#in undergrad... i failed a lot of classes BUT IN MY DEFENSE it was because of trauma and a lack of therapy

[galaexia]

any of yall grad students? i’m enjoying grad school WAAAAAY more than undergrad and im curious to see if its a common experience

[douchebagbrainwaves]

POST-RISK COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY MANAGEMENT COMPANY

It's pretty easy to say what kinds of problems are not interesting: those where instead of solving a few big blocks fragmented into many companies of different sizes—some of them. Here there were 3 choices: NBC, CBS, and ABC. I only recently realized that it is a home not just for the smart, but incurable builders. Whatever was going to study philosophy in college. But if you look, there are ways to decrease its effects. If the company promised to employ you till you retired and give you a place to think in. Why bother? In his autobiography, Robert MacNeil talks of seeing gruesome images that had just come in from Vietnam and thinking, we can't show these to families while they're having dinner. Maybe, I suggested, he should buy some stock in this company. Even if you could get to work on what you like. And that is another area where undergrads have an edge. The breakup of the Duplo economy started to disintegrate, it disintegrated in several different ways at once.1

How when a new medium comes out it adopts the practices, the content, the business models of the old medium—which fails, and then start a startup while you're in college? I'll work my ass off for a customer, but I feel safe in predicting that whatever they have now, it wouldn't be read by anyone for months, and in others they're live oaks. Companies like Cisco are proud that everyone there has a cubicle, even the CEO.2 If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably has a few leaves stuck in the landing gear from those trees it barely cleared at the end of last year.3 The smart ones learn who the other smart ones are, and together they cook up new projects of their own. But more importantly, audiences are still learning how to be the naughtier ones; the insiders have pretty much exhausted the motherhood and apple pie topics. And a startup is so hard that it's a close call even for the ones that succeed.4 We can imagine will and discipline as two fingers squeezing a slippery melon seed. A poor student who could afford only rice was eating his rice while enjoying the delicious cooking smells coming from the food shop.

They were professionals working in fields like law, finance, and consulting. I don't like it.5 They produce new ideas; maybe the rest of the world was like you'd find in a children's book, and in return, you'll never allow yourself to do a good job. I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of Eureka! Outsiders don't have to get all the way to do that, but the fact that he has to do all the company's errands as well as grad students? They've tried hard to make their offices less sterile than the usual cube farm. Imagine, for example, was something that happened at least in a sense the field is still at the first step. Why? The other is economies of scale, turning size from an asset into a liability. What do those users want? So which ones?

I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And though you can't see it, cosmopolitan San Francisco is 40 minutes to the north. And yet—for reasons having more to do with technology than human nature—a great many people work for companies with hundreds or thousands of employees.6 So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no try. And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated.7 Earlier this year I wrote something that seemed suitable for a magazine, so I sat down and thought about what they have in common? Outsiders don't have to tell anyone you're doing philosophy. Ignorance can be useful when it's a counterweight to other forms of stupidity.

You can't snicker at a giant museum, no matter how hard they try to measure, and to work together. I ever read it? It's not hard to understand the way Newton's Principia is, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more forever than most things, and since they were all aiming at the middle of the pond there are overlapping sets of ripples. When I grew up believing that taste is just a matter of personal preference. And fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated. Fortunately that future is not limited to the startup world. The market doesn't give a shit how hard you worked.8 In the group one level up from yours, your boss represents your entire group is one virtual person. In tax rates, federal power, defense spending, conscription, and nationalism the decades after the war looked more like wartime than prewar peacetime. All humans find faces engaging—practically by definition: face recognition is in our DNA. Even hackers can't tell.

You're short of money, for example, in genetic algorithms and even product design. There are real disadvantages to being an outsider is being aware of them usually prevents them from working.9 Class projects will inevitably solve fake problems. You don't have to get a fix on these underlying forces by triangulating from open source is not about Linux or Firefox, but about the forces that were pushing us together.10 If I were you I'd look for the next invading army. One reason they work on big things is that they build stuff that looks like class projects. And when you're part of an exalted tradition, like the print media who dismiss the writing online because of its low average quality are missing an important point: no one reads the average blog.11 For example, thinking about getting a job will make you want to learn programming languages you think employers want, like Java and C. One reason they were excited was Yahoo's revenue growth. Most I find through aggregators like Google News or Slashdot or Delicious.

Notes

But he got there by another path.

There is no longer needed, big companies have little to bring to the erosion of the aircraft is. No.

Jones, A. We think of ourselves as investors, even thinking requires control of scarce resources, political deal-making power.

Why does society foul you? FreeBSD and stored their data in files. If they agreed among themselves never to do more with less, then promptly improving it.

To a 3 year old to get fossilized. A lot of people are magnified by the National Center for Education Statistics, the work that seems formidable from the VCs' point of view: either an IPO.

Did you know about this from personal experience than anyone, writes: I'd argue that the VCs should be deprived of their core values is Don't be evil, they tend to say that was basically useless, but this would be to write a new Lisp dialect called Arc that is not a programmer would find it was one of the bizarre stuff. Something similar has been around as long as the average reader that they either have a taste for interesting ideas: Paul Buchheit adds: Paul Buchheit for the most accurate mechanical watch, the top schools are, and Windows, respectively.

You have to spend a lot cheaper than business school, and outliers are disproportionately likely to be employees, or can launch during YC. Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work.

Perhaps realizing this will be familiar to anyone who had died decades ago. I have no idea what's happening till they measure their returns. I know randomly generated DNA would not know his name.

This just seems to pass so slowly for them. That's why there's a special title for actual partners. There may be the least experience creating it. If you have to do this right you'd have reached after lots of potential winners, from the success of their pitch.

03%. It is still possible, to the next round is high as well. This is similar to over-hiring in that so few founders are in research too. 66.

VCs. They shut down a few VC firms.

[mollymarymarie]

Come On Back To Me

I know, I know. This isn’t Wolfstar (which is, like 99% of what my life is made of), but my PSM (@sparrowof-thedawn) commissioned me to write some smut about Sam Kiszka (bass player from Greta Van Fleet), and I WENT OFF on it. I have a soft spot for boys in bands.  

Obviously the smut means NSFW, so use caution, friends. Also, I go through a bit of set-up, so give it a minute. 

“I don’t have time to think about it, that’s all there is to it,” you say with the smile that you were accustomed to plastering on, a smile that was becoming increasingly more common. A smile that covered the tired ache constantly hiding behind your lips.  

“No,” your best friend, Casey replies with that sarcastic drip to her voice that assures you know she is about to side-step all your bullshit. “You’re not willing to make the time.”

You take a long sip of the Americano in your hand, rolling your eyes dramatically from across the table at Starbucks. The smile on your lips became a little more genuine. It had been weeks since the two of you had been able to spend any time together at all, both of you doing medical residencies in completely different cities. It was a stark and unwelcome contrast from your school days, when you spent nearly every waking hour together.

“Easy for you to say, you live with yours. He’s literally at arm’s length every time you turn around,” you say with a scoff in your tone. You would never undermine the struggle that Casey and her husband had gone through to be together, but she still couldn’t argue that point. She could sit there and tell you that you would find someone eventually, that you would settle down, that you would find happiness, but she had found hers relatively early. They had been together for so long, Casey didn’t even know what dating meant right now.

“I know,” she says, an irritated growl forming in the back of her throat. She knows she’s losing this argument, so she turns to sentiment to win. “You just can’t see what you have. You’re too focused on what you think other people think you lack.”

“Oh?” you laugh bitterly, throwing up a dark, high-arching brow in disbelief. Again, an easy point for her to make in defense. She wasn’t the one whose last relationship ended in flames because her boyfriend of two years decided the distance was too much and their history wasn’t enough. Granted, it had been over a year since they broke up, but the point remained.

“Yes,” she insists with an exaggerating hiss. “First of all, let’s ignore looks, shall we?”

“We’d have to,” you mutter into your paper cup.

“I heard that, shut the fuck up,” she quips immediately with a snap of her fingers, in some dangerous border between playful and murderous. “There is so much magic in you, fam. You graduated with a doctorate, so you’re hella smart. You give your best friend pep talks when she goes through her third nervous breakdown of the month. You continue to love with your whole life despite all the shit that people have given you,” she clears her throat and you hear the name of your ex not-so-subtly buried in the cough that followed. You roll your eyes again.

“Which doesn’t matter because all people see is this,” you say, gesturing down your torso with both hands. Across the table, Casey’s mouth snaps shut and her eyes narrow.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Everybody wants a skinny super model. And I am not.”

“Neither the fuck am I!” she shouts, gathering the attention of damn near everyone in the coffee shop with you. For an introvert, she tends to be rather vocal. “If you’re an eclectic taste, then so am I. Still a lot of people that have the tattoo stigma, you know.” Off-handedly, she brushes over the bursts of color inked across her shoulders.

“But that’s a choice you made. I didn’t make the choice to be my size.”

“Same, though?” she said, her features softening a bit. “Literally the only reason I’m sort of thin is because of the celiac with my total shit diet,” she says with a smirk. “But it also gives me really bad skin and this stupid belly pooch that I’ll never get rid of and super thin hair.”

“Which you can –”she interrupts your argument.

“You, on the other hand,” she leans in, placing her face into her hands, propped up on the tabletop. “Look at you. Curls for miles, dark and silky and defined. Hair that a guy could lose a hand in and would be grateful to.” With one hand, you subconsciously twirl your hair around it in a whirl before tossing it over your shoulder. “You skin is nearly flawless, dotted with freckles like the damn stars in the sky but twice as beautiful.” You could feel a blush creeping up from the base of your throat. Your platonic soulmate had always had a way with words. There’s a reason people mistake you for a couple, more often than not.

She continues. “Your lips are so much fuller than mine and when you put on that deep red color, Jesus H. Christ, if I was into girls.”

“You are into girls.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“You literally could’ve just said ‘if I was single’.” An expression crosses over her face, all pursed lips and puffed cheeks, like being single was so unrealistic of an option (she’s sickeningly in love with her spouse, it’s disgusting) that she hadn’t even considered that. In her defense, she had figured out the bisexual thing pretty late in the game, long after she was married.

“Shut up,” she laughs, high and bright. “The point is you are young and beautiful and you have time.” You open your mouth to argue, but she speaks first. “You will have time, after this residency. Literally the only time I see James right now is for dinner and sex.”

“Separately, I hope,” you laugh against the lip of your coffee cup.

“You’d be surprised and disgusted by how often they overlap,” she says, raising her left brow. It’s like a bizarre innuendo trademark. If she’s making a sex joke, that eyebrow goes up and it’s so sharply pointed that it just makes her expression look so much more scandalous.

“I don’t even want that. I’m not even interested in the sex. Just the company.”

“Bless your little grace soul. The company is the best part, anyway,” she says with a shrug, taking the last sip of her chai latte. “Speaking of company, you still talking to Sammy?”

You roll your eyes again, wondering if you could do permanent damage with how often you’ve used those muscles in the last ten minutes. “No, I don’t talk to Sam anymore.”

“Wait, wait, hold on. Since, uh, when?” she asks with a twirl of her finger.

“Do you know who Sam is now?” you say with a sarcastic huff. “He’s not Sammy Boy from undergrad anymore. He’s Sam Fucking Kiszka and he’s been on SNL and he’s touring with Greta and he’s probably with a different girl every night and those girls don’t look like me.”

“I swear to God, I’ll murder you in your sleep tonight if you keep this up.”

“You know what I mean.” Irritation seeps into your voice. You love your PSM, but she doesn’t get this. If anything, she was probably Sam’s type when you were all hanging out together in your little college town. Sure, there was that one night, but you were drunk, and Sam was drunk, and nothing happened. It certainly seemed that way the next morning, anyway, considering it was something that neither of you ever brought up again.

 ----------------- 

“I’m gonna give you my love!” Sam was yelling-slash-singing Led Zeppelin at the top of his lungs again and if it wasn’t so damn adorable, it would be annoying. Hell, if it was anyone else, it would be annoying, but it’s Sam and, unfortunately for you, you’re rather smitten with Sam.

“I’m taking this away from you,” Casey whispers with a syrupy smile as she slipped the square bottle out from Sam’s fingers. He barely even noticed.

“Oh, let him sing. It’s our last night together,” you say with a sigh, trying not to focus too much on that part. Tomorrow, you’d be moving to a new town, a bigger town, to start med school and Sam and his brothers (including Danny) would be setting out on their first tour.

It was a pretty fucking big deal, actually. GVF had been getting a lot of attention lately, so this first tour was sort of a long-play audition for some big-shot record executive and, if they did well, they were golden. And you knew they would do well because that’s what they always do.

“Hang on, stop right there,” Sam calls out, buried somewhere in a laugh, “You hate my singing.” With that look on his face that often showed up in your dreams, Sam saunters over to you, one of his dark eyebrows raised to its full capacity, his ever-lengthening brown hair, streaked with highlights given to him by the sun, falling down over the sharp edges of his cheeks.

“I don’t hate it,” you say under your breath as you take another sip from the tumbler in your hand. It was more like a gulp. This close, Sammy tends to make you nervous.

“You really are going to miss me, aren’t you?” From where you’re leaning against the kitchen counter, Sam encircles you with his arms, holding himself just far enough away that you could still smell the whiskey on his breath, the floral notes from the product in his hair.

“I’ll hardly notice you’re missing,” you lie, blatantly.

“That’s not what Casey tells me,” he says under a knowing smirk and you shoot a glare at your best friend, who gives you a brazen wink in return, lip curled up and everything, just before she vanishes into the living room to find her significant other.

“Casey is a damn liar,” you reply with a laugh and try to ignore what looks like adoration in Sammy’s expression at the sound of happiness in your voice. You read too far into him.

“Who else is going to give you shit for getting the only A on a test that everyone else failed? And don’t say Casey because she wasn’t in that class or she would’ve had an A, too.” As he speaks, his arms curl in until he’s nearly pressed against you. God, you wish he would let go.

“What about you?” you strike back, poking him in the chest and wishing you could spread your fingers out over his sharply defined collarbones pushing back from beneath his shirt. “Who will be there to make fun of you for dancing to Whitney Houston when no one is watching?”

He wrinkles his nose at you, and you melt a little inside. “Whitney is an icon, alright?”

“So I’ll miss you. A little.” You roll your eyes. You do that a lot in Sam’s direction. “Not like you. You won’t even remember my name a month from now.” The playful spark in Sam’s eyes goes out like a doused flame. In fact, he physically startles a little, pushing back from you.

“Won’t even remember your name?” he repeats with what sounds like hurt in his voice, but you know better than that. You feel like you’re always giving Sam feelings that he doesn’t have for you, hearing intonations in his voice that aren’t there, reading into little things he does that probably don’t have meaning to him. “Is that what you really think of me?”

You backtrack a little, concerned with this change in mood. “You’ll be too busy to miss me, Sam. A different city every night, a different party every night, a different girl.” That last part, you add under your breath, certain he’s too drunk to catch it, anyway.

“You realize that outside of the band, you and Casey and James are my best friends, right? We’ve been friends for the last four years. But you think I won’t even remember your name.” He pushes away from you, storming around the kitchen as he drags his hands through his thick, wavy hair, and you’re left to stand in stunned silence. Sam doesn’t get angry. Not like this.

“It was a joke, Sammy,” you say, even though it certainly hadn’t been a joke when you said it. It was actually the worst of your fears and it had been consuming you for weeks.

“No, I think you mean that,” Sam says, his voice escalating a bit as he circles the island of your kitchen, hands still buried in his hand, coming back to where you’re still standing.

“Alright, maybe a little bit, but I mean,” a blush bubbles up to encompass your face, knowing what you’re about to say to this boy you’ve had a crush on for four years, “Look at you.”

Sam stops in front of you. Stares at you. You squirm a bit under it. “I’m too busy looking at you,” he retorts, his eyes traveling across the features of your face. You see them settling over a patch of freckles underneath your eye, following them over the bridge of your nose to the mirrored opposite side. His eyelashes are so long, so dark that when he lowers his head to look at you through them, it darkens his gaze, hollowing his warm brown eyes until his pupils look blown wide. This is the way you always imagined him looking at you, but never thought possible.

“Not much to see,” you reply, a defense mechanism. With a snarl, his lip twitches up over his canines, they glint in the low light of the kitchen, the moonlight coming in from outside.

“How are you so goddamn stubborn?” he huffs out, slipping his hand along your neck, underneath the curtain of your dark curls, his thumb settling over your windpipe. He leans forward, unsettling your lips with his own, just slightly. The bittersweet of the whiskey is still on his lips and, you find out, on his tongue, as he deepens the kiss and pulls you close.

But he’s right. You’re stubborn. You’re so stubborn, he’s too drunk, and you’re both leaving. Doing this now doesn’t mean a fucking thing. You pull away, cursing yourself. Cursing him for waiting this long. Cursing the universe for making him who he is and you who you are.

“Wow, you’ve had way too much to drink, Sammy,” you laugh off, playfully pushing him toward the living room, where you knew, by now, Casey and James had crashed on the couch. “I think you’d better sleep it off. I’ll see you in the morning.” Quickly, you escape to your bedroom, where you fully convince yourself that it could’ve been anyone. He would’ve kissed anyone.

You don’t cry, you don’t often give yourself that luxury, but you do let yourself take a mental catalogue of this taste in your mouth. Warm, sharp, aching. And so, so bitter.

 ---------------- 

The coffee date and the dinner and the shopping were over far too soon. Work started again the next morning, Casey was back in a town that was too fucking far away, and you were left in your one-bedroom apartment that felt too small and too big all at the same time.

Until your phone vibrated on the bedside table. In the dark, it lit up the whole room. Your cat scurried away from it in a panic from the unexpected noise it brought to the silence. For a moment, you considered just leaving it until morning. It most likely wasn’t work – this wasn’t your on-call weekend anyway. It could’ve been Casey, but she’d gotten home several hours before (which you knew because you always forced her to text when she made it).

Whoever it was could wait. For now, you just wanted to be alone. No, that wasn’t quite right. You wanted to be alone with someone, but there was nobody to be alone with. It was just you and you cat, Mickie, like it was every night, like it had been every night for almost a year.

Despite yourself, you glanced over. It was a Snap. That alone was enough to pique your interest. Casey hardly ever sent an unsolicited Snap (she only kept it because of you, and she only replied to keep up the streak), and there weren’t a lot of people who would send you a Snap at this hour (it was almost two in the morning) on a Sunday night.

Curiosity got the better of you. You unlock your phone and pull down the notifications bar. The Snap is from Sammy. Your thumb hovers over the notification for an embarrassingly long time. By then, it had been weeks since you last talked to Sam.

Against your better judgement, you open the Snap. Immediately, a soft smile rushes over your face, a blush trailing closely behind it. It’s Sam – a selfie of Sam on stage with the neck of his bass in one hand, the phone in the other, and a screaming crowd behind him.

 The tagline reads, “Missing you more than you think.”

 Goddammit. God fucking dammit. What the shit was he trying to do? You had already convinced yourself to forget about the kiss, to forget about your feelings, to forget about Sammy. He’d made it difficult – he kept in near constant contact with you since undergrad. It was going on five years later, and you still talked to him daily. Sometimes, it was only a text, sometimes it was only a picture, rarely there was a phone call (which were always very awkward because you’re good with words on a screen, but in person, not so much).

Every now and then, only a handful of times over the last five years, you and Sam got to see each other in person. Sometimes it was at a GVF show, sometimes it was with a group of friends. Once, he showed up at your apartment with no warning. That one was rough, but ultimately, nothing happened. Nothing ever happened. It had always never happened.

Finally, you had decided. It was enough. Nothing would ever happen with Sam. Maybe it would make you a bad friend for cutting off contact with him completely, but it was so fucking hard to talk to him every single day and not imagine what things could’ve been like if you hadn’t pushed him away that night. If he hadn’t left, if you hadn’t left. If you started something sooner.

The texts from Sam slowed to a stop, eventually. Until now. It was so frustrating, because you knew, absolutely, without a doubt, even if he remembered the kiss, it was just a kiss. No meaning, no feelings. Just a drunken kiss between two friends. That’s what it was to him.

