in his quest for Necessary and Important tasks he’s currently looking into urban chicken keeping (which is a legal loophole he has been flouting since the 1920s that livestock aren’t supposed to ‘run amok in the streets of edmonton’... which they won’t do if they’re in his backyard...

Calvin has owned animals of many kinds since he was a sprout as well and while he loves them all and has said goodbye to many, his current lifestyle of penthouse living and travelling often isn’t super conducive to having a pet (his ideal would obviously be sugarfoot from heartland lmao). However, he does have at least one horse, possibly dogs and a barn cat here or there (which Caroline keeps track of) and though cattle aren’t pets Calvin will still act like his are (which Bert takes care of) 

17. How do they make a living? What kind of job do they want / not want? What is their dream job? What do they think of their current job?

This is a good question because there’s not really any hard and fast rule about how an avatar Has to make a living. Edward currently is working in some capacity for the City (as mentioned in chapter 1) because for him it’s a form of self care (even though it also stresses him out). It’s something he had been avoiding for a long time because he doesn’t perceive himself as a “responsible” person. I like to think that he’s an anonymous person on the 311 line every so often, but he might be doing other stuff like the odd temp work or bus driving. Ed also sells produce at local markets (but he usually gets his sister to do that for him... or she takes the initiative without telling him maybe). 

Of course, both of them have had jobs in O&G (usually Ed being the O and Cal being the G, one blue collar and one white). Ed was on the rigs for a couple seasons during a recent economic boom slash depressive episode and has been many times before - while he won’t disparage the work or the pay he certainly doesn’t enjoy it. Calvin has always been more in the business of speculation and administration and it’s assumed that he gets the vast majority of his income through this and related sources, he also loves to talk and present and to build relationships with people so he really likes his cushy office job. Somewhat ironically he doesn’t always bring that aspect into his municipal/government work because he’s too busy with his “real job”, and when his “real job” falls through in a recession he can either be everyone’s worst nightmare or he can finally redirect all his positive energy towards them (sometimes those overlap) (it depends on the weather).   

26. Who is the most important person in their life? Why? Who is the least important to them (that still has an impact and why?

For Ed and Cal the most important people are always each other. I tend to find it weird when they’re not portrayed/perceived as interdependent to the point of being inextricable from each other’s identities. Sure they ignore each other a lot and step over or on each other depending on the situation, but if one ceased to exist the other would probably be thrown into an absolute identity crisis. 

Least important is harder, not sure if it’s intended in more of a “couldn’t care less maybe” or “hate this person so much i wish they’d get out of my way”. I’d have to think about that a lot more before I could come up with a good answer, because even people they rarely see they might still care about in one way or another. 

34. What social groups and activities does your character attend? What role do they like to play? What role do they actually play, usually?

Just from skimming Calgary histories, marching bands come up a lot so I always laugh at the idea of him in one of those (I always think of that time that Nenshi literally called in the Stampede marching band in to help him sing Let it Go when he lost a hockey bet with the mayor of Anaheim). Calvin would have played every possible role at one point or another in that so I’m not sure what his usual would be. But he likes pomp, circumstance, instruments, uniforms, marching, all that stuff. And then there’s rodeo on top of that too which is a whole other can of worms. 

Ed tends to be more anti-social than Calvin and has tried to avoid a lot of things, but he still has his own interests and groups I’m sure. The ski club for instance has been a big deal and I think he’s definitely the sort of person who does guided walks in the river valley or trips out to Elk Island etc. He also gets roped into Fringe and other arts events on occasion by his sister, or he’ll do some volunteering at festivals such as Heritage Days (and performing at them if you’re very very lucky). 

[readingraebow]

Beautiful Creatures Section Four

1.12 Promise - 2.12 Silver Lining

1. Who is in Ethan’s room in the middle of the night? Why? Ethan wakes up and finds Macon in his room. It turns out Macon isn't a Caster. He's an Incubus. And an Incubus has to feed on Mortals. At first Ethan is repulsed but Macon assures him that he's not a Blood Incubus. Instead, Macon feeds on something that all humans have but don't really need: dreams. This explains why the dreams shared by Lena and Ethan are never complete. Ethan says he can never remember all of them and it's because Macon has been taking bits and pieces so they won't know how it ends. And Macon refuses to explain why.

2. What does Ethan give Lena on her birthday? He gives her a necklace that belonged to his mom. It's a ring, that's made from three different metals and intertwined, on a chain. He says that he found it in his mom's jewelry box and he's sure that she would've wanted Lena to have it. Because it has sentimental value to him and Lena knows what his mom means to him and how much it means that he gave it to her.

3. Who knocks on the door during the Binding? What do these people remind Ethan has forgotten about? At the door Larkin finds Link, Savannah, Emily, Charlotte and basically all of the cheerleaders and basketball team and pretty much the whole school? They remind Ethan first that he completely skipped the reenactment and will now fail history since it's already pretty much over and he spent the entire day with Lena. And they remind him about the surprise party they'd planned for Lena. Because that's why they've come. The Ravenwood grounds have been transformed for the party and there's a stage and lights and all that jazz. And even though they all normally hate Lena, Ethan can tell she really wants to go to the party because it's definitely a Normal High School Girl thing: having everyone in school show up to your really great birthday party. And even though it's all Ridley and it's not real, Ethan can tell it's something Lena really wants.

4. Why did Link urgently come get Ethan from the surprise party? Who do we find out is behind this? He says that Ethan's dad is standing on the balcony of the Civil War museum in his pajamas... like he's going to jump. When they get there, Link says he left Ridley with Ethan's dad to make sure he didn't jump and that's just a red flag all over. It turns out Ridley's the one making Ethan's dad want to jump. She's supposed to be the distraction to get Ethan away from Lena. It seems Ridley has decided to side with Sarafine. And Ethan's dad isn't the only parent they've taken from Ethan. Ridley also hints that Ethan's mom's accident wasn't an accident, though Ridley wasn't behind that one. Ridley says she doesn't want to kill Ethan's dad but she said his mind is weak so he's an easy target. But they manage to talk Ridley down so she doesn't make Ethan's dad jump and they can get him to safety before Ethan goes back to help Lena.

