#ilona makes a big rant/story/diatribe on a big post

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

i agree with this. as someone who at 16-18 in 2012 and 2013, selected to do entertainment industry as part of her hsc/end of high school exams bc she thought there'd be no maths or next to no maths in it...... but was then surprised that: shock! horror! she had to know how to budget for a music festival project!! all so that she could have a decent festival line-up AND audio equipment for the bands/musical artists to play..... in the actual exam, i had to calculate power loads of lighting setups in a multiple choice question (i just looked at this for this post for shits and giggles lol).... but i guessed this question. you DO need maths. and this was at TAFE. i.e. technical college. where a good load of the courses need- yep, you guessed it- M A T H S.... to some extent.

for someone who had a friend, who at that time was training to be a primary school teacher.... but that friend decided to drop maths bc "it's ruining my schedule and marks, and i won't need it to teach year 2 students!" you DO need maths. here's an article about how aussie student teachers are failing the necessary maths test to get into teaching (and i relate to this bc the woman they interviewed for the article gave up in year 9 maths). unfortunately, you DO need high school level maths to teach any level of schooling. be it from kindy to year 12.

as someone who was dumb enough to try to do CHEMISTRY in her hsc without maths in her schedule.... before the careers counsellor at the public school she moved to said "NO. that's a terrible idea. impossible, actually.".... so, instead she had to settle for biology (which she only passed by the tiny miracle of mark scaling in my final exam.... she HATED bio lol) at the school she moved to.... bc her year group either wasn't offered senior science or not enough people selected senior science for it to run.... or that that school had no funding at the time for a senior science class for my year (much like drama)..... YOU FUCKING NEED MATHS.

i got told at business college in 2014, by my trainer, that i had to fix up my maths skills.... bc all of the fake numbers i was using for estimated fake quotes for ad agency fees in some assignments.... and the marketing budget figures i was pulling out of my ass were "all wrong" and "you can't do that in a marketing firm in the real world." but i could do it there.... just so he could have a laugh at my godawful, totally out of proportion, guesstimation skills. mind you, I did that marketing course instead of doing the uni like prep course at my local uni's "uni college" bc that needed at least baseline year 10 maths or year 11/12 general maths- I can't remember now.

my hatred/loathing for maths came from the perceived perfection they wanted in book work. why bother trying, if i was ALWAYS made into the "so, kids. this is the WORK WE DON'T WANT in your books!!! do NOT be this person!!" example in front of the class, ranging from primary school til year 10 in 2011???? it just made me give up and toss it aside; and be like "y'all motherfuckers can go fuck yourselves. my book work does NOT have to be accurate or perfectly neat at ALL, if i'm not going to be an engineer or a mathematician. so fuck you" so, it was better for me to drop it in years 11 and 12 so I didn't have to put up with this bs in maths for 2 more years.... and also so i didnt have to deal with it in maths class at a new school, to boot.

unfortunately, however, any lower jobs or even office jobs, want me to be at least numerate. but i have no idea how to use a calculator to calculate percentages. i have no idea how to convert measurements or distances. word problems always fucked me up in school.... but it's 10 times worse at 28; when you do a bs aptitude test for a job and I have no fucking idea what the actual fuck the word questions are asking.... or how to do a ratio question such as:

that i got in a job test JUST LAST WEEK..... even means. like what the fuck???? what the fuck is this??? why the fuck do I need to know this garbage just to do an admin traineeship??? fuck off. but unfortunately i have to know it..... but i have zilch idea of what the fuck it means, and what the answer is, or how to work it out. so i just blind guessed the answer as 1/2 or 1/3. or whatever the fuck the answers were.

an airforce job i looked at the other day (only bc it said NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED); said i needed a pass at least in year 10 english, science and maths. although i more than definitely had a pass in year 10 english (around a B a i think in my semester 2 report of 2011) and a pass- around a C grade- in year 10 science (although it asked specifically for the physics unit.... which i have FUCK ALL idea what i got in that portion of year 10 science)..... but what was my maths grade for year 10???? E grade- basically an aussie F for americans. it means/t elementary. if you're wondering. i always tried to get everyone to high 5 me for failing maths throughout high school.... including my year 7 and 9 naplan tests... that were, and still are, national literacy and numeracy tests. i was in the guinea pig rollout group for these tests, unfortunately. in both year 7 and 9 naplans, i got band 1 (the worst mark) across the board, in both of the maths papers: with a calculator and without a calculator... but my english marks were ALWAYS in the high band 7s and 8s- about average or slightly better than average.

but you get the point. my numeracy and other maths skills are fucking abysmal. all because i REFUSED to do anything in maths from about year 4 in 2005, onward.... but alas. however, it's cost me a huge detriment. i don't know how to use excel, AT ALL, because i'd make my dad do those "worthless" 5% assessments about excel formulas and spreadsheets..... bc "it fucks with my brain. therefore i dont have to do it. and also, i'll be a trophy wife and famous by 25.... so i'll ALWAYS have someone to do this bullshit maths for me, anyway. so why even fucking bother doing it, lmao???" (i'm just soooo ~funny and edgy~, arent i???) but i still lie through my teeth on my resume, to say that i have basic functional skills on excel..... but they're all around text formatting and word art and table formatting (lol)... basically all about making it look pretty (oh and mail merge picked up last year). but NO real maths skills. NO interesting skills around vlookup or more advanced excel usage skills.

even though i had a professor that liked me (or seemed to like me) in sociology at uni, who told me that i belonged in sociology bc of my personality..... i actively avoided it. bc it meant i had to relearn year 10 statistics for the "social research methods" subject that EVERYONE hated in the sociology major/minor. bc after all, we were arts students (lol not lol). i actively avoided psychology electives and avoided a business degree and majors/subjects for the same reason. in philosophy - YES EVEN PHILOSOPHY - i had to interpret graphs and tables bc some of the fields we did/i chose overlapped into the sciences (e.g. psychopathy in ethics (i think) or social cognition in philosophy of mind i think).... those were the subjects where i realised i had no idea how the fuck to read graphs anymore.... so i'd purposely skip over those pages.... even if they were the crux of the article i had for a reading.

stop trying to avoid maths forever. unfortunately, it's impossible. one day i'll have to apologise to my year 9 and 10 maths teacher from catholic school (who i actually graduated uni with back in 2018 bc she went back to do something else in sociology i think) and beg her to teach me from year 4 onwards..... or maybe year 3 onwards. bc i dont even understand basic fractions around adding and subtracting lol.

people will whine 24/7 about anti-intellectualism on tiktok but then turn around and say "i don't need to know math i'm never going to use this in real life"

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

the over-specialisation of degrees, even in arts departments, is something that really disturbs me. moreover, in my opinion, it's what the first lady and people like her, argue should replace generalised arts degrees like mine. for example, earlier this month, i was looking at doing a cadetship at my home uni that I got my arts degree in english lit & philosophy from (im desperate for a job lol).

as part of the cadetship, then, my home uni paid for the specific degree chosen by the candidate.... I looked at both international studies with a double major in international relations and legal studies, with a minor in linguistics..... or the media & comms degree that I actually began in, in 2015. in the media and comms degree NOW, they expect students to ONLY choose degree streams from THAT degree. most especially if you're doing the marketing communications and advertising major, because that demands a DOUBLE MAJOR only out of journalism or digital and social media or games design... and also a minor out of those subjects.

now, the school of media, when I began uni nearly 10 years ago in 2015, was paired with "english, arts and media." you could either pick a major in the media and comms degree..... which at the time, before I realised the media program was NOT for me, and was too structured and constrictive etc etc, for my liking... that were the following: journalism and professional writing, digital media, marketing comms and advertising (my picked too early major), and international media and film....