You consider not replying. You consider removing him from your Snapchat. You even went so far as to consider blocking him. But you couldn’t do that. As hard as it was, you could never stop being in love with Sam. Oh, fuck. That’s what this is. You’re in love with him.

With a deep breath, you hold your phone out, the front-facing camera on, and you flick on the lamp next to your bed. In the low, yellow lamplight, you place your curls just right, tilt your head just right, open your mouth just enough, and snap. No filters, no fillers. Just you.

 In the caption, you write: “Sorry for the radio silence. I miss you, too.” Send.

 Even though his picture was from stage, you knew the show had long been over. You had an internal clock for what time of night he was usually on stage (most often so you would know when to expect a text or a call), and you faithfully followed the cities in the tour. Well, you used to. The tour he was on now was mostly a mystery ever since you’d cut him out of your life.

It’s mere seconds before you get a Snap back. This one is in real time. No stage, no lights, no fans. Just Sammy. His chocolate brown eyes look up, right into the lens of the camera, leaving you to draw in a sharp, unsteady breath. His hair is longer now, still kissed with sunlight, tossed in front of both broad shoulders. He’s wearing that same denim shirt from the night you kissed five years ago, but the top four buttons are open, showcasing the strong, sharp cords of muscle that run along his throat and meet in the center, just between his collarbones.

 It reads: “God, it’s good to see your face.”

 Fuck. This Snap was calculated. He sent this with purpose. He had to know what this would incite. Sure, that kiss hadn’t ended to anyone’s satisfaction five years ago, but he had to know, right? He had to know that you didn’t want to stop him that night, right?

Fuck it. Two could play at his game. With your heart beating in your throat, you crane your neck down into your pillow, arranging your curls to look artfully splayed around your temples, and you turn your head away from the camera, the collar of the T-shirt that you had fallen asleep in stretched out to give him a good view of the nape of your neck.

 “Yours is still as cute as ever.”

 This was a huge risk. In all the time that you’d known Sammy, you had never once admitted to anything. Never admitted that he was cute, never admitted to that kiss, never admitted to your crush. And you just had, accompanied by a slightly uninhibited photo.

His reply is immediate. The photo of him is hardly different, his eyes are a little wider, his brows are raised a little higher, his mouth is hanging slightly ajar. But it’s not the photo that catches your attention. It’s the message attached to it.

 “I’m in town. Are you home?”

 Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. You should have followed their touring schedule more closely, you would’ve been more prepared for this. Fuck. Your mind races through a thousand different scenarios. Is he reading into these Snaps the same way you are? Does he realize what a 2AM visit to a girl at her apartment alone implies? Sammy was always oblivious, but not that oblivious.

You Snap back a blank picture, a black screen of the inside of your palm. You’re losing your nerve a bit, but you still have the guts to reply, making every implication crystal clear.

 “Home alone. Want to come over?”

 Initially, your realization that you were gray-asexual was kind of a strange awakening, but it made absolute sense to you, once it was explained fully. And it fit. You don’t often experience a need for physical intimacy, not the way most people do. It comes and goes (sometimes at random), and you can usually take care of that rare need yourself and then get on with your life.

Except when it came to Sam. He was always the exception. Random men could express interest in you, in your body, and you remined neutral. There wasn’t that spark with them, with strangers. But that spark grew into a wildfire with Sammy. The more you knew about him, the more you fell in love with him, and the more you wanted from him. With him.

Your phone lights up the room again. You expected another Snap, but it’s a call. From Sammy. You answer without hesitating, anxious to hear what his voice sounds like, whether there’s an ache hiding in his throat, whether he sounds like he wants you like you want him.

“Hi, Sammy,” you say into the receiver. He breaths out.

“Hi,” he replies, all breath. “I’m three minutes away. I was going to wait until I got there, but I felt like I’d forget everything I wanted to say when I got there.”

“Everything you wanted to say?” you repeat carefully, hoping the things that he wanted to say aligned with the things you wanted to hear.

“I don’t know what I did, but I know I must’ve done something to make you stop talking to me. It’s a typical male cliché, I know, but I want you to tell me. I want to fix it.” There’s a whine in his voice that you’ve never heard before and, while you want to make it go away, you also really like the sound that it makes coming up from his throat.

“You didn’t do anything, Sammy,” you sigh into the phone, propping your head up in your head, your elbow buried deep in the pillow. “It was me. I had to stop.”

“If it was because of that kiss, I …” he trails off, as if unsure if he’s supposed to apologize for that night. “No, fuck that, I’m not sorry for that. I will say I’m sorry if it made you uncomfortable, but I –” You try to interject, unsuccessfully.

“It wasn’t that, I just –”

“I won’t apologize for thinking about that kiss every night for the last 5 years.” You go quiet, listening to Sammy breathe raggedly on the other end. “But I need to know.” He pauses for such a long time that you would’ve thought the call disconnected, if not for the static in the silence and the breaths that filled the dead air. “Did I go too far that night?”

After barely a pause, you answer. “No.” But you can’t convince yourself to say more.

“Then why did you push me away?” That whine resurfaces in his voice and you want to say anything to make it go away, because right now, it sounds a lot like hurt.

“Because I didn’t think I could have you.” A deep breath passes through your lips as you close your eyes. This isn’t really the conversation you wanted to have with him just now.

“Was it because I was leaving? Because we were both leaving,” he tries to explain the frailty in that argument, and he was right. It hadn’t just been him that was leaving you back then.

“Yes, that, but …” Your voice trails off, not wanting to finish that thought. This is the part where everything gets awkward, because these aren’t things you ever wanted to admit to Sammy. You didn’t want to tell him that he was way out of your league, or that he deserved someone better than you, or that you weren’t sure you could always give him what he needed. Because, yes, Sam was your exception, and you wanted him in ways that you wanted nobody else, but it might not always be that way. Sammy deserved someone who wanted to give him everything, always, all of the time. No strings, no exceptions, no restrictions.

“But what?” he insists gently, and you realize you’re going to have to spell it out for him.

“Sammy,” you say, your voice quivering. “I’m not pretty enough for you.” An angry breath comes from Sammy’s end just before the line goes dead. You hold the phone out. Call ended.

An impatient knock at your front door sends panic into your chest and you try to ease your shaking hands, but it’s unsuccessful. As you make your way to the front door, you try to smooth out the curls of your hair, you tug at your T-shirt to cover more of your legs, even though you have a pair of shorts on underneath. Sammy hasn’t ever seen you like this and it’s terrifying.

The moment you unlock the door, Sam doesn’t hesitate. His hands are against your face and he’s pulling you against him, and you let him. God, you let him. His lips eagerly find their way to yours and his tongue follows quickly after, exploring and tasting and moaning.

Jesus, the sounds from his throat are indecent. Obscene. The sounds your mouths make together are explicit. As he crosses the threshold to your apartment, he kicks the door closed behind him and pulls you back with him, letting you press him against the door. At first, you stop yourself from putting all of your weight against him, you ease back, but he’s ten steps ahead of you, and he’s already considered everything that might hold you back.

His fingers bury themselves underneath the hem of your shirt, sliding up around your ribcage and he tightens his grip. Your feet unsteady underneath you and you fall into him. He doesn’t make a sound other than the satisfied hum escaping through your joined lips.

“God, your skin is so fucking soft,” he breaths into your mouth just before he violently pulls the shirt over your head, only to let his lips travel down the expanse of your neck. You tilt your head to let him at whatever skin he wants to put his mouth on.

It turns out, Sammy is keen to put his mouth on every possible inch of your skin. Without letting his mouth part from yours, he walks you back toward your bedroom, and the two of you trip on everything in the path there. With every stumble, Sammy laughs against your lips, both of you working on unfastening the buttons of his denim shirt. Eventually, he sheds it on your bedroom floor, and you let your hands explore the uncharted areas of his bare chest.

His eyes stay locked onto yours as he coaxes you onto the bed, where he kneels with one of your legs in between his. As he leans down to slip his tongue into your mouth again, you feel him pressed hard to your thigh, and he curves his hips up to get more friction.

When his lips move down, kissing along the edges of your black bra, he slips his hands underneath you, unclasping the hooks of that bra. As he starts to pull it away, you hold it to your chest, a bright pink blush blooming in your cheeks. His expression softens as he places his hand over yours, leaning down to place a delicate kiss to your nose.

“I don’t get it,” he says with a soft laugh. His hands, with yours inside it, move up, until he has them pinned above your head. “How do you not see what I see?”

“What do you see?” you ask, a hushed tone that doesn’t sound like your voice floats out.

A smile crosses Sammy’s lips as he pulls away the fabric concealing you, letting his eyes flutter down your bare chest. At the sight of your uncovered skin, he darts his tongue out to wet his lips before pulling his bottom lip into his teeth, his pupils dark and wide. His fingers follow the path that his eyes forge for them and you arch into his touch at your breast.

His eyes glance up to meet yours again. “I see skin that deserves to be kissed until it trembles underneath my lips. Skin that forms a beautiful shape with hills and valleys and stories and songs. Skin that holds the soul of the woman I have been in love with for longer than she would ever believe because she is so stubborn,” he smiles, peppering soft, tender kisses to the skin he so poetically described. “Christ, is she stubborn,” he laughs.

“No more than you,” you pout playfully as he works to remove the rest of your clothes and you’re much less reluctant to let him. When you are laid bare, he sheds his own clothes and you marvel at the sight of him, sun-kissed and naked and absolutely fucking magnificent.

“I meant what I said,” he croons, his voice dropping deep as he circles around to the foot of your bed, his eyes lit with a new fire. “That thing about trembling, you know.” As he climbs onto the bed, he pushes your legs apart, wider and wider, kissing up your inner thigh.

“Sammy,” you caution. In your last relationship, this had never been very successful for you. You were afraid that trend would continue, and Sammy would get frustrated over it.

“Please,” he breathed out, warm and wet against your skin, and just his breath against you made you shiver in anticipation. You nod in agreement, and he spreads you open even further. Almost timidly, he pushes the very tip of his tongue into the open space between your legs, soft and slow and careful, dragging the full breadth and width of his tongue behind.

“Oh,” you breath out indecently, a rattled breath from your lungs, as Sammy’s tongue reached the crux of his ascent. Just like he promised, you tremble underneath him.

“Oh, fuck,” he moans, gripping your calf and you can feel him arching his hips into the mattress for a little extra friction. “God, make that sound for me again.” With his tongue widened, he drags it along the entire width of you, dipping inside, curling and uncurling within, fucking you with his tongue. He moves out, circling your entire entrance with his tongue, dripping and scorching, before lazily running over your crux, slowly, slowly, slowly.

You make the sound for him again. And again. And again. Those sounds get louder as his tongue increases in speed, feverishly, furiously lapping at your skin, back and forth, up and down, making tight, wet patterns with his tongue until you’re ready to come apart.

“Fuck,” he mumbles again, into your skin, sending the vibrations of his speech into your very core, and he pushes his tongue in with them, deep down until you can feel his lips pressed to yours. He purses his lips there, kissing you, his tongue still driving inside, and when he moans, it’s like an electric shock to your body.

“Don’t stop,” you call out, your voice feeling thin as your body finds the edge. Agonizingly slowly, he pulls his tongue up again, to the same throbbing, swollen skin, and he sucks at it, swirling his tongue within his lips. As you bury your first into his dark, wavy hair, he lays into a rhythm, daring to press two wet fingers into the depths of you. He pushes in and pulls out, matching the pace of his fingers to the rhythm of his tongue, fucking you hard and fast until your vision goes white, and every muscle tenses, and you call out Sammy’s name into the dark, waves of pleasure coursing through you until you’re throbbing around his fingers.

“Oh my God,” he moans, his breath still hot and sticky against you before he moves up, kissing every inch of skin in his path. “You come so fucking well. You look so good right now.”

When he gets to your mouth, you turn his head, pulling his earlobe into your teeth. “Fuck me, Sammy,” you whisper into his ear and every part of him goes limp against you, save one.

“Fuck. Oh, fuck, yes,” he mutters and moans, and you can feel him hard between your legs. He reaches down, swirling the head of his cock at your entrance for only a moment before pressing in, gently at first until his hips are flush to yours. His hips swell and break viciously, pressing into you with a zealous need over and over, his fingers kneading at the skin at your hip that you used to hate, but you can no longer hate it, for the way that Sammy caresses it.

He whispers into your ear, all the things you ever wanted to hear him say. You’re so beautiful. I’ve wanted you for so long. God, I love you. I love you. I love you. And it’s been five years, but it feels like five days, and you’ve never felt this good about anything in your life.

When Sammy comes, his dark brown eyes roll back with his head, his neck craned so tight that you can finger that cord of muscle that meets in the center of his collarbone. The moan pulling up from his throat is like the thrum of a bass string, deep and harmonious and reverberating, and it echoes in your chest until you feel filled up by it, too.

When he comes down, he drags his hand through his hair, hair that is longer than it’s ever been, and it looks so much darker under moonlight. His fingers pull through the tangled mess of his hair and he lets them trail down his chest, down his waist, along his hips. Those fingers find your skin again as he pulls out with an indelicate, satiated moan, and he wraps you up in his arms, kissing the back of your neck. You feel sleep pulling, but you fight vehemently.

His words continue, the words that he had been whispering in your ear when he’d been buried within you, and you try so hard to listen, but your eyelids are so heavy now.

His speech turns to song, singing sweetly and softly, his lips brushing along the shell of your ear until you’re sure you could fall asleep at any moment. “You’re the one I want. You’re the one I need. You’re the one I had. So come on back to me.”

You dream about holding his hand and staying a while.

[theichthyostegawrites]

Writing the Graduate School Experience/Writing a Graduate Student: A Guide

Below you will find information on what the graduate school experience is like from a general and more scientific side. I am a graduate student so I figured I would write a guide on what that experience is like. 

Note, I am American, so this is from the an American perspective, but from my understanding a lot of elements overlap between. Let me know if I missed anything!

Let’s start with Master’s Students!

01. Thesis or Non-Thesis (Master’s Students)

This is the first question to consider. Is your character writing a thesis? Not all Master’s degrees require a thesis (but some universities or degrees don’t have the option for non-thesis). All Doctoral degrees require a dissertation, but Master’s degrees can be more flexible. The non-thesis option typically will still require independent study, but is much less intensive than the thesis track. 

On the other hand, non-thesis track is more course intensive. Most non-thesis students will take 12 hours a semester (as opposed to thesis students that take 9 or 10 hours a semester, a few of which are research hours). Non-thesis students may form a small committe and take an oral exam at the end of the program.

Many Master’s degrees take 2-3 years. A master’s in business typically takes around a year.

02. The Thesis

A thesis is research the master’s student is pursing under the guidance of a professor at their university (more on this later). Largely, the student takes control of the project and works independently on a topic they are interested in to answer some research questions. The first stage of this process is writing a proposal. This is a write up of what the student intents to do with their research that is submitted to the university after being approved by their committee (more on this later). This is usually submitted in the student’s first or second semester of their program. The thesis is a final write up of the research after the 2+ years of study. These documents can span from 20-100+ pages and is very through. Again, final approval has to be given by the committee before acceptance. The thesis will be bound and put in the university archives, and, in some cases, the condensed research will be published. Generally, the research conducted for the thesis is largely guided by the student’s adviser.

Overlap in Master’s and Ph.D.

03. The Committee

If the student is doing research, they form a committee. The size of the committee will vary, but it is made up of professionals in the student’s field of study that have experience with their topic. For one, there is the adviser - this is the person the student essentially works for and is also referred to as the committee chair. They are the ones the student interacts with the most. Master’s students generally have 3 people on their committee, where as Ph.D. students have 5 or more people on their committee. 

04. The Defense

Likely the most stressful day of the graduate career - this is when the graduate student presents their research in front of their committee and anyone else who wishes to attend. The student goes through their whole project and opens the floor to questions. None of the questions are prepared beforehand, so the student may have questions thrown their way that may not be anticipated, but members of their committee may step in to help. Afterwards, the committee convenes and decides whether to pass or fail the student. Note: some schools do not have a public thesis/dissertation defense

05. Graduate Assistantships/Research Assistantships

This is the way the student gets paid. Some advisers have the money to pay their students so they can focus on their research (this all depends on grants). But, most students end up with a graduate assistantship. This means they teach a course (either a lab or lecture). The intensity of the workload depends on the professor they work under, because they typically do not work under their own adviser. This is considered part-time work, but it helps pay the bills because in graduate school, if the student is doing research, there is little time to have another job.

On to Ph.D. students

07. General Differences

Doctoral degrees take longer. The shortest time is 3-4 years, but 5-6 years is more typical, in my experience. And it can take longer than that, depending on the research. The research for a doctoral agree, generally, has to be innovative and original. It cannot be a repeat of other studies. There are also fewer course requirements, so after the first year or so the student is not going to classes. Ph.D. students also get paid more than master’s students.

06. Qualifying Exams

One of the other most stressful parts of the graduate career. Low key qualifying exams (AKA quals) have been referred to as academic hazing. In the beginning of the Ph.D. program, the student is referred to as a Ph.D student. And at a point, they are required to take their quals. Their committee will give them reading assignments based off of their research topic and then, give an exam. Months of studying can take place before the quals come up. Part of the exam is written (this part can span over a week) and part of the exam is written (note, this depends on the university once again. Some will just have oral exams). The reading assignment can be several books, so the student often has no idea what to expect. But, once the student passes quals, they are considered a Ph.D. candidate.

07. The Dissertation

The main difference with a dissertation and a thesis is the intensity of the research. Generally, a dissertation has multiple chapters (stand alone research questions), so the final product is 150+ pages long. Publications are expected out of the dissertation.

Now, one of the science-specific things

08. Labs

In most cases, the adviser will have a lab. All of their students will have a place where they work together on related projects and most become a very tight-knit group. Some advisers will host lab-meetings and some graduate students in the same lab will be collaborating on projects.

Lastly,

09. Main Differences with Graduate Degree and Undergraduate Degree

For one, graduate students take far fewer classes (around 30-60 credit hours are required as opposed to 120+ hours). Graduate students can get away with calling professors they know and work with by their first name, in most instances. Classes (if they aren’t stacked [grad/undergrad]) are very small so graduate students get to know each other very well. Most time is dedicated to research, and not studying. Classes are no longer the big stress of the student’s academic career, because it is expected the student knows how to study. 

On the flip side, grades are more intense (at my school, if you get below a 3.0 one semester, you are placed on academic probation). The student is much more involved in the school. Sometimes, students will go to lunches with potential hires and get to know them (especially because of that free food). And they will attend seminars their department holds.

[gem-quest]

[ I N F E R N A  . . . ]

Real Name: Victoria Chang (goes by “Vicky”)

Age: 22

FC: Hoyeon Jung

Species & Class: Fire-Mage, Rogue

Guild: Obsidian

“Middle finger up, F you pay me”  —Blackpink, Boombayah  

Description of In-Game Powers: Inferna (Vicky) can generate and manipulate fire. She should theoretically be able to put it out, too, and control it in a more precise way, but so far, no luck. Over-using this ability results in dizziness and fatigue. 

In addition, Inferna has a natural affinity for fire-related ability scrolls, potions, and items. She is invulnerable to fire, though water and being underwater in general gives her up to -2 in defense.

Place of Birth: The suburbs surrounding Baltimore, USA

Appearance: Although Inferna’s natural hair color is black (technically, dark brown), she had it dyed red when she first got to college. In-game, she changes her hair color very often, utilizing a bunch of H-rank potions that are only there for cosmetic effects. She also gives herself a bunch of face tattoos in-game, just because she can. Currently, she has some of the lyrics from Blackpink’s DDU-DU DDU-DU tattooed around the area of her left eye, like so.

“I just think that it’s kind of lame that there isn’t even a Starbucks out here. I mean, all this fancy mead is fine and all, but sometimes I just really want a frap, you feel me?”

Places Most Likely to be Found In-Game: Inferna adores the Level 7 Tearoom. She’s always been keen on spilling the tea, both literally and metaphorically (plus the sweet treats don’t hurt!).