5. Why was Mrs. Lincoln so obsessed with getting Lena out of the school? Sarafine was borrowing Mrs. Lincoln's body. So her vendetta against Lena and getting her out of school was actually all Sarafine. She says she was doing it to show Lena how fickle Mortals can be. Which just a few sentences from Mrs. Lincoln, the entire town turned against Lena and Sarafine wanted Lena to see that. Which is why she was wearing Mrs. Lincoln like a human suit. Rude.

6. What has Macon been lying to Lena about regarding the Claiming? So Lena can choose because she's a Natural. There's some weird clause in the curse that says that the first Natural in the family will go Dark, that's Sarafine, but the second will have the power to turn back. So since Lena is the second natural, she can actually choose. But it turns out that choice has consequences, which is why Macon didn't tell Lena. If she chooses Light, all of her Dark relatives will die, including Macon since he's technically Dark. He didn't tell her because he wanted her to choose Light and not know that she would be killing him because he's willing to sacrifice himself. But on the other hand, if she chooses Dark, she will kill all the Light members and there's no way she would ever be able to kill Aunt Del, Gramma, Reece and Ryan. Though Sarafine tells her that if she's Dark, they have a way that she can be with Ethan. But she's mostly just lying to save her own skin.

7. What does Lena have to give in exchange for using the Cast on Ethan to revive him? Uncle Macon dies. It was his life in exchange for Ethan's, though Lena had no way of knowing that. It seems he did sacrifice himself after all. But Ethan lived and Lena gets to keep him. Boo is still around though so I kind of wonder if that will be a little like having a version of Uncle Macon around, just one that can't talk.

8. Did you enjoy this ending? Did you enjoy the book overall? So I am curious about the second book since it seems like it just pushed the Claiming to Lena's seventeenth birthday instead of her sixteenth. And I'm honestly really sad that Macon died since I really liked him. But other than that, I did really enjoy this book! It was such a fun time and it was so fascinating that I almost couldn't put it down. This was such a good and fun read!!! I'm so glad we read it!!! I went into this book without any expectations and I guess I was pleasantly surprised?? I'm glad to find another YA book that's actually really good!

  Section Four Reading Journal

Okay so. I really, really liked this book! It was a really fun time and it was a lot better than I expected it to be (though I didn’t really know what to expect/didn’t expect much). At the beginning there, it was fairly similar to Twilight though it ended up being a waaaaay better version? (Because, let’s be real, all YA is pretty similar, especially if it’s supernatural YA.) So I really liked this book!

I thought this last section was pretty interesting and I liked all the ~twists. Sarafine parading around as Mrs. Lincoln was such a fun time, wow. But also Larkin???? ‘Kay cool. (Read: rude.) Though I liked that he could hide his eyes with his Illusions. That was super cool.

I am toying with maybe reading more in this series. But I was browsing reviews on Goodreads for the next book and it’s, um, not well liked??? The vast majority of the reviews I read said it wasn’t as good as this book. So that’s disappointing. (I’m just hoping this series doesn’t go the way of Red Queen: utterly fantastic at first, utterly unreadable as you go along.) So I might end up reading the next book later. We’ll see. I am curious to see what happens to Lena since she wasn’t Claimed in this book. I kind of feel like she might have just delayed it instead of stopping it altogether.

I am also quite fascinated by the movie since the cast is fantastic???? Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis (she’s just everywhere; I feel like so many of our book club books have Viola Davis in the movie XDDD), Emmy Rossum, Kyle Gallner. I’m definitely going to have to dig this movie up because who can pass up all of that????? Not me, haha.

Anyway, I think this was my last full catchup book (besides the last couple sections of Outlander). So I think I am basically caught up to the group now? YAY!!! THIS IS SO EXCITING!!! It’s been a long (but mostly enjoyable) reading journey!! Now I’m so glad I can actually read everything while everyone else is reading it now!!! And I can’t wait to start all of our new books!!! Book club is the best. I’ll love it forever <333

[fernandoelly12-blog]

The Number One Question You Must Ask for Sandals Women's Fashion

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[newstfionline]

It’s Cold, Dark and Lacks Parking. But Is This Finnish Town the World’s Happiest?

By Patrick Kingsley, NY Times, Dec. 24, 2018

KAUNIAINEN, Finland--Jan Mattlin was having what counts as a bad day in Kauniainen.

He had driven to the town’s train station and found nowhere to park. Mildly piqued, he called the local newspaper to suggest a small article about the lack of parking spots.

To Mr. Mattlin’s surprise, the editor put the story on the front page.

“We have very few problems here,” recalled Mr. Mattlin, a partner at a private equity firm. “Maybe they didn’t have any other news available.”

Such is the charmed life in Kauniainen (pronounced: COW-nee-AY-nen), a small and wealthy Finnish town that can lay claim to being the happiest place on the planet.

Finland was named the world’s happiest country by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network in April, based on polling results from 156 nations. And a second survey found that Kauniainen’s 9,600 residents were the most satisfied in Finland, leading the local mayor, Christoffer Masar, to joke that theirs was the happiest town on earth.

Some Finns were surprised; a few even unhappy.

In the global consciousness, the stereotypical Finn is melancholic, introverted and more prone to suicide than most other nationalities. Finns themselves buy into parts of the stereotype: If a stranger smiles at you in the street, goes a Finnish proverb, they’re either drunk, foreign or crazy.

“My trouble with the word ‘happiness’ is that we never know what we’re talking about when we talk about happiness,” said Professor Frank Martela, who researches well-being at the University of Helsinki, and grew up a few miles from Kauniainen. “We might mean life satisfaction, or being joyful every day. It’s a bit ambiguous.”

So can happiness really be measured? And if so, are Finns really that cheery?

To try to answer those questions, a trip to Kauniainen seemed mandatory.

The reasons for the town’s happiness are not immediately obvious upon arrival.

Kauniainen, which lies on the outskirts of Helsinki, the Finnish capital, is pretty, but not stunning: a collection of large detached houses, sprinkled throughout a thin fir forest, centered around an unremarkable town square.

At this time of year, the day doesn’t get light properly till after 9 a.m. The light fades again by 3:30 p.m.

Ask a resident if they feel happy, and you get a measured response, but hardly an ecstatic one.

“What is happiness?” Mr. Masar, the mayor, asked rhetorically, over lunch last month at the town’s only deli.

At Moms, the town’s only late-night bar, a few soccer players were in a wry but subdued mood, commiserating after a loss earlier that evening.

