#forensic psychology schools canada

[stressedanime]

15 questions for 15 friends!! thanks for the tag :3 @cordelia---rose

are you named after anyone? first name no, but my middle name is a family name. my parents found my birth name in a baby name book which LIED TO THEM. IT SAID MY NAME MEANS PRINCESS IN SPANISH. IT IN FACT DOES NOT MEAN PRINCESS IN SPANISH lmao it means aunt in spanish. and thats partly why i dont go by it anymore lol

when was the last time you cried? i watched a silent voice a couple nights ago and that movie always DESTROYS me.

do you have kids? i'd rather be put down

what sports do you play/have you played? i danced for 15 years!! did a variety of styles: tap, jazz, ballet, contemporary, and music theatre. i also was on the basketball team in grade 6 lmao.

do you use sarcasm? yes. it gets me into trouble unfortunately

what is the first thing you notice about people? i honestly don't know. probably like, their language? like how they talk, how they hold themselves, how they move. i be analyzing

what's your eye colour? they're supposed to be blue, but ive also been told they have no blue pigment whatsoever and theyre just grey

scary moves or happy endings? BOTH THANKS!!!

any talents? hmm. im really good at ruining the mood. like, "um actually" is my best friend. oh also finding words people are looking for, im really good at helping people finish their sentences when they're stuck. im sure theres more but i cannot think of anything lol

where were you born: canada :D i hate it here but i also love it here

what are your hobbies? i love to cook, i used to play a bunch of video games, but lately ive been doing a lot more writing and reading. i also love to look at my guitar and say "hmm i should play guitar" and then never play guitar

do you have any pets? sadly no

how tall are you? 5'4. which is perfectly average.

favourite subject in school? i honestly do not remember what i liked in elementary school. OH novel studies. reading and analyzing books for sure lol. in high school i loved english and psychology and comp civ, in uni my favourite class was biopolitics or anything forensic.

dream job: realistic dream job is forensic psychologist (experimental not clinical) which i got accepted into masters for!! so i will be studying that in september :3 and like, non-realistic dream job is voice actor, i've always wanted to be one of those people who you recognize their voice and then open their IMDB and they've been in like a million different projects

i dont interact with too many people on here so i won't tag 15 ppl lol but im going to tag @kitkat-tat @sionnaach @hyperfigations. but obvs no pressure :)

have fun, yeehaw

[sagiow]

15 questions

tagged by @tough-n-dumb, thanks friend!

Were you named after anyone?

Not “after”, per se, but my dad “discovered” my name after making a new friend in the glorious Montreal Red Light Disco District... who turned out to be an Italian exotic male dancer (he never told my mom that’s where he got the inspiration from until 30-some years later)

My middle name is my mom’s because my frazzled, mid-20s, overwhelmed first-time parents hadn’t thought of one before he went to register my birth so he kinda blanked and went with hers and she was pissed off because she doesn’t  like her name.

0/2, Papa.

When was the last time you cried?

Some time in the last month.

Do you have kids?

Two, elementary school age, although the eldest is solidly in his tweens and giving me a fantastic preview of the fun years ahead.

Do you use sarcasm?

Just did, didn’t I?

Actually, much less than I used to when I was younger. Mostly for joking around  or ranting about our incompetent colleagues with my work wife.

What’s the first thing you notice about people?

Not to sound like a hippie on Main, but I’d say their energy? Their vibe? Some people come off as very warm, and others colder (and some, downright antipathic). Some have this bubbling, crackling energy to them, others are super chill and calm. Some have this spark of intelligence or quick wit about them, and others make you wonder if there’s anybody home. So a bit of all of that.

A smile, greeting and eye contact (can all be super quick, just acknowledge you see the other person) go a long way in giving off good vibes, so we’ll definitely start on the wrong foot if the other person doesn’t do any of those. Be polite.

What’s your eye color?

Brown

Scary movies or happy endings?

I don’t like scary / horror movies with gore and torture. I do enjoy a good ghost story (the Gothicker, the better) and some psychological horror.

Love happy endings although unhappy ones definitely inspire a lot more fanfic.

Any special talents?

I never look at the picture when doing jigsaw puzzles and WILL complete it before you do.

Where were you born?

Province of Québec, Canada

What are your hobbies?

Phew... there’s a few, and they tend to be seasonal. Summer is reading, hiking, baseball, gardening, camping. Other seasons have baking, crochet, watching TV, playing old-school computer games, and getting ready for whatever holiday or birthday is upcoming. Puzzles and writing year-round (if inspiration striked and fellow fans are around!)

Have any pets?

2 cats (and often at least another because we are a foster family to our local rescue), 2 rabbits and 4 3 chicken (found one dead yesterday after that major storm / tornado passed. Her ancient 3 year old heart couldn’t handle it. RIP Matante.)

What sports do/have you played?

Phew... there’s a few there too. I’m always down to play pretty much anything with a ball (beach volleyball! street ball hockey!), but on the other hand, will probably get my Canadian citizenship revoked at some point because I do no winter sport except for snowshoeing and some shitty skating.

I played provincial-level softball and badminton in school. I did recreational synchronized swimming, various styles of dance, varsity basketball. Now, I play softball, tennis (although my dad is aggressively trying to draft me into pickleball), try to get in a game of golf or two per summer (every addition to this sentence makes me feel 10 years older). In non-summer, I practice aikido, and love hiking, especially in the fall.

How tall are you?

5′7″, or 170cm

Favorite subject at school?

History and Drama in High School, Anthropology and some of my Forensics classes in University (”no applied science”, you ask? meh, not really. Science was me playing Life on Safe Mode).

Dream Job?

I would’ve loved to study Anthropology further and become an archeologist (although I did take one Biological / Genetic Anthro class that was absolutely fascinating and made me reconsider Things) but I’d had enough Academia back then. I wanted to get a job, stop being beyond broke, and travel.

Nowadays I get this massive urge to dump everything corporate and move someplace with shorter, kinder winters, ideally not too far from the sea, and get a bunch of goats and chicken, fruit trees and grapevines, grow a shitload of tomatoes and eggplant, bake bread daily, and write in the evenings. Just need to win the lottery first but then I’m makin’ it happen.

tagging (apologies for the double tags if you got them, I lost track) @jomiddlemarch, @tortoisesshells, @fericita-s, @combat-librarian, @divinecomedienne, @luarenah

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Douglas Todd

Published: Apr 15, 2016

Canada is a place where gender stereotypes remain unusually strong. Few seem able to hear that women can be as violent as men in domestic disputes.

UBC psychology professor Don Dutton, who is about to retire at age 72, has never had a strong desire to be the centre of attention, let alone be infamous. To his mind, he just follows the evidence.

But the expert on forensic psychology ranks high for controversy, at least in Canada.

Dutton has written hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, more than eight books and textbooks, won dozens of grants and served as an expert witness in scores of legal cases, including appearing for the prosecution in the 1995 murder trial of former NFL star O.J. Simpson.

The more than 250 students who take Dutton’s courses each year learn about everything from the reliability of eyewitness accounts to personality disorders, from the roots of genocide to what makes serial killers tick.

But on one subject, now known as intimate-partner violence, Dutton has become too hot for many Canadians to handle.

That may be why outspoken Senator Anne Cools has asked Dutton to speak to the Senate in Ottawa next Thursday, where he will outline how most domestic disputes involve “bilateral,” or mutual, violence.

Sitting in the living room of the Kitsilano home that he shares with his wife, Marta Aragonez, Dutton explains his research is readily received in many places outside Canada.

The author of Rethinking Domestic Violence and The Domestic Assault of Women (both published by UBC Press) has already spoken to the World Bank, the University of Washington law school and many other institutions.

His books have been published in several languages, including Japanese and Dutch. Scholars around the world have formally cited his research more than 7,000 times.

But Canada is a place, he says, where gender stereotypes remain unusually strong. Few seem able to hear that women can be as violent as men in domestic disputes.

Dutton didn’t always think so. He started out his UBC psychology career in the 1970s, offering court-mandated psychotherapy to husbands accused of battering their wives.

“In those days,” Dutton says, “I thought it was just the men who were doing it.”

By the 1990s, however, Dutton realized many husbands were telling the truth when they said, “My wife is violent, too.”

Mutual violence emerges when “couples don’t know how to stop”

American researchers were discovering the same reality. Daniel Whittaker has found the most common form of domestic violence is mutual: Up to 75 per cent of victimized women were also aggressors.

“Couples get into screaming matches that get physical,” Dutton says. “They are under stress and insult each other. And they just don’t know how to stop.”

The second most-common form of intimate-partner violence is perpetrated by females, according to Whittaker and others. The third most-common form, known as wife battering, is perpetrated by males.

Weapons, despite being rare in domestic violence, are gender-neutral, including scissors and boiling water.

Why is such data so little known in Canada?

A key factor, says Dutton, is technical, at least on the surface. Statistics Canada’s widely used domestic-violence data is based solely on criminal reports — and women make the vast majority of complaints to police.

Canadian researchers don’t take the extra steps that American and European researchers do: They don’t ask each partner if they contributed to the violence.

When U.S. scholar Deborah Capaldi has asked such questions, she’s found that in 87 per cent of the cases in which the man was arrested, the woman admitted she had shown prior aggression.

In his presentations, Dutton also cites a study by Denise Hines, who followed 302 men who called a New Hampshire hotline that had been established for men involved in domestic violence (a rare public service). In three out of four cases the men had been injured. But when those same men sought followup help from another domestic-violence program, 64 per cent were told they were the “real batterer.”

In one case, a husband called police after his drunken wife attacked him. The police found the man with a knife sticking out of his body. They still arrested him.

Most police officers that Dutton knows, male and female, are already aware that gender stereotypes about domestic disputes don’t hold up. But he says police feel their hands are tied by public perceptions about violence against women.

Unlike many, Dutton has no desire to politicize domestic violence. Despite accusations hurled at him, he doesn’t belong to any sort of men’s rights movement. Still, he’s taken considerable lumps.

The case of Fariba Mahmoodi

Among other things, Dutton was devastated by the national attention given to 35-year-old Iranian student Fariba Mahmoodi, who convinced a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal he had created a “sexualized atmosphere” when she came to his Kitsilano home in 1994.

Despite the tribunal learning Mahmoodi had stalked Dutton and lied at least three times to advance her career and her finances — and despite the B.C. Civil Liberties Association supporting Dutton by saying the ruling brought a new “chill” to freedom of expression on campus — Dutton emphasizes most “people do not know how bad it is” to be subjected to such a concerted public attack.

The Mahmoodi nightmare dragged on for years, but Dutton notes no other woman ever came forward to complain about his behaviour — “because I don’t do that kind of thing.” He has no idea what’s happened to Mahmoodi.

SFU criminology professor Ehor Boyanowsky believes it’s a shame Dutton’s work, especially on intimate-partner violence, is not more appreciated in Canada.

The problem, Boyanowsky believes, is that Canada is home to more liberal, “well-intentioned” people than most countries.

“They follow their unanalyzed prejudices based on what they think is the right thing to do — rather than looking at the data and acting appropriately for harm reduction.”

Describing Dutton as brilliant, but personally “timid,” Boyanowsky said the UBC psychology professor overcomes his cautiousness by working tremendously hard and doing deep research.

“He challenged the paradigm that men are the perpetrators and women are the victims in almost all cases. He follows the evidence. He’s a scientist.”

SFU professor emerita of psychology, Kim Bartholomew, also admires Dutton.

“He’s been courageous in maintaining his intellectual integrity in a field in which ideology is often more influential than data, and in which there are strong pressures against challenging the ideological view.”  

For his part, Dutton believes Canadian politicians, from both the left and right, have fallen into a gender trap.

Liberal-left politicians and activists have turned domestic violence into solely a women’s rights issue, often defining the entire category as “violence against women.”

Conservative politicians don’t get the picture either, he says. Since they want to appear protective of women, they appeal to religious supporters by framing partner violence as a lack of “family values.”

There is a significant reason Dutton wants policy-makers, including the senators he’ll meet on Thursday, to overcome their stereotypes and recognize men and women are similarly violent in relationships.

If public officials understood the realities, Dutton believes they would realize the harm of domestic violence could be reduced by courts mandating both partners take part in couples therapy.

As he prepares to retire from UBC after 47 years, however, Dutton is not optimistic Canadian politicians will accept the evidence.

“I don’t see it turning around.”

[ Via: https://archive.ph/0GlB7 ]

==

This is what happens when I tag "violence ag" and let it suggest. If you wonder why I'm posting on this topic, this is as good a reason as any.

[baghassavocados]

Gonna put a page break cause it's longgg

1. A little biased but Spinning Tree (both times) {I also enjoy the 2016 tour, a bit of McCarter, and Station Theater BUT I haven't seen many productions}

2. No 😔

3. Uhhh if I have to choose one, Noel, cause he's cool and interesting and he was really fun to play and he's honestly really caring.

4. The Most Creative Person in Town?

5. All of them, but "Noel's Lament" and "Ballad..." especially

6. My favorites are Nischa/Passion Fruit, Mischa x Talia (dunno if they have a specific ship name, they should), SpaceDolls, and PerfectDolls. My least favorite is Noel x any of the girls.

7. Constance's definitely (Mischa and Noel are tied for second)

8. (I put this at the bottom cause I put a LOT-)

9. Y E S- (I'd list them here but that'd make this post so much longer-)

10. Yeye I do :) (they all deserve another chance)

11. I've only ever heard that they exist :(

12. U H- all the New Birthday Song mini scenes? And the scene after "Every Story's Got a Lesson" in the 2016 version.

13. I like the rollercoasters that just spin you around a bunch (so probably similarly to the Gravitron?)

14. Yes

15. Ocean choosing Jane, Constance's monologue, "Talia" and what follows it, "New Birthday Song" and the Jane/Ricky and Noel/Mischa scenes after it, and "It's Not a Game/It's Just a Ride"

16. No

17. Yeah, such as staring blankly, sometimes moving like a marionette, leaning her head to one side, and a more monotone voice.

18. Ummmm

Ocean would try to find a prestigious college in Uranium so she could stay close to Constance but I think ultimately might go to Harvard. Dunno what she'd go into. Maybe teaching so she could be a principal or superintendent eventually (Practicing to be the Prime Minister of Canada). Constance would work at the Blackwood Café while doing online schooling. Dunno what she'd go into either...maybe culinary? Mischa would either take a gap year or just not go to college cause he prefers his rap career. Either way, he'd get a full-time job (probably has one already considering shitty parents don't care about him). He'd also get an apartment the moment he's legally and financially able to (unfortunately doesn't have enough money to get out of Uranium, yet). The rest of the choir would help him settle in. If he did go to college, he'd probably major in music. Penny might go into Forensics/Criminology, Psychology, or Zoology. She might try to go for all three at once. Ricky would go into creative writing but I have a feeling he'd major and/or minor in something else. I don't know what, tho. Noel would want to study abroad in France. Would he be able to? Not very likely. Maybe the choir would pitch in to help, that'd be nice. He'd major in French literature and culture, maybe minor in theater.