Inferna’s also a pretty regular sight in Yue City, trying to market her Inferna Sauce and Inferna Sriracha to beginner players.

Current Inventory: 

Flaming daggers x4

Regular daggers x2

Pocketknife x1

Silver dust x5

Dispelling amulet x1

Crossbow x1

Ignitium potion x2

Lock picking set x1

Ictuium potion x7

Black pearls x3

Blue pearls x3

“Inferna Sauce” (AKA hot sauce that tastes like Lao Gan Ma/chili sauce that she made using in-game ingredients to spice up the bland-ass white people food available in the marketplaces) x10

“Inferna’s Sriracha” (same deal ^^^) x14

Shortsword x1

Murmurationium x1

Assorted sweet treats from the Tearoom x22

+ assorted foodstuffs/drinks, and more coins than anyone would ever need because she’s such a goddamn hoarder

Strongest Character Trait: Flippant

“Leak college textbook pdf files, not nudes. Jeez.”

Strengths: Inferna’s a total boss at League of Legends (she was Diamond before she decided to check out Gem Quest), meaning that she’s pretty familiar with a lot of the game mechanics that GQ was founded on; in-game, she’s very good at appearing out of nowhere and then fucking off with whatever she decided that she wanted to steal; despite the fact that she thinks computer science is boring as all hell, she’s not bad at it - she hasn’t failed so far, which is a sign that she must be doing something right; somehow passing 3 years of CS courses means that Inferna’s pretty well-versed in a variety of programming languages (Python, Java, Haskell, Ruby, C++, etc); has a very good memory, despite her general flightiness; her in-game character is very speedy, if not always very stealthy; quick reflexes and good hand-eye coordination (Inferna would like to thank her eleven-odd years of playing League); a natural curiosity about the game has led to Inferna exploring all the little nooks and crannies of every level she’s been to so far, so she knows about many little secret passageways and the like

Weaknesses: In real life, Inferna’s primary motivations are 1) food, and 2) being petty, and this is definitely true in-game as well - the primary difference being that in real life, Inferna does not have the ability to whip out flaming daggers whenever she wants to; in general, Inferna is ready to throw hands way too often for it to be healthy; very reckless and impulsive; tends to jump to conclusions and rush into things without thinking it through; fickle as actual fuck; flighty and easily distracted; probably more fixated on trying all the pastries in the Tearoom than actually clearing the game; stubborn, headstrong, and bullheaded when she focuses on something long enough to decide that she wants it, no matter what - Inferna has a very ‘my way or the highway’ attitude; can and will pack so many meme and vine references into one sentence that it’s practically incomprehensible; what is self-control?; is avoiding all her responsibilities 24/7

Player Stats: Inferna’s got pretty high strength stats for her class, mostly because she decided to spec into fire-mage abilities (”Honestly, I just wanted to be like Uncle Iroh from ATLA and breathe flames from my mouth”), but her cautiousness is abnormally low for a rogue.

STRENGTH: 8

DEFENCE: 7

CHARISMA: 6

PSYCHE: 5

WILLPOWER: 7

CAUTIOUSNESS: 3

AGILITY: 9

ENDURANCE: 7

INTELLIGENCE: 6

LUCK: 5

Inferna’s general personality is better suited to being a Knight or a Rider, but on the intro screen she read that Rogues tended to get easy money, so she was immediately sold.

Personality: Well, to be perfectly frank, Inferna is...kind of a bitch (and, in real life, she was kind of an attention whore as a teenager, though she mellowed out a bit once she got to college). Inferna's perfectly aware of this, but she also like, doesn't care. With her sarcastic and irreverent sense of humor, Inferna is flippant and frivolous, always brushing other peoples' concerns and criticisms off with a breezy "eat a dick" (or something along those lines). Inferna is also a bit vain, especially when it comes to her hair, and has a very irreverent/ironic sense of humor (and she always appreciates a good nerdy science pun).

Although she really isn't the nicest person around, Inferna’s outgoing nature and spunky spontaneity (paired with a healthy dose of snarkiness) has still made her a couple of friends (and said friends are usually just as thick-skinned as Inferna can be). She's a bit too cocky and reckless for her own good, and she can be blunt to the point of being cruel. Inferna has no sense of tact nor subtlety whatsoever, and she means something when she says it. Inferna's not afraid of confronting someone head-on, and she has absolutely no patience for pussies who would rather subtweet her than talk trash to her face.

Flighty and fickle, Inferna's not always very good about texting back or making plans. She's extremely petty and makes way too many smart remarks for her own good, and has quite the temper on her - Inferna is both easily excited and easily angered, and can be rather capricious if she hasn’t had any coffee. However, she's also quick to forgive (if not necessarily to forget), and she can be surprisingly perceptive and observant sometimes. Inferna's a bit of a hypocrite in that she's not afraid to call out stupid bullshit when she sees it, but she's also very much full of bullshit herself, a fact that she will freely admit to. And although she doesn't seem to take anything seriously, Inferna can and will hold a grudge until the end of time if you piss her off enough.

Finally, some people can find her downright annoying, which Inferna is also perfectly fine with. She's quite self-aware, despite what one may think after interacting with her, and she's definitely not as clueless or oblivious as some people think she is-it's just a matter of if she cares enough to confront somebody about something. And, spoiler alert: nine times out of ten, she doesn't.

“I do things for two reasons, and two reasons only: 1) spite, 2) the aesthetic. That’s it.” 

Biography: Inferna had a pretty normal childhood, all things considered; she was a rebellious kid for sure, but her parents were patient with her and let her do what she wanted, so long as her grades didn’t slip (granted, her mom was pretty pissed when she decided that she wanted red hair on a whim one day and just went ahead and got it dyed, but beyond an annoying lecture, there were no other consequences). Inferna got into the gaming scene pretty quickly as a kid - she passed over stupid games like Call of Duty for ones where she could fuck people up and look cute, like League of Legends or World of Warcraft. 

Inferna got into a fairly decent public university in Baltimore, and was subsequently pressured into pursuing an undergrad degree in computer science by her parents. Inferna thinks that CS is alright - it’s not her favorite thing in the world, but it’s not unbearably boring like reading wack ass Shakespeare plays and then bullshitting a 2000-word essay about it - and so far, she’s passed all her classes. Which has to count for something, right?

Inferna decided to check out Gem Quest not long after it was released to the public, during the summer after her sophomore year of college. The only reason she really decided to was because she was tired of forking over $10 for each damn skin in League, and with a game like League, what was the fucking point if she couldn’t have a cute character? She slowly got more into it as time went on - the character customization options were absolutely gorgeous, plus she liked being able to actually sample the in-game foods - and it was strangely freeing, in a way, to be able to go on her own adventures and explore everything the levels had to offer. A way better use of her time than sitting in the library trying to debug her goddamn code, in Inferna’s opinion.

As Inferna began to take Gem Quest more seriously, she built a reputation for herself as That Bitch (TM).Thanks to her penchant of hoarding items and coins, she has gotten quite coin-rich, and thanks to her affinity with games that were similar to Gem Quest, she quickly advanced through the easier levels. 

Inferna was...surprisingly nonchalant, regarding G’s recent announcement that players could not freely leave the game anymore. She figures that if something horrible happens, she can always steal a relinquium potion from some rando, but until then, she’s just going to enjoy life. G told the real world about the development, Inferna’s assuming, meaning that her parents won’t be expecting her anytime soon. It’s selfish of her to just leave them out there worrying about her, really, but Inferna doesn’t want to go back to the real world, not just yet - one day, she’ll steal that relinquium potion and finish her degree like she’s supposed to, get a 9-5 office job like she’s supposed to, spend all her time on boring software development like she’s supposed to - but right now, she just wants to have some fun.

Relationships:

ENTHRONED - Inferna met Neddy for the first time in Finvarra’s Gardens (Level 10), which Inferna beat a long time ago but returned to because she remembered that the level had the most gorgeous pastries (she forgot that eating/drinking anything would trap her on the level for the rest of the game). Neddy reminded her of that rule, and Inferna spent an inordinate amount of time fawning over Jack like he was a puppy (before asking to ride him, which Neddy agreed to). Inferna thinks Neddy is super cute and generally likes both her and Jack.

Eventually: realizing that Inferna and Plagueis have run into each other before + Inferna has heard the rumors about him and Bloodbriars having the Supernova scroll, Inferna helping Neddy beat Level 30 because she thinks dodgeball is fun

MORNINGSTAR - Inferna met Morningstar in the depths of the Descend one day before the first event. Noticing Morningstar’s potioneering supplies, Inferna asked her if she had anything that would “make it feel like being high on weed, not this red gas stuff that’ll probably give me cancer” (Inferna’s not like, that big on weed, but she likes it on occasion, and kind of misses getting high). 

Eventually: form a small two-person party together, Morn being all starry-eyed about Inferna telling her about how she’s fucked around in general (going to college parties, getting absolutely wasted, getting twisted, just generally dumb college freshman shit), somehow realizing that Inferna knows Emily through a League Discord server

CHAR -

Playlist:

"DDU-DU DDU-DU” by Blackpink

“Fire” by 2NE1

“Friends and Foes” by Higher Brothers ft. Snoop Dogg

“Dalla Dalla” by Itzy

“Icy” by Itzy

“My New Swag” by VAVA ft. Nina Wang & Ty

“Solo” by Jennie of Blackpink

“Boombayah” by Blackpink

“Just Like Fire” by Pink

“High Hopes” by Panic! at the Disco

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ayzrules/leak-college-textbook-pdf-files-not-nudes-gq/

[academiceve]

Grad Profile #1: Interview with a Health Psychology Masters Student

I thought that it would be fun to introduce interview style blog posts on my blog! I have friends in amazing places, doing amazing things, some of which are attending graduate programs! I would also like to talk more about Psychology and what it is like to continue your studies in one of the subfields, so I hope I can hunt down more people but also include those in different disciplines too!

This first interview is with my dear friend, whom I know from undergrad, as we both studied Psychology. She is currently in her 2nd year of a Health Psychology masters program. 

The Interview

1. Why did you decide to study Psychology for undergrad and what was your experience like?

Psychology was not actually the initial undergrad choice. I got interested in the subject sometime after taking an elective Psychology class in high school. It grew on me. Then after some researching and career testing, I decided to stick to the field. It was one of the best decisions I could have made. I thoroughly enjoyed my undergrad studies.

2. Name 3 favourite/least favourite Psychology subjects that you had to take during your undergraduate studies.

The favourite courses that I had in undergrad were definitely Abnormal Psychology, Marriage and Family, and Family and Addictions. The subjects were interesting on their own, what with dealing with different psychological disorders, subtleties of family life, and a broader understanding of addiction disorders. In addition, they were taught by the most amazing professors, who were really passionate about their subjects and knew a great deal, both from an academic standpoint and from personal working experience.

Meanwhile the subjects I liked the least were Evolutionary Psychology, Organisational Psychology and, as useful and necessary as it is in the field, Statistics. The first two subjects were simply not as appealing to me (and were perhaps taught by the wrong people). Meanwhile, statistics was never, and is still not my thing. I think that it’s alright because not everyone is destined for research and not everyone has to like the same things. The important thing is to try.

3. How did you know that you would like to further your studies by obtaining a masters degree?

For me, getting a masters degree was never a question of wanting it. It is just something that has to be done in order to actually work in the field. The question I had to face was figuring out which masters to get.

4. How and why did you choose to study Health Psychology for your masters degree? Talk a little about your program, how long it is, what kind of classes you take, etc.

Choosing Health Psychology for my masters was not an easy choice. It involved a lot of research and a lot of talking. There were talks with professors, family and friends. The first offered their professional insights. Family, meanwhile, helped to figure out the financial/scholarship matters. Lastly, friends were there to listen and to offer their own insights. Honestly, sometimes, it felt less like talking and more like rambling about the same thing over and over again. But it helped. All the options were considered. It makes me all the more glad that I had someone to talk to.  

As for the program itself, the Health Psychology program takes two years to complete and consists of 120 credits. Each semester consists of classes worth 30 credits. It amounts to about 5 subjects each semester, except for the last, which has only 2 that are worth more credits: second practicum and thesis writing and defense. There are several mandatory classes, such as counselling and psychological evaluation, statistics (yay, but sarcastically), rehabilitation, etc. Then there are 3 elective classes that can be taken. For the thesis, it takes 3 semesters to write. The first semester is dedicated to literature review and introduction, the second to methods and the last one to discussion and results. 

5. What do you like/dislike about studying Health Psychology? Is it what you expected it to be? Is it different from what you expected? If so, how?

In regards to my personal liking of the program, I can say that I am rather enjoying it. Some of the subjects are particularly interesting and valuable. For instance, I do not know what I would have done without the psychological evaluations class or the mock counselling sessions in various other classes. They were the basis I used during the first practicum, where real people came with real problems and real psychological evaluation needs. My masters was my standing rock, helping me bit by bit become better at what I want to do in my life.  

Other subjects are naturally, not as interesting or valuable. Then again, it has to do with personal interests and qualifications of people teaching them. You might be surprised to hear that sometimes a person with three degrees and teaching a masters course might have no idea what they are talking about.

On an ending note, here is something I wish someone would have told me.  It might sound out of blue but I hope it helps. Health Psychology, while part of the medical psychology branch, deals a whole lot more with somatic diseases and their psychological treatment, e.g. diabetes or heart attacks, and less so with psychological disorders, e.g. depression or schizophrenia. Clinical, meanwhile, does the opposite. That said, if there is anyone out there undecided between health psychology and clinical, really consider that distinction. While I made my choice, no one made it clear enough while I was applying. To me the two fields seemed completely overlapping (I was wrong). 

6. How did you feel before beginning your masters studies? What the transition from undergrad to post grad was like?

Starting something new can be a pretty scary experience. It was for me. Especially because I had to move to another city. It was my biggest leap of independence yet. Though, scary as it was, I was still excited for my studies. As for the transition, I expected it to be more challenging. It wasn’t easy and there were certainly days when I called my family or my friends and told them that I wanted to quit, to come back home, to try again later or maybe never. I was fortunate to have them there at those times. Then, as the academic year went on, I made new friends, I got adjusted to the different system, different language, new professors and a schedule that was absolutely different than the one in undergrad. All in all, life got better.

7. What was your first year experience like of your master’s degree?

I started the year very excited, albeit a little scared. There were ups and downs, subjects I adored, professors who were amazing, then there were classes I skipped (yes, even in grad school) and the professors I dreaded hearing lecture. Then the motivation was gone. I am not entirely sure why. Health Psychology is something that I do like. Perhaps what I missed was a gap year, to take a break from academics. The summer that I took off was not enough.

So here’s another advice: if you feel like you need a break, take it. No one knows you better than you. Maybe you don’t need a break, maybe you can go into grad school right away and nail those several years. If not, rest. Grad school won’t go away.

In my personal experience, I don’t regret the decision of not taking a gap year. I had an enjoyable year. I just don’t know if I would make that decision again given a second chance.  

8. Is the workload different from undergrad? If so, how? Do you do more work now or is it about the same? Do you have days off? Any tips for adjusting to the workload in graduate school?

It’s rather difficult to compare the workload between undergrad and grad school. In undergrad, the classes were spaced out during the week, Monday to Friday, usually every day; there was a lot of homework, a lot of reading. Now, the days I need to physically go into class range from two to maximum three, as a way to benefit students who also work. The readings are still just as plenty but I guess undergrad teaches what to read, what to skim and what to pretend to have read. For homework, well... It’s all about whether you manage your time right. If I did my assignments at the rate I allowed myself in undergrad, I would have failed the year. The expectations are much higher, instructions are fewer, and getting used to writing papers in my native tongue after doing it in English for four years has been difficult. Do not even get me started on the length. Enjoy undergrad while you can.

Key to getting everything done comes down to time management, multitasking and a few other things I would like to briefly expand upon. One, it is crucial to communicate with your professors. Look at your assignment due dates (make a list of those) in advance. If you see that a semester worth of assignments is crammed into a single week, tell them. The professors can and usually adjust the dates to benefit the students. Unless they are told hours before or after the due date. Two, for the love of puppies, take time off. Go see a movie, read a book, invite a friend over for tea, whatever you like, the important part is that you don’t fry your brain trying to do everything in one sitting. Leave that for the midterms and finals. Everyone says they will study ahead but no one does. Cure? None.

9. How do you manage your time? Are there any productivity/time management apps/tools that you use?

As said above, time management is crucial. To better succeed at it, I have all of my due dates for assignments listed. It helps me decide which projects are a priority, how much time I can dedicate to each, by when I should be done.

Another tool is making a list of everything that needs to be done, say, in a day. Write it down on a sticky note, a piece of paper, whichever; it helps to keep focused. It is also very satisfying to cross things out.

Lastly, I would like to promote Zotero or Refworks when it comes to making “References”. It saves a lot of time and frustration. It stashes all the read articles in a single place and makes references for you with a few single clicks. Saved me hours!!!

10. What was the application process like for grad school for you? Did you have to do a lot more/or less in comparison to undergrad? Did you have to have an interview?

Contrary to undergrad application, which has a national-wide online system to help you out, applying to grad school is on you. Every university has different application dates and deadlines and there are always the application fees. Universities also limit to how many of their programs you can apply to. Mine had four (for both paid and government financed studies), meanwhile another university I applied to had twelve. Most require to come for an interview. Applying is rather stressful and much more independent. Though, at that point in life, it’s not something you can’t handle.

11. Since you had to do an interview, please share what kind of questions they asked you and any tips that you have preparing for an interview.

As much as I would love to share my interview experience, I am afraid it’s already mostly lost to me. I was super stressed out on the day because it was my number one choice program. What I do remember was being asked why I wanted to study in their university, why the particular program, would I still come to study there if I did not receive a scholarship (which was an option for me) and if I could read 10 English books in a year (still don’t know the point of that). I think they also asked me to tell them about my professional experience. Not that any undergrad has much. It then helps to speak of conferences, what you’ve attended, if you’ve presented somewhere.

Interviews are scary, but they shouldn’t be. Just remember that the interview is such a small tiny thing. Even if it doesn’t work out the first time, you can try again. A lot depends on our cognitions. If we tell ourselves it is frightening, then we make it so, in turn making ourselves more prone to “stress mistakes”. If we don’t, it’s not. I think I remember telling myself: “whatever happens, happens”, before going inside. That helped. Besides, the outcome depends as much on the interviewers’ moods, personalities and personal bias, as it does on your personal input. 

More specifically, to please the interviewer(s) you should look up your program. Knowing what classes you may be able to take and gushing how excited you would be to take them is really a bonus. Tell them how it aligns with your professional interests, so have at least some idea what your professional interests are.

12. What are the top 3 study tips that you use while studying for your masters degree?

Write down due dates and start completing the assignments at least several days before it has to be turned in.

Do readings on time.

Make detailed ‘to-do’ lists for the assignments at hand. Cross off completed work to feel better.

13. I know that this is the most annoying question, but after your masters studies, do you have an idea of what you would like to do? Talk about your dream career choice. What kind of further schooling you will need to achieve it?

Doing my practicum has helped me realise that I would really like to work as a health psychologist. I found that I rather enjoy doing psychological evaluations and counselling people. I am well aware that I still lack the skill and the practice. It makes me look forward to the second practicum, where I will get a chance to improve and learn more. And after I am done, I hope I can apply my knowledge and continue to improve as I work. I do wish to go into one of the psychology schools and become a psychotherapist. Perhaps, sometime later in life, once I’ve rested from the academics and actually earned the money necessary to further my studies. We’ll see. I’d like to be hopeful and encourage the same in others.

I hope you enjoyed this interview and a massive thank you to my friend for agreeing to answer questions and talk more about her experience in graduate school! If you would like to read more from me, click HERE to see other blog posts! You can also follow my studygram HERE for some inspiration! 

[reactingtosomething]

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Holiday Shopping with Reacting to Something

stock photo shamelessly lifted from

We know we haven’t generated original content in a very long time, but we wanted to get into the holidays in a way that was more or less on brand. So in the spirit of a Netflix recommendation algorithm, here are some suggestions for what to buy friends and family who liked some of the movies we saw in 2018 (including a couple that premiered in late 2017).