“When we lose,” deadpanned Antti Raunemaa, a construction executive, “we’re only happy after the second beer.”

The barkeep suggested another stop to find more smiles. “Maybe the McDonald’s at Espoo?” said Jenny Lindholm, nodding toward the next town along. “There’s nowhere else, really.”

And yet: There was. Just not where a happiness-hunter might initially expect it.

Kauniainen’s blandly named Adult Education Center, a tall building on the edge of town, did not sound promising. But it was here, not the bar, where large numbers of residents were having fun that evening.

In the basement, they were weaving carpets on vast looms, and making pottery. On the ground floor, a choir was singing. On the floors above, others were painting replicas of Orthodox Christian icons--or practicing yoga.

Subsidized by both the state and the city, the center offers cheap evening classes to residents “in basically anything that people might be interested in,” said Roger Renman, the center’s director.

Around 15 percent of the town’s population are enrolled here at any one time, some paying less than a dollar per hour of tuition, depending on the course.

Similar centers are found across Finland, but Kauniainen’s is particularly active, especially for a town of this size.

It’s this kind of service that makes the town cheerier than most, reckoned Seija Soini, a retired businesswoman taking part in a painting class.

“The main reason is that people have something to do--things like this!” Ms. Soini said, as she painted a portrait of her niece. “It’s like psychotherapy.”

And the education center was just the leading edge in the town’s activity options for residents. For what Kauniainen lacks in parking places, it makes up for with state-funded services.

In this single small town, there are over 100 sports and cultural clubs, all of them subsidized in some way by the local council: clubs for the Swedish-speaking minority, clubs for the Finnish majority, a ski slope, a children’s music school, a children’s art school, an athletics stadium, an ice rink--and even a purpose-built set of outdoor stairs, known as a “kuntoportaat,” which allow people to keep fit by walking up and down.

When residents argued, two decades ago, whether they should build an ice hockey rink or a handball court, the council solved the dispute by funding both.

The only obviously absent institution is a police station: With minimal crime rates, there is no need.

All this supplements a good and cheap universal health care system, free university education and affordable child care.

And a school system in which children are rarely tested, and teachers rarely inspected, but which, despite a recent dip, still ranks as one of the best in the world.

To pay for all this, taxes are high by American standards: Someone earning $45,000 might pay more than double the amount of tax in Finland as in some American states.

But residents said they can feel the dividend: a society with low inequality, high opportunity and a strong sense of solidarity.

“For me, happiness is about being contented with your life and the possibilities you have in life,” said Finn Berg, a former head of the town council. “And if you put it that way, then this is a happy place, because we have a lot of possibilities here.”

[yasbxxgie]

In the wake of Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the consequences of the 2016 election are settling in at a whole new level for white women. As a result, many are revisiting the post-election statistic that showed 53 percent of white women voted for the candidate who spewed racial vitriol and actively emboldened violence against people of color, tolerating his vile misogyny in the process.

We know Trump’s election only exposed more brazenly what’s always been true: White women have always sided with white supremacy.

Now we’re reckoning with another devastating truth, and this one pertains to all white women—including that other 47 percent of us. If we had ever collectively worked to create sustained solidarity with women of color, instead of consistently aligning with white men, we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. Why? Deep, robust multiracial women coalitions would be an unstoppable force.

Another report knocked the wind out of some us. Though swarms of white women rose up publicly enraged, it was only among women of color that a clear and strong majority believed Christine Blasey Ford. A Quinnipiac poll showed that white women only broke 46 percent for Ford (and 43 percent in favor of Kavanaugh, a statistically insignificant difference). On the question of whether Kavanaugh should be confirmed anyway, 45 percent of white women said “yes.” Wow.

Here we sit, with ever more evidence that massive racial failure on the part of white women is at the center of this political crisis. At the root of it all is our collective choice to not learn, prioritize, or consistently live in public antiracist solidarity with communities of color, and especially with women of color.

In short, we’ve never bothered to learn calculus.

(For clarity’s sake, please know I’m purposely not talking about white men — yes, the ultimate perpetrators — here. I am not blaming white women for white male violence. I am also not disparaging the incredible courage of all survivors, including Blasey Ford. I am simply focusing on what white women collectively do and do not do, have and have not done, when it comes to race, racism, and antiracism.)

This is where (one) peril sets in. The longstanding failure to choose calculus that allowed this crisis leaves us wholly unprepared for a political moment where nothing less than brilliant mathematical abilities are required.

For women of color, that cuts deeply.

As we reel, more white women seem to say, “Oh shit! I really do need to learn calculus.” But women of color don’t have the time, energy, or patience to teach us. They certainly can’t trust us. And while women of color have distinctly individual perspectives on and responses to white women in this current moment, it’s safe to say that collectively they’re beyond outraged and all but done with us. Why? Because they’ve been demonstrating the life-or-death urgency of white women learning calculus for decades now.

And yet here we are.

Ongoing apathy toward making the work of antiracism a central priority of our lives as white women has allowed the school building to burn.

My fellow white women, there is nothing not bad about this moment.

Calculus is hard to learn in a regular and relatively calm school situation. Now we need to learn calculus in a school building that’s on fire.

Even for the most willing and earnest student, there’s no way around it: It takes a long time to learn calculus. And, yes, so many of us are deeply hurting, furious, raw, triggered, and afraid. But the building’s still on fire.

Students, sometimes have to actually screw up math problems to actually learn calculus. Screw ups are part of any learning process. But, again, the building’s on fire. And every white woman’s mistake pours more gasoline on a blaze that’s consuming us all very quickly.

The task here is as essential as it is herculean. We need to stop pouring more gasoline on this fire at the same time that we get belatedly serious about the long, slow, mistake-laden work of learning calculus—and we have to do it at lightning speed.

From one white woman to another, here are 10 concrete steps to take right now if we hope to ever do math with women of color—which is not optional if there is any hope of calling into existence the deep, robust, multiracial coalitions all our lives depend on.

No particular order here. Some of these steps fall in the category of “for the love of god, stop pouring gasoline!” Some fall in the category of our long, slow work. None are adequate. All are critical.

