#sometimes I love math as a statistician

[you-need-not-apply]

Who invented calculus and I can I stab them at a 45 degree angle straight into their heart?

[lovelylogans]

fanfic survey: the results

hey there! with 213 responses, here it is: the results of the survey!

before i get into it, though, i just wanna reiterate this disclaimer: this is not meant to tell fic writers what they should or should not write!!! or to tell people what they should or should not read!!! authors should write what they want to write and readers should read what they want to read and for both, it should be what makes them happy—this is purely a curiosity thing! if what you love to write or read turns out to be something in the most popular answer to a question, awesome! if it turns out to be the least popular answer, that’s awesome too!! as long as it makes you happy to write or read, that is what matters. 

i will say that i am removing myself entirely from the answers—i didn’t take my own survey, this is the only time that i’m going to be “speaking,” at the beginning to offer commentary on why i’ve organized things a certain way, and after questions if i need to make mention of a slip-up on my part, or a change to a question. there might be things on here i love, there might be things on here that i don’t like so much, but this is all the voice of you guys—the 213 people who took this survey. i’m just the one who made the survey and is putting the answers out there. i am attempting to make this as unbiased as possible.

in terms of the survey: i’m not a statistician. i do know that i probably haven’t made the Perfect survey, and that i might have missed categories or questions along the way. 213 people also isn’t the biggest cross-section of the fandom, so this is probably a small segment, and shouldn’t be taken as absolute fact with no exceptions—there is a definite margin of error here.

for example: math was not tidy on the pairings questions! i decided to just law out raw data in this results post. i made another post, linked here, ranking most-least popular based on the number of answers for questions 15, 17, 19, and 21 (for example, if column janus got 2 votes in logan, and column logan got 3 votes in janus, then that gets added up to 5 logan/janus votes in that post; here. to think i laid it out like this because i thought it would make neater results!)

these may not be the way the results were listed on the survey; for the results, i’ve made it so that the answer with the most responses is at the top, and then the answers continue in descending order until we reach the “other” category. if the responses don’t add up for some questions, it could be 1. a fault with my math, as sometimes i had to count things by hand or calculate it out myself, or 2. due to the fact that people could select multiple responses for some questions.

when it comes to the “other” category, i have attempted to summarize the majority of 213 answers, so i tended to put down the most common responses.

and now, the results:

Where do you read fanfiction?

210 (98.6%) said AO3 (Archive of Our Own)

146 (68.5%) said Tumblr

22 (10.3%) said Wattpad

14 (6.6%)said Fanfiction.net

3 (1.4%) said Quotev

the other category makes up 3 (1.4%), which said:

Back in the day, it was on Livejournal. And before that, FF.net. Before THAT, fansites.

Used to read on wattpad but not anymore

Mosty AO3

2. Do you write fanfiction?

94 (44.1%) said Yes

59 (27.7%) said No, but I want to/used to

28 (13.1%) said No

19 (8.9%) said Yes, but not for this fandom

the other category makes up 13 (6.10%), some of which said:

Yes and yes but not for this fandom

Sometimes?

I used to write TSS fanfics, but I don't anymore

I used to write fanfics, but not for this fandom

Yes, but I don't post it

3. Do you make fanart?

67 (31.5%) said No

65 (30.5%) said Yes

50 (23.5%) said No, but I want to/used to

20 (9.4%) said Yes, but not for this fandom

the other category makes up 11 (5.1%), some of which said:

Yes, but not for this fandom

I try to

I used to, but not as much anymore

If photoshopping counts

Yes, but I don't post it

4. Do you make other fandom-centric content? (gifsets, video edits, moodboards, speculative posts, etc.)

131 (61.5%) said No

68 (31.9%) said Yes

the other category makes up 14 (6.6%), some of which said:

I make occasional posts

Cosplay

Yes, but not for this fandom

Animation

Yes, but I don't post them

5. How often do you read fanfiction in general?

135 (63.4%) said Daily

45 (21.1%) said Once a week

9 (4.2%) said Twice a month

7 (3.3%) said Once a month

4 (1.9%) said Once (or fewer) every three months

the other category makes up 13 (6.1%), some of which said:

Sporadically

When I get into a fandom, I binge read

It varies/depends

6. How often do you read Sanders Sides/TS fanfiction?

54 (25.4%) said Daily

49 (23%) said Once (or fewer) every three months

40 (18.8%) said Once a week

26 (12.2%) said Twice a month

22 (10.3%) said Once a month

the other category makes up 22 (10.3%), some of which said:

Sporadically

I'm just getting into the fandom, I don't have frame of reference

Whenever I feel like it

More than once a week, but not every day

About as often as Thomas posts

Close to daily when it was my hyperfixation

7. Where do you get recommendations for fanfiction?

182 (85.4%) said Using the website's sorting functions

134 (62.9%) said From people I follow (Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)

81 (38%) said Browsing through the bookmarks of others

80 (37.6%) said From friends within fandom (personal friends, Discord servers, etc.)