It’s probably obvious, but just to be super clear, the format below is --

If they liked this: They may also like this

Miri’s Gift Guide

The Shape of Water: I shouldn’t say a day pass to an aquarium because it’s a terrible, easy joke BUT I AM WHO I AM.

If you’re not a garbage person, maybe consider the rest of Del Toro’s creature filmography, anything related to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or a collection of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen. Dark and gritty originals, not the tidied up versions.

Call Me By Your Name: NO, I WILL NOT SAY ANYTHING TO DO WITH PEACHES BECAUSE EVEN I HAVE LIMITS. APPARENTLY. The book is a lovely, lyrical, tragic read (or listen, if you go with the Armie Hammer audiobook as I did), and I would also recommend giving a gift of solitary artistic pleasure in whatever way speaks to your intended recipient—a CD, a ticket to an art exhibit, a coffee table book of a painter you think they will love. Something beautiful that requires a little bit of space to enjoy privately.

Black Panther: The new Shuri comic! (I am a hypocrite because I haven’t read it yet but it looks so awesome!) Also, there are some choice funko pops for Black Panther, which are a nice, reasonable price and make a great desk or bookshelf addition.

Annihilation: A DVD of Arrival and a book on fascinating genetic mutations. (The photo above is from the first linked book.) Also, tell them about the Twitter account Tessa as Goats, which is a true gift to us all.

Game Night: A murder mystery game! Or whatever game you think most appeals to them, but I personally think the immersive nature of a murder mystery is a true delight. Also, something Olivia the Dog themed because she’s awesome.

A Wrinkle in Time: For the actual child: one of the books published under the Rick Riordan Presents banner.

For the child in all of us: a soothing and/or empowering adult coloring book and some nice colored pencils.

Thoroughbreds: Really cool sunglasses.

Love, Simon: Tickets to the upcoming Clea DuVall helmed queer rom com starring Kristen Stewart and YES this is a request for myself, obviously.

Blockers: Make them a dance music playlist on Spotify!! (Or burn an actual CD for peak nostalgia/those who enjoy physical media.) And if you have some time together, have your own dance party with as many or as few people as you want.

photo illustration by 

Ocean’s 8: LEVERAGE! BUY THEM A SEASON OF LEVERAGE!!! Give them the gift of even more cons and fun!

Incredibles 2: If they are parents: a night out without the children (this could mean a gift certificate or an offer to babysit). If not, try something heroic like these ornaments, or something that helps them learn to be their own hero, like a self defense or kickboxing class.

Tag: LASER TAG! It’s so fun, even if you’re bad at it! Give a gift card or book a session together and enjoy chasing each other around like giant, fun-loving idiots.

photo illustration from

Set It Up: A massage. Anyone who related to this movie too much is likely very much in need of stress relief. Also, a large quantity of popcorn to be eaten in whatever manner they wish with no shame at all.

Hotel Artemis: A Swiss army knife and a couple of airplane bottles of booze.

Sorry to Bother You: An Oaktown t-shirt (I have been told by someone from the area that this is A Thing but I don’t actually know and I’m sorry for that) and a copy of Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

Crazy Rich Asians: Ideally, a whirlwind food tour of Singapore. If that’s not feasible, a Hulu subscription so they can enjoy Constance Wu’s full comic potential in Fresh Off the Boat. And a really nice candle, because it’s a small decadence that can really go a long way.

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before: The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory (if they like a steamy read), tall socks (if they like to be cozy and cute), and custom stationary (if they like to live dangerously).

A Simple Favor: A cocktail shaker, fancy bitters, a really good mystery novel.

Widows: Tickets to go see Widows again because it’s amazing and is probably even more amazing a second time.

Kris’s Recommended Reading 

Wildlife or Widows: The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness

As I say in my Amazon review, this is the best applied ethics text I was never assigned. In fairness to my professors, attorney-turned-journalist Jill Filipovic hadn’t written it yet when I was a philosophy student. Filipovic is also not a philosopher. But she is a brilliant writer and a rigorous thinker, and The H-Spot is fundamentally and explicitly an Aristotelian ethical project. That is to say, it takes the starting position that political organization should be aimed at the goal of human flourishing (as opposed to, say, economic growth). From there Filipovic builds a case, or maybe it's better to say several cases, for specific ways in which American policy fails women and disproportionately women of color in this aim, and concrete ways in which it could address this failure. She does so largely through first-hand accounts of several women across America, in a wide range of socioeconomic circumstances. Although the institutions and less formal systems in play are complicated, the questions at the heart of all this are simple: What do women want? What do women need?

Filipovic asks these questions without pre-judgment, and without assuming that any answers are too unrealistic to consider. Not that anyone she talks to asks for anything "unrealistic." Partly this is because they often speak from too much experience for the unrealistic to occur to them as something they deserve to ask for, but also, the idea that woman-friendly policy is unrealistic is a Bad Take to begin with. Filipovic doesn't need to be pie-in-the-sky utopian to show how things could be much better for women (and by extension, it should but still doesn't go without saying, for everyone).

I left academic philosophy over five years ago, but I really think each chapter (built around topics like friendship, sex, parenting, and food) is brimming with potential paper topics for grad and undergrad students of ethics and/or political philosophy. Whether you’re philosophically inclined or not, if you think “women should be happy” and “the point of civilization is to make happiness easier for everyone” are uncontroversial claims, The H-Spot is the book for you -- and for your friends who loved the several underestimated women of Widows, or Carey Mulligan’s captivating portrayal in Wildlife of a woman doing the best she could within the restrictions of her era.

Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet

Though it helps to have some familiarity with the Avengers storylines that led up to Ta-Nehisi motherfucking Coates’s first year on the Black Panther comic -- as well as with the excellent opening arc of Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man -- here’s all that even a new comics reader really needs to know before jumping into Nation: King T’Challa, the Black Panther, was recently unable to prevent several consecutive disasters in Wakanda. Both as a cause and as a result of these disasters, T’Challa worked with the so-called “Illuminati” (Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Stephen Strange, and other intellectual and strategic heavyweights) to prevent the end of the multiverse itself. That crisis averted, T’Challa has returned to Wakanda to resume his royal duties.

Coates takes as a starting premise that Wakanda, the most advanced nation on earth, would only still have a hereditary monarchy if the monarch was uniquely suited as a protector of the people. In the wake of the Panther’s failures in this regard, Nation opens with a rebellion against T’Challa’s rule on two fronts: domestic terrorists with an unknown agenda on one hand, and on the other, former officers of the Dora Milaje (the all-female royal bodyguard corps beloved by fans of the movie) rallying Wakandan women who have suffered great injustices unaddressed by the crown. The leaders of the latter, lovers Ayo and Aneka, are nominally antagonists to T’Challa, but to the reader they’re parallel protagonists. You root for both T’Challa and the Dora Milaje, even though their agendas are in tension, not unlike the way one might have rooted for both Tyrion Lannister and Robb Stark in early Game of Thrones. (Shuri’s around too, though she’s quite unlike her movie counterpart.)

When he’s not fighting or investigating, T’Challa does a lot of soul-searching and debating about his responsibilities as king, the ways it conflicts with his career as a globetrotting superhero, and whether and how the government of Wakanda must evolve. Though Wakanda is too small to be considered a superpower, the domestic terror angle, an interrogation of historical injustice, and the struggle between moral idealism and political reality make Wakanda a proxy in some important ways for modern America. (You may have noticed that Ryan Coogler did this too.) Coates’s meditation on leadership and political power made A Nation Under Our Feet not only a great superhero comic but -- this is not an exaggeration or a joke -- my favorite political writing of 2016.

Nation is illustrated mostly by Brian Stelfreeze and Chris Sprouse, with colors by Laura Martin; some of Stelfreeze’s designs clearly influenced the movie.

Thoroughbreds: Sweetpea

When a clever, mean-spirited would-be journalist with airhead friends learns that her boyfriend is cheating on her, old traumas bubble to the surface and she becomes a serial killer who targets sex offenders. Darkly, often cruelly hilarious, Sweetpea is what you’d get if American Psycho was set in southwestern England and for some reason starred Amy from Gone Girl. Protagonist Rhiannon is a self-described inhabitant of an Island of Unfinished Sentences, de facto Chief Listener of her “friend” circle, and a maker of lists. Lists of the things her friends talk about (babies, boyfriends, IKEA), signs she’d like to put up at work (please close doors quietly, please do not wear Crocs to work), and oh, the people she wants to kill. Like her boyfriend, at the moment. Or ISIS, when news coverage of a terror attack pre-empts her beloved MasterChef.

Author C.J. Skuse smartly chooses not to have Rhiannon wallow in her traumatic past as many superheroes do. We get glimpses for context, but Rhiannon is committed to moving forward, to escaping her demons rather than being defined by them. It matters that she wants to get better, even if she also hates that she’s bought into society’s definition of “better.” (#relatable)

It’s worth noting that Sweetpea leans seemingly uncritically into a lot of dated gender tropes, in Rhiannon’s assessments of the women around her. (Body positive she is not.) Then again, she’s an unreliable narrator -- one of the best demonstrations of this is a scene in which she’s convinced of her ability to fool the world into believing she’s normal, then overhears her dipshit co-workers talk about how unsettling she is -- so arguably we’re supposed to laugh at how terrible she is without necessarily agreeing with her. This is, I think, a perfectly legitimate approach to a protagonist, even if some find it unfashionable.

The book is not quite as thematically rich as it first appears, at least on the topic of sexual violence; it indulges a “stranger danger” picture of rape that doesn’t feel entirely contemporary. (For a more nuanced treatment of rape culture, see the sadly short-lived but wildly entertaining vigilante dramedy Sweet/Vicious.) But as a portrait of a vibrant, layered, genuinely Nasty-and-you-kinda-love-her-for-it woman -- given Oscar-caliber-portrayal-worthy life by Skuse’s wickedly sharp voice -- Sweetpea is too fun to pass up.

Upgrade or Infinity War: The Wild Storm

Castlevania showrunner Warren Ellis helped redefine superhero comics with 1999’s The Authority, which at DC’s request he's given a Gritty Reboot (along with the WildCATS, whom some of us remember from this extremely 90s cartoon) in The Wild Storm. Ellis has always been interested in The Future, both its potential wondrousness and its probable horror. Fans of Upgrade’s refreshingly unsanitized (and unsanitary) take on human enhancement through body modification will find much to like in Ellis’s spin on the trope of second-skin powered armor. (He semi-famously wrote Extremis, one of the comic arcs that inspired Iron Man 3.)

art by Jon Davis Hunt, from The Wild Storm #1

Angela Spica, a reimagining of Ellis’s old Authority character The Engineer, is a cybernetics expert who stumbles onto a sort of shadow government conspiracy related to her employer, and goes on the run with the armor she’s designed for them. (When not deployed, the armor is stored inside her body.) Angela is quickly targeted by multiple covert organizations, one of which rescues (?) her and brings her in on a secret history of technological arms races and contact with extraterrestrials. The Wild Storm is full of big action and bigger ideas, and for smart, generally curious superhero movie fans who find the decades-long continuities of the DC and Marvel universes intimidating, it’s a great entry -- with a blessedly planned ending -- into sci-fi-comics.

Happy holidays, and have fun gift shopping!

[piperemerald]

I Don’t Hate You

I have commissions open for anyone who wants more Ereri! 

Fandom: Attack on Titan

Paring: Ereri

Word Count: 4,475

Summary: When Levi’s link started he was fifteen and pissed off at love. When Eren’s started he was eight and barely understood soulmates, much less why his was inking his skin with insults. As they grew older, the writing became a game. They both knew that they were never going to ride off into the sunset together, even if Levi secretly wished he could turn back time and be the soulmate Eren deserved.

Levi hated the feeling of regret. He hated how actions a younger and more foolish version of himself could tie him to a life he didn’t want. He hated that he had been the one to screw himself over and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

It started when he was fifteen and not ready for his life to be dictated by drawings on his arms. He had the wonderful example of his parents who had met a few months after their connection started, and split up a few years after having him. Around him were starry-eyed teenagers who thought that meeting whoever they were meant for was the only purpose of their lives.

Fifteen hadn’t been a good year for him. Undiagnosed depression and aggravation that he didn’t know how to direct made something ugly inside of him. He should have been more careful about how it came out, but when careless marks coated his hands one day he didn’t stop himself from marking back in spite.

Eren knew he was abnormal. If he was being completely honest with himself, he’d known that far before the connection started. He’d known it when he was a toddler and the only other kids who wanted to play with him were his adopted sister and the kid who lived next door. Still, it was easier to blame fate and bad luck.

He was eight when he was confused why there were words on his arms in a handwriting that didn’t match his own. His classmates found out what soulmates where through whimsical stories, his mother explained it to him with poorly viewed concern as she covered the crude words stained to his skin.

It took a year for him to begin to challenge the words with drawings and uneven shapes. That irritated his soulmate and gave Eren a stubborn sense of satisfaction. It became a game.

For a while no one else knew. His parents pointedly didn’t talk about the drawings and comments that covered him, while Mikasa and Armin watched him trace sloppy lines. It was almost fun. Eren started getting a kick out of the peeved insults and enjoyed thinking of new things to poorly draw.

Then there was the day he’d needed to wear a beanie to school to cover the words he couldn’t wipe off his face. Hats weren’t allowed in class, and it took less than a minute for his teacher to demand he take it off. She hadn’t liked him. She thought he was too loud.

He didn’t remember the other kids staring at him when he revealed the “fuck off” scrawled across his forehead. He just remembered the burning anger when he interrupted his teachers speech about language to shout that he hadn’t written it, his soulmate had. She was nicer to him after that. His peers weren’t.

Armin said it was because they were jealous. Eren didn’t understand why they would be, but no one listens to the freak’s side of the story. He pretended it didn’t bother him, and continued to stain his skin in defiance.

There were never words back. Levi went years without knowing what his soulmate’s handwriting really looked like, or if he could actually draw when he wasn’t just trying to be a pain in the ass. He watched the people around him fall in love with the other half of their connection and tried to block out the twist in his gut.

He didn’t want that, and he wasn’t allowed to suddenly decide that he did.

He didn’t date in high school. He was too busy trying to maintain good enough grades to earn a scholarships while working his part-time job. The closest thing he got to romance was crossing out the ugly flowers on his arms.

College was different. The random hookups he brought back to his dorm didn’t seem to care about the drawings and insults on his arms. He tangled with others who either thought romance was foolish or were saving their hearts for whoever was at the end of their connection. That kept things simple.

He made a mistake with Erwin.

“Why do you hate them?”

The question wasn’t posed innocently. Levi knew that it had been on Erwin’s mind the second that he saw him shirtless, but had thought he had the decency not to ask it. Now as they laid on Levi’s too small and stiff bed Levi didn’t have clothes to hide everything he’d inked on himself.

“I don’t.” Levi didn’t talk about this. He’d gone six years without anyone to talk about it with. That made it easier to burry away emotions.

“Then why do you do this?” Erwin’s fingers traced the latest string of cruel words that ran up Levi’s forearm.

“It’s just something I do,” Levi muttered. It was a game, and it wasn’t like his soulmate didn’t retaliate in their own way.

“You don’t think it hurts them,” Erwin started. “To know that the one person who’s supposed to love them unconditionally hates them?”

“I don’t hate them,” Levi muttered.

“How do they know that?” Erwin asked.

“Shut up,” Levi rolled over. “I’m going to sleep. Either stay or get lost. I don’t care.”

Erwin laughed, but didn’t leave the bed until the morning.

Levi had thought that would be the end of that, but Erwin wasn’t like the other guys he’d messed around with. For some reason, he’d decided to pull Levi into his circle of friends. He didn’t make him talk about his soulmate, but he sent knowing looks every so often. Levi pretended that he didn’t like having someone looking out for him. He pretended that he didn’t know that Erwin was right.

Time glossed by easily. Levi let Erwin drag him into his start up company only because he knew that once they were out of school it would be a lot harder to keep their friendship alive. He’d gotten a little too used to Erwin looking out for him.

The success came as a surprise. He went from hiding the ink with old worn jackets to masking scribbled flowers with expensive suits. He learned what it felt like to have money, to not worry about the years to come. By the age of twenty-eight he was co-CEO of a successful company and living in a penthouse.

It was the comfort that let his thoughts catch up to him.

Eren didn’t necessarily want to be a receptionist. He didn’t necessarily think he was going to get the job in the first place, but somehow he hadn’t completely failed the interview and his practically bare resume wasn’t as pathetic as he thought it was. This wasn’t where he thought he was going to be a month after earning his undergrad, but after his father refused to finically support him if he didn’t go to medical school, Eren wasn’t left with many options.

His sister was in a different state, and his best friend was barely getting by as is. Eren needed to grow up.

Levi didn’t necessarily want to introduce himself to the receptionist Hanji had hired. He honestly doubted he’d ever have to speak to the kid, since his day to day rarely involved interacting with his co-workers. That was Erwin’s forte.

But after listening to her nagging for what felt like an hour, Levi gave in and left his office to talk to the boy sitting at their front desk. He was younger than they usually hired, especially for a corporate position. Levi would blame Hanji for that much.

The boy was focused on filling out some form that Levi doubted required as much attention as he was giving it. New hires were usually like this. It would take a few weeks for him to relax.

Levi coughed.

“Shit.” The pen the boy had been holding nearly fell out of his hand, he scrabbled to catch it.

“You alright?” Levi raised an eyebrow.

“Oh yeah, sorry. I just—” He looked at the mark across his hand. Levi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Who reacts that strongly to dropping a pen? “Do you need anything?”

“No,” Levi said a little too pointedly. “Hanji said I should tell you who I am so you don’t get intimidated when I do need something.”

“Okay,” the boy looked unsure what to say now. “Hi. I’m Eren.”

Levi nodded, not feeling the need to introduce himself formally. Eren clearly knew who he was. He probably wouldn’t look this on edge if he didn’t. His gaze dropped to the files piled on the desk that Eren was probably planning to put away once he’d finished the form Levi had interrupted him from.

“Those are out of order,” Levi observed.

“No they’re—” Eren glanced at the files. “Shit.”

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Levi realized.

“It’s my first day,” Eren stammered in his defense.

It was only then that Levi took in how the boy’s worn collard shirt hung to his frame and the beginnings of circles under his bright green eyes. This was a pity hire. He should have figured that much from Hanji. The rest of the office was going to eat this kid alive.

“She didn’t show you how to organize shit?” Levi asked.

Eren shook his head.

“Okay,” Levi let out a sigh. He had better things to do today. “Let me see it.”

“You don’t have to,” Eren started.

“Contrary to popular belief I’m not the most irritable person here,” Levi told him flatly. “Either I show you how to do stuff now or you get yelled at later.”

“Thank you,” Eren smiled at him.

“Shut up and pay attention,” Levi said pointedly.

He spent the next half an hour explaining how to organize the office to Eren. Despite being clearly in over his head, the boy picked up pretty quickly. It was only when he got back to his office that Levi noticed the line running across his hand and realized that he was screwed.

Eren stayed five hours later than he had to, but decided that it was better if he left knowing what he was doing. He knew he wasn’t qualified for the job, and now his boss did too. The least Eren could do was prove that he could work hard. He’d always been good at working hard, even when he hated the work.

When he finally stepped into the elevator he didn’t expect the person who he pretty much owed his survival that day to be there as well. Eren didn’t see why the man who ran the company needed to stay so late, but he figured it wasn’t his place to ask.

“Thanks again for earlier,” Eren said to fill the silence if anything.

“Just do your job,” Levi Ackerman said curtly. He was looking at his phone.

“I will,” Eren uttered. He’d never felt so small in the presence of someone so physically smaller than himself. It was weird. “So, you’re the one who started all of this, right?”

“If by all of this you mean the company, I guess,” Levi said dryly. “It was mainly Erwin, but he lets me take credit for some of it.”

The elevator stopped at the level of the parking lot. Levi moved to exit it, but turned back to Eren before he stepped over the exit.

“You’re not getting out?” He asked.

“I didn’t park in the building,” Eren said.

“You seriously parked on the street?” Levi made a disapproving face.