19. Jane and Talia - Blue (specifically the RTC album blue)

Ocean and Penny - Green

Noel - Red

Mischa - Orange (maybe also yellow)

Ricky, Constance, and Karnak - Purple

Ricky - also Pink

20. Fall Fair (but I do enjoy Uranium Suite)

8. Ocean and Noel are like siblings (hate each other {and Noel knows when to shut Ocean down} but care about each other), Penny has so many dark facts about animals, Ricky learned ASL on his own and has an AAC device, they all probably learn French cause they're Canadian but Noel likes to use it a lot in day to day life (but he also tries to use more European French than Canadian French), Ricky has a whole Google Doc and at least a few notebooks/sketchbooks dedicated to Zolar, they also have a DeviantArt account, Ricky's also trans but I can't decide which trans she is (like idk if they're Transmasc, Transfem, Gender fluid, Nonbinary... Ricky is THE transgender-) he uses any pronouns tho, Ocean is AroAce or Lesbian {either way, she is not attracted to men}, Constance loves baking for the choir and she makes sure to take into account any and all dietary restrictions, Ocean is a vegan, Mischa is unphased by horror movies but if he's watching one with someone else and they seem terrified he'll talk throughout the movie to make them less terrified and if they're enthusiastic he'll talk through some of it to point out details he notices, Mischa is like the older brother the choir never knew they needed, Ocean would probably add more (or has more) religions onto her list of religions (also for some reason, Ocean with a hijab is appealing to me), Ricky likes putting buttons on their uniform and customizing almost everything they own (such as technology, disability aids, sketchbooks, etc.) with cool stickers, Penny and Ricky (and maybe even Ezra) like to talk about Fnaf theories, Ricky has the choir beta read her writing {Penny, Mischa, and Constance tend to be the ones to do it}, when Noel finally feels comfortable to be Lola Lola for Halloween, Mischa and Ricky support him through dressing in drag with him, Mischa offers up stick and poke tattoos and Penny and Noel are the only two who take him up on it (Noel gets a bleeding, broken heart struck with an arrow on his shoulder, Penny gets a snake eating it's own tail on the back of her wrist, and Mischa gets a mixture of the two by the inside of his elbow), they're all autistic, and I think I should stop there cause oh man I didn't realize how many I had (i should make a doc or something with all of my headcanons-)

ride the cyclone ask game!!

(I’ve never actually made/done one of these before so if I somehow manage to do this wrong pls tell me ^^)

1. What’s your favourite production?

2. Have you seen/read the script for Legoland? If so, what do you think?

3. Favourite character and why?

4. If you were in the choir, what would your “the most x person in town” be?

5. Favourite song/songs?

6. Do you engage in shipping, and if so, what is your favourite and least favourite ship?

7. Favourite monologue?

8. What’s your favourite headcanon?

9. Do you have any fic recommendations?

10. Do you enjoy the ‘everybody comes back to life’ aus?

11. Do you know much about the cut characters? If so, do you enjoy them?

12. Favourite scene?

13. Do you like rollercoasters? If so, what type of rides do you like?

14. Do you think Talia is real?

15. What moment/scene in the show makes you the most emotional?

16. Do you have any ocs?

17. Do you think penny retained any ‘jane doe-ish’ features after coming back to life?

18. What do you think the choir would have done after high school if they didn’t ride the cyclone?

19. What colour do you associate with each character?

20. Fall Fair or Uranium Suite?

[luckyclover]

PARENTAL ALIENATION AND SUICIDE IN MEN

Leo Sher

James J. Peters Veterans’ Administration Medical Center and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA

*****

Parental alienation is defined as a mental state in which a child, usually one whose parents are engaged in a high-conflict separation or divorce, allies himself strongly with one parent (the preferred parent) and rejects a relationship with the other parent (the alienated parent) without legitimate justification (Lorandos et al. 2013, von Boch-Galhau 2013). Parental alienation is anomalous, maladaptive behavior (refusal to have a relationship with a loving parent) that is driven by an abnormal emotional condition (the false belief that the rejected parent is evil, dangerous, or unworthy of love). The most common cause of parental alienation is indoctrination of the child by the alienating parent to dislike or be afraid of the target parent. The concept of parental alienation has been recognized by mental health professionals for many decades.

Suicide rates in men in Western countries are very high (Sher 2015, World Health Organization 2015). For example, age-standardized suicide rates among men in the United States, Canada, Croatia and Hungary are 19.4, 14.9, 19.8, and 32.4 per 100,000 population/per year, respectively (World Health Organization 2015). It is interesting to speculate that parental alienation may contribute to suicidality in adult men who were victims of parental alienation as children or in men who are alienated from their children.

Studies suggest that parental alienation is associated with long-term psychological damage (Baker 2005, Lorandos et al. 2013, von Boch-Galhau 2013, Bernet et al. 2015). For example, a recent study showed that reports of childhood exposure to alienating behaviors were statistically significantly associated with higher scores on most of the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) scales (Bernet et al. 2015). Moreover, the degree of exposure to alienating behaviors was positively associated with higher scores on the SCL-90- R. The SCL-90-R assesses symptoms of psycho- pathology and provides global distress indices. Adults who had experienced parental alienation as children frequently suffer from depression and may have problems with alcohol and drugs (Baker 2005, Lorandos et al. 2013, von Boch-Galhau 2013, Bernet et al. 2015). Mood and substance use disorders are associated with suicidal behavior (Sher et al. 2001, Maris 2002).

The predominant feelings among alienated parents are helplessness, powerlessness, and growing despair (von Boch-Galhau 2013). Fathers who have lost some or all contact with their children for months or even years following separation or divorce are sometimes depressed and in a severe suicidal crisis since the loss of contact or restriction of the relationship between the children and the father is a very upsetting and painful experience for both the children and the father (von Boch-Galhau 2013). This may contribute to suicide in men.

Possibly, a decrease in the number and intensity of parental alienation cases may reduce suicidality in men. It is quite difficult to reduce the number and intensity of such cases. The alienating parent’s task is easy. The playing field is not level. It is prejudiced in favor of the alienating parent (Bone 2012). We must simply recog- nize this if it is to be overcome. Legal interventions may help. Dr. Ludwig F. Lowenstein, one of Britain's most quoted authorities on psychology in education wrote: “The threat of punishment for the alienator must be supported by punishment, including removing the child from mother’s care to a neutral place or to the alienated parent, and to use incarceration when necessary. Failure to carry out this distasteful, but necessary, action against the obdurate party would constitute a mockery of the judicial system. It is my experience as an expert witness to the Courts as a forensic, clinical psychologist, that most alienating parents, whether mothers or fathers, will obey a court order if punishment is threatened for fai- lure to adhere to the ruling” (Lowenstein 1999). Educa- tion of legal and mental health professionals and the general public may also help.

Acknowledgements: None. Conflict of interest: None to declare.

References

1. Baker AJ: The long-term effects of parental alienation on

[degreeacademic]

Seven Top Risks Of Forensic Psychology Schools | forensic psychology schools

The opportunities for a career in forensic psychology are growing at an amazing rate. This field is growing exponentially because there are so many more crimes being committed every day. But, just like any other career, if you choose the right school you could get an amazing job. But, most who have an interest in forensic psychology are going to find that this is probably one of the most exciting fields out there.

Once you have decided to become a psychologist, you should really think about all the requirements. As stated earlier, you must first go through some training. Of course, you will have to ensure that you get accredited forensic psychology programs with high quality programs. This is important as the employers are looking for people who know how to do research and analyze cases. There are also different levels, so make sure you do the proper research.

To be successful in this field, it will take quite a bit of education, which is why you need the right college to get your degree. This is a profession that is very rewarding, and it doesn't require a high level of education, but there is a certain amount of education that you will need. It's not too much to take, and you could get a good job if you get the right programs.

There are several online schools that offer degrees in forensic psychology. There are also traditional colleges that offer these programs. It is vital that you do your research thoroughly before choosing a program. Make sure you find out if you will need any clinical training in addition to the classroom study. You should also find out if the school has the equipment and facilities that you need to do your job.

There will be a certain amount of coursework to be done, which will depend on the program that you choose. Most of the time, you will learn about criminal behavior and crime scene investigations. As you progress through your studies, you may be able to specialize in certain areas of forensic pathology. The last thing you want to do is to get bored in your career, so make sure you do your homework on each program before making the final decision.

Forensic psychology programs are also offered at various colleges, although some offer more than others. You may even be able to attend a campus-based program. Although it may seem that this might be easier, you could be able to work around campus life and still keep up with your classes. Many students choose to work on their online degrees, but will still have their clinical hours met at the same time.

Once you finish, you will need to get a certificate or a bachelor's degree, depending on the different levels that the school offers. Once you earn your degree, you will then take an exam for licensing, which will give you the certification that you will need for working in the forensic field.

The job opportunities are unlimited, and you will be happy with the work that you do, but you will still need to get your education as well. With the many different degrees available in this field you could also get a job in a government agency, a private lab, or a private practice as a psychologist.

There are many different skills and qualifications that you will be required to have to become a psychologist. Many of the jobs will require a bachelor's degree, which can be obtained through an online program. The skills that you will need include the ability to identify psychological disorders, to write a forensic report, and to conduct interviews. You will also be required to know the legal system, which is something that you will likely learn while in school.

Many careers in this field offer more job opportunities than others. If you are interested in the legal system, you may be able to work as an investigator for a defense lawyer firm or a prosecutor, although this will likely require a higher level of education and more training than most other jobs in the field.

You will need to know that there are many benefits that come with working in the field. You will be paid well, you will have an opportunity to do interesting work and get to see the world firsthand. You will also have a valuable tool for learning. If you are interested in becoming a forensic psychologist, you may want to consider looking into forensic psychology schools.

Forensic Psychology Degree Question – forensic psychology schools | forensic psychology schools

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What is the Benefit of a Degree in Clinical Psychology vs – forensic psychology schools | forensic psychology schools

10 Best Master’s in Forensic Psychology – The Best Master’s Degrees – forensic psychology schools | forensic psychology schools

Graduate Forensic Psychology Programs Become a Psychologist in UK – forensic psychology schools | forensic psychology schools

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Top Forensic Psychology Doctorate Degrees & Graduate Programs 10+ – forensic psychology schools | forensic psychology schools

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The post Seven Top Risks Of Forensic Psychology Schools | forensic psychology schools appeared first on Academic Degree.

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[ss-agent-emily-prentiss]

thank you to @prentissinred and @cmhotchniss-blog for the tag, I feel honoured!

*tag 10 people you'd like to get to know better*

relationship status: newly single (hit me up in my dms LOOL jk, unless....)

favourite colour: light pink and light blue

three favourite foods: sushi, pasta/noodles in general, soup dumplings (honestly i just like all food)

song stuck in my head: Got That Boom by Secret Number

last song I listened to: Bored by Pentatonix

laat thing I googled: Forensic Psychology PhD (I'm not prepared for another 4 years of school just to get a PhD, someone help)

time: 1:53am

dream trip: Hawaii (or anywhere warm since it's cold half the time in Canada)

anything I really want right now: to see my friends in person (i really miss them, it's been too long)

tagging: I'm sorry if you've already been tagged :)

@ninelesbien @strongfemale-obsession @give-me-therapy @aubreymatthews @calucinnamon @marilynroselleprentiss @froggymanasa @bossofcriminalminds @danversisgaysaywhat @criminalmindsgonewrong

[originandcauseservicefirm]

Which is a vital part of a forensic fire investigation?

What makes a fire investigation so important? It can make or break a case, and if the wrong results are given to law enforcement officials then it can be devastating to a family's life and future. Here is a look at some of the different parts that make up fire investigation services origin-and-cause.com in Canada.

A fire investigator in Canada is responsible for collecting evidence and preserving it in order to present it in court. This can take place after the fact, or even before. 

As you can imagine, when a fire has taken place and there are victims and evidence that needs to be preserved, it can be quite a task to get all of this done in a short amount of time. The fire investigator will work closely with an investigator from the fire department to get all of the information together, and then present it to the investigating officers.

Of course, the fire investigator is not the only one who is involved. There is a trained technician as well. He or she works alongside the investigator and will be required to review all of the gathered evidence and determine the correct procedure to be followed. 

Then it is time for them to deliver their findings. Having someone who is there with you is extremely important when it comes to fire investigation services in Canada.

The fire investigator may need to talk to you directly about what your case is. In some instances, he or she may need to meet with you to discuss the fire investigation. 

The investigator may also need to talk to the property owners of the buildings that have been destroyed to see if there are any laws that require them to seal up the building. Some states do have these types of laws. If they don't the fire investigators will need to find out what the state law regarding fire investigations is.

The fire investigator jobs that are open in the field of fire investigations all require a certain amount of education. While many fire investigators obtain a high school diploma, some fire investigators will want a degree in chemistry, physics or computer science. 

Those who choose a four year degree or higher typically have some sort of college preparation coursework including English, math, chemistry, biology and psychology. This can help them get a good job and land the best fire investigator jobs.

Those who work in fire investigator jobs usually enjoy their jobs. They are able to put the lives of others into their hands and get to catch those who would do terrible things. 

They work tirelessly throughout the day, doing everything from interviewing witnesses to carrying out some very important physical tests on the scene. Sometimes these investigators must stay at the fire scene overnight, depending on the severity of the incident.

If you want to know which is a vital part of a forensic fire investigation? It is knowing how to collect evidence and preserve it. Evidence can be crucial to pinning down any fire causes. If a fire investigator fails to collect evidence that proves what caused the fire, then it is unlikely that a suspect will be brought to justice. 

The fire investigator jobs that remain open have a very important responsibility to ensuring that the fire investigators that remain on the scene collect and preserve evidence for use in future fire investigations.

When someone thinks about fire investigator jobs, they may think about getting a job with the local fire station. However, there are plenty of other fire investigator positions that are open because of the need for fire investigators. If you would like to work with law enforcement, then you might consider working for a private investigator or a government agency. 

These are some of the most popular fire investigator jobs because they pay a lot and require only a high school diploma. Remember, if you have a passion for helping people get off of the hook, then you may want to consider fire investigator jobs!

[likeabxrdinflight]

I have heard for like a decade that there is no way Harley Quinn would have had sessions with The Joker as an intern. I don’t know if I agree with this working in in-patient myself. I feel like The Joker actually wouldn’t be the most difficult patient in Arkham considering he can take care of himself and isn’t hallucinating or activity suicidal. What are your thoughts? Would Joker be more difficult than any other patient in the asylum in ways I’m not thinking of? The only other issue I can think of would be high turn-over rate in the asylum, which would mean they may not be able to afford to baby interns. Or possibly unethically lacking supervision sessions and supervisor burn-out. But what do you think about this? Do you think it is more or less realistic for Harley to have sessions with Joker? There could obviously be some stuff I’m missing. I also live in Canada so perhaps the U.S is more strict with psych interns.

In my experience as an intern in the US, we definitely get assigned some pretty tough cases. Throughout both my master’s and PhD, I’ve worked at a homeless shelter, developmental disabilities board, foster care agency, college counseling center, a specialized school for kids with neurodevelopmental disorders, and next year will be on a hospital inpatient unit. The easiest cases came from the disabilities board, hands down. 