11 (5.2%) said I only read fanfiction by friends/people I follow

the other category makes up 10 (5%), some which said:

From whatever new fic gets updated on AO3

Videos from Tiktok

I don't understand the question

Searching fic recs

A combination

Scrolling through tags

I only read from one author

8. If you use sorting functions, do you sort by:

160 (75.1%) said Tags I want

98 (46%) said Newest first

69 (32.4%) said Most kudos

23 (10.8%) said Most bookmarks

16 (7.5%) said N/A, I do not use sorting functions

12 (5.6%) said Most hits

4 (1.9%) said Most comments

the other category makes up 14 (6.5%), some of which said:

Word count

Kudos, then start on the last page and work my way forward so I find hidden gems

Date updated

Rating

Relationships

Specific tags

Completed

In progress

Depends on the day

9. Do your preferred fanfictions range across fandoms?

81 (38%) said Yes, about an 80/20 split (majority other content)

41 (19.2%) said Yes, about an 80/20 split (majority TS content)

19 (8.9%) said No, I read exclusively Sanders Sides fanfiction

19 (8.9%) said About a 50/50 split

15 (7%) said Yes, about a 60/40 split (majority TS content)

13 (6.1%) said Yes, about a 60/40 split (majority other content)

the other category makes up 25 (11.7%), some of which said:

I bounce back and forth between fandoms depending on the day

Whenever the hyperfixation hits

It's more than an 80/20 split

Like a 95/5 split

Mostly in the fandom, but I LOVE crossovers

The percentages break down a bit more because I'm in a lot of other fandoms

10. Do you read fanfictions in progress, completed fanfictions, or a combination of the above?

182 (85.4%) said A combination

30 (14.1%) said Completed only

1 (0.5%) said In progress only

11. What genres within the TSS fandom do you find yourself reading most often?

160 (75.1%) said Hurt/comfort

141 (66.2%) said AUs

125 (58.7%) said Fluff

125 (58.7%) said Angst

124 (58.2%) said Works centered around shipping

59 (27.7%) said Smut

18 (8.5%) said Crossover

the other category makes up 9 (4.2%), which said:

A few x readers

Works centered around NOT shipping

Depends on the day

Found family (the most popular "other" answer)

Crack

Roman and Remus having just — the worst possible sibling relationship

12. Is there a specific AU you tend to read?

138 (64.8%) said Human AU

115 (54%) said Other kinds of popular fanfiction AUs

105 (49.3%) said Canon compliant AU

83 (39%) said High school/college AU

70 (32.9%) said Enemies to lovers AU

59 (27.7%) said Roommate AU

34 (16%) said Fake dating AU

the other category makes up 37 (17.3%), some of which said:

Fantasy AU (the most popular "other" answer)

Weird AU (it's gotta be weird)

TV show AUs

Soulmate AUs

Any AU

No particular preference

Role swap/light dark

Supernatural AU

AUs in which the Sides are another species (some mentioned: merpeople, fae, with wings, space orcs, selkies, vampires, magic users)

13. Is there a specific character you prefer as your "main character?"

47 (22.1%) said Virgil

44 (20.7%) said I prefer ensemble pieces

30 (14.1%) said Logan

22 (10.3%) said N/A

21 (9.9%) said Roman

17 (8%) said Janus

12 (5.6%) said Patton

11 (5.2%) said Remus

1 (0.5%) said Thomas

1 (0.5%) said Other Thomas characters (Vines, shorts, Cartoon Therapy, etc.)

1 (0.5%) said RPF (Thomas' friend such as Joan, Valerie, etc.)

the other category makes up 7 (3.2%), some of which said:

Creativitwins equally

Virgil and Logan equally

Janus and Virgil equally

A combination of characters

Changes daily

14. Is there a specific character you avoid as your "main character?"

48 (22.5%) said N/A

38 (17.8%) said RPF (Thomas' friends such as Joan, Valerie, etc.)

28 (13.1%) said Patton

21 (9.9%) said I prefer ensemble pieces

17 (8%) said Thomas

14 (6.6%) said Roman

14 (6.6%) said Other Thomas characters (Vines, shorts, Cartoon Therapy, etc.)

10 (4.7%) said Virgil

9 (4.2%) said Remus

6 (2.8%) said Logan

4 (1.9%) said Janus

the other category makes up 4 (1.9%), which said:

Everyone but Virgil

Patton of Virgil equally

RPF, Thomas, and Virgil

Other Thomas characters and Thomas' friends as characters

A combination of characters

15. Is there a specific romantic pairing you prefer as your main pairing? Please select the intersection of the two characters. (A polyship/other pairings not listed specification option is below.) disclaimer: this is where the math may get a bit dicey; i did my best to calculate correctly! this is where the data is laid out raw.