“I don’t have a car,” Eren blurted. “I take the subway. It’s cheeper.”

Because this guy couldn’t already tell how hopelessly poor he was. Eren mentally smacked himself.

“It’s late,” Levi commented.

“I’m careful,” Eren assured him.

Something that Eren couldn’t read passed through the eyes of the man in front of him.

“Come on,” he said after only a moment. “I’ll give you a ride.”

Eren blinked at him.

“You don’t know where I live,” he sputtered.

“I figured you’d tell me that part in the car,” Levi said dryly. He turned to leave the elevator. Eren followed him into the parking lot.

“Why are you being nice to me?” He asked only when they’d reached the car.

He watched Levi narrow his eyes. He could see the question behind that. Eren knew how the world worked. People didn’t just hand out favors. Eren’s own father had refused to do that much for him. There wasn’t much someone like him could do for someone like Levi. In fact there was only really one thing, and Eren was fairly certain Levi knew that much.

“I told you,” Levi said casually. “I’m not as much of an ass as people think.”

So did that mean that he was just being kind? He wasn’t about to make a move on Eren, he was just a good person. That didn’t feel right. People weren’t just nice to Eren. He didn’t put out enough good karma to get any in return. He wasn’t like Armin or his sister.

“Yeah,” Eren met his eyes. "But why me?”

Levi sighed. He was annoyed. Eren once again wanted to smack himself.

“You seem out of luck,” Levi said in a softer, more careful voice. “I’m just trying to help.”

“No offense, sir, but I don’t want your pity.” Eren stated plainly.

“Don’t call me sir,” Levi winced. “You’re what, five years younger than me?”

“Seven,” Eren corrected. “I’m twenty-one. I did some research on the company before the interview. There’s a lot of articles about you.”

“Most of them are lies,” Levi opened the door to his car and slid into the drivers seat.  

“Right.” Eren got into the car as well.  He’d made his point, if Levi was still going to do him the favor he wasn’t really in the position to say no. Plus, it was late and he hated taking the subway at night. “I’m not out of luck. I’m just not where I wanna be right now. It’s not a big deal.”

“Saving up for school?” Levi asked as he pulled out of the reserved parking stall.

“You could say that.” Eren hadn’t thought about what he was going to do once he had enough money to stop worrying about starving or being out on the streets. “My dad, he doesn’t want to pay for anything that’s not medical school so...”

He shouldn’t have said that.

“He sounds like a piece of shit,” Levi said bluntly.

“He is.” Eren let out a laugh before he could stop himself.

He didn’t think that it was going to become a routine. He thought that Levi Ackerman was being charitable to him on his first day and that was going to be it. When his boss caught him in the elevator the next night, Eren didn’t know what to think.

Despite what most believed, Levi had never been good at handling confrontation. At a young age he had concluded that it was easiest for him just to avoid it altogether. He was fully aware of how unhealthy this solution was, but he had never been good at taking care of himself either.

Avoidance had been his plan when he realized that his new receptionist was the person he’d been verbally berating for years. When Levi was being completely honest with himself, he did feel guilty, he felt extremely guilty, and seeing Eren only made him feel worse.

This kid was vibrant and bright and Levi knew that he had to hate him. He just had to resent what a terrible soulmate Levi was.

Levi left the office on Eren’s first day planning to avoid speaking to him as much as possible. Hopefully the boy would find a better job at some point and leave his life without ever realizing that Levi was the person who had let him down so much. Then Levi saw him in the elevator.

He couldn’t just let his soulmate take the subway home at night. The station wasn’t exactly in a nice neighborhood and Levi knew full well that all it took was one person for something terrible to happen. He couldn’t stop himself from helping. He couldn’t stop himself from getting involved.

“It’s so hot today,” Eren complained.

“You’re wearing a giant coat, of course it’s hot,” Levi commented dryly. “You can take it off, it’s not like we’re in the office.”

“Right,” Eren uttered.

He needed to go clothes shopping now that he actually had money. All of his decent shirts were from his first few years of college, and that was back when he didn’t care who saw the stupid drawings and insults on his arms. Now they felt childish and unprofessional.

“It’s nothing,” he glanced down at the writing. “My soulmate hates me. We like to mess with each other.”

“That sucks,” Levi was still looking at his arm. “That they hate you, I mean.”

“It’s not that bad,” Eren said quickly. He didn’t know what to do with the thoughtful look in Levi’s eyes. They’d done such a good job of avoiding serious conversations so far. “I think it’s more entertaining than sappy love poems. That’s what my best friend’s soulmate does. It’s really cheesy.”

“That’s what Erwin did at one point,” Levi chuckled. “Don’t tell him I told you that.”

“I won’t,” Eren promised.

“Do you hate them back?” Levi probably thought that was a simple question. It wasn’t. Eren had spent too long wondering how he actually felt about the person on the other end of his connection.

"I feel bad for them,” he said after a moment. There wasn’t any point in not being honest. Part of him was pretty sure Levi would be able to see through him anyway. “Getting stuck with me and all.”

“You shouldn’t,” Levi’s voice was darker now. “They’re lucky.”

“Lucky that I spend every free second annoying them,” Eren scoffed. “It’s not even because I want to anymore, I just don’t know how to not. It’s not like I can casually write my number and hope they call it. They’ll probably just laugh at me.”

“You want to meet them?” Levi asked.

“Yeah,” Eren admitted. “I mean, I don’t expect to ride off into the sunset or anything, but it’s hard to date someone when you have these constant reminders that you’re supposed to be with someone else.”

“So if you met them, you wouldn’t be mad at them?” Levi was giving him a look that Eren didn’t understand. “For all the insults.”

“Not really.” Eren shrugged. “Like I said, it’s a game. I don’t think they actually mean them. What about you?”

“What?” Levi seemed almost startled.  

“Did you meet yours yet?” Eren asked.

“No,” Levi uttered. “I don’t think I will.”

“That sucks,” Eren hummed.

“I’m sure he can do a lot better than me,” Levi muttered.

“He?”

“I just kinda of assumed it’s a he,” Levi said sheepishly. “It sounds bad.”

“No, I get it,” Eren nodded. “I think mine is a he too. He’s probably really smart, he has that kind of handwriting, you know.”

“That’s whimsical of you,” Levi mused.

“Yeah,” Eren hummed. “Might as well be, since we’ll probably just end up bickering when we do meet. Or he’ll be disappointed.”

“You’re very down on yourself today,” Levi commented.

“Who wants their soulmate to be some kid with no ambitions who care barely afford his rent?” Eren said back.

“More people than you’d realize.” Levi didn’t sound like he was just saying this to make Eren feel better, but Eren didn’t get why else he would.

“Sure,” he mumbled. .

"He’ll like you,” Levi told him. “I promise.”

“Thanks for saying that.” Eren smiled at him, and wasn’t able to ignore how warm he felt when Levi smiled back.

Levi was in too deep, and he didn’t know how to get himself out.

“If he tried to find you, what would you do?” Levi asked one day, before he was able to stop himself. They hadn’t talked about soulmates since the car ride Eren had taken off his jacket, but questions like these had been on the tip of Levi’s tongue ever since. He just wasn’t sure if he wanted the answers.

“I don’t know,” Eren hummed.

“You wouldn’t want to meet him then?” Levi questioned.

“I thought I did,” Eren was looking at his hands.

“Right,” Levi nodded, trying to swallow the burn those words left him with. Eren knew he could do better. That was good, wasn’t it?

“It’s just,” Eren stated. “I think I want to be with someone else.”

“That makes sense,” Levi tried to keep disappointment from his voice. This was fair. This was better.

It didn’t matter that Levi realized too late that he was an asshole and hated being alone. It didn’t matter that he probably would have cared about Eren whether of not he’d realized they were soulmates. It didn’t matter that Eren had no idea that he held Levi’s heart in his hands—that he had since the beginning.

“Not because of the insults or anything,” Eren added. “It’s…”

“There’s someone else,” Levi realized.

“Yeah,” Eren gave a small nod.

Why did that hurt so much worse?

“Your friend?” Levi asked.

“Armin? God no,” Eren let out a laugh. “He’s like my brother.”

“It’s fine to not be with your soulmate,” Levi knew Eren needed to hear this from someone, and for some Goddamn reason the kid did still respect him. “Not enough people realize that, but it is.”

“I don’t think he feels the same way,” Eren sighed.

“I doubt that,” Levi said dryly.

“What?” Eren blinked at him.

“You’re a catch, kid,” Levi informed him.

“I’m not a kid,” Eren muttered.  “I know I don’t have a shot with him. That’s what sucks. It’s like I don’t want to be happy. The second I let myself think that maybe my soulmate might want me I start falling for someone I can’t have.”

“Did he say you couldn’t have him?” Levi asked. He tried to imagine anyone turning Eren down.

“No,” Eren admitted.

“Go for it,” Levi all but instructed. “Trust me.”

Of all the ways for the closest thing they’d had to a moment to be shattered the car behind them crashing into the back of Levi’s car was not what he would have imagined.

The vehicle surged forward. Levi felt a sharp pain as his arm collided with this side of the wheel. He heard the screech of the car that had smashed into them speeding away.

“Fuck!”

Levi could not believe this was happening. Quickly he served them to the side of the road. He didn’t need to see his car to know there had to be a huge dent. He really wasn’t in the mood for this.

“Are you okay?” He turned to Eren.

“Yeah.” Eren looked out of breath and thoroughly freaked out, but there didn’t seem to be any damage. “Your arm—”

“It’s nothing,” Levi brushed off. He tried to ignore the pain, and assess the situation. Him loosing his shit wasn’t going to do them any good. “God-fucking-dammit. Did you see the license plate?”

“No,” Eren shook his head. The car that hit them was long gone, and Levi doubted that the traffic cams had clear enough footage for it to be tracked down.

“I hate this city,” Levi groaned.

“Levi, your arm—” There was too much concern in Eren’s voice.

“It’s nothing,” Levi said again.

“Your bleeding,” Eren reached forward.

“Don’t—”

Levi tried to pull away, but he was too late. Eren’s gentle hands had already pushed back his sleeve, revealing a sloppily drawn flower on his wrist the Eren had to recognize.

For a second, he didn’t react. It was only when Levi had pulled the sleeve over the drawing that the shock began to spread over Eren’s face. Levi watched him mentally rewrite everything that had happened since they first met. He watched whatever trust he had managed to gain dissolve.

“Eren, I—”

“I have to go,” Eren unbuckled his seatbelt. He pulled the bag at his feet onto his lap.

“We’re miles away from your apartment,” Levi reminded him.

“I’ll take a cab,” Eren opened the door.

“Please, just let me explain,” Levi begged.

“No.”

The next day Levi was informed by Hanji that Eren had quit his job. He knew that this was his fault, that he’d asked for this the moment he’d written that first insult, but that didn’t make him feel any less empty.

Eren didn’t know what kind of reaction to expect when he showed up outside of the building he used to work at a week after the car accident. He knew someone would see him and tell Levi. He just hoped that would be enough to get Levi to come outside. He didn’t want to write for him to on his arm. That didn’t feel right.

“What are you doing here?” Levi was good at concealing his emotions—Eren knew this too well—but right now he was wide open. Eren could see surprise and hope in his eyes. That made him smile despite himself.

“I don’t hate you,” Eren told him.

“Okay?” Levi gave him a quizzical look.

“Do you hate me?” Eren asked.

“No,” Levi shook his head.

“You could have said something,” Eren exhaled.

He knew that Levi had to have reasons, but that didn’t mean that keeping him in the dark was okay. If it had been anyone other than Levi, Eren knew he would have been a lot angrier. But he couldn’t find it in him to fight with Levi. He just wanted them to be on the same page and figure out where to go from there.

“After years of being an ass?” Levi scoffed.

“I said it didn’t bother me,” Eren reminded him.

“It bothers me,” Levi said strongly. Eren felt something inside him relax. That was all he needed to hear.

“Do you want to go out on a date with me?” He asked.

“Really?” Levi blinked at him. Dumbfounded was a new look for Levi. Eren liked it.  

“We could start over,” Eren suggested.

"I’d like that,” Levi smiled at him.

“Me too,” Eren said.

“What about the other guy?” Levi suddenly asked. The guarded fear on his face made Eren want to laugh.

“He’s you,” Eren told him.

“What?”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

“You asked me for advice about having feelings for me?” Levi shook his head.

“I’m an idiot,” Eren admitted.

“You are,” Levi laughed. “A date sounds nice, one condition, though.”

“What?”

“Come back to work,” Levi took a step closer to him. “You need to pay your rent, idiot.”

“Does that mean we get to make out in your office?” Eren asked cheekily.

“Shut up,” Levi uttered before pressing his lips to Eren’s.

[sage-nebula]

For the autumn asks : Pumpkin, Cinnamon, Crow.

Crow:  Which school subject do you wish you had an aptitude for?

Math.

Truth be told, it’s less that I even wish I had an aptitude for it, per se, and more that I wish that it was possible for me at all. I can do basic math, and I memorized my multiplication tables because I wasn’t allowed to eat until I could recite them, but I still don’t know how to do long division (does that count as basic?), and I have a diagnosed learning disability as it pertains to mathematics. It’s difficult for me to gauge distances, time management is a real struggle, and all of this goes back to the fact that my brain is wired in such a way that holding numbers in my head and understanding mathematical concepts is nigh impossible. I had to have my math general education credit waived during my undergrad because I tried to get it four separate times, in different courses, and just could not pass with a grade high enough in a course that qualified to get the credit. I gave myself stomach ulcers to get a C in Basic Math, only to have that not count. When I took College Algebra, I would understand the lesson all right when I was in the class, but when I’d try to do my homework at home, I’d have to re-teach myself the material using the book. Ten problems would take me two or three hours to complete, and you can’t use the book on the exams, so I was basically screwed. How I ever managed to get through math in K-12 is a wonder, but the fact that I did fail geometry junior year and had to attend summer school for it isn’t a surprise at all, in retrospect.

All of that said, not only do I wish that I didn’t have a learning disability because of the sheer Hell it put me through, but I also wish that I had mathematical ability because a lot of the fields I’m interested in require it. Anything pertaining to space exploration or travel is barred to me, because the sciences that go into that field are math-heavy. Computer programming not only requires some mathematical ability, but programming itself is heavily rooted in a type of reasoning that leans heavily into the mathematical portion of one’s brain. It’s something that my brain just cannot process, no matter how much I would love to learn (and believe me, I would love to learn, and I have tried to learn, but it’s like there’s a block there I just can’t get past). My brain just will not hold or process those numbers.

So when I say “I hate math,” it’s not so much that I hate math itself as much as it is that I hate all of the time I spent crying because I felt like I was too stupid to do understand simple math problems. I hate the stomach ulcers I gave myself in university, and the emotional breakdowns I had because I thought I wouldn’t be able to graduate with my creative writing degree because I couldn’t pass a math course. I hate the fact that there are so many beautiful parts to math, such as the fact that it’s the universal language that everyone theoretically should be able to understand and learn, but that I can’t because my brain simply won’t process it. And to be honest, I hate people when talk about how, oh, yeah, math is frustrating, but they can at least still learn it, their brains can still at least process it if they try, whereas I can’t. It’s not just that I don’t want to, or that it’s a bit hard but I can do it, it’s that I have tried, and tried, and tried for hours straight, to the point of making myself physically sick, and I cannot. 

So I don’t hate math. I hate my learning disability which has made math cause me actual, physical pain, and has barred me from subjects I otherwise have vested interest in (and has made some things, like science, insanely difficult). I really wish math and I could be friends. I really, really do.

Cinnamon:  If you had to live in a time period different than the present, which would you choose and where?

THE FUTURE!

It’s hard to be more specific than that, because I’m not sure what the future holds. But whatever it holds, I’d like to think it’s better than the present, and it can’t be worse than the past. Honestly, so many people want to travel backwards in time, and I just---why? What is appealing about the past? Technology is worse the farther back you go. If you go back far enough, there is no indoor plumbing, and showers might not be commonplace. Public transportion is worse. Like . . . the past holds nothing of value. We can learn from the past, absolutely, but why would anyone want to live there? It’s gross and inconvenient. Let’s leave the past in the past where it belongs, and look instead to the future.

Think of how many incredible things the future could have. Technology could be so advanced and commonplace that universal translation devices might be $30 at most. Language barriers would be a thing of the past---we could all communicate. What if we have teleportation machines as a means of public transportation? What if we have luggage and bags that are Bags of Holding, that are their own personal, pocket dimensions that can store anything? There are so many cool inventions that are in the process of being made, and this is all technology that will make our lives better. New medicines, vaccines, and antibiotics are being discovered on the daily. Our space exploration programs are discovering new planets, and are discovering new things about known planets that could, potentially, get us off this wretched planet and into space one day. The future is where it’s at. The future has to be better than this. Or even if it doesn’t have to be, I hope it is, and we know for a fact that the past is not, so that needs to just be discarded and swept away.

I want the future to be better. And if you ask me if I prefer the future or the past, I’m going to pick the future every time. Get me a world of tech and innovation, where everyone can live freely and happily, where we’re actively striving to make each day better than the one before it. That’s the world I dream of. That’s the one I want.

Pumpkin:  Do you think that humans are inherently good or bad?

That’s a complicated question, and . . . I think it depends on the individual.

I think the word “inherently” is the main rub here. What does that mean, precisely? I think it dials down to the nature vs. nurture argument. Are we who we are when we’re born? Or are we who we are based on the environment we’re raised in, and how we’re raised within that environment? In other words, does the tabula rasa theory hold water, or not? And I think that it’s a little bit of both. I do think there are some innate qualities that we, as individuals, have, and would have no matter what. The fact that even infants can be different in terms of temperament and demeanor (e.g. I was apparently very, very quiet as a baby and didn’t cry much at all, but my older sister was apparently much fussier and more high maintenance) shows as much. Some people are bound to be more naturally determined, or more naturally shy, than others, regardless of the environment they grow up in. Some people simply are. But I also think it’s undeniable that our environments do shape us. Things like ethics, morals, virtues---these are things we’re taught to believe. And it isn’t just that. I’ve talked before about how I have C-PTSD thanks to my life expereinces, and C-PTSD is something that shapes how you behave, and how you view and interact with the world. It shapes you as you grow. I’m not sure who I would be if I didn’t have C-PTSD affecting how I see and interact with the world, and though I’ve attended therapy in an effort to recover (and though I’ve been practicing things like CBT to try and help myself heal), that doesn’t change the fact that my life experiences did shape me as a person, even though C-PTSD manifested in my psyche. (And to give an idea of how much C-PTSD affects a person, it’s sometimes recognized as a personality disorder, and can sometimes resemble BPD. So, yeah . . . it really does shape how someone develops.) How we’re raised does affect who we are as people. Our environment does shape us. So while I do think there are certain parts of our personalities that are innate, I also think that our environment plays a part in that as well. It’s not nature or nurture. It’s nature and nurture.

So to get back to the original question, what does that mean in terms of being good or bad? Well, first we must remember that “good” and “bad” are subjective. While there are some things that we as a society can generally agree upon as being good or bad (e.g. it’s good to be generous and charitable, it’s bad to murder), even then there are often qualifiers that vary from person to person. Is it wrong and bad to take a life no matter the circumstances? Or is it justified if it’s in the defense of yourself or others, or punishment for especially heinous crimes? Is it always wrong to steal, or is it justified if it’s to feed your family? Things like that---questions like that all come down to subjective beliefs and ideals. It’s why, to use a fandom example, Gryffindors are not always heroic. Gryffindors are driven by the question of Right or Wrong, but what is Right and what is Wrong varies from Gryffindor to Gryffindor. Even if a Gryffindor maintains that their ideal of Right is objectively Right, in the end it is still subjective. It’s something you feel in your gut, in your heart. There is no one answer that everyone in the world will agere with, even if many do.

So at the heart of it, what we’re dealing with is subjectivity, and even then we’re dealing with subjectivity in a nebulous area where it’s difficult to ascertain what is inherently true of an individual. Does it still count as inherent if some of their worse behaviors or beliefs are a result of the environment they were raised in? Does it count as inherent if they could potentially be swayed from these things? It’s difficult to say, and I feel that everyone would have a different take on it.