I’ve worked in some capacity with a wide variety of diagnoses ranging from depression and anxiety disorders all the way up to complex trauma and borderline personality disorder. Next year I’ll be seeing patients with even more severe pathology including psychosis, which plenty of my other classmates have already had experience working with. They’re not afraid to throw hard cases at interns at all, and if you do a rotation on inpatient you’re absolutely going to get short term cases too. 

Joker would be a hard case given his criminal record, but not necessarily because of his diagnosis, agreed. Active psychosis and severe anorexia, I think, are the most challenging disorders to work with if you’re a trainee and not specialized in any way. Some people do think personality disorders are harder, but I dunno...I’ve had PD cases and think it’s been fine, so...

Frankly the main reason I can see a supervisor not wanting to assign someone like the Joker to a young Harley is because he had such an extensive criminal record. If I were a supervisor I might be hesitant about giving that case to an intern if I thought there was a potential danger to the intern. Knowing his history of violent behaviors, that would definitely give some pause, I think. But if he had a diagnosis of, say, antisocial personality disorder and my intern was there expressing interest in criminal and forensic psychology...well I’d think you’d expect the intern to get some potentially tough cases. That’s the training they’re looking for, after all. 

You would absolutely never want an intern to not have strong supervision in a criminal/forensic or inpatient setting though, because those cases are complex. If Harley had had a good supervisor I’d like to think she might have been able to notice what dynamic was happening in the room, and maybe even been able to confide in her supervisor that she was feeling attracted to him. So if supervision was bad at Arkham, then sending Harley into that room with the Joker was absolutely a mistake and someone should be held accountable for that.

Interns get tough cases though. This is part of the training and part of the work. So I don’t think it’s super unrealistic that an intern, especially one coming in and stating they want a career working with these kinds of forensic cases, would be assigned the Joker. I do think it’s unrealistic if she doesn’t have supervision, though, and I’m not sure whether or not she ever did in the comics. 

[schalaasha]

Top 20 Games of the Decade

Hi, I felt like writing about my top 20 games of the decade because I kept thinking about it. This is a semi-ranked list, but I decided not to throw numbers into the mix since, really, outside of the top 2, I can’t think of how to rank the games prior to them. I also commissioned hyiroaerak (@/HRAK__S2 on twitter, https://hyiroaerak.weebly.com/work.html) for art to commemorate this occasion.  Our characters are cosplaying as characters from our games of the decade!

Mega Man 10

I actually like Mega Man 10 more than Mega Man 9 out of the two platformer revival games in this series. Though a bit of background on this: Mega Man 4 is my favourite, and I prefer the games that are not 2, 6, 7, or 11, so I suppose that contextualises this for others.         Either way, despite it not having weapons that were as useful as Mega Man 9’s, I felt like 10’s level design and pacing worked more for me in my favour. Though I’m saying that as someone who liked the double fortress design in earlier games so that might invalidate how I feel.

 Time Attack mode from Mega Man 9 returns as well as Proto Man (but he’s unlockable right off the bat). It also has a proper Challenge Mode compared to Mega Man 9’s challenges, whereby challenges for certain levels or bosses are unlocked when you actually do it in the main game. Being able to play as Proto Man off the bat allows for the fluidity Mega Man had in 3 and beyond by letting you slide and use charged shots. I personally liked being able to play as Proto Man off the bat as while he has the 3 and beyond advantages for his moveset, he is a glass cannon and you still have to watch where you’re going.

 I feel like the levels were a little better designed and if I needed more of a challenge, Hard Mode was still there to cut my teeth on. I liked the colour schemes throughout the level maps a lot more than 9’s as well. The bosses felt particularly gripping and trading blows with them fit into a nice rhythm.

 It has more content than Mega Man 9 and I had a lot more fun with 10 than I did with either 9 or 11. The formula itself is pretty static compared to other Mega Man games, but I like simple things. Why fix what isn’t broken? It’s just a nice piece of cake at the end of the day and that’s all I really want.

  Trauma Team / HOSPITAL: 6人の医師

When I started university for the first time in 2006, I was pre-med.  I eventually got sick and tired of the politics and people in the program (ie: folks saying they only wanted to go to med school so they can get rich or make friends with pharma reps who might give them perks), and I left the program to pursue program majors and a minor to prepare me for speech-language pathology instead.

 We had a Wii in our student lounge. My main university campus wasn’t exactly big and a lot of the people who hung out in the student center were kind of cliquey. I think I had the benefit of being really good friends with one of the guys who was the biggest social butterflies at the school so I got to meet a lot of people or get involved with stuff if I felt like it. So that meant I got to play with other students in games or wi-fi sessions during classes or after classes if I didn’t have to commute home right away.

 Because almost everyone I knew at my school wanted to go into medicine, everyone played the Trauma series. Some kids played Under the Knife during class. Some kids played Second Opinion on the Wii in the student lounge. Some kids played New Blood. This was before like… Farmville took over everyone’s computers at the time.

 Trauma Team came out way after that, and some of us were either graduating or staying in school an extra year because we didn’t know what to do after the recession or knew what to do but needed extra courses for graduate school.  So the Wii was free to use.  I don’t think people hooked it up as often anymore anyway. By 2010, a lot of us who had met each other in first year decided to go our separate ways, not even in the same majors or programs anymore. A lot of us either branched out into research, psychology, neurology (like me), kinesiology, epidemiology, forensics, genetics, etc. So Trauma Team for the rest of us who were still there was a good fit.

 Trauma Team took some influences from the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic considering that was when the development phase occurred. Now, I live in Canada, and Canada was one of the focal points for the 2003 SARS outbreak. This was when health bodies in the country decided to make some changes to how they respond to potential pandemics. A lot of things they tell medical students or any students studying health policy (like I was at the time) emphasized how different parts of the hospital or medical or health care staff need to work together in order to care for a patient. I actually find the different professions involved in Trauma Team useful and a reflection of what my class of 2010/2011 became later on (a lot of us graduated in 2011 and took an extra year).

 Diagnostics and Forensics were what I was really interested in since they don’t play the same as surgery/emergency medicine since they played out like a point-and-click. Later on in life, I had to look at so many medical reports and radiology reports and file them but by then I realised what my patients had but I can’t tell them myself since I’m not a doctor. But Trauma Team gave me a chance to do so and practice my terminology as a student. A friend of mine, who ended up becoming a doctor at a hospital in Toronto, really enjoyed endoscopy since it merely involved using the Wiimote as an endoscope and the nunchuk to steer. A lot of us played co-op too.

 The difficulty in Trauma Team, I felt, was decreased from previous games. But that doesn’t really spoil it. It was a varied game and it looks fantastic. It’s a shame that the game style hasn’t been replicated or given a sequel in later years, because while I’m older and my classmates are doing completely different things and I haven’t seen some of them in years, I’d love to take a stab at these types of games with a well-practiced laboratory technologist’s hand.

  Sonic Colours

I think it goes without saying. My first community when I joined the old forum was the Sonic community. Just a bunch of people who were interested in talking about Sonic so much in almost every thread that we ended up making a community thread together. I don’t post in the new forum everyone is at but I still talk to mostly everyone via different social mediums.

 I wasn’t around when Sonic Colours came out but I think I remember reading the joy everyone felt when nearly universally everyone in that thread seemed to really like Sonic Colours. I remember the thread title still. I preordered Sonic Colours because apparently previews were saying it was… good? I didn’t bother playing Sonic Unleashed until after I’d joined the forum, but hearing Sonic Colours would be a return to form since I was one of those people who didn’t adjust well to the 3D games made me interested.

 Sonic Colours is everything I wanted from a 3D Sonic game. Or rather, a 3D version of a platformer. I didn’t really like where 3D platformers were going because they were hard to look at, hard for me to pay attention to, and to be honest I got dizzy while playing a lot of them since you’re expected to work in a 3D space as opposed to a 2D space so it was really hard for me to process. I really like the hybrid nature of the level designs that’s where Sonic Colours got me.

 Sonic Colours isn’t without its hangups: some of the levels are really short; existing mostly for ranking/getting red rings. Sonic’s jump is pretty floaty. The script is fairly short even if the jokes can be funny. Bosses are reused. Sonic Colours is not a perfect game, but the attempts it made were fantastic enough in its own right.

 The music continues to be great, but the areas are visual spectacles. Whatever you think of the series, it’s fairly undeniable that the games try to have style. From the lighting, to posing, to setpieces, to colours used in assets in the level design – Sonic has always had really great ideas.  Sonic Colours is no exception – areas like Aquarium Park, Planet Wisp, and Sweet Mountain have a variety of neat level ideas and they look good trying to execute it. From popcorn on the floor to one of the best darned water levels in all of video games due to the drill wisp, to a fresh take on a grassy knoll with beautiful music, Sonic Colours can bring tears to your eyes because of what it attempts. Terminal Velocity Act 2 is also one of my favourite parts of the Uncolourations games partially because it’s a well-executed setpiece, but it also showed me that maybe those 3D racing bits aren’t that bad.

 The bosses may be really easy, and the final boss ends far sooner than it should before it could perfectly execute its Kamen Rider reference, but I think the point was to fully enjoy the theme park that Sonic Team threw at you this time.

 In 2020 I like to say that out of all of the Uncolourations games, Sonic Unleashed is my favourite due to the balance it struck and its presentation/artstyle, and basically having one of the best soundtracks of the previous decade. But I recognise everything that Sonic Colours brought to the table. If it wasn’t for Sonic Colours, I wouldn’t be friends or acquaintances with so many people that I am with now.

  Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Have you ever played a game that made you feel warm and toasty? Canadian winters can be really cold, you know.

 When I lived at my old run-down house, my old room didn’t have good insulation. Whenever it got cold, my room got really cold. I had my own personal heater because we didn’t really have a good heating system in my room either. So I only wore flannel pyjamas, wrapped myself in faux-wool blankets all the time, and went to sleep covered in at least four quilts or comforters (which is something I still do out of habit sorry). I used to make hot choco every day because it was just so cold in my room.

 I love Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Kirby’s Epic Yarn makes me feel warm and toasty inside because I think of being wrapped up in yarn and sheets and scarves and I just feel so happy. There are so many pastels used in KEY’s earlier stages that I can’t help but to feel toasty and happy when I’m playing it. It’s not the most challenging game. The game is really easy and all you mostly do is collect furniture, music, beads, and parts of the results wheel in every level, but I don’t think that’s the point of it. The point is just to have fun. Watching Kirby turn into a car to sprint, watching him turn into a little parachute or transform during those vehicle bits, you just can’t help but to feel so enveloped by the cute.

 Being able to interact with cloth by pulling a loose button and releasing something, taking off tags, pulling on stray thread, spin balls of yarn… it feels so fulfilling because it’s a clever use of the medium. It’s exactly what you’d do if you’re stitching or knitting. Placing furniture around Kirby’s little apartment makes the Animal Crossing fan in me so happy.

 I appreciate the lengths Good-Feel went to producing the level designs. They took photos of the fabric they bought and created the graphics that way. The music is calm and relaxing, with lots of woodwind and piano and lighter sounding instruments. The entire game feels so soft and sweet. It’s a visually-impressive game since everything animates incredibly fluidly.

  Cuphead

Like anyone my age or older, I grew up watching a lot of older cartoons by Max Fleischer with watercolour backgrounds, hand-drawn characters with a lot of focus on expressions, rotoscoping, etc Lots of slapstick and musical scores out of that decade.  I would have never believed I’d play a video game that looks like that but here we are playing Cuphead this decade.

 Cuphead is a blend of that artstyle with older run and gun style games. It combines a gunning experience with puzzles, reflexive actions, and dying… and dying a lot. And learning. Underneath it’s cartoony and child-friendly veneer lies a game that is unrelentingly difficult. There aren’t really any checkpoints in the game save for one. You can’t regain lost health. It’s just you versus the game. You may spend hours on one single level learning everything about it. And you can’t beat the game until you finish off every other level on regular difficulty.

 Different levels have different forms: they can be run and guns á la Contra, which are actually, oddly enough, breathing room levels. They’re probably the “easiest” levels in the game. Other types of levels can be straight up shmup-like boss fights where you’re flying in a plane. They can be hard as a regular shmup.

 The best crafted types of levels are the ones that include platforming as part of their boss battles because they use the artstyle and ideas involved in the art piece as interesting platforming mechanics. You have a more limited control scheme but the scenario you’re involved in is really interesting and unique. You fight a woman in a play and the setpieces in the play change according to how far you are in the boss fight, for example. The game also has a parry mechanic whereby you can double-jump off of anything that’s coloured pink and fill your super meter in order to kill bosses faster. The parry cues change per boss so it’s really cool to see what they look like every time you encounter something new.

 I think while Cuphead can be utterly unforgiving, I think it should be experienced at least once for how much work was put into making things look so fluid and how creative every boss and level can be. It’s what I wanted the UBIart framework to eventually evolve into. I think the game’s aesthetics and sound are its own reward in addition to that feeling when you finally conquer That One Boss.

  Asura’s Wrath

Asura’s Wrath was a game I was incredibly iffy on even buying at all. I heard about how the ending was part of paid DLC, that the game didn’t have a lot of gameplay, and that it was incredibly unremarkable. I don’t think I had a remarkably low bar or anything for this, but I decided to purchase it on the cheap.

 Asura’s Wrath definitely isn’t a game for everyone, and I feel as though it’s an acquired taste. The main character’s art might not jive well with everyone, the lack of ‘play’ will probably deter some folks, and its episodic nature/final chapter unlock sequence would probably get on people’s nerves. With that said, at first, it seems to be an action-cinematic game without necessarily expanding on the “action” part. A lot of it at first seems to be a bunch of QTEs to move the narrative along, with the narrative not necessarily being that strong in the first place. I think that’s due in part to the game’s structure initially. The first few chapters and the first act truly don’t seem very remarkable. The Buddhist and Hindu aspects of the game are very obvious and very central to the game’s plot, but at the same time, they don’t seem to be specifically mentioned whenever someone talks about the game to me. The Asuras were not one singular character or a god, but a race of warlike beings exhibiting wrath and pride. They were incorporated into Hinduism and Buddhism through their mention in The Rigveda. With that said, I was continually impressed by how many references—whether it was mere mention of regular terms/concepts/people, the artstyle and inclusions of things like lacquer skin, mandorlas, Vajras and Pretas, and also Siddham script—was included in this game. Asura’s Wrath ended up feeling incredibly natural and a nice way of shedding some light on non-Judeo-Christian religions.

 Anyway, I genuinely liked that the game felt like a playable anime. I don’t feel like the game would be as effective if it were put into another genre, or were less cinematic. It ends up getting its message across with its carefully-researched artstyle, great scene direction, well-composed music, and penchant for feeling like it was a fantastic shounen anime. I also feel like the game has more combo-based gameplay than people give it credit for. A lot of the complexities come to the forefront on Hard mode, and going for S-ranks and finding ways to do that quickly and effectively on higher difficulty modes is always an interesting affair.

  Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

I finished marathoning all of the Ace Attorney games in 2010. I don’t recall if I was doing it before Ghost Trick but I think what enticed me to get the game was its amazing animation. I hadn’t seen 2D sprites move that fluidly in a very long time. Characters have exaggerated movements, exaggerated dances (ie: the panic dance), and they have big flashy gestures to show off the game’s animation engine.