Of the 56 responses in column N/A: 49 said N/A; 2 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 2 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 1 said Remus; 2 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 107 responses in column Janus: 7 said N/A; 27 said Patton; 20 said Logan; 15 said Virgil; 7 said Roman; 27 said Remus; 1 said Janus; 3 said Other

Of the 105 responses in column Logan: 6 said N/A; 16 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 26 said Virgil; 12 said Roman; 26 said Remus; 17 said Janus; 2 said Other

Of the 91 responses in column Patton: 12 said N/A; 0 said Patton; 29 said Logan; 4 said Virgil; 9 said Roman; 6 said Remus; 29 said Janus; 2 said Other

Of the 83 responses in column Remus: 10 said N/A; 7 said Patton; 22 said Logan; 7 said Virgil; 2 said Roman; 2 said Remus; 32 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 111 responses in column Roman: 6 said N/A; 12 said Patton; 16 said Logan; 57 said Virgil; 1 said Roman; 4 said Remus; 13 said Janus; 2 said Other

Of the 114 responses in column Virgil: 7 said N/A; 6 said Patton; 27 said Logan; 0 said Virgil; 50 said Roman; 5 said Remus; 17 said Janus; 2 said Other

Of the 51 responses in column Other: 20 said N/A; 1 said Patton; 2 said Logan; 3 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 1 said Remus; 2 said Janus; 22 said Other

16. Other pairing/polyship that is preferred:

This was an optional, fillable other category, which received 116 (54.4%) responses, some of which said:

LAMP (the most popular "other" option)

Intruloceit

Virgil/Remus/Janus

Nico/Thomas

Analogince

Roloceit

Analoceit

Anyone with Virgil

Galaxy polycule (Noise/Roman/Youngblood)

Dark side poly

Thomas/Virgil

Thomas/Janus

Analoceitmus

Logan/Patton/Virgil

I like them all

17. Is there a specific romantic pairing you prefer to avoid as your main pairing? Please select the intersection of the two characters. (A polyship/other pairings not listed specification option is below.) disclaimer: this is where the math may get a bit dicey; i did my best to calculate correctly!

Of the 45 responses in column N/A: 42 said N/A; 1 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 1 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 0 said Remus; 0 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 74 responses in column Janus: 16 said N/A; 12 said Patton; 12 said Logan; 14 said Virgil; 12 said Roman; 7 said Remus; 0 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 66 responses in column Logan: 20 said N/A; 29 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 3 said Virgil; 5 said Roman; 4 said Remus; 4 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 81 responses in column Patton: 12 said N/A; 2 said Patton; 12 said Logan; 26 said Virgil; 13 said Roman; 10 said Remus; 5 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 115 responses in column Remus: 4 said N/A; 11 said Patton; 4 said Logan; 9 said Virgil; 83 said Roman; 1 said Remus; 2 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 110 responses in column Roman: 5 said N/A; 15 said Patton; 3 said Logan; 17 said Virgil; 2 said Roman; 61 said Remus; 7 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 86 responses in column Virgil: 10 said N/A; 42 said Patton; 1 said Logan; 0 said Virgil; 12 said Roman; 7 said Remus; 14 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 31 responses in column Other: 21 said N/A; 2 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 1 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 1 said Remus; 1 said Janus; 5 said Other

18. Other pairing/polyship to avoid:

This was an optional, fillable other category, which received 61 (28.6%) responses, some of which said:

Roman/Remus (the most popular "other" answer)

I avoid shipping in general

Patton/Remus

Remus/Virgil

Virgil/Janus/Remus

Anything with Patton unless it's Remus

Remus/any light side

Roman/Janus

Anxceit

I avoid shipping Thomas with anyone

Any poly ships that involve both Roman and Remus

Most Virgil and Patton ships

19. Is there a specific friendship you prefer as your main platonic pairing? Please select the intersection of the two characters. (A polyship/other pairings not listed specification option is below.) disclaimer: this is where the math may get a bit dicey; i did my best to calculate correctly!

Of the 45 responses in column N/A: 43 said N/A; 0 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 0 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 0 said Remus; 0 said Janus; 2 said Other

Of the 98 responses in column Janus: 5 said N/A; 18 said Patton; 15 said Logan; 22 said Virgil; 5 said Roman; 32 said Remus; 0 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 79 responses in column Logan: 6 said N/A; 12 said Patton; 2 said Logan; 19 said Virgil; 14 said Roman; 16 said Remus; 9 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 83 responses in column Patton: 8 said N/A; 1 said Patton; 17 said Logan; 25 said Virgil; 9 said Roman; 7 said Remus; 15 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 92 responses in column Remus: 6 said N/A; 5 said Patton; 6 said Logan; 16 said Virgil; 30 said Roman; 2 said Remus; 26 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 79 responses in column Roman: 7 said N/A; 8 said Patton; 15 said Logan; 14 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 27 said Remus; 7 said Janus; 1 said Other

Of the 102 responses in column Virgil: 6 said N/A; 28 said Patton; 19 said Logan; 1 said Virgil; 18 said Roman; 15 said Remus; 12 said Janus; 3 said Other

Of the 33 responses in column Other: 16 said N/A; 0 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 0 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 0 said Remus; 2 said Janus; 15 said Other

20. Other friendship/group friendship preferred:

This was an optional, fillable other category, which received 75 (35.2%) responses, some of which said:

LAMP (the most popular "other" answer)

All of them!