As for me . . .

At the end of the day, I think that trying to make blanket statements about humanity like this one way or the other is a mistake. As I’ve said, it depends on the individual. Yes, I do believe that there are some people---some human beings---who are simply evil. I know that people rail against this idea. You have people who try to appear “enlightened” in fandom maintaining that characters who are simply evil and awful are unrealistic, because everyone has some tragic backstory to explain their actions, or some shade of grey that makes them better, and you also have people who try to be enlightened in a different sense pointing out how all heinous people have loved ones and soft interests, and therefore it’s wrong to label people as monsters. I think that both of those so-called “enlightened” opinions are wrong. Even if someone has a tragic backstory, or even if they have some reason that they believe justifies their actions, there are some heinous actions that simply cannot be excused or sympathized with, regardless of the reason. And even if those heinous people have loved ones, that doesn’t matter. Being nice to your significant other doesn’t excuse the dozen children you raped and murdered. Liking dogs doesn’t change the fact that you believe in the systemic slaughter of millions. And even going away from extremes like that, there are people in this world who simply enjoy causing others pain. Dolores Umbridge is a horrible, horrible person. She is, at her core, evil, even if she doesn’t commit acts that are as outright heinous as, say, Voldemort (at least on the surface, because let’s not forget her willing service when the Ministry was sending muggleborns off to Azkaban for the crime of “stealing” magic). And she’s such a reviled villain in the fandom because of her realism, because for as many heinous and awful things as she does, we’ve still encountered people like her in real life who enjoy making life difficult and painful for others. People like Umbridge, who have no redeeming qualities on the surface (aside from maybe liking cats) exist. There are people like that. There are people who like to see others suffer, who are selfish, malicious, wretched people. We have political leaders in our history---in the world’s history, from pretty much every country---who have passionately believed in the horrid things they did. Practically every country on this earth has a bloody history because, at some point in time, heinous people believed that they were justified in their atrocities. And yes, I do believe that those people, however justified they felt they were, were evil. There is a saying that crops up again and again in JRPGs, and that saying is, “If there is evil in this world, it lurks in the hearts of men.” And I believe that’s a saying for a reason. I think it’s true. I think there are people out there who are, at the heart of it, evil, regardless of how justified they believe they are.

But on the flipside, there are people who are good, too. There are people who dedicate their lives to charity, to saving others, to protecting those who can’t protect themselves. Just as there are people who are, for whatever reason, evil, there are people who are good, too. The history of the world is bloody, but when atrocities happen there are those who oppose them, and those who oppose the atrocities are good. Those who gain true joy and fulfillment from helping, rather than hurting, others are good. Those people exist, too.

Again, I don’t like making blanket statement about humanity. I do think that visions of the future where everyone shares everything out of the goodness of their hearts are idealistic and unrealistic. But I also think that visions of the future where everything is bleak, and everyone hates everyone else are pessimistic and unrealistic. It all comes down to the individual. It’s our actions, and how we feel about those actions, that ultimately defines who we are. I do think there are some people that are just evil. But I also think there are some people that are just good. And I think that there are a lot of people who waver between the two, who simply are, who are doing their best, the best they can.

It’s a really complicated question, but that’s where I’m at with it right now.

[andrewuttaro]

Same Humans, Different Worlds

This was initially going to be a thread of tweets but then I realized this deserved a full post if not a lot more. I’ve tweeted and posted my thoughts on the new set of eyes we seem to be acquiring as a country right now for racial issues. The murder of George Floyd set off millions of conversations just as it set off a world of protests. For black and brown people these conversations are part of everyday life. For those of us in white America these are the uncomfortable conversations you have a couple times in history class and a few times with your family if you’re lucky. We’ve never really completed the conversation. We prefer to point out we’re all the same humans while allowing others to live in different worlds.

Black Lives Matter. It is bizarre to me how this was ever a controversial statement. When I think back on the rise of the movement and my early encounters with it, I see why. The response among white friends and family moved toward the bastardization All Lives Matter. A statement, not a movement, really to silence others. Just like with Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest we privileged populations like to misdirect: Forget his message, make it about the flag. We silenced him with the flag. People I love would say these things, not out of racism, but out of ignorance. When a white person, especially a straight white male like myself, is confronted with racism and discrimination our first reaction is always some variation of “I’m not a bigot.” We just want to clear ourselves morally as a way to not need to educate ourselves any further.

It’s wrong. It’s counterproductive. We need to be done with that. My wife and I had an interesting conversation recently. We met as undergrads at Niagara University. Niagara is a college I’m proud to call my alma mater. It is also an institution with a history and many issues. My wife and I marvel at what appears to be a disconnect between our experience of this institution and friends of ours who see it in a completely different light. Some context here: my wife and I went to Niagara for Social Work. Our line of study and our participation in service projects through Campus Ministry and what not defined our time there. For us, Niagara was our education in diversity. It was our education in Black Lives Matter.

We came from very white communities with little exposure to the issues of people who look different from us. As Social Work undergrads we learned about structural inequality, empowerment, systemic racism, and internalized sexism among so many other things. Yes, I was among only a handful of men, white men at that, in the Social Work program but the diversity I learned there wasn’t a pill for me to swallow. It was a joy. For my wife and I we were excited to build a better world and fight for equality. We still are. I recall a particularly eye opening service trip to Camden, New Jersey that taught me a lot. This was not everyone’s experience of Niagara University; far from it in fact.

My Senior Year at Niagara saw a Black Lives Matter march and rally. It was quite controversial at the time and I recall black friends of mine experiencing pushback from fellow students and yes, even professors and staff. Though I made an effort to participate in that rally I felt, as I do today, that I didn’t do enough. Discrimination and bigotry ran deep at Niagara. On numerous occasions racist incidents would happen unprovoked. After the re-election of President Obama in 2012 there was racist vandalism. Just like with Kaepernick’s very educated kneeling protest the Black Lives Matter rally at Niagara was met with a defensive, misdirecting venom. Protestors demanding a black studies curriculum had their words perverted into asking for a separate institution, as if they were demanding a new segregation. The misdirection was overwhelming but painfully familiar. The privileged white world of Niagara was clashing with another world in its midst. All these people were as close together as classmates and colleagues on a college campus.

The women on campus who spearheaded greater accountability from the administration on the MeToo Movement were met with deeply sexist rebukes from their classmates, and yes faculty too. Sexual Assault on campus was underreported and silenced more often than not. One friend of mine became a vocal advocate because of trauma in her own life and the silence she saw from Niagara’s administration. As someone who had become accustomed to checking my privilege and not really taking issue with doing so I was shocked when other friends of mine were so hostile to these movements. A close classmate of mine was accused of sexual assault and confessed it to me one day as we played video games. He passed it off as more bitching and moaning of “those people” who just want to make life harder for others. When I reported this to University authorities they said they knew of the incidents in question and to not talk about it anymore. That was the small experience I had as a straight, white, male of what it means to not be heard. Something others experienced so much more frequently.

If you’re not familiar, Niagara University is a small, private school with a less than diverse student population and faculty to match. There was and remains an affluent part of the University population that is generationally connected to the school for better or for worse. It also happens to be founded by an order of Catholic Priests called the Vincentians whose whole charism is based on charity, fighting poverty and the systemic evils that oppress humanity. These two worlds were held in ironic contrast for me in my four years there as I received an education I feel was an awakening while seeing part of the same institution that was educating me fail to live up to the dream of its own founding. My wife and I lived in one world of Niagara while our black and brown friends, as well as many of our female friends, lived in a quite different world.

I look at these experiences in the context of our current moment and think about this nation as a whole. So many of us in the white community and the middle and upper classes prefer to say the comfortable thing over the right thing. We pander to the systemically oppressed by our brief education in racial history by quoting Martin Luther King Jr. We point to peaceful protesting in his message while conveniently forgetting this man was also murdered for his activism. Like with so many incidents in recent memory, MLK’s killers were never found or charged either.

Now, even to white America, it is plain as day that this kind of thing happens all the time. What black and brown people have always known, what women have faced since the dawn of time, is no longer hidden from anyone. Credit it to smart phone cameras, protest-minded Zoomers, or a large portion of the country unemployed because of the ongoing Pandemic: there will be no hiding institutionalized hatred anymore. At the very least we ought to be serious about it this time and not look for another misdirection.

There was once a time the political authorities dealt their way out of these protest movements by identifying a leader and working through or against them. Those days are done too. A leaderless movement now delivers us a generation of change, not just by affected populations anymore. No, this is everyone who wants to even pretend they’re social responsible now; everyone who wants to stick with societal progress. Police brutality isn’t going to be something we wave off with thin blue line flags because we don’t want to face the hard truths of an institution in desperate need of reform. My white male privilege isn’t blinding me anymore. And if there is a just soul at the heart of American Democracy it won’t blind our country anymore either. The time is ripe for wholehearted change from everyone.

Just like Niagara University I think our country is a collection of institutions that are deeply flawed in need of reform. Meaningful reform takes everyone, not just those affected by the issues. When we vote we can’t just vote for our own interests anymore. We also have to vote thinking about the same humans who live in a different world right here in the same country. We’re the same humans living in different worlds. To my fellow privileged Americans: the least you can do is recognize that. The least you can do is finally say Black Lives Matter without indulging our privileged desire to misdirect.

The next thing you can do is educate yourself, and then you can act. Action is made into this aloof hobby of activists, celebrities, and politicians. No more. In a truly functional democracy with the promise of the values this country has built in, built in deep in the circuitry of it all, everyone should be active in the process. Everyone. It works better that way.

Yes, action is voting. But its also not being a bystander. It’s speaking up. It’s knowing how to listen. A wise man once told me God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason. Listen more than you talk. Act more than you react. Don’t silence the tough stuff because you can. Our country, it’s leaders, it’s institutions, right down to the small communities like Niagara University and all the little small towns who don’t know diversity. We have to be continuously learning, listening and acting not just for ourselves but for those same human beings who live in a different world right beside us.  

[ashleydpalmerusa]

How Accounting Firm Aprio Helped an Employee Make Partner at 32

The road to making partner at an accounting firm is often a long one. It generally takes about 10 to 15 years for a CPA to get to partner, so most accountants won’t receive an offer until their late 30s or even early 40s–if they ever get one at all.

But at some firms, fast partner tracks that include training and mentorship programs can get you there sooner. If making partner young is important to you, you’ll want to consider these types of offerings when making your next career move.

We sat down with Carli McDonald, partner-in-charge of R&D tax credit services at Aprio, who made partner at age 32. We wanted to see how she pulled off such an unlikely feat–and how Aprio helped her along the way.

If you want to be like Carli and take advantage of the fast partner track opportunities available at Aprio, a full-service accounting firm operating out of Atlanta, scroll down to the bottom of this article to see a list of current job openings.

Education credentials for making accounting firm partner

Going Concern: So where did your journey toward making partner start? What’s your educational background?

Carli McDonald: I went undergrad for premed, and at some point along the way I was sitting beside a female neurosurgeon at a conference and she was telling me how she gave birth and took her finals in med school the next day. She said to me, “You’ll be a female doctor and you need to make sure you find a husband who will do everything at home because you’ll need to be available for work all the time.” I thought she was right and I thought that lifestyle wasn’t for me.

I ended up with an English literature degree at Vanderbilt and I got done a semester early and was having a crisis with not knowing what to do anymore. I took two years off essentially doing different jobs at a law firm, performing client service management at a voice-over IP firm, and doing fundraising for the Boston Children’s Hospital. During that time I took the LSAT and decided to go to law school.

I wanted to do immigration adoption law. I got into that and realized that it’s a very emotional job. You have to do things like give babies back to their birth mothers if they request it within 10 days. We had to facilitate three or four of those and I realized I didn’t want to actually do that.  

During that time I was also taking tax classes and it clicked. I understood the numbers. The business part of it made sense to me. Accounting was something I could see myself doing for a career that didn’t have that emotional component.

In addition to my law degree, I got a Masters in Taxation. At that point I knew I didn’t want to work at a law firm. I was going the accounting firm route.  

The first steps toward making accounting firm partner

GC: What was your accounting firm experience like, and why did you decide to move to Aprio?

McDonald: My path was unconventional. I started at an accounting firm in the R&D tax credit practice.

My job involved interviewing subject-matter experts and talking to the client a lot. It’s one of the very few areas in a CPA firm where you have to write a technical report and give it back to the client. And it also has that numbers component. I thought it was an area where I wouldn’t get bored because there are different tasks every day.

I was there for a couple of years, and due to various reasons, I decided to make a switch. One of those reasons being I was traveling all the time. When you’re traveling, it feels like a 70-hour week because you’re doing client dinners at night and then writing emails when you get back to the hotel. Part of the reason I moved to Aprio was because I wanted to have balance in my family life.

I saw the opening at Aprio as an opportunity to take control of my career and make it everything that I thought a job should be.

Going from accounting firm employee to manager to partner

GC: How did you make the transition into management and ultimately to partner?

McDonald: The director quit after I’d been here a little over a year. We were right on the precipice of being a high-gross team and I could feel the momentum. My supervisor asked me if I needed to hire someone else to fill the director position or if I could take it on.

There are these moments in your career where you make choices. I’ve talked about not being a doctor, deciding to go to law school, and deciding to go into the R&D field. I could have said, “Let’s just bring in someone else.” But I thought I could do the job. I think sometimes in life you have to take a leap of faith and trust yourself.

Probably a week before I decided I wanted to give the director position a try, I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. I thought, “I’m not going to get this opportunity again, and I can do this. I can be pregnant and run this department.”

I got promoted to senior manager two weeks before I went on maternity leave. Then I got a midyear promotion to director, which is not traditional. And then two years later I made partner. That was after about six years total in the accounting industry and just four years working at Aprio. I never asked for these promotions either. Aprio was really good about proactively rewarding me.

We have grown exponentially every year since then. We are the top growing department in the firm. I’m really glad I decided to take that leap.

Guiding accountants on the partner track

GC: How did Aprio help you develop the skills you needed to be a partner and give you the confidence to take on such an important role at a young age?

McDonald: Aprio invests in training for their superstars and that’s something that I thought was really nice. I had mentors and sponsors at Aprio who saw things in me that I maybe didn’t see in myself. I work really hard, but part of the reason for my success is I have an amazing group of people here who really wanted me to succeed. They had an open door and open phone line policy with me. They’ve coached me on everything so that I would be ready and I wouldn’t fail.

I don’t think there are a lot of accounting firms like that. I think a lot of times what we see in the industry is that cutthroat component. The mentality of, “I might want you to succeed but not do better than I did.” I haven’t experienced that at all since I’ve been at Aprio.

In some places to make partner you have to bring in your own business. The other partners aren’t going to give you their revenue. But at Aprio, there’s a very collaborative environment.  Partners will willingly give up their revenue to the up-and-coming partner. That’s very unique for an accounting firm.

The life of an accounting firm partner

GC: What’s a typical day at Aprio like for you?

McDonald: My days are so varied. This morning we had a massive tax practice group meeting. I also oversee the special ops division at the firm that includes international tax, tax consulting, and local consulting.

Running my practice area is a massive time commitment that includes technical review, the reports in the credit work, visiting with clients, and being here for my team so they can ask me questions.  

Along with that there’s the HR component, including performance reviews and compensation decisions. We have over 25 people in my department, or 35 if you include special ops. I’m the first line of defense, and if someone has a complaint, they will come to me.

Business development is also something I do a lot of. I’m really involved in going to prospective client meetings and delivering proposals, and I run a couple of sales initiatives.  

I do limit my travel to once a month now, with a max of four days on a trip. I make time for the things that are important to me, and Aprio is very supportive and wants people to do that. We have a very flexible work environment, and I give my team a flexible environment because I want one.

I write articles and do some research. I’ll get involved with acquisitions and educating prospective clients. Any day could have something from all these different things. My days are never the same.

How you can get to accounting firm partner fast

GC: What advice would you give someone who wants to join a firm and make partner quickly?

McDonald: Work very hard and don’t be afraid to ask for what you deserve. Seek out tasks and activities that push the boundaries of your comfort zone because that’s where you’ll find growth. Ask people in the firm to mentor and sponsor you and make it be known that you want to be partner.

Get on the partner fast track at Aprio

Want to be like Carli and take advantage of Aprio’s career-nurturing culture and professional growth opportunities? Click on one of the links below to apply for an open position now.

Atlanta, Georgia accounting job openings

R&D Senior Associate (work with Carli!)

Senior Finance Manager/Controller

Transaction Advisory Director

Audit Senior Associate

The post How Accounting Firm Aprio Helped an Employee Make Partner at 32 appeared first on Going Concern.

from Accounting News https://goingconcern.com/make-accounting-firm-partner-fast-young-sponcon/

[amorremanet]

Sebastian

“ten facts about my characters” meme


1. The background on his phone is currently El Greco’s 1585 Pieta. He wanted to have a picture of one of his dogs, but then he felt like he was being mean to the other five, so he set it to the late Chewie but that just made him feel terrible because she just passed away in March, so he and Pete tried to get all six of the dogs on Seb’s couch at once but they wouldn’t cooperate, so Seb gave up and picked a painting that he likes.


(and while Seb and Pete were trying to corral six dogs onto the couch for a family portrait, Margot just kinda sat aside in one of the chairs, reading and casually telling her boys, “This isn’t going to work” and then she got to go, “I told you so” when it didn’t)



2. Seb loves nicknames, both giving and receiving, but probably his favorite nickname is the one that Pete gave him back in high school, 
“Princess.”

He earned that nickname because he was babbling about how princesses are actually pretty cool, and they can get shit done, and Pete was torn between enjoying this and being frustrated because he had to finish writing an essay for class, so he went, “Okay, if you stop talking about it right now, you can be MY princess. Would that make you happy?”

Long story short, yes. It made Seb very happy.

That said, Pete is the only one who’s allowed to call him, “Princess.” Partly, this is because Pete gets possessive of the nickname because he likes having special nickname privileges and Seb likes making his best friend happy.

On the other hand, it’s partly because Seb is used to most folks who aren’t Pete using, “Princess” to refer to him in a more dismissive, if not outright derogatory, way. There are some people whom he’d mostly be okay with using the term, if not for how much Pete likes having exclusive nickname privileges, but most people are not on that list.

But most people will be told, “I’m Pete’s Princess, not yours,” or if they try it in front of Pete, they might get told, “Hey, he’s my Princess, not yours.”

Just…… it’s not your nickname, please don’t use it.



3. In “your OC’s as text post meme” land, one of the ones that I gave him was, “in alcohol’s defense I’ve done some pretty dumb shit while completely sober too” — which is true.

Like, for example, his lower-back tattoo of Oscar Wilde’s line from De Profundis, “Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling” — which he got in the area of the lower back that is usually called something misogynistic that rhymes with, “damp scamp,” and then he was completely shocked when Todd, Margot, and Pete thought it was about sucking dick.

And Margot and Todd at least tried to explain it, while Pete just could not and fell over laughing because this was the funniest thing to happen all week, and Seb was just like, “Oscar Wilde was talking about prayer! And redemption! It’s from his prison letter to Bosie! I can see where you’re coming from but it’s not about sucking dick, oh my god, why is everyone being like this!”

—and right as Pete finally started calming down, Todd started to go, “Well… I mean, were you drinking? Just tell people you were drunk.”

Seb: “………I was completely sober. *blushes scarlet as Pete falls over laughing again**”

Seb doesn’t regret this tattoo, exactly (because if he did, he could and probably would just get it removed). But he does feel exceptionally silly for not even thinking that it was, in Pete’s words, “Like putting ‘nympho’ on the ass of your jeans, but in tattoo form” (though he still maintains that jfc, that’s not what the quote was about, why is everyone like this)



4. Seb can drive a motorcycle, and owns one, but since his cousin Jeremy died, he hasn’t really been able to ride it without getting upset and, sometimes, having panic attacks that he refuses to admit are panic attacks, because those are for people who have, “real problems” (i.e., literally everyone but him).