OR you were allowed to pick a major from the wider arts department. many students (esp in the journalism and professional writing major) would pick english or creative writing as their wider arts department major. so that they could learn adequate writing skills, etc. at the time, and also throughout that first year of uni, I was looking at pairing my advertising major in a double major (or a minor) with sociology; to learn about broader society, research skills (eg. survey construction, conducting focus groups), and demography outside of marketing. then I was gracefully and thankfully allowed to change to my arts degree at the end of first year.

now those double majors OUTSIDE of media & comms with that major (or any major in the degree/dept i think), CANNOT be taken, and you MUST do a double degree if you want to do a philosophy or english lit major or even a minor (probs i didnt read it properly tbh). I'm not sure about electives tbh: maybe other arts electives are allowed.

this concerns me, because how exactly are journalism, marketing etc etc, majors in these highly specialised degrees, even learning to analyse deeply and constructively???? because what I heard CONSTANTLY from journalism majors in my first year philosophy subject "media, art and censorship" that was about media ethics (so it was very obviously compulsory for them).... was any iteration of this rant: "I AM A JOURNALIST!!!!! I ALREADY KNOW HOW TO ARGUE AND BE LOGICAL!!! HOW DARE YOU WASTE MY TIME WITH THIS USELESS, POINTLESS SUBJECT!!! I DONT NEED TO DO MY READINGS AND THINK ABOUT ETHICS!!!! WHEN I ALREADY DO THAT IN MY VASTLY MORE IMPORTANT JOURNALISM CLASSES!!!! REMOVE THIS FROM MY SCHEDULE PLEASE!!!" I also found this particularly rife in the law students, too. but that's for a different rant on another post. lol not lol.

it was given, that yes, I was talking to 17yos or 18yos, who'd just started uni. who thought that they already knew everything possible about writing/argument etc.... because "I was in debate/parliamentary club in school!!!! so I've already learnt how to argue my points to perfection! to analyse people's bullshit opinions and arguments, so I'll NEVER have to waste time in philosophy talking about "do strawberries have brains?" and "what is life, really?" when I've already done that." on top of that, also bragging that since they'd gotten their perfect entry marks (atar's), that again, "I never have to learn to make a cogent and cohesive argument by debating the utter bullshit that you read in philosophy. what's the use of wasting my time doing that, when I got into my media and comms degree early via early entry..... but basically got my desired 82 atar... and got 76 in advanced english and 45 in extension english 1??? because obvs I'm perfect and deserve to be excused from doing that???"

even when arts students continually degrade certain departments because they're in a "specialist" field like journalism (or another real specialist field such as law), so that then means that they think they get to be excused from important subjects like media ethics, philosophy, rhetoric (because that was also touched on, in that philosophy subject I referred to) and how they relate to propaganda.... which as a JOURNALIST, which you are just sooooo haughty about; that you WILL be complicit in writing and deseminating, depending on where you work??? like bro. journalism used to be a full ass TAFE (aussie tech college) course. hell, it was still just a tafe course 10 YEARS ago, while i was still in year 12. then like a normal arts dept major or minor. it's only probs in the last 10 to 15 years, at my home uni at least, that it's become its own DEPARTMENT (I assume anyway. I actually have no idea tbh) with its own ENTIRE degree programs.

anyone studying media and communication NEEDS to be able to deconstruct arguments and systems and be able to relate to anyone, on any level. journalism, marketing/advertising, et. al majors in these departments need to be able to analyse class relations and societal structures if they do social commentary as part of their jobs. they need to read Dickens, the Brontes, and jane austen. what's the use of going through your entire degree just learning g how to write shitty listicle articles and soulless copy, in the hopes of going viral... especially when you can't draw any good comparisons from literature or TV or film... but instead, just trail off into "the 20 greatest marketing and communications plans of the 21st century???"

english, philosophy, and even a sociology or other social studies classes can give you the incisive precision to execute good creative advertising copy, article/media or book briefs.... or good policy writing; and whatever else was in that one elective subject that I kept looking at when I was in uni, in the journalism & professional writing major.... but was roped off TO ONLY communication and media students in their second year. like that subject has since been either superseded or discontinued. but I am STILL so fucking salty that I was never allowed to do it, bc I wasn't in the only "correct" degree field/stream. when a few professors said that with english and philosophy or other arts, or even creative arts majors, students/grads could work in fields such as media, business comms, marketing, and advertising. but then the media school refused other arts students access to a subject that could help them build a portfolio in this field/type of work.... and instead told other arts students to downgrade to teaching only.

hell, I even got told by the arts dept CAREERS ADVISOR that I should've stayed in my media and communications degree if I wanted to work in marketing and other creative industries. however, that was a degree that bored me to death, unlike english and philosophy. when I said "no I want to do english and philosophy and go into marketing." she just basically just told me to accept my lot and go into teaching... "because that's the only field that will ACTUALLY hire you.... if you want a career in arts and NOT business and advertising etc".

so it's almost like unis do just as much to devalue THEIR OWN arts departments, demoting my skills in analysis and cogent and divergent thinking to "being a teacher or forever student, only". OR force yourself into an extremely programmed and over-specialised degree that didn't even exist like 20 years ago. bc comms and media used to be just a normal arts major or minor at my home uni..... rather than its OWN dept and extremely over-specialised degree.... whose students think they can excuse themselves from learning the necessary deep analysis, deep reading, and cogent argument formation, with concise and precise logical thinking needed to connunicate complex ideas easily... all bc "oh, they teach us how to write cohesively; while also making businesses money by going viral!!!" which apparently any other arts field does not do.