Janus/Remus/Virgil

FamILY

Creativity brothers

"When the gangs all here..."

Thomas and Joan

Remy/Sleep and Janus

Moceit

Platonic prinxiety

Virgil and Remy

Logan and Janus

Traffic light trio

21. Is there a specific friendship you avoid as your main platonic pairing? Please select the intersection of the two characters. (A polyship/other pairings not listed specification option is below.) disclaimer: this is where the math may get a bit dicey; i did my best to calculate correctly!

Of the 116 responses in column N/A: 116 said N/A; 0 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 0 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 0 said Remus; 0 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 44 responses in column Janus: 25 said N/A; 5 said Patton; 2 said Logan; 3 said Virgil; 7 said Roman; 2 said Remus; 0 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 42 responses in column Logan: 28 said N/A; 5 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 1 said Virgil; 3 said Roman; 3 said Remus; 2 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 47 responses in column Patton: 26 said N/A; 1 said Patton; 1 said Logan; 2 said Virgil; 2 said Roman; 9 said Remus; 3 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 44 responses in column Remus: 27 said N/A; 11 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 3 said Virgil; 2 said Roman; 0 said Remus; 1 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 41 responses in column Roman: 27 said N/A; 5 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 2 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 1 said Remus; 6 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 42 responses in column Virgil: 27 said N/A; 7 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 0 said Virgil; 2 said Roman; 0 said Remus; 6 said Janus; 0 said Other

Of the 32 responses in column Other: 28 said N/A; 1 said Patton; 0 said Logan; 0 said Virgil; 0 said Roman; 1 said Remus; 0 said Janus; 0 said Other

22. Other friendship/group friendship to avoid:

This was an optional, fillable other category, which received 22 (10.3%) responses, some of which said:

N/A (the most popular other answer)

I don't mind who is friends with who

Patton anything

LAMP

23. Do you find yourself gravitating toward a certain fanfic length?

100 (46.9%) said 5k-10k

90 (42.3%) said 10k-20k

68 (31.9%) said 20k-50k

66 (31%) said Less than 5k

52 (24.4%) said 50k-100k

38 (17.8%) said 100k+

the other category makes up 53 (24.8%), which said:

Any length (the most popular "other" answer)

4k-150k

Depends on my mood

Chapter length

24. How often do you leave kudos? with 1 being categorized as "Never" and 5 being categorized as "Always"

87 (40.8%) said 4

76 (35.7%) said 5 (Always)

28 (13.1%) said 3

14 (6.6%) said 2

8 (3.8%) said 1 (Never)

25. How often do you bookmark/save a fic for later? with 1 being categorized as "Never" and 5 being categorized as "Always"

67 (31.5%) said 3

53 (24.9%) said 2

37 (17.4%) said 4

33 (15.5%) said 1 (Never)

23 (10.8%) said 5 (Always)

26. How often do you comment? with 1 being categorized as "Never" and 5 being categorized as "Always"

74 (34.7%) said 2

60 (28.2%) said 1 (Never)

54 (25.4%) said 3

18 (8.5%) said 4

7 (3.3%) said 5 (Always)

27. Of the fanfiction authors you read, are they someone you know? (Either in real life or online.) with 1 being categorized as "Never" and 5 being categorized as "Always"

99 (46.5%) said 1 (Never)

65 (30.5%) said 2

36 (16.9%) said 3

13 (6.1%) said 4

0 (0%) said 5 (Always)

28. Do you find length is a significant factor when reading fanfictions?

80 (37.6%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but length is probably one of the LEAST important

73 (34.3%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but length is definitely one of the MOST important

30 (14.1%) said No

20 (9.4%) said Yes

the other category makes up 10 (4.6%), some of which said:

It's about in the middle (the most popular "other" answer)

It factors in especially when choosing bedtime stories

Depends on fic and fandom

It doesn't particularly matter most of the time, then sometimes it really does

Unsure of what question means

29. Do you find lack of tags is a significant factor when reading fanfictions?

69 (32.4%) said Yes

66 (31%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but lack of tags is one of the MOST important

35 (16.4%) said No

33 (15.5%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but lack of tags is probably one of the LEAST important

the other category makes up 10 (4.6%), some of which said:

It's very likely to deter me

It depends, usually it's a big deal to me, but if the summary is interesting enough I'll read it

Tags are extremely important when it comes to "heavy" content.