Anyway, he doesn’t know it yet (because they haven’t met each other yet), but Sara Grace is very interested in learning how to ride a motorcycle, and while Seb isn’t going to full-on teach her himself, he’ll be glad to give her a couple pointers, and once she has her license, he’ll gladly give her Bettie.

He absolutely named his bike after Bettie Page, because he’s a loser nerd.

5. Seb can be incredibly frustrating to deal with about some things, because he’s so open to hearing other people’s perspectives on things, and hearing most kinds of new information, and revising his opinions about most things…… but then there are other things that he just will not listen about until reality kicks him in the ass, and even that isn’t always a guarantee.

A lot of this has to do with his until-recently undiagnosed and thus untreated or improperly treated depression. Other parts of it have to do with the PTSD that he “totally doesn’t have” (i.e., he totally does have PTSD, but he thinks that he can’t possibly have PTSD because that would be an actual problem, and he doesn’t have any actual problems, because reasons).

The biggest underlying theme in the things that he’s stubborn about is that they go back to things like devaluing himself, invalidating himself and his feelings and his problems, hurting himself and/or justifying it, denying the possibility that he deserves nice things or that nice things are happening to him (e.g., “There’s no way that Stephen is flirting with me, he’s just being nice, he’s a nice person” — Seb, to Pete, after Stephen had just tried to make a joke about sleeping with Seb*), denying that anything is wrong with him or his life or anything, etc.

But, seriously? This is a guy who can, without missing a beat, jump right from complaining about how his big brother Max low-grade hates Margot and Todd, even though Max doesn’t really know them and rejects most information that contradicts his preconceived ideas of who they are and what they mean to Seb…… to insisting that Max probably hates him based more on his own anxiety and self-loathing than on any actual facts evidence of what Max feels about him

Seb is also a guy who can tell you in earnest that he’s a complete idiot, while reading Proust in the original French (and possibly complaining that none of the English translators really get it right), or can tell you that he’s an idiot and follow it up with a completely off-the-cuff lesson on Latin grammar and vocabulary, and just

Trusting Seb’s opinions about himself is a bad idea, because his opinions about himself usually have only a very select relation to reality and some things will end up being magnified while others are ignored, and he’s just not always a reliable narrator



6. Seb is a Hufflepuff, even though he doesn’t appreciate what that means because the HP series isn’t really his thing and he only got Pottermore-Sorted as part of helping Todd apologize to his teenage niece, Bianca. If Seb did understand what this means, he’d probably identify with the stereotype of, “Hufflepuff, ‘taking the lot’ means that they’re the reject House, lol” because that’s how he feels, even if it’s

 not actually accurate.

The Hufflepuff stereotype that he more accurately fits is the, “you have ten fingers? I have ten fingers! Let’s be friends!” one

Granted, it’s a lot harder for him to be like that than it used to be when he was younger, but Seb is still someone who:

decided that he wanted to be Margot’s friend because of how she seemed interesting and cool during the few minutes they spent paired up in a, “get to know the people on your hall” exercise in their freshman year of undergrad

called his Mom after meeting Todd for the first time (and trying to ask him out on a date-date, but botching it a bit and instead getting platonic coffee), because he was just so happy to have made a new friend, even if he’d totally failed to convey any potential romantic interest

and started his first conversation with the guy who would become his sponsor by noticing the CD case for Judy at Carnegie Hall in Nick’s bag and proceeding to kinda geek out at Nick about it, then ask for a bunch of Nick’s opinions

and after having a nice chat with Nick at the after-meeting coffee talk, Seb went home, where Margot was waiting with his dogs, and went, “So, I met someone at group who I really like and I really want him to like me, he’s this nice older guy, he has a cat and a husband and apparently quite a few stories that I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of, he owns an art gallery, his name is Nick, I really like him, omg”

7. Seb is a devout Catholic. It’s pretty easy for people to forget this fact (even his sponsor Nick, and sometimes even his parents), but that’s mostly because:

1. being devout doesn’t mean that he acts like what most people he deals with consider a, “good Catholic boy” (to be fair, he used to act more like that, but he really hasn’t since he was about sixteen, because that was when he had to leave his Catholic school in a pretty Not Good series of events, went to his Dad’s old prep school instead, and in short, went through Some Shit);

and 2. he hasn’t ever seen a contradiction between being gay and non-celibate and totally fine with his sexuality, and being Catholic. If you ask Seb, though, the biggest problems he’s ever had here have had jack squat to do with God or Jesus or his faith, and everything to do with other human beings being homophobic dicks who only liked him as long as they believed hat he was straight.

The latter problem has been slightly relieved by him switching churches, which was pretty much entirely Margot’s doing.

Like, Seb was more or less resigned to sucking it up and going to Mass with a priest who was openly homophobic, and fellow parishioners who had a tendency to be pitying but kinda sorta sympathetic when he showed up looking like shit because he was probably up all night and was likely hungover or still kinda drunk, and might gently mention a second-cousin who had a lot of success with this AA group or that therapist one moment, then say some homophobic bullshit the next because they had no idea they were talking to a gay man

So, Margot found a different parish — one that technically isn’t sanctioned by the Vatican but was started by two gay men who left seminary to be together, and is socially and politically liberal-to-progressive and very pro LGBTQ — and she only didn’t bodily drag Seb to it because he’s 6’3”, she’s 4’11”, and he’s physically stronger than she is besides.

Instead, she went, “I am your friend, I’m concerned about you, and the only way to make me be less concerned, right now? Is to stop acting like the only way to fulfill your spiritual needs is essentially emotional self-harm. You don’t need to debase yourself by fake smiling and catering to those people, they don’t deserve it”


As far as most people are concerned, Margot intervened and started dragging Seb to a different and technically non-Vatican-sanctioned church out of enlightened self interest. Going to his previous church was fucking him up, which was screwing with her ability to work and their, “business ventures,” and that’s it, because Margot has trouble admitting to most people that she has a heart or ever does nice things for other people.

Anyway, another positive here is that Seb is now on legitimately good terms with the people at church, rather than, “good terms as long as they don’t know he’s gay, or fake good terms where he spends most of their conversations internally screaming,” from the other parishioners to the staff and priests.

The youngest of the priests, Fr. Teddy, is one of the few people out of the huge number of contacts in Seb’s phone who’s saved as a favorite.

They have a standing friendly coffee-date every Sunday after Mass, and although Seb doesn’t entirely know if he’s “allowed” to call Teddy a friend or not (because he has a lot of trouble with that in general), they know each other pretty well, Teddy didn’t exactly save Seb’s life once but did get him to help when he couldn’t exactly do it himself, Teddy was there at Seb’s intervention, and Seb is on a first-name basis with Joel, Teddy’s nice Jewish boyfriend while Teddy is on a first-name basis with Margot and Pete, knows Todd kinda but more knows of him, and will be eager to meet Stephen, once he and Seb get serious.

Teddy isn’t exactly skeptical of this superhero thing that Seb sort of stumbled into, but he’s watched someone else he cares about go into it with good intentions only to end up selling out and doing nothing for anyone but himself anymore, so Teddy’s a bit wary

The person in question was Teddy’s cousin Elliott. He’s a member of the All-Stars team out of Manhattan, and…… well. There are a lot of reasons why Teddy doesn’t talk about their connection, and only one of them is that he cares about protecting Elliott’s secret identity, since he’s only famous as his costumed alter-ego.



8. Seb’s only been going to AA and NA meetings for a year-and-a-half, when the story starts, and he already has more than a few examples of Times When He Showed Up For Group While Wearing Something Unfortunate Or Just Barely Avoided This, including but not limited to:

The time he wasn’t paying attention and put on a t-shirt with the Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey label on it, simple because it happened to be clean, and when Pete went, “Uh, Princess? Really?” and offered to run back to Seb’s place so he could change, Seb’s solution was to take the shirt off in the middle of their favorite coffee shop, turn it inside out, and put it back on

The time he wasn’t paying attention and threw on a shirt that Todd had left at his place, which was somewhat oversized on Seb, but was also one of the sexual innuendo shirts that Todd, “only wears ironically” (i.e., he totally thinks they’re funny, because Todd has the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old looking up cuss words in the dictionary and just learned what 69 means, but Todd is also a pretentious hipster fuck who can’t just admit that he thinks his stupid sexual innuendo t-shirts are funny, so he has to misuse the term, “irony” to justify wearing them)

Anyway, Seb went to his Friday night NA wearing this little number (a purple shirt with a cartoon bubble tea and a caption that says, “suck my balls”), and actually, he probably would’ve been okay just wearing that, but Pete took it as a sign that Seb and Todd were having sex again (which they weren’t, at least not right within ten days of that incident), and got exasperated and Dramatic™ about sex that his bestie hadn’t even been having


The time when he wasn’t paying attention and grabbed one of Pete’s shirts (which was: 1. just at Seb’s place, because Pete’s over often enough to justify having some spare clothes around, and Seb hadn’t sorted out the laundry yet; and 2. already small on Pete because he wanted it to be tighter-fitting), and Seb sort of just assumed that he’d screwed something up and shrunk the shirt, and maybe this would’ve gotten cleared up if Pete had been able to meet him for coffee before group

—but Pete couldn’t meet for coffee, so Seb showed up in a hot pink Female Trouble t-shirt that was almost a crop-top on him, and didn’t put everything together until Pete got there and went, “Oh, I wondered where I left that.”


And hey, on the second anniversary of his cousin Jeremy’s death, Seb is going to end up going to NA in a pair of scrub pants that belonged to one of Pete’s exes and got left in Pete’s car for over a year, a crop top that belongs to Pete (though, as far as shirt designs go, a black shirt that says, “too cute to be straight” isn’t really that bad), and a pair of sandals that Seb thought he lost but actually they were also in Pete’s car all this time

This is going to happen because Seb still won’t have that much control over his shifts because no one will have worked out what triggers them, exactly, or what La Bête’s deal is.

So, when he and Pete visit Jeremy’s grave, Seb’s emotional upset triggers a shift that he can’t stop, and Pete handles it really well, especially considering that it’s the first time he’s actually seeing Seb turn into a nine-foot-tall wolf-person

……But then, when Pete gets Seb to shift back, Seb is kind of naked. Kind of very naked. And they don’t have enough time to get him home before group, so they make do with whatever clothes Pete can find in his trunk while Seb curls up in the backseat so he can’t get arrested for indecent exposure while stone cold sober



9. 
If you pay attention, what Seb’s wearing on his arms can be a good way to guess how he’s probably doing, emotionally. See, Seb’s arms are kind of a mess:

His tattoos looked fine: on his right, the black outline of a rosary; on his left, the family’s heraldic wolf with its thyrsus staff. His scars, however, were another story. Most were thin and uniform, horizontal and so pale that they almost disappeared against his skin. Just below the wolf was a small circle, left behind by an ex-boyfriend’s lit cigarette. But each arm also had one vertical scar, longer and angrier than the rest. Gnarled like the bark of their Grandfather’s favorite ironwood tree, they cut over the smaller marks and bubbled underneath his ink in a bloodless, silvery shade of pink. Five years after giving them to himself, Seb couldn’t look at them without his insides going cold.

He’d really like to get to the point where he feels more or less secure enough to just wear short sleeves without letting other people’s reactions get to him too much…… but that’s probably a long way off for Seb, not least because he hasn’t actually been working on it that hard so much as wishing for it.

As it stands, Seb has a few usual standbys — long sleeves regardless of the weather; arm warmers (i.e., the long finger-less gloves with different kinds of rivets and lacing or other decor, all of which he got when he was a teenager and having a mall goth Hot Topic phase); different combinations of cuffs and bracelets (many of which are also left over from his Hot Topic phase); and, “nothing, but this should not be seen as a sign of him doing well, just yet”

Arm warmers are usually Seb’s default during the spring, summer, and early autumn, because they can draw attention but they’re also less of a pain than wearing long sleeves during a Baltimore summer. This makes them the hardest one to really get an accurate read on, because he wears them for so many different moods, but they all average out to, “He’s probably not doing great, but then, he’s almost never doing great; he’s about as okay as he ever manages”

Long sleeves tend to mean that Seb is feeling vulnerable and not-that-great, because they might attract attention sure, but it’s usually not as much as he gets while being nearly thirty and wearing his teenage Hot Topic mall goth arm warmers

Unfortunately for Seb, some of the people who love him still associate long sleeves with, “Sebastian is trying to hide something,” especially when he wears them in the middle of summer — which is how we get moments like Max catching his little brother by the wrist and anxiously tugging Seb’s sleeves back to check his arms

Which is just…… Max doesn’t mean for that to be hurtful or anything, but he’s worried about his brother (and not without reason, either) and he’s scared and he really doesn’t get that doing things like this isn’t helpful for myriad reasons, and in his experience, Seb most often wears long sleeves in summer when he’s been hurting himself and/or getting high

Bracelets and the like usually means that consciously, Seb isn’t sure if he wants to talk about something or not, but he probably does want to talk about it and will do so, if someone nudges him or gives him some indication that they’re willing to listen (because he kinda needs to be nudged and invited and otherwise reminded that he’s allowed and encouraged to talk about what he’s feeling with people, it doesn’t make him a burden)

And, at present, unless Seb is at home (either alone or with Pete, Margot, and/or Todd), short sleeves with bare forearms usually mean that Seb is really not in a good state of mind, because he’s probably feeling too tired or sick or hopeless to put on his arm warmers or care how people might react to his scars

10. Once someone gets saved as a favorite in Seb’s phone, they will almost definitely get a special ringtone. About the only exception to this is his sister-in-law, Linda, and that’s mostly because Seb is still scared of her, despite having known her since he was ~16, and thus, he doesn’t know her very well, and he feels like all his ideas just come down to, “I’m scared of you and that feels really mean.” But some of the other ringtones he’s given people are:

Pete: Natasha Richardson’s version of “Mein Herr” from Cabaret (because it’s Pete’s favorite version of his favorite song from his favorite musical)

Margot: “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind” from The Great Mouse Detective

Todd: “Friday, I’m In Love” by The Cure (because one of the first things Seb and Todd bonded over was The Cure)

Nick: Judy Garland’s Carnegie Hall performance of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”

Marceline, his Mom: Bernadette Peters’ version of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”

Max: “I Don’t Want To Know” by Fleetwood Mac

Unbeknownst to Seb, his ringtone in Max’s phone is Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” which is another of the Stevie Nicks-penned numbers on their Rumours album, and yes, Max and Seb are aware that she wrote the songs about her romantic relationship with Lindsey Buckingham

But both of them suck at actually associating their songs of choice with romance at all, because they first and foremost associate Fleetwood Mac with Marceline

Adelaide: “Be Prepared” from The Lion King (he originally gave her, “This Corrosion” by The Sisters of Mercy, but Addie took exception to that)

Ambrose: “Magic Dance” by David Bowie, from Labyrinth — specifically, the, “you remind me of the babe!” “what babe?” “the babe with the power!” part, because Seb is a dweeb and has happy memories associating his middle brother with Labyrinth

He’s also a dweeb who still calls his middle brother, “Ambrosius,” which he started doing when they were kids and he was having a hardcore Labyrinth Thing

But Ambrose just calls him, “Sir Didymus” back, so it kinda balances out

Abe, his Dad: “The Flying Purple People Eater” (it’s probably better not to ask why this is one of their father-son things, because neither of them can explain it in any kind of succinct fashion that makes sense to anyone but them)

Abe also has a custom ringtone for Seb. He literally only learned how to get custom ringtones (read: asked Adelaide to please do it for him) so he could set Seb’s ringtone as, “Carry On, Wayward Son”

Seb is aware of this, but he really doesn’t know how he feels about it

Fr. Teddy: “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen

Stephen: currently has Aqua’s “Barbie Girl,” because he’s mentioned that it’s one of his favorite songs before, but after their eventual relationship upgrade, Seb’s going to change it to Whitney Houston’s, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody Who Loves Me,” which is higher up Stephen’s favorite song list and Seb feels like it’s more fitting for a boyfriend

……except that Pete knows the passcode into Seb’s phone and will amuse himself by periodically changing Stephen’s ringtone to The Divynyls’ “I Touch Myself” or George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex,” then moving Seb’s phone and pretending his is dead or charging so Seb has to ask Stephen to call it

This won’t always work out exactly how Pete wants, but he still tried, okay

Bonus fact (brought to you entirely by his headcanon casting and the, “I thought it was funny, so sue me” foundation): He doesn’t like sand. Or the beach. Especially not the beach. Like, sand is gross and it gets everywhere, and who the Hell decided to make, “sex on the beach” a romantic trope and what the fuck was wrong with them because it is actually terrible, there is sand in places where there ought not be sand, what is wrong with people — but the beach is even worse than the sand.


Seriously, when he and Julian were dating each other for the first time, they very nearly didn’t make it past the hurdle of, “Julian loves the beach and wants to drag Seb to the beach (and make Seb pretty please pay for it because his parents are “old as BALLS” money rich white people and Julian’s are middle-class white people from Minnesota), and ugh why do you want to stay home for spring break, who cares if Pete is in a play, he’ll forgive you for not going to opening night, I wanna go to the beach and you’re just trying to get out of going to the beach because you’re being difficult, you’re being obstinate, and you’re being difficult, and if we go to Pete’s play and don’t leave ‘til after his opening night, can we please please pleeeeease go to the beach”

Except that, rather than dealing with the fact that Julian was pushing him around (despite also being the one more open to compromise, for once), Seb just went, “No, my only objection is that I irrationally dislike the beach”


His aversion to going to the beach has only gotten worse since then, and only partially because he and Julian went to the beach for that spring break and Julian went, “Please, please, can we, please, please, please” about sex on the beach until Seb agreed to try it.

(They did not succeed in this effort, because Julian was confronted with the reality of having sex on the beach and went, “This is significantly less romantic and fun than I’ve been led to believe. ……Take me back to the hotel, I have sand in places where I don’t want for there to be sand :(” — but they still tried)


The other big part has to do with how much of a mess Seb’s arms are, and how many scars he has elsewhere, and how he wouldn’t even mind the fact that he burns super-easily (which he used to mind quite a bit), but he doesn’t want to deal with the questions that he can attract based on his scars, or with the way that people are super-unsubtle about trying not to look at his scars but still looking at them and giving him sad, pitying looks, or with wearing long sleeves and/or “leftover from when he had a Hot Topic mall goth phase” arm warmers at the beach and attracting attention because he’s doing that



—and in closing, this meme was hard because I felt torn between, “oh yeah, I have a lot of things to say about the little shit who started this whole series,” “oh, but do I talk about him too much already,” “oh, but what parts have I shared enough that I don’t need to anymore,” “oh, but which ones do I need to share for context,” “oh, but how much linking to things I’ve shared before can I get away with and not look conceited,” and the impulse to just go, “okay, you guys, look, I know he’s a mess, but he’s MY mess”

He’s kind of a disaster but he’s trying his best, okay

*: And here is the conversation in question, as evidence of how totally not subtle Stephen was being:

“Nothing, [Todd] didn’t… His and Pete’s friendship is founded on hating the same things and picking on each other.” Seb shook his head. “Pete doesn’t know what he’s talking about, though, okay?” he said. “I wasn’t with Todd last night. Or anybody. Except my dogs. I only had a, ‘baking ’til I felt tired, then spacing out to Catching All-Stars reruns until I finally nodded off’-style long night.”

“I know how that goes. Where it’s like…” Stephen smirked, and snickered. “Like, you’re trying to knock yourself out…” He failed to stifle a chuckle. “I mean, like…” He snorted, and ducked his head as he giggled. “Like, the kind of night when you need intellectual Novocaine instead of lullabies?”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Seb laughed into his hand. “Being with somebody probably would’ve been better for me. Or worked sooner. I lost track of how long it took to get to sleep.”

“Yeah, well, if you wanted to have somebody, then I bet I could…” He was definitely leaning in, now. He bit his lip, glancing around like he felt guilty about something. “If you wanted, I could get you in bed by, I don’t know, eleven-thirty? Or like, whenever you want?”

“What, is that, like… an invitation?”