1. Stop saying ‘women’ anything.

When the phrase “women must…” or “women are…” is about to come out of your mouth: Stop. Commit to the discipline of being racially specific in your speech. “White women must…,” “white women are…,” or “women of color and white women seem to be…”—at which moment you may notice, “Oh, wait. I really can’t say anything about women of color because I don’t know.”

You may not understand why this discipline is important. Do it anyway. It’s important because there is no non-racialized woman. Committing to this practice will make you more likely to notice gaps in your awareness. You’ll be more likely to notice the racial assumptions embedded in your own claims. This will help you gain clarity about where you need to focus as you do your homework. It will also necessarily rein in your claims about “generic” women, which is one small but critical way to stop pouring gasoline on this fire.

2. Do not participate in any public action called by white women with a reflexive ’yes.’

Stop, seek out, and then listen seriously to what women of color say about it first.

That “women’s blackout” action? Serious douse of gasoline. Yes, a very small number of women of color in my life sent me the invitation, too. (Remember. People of color don’t speak in one voice on anything.) If more white women had slowed down and listened to what women of color had to say publicly about all the problems with that “black out,” well — I don’t need say more about its problems. Go read what feminists of color themselves said about it. They were clear.

3. If you didn’t take a knee during the anthem in support of Black lives for the last two years, don’t share the meme suggesting all women and girls should now take a knee (see item number 2).

Even better, invite other white women sharing this meme into public conversation about why this is a problem. Don’t yell at them. Ask them to talk it through.

But make sure some version of what’s wrong with this does get explained: If we haven’t been taking a knee for Black people already, then kneeling now exposes whose humanity we actually care about. Not to mention white people co-opting a Black people-led movement is a problem, along the lines of what happened to Tarana Burke. Gasoline.

4. Transfer the vast majority of the time you spend reading and engaging in media to reading and engaging with feminists of color.

Literally and almost exclusively read feminists of color (feminist men and other genders of color too) every single day as you try to figure out what the hell is going on in our country right now. Don’t worry, you’ll still get the news. But, you’ll get it through the analysis you’ll need if you want to move beyond basic addition. Do an audit of who is in your feed; choose to follow the many diverse and brilliant people of color who are public thinkers, writers, and activists. Engage their knowledge and wisdom (and their disagreements with each other). When you don’t understand what they’re saying or why they’re saying it—keep reading. Know that it’s going to take a while before the basic vocabulary of calculus makes sense to you. But it will come, if you stick with it.

5. When women of color write about white women, do not privately message them with questions or rebuttal…

���Unless they explicitly tell you they are cool with that.

If they invite public response and you decide to say or ask something, cool. But be ready then to just sit and listen deeply to the response, whatever it is. If the response makes you uncomfortable or isn’t in the tone you were hoping for, don’t proceed to tell them how it made you feel (more gasoline). Sit with those feelings and then keep reading, thinking, and engaging. If you need to talk about those feelings, cool. Find another white person who’s also trying to learn calculus—maybe someone who’s been at it for longer than you have—and talk it through with them. Then keep reading and listening and sitting with your feelings some more.

6. Don’t just sit there with your feelings. Take your actual physical self to an organization led by people of color who are working for justice—and show up in person.

(Assuming that organization welcomes white participation, of course; most do.)

Don’t say you’re too busy. If you volunteer at your kids’ school, do stuff for your church, are part of a book club, spend time on Facebook, whatever else—this is the moment to transfer hours in your given week from white people (even time spent at your own kids’ school; your kids are going to be fine) to people of color.

The obvious reason for this is to put more labor toward the disproportionate heavy-lifting people of color are already doing for justice. The added benefit is that you’ll start to learn calculus in a way that reading alone doesn’t make possible. Show up. Do what is asked of you. Listen carefully. Don’t overspeak. If you’re uncomfortable being one of the few white people in that space, good. Do it anyway. Don’t flake out.

(Join the NAACP—they’re doing voter mobilization all over right now. Put in volunteer hours to people of color groups working to decrease the presence of police in schools. Get active in a sanctuary network for which Latinx activists are calling the shots; white people with citizenship are needed desperately for all kinds of work. Show up. Wherever people of color live, they are organized and acting. Figure out where and go.)

7. Read ‘So You Want to Talk About Race’ by Ijeoma Oluo.

Seriously, do this right now. If you have the means, buy a copy for another white woman in your life; for all the white women you know. Read it alone. Read it together. Talk about it. This book is a crash course in calculus. It’s brilliant, truthful, funny, loving, difficult, nuanced, and more. Read it with your teenager. Ask your teenager what they think about it (start inviting them to learn calculus, too). See if your co-workers will talk about it with you over lunch.

8. Make a concrete commitment to reallocate resources to women of color organizations. Donate to women of color running for elected office.

Now I am talking about money. This part isn’t so much about you and calculus. It’s just the right thing to do. It also may be the best hope we have to save this “democracy.” I don’t mean that in a “women of color are going to save us” kind of way. But, seriously, we don’t get to just run around giving Facebook shoutouts to Black women voters in Alabama for saving us from predators like Roy Moore, and then not go all in for them. We owe women of color something, and this includes being all-in in terms of having their backs as they step up and out into leadership (taking huge risks as they do so). We owe actual time, energy, and resources. Get your white women friends (and the men) to give money too. Do it.

9. Some white women, white queer folks, and a handful of white feminist men have been working for a long time to learn calculus. Find and follow them, too.

They are imperfect and make mistakes. But being white and trying to learn calculus is different from being a person of color and learning calculus. There are unique challenges. Your learning will speed up if you engage some of the white people who have been on this learning journey for a while.

Be careful who you listen to. Vet those white people to be sure their calculus-learning is legitimate and on the right track. See who they’re in dialogue with. Notice what feminists of color say to and about them. (Hint: If mostly only other white people like their work, don’t learn to do math the way they’re doing it.) Find the white folks who are obviously in relationships of accountability with people of color—these people do exist. Get with them.

10. Take an inventory: Where do you shop? Who cuts your hair? Where do you take your kids to the dentist? Where do you eat out?

Find ways to move your personal participation in the economy over to Black, Latinx, and other businesses owned and operated by people of color. This includes medical offices, stores—as many establishments as you can. Urge others in your life to do so, too. This not only actively reallocates resources you are already expending to communities of color and their economies, it also brings you into more frequent contact with people who our deep and wide white-segregated enclaves typically prevent us from being in contact with.