Depends on if I "know" the author

It depends on if I'm looking for something specific

Unsure of what the question means

30. Do you find an abundance of tags is a significant factor when reading fanfictions?

60 (28.2%) said No

53 (24.9%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but abundance of tags is definitely one of the MOST important

50 (23.5%) said Yes

41 (x%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but abundance of tags is probably one of the LEAST important

the other category makes up 9 (4.2%), some of which said:

An abundance of "relevant" tags makes it easier for me to make a decision

Yes, in that I don't like it

I do enjoy thorough tagging

Not too much, not too little

If the summary is descriptive or intriguing enough it doesn't need too many tags, but the more the better

Unsure of what question means

31. Do you find the summary is a significant factor when reading fanfictions?

133 (62.4%) said Yes

53 (24.9%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but the summary is definitely one of the MOST important

13 (6.1%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but the summary is probably one of the LEAST important

12 (5.6%) said No

the other category makes up 2 (0.9%), which said:

Summaries have an influence, but not more than the tags

If the tags are super thorough, no. If they're not, yes

32. Do you find accompanying fanart/playlists/other content makes you more likely to read a fanfiction?

94 (44.1%) said No

55 (25.8%) said Yes

51 (23.9%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but additional content is probably one of the LEAST important

10 (4.7%) said It depends on a combination of factors, but additional content is definitely one of the MOST important

the other category makes up 3 (1.4%), which said:

Neither the most or least important, but it's helpful to see.

It makes the work more enticing, but it's not a requirement to get my attention.

No, but it makes it more likely to get me to enjoy/finish it

33. Of options not listed above, is there something that is more likely to get you to read a fanfiction? (interesting title, good spelling/grammar, promising tags/plot, etc.)

81 (38%) said N/A

29 (13.6%) said other

Some more include:

Promising tags/plot

Good spelling/grammar

If it's an AU I like and the summary has a clear plot

Well-written

Interesting title

Tags I'm looking for

Recommendations from friends

A title I recognize from a poem/quote/song

Ships I like

Good formatting

Characterization

34. Of options not listed above, is there something that is more likely to get you to NOT read a fanfiction? (no/poor formatting, untagged content, bad spelling/grammar, etc.)

56 (26.3%) said N/A

55 (25.8%) said Other

Some more include:

Untagged content

Plot devices I find unappealing

Bad grammar, spelling, or formatting

No paragraph breaks

First person/second person

Uninteresting plot

Author's comments in the summary

DNIs/text explicitly denigrating other people in fandom

I dislike most AUs

Unsympathetic tags

Woobification

If it's a complicated concept and it's incomplete

thanks so much for taking this survey, y'all!

[backslashdelta]

Discard the imposter syndrome! You're mathblr! You see the joy in mathematics and thats way further than you have to be to get into mathblr!

Hello!

I'm gonna be honest, idk what prompted this because I don't remember lately saying anything about not being part of mathblr BUT I don't doubt having said something like that in the past SO I'm going to assume you came across something from a while ago

ANYWAY

Thank you, and I appreciate it. I do want to clarify a bit though.

It's not that I think I can't be part of mathblr. I have a master's degree in math (with a focus in combinatorial commutative algebra, specifically) and my day job is as a statistician, so like. I love math, have loved math since I can remember (fun fact: my dad found my report card from grade primary recently, and the teacher made a note about how great my math skills were even then lol), so it's not a matter of whether I could fit in to mathblr.

The fact of the matter is, I'm mainly a Glee blog lol. Yeah I post about math sometimes, and I post about some other fandoms as well, but I wouldn't say I'm really part of those communities. I'm more like a visitor. I follow some people who are more "properly" in mathblr, and I see that they're friends and I've heard mentioned of a mathblr discord I think, and I'm just not a part of or involved in any of that.

Which is fine!! Like I'm not complaining or lamenting or anything. It's genuinely a non-issue. I have my little niche in Glee fandom and I have some friends here and I'm vibing, it's great. I enjoy the math stuff when it crosses my dash and I have a couple people who I would consider from mathblr following me, even, but I just don't really feel a part of the community myself, that's all. And again, not a negative! Just a neutral feeling, it's chill, it's all good.