so all in all, FUCK the people who make fun of typical humanities degrees.... that think that EVERY degree needs to be hyper-specialised to Make Money™️; both in term of the uni's/colleges themselves AND business... and possibly the students who graduate from them (lol, that's null and void at this point, lbr). that purposely demote arts degrees as useless "fluffy/namby-pamby/mickey mouse degrees"; to the point that students in different schools of arts departments even state that the skills or their fellow students in english/philosophy/sociology etc are worthless, apparently, against theirs.... that somehow journalism degrees make them "more work-ready, competitive and intelligent" than those students in traditional arts fields.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

god. I was reading the comments on a post from an aussie brekkie (breakfast) news show; that was about a new kids' park that needs to be built somewhere in sydney or something... since the old ome is like falling apart or whatever. most of the comments were helpful like "make it colourful and fun and make it safe!" etc.

but then one weird ass commenter, that i suppose is from this line of new-agey "only have neutral colours only" people was in the comments all like "REMOVE ALL PRIMARY COLOURS!!! STOP MAKING THESE PARKS SO GARISH AND UGLY!!!! MAKE THEM ALL NEUTRAL (browns, whites, and dull greens), LIKE THE BUSH!!!!! SO KIDS CAN APPRECIATE NATURE AS TODDLERS!!!! KIDS NEED TO DEVELOP WITHOUT SO MUCH HIDEOUS BRIGHT COLOUR BRAINWASHING IN THEIR LIVES!!!!!" or something along the lines of that.

most of the people that replied to this woman's comment were like me when i read it - "are you insane, brenda????? what the hell does that end bit 'hideous bright colour brainwashing' even fucking mean???? why don't kids need or apparently- in your world- deserve to have bright primary colours- which they can actually see better when they're babies- at play spaces dedicated to T H E M??? and not Y O U??? why should they ONLY HAVE dull greens, browns, and whites??? and I'm sure toddlers, babies and other young kids have enough appreciation of nature as needed when out with their families, that they don't need to have playspaces completely in neutral colours."

like it was such a weird comment. and absolutely fuck off this ugly ass neutrals only trend. and fuck adults thinking they can fully dictate their child's colour tastes- or in the commenters' case- everyone else's children's- colour choices and tastes as well.

Am I the only one bugged by the sort of bland minimalist aesthetic people are using on their babies?

Burnt orange, mustard yellows, creams, whites, and then plain wooden rattles, trucks, and figures. Even if they have stuffed animals they're neutral or muted in tone

I get it "looks nice" or "tidy" or whatever but.. it can't be that good for the kids, right?

Where's the bright colors to get their attention and entertain them? The colors they learn and are drawn too? Blue like the sky, green like the grass, ect. Where's the stimulation?

Don't these look fun and enriching?

They look so boring and even the twins in the first picture didn't seem thrilled with their entertainment. They look like unfinished crafts you picked up from hobby lobby then forgot about until the baby was there and "well, they need something to play with"

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

this!!! i’m currently in a cadet position, and everyone is ready to help me even over something as simple as scanning stuff to my email double sided. school also has you believe that there’s such a thing as ���dumb questions” such as “uh so how do i scan double sided so then i don’t have to turn my tax form into a zip file for some weird reason?”….

but the “dumb questions” thing is mostly bc you were unlucky enough to have a shitty sub teacher or a regular teacher tell you that “you’re wasting time asking silly questions” or other put downs when it’s something you genuinely don’t fucking understand in whatever subject (for me it was usually maths, geography, science and pdhpe). and then the other day i was told to google the energy ratings of different house appliances for my boss. like yeah. it’s whack that there’s no such thing as a “stupid question” like school would like to tell you there is.

idk if any young person needs to hear this but when you work at a job you absolutely can google anything you don’t know or ask someone for help. school has you conditioned to think you have to have everything memorized all the time but let me tell you. I am dumb as shit and I am great at my job because it’s not a test, it’s just work. the more resources you utilize the better.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

do this also with books you had to read in uni/college! over the course of my time at uni, i didn’t bother reading many of the books that were on my reading lists or got halfway through them before ditching them. however, after i graduated, i went back to re-read/re-listen to some of my set texts, like jane eyre, sense & sensibility, hard times….. the list goes on. right now i’m re-reading/listening to grapes of wrath….. which i partially read in the second year creative writing subject i did in my final sem of uni before graduation.

reading all of these books with fresh eyes and not under the pressure of the “you must read this book either in a week or over the course of the semester and come back with your interpretations” deadlines, is so much better. you can finally grasp them better than when you’re going through it at uni. and the same goes for any classic book that you were forced to read as a set text in high school. not that i ever did any bc i wasn’t in the right english class level (years 7-10) or english subject level (in senior high school) to get assigned classic texts, bar shakespeare. but i always had an interest in reading them eventually, since i’m surrounded all of these books at home.

but the best thing with re-reading these texts when you’re older or not under any deadlines, is that you can just passively listen (if you so desire) instead of being forced to analyse every fuckin thing that’s going on. like obvs go for analysis if you want to, and it’s great to flex your analytical skills while engaging with classic texts…. but sometimes you just want to chill the fuck out.

although with all the above being said, i will never read james joyce’s a portrait of an artist. idk what the fuck it is with that book but i don’t think i’ll ever get past page 10 of it. lmao. and my point for also bringing up uni is, bc at 18-21, i didn’t particularly want to read all of my assigned classic texts at uni. i just wanted to survive off of the crib note analysis websites and books that you could get for many of them. bc fuck reading the 400 page volume of tess of the d’ubervilles or another 300 pages for idek modernists for lady chatterly’s lover, when i can just read the cheat notes instead and pretend to know what the fuck is going on when i write an essay. but going back in my own time, i was able to appreciate them much more for building my vocabulary and also enhancing my analytical skills in general.

and also for the texts that i fully skipped like frankenstein, for example: going back to finally listen to the full audiobook, i gained appreciation for why the hell my professor even put it on our romantics reading list, and for the concept of the sublime….. that i zoned out on bc i was much busier dicking around on here and online shopping during my classes. just go back and learn to appreciate your old assigned texts, no matter what age you were when you were given them. bc even in your 20s, you mightn’t have enough emotional maturity to process the text you’ve been given in class….. most esp when you haven’t even bothered to touch it and to read it for yourself all bc “i’m in uni. why bother reading this??? i’ll just get a reading off spark notes and run with that for my lectures/tutes/assignments and they’ll never know. and also im the master of bullshit bc i’m an *insert arts major field here* student.”

then again, you’ve got like a bajillion assigned texts to read in an arts degree during a sem. so, imo, it’s totally understandable that you’ll just never reach some of them during that particular semester. but at some point, go back and engage with those texts anyway. you’ll gain an appreciation/understanding as to why the fuck your professor made them part of your readings in the first place, much like i did with frankenstein and like 20 other assigned texts that i was supposed to read, or finish reading, during uni.