That’s no quick math formula. But it is critical pre-context for calculus-learning.

***

Here we are.

When you’re in a burning building, every step you take must be purposeful. We’re not going to be collectively calculus-fluent anytime soon. We’re also going to have to live with the consequences of our collective behavior. Namely, we’re going to be divided from women of color for a very, very, very long time. And there are no guarantees here. When I said there is nothing not bad about this moment, I meant it.

But I also know this. Standing still in a burning school building isn’t an option. And I know there are lots of white women and white queer folks (and a few white feminist men) right now who want to take purposeful steps. As much as we don’t quite know what to do, don’t totally get it, are ourselves hurting, fear making mistakes that pour gasoline—there are many of us ready to roll up our sleeves and learn the math. Let’s get purposeful. Together.

If this is you (and I commit to you, it is also me), know you are not alone. I offer this essay in a spirit of love, anger, urgency, and partnership. Let’s pull out our pencil and paper now—and a shitload of erasers. And let’s get to work. [x]

[smokeybrand]

California State of Mind

I grew up in Meadowview, which was kind of a melting pot of a neighborhood, in a melting pot of a state. My first grade class was filled with every ethnicity you can imagine. White, Asian, Black, Indian, Mexican, and a few islanders. I say islanders because they ran the gambit from Hawaiian to Samoan to Tongan to Fijian and even a few Haitians We also had a couple Portuguese in there, too. Like, Meadowview had a surprisingly large Portuguese community. Looking back, that sh*t is kind of staggering how many of them there were. I didn't notice as a kid because who cares but, looking back as an adult, it was really a substantial amount. But this crop of kids, that first grade class, would be people i would call peers for the next twelve years of my life. Some of them, even more so. My best friend from grade school was an Asian kid named Peter. We used to larp out in the football field during recess and wanted to make games together. How big of a geek was I that I wanted to make video games with my best friend at eight years old? I used to go to his house and play DnD with him. Our other friend, Trevero, has a crush on Pete's older sister. It was weird. This was LONG before i met B, which is weird because he literally went to the elementary school a street over. It's odd how segregated we are as kids until we're not. It's like we were exposed to the world in incremental stages, which leads me to the next step in my exposure; The seventh grade.

When i got to seventh grade, i went to a different middle school than most of my classmates. I said farewell to these kids i spent my entire life with up to that point, and got bused to the rich middle school because the one in my neighborhood had a bad reputation. Surprisingly, that didn't matter because i was still put in remedial classes anyway. When i left grade school, i was doing algebra. Everyone thought this particular middle school would facilitate that but, because i bused in from the ghetto, they did not. It was mad surreal doing sh*t i had already mastered in, like, the second grade, because motherf*ckers thought less of me. For living in a poorer neighborhood. Still, Sam Brannan was good to me. I met a lot of dope motherf*ckers that i still talk to today. More to the point, this school as chock full of Asian kids. Like, SO many, man. It was insane how many Asians were in this joint. I mean, there were other kids, of course, but the vast majority of that school's student body was definitely Asian. Coming from my grade school where they were the minority, seeing this many Asian kids was captivating. I made friends with a lot of people that I didn't think i would ever have the opportunity to do so with, and it went a long way for broadening my already healthy cultural horizons. I was introduced to a plethora of Asian cuisine and philosophy. I met my first Buddhist there which sparked my interest in learning about the world's religions, not just Christianity. I didn't return to Brannan for my 8th grade year though. That school was kind of whack for the scholastic aspects. Instead, I went to Goethe, the school no one wanted me to go to in the first place.

Goethe was interesting. I met a lot of my oldest friends there. I met Kellen there. I met my first real crush, Melisandra, there. I met B there. That motherf*cker ended up being family and I miss him everyday. Tamika, David, Jay, Brittney, Shameka, Chris, and Alaina. I mean, not s much Alaina. She was my Dad's best friend's niece so I kind of knew her from other things. I met a chick named Sparkle and another one named Star. I met a neighborhood bicycle name Tawana, i think. A friend of mine from that first grade class knocked her up that year. I met my first chola named Anneletta who tried to stab a b*tch in my first period history class. Mr. Varner, the teacher, straight up kicked the victim out into the wild to fend for herself when she ran into our class for help. Coldest sh*t, ever! That was wild. I went to my first school dance there and ended up slow grinding with my homey's ex. That was fun and later, real problematic. I came back to a school where the majority of kids were once again, black, where i knew so many people and was still able to meet so many more. There were definitively more of us but the ethnic mix was still pretty eclectic. So many races, so much cultural melding. And then i got to high school. That sh*t was wild.

I went to, statistically, the best high school in South Sacramento. All those overachieving Asian kids from Sam Brannan? They went to my high school. Everyone from 21st street up to Freeport, the f*cking ghetto i grew up in, went to my high school. That was basically everyone from my elementary and middle schools, all in one place. These two, independent worlds that i lived in, collided for the first time, and it was a little overwhelming at first. Mostly because the high school, Kennedy, wasn't just MY schools. Cats that I met when I stayed in G Parkway for that year, motherf*ckers I met when I went to the worst school ever, Parkway Elementary, found there way to my high school. So many people i didn't know, went to this school. Cats that came from super affluent areas. Motherf*ckers from straight up hoods. All of these people, so many different cultures and ethnicities, so many different financial and living situations, all trying to figure out who they are, who they are going to be, all at once; It was an experience. Looking back, it was actually kind of intense. Beautiful, but intense. Kennedy, for me, and I can only speak from my personal experience here, was like that first grade class but blown up to, like, thousands of kids, not just the thirty-three I started school with. I loved that part of it. Not so much the actual schooling. I stopped actually learning sh*t in class when I was in, like, the third grade. One I had the fundamental sh*t, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, everything else was that an exercise in fact memorization. That's all the US education system is, memorizing mundane facts or tasks, and then regurgitating them on tests for grades. School is dumb.