I definitely do and will continue to share math stuff on my blog and try to find fun ways to incorporate it into my fandom activities if I can though. Math is fantastic 💖

[clementimetodie]

You’re such a relief from the usual anti-vax stuff I see Catholics reblog. I love them but damn do I cringe when I see it. Thanks honestly

Sigh, thanks

I try to avoid conversation around it as best I can tbh, I almost went insane in January

The thing is, no matter the side, they always tell you that you are listening to the wrong science and their science is the correct one, actually, and it just gets so frustrating and out of hand

I used to be really polarized even just a few years ago, where I would look at other information just to prove my opponent wrong, but I got tired of it and started looking for the middle ground

You're never going to find a reliable resource. But what you can do is apply logic and reason, and you can analyze the data, which is good practice even if you're not sure you can trust the data (and the best way to find out if the data is reliable or not? analyze it!). I'm lucky enough to know what bad data looks like (ex. small samples sizes), even if I can't do all of the math myself. I also married a statistician, so I can ask him to look at the numbers for me to see if they look like they make sense

I also like to research things for fun. If I really want to know something, I will obsessively research it sometimes for days. I've done this with medical topics as well, so in addition to having a really good memory of my (admittedly, small) education in biology, I get more and more familiar with certain concepts the more I research them. There are things that I've speculated about while researching my own disease and medical technology that ended up being professionally researched by actual scientists. I'm not smart enough to get a job in this stuff, but I'm smart enough to have some idea of what's going on and come to reasonable conclusions (disclaimer: I also throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall, so it could just be dumb luck)

When covid first hit the states, I couldn't sleep. With the information I had at the time, I thought I was going to die and nobody gave a shit because "it's only killing the immunocompromised and the elderly." Well thanks, I was diagnosed as a toddler, so I didn't ask for my disease, but sure "fuck me" I guess. It soon became clear that it wasn't that bad, or at least no longer was

Now with the vaccine, I didn't know what to think. For a while, I flip flopped between "it's safe but I don't want it" and "it's dangerous and I don't want it". I used to be of the opinion certain vaccines should be mandated (excepting medical reasons) because otherwise we'll have horrible preventable diseases rampant again. I've since changed my position because of the way they treated this vaccine, tho I still think you have a moral obligation to get vaccinated for things like polio

That said, when I looked at the evidence people gave against the covid vaccine, well a lot of the numbers didn't add up. Are there injuries? Yes. And it's frustrating that they're not being looked into. They seem to mostly be related to inflammation, so I don't understand why an advil or something isn't recommended alongside the vax. But even so, there just are not as many injuries and deaths as people are claiming, and I really don't like the attitude of "well my science is the right one because they messed with the other side's science and obviously my side doesn't do that". It's literally just another echo chamber and the scaremongering is as bad as the side claiming covid is dangerous enough to justify lockdowns (in our rich, healthy, western society)

Anyway, this has been an unnecessarily long response lol. If you've reached the end, thanks for listening to me vent xD

[jemej3m]

smile and wave, boys

a fake exes trope? more likely than you think! i got my prompt from here via @sig66 (first dot-point). i love u babe here have a fic

*

Neil was in advanced statistics because he’d decided to make his sophomore year of college hell: It was within the statistician’s stale lecture hall that Neil met Nicholas Hemmick. 

“Why do I know you?” Nicky had waved his pencil menacingly, eyes narrowed as he slid into the seat beside Neil’s. “I feel like I’ve seen you somewhere.”

That wasn’t exactly what Neil wanted to hear on a Monday morning. He just shrugged, but the man just smiled and extended his hand. 

“Nicky Hemmick. Marketing major.”

Neil shook it reluctantly. “Neil Josten. Mathematics and chemistry.” 

His eyes lit up. “I do know you! You’re friends with Matt Boyd, aren’t you? Allison’s in my public relations and business law seminars. It’s fantastic to finally meet you, Neil! God,” Nicky remarked. “You’re just as pretty as Reynolds said you were.” 

Neil had no clue what to say to that, but it didn’t matter: The lecture was starting. 

Eventually, Neil had warmed to Nicky’s persistence. He was harmless, really, and easy to work with for group assignments (though there weren’t many in maths). When Neil missed a lecture on anniversary of his mother’s death, Nicky sent him notes. When Nicky left for Stuttgart a week earlier than the winter break, Neil got second copies of everything and compiled him a file to scan through. 

Nicky was fine as a classmate, and as a person. Neil valued his company and appreciated his efforts and patience. 

That is, until he started asking about Neil’s lovelife. 

*

Neil knew Andrew Minyard only by chance. It wasn’t like they’d cross paths otherwise, seeing as the man was a criminology major and had seemingly no interest in socialising whatsoever. 

It’d been a Saturday morning: Neil had taken his usual jog around campus, showered back at the dorm and snatched his bag to trundle down to Sweeties for the biggest cup of black coffee available. He’d sit in his corner like he did every Saturday morning and get through his derivatives pamphlets before his friends inevitably distracted him. 

He’d arrived, waited for his drink - said hello to Katelyn who was tucked behind the coffee machine (they were friends from the Spanish class he’d taken last year) - and turned to sit, but someone was already there.  