A glimmer sparked up behind Stephen’s eyes. His smile twinkled. Seb was the one leaning in, now, and Stephen’s mouth was right there, and—

“Well, I guess I’m inviting myself to get my own goddamn beverage, since you two are busy flirting.” Pete glowered and, elbowing between them, he said, “Stephen, you’re adorable, but if you’re gonna distract my Princess, then can you please just kiss him already.”

So, yeah. Like…… yes, Stephen botched the delivery because he isn’t that great at actually telling jokes, but he’s not being subtle about flirting with Seb right now and it’s completely fair for Pete to be exasperated as fuck with his Princess when Seb tries to go, “I bet Stephen’s just being nice, because he’s a nice person, not like he’s actually interested in me”


[raystart]

If I Had To Do It All Over Again

You hear it all the time: “Everything happens for a reason.” Let it sit there for a minute. Marinate. Steep. What exactly prompted that thought? You flunked a class. You got fired. You presented a really wacky idea in a pitch meeting when something more conservative would have won the gig. Regrets. We all have ‘em.

Does everything really happen for some indefinable reason? Probably not. Call it a defense mechanism, something you say when you’ve screwed up and you need a way to move on. But sometimes we need to live with our mistakes. Own them. How else will we remember not to make them in the future? A little wallowing, as long as it’s not paralyzing, never hurt anyone.

So we decided to throw this query out to designers of all stripes, from leaders at Airbnb and Shake Shack to those guiding bold studios like La Tortilleria: If you could look back at your career and rethink one of your big decisions, what would it be? And why?

Sure, we wanted to hear about the do-overs, but our main premise wasn’t to make anyone dredge up unpleasant moments. Rather, our goal was to have them weigh the choices they made then, based on what they know now.  We were looking to commiserate. We were looking for a little wisdom. We got both.

Laura Seargeant Richardson

Creative director, Argodesign / Austin, Texas

I would have trusted my instincts and drawn every damn day.

I would recognize that the future is by our design, but some things never change and that is the ability to communicate our ideas across mediums. Because we rely on the visual medium more than any other, I believe it has the greatest weight and importance to the design profession. My instinct was to take art in high school. At the time, my mom suggested typing or writing…something more “practical,” in her mind. That was before the internet and touch screens and a world we had not imagined. I remember my first interview with the VP of creative at frog design. I was applying for an interaction design position. When I decided to show my versatility by sharing a few visuals, like a T-shirt design, he asked me, “Are you applying to be a visual designer?” I said no. He replied, “Then don’t show me that stuff.”

Design consultancies sell expertise, and they often have specific design roles. At the time, visual and interaction design were very much separate, and I was clearly in the interaction design camp. We “didn’t do” visual design. So, while I was at one of the most esteemed design firms, I did not improve any of my visual design skills. Instead, I became an expert in the field of interaction design as well as design research and strategy. However, my greatest regret is not taking the art path. I think some of the strongest designers are a combination of art and science. And while I have an eye for design, while I can creatively direct designers of all types, I can never bring my ideas to visual life in a gratifying way. For a designer, that is the most painful and frustrating limitation. People can hear me, but they cannot see me. If I had to do it all over again, I would trust my instincts and draw every damn day.

Zita Arcq

Creative director and cofounder of La Tortilleria / Monterrey, Mexico

I wouldn’t have worked for companies that didn’t completely trust us.

Last year I went to a master class with Bob Gower, who teaches responsive organizational design. He mentioned something really simple but important: If people are not kind, you don’t want to work with them. That is something our firm forgot twice in the past, once five and then again three years ago. Both times, we were caught thinking that a large client and large account would be a good thing for the agency. That was a big mistake. We realized that sometimes large companies don’t know how to work with agencies. They don’t know how to collaborate. All they want to do is impose. And it begins at the top, with owners or heads of companies not really knowing how their people manage their teams or the people they work with.

They don’t realize this affects the entire organization. Both times we completed our work obligations. But one of those times someone from our agency quit because she couldn’t handle the client anymore. She didn’t want to be in touch every day with this person because the client was too much work and too exhausting. If the client had been nice, kind, conscientious, the work would have been just work, instead of a nightmare. We now have a couple things that we think about before deciding to work with a new client. First, do we have contact with the person who makes decisions for the organization? If we do not, we need to be sure the person we are working with has the power to make decisions. Otherwise you will not be able to do good work. Then you have to decide if this person, the contact person within the client’s organization, knows how to work and collaborate. If they don’t trust you, don’t let them hire you.

Alex Schleifer

VP of design, Airbnb / San Francisco, California

I would have picked my projects more carefully.

Look, we all have to do this as a designer – just take a job sometimes. I know that. But in the past, I think there were months and years that maybe I lost some of the drive because I was working on projects and for companies that I didn’t believe in. It’s good training when you’re starting out to say yes to everything. However, there’s a time when you start to negotiate with yourself about saying yes all the time. The internal conversation changes because something you fell in love with becomes the worst part of a job. Sometimes you’re using all that creative energy on companies and projects you don’t believe in. Working with people you might not really like all that much can be draining.

It’s hard for me to want to change those decisions, because I’m very happy today. I do feel that I could have saved myself a couple of years here and there if I’d just told myself, This is not what I want to be doing. So just make sure that you don’t fall out of love with designing something because you are not designing it in ways that enrich you. Working enough to be able to say “I don’t love this project” is a nice problem to have. Lots of people out there are thrilled to get the gigs they do get. But falling out of love with design can happen to anyone.

Syd Weiler

Illustrator, animator, and Adobe creative resident / Sarasota, Florida

I was told that I should think about a different career, something that was not creative.

I’m just starting out, having graduated last May from Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, so I’m not entirely sure I can answer this question well. I’m not even 24, after all. But I did make a big mistake in school. For a few years I was in an animation curriculum, and I almost failed out. Well, failed sounds too severe, but my grades weren’t good enough to continue in the program. How did I get into that situation? I was trying to force myself to do work I thought, and others were telling me, was valuable. Sometimes I wish I had listened to my gut and switched majors to illustration earlier, because it would have saved me a lot of emotional turmoil.

But, I wonder if, had I done that, would I have learned the lessons I live by today?

I came out of high school in northern West Virginia, where I breezed through school and never failed at anything. I was accepted into this prestigious program and, two years later, I was struggling. Before that point, I never had the feeling of not being good at something I was trying really hard to do well in. The curriculum demanded a certain style, a form-and-volume-based drawing style.  When I wasn’t able to make it work that way, I was simply told I was wrong, without any other explanation.

It’s the first time I felt like my style wasn’t a good fit for the program. After all, I was getting the feedback from professors via their critiques and my grades that it wasn’t working out. I was even told that I should think about a different career, something that was not creative. I was a wreck!

So here I am a few years later, and I’m an illustrator and an animator. The Adobe creative residency program plucked me out and has been sponsoring me for nearly a year and will continue to April. It wasn’t until I switched over to illustration that things began feeling more comfortable for me. All along, I knew it would be a better fit, but there was this stigma at school that illustration was for the weak, that it was the easy way out.

It wasn’t until a classmate made the switch that I realized I could switch, too. In the end it added up to another year of school, but it was worth it. I started rebuilding myself and my work from the ground up, because I had a clean slate and a fresh start. I now make work about what I like, by doing it how I like to make it. I’m building an online community (my streaming channel) around this idea, for others who might not have a good working or educational space, like I didn’t for a long time. I can do what I do now because of what I learned in both animation and illustration.

Cathie Urushibata

Art director, Shake Shack / New York City

I rationalized the excuse due to cost and timing, but in reality I was just scared.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have studied abroad for a semester as an undergrad at Cal State Long Beach. I was a fine arts and illustration major. We had opportunities to study abroad in places like Italy. I could imagine myself drawing and painting in front of an original Michelangelo. At the same time, the required art history course I was taking covered the Italian Renaissance. I picked up some pamphlets and did some research; it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

But once I learned how much more expensive it would be to travel abroad and that it would delay my graduation, I didn’t go through with it. In my head, I made excuses – too expensive and not the right time. In reality, I was just scared. 

I moved to New York City for grad school and got some experience being on my own. After that, I didn’t want to miss another opportunity to travel abroad. When I started to freelance, I realized I could work remotely – from my apartment in New York or somewhere else. That’s when I knew I had to take advantage of the opportunity. I started to tell my friends that I planned to go to Paris for a month. By putting it out there, it made me accountable. In September 2011, I traveled to Paris for a month and even went to Morocco for a long weekend.

Looking back, I should have stayed longer! Traveling and challenging myself to be in an environment that was new to me was one of the best things I could have done personally and creatively. It is always inspiring to see what other creatives are doing out there in their own city, even if they can’t get on a plane for Europe. Of course, you should go to the local art museums. But there’s something to learn from walking the aisles of the grocery store, checking out the packaging. Now whenever I have the opportunity to travel, I make sure to take it.

Rob Vargas

Creative director, Bloomberg Businessweek / New York City

I would have still sacrificed my personal life at times to jump-start my career.

There was a certain point earlier in my career where I was basically sacrificing almost all of my time to work, and I didn’t have a lot of time for friendships and relationships and things like that. Some people might say they regret that, but I actually don’t. Early in your career, you’re proving yourself, and you just have to work five times as hard. There were days where I’d work a full day at one job, then come home, lock myself in my room and work on two other freelance client projects. Partly that’s because you have to work like crazy to make ends meet in an expensive city like New York. But also, I never considered myself naturally talented.

When I was an associate art director at New York, I worked my first 24 hours straight. The magazine is known for these immersive infographics, and I had to design a four-page infographic on my own. I remember very distinctly being in the office one day and then it was 7:00 a.m. [the next day] and no one was in the office yet. And I was like, I need to get out of here before someone sees me. Working extremely hard is always a risk. If I was out in the streets or something, I would have been like, Oh man, I wish I had spent more time with my friends. How I wound up at Bloomberg Businessweek is an amazing stroke of luck. But obviously I owe some of that to all the work that I did. So yeah, I do feel in a lot of ways happy that I put in the time.

Cedric Kiefer

Cofounder, onformative / Berlin, Germany

I used to think that a concept would be more valuable the longer I worked on or thought about it.

The biggest piece of advice I have for someone who is faced with an important decision is don’t hesitate if it feels right. Take the example of how we started onformative. My cofounder, Julia Laub, and I decided to start the studio seven years ago without having met in person. We had been talking online for about a year, but never worked together or spent more than a day in the same room. Still, we had the feeling that there was an opportunity for us if we moved quickly.

That was a big decision for me, since I moved to Berlin from the south of Germany and founded onformative a few months later. Maybe it was a bit naive of me to decide to move so quickly back then, but I think if we had thought about it too long, we might have missed our chance.

The idea of not overthinking something can apply to everything from a big decision, like moving across Germany to start a business, to making new hires and even working on individual projects.

If you think about ideas or concepts, they’re not necessarily going to improve the longer you think about them. That was a hard thing for me to learn, because earlier in my career, I used to think that a concept would be more valuable the longer I worked on it. After a while, you learn that the simplest idea is usually the best one. Remember, just because a project feels easy for you doesn’t mean it feels easy for someone else. A lot of the time that’s just proof of why you’re doing the work you’re doing.

Irene Au

Design partner at Khosla Ventures / Menlo Park, California

Although I was continually diving into the unknown, I grew, and I had a ton of fun.

After I graduated with my master’s degree in industrial engineering and human-computer interaction, the advice some people gave me was to join an established company, like Hewlett-Packard, to learn the ropes and then go on to a company that had a higher risk and higher reward factor. But I decided to become an interaction designer at Netscape, which had only started two years earlier. My friend’s parents told me they couldn’t believe what I was doing by choosing Netscape over a Hewlett-Packard, and that I was making the wrong choice. However, I knew that my life didn’t have time to wait. If I had gone to work at HP at the time, I would have missed my window of opportunity at Netscape. When I reflect on my career, this is a theme that I have seen play over and over again – diving in to build something that has never been built before. That is my tribe, and those are my people – right in the middle of where it feels like the action is happening, even if people looking in from the outside can’t fully understand my decision. When I was looking for my next job after Netscape, I chose between Yahoo!, Excite, Webvan, and a couple of design firms. I chose Yahoo! because they had the best mind-set for making the internet useful and accessible to everyone. The company was filled with fun, smart people who had a lot of heart and genuinely cared about serving the people who used the site. Most of my design peers, though, thought of Yahoo! as a Web directory that lacked any design. They didn’t see that Yahoo! was a useful place to start your internet experience, that it could grow into something more interesting and bigger, and they couldn’t understand why I would want to join the company, because it didn’t obviously value design.

Yahoo! proved to be a great career move for me. No other internet company was using human-centered design practices to conceive and create their services, and my boss gave me tremendous leeway to lead our efforts and figure out how to do this on internet time, at internet scale. Yahoo! became the premier destination for people all over the world on the internet. We redefined what it meant for a product to be well-designed – it wasn’t just about aesthetics but, more importantly, the extent to which it solved people’s needs and was easy to use.

My decisions to join Google after Yahoo!, then Udacity, then Khosla Ventures were all motivated in the same way:  go where I can work with great people, follow my curiosity, and choose the path with the most heart. When I get asked for career advice now, these are the same factors that I ask people to consider.

Each experience we have in life, each challenge we accept, sets us up for the next endeavor we take on. My experience at Yahoo! taught me how to build and scale design teams and understand at a deep level the impact organizational design has on a company’s product design. At Google, I learned how to operate in a bottom-up, engineering-driven environment, so that we could engage engineers and product managers to think like designers. At Udacity I gained tremendous empathy for early-stage startups and their occasional need to pivot while they find product-market fit. These experiences have equipped me with perspective and insight that allow me to add value to the Khosla Ventures portfolio as a design partner.

If I had to do it all over again, I would take the same journey. Although I was diving into the unknown with no guarantees of what the future would hold, I learned something from each experience. I grew, and I had a ton of fun.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT COINCIDENCE

Most of the stuff you build in the first year. The only way their performance is measured is by how cheaply they can buy you, and b if you seem impressive, they'll be discouraged from investing in your competitors. When I notice something surprising, it's usually not realizing they have to work too hard on filtering it. God help you if you don't want to face what is usually the real reason: the product is only moderately appealing. This was also one reason we didn't go public. It's not as simple as picking startups that are already making something wildly popular. It's important to realize you're not. Some people could probably start a startup. It is no coincidence that startups start around universities, because that's why it's structured that way. That makes him seem like a judge.

The only place your judgement makes a difference is in the generation of buzz. Big companies are good at that kind of thing is out there for anyone to prove what ideas you had when, so the best plan is not to be the middle course, to notice some tokens but not others. And if you're doing really badly, meaning the company is sold or goes public. If you're a nerd, you can rely on word of mouth online than our first PR firm got through the print media. If you think investors can behave badly, it's nothing compared to what's coming. And yet in the very first filters I tried writing, I ignored the headers too. An area without railroads or power was a rich potential market. Starting a startup to write desktop software now you do it. And since the customer is always right, but different customers are right about different things; the least sophisticated users show you what you need to simplify and clarify, and the existing players can't follow because they don't even get to choose which. Web-based applications.

But events like Demo Day only account for a fraction of matches between startups and money, it shouldn't be surprising that luck is a big deal, in the current filter, free in the Subject line has a spam probability for free with seven exclamation points, uppercase letters, and occurring in one of them you were at a disadvantage. The huge volume of the spam, which has so far worked in the spammer's favor, would now work against him, like a skateboard. When you work on making technology easier to use, because it would cause the founders' attitudes toward risk to be aligned with the VCs'. To the extent there's any difference between the two, but it also has a lot of money to implement it. As far as I can tell these are universal. The reason I suggested college graduates not start startups immediately was that I felt most would fail. It's something that can be done by one or two using Python or Ruby.

Only sites on a blacklist would get crawled, and sites would be blacklisted only after being inspected by humans. But my increased belief in the importance of this idea would remain something I'd learned from this book, even after I'd forgotten I'd learned it. It allows you to give an example of whatever paradigm might succeed the Standard Model of physics. The strategic decisions were mostly decisions about technology, and we won't have to work too hard on filtering it. Do we want to sell your company right now? And while that would probably have been better for him. Some meant the micro-community of YC founders: The immense value of the code while you're still in school is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff can be very cheap, and b they work. That's four years. Much of what VCs add, acquirers don't want anyway. Competitors riding on lots of good blogger perception aren't really the winners and can disappear from the map quickly. But for every startup that succeeded, but 75% is probably on the high side. You can still see evidence of that if you look at it.

You should at least find out what they want. I got over 100 other responses listing the surprises they encountered. A Public Service Message I'd like to conclude with a joint message from me and your parents. It would also be helpful if the styling was in the tradition of rapid prototyping. I know that naming companies is a distinct skill orthogonal to the others what they've got so far. Tribes of hunter-gatherers have much more freedom. So now there are two numbers you care about: how much money you're putting in, and the programmers work down the list, and indeed, no one can predict them—not even the founders, who have the most to lose, seem to see the real Nixon. Maybe because the suit was also back in February, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002. We tend to regard all judgements of us as the first type. This doesn't seem to bother kids as much as he expected. The more I think about it, is not at all, if you're not.

The core of the Democrats' ideology seems to be a lot of customers fast is of course Google. After you've been working for a software company to pay off my college loans. 9782 free! And who knows, maybe their offer will be surprisingly high. With Web-based applications are cheap to develop, and easy for even the most promising path. And such random factors will increasingly be COOs rather than CEOs. Like the time the acquirer gets them, they're finishing one another's sentences. American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier. Which means it is very much worth reading important books multiple times. If you can discuss a document with your colleagues, why can't you edit it? And it can of course counter by sending a crawler to the site, you wouldn't find a smoking statistical gun. Disk crashes won't be a thing of the past, but users won't hear about them anymore.

So class projects are mostly about implementation, which is the worst thing you can least afford in a startup, there are twenty more that operate in niche markets. I'm relieved to find they're not as bad as I feared. The workers of the early twentieth century must have had a few, but at every point where a startup touches a more bureaucratic organization, like a big arrow pointing users to the test drive. The importance of stamina shouldn't be surprising that luck is a big change from the recipe for winning in the past century. It does seem at least that if we let more great programmers into the US, they'll want to come here. Now women ask me where they can meet nerds. The business doesn't have to advertise. So the deals take longer, dilute you more, and the format prevents the writer from indulging in any flights of fancy.

Notes

According to a partner from someone they respect.

As Jeremy Siegel points out that taking time to come if they seem like a month grew at 1% a week for 19 years, maybe the balance of power programmers care about valuations in angel rounds can make it sound. But there seem to be significantly pickier. When we work with an idea is bad. And in any other field, it's ok to talk about humans being meant or designed to express algorithms, and many of the company really cared about doing search well at a time, which can vary a lot of companies used consulting to generate everything else in the 1920s to financing growth with the Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Edgar v.

Beware too of the biggest company of all, the American custom of having one founder take fundraising meetings is that they consisted of 50 pairs that each summed to 101 100 1,2003.

When Harvard kicks undergrads out for doing so much from day to day indeed, is this someone you want to sell them technology.

The worst explosions happen when unpromising-seeming startups are possible. This is one problem where rapid prototyping doesn't work. 92. Actually, someone did, but those are probably especially those that made them register.

Quite often at YC. These two regions were the case in point: lots of people who are all that matters financially for investors. A termsheet with a wink, to take over the Internet. According to the Depression was one in an era of such regulations is to write an essay about why something isn't the problem, any YC partner can estimate a market for a while to avoid becoming an administrator, or how to allocate resources, because time seems to me like someone in 1500 looking at the same phenomenon you see with defense contractors or fashion brands.

As the art itself gets more random, they were actually getting physically taller. But although for-profit prison companies and prison guard unions both spend a lot of people like them—people who lost were us. The founders we fund used to those. In technology, companies building lightweight clients have usually tried to combine the hardware with an online service, and one of the incompetence of newspapers is that you'll expend a lot of press coverage until we hired a PR firm admittedly the best approach is to raise money on the side of the things startups fix.

When VCs asked us how long it would have seemed a lot about some of the definition of important problems includes only those on the firm's site, June 2004: While the space of careers does.

Within YC when we say it's ipso facto right to buy you a clean offer with no valuation cap.