 You’re introduced to all sorts of eccentric characters, many of whom don’t overstay their welcome (Circus case from AA2, I’m looking at you). You have a desk lamp, a doggo, a dancing detective, a little girl who’s the focal point for one episode, etc. Everyone’s dialogue is relatively snappy, their expressions and animations make them stand out from others, and due to how everything is presented right down to the character art portraits, everything just jumps off the screen.

 Because you’re a spirit with amnesia, you’re given the ability to go through time, and also the ability to through environments by hopping from object to object and possessing them in order to influence what happens in the past to save people in the present.  This is just a path to trying to figure out who you really are or to find who or what killed you. A lot of the gameplay revolves around trying to figure out which objects to manipulate and when in order to influence an outcome. It makes the game partially point and click, but also partially a physics puzzler. I don’t think I remember a single object in the puzzle segments that was wasted. In other circumstances, you must manipulate time in order to save someone in their last four minutes.

 If anything, I feel like Ghost Trick is a necessary inclusion simply because of its style and attention to detail, as well as its sort but sweet story where nothing overstays its welcome. Its soundtrack also feels similar. The game is fairly consistent and nothing really changes in terms of progression over most of the game. But I see that as a plus as opposed to a minus for the most part. It helps to bring the game to a compelling and surprising conclusion.

  Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I marathoned all of the Assassin’s Creed games in one year prior to Assassin’s Creed III since I wanted to see what the deal was with the series because the first game wasn’t that great from a play perspective for me. The thing that resonates the most with respect to Assassin’s Creed for me is marshmallow-flavoured birthday cake and a bag of regular Bugles. I started this marathon on one of my birthdays that decade.

 Assassin’s Creed II is one of my favourite games out there, but Brotherhood adds so much to the formula despite its middling storyline compared to its predecessor. But that’s because most of Ezio’s growth happened in the previous game. He is a middle-aged man searching for the Apple of Eden, and while the story does not carry as much emotional impact, that isn’t exactly what I’m looking for with respect to the earlier AC games.

 One of the things I absolutely love about the earlier AC games is its attention to detail even if it isn’t necessarily completely accurate. At first I missed the fact that I could explore many different towns like I could in AC2. But then I realised how big Rome and its surrounding area is. Rome is gigantic, and it has so much attention to detail with historical buildings everywhere (which you need to pay to rebuild), old tapestries from the era, citizens dancing in the streets, lovers flirting with each other behind pillars, etc. There are more roofs and buildings to parkour over and between. The game adds towards that require you to take over them before you can use them to gain access to vendors and things to renovate. You can also find the glyphs (much like the ones from the previous game) to solve puzzles in order to gain access to more lore.

 I genuinely love the renovation aspect of this game. It’s more involved and a lot better than what the previous game tried to do with its economy. You renovate in order to gain access to shops, which in-turn generates income for you, and then you can renovate other stuff based on the income that you generate. It’s something that I’ve come to miss in later AC games. It felt a lot like a Suikoden game in some aspects.

 Platforming missions return in the form of finding parts of a cult and cutting the beginnings of a conspiracy off by its limbs. They’re faster paced than AC2’s tombs and there is more variety in terms of what you platform through. I like both types equally since one allows you to marvel at the beauty of a cathedral, while the other allows you to clock a few folks while making your way through a lair.

 In addition to the lairs, there are different types of missions for each faction that you forge alliances with, there are Da Vinci missions that involve new war toys and blowing things up in a scripted way. Assassin missions can vary in terms of how you carry out the assassins (albeit still scripted; improvisation was not a thing until ACUnity).

 The crux of AC: Brotherhood is being able to recruit assassins to your cause. Random citizens throughout Rome may be under attack by Borgia soldiers, and once you save them, they are recruited to join your cause. You level them up, send them out on missions, improve their gear, and ask for their help when you can and when they’re available. This feature gets expanded upon in later AC games but it gets a very good start here.

 Brotherhood is so full of content and a lot of little things that playing it for me makes it feel like comfort food for me. It may not have the best story and it certainly isn’t as memorable in that sense as its predecessor. But it’s so fun that I can’t help but to feel satisfied every time I turn it on.

  Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

I played the original Pac-Man CE on 360 years ago at my cousin’s house, where they added a timer and a morphing maze to the base original game. I thought it was a neat novel thing at the time but didn’t think further.

 Pac-Man CE DX adds more mazes and more mechanics and more modes to the championship edition base. It added sleeping ghosts where, if Pac-Man moves near them, they wake up and they chase him around the maze in a line until you can finally eat them all and rack up a huge score. You can also elect to use a bomb at a small expense in order to save yourself and send ghosts to the middle of the maze again. These changes assist in maintaining the game’s flow and it never makes a score attack daunting or boring.

 Devouring big long conga lines of ghosts following you is so satisfying while you’re listening to a bumpin’ soundtrack and chilling out looking at the cool lights on the maze. Really and truly, while at its core, PMCEDX is a score attack game, it makes for a beautiful loving chill sensory experience and I couldn’t ask anything more from it.

  Deadly Premonition / レッドシーズプロファイル

I think I, like a lot of people, was introduced to this game via the GB series. I didn’t have an Xbox 360 so I eventually imported the Japanese version for the PS3. The game’s dub was already in English; the text was in Japanese and it was pretty easy and reasonable to get through. Deadly Premonition actually the Guinness World Record winner for most critically polarizing horror video game since the reviews at the time were so all over the place. And yes, I will contend that Deadly Premonition is definitely not for everyone.

 I am not the type of person to play shooters. I actually hate them a lot. I don’t like gushing blood in video games, and I don’t really like the act of murdering someone in a game. I used to play a lot of survival horror games when I was younger on the PS1 and PS2, but a lot of the time you’re dealing with the undead or oddball things going on around you so it’s not nearly as bad I think. It’s funny; I deal with people’s bodily fluids and body parts all the time in real life as part of my job (ie: I’ve had to help dissect someone’s stomach before fresh out of the operating room), and it doesn’t bother me. But the mere act of seeing it done or doing it, makes me feel squeamish. I don’t like it. I don’t even like watching blood being drawn from me or needles being stuck into me, even though I’ve done it to other people as part of my work.

 For the most part, inexplicably, in Deadly Premonition, you’re dealing with the undead anyhow. I’m not the best person at shooters, but I certainly know what’s a good one and what isn’t.  Deadly Premonition is not a very good shooter. It’s really janky. Some of the weapons don’t make sense in terms of how balanced they are. The controls are also really janky. This is not really a surprise considering the game’s strength wasn’t supposed to be its shooter aspects. In fact, those parts weren’t even supposed to be there.

 Deadly Premonition is often cited as an artistic piece or a good game simply because of its story and character writing.  It has an excellent main character who was cast almost perfectly. It has a lot of eccentric characters filling the town of Greenvale to help you solve the murder mystery or help obstruct it. The end result of having an unreliable narrator works out in the game’s favour. It helped sprout pop culture references, weird humour, quirky dialogue and more. I have certainly never watched Twin Peaks but I got the allusions either way since the show was so big. Slowly uncovering how every cast member lives their lives throughout the town and every day makes you more emotionally connected with them.

 Greenvale is more of a sandbox than just a place where a crime is committed. You can play darts. You can race cars. You can do a ton of sidequests somewhere that will reward you elsewhere. You can collect trading cards??? You can carry some lady holding a pot everywhere? You can taste-test for one of your coworkers? You can do a lot of stuff that makes zero sense but I still end up enjoying it all anyway.

 It looks like a PS2 or Dreamcast game or something and I almost found that utterly endearing in the era in which it was released. The soundtrack itself is so dissonant and doesn’t always fit the situation. Sometimes the sound mixing is so all over the place that it often results in making a scene more hilarious than it should be. There’s a song that’s just��� American Idiot… on the soundtrack for some reason. Along the way, you start wondering “is this game real? Am I real? Is this really happening right now?” and yes, yes it is.

 In the end, because of its cult success and getting people talking, it allowed Swery 65 to make more games. Deadly Premonition was lightning in a bottle for him. He followed up with D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die (unfortunately in limbo). He cowrote Lord of Arcana and Lord of Apocalypse. He recently released The Missing. If anything, I’m more interested in what he makes. I’m eagerly looking forward to The Good Life.

  999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Text/Puzzle-adventures, rather than pure visual novels, became a staple of some players’ libraries due in part of the popular Ace Attorney series, Professor Layton series, and whatever Mystery Case File games that were published by Nintendo. 999 is not a pure visual novel. It’s a puzzle adventure game with visual novel elements. With art by Kinu Nishimura and a story written by Kotaro Uchikoshi (who had a few visual novels under his belt), it was difficult for me to ignore this game. I was also at a point where I really wanted to get into a lot of the games that Aksys published so it was a natural choice to buy.

 A lot of the localization and language in this game was edited so that while it stays true to the spirit of the original language, a lot of care was put into making the dialogue and writing sound natural in the English language versus going line by line exactly. It worked out in the game’s favour because the script was fairly large. Based on Uchikoshi’s past games, he likes to ask a question and generally incorporate some pseudoscience in his narratives. 999’s version of pseudoscience ended up being morphogenetic fields (see: Rupert Sheldrake). This theory ended up the basis for a few characters and it is the way the story unravels. He also took inspiration from another older game of Chunsoft’s: Banshee’s Last Cry where the player is put into an unsettling position right off the bat. Indeed, 999 starts the player in media res, but the player is already in trouble when you begin to control the main character.

 The puzzles were added to the game so that it would be received well by a wider audience than just visual novel readers. They were naturally and seamlessly integrated into the experience that the game became almost wholly about the puzzle rooms and whatever flavour dialogue occurred during the puzzle rooms. A lot of inspiration seems to have been taken from browser-based escape games like the Crimson Room from 2004. Escape the Room games were a subgenre of point and click adventure games and it was nice seeing the concept integrated in a narrative experience that wasn’t Myst (see: http://www.fasco-cs.net/ for more information). Due to the puzzles being a fundamental part of the game’s story, with them getting more and more difficult, the final puzzle for the entire game at the end of the true route is both a relief and also incredibly impactful due to using both of the DS screens and also revealing a lot to the player about the narrative.

 If I had criticism for the game, I feel like it would be having to play the game repeatedly, doing the same puzzles repeatedly in order to unlock another prerequisite ending for the true ending. I did not play the later port which rectifies this but I’m not entirely sure that being able to see the branches would be great for the game either. I also feel like, just like a lot of Uchikoshi’s writing and previous games, that when the characters start cracking jokes when they have to urgently do things to not die, the tone feels a little off.

 With that said, 999 is one of the more compelling text/puzzle-adventures from last decade, and it uses its native platform to its advantage. There weren’t a lot of games that used the DS screens to convey a narrative properly but when you are faced with the revelation that the game was using the two screens for a remarkable reason, you feel like the game is a natural and powerful addition to any DS library and gives significance for the dual screens.

  Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

The funniest thing about Metal Gear Rising was that I actually disliked it at the beginning when I first started playing it. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time, and I didn’t ‘get’ the parry mechanic. At first, I guess I was playing it for the sake of playing it? It definitely took me a while to even warm up to it. The camera was obnoxious (and still gets to be obnoxious in some places), and I felt incredibly nauseous while playing it sometimes.

 It wasn’t until I got to the Mistral boss that I finally … found what I was looking for… I’m sorry. I’m serious, though. Metal Gear Rising truly shines during the boss battles. When I finished that particular boss battle, I’d reflected that I was smiling like an idiot the entire way through. I don’t think I’d fought satisfying boss battles in years prior to that. Returning to previous chapters told me that Platinum really likes to frame and teach players via trial by fire. Learn to parry yourself, here’s a test to see if you can parry well and you can get a trophy for it, here’s the final test to see if you can even parry (Monsoon). I loved that Metal Gear Rising threw a lot of what we knew about Metal Gear Solid out of the window, with a significantly interesting score, boss battles that centre around the climax of a battle (expertly done via excellent sound design as I noted in my SotY writeup this year), and a more interesting and personable version of Raiden. It relies far more on offense than defense and stealth, and that’s okay to me. It ends up separating Raiden even more from Snake.

 The final boss is a love-it-or-hate-it sort of affair, and I ended up loving every single part of it. I felt like it was one of the best final bosses in years. Don’t know how to parry? You’re fucked. Don’t know how to use the game’s other offensive rush tactics like Defensive Offense and running? Good luck. The game makes sure you try to know how to do these things before even bothering to attempt the boss, with the major roadblock being Monsoon. And if you can’t parry by then, the game brutally tells you that you aren’t doing it right by making the boss battles ramp up to significantly require you to use one of the game’s core mechanics for elegant combat. This isn’t the most elegantly-designed game whatsoever. In fact, it can be really sloppy. With that said, it’s one of the better action games I played all decade.

  Papers, Please!

Papers, Please is work. It feels like work because it is work. You can grant freedom and admittance to people, or you can just take their freedom away or not permit them to cross the border. Everything you do is controlled by the government, or by rules and regulations. If you do something wrong, you’re written up. Do enough wrong, and your pay is cut. Do enough wrong and your pay is cut multiple times, and you can’t provide enough for your family. Everything about the game just feels like work. Even right down to the end of the day when the whole thing feels like a budget calculation and spreadsheets. Everything about the game’s UI feels a lot like work. Where do you allocate space to do your job? How much money do you allocate to heat/food/medicine? It ends up feeling very tedious, but somehow fulfilling.

 You are an immigration officer in a fictional Soviet state. The interesting part of the game is that it doesn’t only feel like a job, but it also feels like government and self-evaluation. You end up studying why the government keeps regulating the border the way they do, and thinking about how mundane the job can be. You know that people’s livelihood and family lives hinge on whether or not they cross the border, and sometimes your penchant for following the rules and disallowing people across the border may be called into question when people plead with you to go through. Do you accept docked pay so you can reunite people or save people from slavery, or do you do as you’re told and live with the consequences of your actions. In a small way, your ethics are called into question. It’s a nice reminder that a lot of things, despite people being people and having their own stories, generally seem to come down to bureaucracy and pieces of paper as opposed to a full understanding of humanity or extenuating circumstances.

 I’d also like to add that Jorji is one of the best characters of 2013 to me. I think his glass half-full philosophy / if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again philosophy is something to look forward to whenever I encounter him in-game.

 In many ways, Papers, Please feels a lot like the Milgram experiment. Are you going to make cruel judgement calls to separate a family, or keep people in slavery because the authorities and higher-ups essentially tell you to do your job so you can keep your family healthy? Papers, Please in many ways is written incredibly well. It doesn’t use reams of text to make you understand the overall premise of the game but through your actions, you’re also helping to tell the story. That’s the sort of weird and wonky player “agency” that I find interesting.

  World of Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy series had a better decade than the last decade, I feel, considering the quantity of releases increase from the previous decade.  However, it had a lot of growing pains to deal with at the beginning of the decade. Final Fantasy games sell well all the time, and more people playing games than ever, it makes sense that sales numbers continuously increase. Attach rates aren’t as large.  Final Fantasy XIV came out in 2010 and it was not a good game at all to the point of having to be structured for its 2013 re-release. Final Fantasy XIII had mixed reviews, as well as its subsequent direct sequels.  Final Fantasy All the Bravest wasn’t exactly the best mobile debut for the series. The brand also suffered from dilution – the Final Fantasy name was attached to almost anything and everything for the sake of sales, and numerous spinoffs were released and the quality varied.

 Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII, originally planned to be part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis setting with Final Fantasy XIII were renamed and rebranded/redesigned to be their own titles: Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy Type-0. Both games also had mixed reviews and multiple delays. If anything, I can probably say that this decade was the most divisive for Final Fantasy fans.

 World of Final Fantasy came out during the same year Final Fantasy XV. I think I’ve made my feelings about Final Fantasy XV fairly well-known.  Perhaps my feelings about that game influenced how I felt about World of Final Fantasy but as someone who has played this series for decades (for reference: the first game is one year older than I am, and my first Final Fantasy was the first game), I felt like World of Final Fantasy was a love letter written to fans like me. I am a long-standing fan of the series over the course of decades and have been through its up and downs, and while I don’t like every game in the series (we all know how I feel about half of the games in the series, after all), I can still look at them for their influence on the rest of the series.  I also like the newer games equally as the older games and dislike and like games from all of the eras, so I don’t really have issues with how the series is represented in general unless the games are really bad.

 World of Final Fantasy feels like a Kingdom Hearts-esque exploration of the Final Fantasy games while throwing Pokemon into the mix. It involves a lot of older references as well as bringing new references in and throwing it into a presentation mode that fans of all ages can enjoy. The main characters are chibi which fits right into how the older games represented characters, but they can also grow taller to represent how the newer games are represented. You can create stacks of party members according to their height and balance well accordingly out of classic Final Fantasy enemies and characters in order to battle against other classic Final Fantasy characters, villains, and monsters.

 The game is exactly what I wanted a mainline Final Fantasy to look. It retains a cartoony look, embracing stylization while adding so much detail to the areas’ setpieces so that they also stand out while the characters move around on the map. I also felt like the score was also a brilliant blend of old and new: with Masashi Hamauzu composing the score but also remixing older Uematsu themes to fit within the context of the score. The score was loftier compared to Hamauzu’s older works and the strings, synth, and piano works incredibly well to bring the game’s world to life.

 The idea for WoFF was to try to bring younger fans into the fold, hence the Pokemon-like influence for using and rearing many classic FF enemies so that children could start to recognise them. The loftier script was also written in-mind taking into account both lighter storytelling from older FF titles and some darker bits taking into account newer Final Fantasy games. I’m not too sure that SE was very successful with bringing younger fans into the fold, but the way the game was written fit well with what I remember liking about FF for the first few games I had played. I also enjoyed that characters were chosen for their involvement to the plot versus them simply picking the most popular ones. This is why we got characters like Eiko and Shelke as well as regular FF mainstays. All of the characters were woven into the story well, as citizens of Grymoire as opposed to characters who just have their regular identities transported into Grymoire instead.

 I felt like the Pokemon mechanic was handled well. I even loved it enough to have the idea commissioned in combination with our FFXIV characters.  I liked that it changed up whatever skills you had access to, it influenced your stats, and it looked adorable to boot.

 I would absolutely love to see a mainline game made by this team because I felt like the loose style of storytelling and worldbuilding made for a very good Final Fantasy game, and in essence, WoFF was the real Final Fantasy XV to me. It felt more “Final Fantasy” than a lot of the games released in the same decade, or even compared to ones released in the previous decade. It was a nice step and touch to demonstrating that there were staff members who remembered what Final Fantasy is to older fans.

  Va-11 Hall-A

I’m too young to have a big attachment to older PC games like the ones on the MSX or the PC-88/98. But I’ve always had a fondness for their graphics and their music, like sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong time or something. It’s one of the reasons why I gravitated hard to the PC Engine—I felt like it was a way for me to finally experience stuff like that.

 Valhalla is supposed to be a bartending simulator but in reality, mixing drinks is a bit of a break and distraction between the visual novel bits. Usually if you’re stuck in a futuristic landscape akin to Bubblegum Crisis or Blade Runner, you’re asked to investigate a mystery or explore it. But nope, you’re a bartender making drinks and making enough to scrape by and pay your rent. You hear a lot about the world from various clientele while you serve them drinks but you don’t necessarily have to do anything with the information they give you.

 I worked as a medical administrator for a few years and over that time, I got to hear a lot of stories, meet some famous people (like been on TV people or youtubers or people who got paid to do things for celebrities), and just meet a lot of neat and interesting regular people. I got to hear stories about people’s health or their personal lives or witness people falling in or out of love. You don’t necessarily have to do anything with that information (in fact you can’t due to patient confidentiality), but the stories become sealed in your head. I can’t help but to think of some of these people I met for those few years or where they are now. I actually run into some of them at my current lab so I keep getting to see some of their stories. You eventually learn how quickly icebreak in situations like these to make people feel at ease or find a topic of conversation while they’re waiting. I even used my phone to gauge news because a lot of the time when I got home, I was too tired to do anything or getting news in the palm of my hand was incredibly easy to do.

 In this sense, I understood Valhalla. It may look dull and it doesn’t look special but you’re the one who makes it so that it doesn’t have a dull moment in the bar. You’re the one who has to make it enjoyable even if your pay sucks. Because you don’t want to be miserable either. It’s through the conversations with others that you learn about Jill because she has to add commentary too. Everyone has a different way of requesting something and it’s up to you to figure out how to decipher it. It’s a lot of like practice in being in the service industry.  You need to consistently gauge a conversation in order to actually give the client what they want to unlock more conversation.

 The pacing in this game may be a little slow, but it doesn’t feel like a hindrance because the writing is really good. Something always happens to keep you interested or you have to mix drinks to keep yourself on your toes. The humour comes across well, and nothing really falls flat. Part of the reason why I feel like the writing is genuine is because the game’s developers wanted to write something that reflected how they live in Venezuela, akin to laughter in the middle of despair according to the developers. The writing is balanced well with the music and the visuals which makes the whole package a wonderful experience.

 This game also has Rad Shiba so it belongs on the list by default.  

  El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

I had gone to Catholic Schools all my life. I was even in a nursery school operated by nuns when I was a toddler, and they always tried to get me to write with my right hand instead of my left (which left me ambidextrous for some things lol).  Because of my experiences with religion growing up, I absolutely had questions and doubts and concerns with metaphysics, theology, and epistemology. Every Catholic, I think, as they grow up and have to take religion classes, and having to take what the province mandates as metaphysics are somehow inserted into math and biology syllabi without even being mentioned in the coursework at all, questions it. And that’s okay. You should. The best religion and philosophy teacher I ever had growing up always said we should question everything we learn including what he taught us.

 Going through school, though, and reading the Bible and having Bible study, my friends and I always sorta wondered what it’d be like if a game was made about this stuff?  I know it may be a little sacrilegious but there are so many stories in there that would fit a game. Throughout my life, as I became acquainted with others from different branches of Christianity or other western religions, I talked with others who played games who… surprisingly had the same ideas and desires?  It probably won’t ever be done. El Shaddai is inspired by the Book of Enoch and while it is considered as non-canon in most Christian and Jewish sects, I guess it might come close to what some of us wanted.

 El Shaddai was a game that I picked up mostly because I bought almost every niche game back then. I just looked at some of the trailers, thought it looked just okay, and picked it up because I felt like Ignition was going out of business and it would be a novelty item. Ignition did not have the best reputation among the people I talked to back then. I played Lux-Pain whose localization left a lot to be desired. Nostalgia was a middling RPG. Arc Rise Fantasia’s localization left a lot to be desired despite being a good game. Deadly Premonition had an English dub already but the text localization wasn’t that great. I felt like El Shaddai was the most polished game that Ignition released. They got incredibly great voice actors, including Jason Isaacs. They developed a score attack combo ranking system for replayability. They had a fantastic art director and background art. They made two bishounen that screamed for female audiences to pay attention.

 All of it didn’t exactly work out for the time the game came out, and I always contended that the game was released before its time. Unfortunately, all the effort put into El Shaddai didn’t exactly save Ignition. I feel like if El Shaddai were released in the later half of the decade, it would have been accepted. However, I also feel like its marketing was mishandled. It doesn’t feel like a Devil May Cry successor. It shifts between genres continuously. It is very much like Nier in this regard: it is not for everyone and it has its own unique feel that sets it apart from other games.  It is also a score attack action game, not a hard character action game.

 One thing I really enjoyed about El Shaddai was that all of the setpieces aren’t exactly the same. It ranges from a watercolour painting to abstraction to 2D children art to more abstraction to Final Fantasy VII and keep going like that. It references rhythm games, 2D Platformers, racing games, action games, Devil May Cry (with its own brand of Devil Trigger to boot), and other genres to create something that syncs up very well with the rest of the game due to lore reasons: different enemies prefer different things so that’s why each environment looks different or the gameplay styles may be a little different. I’m okay with this because it shakes things up per chapter and the game doesn’t feel stale at all. You’re expected to adjust to new mechanics per area.

 The combat is a lot like Rock-Paper-Scissors, where certain weapons beat other weapons, or some bosses change which weapons they’re weak against (and the game gives you other weapons so you can adjust accordingly during fights). The weapon you wield also modify your platforming abilities (ex: one allows Enoch to dash, one weighs him down, etc), and they also vary in terms of character strength. In order to obtain G-rankings for each stage, the player needs to analyse which weapon would be the most useful for certain enemies and combo while guarding, guard-breaking, and stealing enemies’ weapons.

 I am putting El Shaddai on this list because I really enjoyed it for what it was. It’s a brilliant score attack action game with a fantastic soundtrack and fantastic art design. It made for a pleasant sensory experience and made some religious figures fairly compelling with good character designs. It’s definitely one of the most rewarding and prettiest score attack games I’ve played this decade.

  To the Moon

Everyone goes through life with regrets. I’m in my thirties now and I think I’ve done things I’ve regretted, or I didn’t other to do something and I’ve regretted that. Kan Gao was inspired by his grandfather’s illness when he was writing and making To the Moon, he’s noted that when he gets old and when his time would come, he might end up regretting some decision he’d made throughout his entire life.  Everyone goes through that when faced with introspection. You can have the courage to love, you can feel pain, you can live your life fully, or not live it enough. To the Moon explores this, and while the writing isn’t the best and can be a little messy (this gets improved on in Gao’s later sequels to this game: A Bird Story and Finding Paradise), I understand what To the Moon was trying to accomplish. To the Moon is an exploration of everything that life throws at us, and the results of the decisions made throughout our lives that touches everyone and everything around us until our time passes.

 Eventually you build up so many wishes and have a big bucket list but eventually there will come a time where you won’t remember why half of those things are on those lists.  To the Moon relates the story of Johnny Wyles, an elderly man on his deathbed with one wish: to go to the moon. The problem is that he could not remember why. The general flow of Gao’s games have involved two scientists from Sigmund Corp, specialising in wish fulfillment at the end of someone’s life, creating memories for people in their final moments to generate comfort for the patient. How ever you may feel about the moral implications of generating false memories for someone prior to their end of life, this is merely a set up for traveling through time to understand what the patient had wanted and what they’d accomplished.  

 Johnny’s character revolves around another character with an ASD. I will also note that my brother has autism (compounded with a multisystem syndrome). While the central focus was on Asperger’s Syndrome (Tony Attwood books being mentioned in the game), I’m a little happy that ASDs are being brought up in games and the game truly hit home for me. The writing may not be stellar, but I felt that the theme of the impact of medical disorders was communicated well. Particularly the theme of why communication and connections with others is so difficult for those with ASDs and those who take care of those who have ASDs. It’s easy to sympathize with the characters trying to express what they mean to each other.

 The game itself is relatively short. Regardless of its length, players must confront some uncomfortable situations and emotions that people struggle with daily or even at different points in our lives. I’m older now and I appreciate this game a little more since I’ve come to experience more of what the game had been trying to tell me a decade ago. The writing may not be the best, and it can be a little messy at times with respect to how it’s presented and written, but a lot of its messages come across as utterly genuine. Slowly unraveling the reasoning behind Johnny’s desire to go to the moon is beautiful. This game is quite human and I appreciate all three games that are a part of this subseries that came out this decade.  I am looking forward to more.

  Nier Gestalt

If you’ve played a Drakengard game or the first Nier game at all, you kind of know what you’re getting into.  Not the best graphics of the decade, plays pretty janky, having bosses that can be difficult to manage, etc.  So going into Nier Gestalt in 2010, I knew what I was getting into. Not a lot of people bothered playing this game since I don’t think it got as much promotion considering it came out during the same year a mainline Final Fantasy game got localized.  Nier also got a little scrutiny since the west got a different protagonist from the Japanese version.  I will say that this worked out in its favour, since the protagonist being one of the central character’s father versus her brother makes for a better, more interesting story than having yet another shounen protagonist.

 I will support the case that, like the Drakengard games before it, Nier Gestalt was difficult to get into. The gameplay is jank.  Easy is too easy.  Normal doesn’t drop enough stuff to warrant playing on the mode. Hard can be a little hard but eventually it evens out. I generally used spears for the charge portion of the combo but in the end it doesn’t necessarily matter what weapon type you use. It doesn’t even matter if you use magic or not unless the game prompts you to do so. It’s either broken or not and the game doesn’t have a set balance for anything. Combos are boring and you’re essentially mashing a button. Even playing through the Nightmare DLC for extra drops, it continues being like this. I was used to playing shmups so it wasn’t necessarily revolutionary that AoE attacks looked as though they were spat out from a shmup either.

 I wasn’t quite understanding why game started acquiring a cult following, because what I’d played of it was pretty boring and standard. “It’s just a regular ARPG starring an older character versus a young protagonist,” I said to myself. I guess that was the reason.  I didn’t quite understand why, even past acquiring Kaine, because I guess I accepted that there weren’t a lot of NPCs and certain towns were the way they were due to, what I surmised were, RPG conventions. It wasn’t until I finished the questline for the brothers, where their mother tried to run away with a man and abandon her children, that I finally started to understand.

 Within every substory, there was something that resonated with someone.  I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to abandon their responsibilities, and at the same time I understood. Sometimes you just want to take care of yourself. With the way the older brother sort of understood why even through his anger and disappointment, it resonated with me. I finally ‘got’ the story, so I wanted to play more. This became one of those rare games where I played only for the story and lore and abandoned any hopes of the gameplay getting better.  I fished, I upgraded weapons, I did enough sidequests for the trophies. I almost platinumed this game, but since the drop rates are so terrible for this game, I didn’t.

 I started enjoying the game for what it was. It was genuinely a fun romp where it feels like everyone taking part in the game’s design contributed something unique and something they were fond of.  If you read any interview from Emi Evans from this time period, you’d realise language is something she’s particularly fond of, so much of the composition and lyrical content of every song was a phoneme from any language that would make it sound like an evolved or a sort of Esperanto version of a current language. This came into play with the game’s lore, and many of the interviews were interesting to read from back then.