He was even shorter than Neil, and somehow grumpier too, a black beanie pulled over blonde hair and black glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Despite that, muscle wrapped his arms and there were definitely sheaths in those armbands. The piercings didn’t subtract from the look either. 

Neil wasn’t deterred. This was his Saturday routine. 

“I usually sit here.” He said. 

The man lifted his gaze from his laptop slowly. 

“My friend who works here - usually reserves it for me.” Neil explained. 

His gaze dropped back to the screen as he put his feet up on the coffee table in front of him. 

Neil narrowed his eyes. “Alright, asshole. Ignore me.” He grabbed an unused chair from nearby, dropped it in front of the man and sat down, causing enough of a ruckus that he looked back up from his work. 

Neil felt his gaze as he settled, answering almost five questions before the staring got weird. Looking back up, he arched an eyebrow. 

“Problem?” He asked. 

“Yes.” The man said. He was probably just about Neil’s age. Pretentious dick. “You’re insufferable.”

“So I’ve been told.” Neil answered coldly. 

Neither of them were stubborn enough to move, so they sat in stoic silence. Neil hoped he would leave before Neil did, but to his dismay, they both readied to leave at the same time, sending unsubtle glances towards one another. 

Katelyn gave him an apologetic look as he swung by, handing back the mug. “I don’t know where he came from but he wouldn’t listen to me when I told him it was saved. Sorry, Neil.”

“It’s all good.” Neil said. “I’ll just get here early next week.”

And so, Neil got there early. Got his spot. But the man had shown up and pulled the exact same thing, dragging across a chair to sit opposite him in passive-aggressive silence. 

Another barista, Roland, eventually managed to get the man’s name and passed it to Katelyn. Andrew Minyard. 

After a few weeks of back and forth, Neil decided to give it a rest. He arrived early, dragged up a seat and left the original spot to Andrew. If he was surprised by Neil’s complacency, he barely showed it, other than a slight narrowing of his eyes. 

Without intending to, it became habit. Neil even learned his coffee order, though sometimes he switched up the syrup. 

The first time they’d spoken was when Andrew snapped his fingers at Neil’s face. 

“Math major. You got a calculator? Phone’s dead.” 

Neil handed it over. “What do you need a calculator for?”

“Judicial system topic.” He muttered. “Has a finances subject.” 

“A crim major?” He’d thought maybe someone as entitled would’ve studied the classics, or english literature. Poetry, even.

“Just asked for a calculator, not a conversation.” He groused. Hesitated. “Yes, criminology major.” A few minutes later he chucked it back into Neil’s lap and muttered out a begrudging “Thanks.” 

Neil took it with a grain of salt, but still: their little routine continued. 

*

“Neil, Neil, Neil.” Nicky grinned as he sidled up to Neil after class. “What am I going to do with you?”

“What did I do this time?” Neil asked, affronted. 

“I just wanted to know when you last went on a date.” Nicky grinned.  “Been getting some great stories out of people lately.”

Neil couldn’t tell him he’d never been on a date before. Nicky would lose his shit. How the fuck could he shut this down with little to no collateral damage?

“Oh, come on!” Nicky jostled his shoulder. “It couldn’t have been that bad, right? No one would turn down a looker like you.” 

“It just didn’t work out.” Neil lied. 

“Ooh!” Nicky laughed. “Who, who? You have to tell me. You’ve got no choice.”

Fucking hell - who was someone that Nicky would never, ever come across throughout his college career? He already knew most of Neil’s friends, because it wasn’t like Neil had many. He couldn’t make up a name because Nicky would figure out the truth as soon as he scoured the internet, and there wasn’t any time to go fabricating a whole person.

Without better judgement, he blurted: “Andrew Minyard.”

For once, that drew Nicky up short. He looked at Neil like he’d grown a third eye. Neil looked back, equally as surprised by his own words. 

“Andrew Minyard?” Nicky asked. “Really?”

Fuck. Nicky did know him. Maybe he only knew of him? 

“Uh, yeah.” Neil grimaced. “Why, what’s wrong with him?”

“Oh,” Nicky laughed lightly, if a little tight in the throat. “Nothing. He’s just my cousin, that’s all.” 

Oh, Neil thought. Oh indeed.

Oh, fuck.