Anyway unpopular opinion probably but the school system (and general book snobbery) fucks up by trying to force kids to read "classics" before they have the mental and emotional development to appreciate them.

This post is me telling you to consider revisiting that classic book you read in the 7th grade that you hated because the ability to understand a lot of literature gets unlocked later, for reasons a lot to do with emotional maturity

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

this kind of reminds me of my youngish english tutor (around 28-30 ish- the bulk of us were in our 20s) for the social justice and kids lit subject i did, joking to us in 2017 at uni, that he’d mark our assignments with memes and internet slang/speak bc we’d find it funny etc bc we’re all on The Meme Game™️ and Terminally Online™️ …. but obvs he didn’t bc it was unprofessional and rude as hell to mark assignments with “hey this is fire 🔥 🔥” or “i’m keepin’ it 💯: your analysis sucks, bro. but no hate. i’m just sayin’ bro.” or whatever else commentary that he could’ve given back with meme-y type or snarky and passive aggressive internet slang/speak feedback for shits & giggles.

also i think there’s a fine line between being professional and meme-y or internet-y: and the difference is prev tags vs ibid in referencing. like i imagine some professors are getting kids writing (prev tags) instead of (ibid) for in-text referencing when they’ve reused the same source quite a few times in the same paragraph or same essay. like i’d hate to be the one explaining to those kids that NO (prev tags) is NOT a valid form of referencing outside of the twittersphere or tumblr or tiktok et al. you cannot stitch together your essay like a tiktok video with tags and shit. yes your essay may be a stream of consciousness think piece (or so you think when you’re writing it either at 2am or right before deadline at 4pm). and yes, your thoughts/opinions and analysis are obvs threaded through it….. but that doesn’t mean to try to whittle it down to a bare-bones pithy/witty, funny and digestible tweet thread or reddit thread or discord convo (unless you’re in media and communications/journalism/PR and this is a form of legit assessment) with nonsense tags like prev tags. please, my brother in christ, state the name of the article author/s about twice and then if the same reference is used frequently through out your assignment, use ibid to indicate the use of idek (smith and fredickson 2007; pg 40) or whatever in your reference lists/bibliography/footnotes/in-text reffing.

bc internet slang doesn’t work in real life. take it from someone that spent a whole year in high school ending EVERY SENTENCE with the word “lol” (and also using it throughout sentences/as punctuation too i think as well) bc she spent so much fucking time online and thought it was funny and quirky to use it in physical conversations….. but tbh, looking back, it was just hella irritating that she couldn’t get her point across without using internet chatspeak. like obvs i grew out of doing this and i was a kid at 14/15 when i was doing it. lol /comedic effect.

but yeah. if i met someone who uses lmao or lol at the end of every sentence irl (or uses it as punctuation)/throughout their general speech; but in a professional context, such as uni or in the workplace during a meeting or just general office small talk…. it would be super fucking frustrating. bc are they being serious or not?? are they being sarcastic??? are they being genuine??? just laugh and don’t say lmao out loud unless you’re speaking about LMFAO bc they’re on the radio for some reason again. or whatever. same goes with lol tbh.

and also dude. you’re in your fucking late 20s or somewhere in your 30s at the youngest (or possibly sometimes younger if you’ve dropped out of school). get off your group chat discords/fb/whatsapp chats with friends and speak in person again. like given, that yes, there would probs be a decline in social skills even in adults since the pandemic. but still. that doesn’t give you an excuse to be snub small talk to be rude or use snarky internet speak in physical conversations constantly. or as someone mentioned earlier, to call strangers “whores” or whatever as if you’re automatically friends bc you speak online in whatsapp or whatever the fuck. like yeah. i also did that shit as an edgy teen. but again. i was a teen in fucking high school and not some adult rando calling people “idiots”/bitches etc thinking it’s affectionate when really to a load of strangers at work or just generally in public and even on the internet; it’s rude as fuck.

to finish off, i think the “i hate small talk” bs stems from both the whole internet “culture” around the introvert/extrovert divide….. where introverts are super deep thinkers and don’t want to waste time to talk about the weather; but instead always want to talk about “space and time and the existence of humanity”… and it goes along hand in hand with the whole “drink tea, read books and carry on” aesthetic that was so horrendously popular on this hellsite from 2011-2016; to make tumblr seem like the more ~intellectual side~ of the social media websites…. when in reality 90% of the blogs i followed on here at the time were fucking harry potter fandom and disney fandom blogs and my chemical romance and other emo bandom blogs. but i still lapped that fucking shit up at 15/16 til about 21 (and i justified it at 21 bc i was at uni doing my english major/philosophy minor arts degree).

but then it also stems from those general pretentious memes about “deep 3am talks on rooftops with hot chocolate and your bestie/fave person” or whatever the fuck started getting peddled outside of tumblr and everyone just latched onto it as a way to seem misunderstood and shit. everyone latched on them as a way to say “hey i want more meaningful conversations/interactions. but now in wanting those, i’ll just become more aloof to everyone bc i spend so much time online bitching about wanting these connections but doing nothing to get them. but why is no one DEEP and THOUGHTFUL anymore??” but it’s bc you’ve lapped up too many of those shitty pretentious fake deep memes jenna or damien. and now you think every convo you have in general about the weather or the general “how are you?” and “getting to know you” ice breaker games at uni at the start of every semester, or at general in work are “#fake”…. and that then means that simply and apparently no one will EVER know about the “REAL, DEEP YOU 🤓🧐🤔” other than you and your tiny circle of curated online friends (and/or followers) or irl friends…. bc no one wants to look past your shitty fake deep, anxious/socially awkward internet tea drinking introvert, dark academia, cottagecore veneer/persona that you’ve got curated on your 10 different social media profiles and your carrd.

some of you need to go outside and I dont mean that in a mean or condescending way I mean it in a "you would benefit from talking to real people face to face, and developing social skills" type way

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

i’m STILL fuming at the one english professor who pretended to not know how to get me a laptop for my course special accommodation for my handwritten exams/in class tests etc…. who constantly told me that he didn’t know how it worked bc he’d been out on sabbatical. like no, paul, you fucking dickhead bastard, literally EVERYONE including the disability department and the department that organised the special accoms for students straight up told me that YOU have to organise the laptop for me and also consult with me on needing it. not the other fucking way round, you lazy motherfucker. just ask the other professors in your department how they did it??? for fucking crying out loud. and this was back in 2018 right before i graduated.

and it didn’t seem like he fucked anyone else on that course who had special accoms around like he did with me. it drove me insane that he thought it was “your (my) responsibility to do it”, solely bc i was just about to graduate. like no. it is not my responsibility to do it, when literally every fucking department tells me it’s not me, it’s you, paul. even the booking staff don’t but your “i was out on sabbatical idek how it works. you do it and grow up a bit 🤷🏻‍♂️🙄” schtick when you’re the head of the english department. go fuck yourself. like basically this fucker was trying to make me miss out on graduating at the right time in a way, solely bc he didn’t want to arrange for a laptop for me for my mid semester inclass test bc he’d “forgotten how to do it” and that it was “too hard “.