 Many of the game’s stages borrowed from different genres of video games. There were the obvious shmup references, the rail shooter reference, the visual novel reference, the Resident Evil/fixed angle horror game reference, the Shadow of the Colossus references, the 2D platformer references, the Zelda references, the top-down puzzle game references, etc. For what the game lacked with respect to its combat, the game excelled at reliving genres and putting maps together in such a way that it felt like an ode to other games and genres that inspired it. The City of Façade’s language being a loose phoneme reconstruction of Japanese felt right at home with the dungeon’s Zelda references complete with Zelda fanfare for me. The Forest of Myth being one long visual novel was so hilarious and unique at the same time.  

 Playing more of the game and opening up the lore with every playthrough was neat. I don’t particularly like when games waste my time, but Nier made each new playthrough worth it. Killing bosses quickly for a trophy, redoing dungeons to see the enemies’ perspectives, and unlocking more of the story and learning more about the world that came from a Drakengard ending felt satisfying. As someone who was studying linguistics at the time, constructing nonsense words from drops out of different morphemes to act as accessories or armour was really amazing for me.

 Much of Nier felt organically put together, from characters’ writing and what they wanted from each other, to the dungeon design, to maybe even the combat design… it felt like a truly special game made from the heart with as much lore as it could possibly include. I had purchased the Nightmare DLC primarily to get weapon drops and while it isn’t nearly as interesting as the rest of the game, it has some implications for the lore. The music and resulting soundscape lends so much to the worldbuilding and includes many peoples’ languages from the area with French, Japanese, English, German, etc phonemes thrown around to sound utterly organic and special.

 At the end of this, I have come to realise that despite saying to myself that I never played this game for the game… I’ve been lying to myself this entire time. I actually did play the game for its game parts. Those are the bits I remember the most about it, and they’re the reasons why I genuinely loved the game. It’s unforgettable for me and it’s why it’s one of my favourites in general.

  Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

I did not care about MMOs in my late 20s because I was far more focused on finishing school and actually working hard in my field. I think by the end of university, I barely played games because I literally didn’t have time for them. I probably stressed myself out a lot. I threw myself into a semester where I had what felt like 500 evaluations, had to study a lot, had to write papers, and I ended up breaking up with my ex-boyfriend amicably. I was on my own a lot and to be honest, I think I felt okay that way. I think maybe others thought I was unapproachable.

 My best friend now turned fiancé had been begging me to start playing Final Fantasy XIV for a really long time, since he was in the beta prior to its 2.0 release. I made excuses and said I won’t play until a speedster class was implemented since nothing really stuck out at me. In reality, I was mostly busy. Well, Ninja got implemented late 2014, so I ran out of excuses. I got a copy of ARR but to be honest, I didn’t have time for it and I didn’t play it much so I didn’t bother to try harder since my focus was elsewhere.

 Luckily, I got into a semester where I didn’t have that much coursework to think about so I ended up playing XIV more. I caught up during ARR and really my intention was to only play through ARR and finish the story and quit. But my fiancé’s friends were so nice and welcoming to me. When the servers shut down for Heavensward maintainance and I’d finished the ARR storyline literally that night, I made the conscious decision to buy Heavensward. By that time, I was falling a little too hard for my best friend and I really liked my newfound friends. I wasn’t ready to leave Eorzea yet.

 Of course, I had some quests to finish up during Early Access so I didn’t get the opportunity to play with anyone I knew during the main storyline for Heavensward. Heavensward was leaps and bounds above anything I experienced in ARR. The story was well-written, the English voices were recast and given better direction, character deaths were meaningful, a smaller cast made for good character building, the environments were large and you could only assume things happened in each area eventually (they didn’t in the long run), each area was different, it reminded me of Canada… Heavensward made me feel at home.

 Almost every job felt built on, since nothing was really truly culled. A lot of what you got felt like an extension of what you already did. The three new jobs didn’t start out too well or too balanced. Machinist was a mess. Astrologian felt weird. Dark Knight had some growing pains but probably performed the best out of the three once the Alexander raid was implemented given that its specialty at the time centered on magic defense. I was one of the five people who really liked bowmage since it required you to think before you cast but you still did a lot of damage if you thought before firing. I swapped to an omnihealer main officially halfway through the patches because my fiancé requested it.

 Heavensward had a lot of growing pains. For all the team did for the base game, they took a six-month vacation to recharge. 3.1 wasn’t really worth the wait and a lot of people quit the game or stopped playing because nothing really meaningful was added to the game other than a faceroll raid, poorly-tuned exploration missions, and two dungeons. Gordias earlier in the expansion nearly killed the raiding community as a whole.  3.2 didn’t fare too much better, though it did add the best raid tier that has yet to be topped. 3.3 was when FFXIV solidified itself as an MMO with a grand story to tell, with one of the best conclusions a Final Fantasy game had seen in almost a decade. The sound design was near-perfect for this patch, and it was when a lot of us genuinely felt comfortable with the game and its future. Heavensward wasn’t perfect; it still had its missteps and balancing issues, but it was the most comfortable and profoundly skilled I’d ever felt with the game.

 Final Fantasy XIV may not be what it used to be.  I feel old and I feel like I’ve played the game for a really long time.  Now while it’s riding the wave of success, currently having the best story Final Fantasy has seen in a very long time, I can’t help but to remember Heavensward when we finally felt assured about the game and it felt like a cohesive gift to players who were active at that time.  I got to know so many people during Heavensward, and now I’m engaged to my best friend partially due to our experiences together playing at that time.

  Undertale

The late half of 2015 was a really bad year for me. The first half was really great. I started playing FFXIV often, I finished the hardest year I’ve ever had of my 9 years of university so far with high grades and was going full-on hard into my residency year, I fell in love with my best friend.  I was pretty happy since I finally felt very successful.

 If anyone can recall (or this may be new to the person who is reading this), towards the end of 2015 my dad was falsely accused by our neighbour of possession of a weapon (it was a gardening tool), and he had a restraining order put against him so he couldn’t live with us anymore.  My little brother is severely disabled so that’s why I still lived at home so I could help out.  Without my dad around, it was so much harder.  I came home from my days at the hospital every day after a 12-hour day, had to babysit my brother since my mom still cooked food to carry for my dad who had to live at my aunt’s, somehow had to find time to study for my licensing exam and do some work for school and my thesis, had to find time to socialise a tiny bit otherwise I’d go crazy, maybe had to take my brother to his appointments by coming home a little early, and then had to find whatever time I had left to sleep.  I stopped posting on message boards because I literally had no time to do so and I wouldn’t have anything of value to contribute to discussions either.  

 I detached myself from a lot of people. It was actually kind of lonely. It was really hard. I lashed out at people when I shouldn’t have. I don’t look back on those days other than the bright spots with fondness at all.

 Before that, everyone was telling me to play Undertale but I sort of didn’t want to? I felt like the fanbase was sort of making the game unapproachable around the time it came out. By the end of the year, I was so out of the loop about games that I didn’t give a hoot.  A friend of mine, Shadow Hog, bought the game for me on Steam. I still have the e-mail message for it.

 My now-fiancé got his own copy so we could play it together because at that point I didn’t want to do much of anything alone. I was actually sinking deeper into depression and verging on a mental breakdown. I was not mentally sound and every single week it felt like someone had to save me from doing something stupid.

 I started Undertale and I didn’t really think much of it at the start.  I can’t remember when it started clicking with me but maybe it was around the time I got into a battle with Tsunderplane and Vulkin and got to Hotland that I gave up and started having fun with it because it was just… silly. It was time to let down your hair and have some fun for once and not feel completely guilty about it.

 The idea of having to win and achieving a certain ending by sparing your enemy isn’t necessarily new – SMT’s demon negotiation, Silent Hill 2’s morality system, and MGS3’s fight with the Sorrow have some sort of sparing mechanic. The hybrid of a turn-based battle system with enemy negotiation, as well as dodge system inspired by a shmup makes every encounter both strategic (ie: having to avoid bullets while also sparing enemies in a set order per battle) and consistently active.  Unless you are going for a certain other ending, you cannot just sit there and hold down the attack button and expect to win.  That said, this makes a lot of encounters a little longer than a standard RPG battle, but the flavour text for each uniquely-designed enemy makes many of the battle worth it. Undertale isn’t a hard game unless you’re playing on a certain route. But I don’t necessarily think the gameplay part of Undertale speaks properly for it. The dungeon maps are relatively simple. They all have their little gimmicks. The battle system is relatively easy to understand.

 The reason why Undertale has such a prolific fanbase is primarily because of its character writing and ability to make and use memes properly enough that they catch on. Many of the characters are easily encountered early, are easy to draw (propels a lot of fanart), and understand due to the character writing. What also helps is that the game is 4-6 hours long, and it came out at the right time with the right kind of word of mouth.  Undertale could have easily fallen into the sea like so many other RPGs before it but it didn’t.  My fiancé and I were shopping for work clothes one day at a store that sells business clothing, construction clothing, and scrubs. He was wearing a shirt with the Delta Rune on it since he loves game shirts that are relatively subtle. Even then, one of the sales clerks pointed it out and was pretty excited to see it.  It was pretty crazy to both of us how popular Undertale had gotten.  I don’t think the popularity was unwarranted. I think it’s a fantastic game, helped by a considerably lengthy varied and catchy soundtrack. Granted, I was not as exposed to how explosive its popularity was when it came out. But I understood why so many people liked it. It wasn’t for its gameplay.

 As I progressed through Undertale, instead of thinking of the lore (which was well-written), I was thinking of how the monsters treated your character with respect and love because you treated them that way.  They didn’t go out of their way to fear you, and welcomed you as one of their own.  In the end, they were hesitant to even kill you, and you were hesitant to kill them.  Even then you still had the spare/save commands.

 At the very end, you only had the Save command.

 And that’s how I felt. When Hopes and Dreams started playing, I couldn’t help but to cry. When I was repeatedly nudged to press the Save command, I didn’t actually feel like the game nudged me to do so. That was something I wanted to do. Just remembering how depressed I was when I started playing this game and then progressing to its true end with Hopes and Dreams and SAVE the World playing, I couldn’t help but to feel like my hopes and dreams were still alive.

 Even if I was going through a really hard time in my life, hope was still there as long as I had people around me that supported me all the way through. That was the time in my life that I realised who my real friends were. And in the end, I felt like Undertale told me my friends saved me and that my dreams weren’t crushed, now matter what threw at me.

 And that’s why it’s my game of the decade. It may not be the most perfect game that came out this decade or the objectively best-crafted, but it did so much for me. When I was prompted for my game of the decade, Undertale was the first thing that popped into my head. I didn’t question it. I just knew. I don’t think we’ll get another Undertale again in my lifetime, but I’m glad to say that I gave it a shot and I love it for what it is.

[thatsdemko]

i’m a first university student in canada, and i go to school for a joint major in forensics and psychology with a specialization in law and policing. i have always loved science but also legal aspects of stuff so my program is like perfect for me

That’s amazing! I love psychology it’s such an amazing science it’s the best I think I love it more than anything and I think range so amazing that you want to tie it with law/legal that stuff always seems cool!

[himanshuagarwal1282-blog]

Best Multidisciplinary Universities

Brown University

Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. The premier institution offers two multidisciplinary degree programs. Founded in 1764, Brown is a leading research university home to world-renowned faculty, and also an innovative educational institution where the curiosity, creativity and intellectual joy of students drive academic excellence.

Providence, Rhode Island — Brown’s home for more than two and a half centuries — is a vibrant place to live, work and study, a stimulating hub for innovation, and a city rich in cultural diversity.

Get all Admission Information here>>>>

Know More: Brown University

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university in Michigan and the state’s oldest university. It offers interdisciplinary learning for students of its Residential College within the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA).

Facts & Figures

Research

#1 Public research university in the U.S. — National Science Foundation

$109M in annual industry-sponsored research (2018)

1300 Students participated in the Undergrad Research Opportunity Program (2018)

$1.55B in annual research expenditures (2018)

Academics

100 Grad programs in the top 10 — U.S. News & World Report (2019)

97% Freshman retention rate

92% Of students graduate within six years

19 Schools and colleges

263 Degree programs

15:1 Student to faculty ratio

Know More: University of Michigan

Fitchburg State University

Fitchburg State University is a public university in Massachusetts. It offers as many as four multidisciplinary degree programs.

University Facts & Figures

Fitchburg State offers undergraduate and graduate programs with an emphasis on career-orientated learning that is firmly grounded in the liberal arts, as well as selected majors in the traditional arts and sciences. The University features small class sizes, hands-on professional education, and an accessible faculty dedicated to teaching.

The University supports both traditional and nontraditional students. Full-time and part-time enrollment opportunities exist during the day and the evening, and at the graduate and undergraduate level.

Get All Admission Related Information Here >>>

Know More: Fitchburg State Mobile

Shiv Nadar University

Shiv Nadar University is a private research-led, fully multidisciplinary university in India. It was recently recognized as an Institution of Eminence (IoE), making it one of 10 private institutions in India to be accorded the status.

University Leadership:

The Chancellor is the head of the University. The Office of the Chancellor ensures that the Act, Statutes, Ordinances, Rules and regulations of the University are faithfully observed.

The Vice-Chancellor is the principal academic and administrative officer of the University. The Vice-Chancellor is charged with the responsibility to provide general supervision over all affairs of the University; direct the establishment of and is responsible for the achievement of the University’s mission and strategic goals. The Vice-Chancellor recommends to the Executive Council the creation or continuance of academic units, programs, and recruitment; the retention and promotion of faculty and other employees of the institution; formulate and issue rules and regulations consistent with statutory policies and procedures. Additionally, the Vice-Chancellor is the interface between the University and local, state, regional, national, and international institutions to enhance and extend the University’s programs and services.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: Shiv Nadar University |

The University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is a public research university in Australia and the country’s first university. It offers interdisciplinary programs and projects to enhance learning and boost employability.

Engage with them:

Leverage our cross-disciplinary research to create commercial success stories and improve lives. Collaborate with our network of outstanding academics, students and alumni, to generate new knowledge by working together across disciplines.

There are many ways you can connect with the University of Sydney. However, we understand that navigating universities can be complex and confusing. We will connect you with the right people to support your strategic priorities.

Find a Course Here>>>

Know More: Home

FLAME University

FLAME University is a private liberal education university in India. The innovative curriculum takes an interdisciplinary approach to provide students with a broad understanding of subjects.

FLAME University exists to build an aspirational destination for students and faculty, to push the design and nature of studies and to create a societal up-gradation phenomenon particularly in the fields of liberal education and leadership.

FLAME will be amongst India’s most reputed and respected universities. We will be the university of choice for higher education in India. We will be recognized for the impact our teaching has on our students and the community at large. Further, we will be the leader in creating and disseminating knowledge in the disciplines we offer. With that, we will pioneer the advancement of knowledge in these disciplines.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: The Pioneers of Liberal Education in India

University of Central Florida

The University of Central Florida is a public university in Florida. Students have a choice of two interdisciplinary degree programs.

Research, Partnerships & Innovation

UCF researchers drive intellectual capital and innovation to solve today’s most pressing problems. As an emerging preeminent university, we promote economic development in the region by aiding in the transfer of technology and other discoveries between university and industry to create next-generation ideas and products. From nanoscience to optics, from simulation to forensic science, UCF researchers work together to have real-world impact, improving the lives of our students and community.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: the University of Central Florida | Orlando's Hometown University

Ashoka University

Ashoka University is a private research university in India with a focus on liberal arts. It offers a multidisciplinary undergraduate program and students are not expected to declare their Major until the middle of their second year.