The first time i saw a complete lack of diversity, was my first day of college. That was the whitest day of school i ever had in my entire life. It was surreal. I had just the last two decades surrounded by a rainbow of color, of culture, of perspective, and now it's all milky white. That was the first day that i really understood, on tangible, conscious level, what it meant to be white and privileged. You hear all of the statistic and the numbers about how minorities don't make it to higher education, how hard it is for black kids in particular, to make it out of high school without a rap sheet or even f*cking alive, but to see it in real time like that? To experience that sh*t on your first day of real school? It's mad disheartening. Of course there was a semblance of diversity on my college campus, it is a college, but i knew i was definitely a minority at that point. I knew for a fact that there was less people who looked like me, at this level, and it kind of hurt. It hurt even more as i got older and learned that was the norm, not the exception. I mean, you always know. I can only speak for black folks, but you're taught at an early age that you, as a colored person, are an endangered species in the US. That you have to be twice as good at everything just to get half of what my white friends would have. But to see it as an adult? To actually witness that sh*t firsthand? There's no amount of preparation that can prepare you for that rude awakening. Reality hits you like a ton of bricks once you finally get outside of that social bubble you grew up within. And it gets worse the farther away from the scholastic world you get. The last job I held had maybe ten black people there at any one time. Ten. Realistically, less than that. Usually around five. I have held about seven jobs in my life and at three of them, I was the only black dude. That's my reality.

I said all of that to give perspective on this: I've never not been surrounded by diversity until i was grown. The formative years of my life were spent exposed to almost every major culture and race of the world. I didn't grow up with a lot of white kids in my neighborhood but they were there. I was able to get their perspective, to understand what it was like to be white in a world of color. I was able to see that the ones who lived with us, were just like us. I didn't grow up segregated in our own, little, Negro areas, I grew up in a cornucopia of different people. The crew i rolled with in high school was full of black kids, sure, but these were cats I've known since i was, like, twelve. We were tight going nto Kennedy but that doesn't mean were weren't inclusive when we got there. We never discriminated against anyone, ever. We made friends with everyone. Our locker was opened to anybody who was chill and could play dominoes. Hell, there was this little Asian kid that Bryan brought once and he just never went away. Motherf*cker never talked but dude was chill as f*ck. Cats would give him sh*t but that stopped when he started posting up with us. That's the energy of California. That's the energy i learned growing up. That's the energy i carry to this day.

My best friend was an Asian kid until i got to the tenth grade where B and i shared that English class and got super tight. The person i was closest with in seventh grade, was a Japanese girl that i met in PE named Jamie Hom. My first, real, girlfriend was named Maristella Cordova and she was Brazilian. The first girl i ever danced with in eighth grade, Tina, was Hmong. I played football with all of the giant Samoans and Magic with the nerdy Asian kids. I was in BSU and a ghost member of the Anime club. My kid sister is Desi, one of my closest friends is Puerto Rican, my baby sister is white, and my chick is Mexican. I can't fathom what it's like to not have that diverse perspective but, statistically, my experience is rare as f*ck. The experiences my friends and i shared growing up here, in California, are rare as f*ck. Our diversity isn't the norm, it's the exception. There are more places like Idaho, where ninety-three percent of that population is white, than there are places like California. Its not that we're super liberal, it's that we don't exist in an entitled echo chamber. We don't have xenophobia because we were constantly surrounded by the xenos. We have so many different voices, so many different perspectives, that we can't help but be progressive. It takes a diverse perspective to think forward and we have diversity in spades out here. If the majority of the people who live here, grew up like i did, then of course we'd be the most progressive state in the union. How can we not be?

I don't have a point of reference for alienating the Other. We were all Others. I grew up in a neighborhood of Others. I went to school with a peer group of Others. My family is made up of Others. Being different, being the Other, has never mattered to me. It doesn't matter, period. People are people, regardless of race, creed, or sexuality. That's why California is different. We celebrate that diversity here. We make it a point to use our differences as strengths, always have. That's why i don't understand all of that MAGA sh*t. I mean, go off with your ignorance but it doesn't matter. You can't make America great again because you've conflated whiteness for greatness and there are too many people with melanin for that to ever be a thing again. You can march and scream and gerrymander and voter suppress and poll watch and whatever else but it's all for not. There are more of us than there are of you. There re more people like me, who grew up like me, than there are of you, here, in California. Rail against the Others all you want. Vilify those who champion diversity. Try and force your witness on these who aren't white. Heep on with that wild, embarrassing ignorant sh*t. I'm just going to be over here, with my Desi sister, my Mexican lady, and black homeys, laughing at your narrow ass life choices. How sad is it people choose to deny themselves so much rich dopeness and shine because of some misplaced idea of supremacy? Segregation is stagnation, man. That sh*t is how you become irrelevant. That sh*t is how you go extinct.

[prorevenge]

Teacher tells me I am lying about my mother having cancer.

This is a long one with TLDR at bottom

This was in my grade 11 year of high school, My computer class had a year long substitute teacher because our amazing teacher was out for a year working on a government contract. Our previous teacher was outstanding. He had six different classes in our classroom all happening at the same time which were: computer repair, programming lvl1, programming lvl2, networking lvl1, networking lvl2a and lvl2b. He would give a lecture for each of the classes on a specific day of the week, programming on Monday, repair on Tuesday and so on, we would all work in our own groups and everything went quite well.

The next year came around and I found out that we had a sub for the year I had two back to back blocks in this class cause I was doing two courses, I wandered up to the class to see what kind of teacher we were dealing with, mainly interested because i was almost certain whoever they found did not have the credentials to teach at least half of those classes. The new teacher was a foreign woman that none of us have ever heard of before, for the purpose of the story we will call her Mrs. S.

I went and found my friends to tell them what I had seen. We were all optimistic cause from a very short conversation she seemed quite informed and had a good background.

It didn't last long, on the first day of class Mrs. S introduced herself as a programming teacher who had been in school for four years. She went on to tell us about her programming experience in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access. She then told us that the programming students would not be doing the Java and C++ course we had signed up for and would instead be doing database and Excel because those are what she learned and she said and i quote 'they will be more useful than C and The Java'. She also went on to suspend all at lunch clubs because she didn't think high school students could be trusted with computers alone.

Understandably some of us were quite upset about that considering that we came there to program. She also did not give the repair people or the networking people any kind of support and completely stopped their lectures as well, preferring to let them figure it out themselves and 'self teach' without giving any of the resources to do so and occasionally throwing out a test pre-written by the last teacher for her.