basically every other creative arts/english and philosophy professor i had were really good with special accoms (minus the one in class test in a first year editing creative writing class that i really didn’t need a laptop for, considering we wrote the total of like one sentence and all the rest of it was about punctuation marks). just douchey paul doesn’t want to extend himself and help for some reason. it still pisses me off too, to this very day, the amount of bs run around that i had to do vs everyone else in that course who had special accoms for the shitshow of the inclass test we had tbh.

colleges are like: we hate disabled people, we hate sick people, we hate our baseline student but if you need accommodations we hate you much much more, we don’t think you deserve an education if you will have to miss classes because of your chronic illness or disability, we don’t care if you live or die in fact we hope you die

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

my period came when i was year 6 in 2007- so i was either 11 or 12. i kinda knew what was happening bc i’d been reading aussie teen girl magazines dolly and girlfriend (ie aussie 17 magazine) and cosmo and i’d also had sex ed at school the previous year. but at the same time, i didn’t know what was happening when my cramps hit every fuckin month, considering that mine were super intense up until i got on the pill in my early 20s….. since i had fuck all idea how to bring up my period pain and my periods in convos in high school, including with my doctor, let alone just at all. just. yeah. 13 isn’t too young to get your period when it all depends on when a a girl’s body decides to start having the period and not weird societal standards of whats “too young”.

as a parent, you should take initiative (yes esp if you’re a dad!) to teach your own children about their periods and how they work instead of solely relying on tween/teen/womens magazines, tv and school for period education. i don’t care how old you are as a parent or if you’re an “old school” type of parent either. take the the fucking time to read up on it for your OWN damn daughters instead of relying on everything else/someone else to educate them. in the day and age of google, it honestly isn’t fucking hard to do that.

absolutely hysterical and also not hysterical at all to me that some people view 13 as "too young" for getting your period when a bunch of us are like, uh yeah I'd already had my period for years at that point in my life

like I've talked to moms with adolescent children and discussed that yeah, your 11 year old may be getting her period any time now and you should be prepared. in fact, the younger they are, the more you should prepare them because everyone has a different body. I got mine when I was 10 and my sister was 15. you really have no idea and if you are super young, it's even scarier if you haven't been prepared.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

some of the stories on this thread remind me of when i was doing the Premier’s reading challenge (ie a statewide reading initiative in new south wales australia when i was a kid in primary school) back in like 2006. everyone in my year was sick of reading the “age appropriate” books that we were being encouraged (kinda forced in a sense as part of the program) to read…. since they were obvs all longer chapter books were meant for our age group (10-12 years old in “stage 4”; meaning years 5 & 6). so instead, we all revolted and started to borrow out the kids picture book series, Grug and also like thomas the tank engine, despite our teachers telling us off in every library borrowing session bc “why aren’t any of you borrowing the year level appropriate books of the premiers reading challenge??? please read more age appropriate books!” and “we don’t understand why you’re all borrowing picture books when you’re all so close high school age! grow up!”

eventually they did relent, and decided to sit us all down as a dual class one day (we were two seperate classes) and read a couple of Grug books to us. but in my opinion, looking back, i think the reason we were all borrowing out picture books again, so close to high school age, is because we were all kind of….. idek…. burnt out as kids??? like don’t get me wrong, i fucking THRIVED doing the premier’s reading challenge back then…. because you had to read let’s say, 3 books a week or whatever but the total was like 50 books in the like 3 months that the premiers reading challenge ran for.

but bro. we were fucking 10! 10! you were expecting us to read (even the “im not a big reader” kids) like 3 longer chapter books (say maybe 300-600 pages each) maybe a week or something…. mixed in with more “sophisticated” and “mature” picture books like graeme base’s animalia or “the water tower” by gary crew (this book gave me nightmares lmao) or whatever the hell they were. but yeah. we were burnt out imo. we wanted to chill the fuck out. we wanted to space out from all the books that were “age appropriate” and also put our minds at ease. when the year later (2007), at the end of it, we were being whisked into “leadership” programs and also “hit the ground running” high school preparation programs, and going to high school orientation days etc etc. we wanted read easy things. but no. instead it was like “read this 500 page novel as part of the PRC program solely bc the program says so and also says it’s “age appropriate” for a year 5 student.”

hell, i remember my teachers lecturing me on not borrowing out paddington bear short chapter books bc i was “much too old for those now! read this long complicated and intricate novel instead, because it’s aimed at 10 year olds and not a year 2 student like paddington is!” but miss pendleton, im sick and tired of long novels and stuff. considering that yes, i was reading both the harry potter series and the a series of unfortunate events series (again) which were longer books. i’d also bought from scholastic book club, the first book of the icemark chronicles (eg. the cry of the icemark bc of its pretty cover lmao), and i was trying to read that as well…. but i dropped it bc medieval fantasy fiction wasnt my thing at that age… and plus it was really on the longer side at like 716 pages or something, so i gave up on it like 1/3 of the way through or whatever. 10yo me found it much too heavy to read. besides the point that it was “political”- on the way that thirrin must travel to consort with the giant talking ice leopards in the north and the king & queen vampires of the “land of the dead” or whatever the ghost/vampire/werewolf/zombie part of icemark was called. and it’s all in response to the southern more “science driven” part of the realm wanting to overthrow icemark and the entire world lmao- with their utterly tyrannical ruler scipio bellorum at the helm of this war machine. like all of this was far too much of 10yo me to grasp/process and to get on board with, so she dropped it.

but according to my teachers, that was a set back. a failing. but yet i think i was one of the first students to finish that years premier’s reading challenge in my year group that year bc i read so many books lmao (i think the total was 40-50). but like. yeah. why was borrowing paddington a reason to talk down to me?? i was a kid! i’d had a hard year too, with a death in the family. but yet. no. i wasn’t supposed to read a book that made me feel better/lighter/happier solely bc “ITS FAR TOO EASY AND NO LONGER AGE APPROPRIATE FOR YOU! instead read these longer books that will make you feel closer to the reading age of your peers” or some dumbass bullshit.