International Partners:

Visiting faculty

Faculty from our partner institutions visit campus and teach courses for a semester or more, thereby giving students academic exposure in cutting edge research and developments in various fields of study. Professors from U.Penn, Wellesley, HEC Paris in the fields like Psychology, Sociology, and Entrepreneurship routinely visit to teach at Ashoka.

To learn more about faculty at Ashoka, check the list here.

Faculty Collaboration and Research

Ashoka faculty have collaborative projects with global institutions in the fields of Political Science, Psychology, Journalism, Media studies and more.

Study Mobility

Outbound mobility

Ashoka students have a unique chance to travel abroad to study and experience new cultural and academic environments at international institutions. Courses undertook abroad count towards the credit requirements for graduation.

To learn more about these programs:

Summer Abroad

Semester Abroad

Inbound mobility

Ashoka also welcomes international students from partner universities and others for studying at Ashoka for a semester or a year.

To learn more about these opportunities:

Visiting Students Programme

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: Liberal Education University in India

Queen’s University

Queen’s University is a public research university in Canada. It offers interdisciplinary options across various fields including Computing, Gender Studies, Arts Management & Leadership, and Environmental Studies, among others.

Some Strong Facts:

Queen’s University is highly-ranked in Canada for student experience, taking an inclusive approach and offering to learn beyond the classroom; this experience includes the most clubs per capita of any Canadian University as well as a robust international exchange program with more than 220 partners.

Queen’s research-intensive environment and interdisciplinary program offerings provide students with the comprehensive and nimble skills required in today’s competitive and evolving workforce with 91% of Queen’s grads employed within six months after graduation.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: Queen's University

The University of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma in Norman is a public research university in Oklahoma. It offers two multidisciplinary degree programs.

Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma just 20 mins. south of Oklahoma City. OU’s Norman undergraduate population is slightly more than 20,000, giving students a major university experience in a private college atmosphere. With three campuses in Oklahoma, OU also offers study abroad opportunities at several locations and OU campuses overseas.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: The University of Oklahoma

[himanisharma1282-blog]

10 Best Multidisciplinary Universities

Brown University

Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. The premier institution offers two multidisciplinary degree programs. Founded in 1764, Brown is a leading research university home to world-renowned faculty, and also an innovative educational institution where the curiosity, creativity and intellectual joy of students drive academic excellence.

Providence, Rhode Island — Brown’s home for more than two and a half centuries — is a vibrant place to live, work and study, a stimulating hub for innovation, and a city rich in cultural diversity.

Get all Admission Information here>>>>

Know More: https://www.brown.edu/

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university in Michigan and the state’s oldest university. It offers interdisciplinary learning for students of its Residential College within the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA).

Facts & Figures

Research

#1 Public research university in U.S. — National Science Foundation

$109M in annual industry-sponsored research (2018)

1300 Students participated in the Undergrad Research Opportunity Program (2018)

$1.55B in annual research expenditures (2018)

Academics

100 Grad programs in the top 10 — U.S. News & World Report (2019)

97% Freshman retention rate

92% Of students graduate within six years

19 Schools and colleges

263 Degree programs

15:1 Student to faculty ratio

Know More: https://umich.edu/

Fitchburg State University

Fitchburg State University is a public university in Massachusetts. It offers as many as four multidisciplinary degree programs.

University Facts & Figures

Fitchburg State offers undergraduate and graduate programs with an emphasis on career-orientated learning that is firmly grounded in the liberal arts, as well as selected majors in the traditional arts and sciences. The University features small class sizes, hands-on professional education, and an accessible faculty dedicated to teaching.

The University supports both traditional and nontraditional students. Full-time and part-time enrollment opportunities exist during the day and the evening, and at the graduate and undergraduate level.

Get All Admission Related Information Here >>>

Know More: https://www.fitchburgstate.edu/

Shiv Nadar University

Shiv Nadar University is a private research-led, fully multidisciplinary university in India. It was recently recognized as an Institution of Eminence (IoE), making it one of 10 private institutions in India to be accorded the status.

University Leadership:

The Chancellor is the head of the University. The Office of the Chancellor ensures that the Act, Statutes, Ordinances, Rules and regulations of the University are faithfully observed.

The Vice-Chancellor is the principal academic and administrative officer of the University. The Vice-Chancellor is charged with the responsibility to provide general supervision over all affairs of the University; direct the establishment of and is responsible for the achievement of the University’s mission and strategic goals. The Vice-Chancellor recommends to the Executive Council the creation or continuance of academic units, programs, and recruitment; the retention and promotion of faculty and other employees of the institution; formulate and issue rules and regulations consistent with statutory policies and procedures. Additionally, the Vice-Chancellor is the interface between the University and local, state, regional, national, and international institutions to enhance and extend the University’s programs and services.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: https://snu.edu.in/

The University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is a public research university in Australia and the country’s first university. It offers interdisciplinary programs and projects to enhance learning and boost employability.

Engage with them:

Leverage our cross-disciplinary research to create commercial success stories and improve lives. Collaborate with our network of outstanding academics, students and alumni, to generate new knowledge by working together across disciplines.

There are many ways you can connect with the University of Sydney.  However, we understand that navigating universities can be complex and confusing. We will connect you with the right people to support your strategic priorities.

Find a Course Here>>>

Know More: https://sydney.edu.au/

FLAME University

FLAME University is a private liberal education university in India. The innovative curriculum takes an interdisciplinary approach to provide students with a broad understanding of subjects.

FLAME University exists to build an aspirational destination for students and faculty, to push the design and nature of studies and to create a societal up-gradation phenomenon particularly in the fields of liberal education and leadership.

FLAME will be amongst India’s most reputed and respected universities. We will be the university of choice for higher education in India. We will be recognized for the impact our teaching has on our students and the community at large. Further, we will be the leader in creating and disseminating knowledge in the disciplines we offer. With that, we will pioneer the advancement of knowledge in these disciplines.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: https://www.flame.edu.in/

University of Central Florida

The University of Central Florida is a public university in Florida. Students have a choice of two interdisciplinary degree programs.

Research, Partnerships & Innovation

UCF researchers drive intellectual capital and innovation to solve today’s most pressing problems. As an emerging preeminent university, we promote economic development in the region by aiding in the transfer of technology and other discoveries between university and industry to create next-generation ideas and products. From nanoscience to optics, from simulation to forensic science, UCF researchers work together to have real-world impact, improving the lives of our students and community.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: https://www.ucf.edu/

Ashoka University

Ashoka University is a private research university in India with a focus on liberal arts. It offers a multidisciplinary undergraduate program and students are not expected to declare their Major until the middle of their second year.

International Partners:

Visiting faculty

Faculty from our partner institutions visit campus and teach courses for a semester or more, thereby giving students academic exposure in cutting edge research and developments in various fields of study.  Professors from U.Penn, Wellesley, HEC Paris in the fields like Psychology, Sociology, and Entrepreneurship routinely visit to teach at Ashoka.

To learn more about faculty at Ashoka, check the list here.

Faculty Collaboration and Research

Ashoka faculty have collaborative projects with global institutions in the fields of Political Science, Psychology, Journalism, Media studies and more.  

Study Mobility

Outbound mobility

Ashoka students have a unique chance to travel abroad to study and experience new cultural and academic environments at international institutions. Courses undertook abroad count towards the credit requirements for graduation.

To learn more about these programs:

Summer Abroad

Semester Abroad

Inbound mobility

Ashoka also welcomes international students from partner universities and others for studying at Ashoka for a semester or a year.

To learn more about these opportunities:

Visiting Students Programme

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: https://www.ashoka.edu.in/

Queen’s University

Queen’s University is a public research university in Canada. It offers interdisciplinary options across various fields including Computing, Gender Studies, Arts Management & Leadership, and Environmental Studies, among others.

Some Strong Facts:

Queen’s University is highly-ranked in Canada for student experience, taking an inclusive approach and offering to learn beyond the classroom; this experience includes the most clubs per capita of any Canadian University as well as a robust international exchange program with more than 220 partners.

Queen’s research-intensive environment and interdisciplinary program offerings provide students with the comprehensive and nimble skills required in today’s competitive and evolving workforce with 91% of Queen’s grads employed within six months after graduation.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: https://www.queensu.ca/

The University of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma in Norman is a public research university in Oklahoma. It offers two multidisciplinary degree programs.

Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma just 20 mins. south of Oklahoma City. OU’s Norman undergraduate population is slightly more than 20,000, giving students a major university experience in a private college atmosphere. With three campuses in Oklahoma, OU also offers study abroad opportunities at several locations and OU campuses overseas.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: http://www.ou.edu/

[missmentelle]

Post #1000 (FAQ)

When I started this blog a few years ago, I couldn’t have imagined that it would grow as quickly as it did - and I definitely didn’t expect to make it to a thousand posts and beyond! I’m so grateful for each and every one of you who has sent in asks, reblogged and liked my posts, or sent me messages and replies. I really wouldn’t still be going if it wasn’t for you. 

So in honour of post #1000, I thought I would take some time to answer some of the most common questions that I get about me, my blog, and the issues that matter to me!

What should I call you? Miss Mentelle?

You can call me MissMentelle, Miss Mentelle, Miss, Mentelle, Ment, MM, or just M. Really, call me anything you like, none of those are my real name.

What kind of education do you have in mental health? Where did you go to school?

I have a Bachelor of Arts Honors degree in psychology, from a large public research university in Canada. I’ve completed a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology (concentration in forensic psychology) from a fancy private university in the USA. I’m also a certified rape crisis counselor in NY state. 

Have you ever actually worked in mental health in real life?

I sure have. I volunteered at a suicide hotline and a walk-in mental health distress centre as an undergraduate, and then after graduating I spent two years working with homeless and high-risk inner-city youth in a large Canadian city, doing counselling and psych testing. I then both worked and volunteered at a rape crisis centre in NYC. My hands-on experience working with mental health has mostly been made up of extremes - I have personally dealt with or been present for overdoses, gang fights, suicide attempts, sexual assaults, underage prostitution, psychotic breakdowns, and one instance of gun violence. 

Are you a psychologist? 

I am not. I am not qualified to give anyone a diagnosis. I am qualified to administer and score psych tests, but I am not qualified to interpret the results. Becoming a full-fledged licensed psychologist is a major goal of mine. 

Why did you start this blog? 

When I was working with homeless kids, we had a constant, ongoing problem where many of the kids had absorbed extremely unhealthy ideas about relationships that caused many of them to enter or stay in life-ruining relationships. No matter how hard we tried to counter these ideas and teach the kids about healthy relationships, it never seemed to make much difference. I was required to maintain separate “work” social media accounts that the kids could use to communicate with me, because that was the only means of communication that most of them had, and once I started seeing their social media feeds, it became pretty obvious that most of them were getting their information about love, sex and relationships from incredibly damaging posts being shared on social media. I couldn’t compete with that kind of influence as their mental health worker. So I decided to go online myself, and start creating healthier content to teach kids about these things, not as their worker, but as a blogger. It grew from there. 

Why do you always spell words like “centre” and “cheque” so weird?

I’m Canadian. You can pry my British spellings from my cold, dead hands. “Cheque” in particular seems to really bother people, but I promise you, that’s how non-Americans spell it. 

What’s your real name? 

Nice try, person-who-is-clearly-trying-to-steal-my-identity.

Do you do anything other than mental health?

Of course! I’m a writer in real life, and I’ve published stories in several mainstream anthologies. I also do stand-up comedy, write for a major comedy website, and run a true crime podcast. 

Can I send you an ask?

You definitely can!

What can I ask you about?

Pretty much anything that you feel comfortable asking me - I’ve answered questions about depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, personality disorders, romantic relationships, school problems, friendships, family relationships, parenting, pregnancy, sex, sexuality, and pretty much every mental-health-related topic in between. If I don’t know the answer, I will do some research and try to find the answer, or point you toward someone who does know. I also answer personal questions about myself, my schooling and my experiences, as well as general questions about how to break into this field as a career. 

Are you LGBTQ+?

Yes. I am a bi-romantic ace woman. I openly date both women and men, with no strong preference either way. I am not out to my parents, as most of my long-term partners happen to be male, and that’s not a conversation I want to have with them until it’s strictly necessary. I routinely blog about what it’s like to date while bi and ace and closeted, and I’m happy to answer questions on that topic. 

Are you mentally ill yourself?

Sometimes. I have OCD that is mostly mild/dormant, but it occasionally pops up again when I’m stressed, and it can lead to me spending hours in obsessive thought-spirals where I endlessly worry about things I have no control over, instead of doing anything productive. My OCD makes me believe that I will cause bad things to happen if I have “bad” or “wrong” thoughts that I don’t immediately balance out with “good” thoughts, and even though I know that’s completely irrational, my brain doesn’t agree. I also have ADHD, which I’ve learned to manage, and Tourette’s, which was extremely embarrassing for me as a child, but has gotten milder with age. 

What topics do you know the most about? 

My master’s degree is in forensic psychology, and that’s what I know the most about. My specific areas of expertise are conduct disorder, anti-social personality disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and other severe childhood behavioural problems, psychopaths, paraphilias, the relationship between psychology and crime, FASD, and the ongoing suicide crisis among First Nations youth. I almost never get asks on any of these topics.

Can I request a post on a certain topic?

You sure can! I would love to know what my followers are actually interested in learning more about. 

I sent you an ask weeks ago and you still haven’t answered! Do you hate me?

I don’t! I get a lot of asks, and unfortunately, I have a pretty full schedule that doesn’t leave me enough time to answer all of them in a timely fashion. I do answer all asks eventually, but it might take me a while to get to everyone, and I thank you all in advance for your patience. 

What can do to make sure you answer my ask?

I get to everyone eventually, but I do get to some quicker than others. There’s no guaranteed way to ensure a quick answer, but you’ll probably get a faster reply if you’re asking me a question that I don’t see very often. I’m also faster to reply to asks that give me a specific question (”Where can I find resources to learn meditation?”, “What’s the difference between a PhD and a LMHC?”) than I am at replying to more vague asks, or asks that don’t really ask a specific question (”I’m sad”).

What topics do you get the most asks about?

It varies over time, but in general, the most common asks I see are variants of: “I’m trying to set boundaries with my friend but they aren’t listening”, “I’m sad but I’m not sure what to do about it”, “I need to tell my therapist something but I don’t know how”, “I’m not sure if this relationship is healthy”, and “I went through a breakup and I’m having a hard time getting over it”. I’m happy to keep answering these kinds of questions, but I encourage you to read through my archives a little if that’s the sort of issue that you’re facing.

I’m just starting out as an advice or mental health blogger! Will you promote my page?

Probably not. I get several requests like this per day, and I don’t really have time to vet everyone who asks me this to see if I’m comfortable recommending you to my followers. Plus, most of the blogs that send me requests like this are run by people who don’t have any mental health credentials, and unfortunately, I’m just not comfortable endorsing mental health blogs that don’t have some sort of professional education or experience behind them. 

Can I send you a private message?