This continued for about two weeks till one day she came in and said quite irritated that we would actually be doing 'The Java' now unless we wanted to keep doing database, so we switched to Java and she basically left us out to dry from there. because she wasn't teaching Database anymore she came to harass people in computer repair. First she told us the shop room was too messy and made us throw out 90% of our training workstations and equipment because they were not important in her eyes. Equipment that did not belong to the school but actually belonged to the other teacher. We took home what we could steal for safe keeping but she did end up throwing out a few thousand in equipment.

Then she started imposing stupid rules on us such as;

"You can't have the computer on while you are troubleshooting inside cause you could electrocute yourself"

Or

"You don't need the case open to troubleshoot motherboard lights"

Or my personal favorite and the most scary

"maybe you should change the power supply to 240v if you aren't getting enough power"

We followed most of her stupid requests as much as we could because she threatened to lock us out of the lab room and give us only textbook work if we didn't. Needless to say it was a challenging time. One of the students in the networking area got fed up and started doing up his own course work and lecturing to us so that we could at least get some kind of use out of the courses. To his credit it was all very good but Mrs. S had the balls to force him into doing it from there on out and then turn around and give him low grades for not getting his own work done on time.

A few months of this very uneasy balance go by and my mother comes down with Colon cancer. I have already had a handful of other family members suddenly taken from me by cancer so understandably this is a very stressful time. I was joking with my friends and trying to not break down over the whole thing. I had a very unstable laptop running Linux that would crash if looked at funny and had a horrible habit of corrupting the OS when the battery died because the reserve shutdown sensor didn't work anymore (battery always read 0% but would go for an hour or two). while I was working on the school desktop computer I had a few pages open that I was taking notes in and a facebook tab so I could keep in contact with my mother cause she was in surgery and I was waiting for her to come out. I look over and the teacher is snooping through my laptop opening folders and closing windows and eventually pushes the power button in till it shuts down (which also usually corrupts anything I was doing). The following happened.

M: What the hell do you think you are doing?

S: You shouldn't be on facebook or writing notes on a personal computer during class time, especially when your grades are slipping.

Thanks for bringing that up in front of everyone...

M: That gives you no right to touch my stuff! You better hope you didn't just corrupt everything! this laptop breaks easy.

S: Then you shouldn't have it out during class, keep that tone up and I'll see you get a detention.

At this point I am trying just to keep calm because if I get too emotional I have a tendency to explode. This is often made worse because of my mild autism. I took a second replied in a calmer tone.

M: I'm sorry, I'm just having a hard time at home right now... My mother was diagnosed with Colon Cancer and I am waiting to hear back.

And this is the part which REALLY set me off.

S: You don't look like a kid who's mother has cancer, quit making sob story excuses.

are you FUCKING kidding me‽

It took every fiber of my body not to stand up and slap the bitch right there. I gave her the dirtiest thousand yard stare I think I have ever done while also trying to not burst out crying. I spoke to nobody for the rest of the day till I got home, people kept asking if I was okay and I ignored everyone. My mother was out of the hospital and home by the time I got there. I broke down crying and told her about my day, her face was comforting but you could see the fire of an angry woman behind her brown eyes. She told me not to worry and that it'd be okay.

A few weeks passed and I was called into the office for a one on one parent teacher conference someone forgot to tell me about. There were all the teachers I had that year, good and bad, my Learning assistance teacher the VP and the principal herself. They told me that we were there to discuss my grade slippage as soon as my mother came. My mother was about 10 minutes late, leaving me to awkwardly sit with all these people. She comes in and is all smiles,

M: Sorry I am Late! I got held late at the hospital.

Someone but i'm not sure who asked her why she was at the hospital and if everything is okay. My mother answered in her happy way.

M: I was just getting my C̭̟̦̤̕A̰̣̰̼Ń͕̝̬C̵͕E̯R̥̫͇̹̳͝ checked on, Because I have cancer.

The room went cold and her voice seemingly dripped with blood when she said it, my computers teacher went pale and everyone in the room was giving a confused 'what on earth did you do' look

My mother proceeded to relay me coming crying home about how I was treated to everyone present while Mrs: S tried to become one with the wall of the small meeting room. She kept it short but to paraphrase added the following.

M: How dare you say something so careless to my son, I hope you are ashamed and I hope you don't get invited back for another year.

She then returned back to her normal happy self and discussed my grades like nothing happened whilst half the teachers were still trying to figure out what just happened and told them that now she was out of the hospital my grades should improve again. I just sat quiet the whole time and tried to suppress bursting out laughing.

After that day she never directly spoke to me again, had instructions relayed through other people or gave them to the class as a whole, she did her damnedest to be nowhere near me and say nothing to me. My grades improved quite a bit and the year ended with me passing.

Mrs. S was previously offered a job at the school as a secondary computer teacher but after all the trouble the job was pulled back. The next year when our first computer teacher returned he was furious to learn most of his equipment and personal books had been thrown out, we returned the things that we snagged during the purge but he still lost a few thousand in personal teaching stuff. The school payed him back with 10,000 but he says he lost so much more than that in time and pre-set hand made equipment. We told him all about the horror show and he gave us all an extensive test normally given at the end of the year which the vast majority of us failed, we ended up redoing all the computer courses from the previous year because in his words she didn't even teach us the basics. that sub can no longer teach in this or the neighboring districts

TLDR:

Shitty year long sub fucks us all over, tells me i am faking my mother's cancer and destroys another teachers personal property. Gets ripped into by mother with all my teachers and VP and P present. looses opportunity to work in my district or any surrounding for being unprofessional and not knowing her subject forcing everyone in her class to retake the next year.

(source) (story by flanigomik)

[jdaze-things-blog]

Food for thought if you care to read. This is not mine, but copied from another blog. However I wholeheartedly agree with it.

This is facts, not false Facebook and twitter memes

Bryce Bowling

February 21 at 9:31pm

·

Someone told me today that they were shocked that I haven't given my viewpoint on the gun debate. I was going to stay out of it, but honestly, it's been a week of the same garbage, so I'm going to speak on this briefly (well, not so briefly ..... here goes).

A Point-by-Point primer on the gun debate (from a legal gun owner and father)

I have 2 little girls in school right now. I am a member of the NRA, I shoot competitively, and I own a lot of guns. But if you told me that giving up all of my guns would ensure there would never be another child murdered by a lunatic, I would voluntarily give them up in a heartbeat. I think most legal gun owners would do the same. Would it help? No.