like i don’t give a fuck about the reading age of my peers!!! let me read my paddington books bc they all have happy endings, which some of what my 10yo self needed….. especially when HP at that point was death all round and even the icemark series was a war series, and thirrin’s (the lead character) dad, king redrought dies within the first few chapters, so she was left to rule icemark and take icemark to a war (that she wins!) on her own at 13. like that’s some heavy shit!!! why the fuck are you so desperate for me to read these books??? like yeah. obvs. all that death is what will probably help me deal with the death in my family too. but i don’t care. i want a cute and fluffy story! i’m 10 for fucks sake!!!! let me have a slice of happiness on the dreary first year of grief. also yes. i did have a weird interest in some of the the darker kids books about death, like “the naming of tishkin silk” that was a boy’s (griffin silk) baby sister dying in her cot (but i always somehow also interpreted it as a stillborn baby for some reason).

but yeah. let kids read what they want, especially when it’s what gets them interested in reading…. or if they’re burnt out from some type of intensive reading program like what the premier’s reading challenge was for my age group back in the mid 2000s.

based on a true story

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

one of the main reasons i dropped out of my online postgrad course is because i kept looking at my ever-mounting student debt that people were telling me not to pay off bc “save your money now!” but like….. bro. i have $42,500 of fucking study debt already… and i’d like to start to pay at least $250 off each semester at least… and why can’t i have a job during uni??? when ironically that’s all grad employers actually give a shit about….. whether or not you’ve had a stable or multiple stable jobs through uni….. and not really about the bs mark requirements of at least distinction level (75%+). so now i have 3 loads of study debt and i’m pretty unemployable according to the bs that grad employers spin all bc i’ve never had a job. like fuck man.

and for the first couple of short “sems”/terms of this library course i was actually doing pretty well, still doing everything at the last minute and pulling 65-74 marks…. but the ever present need to get a job to slowly begin to pay off my student debt and people in my life being all like “no! don’t get a job it’ll ruin how you’re going with uni… just continue going steady as she goes” just made me have a mental breakdown. besides the point that the same people were constantly pushing me to go onto the masters program bc “it’s internationally recognised!!! what if you want to take a job in the US or canada????then your grad diploma will be useless!!!” but like… i KNEW if i went on to do masters i’d try to do a 20,000 word dissertation (or however long it was idek now lmao) all in one go the night before it was due, with no proper editing (bc is do editing while i was writing with grammarly which would fuck up my writing even more lmao)…. poor referencing in like i think APA or MLA both of which i fucking LOATHED bc i just couldn’t grasp them (and i could never grasp MLA in undergrad either)…. so i just gave up. even though i was going pretty well.

also the other main reason i dropped that course was bc i tried to do my first ever 3,000 word assignment (bc i purposely avoided any subjects in UG that had assignments of over 2,500 words tbh) at the last minute, about 8hrs before it was due bc i was just so used to doing all of my work like that. but it was a lot more than i’d anticipated and i’d presented it all wrong so i got like a 51 or something.

besides the point that i was sick and tired of lying through my teeth writing fake scenarios for my assignments and not knowing if they’d work irl bc i’d never worked in a library, let alone worked at all. and i also had a mental freak out over the work placement that was meant to go for a week bc “why the fuck would you ever trust me… ME…. to ever be a fucking professional…. bc everyone knows i’m too fucking STUPID to do that???!!! just let me be a kid again even though i’m 24 lmao” . like yeah. it was hellish fucked and i’m glad i dropped out in the end.

College is wild because it really isn’t about intelligence or the ability to understand the material at all. It’s literally just a test of executive function and abled-ness. I had good attendance. I participated in class discussions…possibly to an annoying extent, I got A’s on my tests. When we did group work in classes, it was usually me knowing the answers and everyone else just writing them down from my paper.

But I watched those same people who copied my in-class work and who barely passed tests and who only understood the material enough to regurgitate it, not to expand on it, graduate while I flunked out. Why? Because I didn’t have the executive function to do homework outside of class. That’s it.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

a couple of weeks ago, i went for a gastroscopy/endoscopy to check out my throat/stomach etc after i’d been suffering for the last few years with frequent bouts of nausea/vomiting (although i was actually meant to go for it last year tbh i but i was anxious about it and forgot to hand in the paperwork early and then covid came so i didn’t get it until early september). the gastroscopy surgery picked up a lump on my duodenum. today i went for a CT scan so the gastroenterologist can tell me more accurately if it’s bad or not (ie is it a tumour: benign or cancerous? is it just a lump that will go soon? does it need to be surgically removed??? etc etc).

“how much did these appointments cost you, though?” i hear some people asking me. nothing. nada. after my doctor sent through a medicare patient letter to these people and the private hospital also (bc it got my gastroscopy got moved there) so i got it done on the public medicare costs. but if i wasn’t covered by medicare? i’d probably would’ve had to pay $166 for the gastroenterologist (w/o medicare gap or bulk billing), $1,350 for the gastroscopy surgery (if there was no medicare gap payment or bulk billing). then for the CT scan maybe $250 or something (w/o medicare gap or bulk billing). and i can imagine all of those costs being at least doubled or tripled under the US system.... and then having extra costs for like band-aids etc also being added at the end just because.

anyway. my experience here in australia with medicare etc shows why america needs a better medicare net/universal healthcare. i wasn’t literally thousands of $$$ out of pocket just for an hour in the hospital for the hospital visit before covid with the gastroenterologist. then the few hours i’d spent at the private hospital for the gastroscopy. then another phone appointment with the gastroenterologist. then the CT scan.... which i can imagine under the US system being at least idek, $30,000???? unless you constantly ask them for an itemised bill then they’ll put it down. but still. i was bulk billed for all of this stuff so far.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

as someone whose spent the entire year recovering from a major (and kinda traumatic) major surgery from late 2020, trying to retrain myself to take my self care walks in the afternoon each week day, or just generally use workout things like our old elliptical machine, has been hard. what made me start doing all this again was buying a cheap fitness watch that’s decked out with a step counter and heart rate monitor etc. all i focus on is getting my 10,000 steps day instead of the calories burnt or anything to do with weight.

and also. in general, it took me literal years to grasp that exercise was actually good for me, considering like op said, it’s tied to being a moral failing towards being non-athletic. for me, anything to do with gyms or personal trainers or athleticism, reminded and still reminds me vividly of school sport (more high school sport though bc the teachers are more aggressive), where i constantly refused to participate due to what i call “competitiveness rhetoric”- even on a personal level.

i hated the fact that i had to set “goals” to meet and to somehow “push” myself to do those goals… much like my high school PE teachers literally screaming at me and the rest of the class to “PUSH YOURSELVES!!!” when it came to the pacer/beep tests in years 7 and maybe 9 or 10 (i can’t remember now)….. where every time i’d purposely tap out at level 1:1 which was walking….. because i didn’t see any fucking point in going any further… when, on the other hand my teachers kept trying to aggressively push me to a higher level maybe at least 5 or something, all because they thought since i was small and skinny, i was obviously built for school athletics- mostly track.