Of course! You should know, though, that I’m worse at responding to private messages than I am at responding to asks. Unfortunately, many of the people who have sent me private messages in the past have done so with the expectation that I will provide ongoing mental health support for them or that I will talk them through an ongoing crisis, and I unfortunately don’t have to time to do that for everyone who wants it. I’m a little bit wary of private messages for that reason, but I do still read and answer them. 

Why do you write such long posts and answers?

I was that kid in elementary school who asked if “3-5″ pages was a maximum, or if I could write more than that. I have never grown out of being that type of person.

What should I do with my life?

I don’t know. Sometimes I barely know what to do with my own life. I can point you toward resources to help you figure stuff out, but I can’t tell you what to do - you’re the expert on your own life, not me.

How do I get therapy?

This is actually a really hard question for me to answer. It depends on your individual situation, as well as your financial resources, geographic location and insurance situation. Most of the time, I just don’t have enough information to give you an answer. I can tell you about some online resources and telephone hotlines that you can try, but you’re probably going to have to do your own research about how to access long-term professional mental health services in your area. 

Should I break up with my partner? 

I can’t really give you a straight answer to that either - I don’t know either of you, and I can’t make such a huge decision for you, especially when I only have a couple hundred words of backstory on the relationship. I can tell you whether the relationship sounds healthy or not, based on what you’ve told me, and I can tell you some general information about situations that might cause people to break up, but you have to be the one to actually make the decision about whether or not to pull the plug. 

I don’t like my medication, should I stop taking it? 

I’m not a doctor and I can’t answer that. Stopping medication suddenly and without medical supervision can be dangerous - if you are having issues with your medication, you need to speak to a doctor about it as soon as possible. 

I want to be a psychologist! How do I do that? 

I’ve answered this question pretty extensively a couple of times, but the answer boils down to this: get the best GPA you possibly can, get as much research experience as possible, take lots of stats classes, register for the GRE early, do lots of research on graduate programs, and don’t be disappointed if it takes you a few years to get in.  I think that covers most of my Frequently Asked Questions! If you have anything else that you’d like to know, leave it in the replies to this post, or send it in as an ask! Here’s to 1000 more posts!

[rajdeep1282-blog]

Top multidisciplinary universities in the world.

Brown University

Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. The premier institution offers two multidisciplinary degree programs. Founded in 1764, Brown is a leading research university home to world-renowned faculty, and also an innovative educational institution where the curiosity, creativity and intellectual joy of students drive academic excellence.

Providence, Rhode Island — Brown’s home for more than two and a half centuries — is a vibrant place to live, work and study, a stimulating hub for innovation, and a city rich in cultural diversity.

Get all Admission Information here>>>>

Know More: Brown University

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university in Michigan and the state’s oldest university. It offers interdisciplinary learning for students of its Residential College within the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA).

Facts & Figures

Research

#1 Public research university in U.S. — National Science Foundation

$109M in annual industry-sponsored research (2018)

1300 Students participated in the Undergrad Research Opportunity Program (2018)

$1.55B in annual research expenditures (2018)

Academics

100 Grad programs in the top 10 — U.S. News & World Report (2019)

97% Freshman retention rate

92% Of students graduate within six years

19 Schools and colleges

263 Degree programs

15:1 Student to faculty ratio

Know More: University of Michigan

Fitchburg State University

Fitchburg State University is a public university in Massachusetts. It offers as many as four multidisciplinary degree programs.

University Facts & Figures

Fitchburg State offers undergraduate and graduate programs with an emphasis on career-orientated learning that is firmly grounded in the liberal arts, as well as selected majors in the traditional arts and sciences. The University features small class sizes, hands-on professional education, and an accessible faculty dedicated to teaching.

The University supports both traditional and nontraditional students. Full-time and part-time enrollment opportunities exist during the day and the evening, and at the graduate and undergraduate level.

Get All Admission Related Information Here >>>

Know More: Fitchburg State Mobile

Shiv Nadar University

Shiv Nadar University is a private research-led, fully multidisciplinary university in India. It was recently recognized as an Institution of Eminence (IoE), making it one of 10 private institutions in India to be accorded the status.

University Leadership:

The Chancellor is the head of the University. The Office of the Chancellor ensures that the Act, Statutes, Ordinances, Rules and regulations of the University are faithfully observed.

The Vice-Chancellor is the principal academic and administrative officer of the University. The Vice-Chancellor is charged with the responsibility to provide general supervision over all affairs of the University; direct the establishment of and is responsible for the achievement of the University’s mission and strategic goals. The Vice-Chancellor recommends to the Executive Council the creation or continuance of academic units, programs, and recruitment; the retention and promotion of faculty and other employees of the institution; formulate and issue rules and regulations consistent with statutory policies and procedures. Additionally, the Vice-Chancellor is the interface between the University and local, state, regional, national, and international institutions to enhance and extend the University’s programs and services.

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Know More: Shiv Nadar University |

The University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is a public research university in Australia and the country’s first university. It offers interdisciplinary programs and projects to enhance learning and boost employability.

Engage with them:

Leverage our cross-disciplinary research to create commercial success stories and improve lives. Collaborate with our network of outstanding academics, students and alumni, to generate new knowledge by working together across disciplines.

There are many ways you can connect with the University of Sydney. However, we understand that navigating universities can be complex and confusing. We will connect you with the right people to support your strategic priorities.

Find a Course Here>>>

Know More: Home

FLAME University

FLAME University is a private liberal education university in India. The innovative curriculum takes an interdisciplinary approach to provide students with a broad understanding of subjects.

FLAME University exists to build an aspirational destination for students and faculty, to push the design and nature of studies and to create a societal up-gradation phenomenon particularly in the fields of liberal education and leadership.

FLAME will be amongst India’s most reputed and respected universities. We will be the university of choice for higher education in India. We will be recognized for the impact our teaching has on our students and the community at large. Further, we will be the leader in creating and disseminating knowledge in the disciplines we offer. With that, we will pioneer the advancement of knowledge in these disciplines.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: The Pioneers of Liberal Education in India

University of Central Florida

The University of Central Florida is a public university in Florida. Students have a choice of two interdisciplinary degree programs.

Research, Partnerships & Innovation

UCF researchers drive intellectual capital and innovation to solve today’s most pressing problems. As an emerging preeminent university, we promote economic development in the region by aiding in the transfer of technology and other discoveries between university and industry to create next-generation ideas and products. From nanoscience to optics, from simulation to forensic science, UCF researchers work together to have real-world impact, improving the lives of our students and community.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: University of Central Florida | Orlando's Hometown University

Ashoka University

Ashoka University is a private research university in India with a focus on liberal arts. It offers a multidisciplinary undergraduate program and students are not expected to declare their Major until the middle of their second year.

International Partners:

Visiting faculty

Faculty from our partner institutions visit campus and teach courses for a semester or more, thereby giving student’s academic exposure in cutting edge research and developments in various fields of study. Professors from U.Penn, Wellesley, HEC Paris in the fields like Psychology, Sociology, and Entrepreneurship routinely visit to teach at Ashoka.

To learn more about faculty at Ashoka, check the list here.

Faculty Collaboration and Research

Ashoka faculty have collaborative projects with global institutions in the fields of Political Science, Psychology, Journalism, Media studies and more.

Study Mobility

Outbound mobility

Ashoka students have a unique chance to travel abroad to study and experience new cultural and academic environments at international institutions. Courses undertook abroad count towards the credit requirements for graduation.

To learn more about these programs:

Summer Abroad

Semester Abroad

Inbound mobility

Ashoka also welcomes international students from partner universities and others for studying at Ashoka for a semester or a year.

To learn more about these opportunities:

Visiting Students Programme

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: Liberal Education University in India

Queen’s University

Queen’s University is a public research university in Canada. It offers interdisciplinary options across various fields including Computing, Gender Studies, Arts Management & Leadership, and Environmental Studies, among others.

Some Strong Facts:

Queen’s University is highly-ranked in Canada for student experience, taking an inclusive approach and offering to learn beyond the classroom; this experience includes the most clubs per capita of any Canadian University as well as a robust international exchange program with more than 220 partners.

Queen’s research-intensive environment and interdisciplinary program offerings provide students with the comprehensive and nimble skills required in today’s competitive and evolving workforce with 91% of Queen’s grads employed within six months after graduation.

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Know More: Queen's University

The University of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma in Norman is a public research university in Oklahoma. It offers two multidisciplinary degree programs.

Founded in 1890, the University of Oklahoma is a public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma just 20 mins. south of Oklahoma City. OU’s Norman undergraduate population is slightly more than 20,000, giving students a major university experience in a private college atmosphere. With three campuses in Oklahoma, OU also offers study abroad opportunities at several locations and OU campuses overseas.

Get All Admission Related Information Here>>>

Know More: The University of Oklahoma

Hope you’ll find this helpful…

[neil-is-awkward]

Dbh rp oc

I'm in Detroit Become Human fandom since some times and so, I decided to try to create an oc for this fandom. It's the first time I'm doing it. I'm not a writer, I really don't know if this character is too cliché or no or even if I'll be able to write any good shit... but I want to try anyway, I hope you'll be understanding and kind with the dumb and shy person I am... Also, I'm not a lot on Tumblr, dealing with my real life. I really hope you'll enjoy this boy... (Thank you to @forensic-boi and @androidwithangerissues they make me want to do that...)

Name: Neil (Jefferson) Miller

Age: 24

Sex: Male

Blood type: O-

Nationality: American

Ethnicity: Don’t really know

Sexual Orientation: Pansexual

Current status: Single

Birth date: 17 March, 2008

Birth place: Canada

Current residence: Detroit

Occupation: Forensic scientist

Hobbies/Pastimes: Drawing, watching shows, reading

Past History

Hometown: Chelsea, Quebec

First Memory: When he was in crèche, he remembers something about someone changing his nappy, he remembers the rattle (a red and yellow stuff, with tiny letter cube…)

Most important childhood event that still affects him/her: When he found out he had a secret big brother.

Why/How?: He grown as a single child, always thought it was only his parents and him, but one day he found out that his father had a first son in France years before his own birth. He felt something break in him. It had an influence on how he could entrust people.

Other memories/events that still affects him/her and why/how: When his parents separated and, years later, when they came back together. It wasn’t a traumatize, he just kind of didn’t care, it’s their life, their problem. But it influenced on his own life, how he moved to Detroit.

Biggest disillusions from childhood: Figured out he couldn’t even trust his own parents.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 1m73 (5’7)

Posture: Most of the time, he his a bit bend, his shoulder a bit lower.

Build: Thin? Slightly in shape, but don’t ultra muscled, not too thin, pretty much average.

Skin: Pale and scattered with tiny freckles on his face, his shoulders and his arms, not really hairy

Hair: Dark ginger-Brown? Straight (even if, sometimes, when he wakes up with his hair all curled, something in his family, his brothers have it too…), short/half-long hair, shorter in the back of his head, quite longer in the front, parting on his right, sometimes he put a barrette to see in front of him

Widow's peak? Subtle

Ears: A bit small, pointy

Eyes: Grey-green, he has natural dark bags (thanks to his father) and a red line in the bottom of his eyes (due to his constant lack of sleep)

Nose: Pointy, a bit turned-up?

Mouth: Tiny, not too wide, but his lips are full, especially his lower lip

Face shape: a bit round-like, but he has a squared jawline

Expressions: his resting face is mostly a deadpan face, but he has of course expression, he can smile, and be angry (if he’s angry, he’ll never frown, he looks like he’s about to cry when he frowns…)

Describe their smile: even if it’s 100% sincere, his smile looks fake. Also, he has dimples when he smiles, just after the corner of his lips.

Hands: Not too long, with slender fingers

Feet: As his hands?

Tattoos/Scars? A thin triangle with a four leaved clover on his right arm and a line form on his left arm, looking like a fox head

Glasses/Contacts? He wears glasses when he works, draws and reads

Left/Right handed? He is a right handed, but since he was a young boi he wants to be a left handed, so he worked to be an ambidextrous. It’s not an easy task, but he can barely write and doodles

Distinguishing features: Somewhere, around his left knee, he has some stained, as several bruises or burn marks, it’s his birthmark. He also have a lot of moles, natural tiny teeth and a bit sharp, he seems younger than he actually is

How does s/he dress or what do they typically wear? Hoodies and round collar sweater, large, mostly dark or light colours (nothing too flashy, black or light grey), dark slim jeans, biker boots, ankle boots (like doc martens), socks with patterns, sometimes a military-like cap

Other outfits one might find in their wardrobe: Parka, large check shirts, some old geeks/band tee-shirt, …

Jewelry: Kind of guy to have too much silver rings and wristbands

Other accessories: His two ears are pierced, all along.

Weapons: His words are his best weapon

Health: Good, rarely ill, just allergic to a lot of thing and asthmatic

Hygiene: He loves showering so, every day he’s showering (or bathing if he has enough time)

Characteristics

Are they generally balanced or clumsy? Somewhere between the two, but more balanced

Describe their walk: Sure, quick, if he walks it’s to go from a point A to a point B

Unique phrases/words: “Geez”

Do they curse, and if so, to what extent? They curse, often, but rarely insults someone, it’s more like “Shit… I drop this” or “Geez… I’m late”

Voice: Clear, a bit croaky?

Describe their laugh: Conversely to his smile, his laugh always sounds genuine, it’s rare, but spontaneous and is those kind of laughs that make you smile

Describe their sleep patterns (light/heavy sleeper, no sleep, sleeps too often, etc): Sleeps early (sometimes, he chills a bit late), wakes up early

Describe their dwelling/house: Well, something between Norwegian style and Indus style, with plants. He’s the kind of guy a bit shambolic, but still maniac (like, he likes order cards or tidies colour pencils in shade)

Psychological/Personality Attributes and Attitudes

Intelligence Level: He would say “average”, but he was better than a lot of his mates at school

Known Languages: English, a bit of french

Character's long-term goals/desires in life: No idea

Character's short-term goals/desires in life: No idea

Secret desires: He doesn’t think he has any

How self-confident is the character? He seems confident, but he is not that much

How do they see him/herself? As a strange person, doesn’t understand himself

How do they believe s/he is perceived by others? Probably as a strange person, reserved

What is the character most proud of? His cat

What does the character like least about themselves? His lack of confidence

Is this character generally dominant or submissive? A submissive, even if he could act as a dominant, he’s still a submissive guy

Patience level: Very high, except in extreme stressful situation, at those moments he could – sometimes – just freak out

Does the character seem ruled by emotion or logic or some combination thereof? Hm… A combination? But maybe a bit more by logic

Most at ease when: He is with his friends

Ill at ease when: He is alone

Describe their sense of humor: Dark humour, sarcastic but also memes

If granted one wish, what would it be? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ be a cat ?

If they could be described with one of the seven virtues, which would it be? Patience

If they could be described with one of the seven sins, which would it be? Lust

Biggest Vulnerability (non physical): His fear to be alone

Optimist or Pessimist: Depends on his mood

Introvert or extrovert: Social introvert?

Greatest Fear: Being abandoned

Other Fears/Insecurities/Phobias: That someone breaks in and kills either himself or people he cares about

Character's darkest/deepest secret: He sometimes imagines how he could kill someone, detailing each step in his head, and wonders what his this boundary that prevent him to do it

[Part II]