The only thing I have seen on TV and rampant on Facebook for the last week is how we must ban AR-15's. I've actually seen some destroying or turning in their AR-15's to law enforcement for some unknown reason.

Most people screaming for a rifle ban couldn't pick an AR-15 out of a lineup if it saved their life. Most people can't tell you the difference between automatic weapons (which, by the way, are illegal without heavy licensure) and semi-automatic. Most can't tell you what an "assault rifle" is - mainly because that's a "BS," made-up term. So, I'm going to present some facts - backed up by evidence and statistics - to help paint a picture of why banning a weapon will do nothing. I ask you gun control advocates to keep an open mind as you read (if you choose to read). But at the same time, I will offer a suggestion on something I have written the White House and our State Senator about that has the potential to help. So, here we go - facts and stats 1st:

-The USA has, by far, the highest per capita gun ownership in the world. What is per capita gun ownership? Basically, when measured by number of guns owned per 100 residents - the USA leads the list at 90. 90 guns owned per every 100 residents.

-The estimate is that a total over 360 million guns are privately owned in the US. 15 million of those 360 million are AR-15s.

-The AR in AR-15 does not stand for Assault Rifle and it doesn't stand for Automatic Rifle either. The AR stands for ArmaLite Rifle, after the company that developed it in the 1950s. "Assault" is a verb - not a noun - assault is what you do with a weapon.  I can assault you with a stick (it doesn't make it an "assault stick" or maybe it does). I own an M4 (a beefed up, full bolt version of the AR-15), and yes, for all the people that say "why do you need that?", I do hunt with it depending on the hunt. I also shoot competitively - not only with my rifles, but with shotguns and pistols.

-Have you heard that these "assault rifles" are used in the majority of homicides? I heard that - this week. On the news. Is it true? Not even close. According to the FBI, rifles of all kinds account for 3% of firearm homicides. Clubs, hammers, hands, fists and knives are all used to kill much more frequently than a rifle. According to FBI statistics, you are 3 times more likely to be stabbed to death than to be killed with a rifle.  Don't think you can mass kill with a knife? Just 3 years ago, a group of 3 men in China went on a killing spree in a train station. They killed 33 and wounded 130 more. Not a single gun was used - they only had knives.

-Contrary to what news outlets like to convey, the vast majority of mass shootings involve pistols.  How many CNN anchors have you heard this week claiming the AR-15 to be the "weapon of choice for mass shooters?" Again, more "BS." In a review of mass shootings from 1982-2012, 66 percent of the weapons used in mass shootings were pistols.  That same review found that only 14% of weapons used in "mass shootings" would qualify as an assault weapon under the definition used in a 2013 bill sponsored by Dianne Feinstien (D-Calif).

-In a secondary review of mass shootings from 1982-2017, about 1/4 of mass shootings involved a rifle (of any type - including but not limited to the AR-15), almost 1/4 of mass shootings were performed using a garden variety shotgun. Well over 1/2 of all mass shootings in that same time period used pistols only.

-The Va Tech shooter killed more than double the amount of students recently killed in Florida. He only used pistols. No rifles were used in that spree ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/16cnd-shooting.html ).

So, will banning the AR-15 do anything? No, and here's why. A person dead set on committing murder doesn't care about your law. If he can not legally buy an AR-15, he'll get one illegally, on the black market. Remember he/she is a criminal; they don't care about your law. So, let's play devil's advocate and say we confiscate, and even eliminate all AR-15s and similar rifles, and they aren't available - even on the black market. The criminal will still mass murder - using a shotgun. Remember, almost as many mass shootings have involved garden variety shotguns. So, we'll ban, confiscate and destroy shotguns. OK, the criminal will move to pistols - banning the rifle or shotguns will simply change the 66% of mass shooting being with pistol to 90+%. So, ban the pistols then. They'll move to knives, they'll go on the dark web and find instructions that allow them to make a bomb (capable of killing and maiming hundreds at a time) that they can make out of household items in less than 10 minutes.  Banning an AR-15 simply takes it out the hands of the legal gun owners. It won't keep it out of the hands of criminals - and even if it does, it will simply drive them to change the instrument. It's like taking away the truck they would use to drive to the mass shooting. They'll find another way ( maybe a box truck rented from Home Depot - https://tinyurl.com/y9p4cqlm ).

So, what about people that buy it legally and then snap? Ahh, there's where the problem lies.....and there is where we can make a difference. How?

Everyone likes to yell "gun control," but no one seems to be able to give a detailed answer on what that means (outside of ban, ban, ban!). We have gun control laws now. The problem is they aren't enforced. And now that the details start to emerge we can see how many red flags were overlooked with this kid in Florida. He told people he was going to do this. He was reported to the FBI. Twice! He was treated in a mental health facility for psychiatric illness and yet he was still able to purchase this weapon legally. That is absurd. This is the heart of the problem.

Show me a mass shooter in recent memory that has not had a documented history of psychiatric illness. I am a physician and I'm all for following HIPAA guidelines but we must lighten up on HIPAA guidelines and merge the ICD-10 diagnoses codes for mental illness from the electronic medical record to the FBI Background Check National Database so that individuals who have a history of psychiatric illnesses that predispose them to homicidal and suicidal tendencies, are kicked out of the system just as any felon would be.  If I smack my wife, she reports it, and I go a month later and try to buy a gun, I can't.  But I can threaten to kill people, actually promise to be a "school shooter," even be treated for schizophrenia and still LEGALLY purchase a firearm.

In an effort to enact some form of change, I have written both the President and Tennessee State Senator Lamar Alexander. (Who of you would have ever thought the first time I'd write our President or Senator would have been in the name of gun control?) Will it fix everything? No way, but it's a start, and it does have the power to prevent a person with schizophrenia from walking in to Bass Pro Shop and leaving with an AR-15 and 500 rounds in 20 minutes. Please recall, most every person who committed a mass shooting in recent memory obtained their gun legally.  There's no excuse for that.

Until we enforce our current gun laws and do everything possible to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, this problem will not change. And it has to change. It just simply doesn't change by targeting a weapon that looks "scary." I hope I've opened a few eyes here.

Disclaimer: These are my views. They may not be your views. I won't get in to a verbal sparring match with you over this. If you'd like to talk more about this, call me. I'll have you over to my house and we'll discuss it. I'll provide the cigars.