like if PE classes in schools weren’t so focused on being stupidly overly competitive and “pushing yourself to your physical limits”, even to the point of general fitness tests like the beep/pacer tests… and focused on a more holistic and healthy approach to exercise, maybe i would’ve actually given a fuck about it and grasped that exercise was important much earlier than my early to mid 20s. and it’s also past kids channels on austar/foxtel like nickelodeon doing their “20min break for fitness and staying healthy” that they tried in on mid 2000s to try and motivate kids to get outside and get fit, instead of sitting in front of the tv all afternoon after school; where i’d purposely change the channel to something else while that 20min break was running.

because by my early 20s and mid uni, i was deeply depressed and highly anxious with my uni assessments, and still under the impression that “since i’m small, i don’t have to do any exercise…. and plus walking around campus to my classes and shit is more than enough exercise for the day!” and gave into the “super lazy, unorganised and unfit uni student” schtick to get me out of doing any type of exercise, just so that i could stay in bed all day and avoid all of my problems and responsibilities.

however, eventually it caught up with me and i realised that i HAD to go at the very least, for a walk, because i was so depressed with only leaving my room for uni classes and occasionally handing my assignments in in print; that i had to reframe it as self-care and not “i have to set a goal and meet it otherwise mr watchenhousen, the sports department coordinator from catholic school who i’m pretty sure wanted to expel me in year 10 for refusing to do ALL of my physical AND theory PE lessons and assessments (unless they were group or partner work) from years 7-10 will appear out of nowhere and SCREAM at me for not “participating properly, you lazy child WHAT ABOUT PUSHING YOURSELF AND CARING ABOUT YOUR TEAM!!!!????””

like in a way, it was sad that i didn’t move schools earlier, bc the public school that’s literally down the road from me, that i moved to in 2012 for my final years of high school; had walking for sport. YES. you read that right. just plain old walking for sport. general non-competitive exercise for sport. they also had fishing. and a myriad of other things like yoga (which i also had at catholic school). and catholic school did have good sport rotations that weren’t taught by the PE teachers like zumba, bowling, circus arts, gymnastics, self defence/martial arts and like i said, yoga.

all of these sports, which i liked, i liked mostly because everyone else sucked along with me (circus, zumba and self defence (not counting my friend who was a black belt instructor at her karate school)) or envied me for being able to stretch and flex like the instructors (yoga and gymnastics) or was too embarrassed to participate properly (zumba and circus skills sometimes). and bowling was great, bc it came with buying hot chips and coke at the food bar of the bowling alley and you got to sit down 90% of the time lmao 😂😅. i liked the self defence classes (minus the sexist and ableist instructor) bc i saw the practicality in learning it. and plus, these sports were generally not violently competitive bc we were always chaperoned by non-sports teacher like my english teacher, who, like me, held the view that sport was a waste of fucking time, especially in terms of her marking times of her students (including my year 9 and 10 english class’s) work, when she was instead chaperoning a sport class to hip hop dancing that she barely ever participated in, due to not being in the right clothes.

but outside of school, obvs like op said, the fact that you’re expected to try to fit any of those above activities, which are usually classes that cost hundreds of $$$ per a term (and obvs rightfully so), if you want to be taught in your area and not by youtube… is what has frequently blocked me out of yoga or pilates classes and trapeze/other circus skills classes…. or hell, even trying to find an adult gymnastics class or physie class (which is a combined dance and like gymnastics sport) or even parkour classes if that’s more your thing, is impossible. and the same goes, in general, for people who just want to go to the gym. plus there’s the fact that gym memberships are hard to cancel, considering they want to retain your subscription/membership, despite you not using their services or facilities at all over the year because you have no time or energy left to go on the weekend (because we need to rest fuck damn it) or after work.

okay i went off on a big tangent about sport education in schools, but like. still. exercise is important and it sucks that in schools that it’s throughly overpowered by competitiveness rhetoric and the concept of winning at all costs (like bro it’s fucking high school PE class!!!! not the fucking olympics or the NBA or whatever other professional and elite level sport league) and pushing yourself to your utmost limits…. when they really need to reframe it as a self care activity to keep you healthy in general.

and i think reframing it as a self care activity so that kids, just like i was in high school, who were pretty much scarred by the over-competitiveness of sport; don’t automatically equate their failure of not engaging with at least like 30mins a day of exercise for just basic health reason to being non-athletic… or don’t end up like i was at uni incredibly depressed and anxious (and ultimately with a stomach tumour probably caused by my aversion to exercise and over-eating)…. or moreover, end up seeing themselves as failures bc they’re not pushing themselves to go to the gym everyday or pushing themselves every day to do some stupidly long 5km run bc idk fitness tiktok (idk of its called fit-tok or some dumb asf bs name) told them that that’s the stairway to the perfect health & wellness journey…. when they haven’t even built up the necessary stamina or something to do so. then they unfortunately end up beating themselves up mentally bc they haven’t done just a little bit of exercise bc their work life and life in general doesn’t give them the energy to do so.

finally, also fuck the whole thing about losing weight and burning/counting calories that’s seeped so deeply into exercise as well. bc it’s exactly how so many people end up with body image issues or mental health conditions like anorexia and/or bulimia or orthoreixa (around calorie counting and eating the perceived “right foods”). exercise is fucking self care and simple mental health management, plain and simple.

exercise is important and good for you but the way its discussed is so inextricably wrapped in like weight loss and it being a moral failing to be unathletic or whatever and that really sucks

like im someone who does more strenuous exercise (tho literally just like. walking a half hour every day is perfectly ideal) but i dont care if it affects my weight or not bc regardless i know im doing something healthy for my lifestyle. when i lose weight as a byproduct, fine, its not my goal. if i dont, fine, it doesnt matter to me bc my body is doing what it needs to do. i think thats a pretty healthy frame of mind for it. like it needs to be reframed as what it is- something good for your physical and mental health , not as a means to an end of getting skinny or as a punishment

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

i second the job application email!! as someone whose signed up to fb STILL with one of her old embarrassing high school email accounts (that’s based on in the night garden for some bizarre reason lmao), please just make an email specifically for job applications!

yes it’ll suck and feel stuffy and adulty (for the younger users on this site) but it’ll make you feel better in the job apps process rather than applying for jobs with something like theoriginaligglepiggle vs something like janine.endelson@example.com or aaronsanderson1986@*insert email provider here*. that’s the main reason that i’ve NEVER used the facebook jobs function on fb, bc it autofills with my junk email on hotmail from literally a fucking decade ago; rather than one of my proper sounding job app emails that i’ve made in kind of more recent years when having to buy new laptops and shit for uni and generally for subscriptions.

but mind you; i also use a job sounding email for online shopping as well…. bc eventually you will have to give up signing up to every site with something like neopetsfreak@hotmail.com. or for me, my other online persona, heureuxbones, that i used in high school and i think my early 20s for a tiny bit for online shopping (it’s one of my old high school emails). but that’s another adulting tip for another post lol.

could you IMAGINE if jobs asked to see your tumblr ajsjskksksks the url alone is enough to disqualify half of you hoes let alone your blog descriptions

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

at the catholic high school i went to for years 7-10 we had topics in english and religion were solely about the topic of “adversity” and it drove me insane lmao. basically my years at that’s school were me my “how many times can you say adversity before i get anxiety or have a mental breakdown” speed run. it’s why i left at the end of 2011 because i couldn’t stand to get guilted anymore about people being in “more adverse conditions to you so give money to our school charity or write some guilt-tripping speech/essay about it instead”. it’s also how i got harassed for money by kids in both schools because “oh i forgot to eat my breakfast think of me as a starving vietnamese kid that we’re feeding with project compassion and give me your lunch money. c’mon don’t you care about those kids or me???” like no jemima or alan, especially when i know you’ve bullied another kid in our year/your year or a grade lower than ours/yours for their money two minutes ago. like stop being an actual selfish entitled cunt. how about that??? because more often than not, it was the kids with $20 lunch money every day that would scab off me not the kids with none.

the other big part of why i left is because i couldn’t stand have the donation box waved under my nose every fucking morning and being guilted by teachers and friends alike when i would only give say $1 to the box a month or something instead of like $15 a day or a week like some other kids could afford to do. like y’all know people have fucking bills right???? oh wait you don’t because apparently all that matters is money for the school charity. which by the way, i’ve been giving to for 10 years and i don’t fucking know where my money goes or how it’s used??? how about answer that first before i give anymore money to this cause lmao.

before i had gotten close with ex-catholics i was under the assumption that "catholic guilt" was mostly about sex, or serious topics.

but i was naïve. it's apparently about every positive experience. enjoying a meal? you're so lucky, children are starving. spending your day off cosy in bed? wow, so selfish, homeless people are freezing to death.

every former or present catholic i've met has a very obvious anxiety disorder and it's so painfully not a coincidence.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

yeah i was thinking about this the other night, with how even at uni for programs that are MEANT to give you experience, they still prefer to hire someone who’d done all the program positions already. because while i was at my local uni for my undergrad, i joined this extra curricular student org/program that gave students many soft skills like time management and public speaking/communication skills, entrepreneurial skills/business acumen skills, group work/leadership skills and all that jazz, amongst others.

however, whenever they got to the interview stage, and i was ALWAYS running against someone who i’d met through some other like careers workshop thing who ended up becoming the spokesperson for student involvement in this EC program/org for the “job readiness/employability skills” that it provided (the particular position that i’d applied for was to be a spokesperson on the high school ‘discovery days’ for like 2017)…. and they had always done a few of the other programs this org provided, so they gave the position to them instead of me. and it really fucking pissed me off. bc this was one of the very FEW positions on this ec program that didn’t expect you to have a distinction (75+) mark average to do it. but it STILL went to this person who often was part of the golden key society and was a deans scholar and every other high achiever uni title you can name. it went to the person that had already done several positions before so they were already close with the people in the program/org; so they didn’t really have to train them either.

bc like. what the actual fuck are general credit students (65+) average mark students like myself meant to fucking do if even job readiness/employability programs at UNI don’t even fucking want to hire you??? you know that gives students such as myself zero confidence right??? which is what you ironically harp on about giving to students who participate in the program/org. and plus, they were mostly all unpaid volunteer positions, which eventually convinced me that they weren’t worth doing anyway tbh. like why the fuck won’t my uni even give me a chance to build my fucking skills for presenting/public speaking/time management and shit outside of class…. instead of just doing in class presentations and stuff???? absolutely fucking ridiculous.

and also remove all the bullshit mark parameters too??? because to me, presenting to high school kids on orientation days or at uni open days or travelling to schools shouldn’t warrant at 75+ mark!!!!???? because that’s exactly what made me feel so useless in applying for uni and made me feel like my goal of going to uni was incredibly unobtainable in years 11/12 back in 2012 and 2013. where’s the justice for people that just want to be an average mark person, bc being a high achiever gives them a mental breakdown lmao????

also yeah i get that i did sign up to one of these programs; which was my uni’s rip off of HONY and ended up doing nothing with it…. because i realised that i was too shy for journalism and bad at photography…… and i had such bad time management skills that i had no time to organise and schedule to source people to interview (or find the people that they provided and schedule a time to talk with them) and update their fb page which got loads of traffic, and their tumblr page that no one looked at/followed (which is why i signed up lmao).

but again, this blogging position was one one of the very few positions that didn’t require at least 75+ to be even considered for it. it was fucking stupid imo. and again i dropped it because i wasn’t getting paid like i reckon we should’ve been; since some uni official in the student well-being centre team and marketing team was also helping us run the page and look at its engagement metrics (mostly likes of the page and the popular post engagement) and interpret them. but really it was all to simulate what being a social media intern would be like in a corporate office or a boutique social media marketing firm etc etc in sydney or another capital city imo.

just. yeah. unis and colleges trying to block people out of job readiness programs to develop employability skills needs to be thought of as well imo. because since i was an arts student in english & philosophy; i didn’t have many programs to choose from or it was constantly suggested that i go straight into teaching/tutoring positions when i don’t have the temperament and stress management skills for them lmao (not including marks lol).

Every time I think about the entry level job paradox my head feels like it’s gonna explode.

Whenever I think about all the people that didn’t hire me to be a busser because I didn’t have any restaurant experience even though it’s the lowest ranking job in the restaurant I feel a dangerous urge to strangle a hiring manager.

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

yeah reading the articles about the aussie lockdown dress up fb group page (i can’t remember what it was called) that was hella popular in 2020, having to shut down on new year’s eve last year, bc (A.) it became a global page, rather than just aussie and (B.) the lady and the team from outback queensland that were running it got hella burnt out and hated culling the negative comments that some people loved leaving on posts. and it was sad, bc it was one of my fave fb pages and things in general to come out of the hellscape year that was 2020.

and it’s the same with a local buy & swap etc group in my area im still in from years ago on fb. many of the admin leave because it’s voluntary but also bc they can’t stand people being rude asf and refusing to say “please” and “thanks” on posts; even though it’s clearly stated in the rules that you must say them in response to nabbing peoples items etc. they also have disclaimers about no-shows etc as well.

im completely serious when i say this online moderation is one of the nastiest most thankless jobs of the modern world. not talking about the guy who runs your video game discord, but the people who are tasked with clearing up major websites and social media of the filth there. read a chilling article a few years back about how this was done by underpaid workers and often from developing countries (because of course) who would get for most, lasting psychological damage from what they had seen. the internet is held up by invisible people you will never hear about despite their hard work