*

[nsmorig]

heya! i’m percy! i’ve had this account for a while now, but i thought i might put up an intro post, ‘cause i haven’t before.

i had a studyblr a Million years (1) ago, which was, i think, bombus-lapidarius after a kind of bumblebee, and now i’m picking up studying again! 

about me:

despite my name (yes, i know, i get it all the time,) i’m a woman! she/her, please!

i’m a lesbiab. lesbab. lebisbian. girls

i’m a londoner! which means i have very strong opinions about what is and isn’t acceptable to do on the tube

i’m studying MATHS. (also physics and biology but who cares? maths is where it’s at.)

which is also what i’m trying to study at uni! i want to be a mathematician or a statistician :)

i’m very sporty (ask me about weightlifting! or fencing!)

i like bees more than people

but i do like people a lot-- i’m 100% an extrovert, come talk to me ^-^

i got hella ADHD and (? confusing) pain problems, which can get me down sometimes, but i’ve found that talking about that negativity just gets me more down. i blog about that sometimes?

i’m hyperfixating on space (and, by extension, star trek) at the moment! oh, boy, i just motherfucking love space.

a lil background:

i quit studyblr ‘cause i started an engineering apprenticeship, which didn’t involve any studying! and then i worked out that i really liked the studying? and hated engineering! who’d’a thunk. 

i was super lucky in that i was able to get back onto an a-level course three months into the term, and then i worked my ass off getting back up to speed-- i went from A B- C- in my first set of exams to AAA in the Summer mocks, which really made it clear to me what i could do if i applied myself. so now i’m working to keep that up ^-^

[anilkhare]

What Career Can Be After Mathematics?

A question many people often ask when considering a change to a different career, but seldom are they asked "What career can I be after Mathematics?" The subject of Math is so diverse that it would be impossible to name exactly a 'career' after it. However, there are careers that will always be open to the dedicated student who has a love for the subject and a thirst for knowledge. Whether you want to become a teacher or a research scientist, a statistician or an accountant, or work in public sector, the field of Math can lead to many different job titles.

Teaching is a very popular career, as many bright minds find it difficult to sit in a classroom all day without any social interaction. Teachers can be found all over the place - from boarding schools to preparatory schools - providing valuable lessons to young ones. The curriculum is often changed on a regular basis, allowing students to develop a keen interest in learning new subjects. There is always the potential for growth within this career, with many people choosing to teach for the joy of doing it or for a dedicated career.

Statisticians deal with the world's population, calculating such things as national income per head of adults and the gross domestic product (GDP). They are involved in creating policies that allow for economic growth and can oversee many aspects of the scientific community. Not many people decide to become a statistician, with many wanting to be involved in more practical areas of science. However, the role can lead to many exciting challenges, such as driving new research vehicles, discovering new diseases, or simply finding more statistical proof for long-standing ideas.

The accountant is responsible for ensuring the financial health of a company. The role can involve a lot of travelling, and can sometimes lead to a stress-filled lifestyle. If you love to travel, but also like the comfort of being in a familiar environment, an Accountant could be ideal for you. For those who find the lifestyle stressful, there are opportunities to go into teaching or data entry. A career as a Bank teller is also very popular.

One of the most exciting ways to learn is by way of teaching, and there are many teaching opportunities available. An Education Director is a key part of any Education System, and their responsibility includes developing and implementing a student's learning and development needs. Responsibilities include overseeing academic and educational policy, dealing with complaints and concerns from parents and guardians, and interacting with other staff members such as teachers and other students. A position as an Education Director can lead to a rewarding position at a leading university or college.

Teachers of Mathematics form the backbone of school systems, and many schools rely heavily on their teaching. At younger ages, students are taught the basics of Mathematics by teachers. As a student progresses through the grades, the teacher will move them on to a more complex subject, such as Algebra or Trigonometry. Teaching covers a wide range of subjects, and there is no limit to what can be taught.

After a student has graduated from a Teaching Degree course, they can look towards a rewarding position in teaching. The best positions are always available, and they are in high demand. In these positions, there are always pupils to teach and classes to manage. If you enjoy working with young children, then a teaching career may be the right fit for you. These jobs are often a stepping stone to other more challenging roles, and there is never a shortage of pupils or teachers.

There are many different career opportunities after Mathematics, but it is important to consider the type of education that suits you the most. If you enjoy interacting with and helping people, then it may be a good fit for you. However, if a position involves a great deal of paperwork and can be cold and clinical, then this may not be the career choice for you. Whatever your preferred area of education, there will be a position waiting for you. All it takes is a bit of research and a willingness to try new things.

[elsewhereuniversity]

Many friends to be found for the lifesavers

((A study of the biologists on Elsewhere University, a continuation of the posts on statisticians and physicists by Canadianwheatpirates. Also on Ao3 )) 

Being a biology student on Elsewhere University is simply put absolute torture.

It’s in the nature of the Gentry to avoid the science students. Disapproving of everything and everyone that wishes to pin them down, put rules to them or uncover their secrets. It’s an uncomfortable truce, but in general the science students are bothered a lot less than the others. Especially the chemistry students are given a wide berth after the incident with their professor. Most science students are perfectly all right with this. No better guarantee for safety, after all.

The biologists? Not so much.

After all, what’s more of a novelty, a marvel, to a biologist then an entire hill filled with strange new species. Unclassified, unidentified, with unknown behaviour patterns and illogical body plans, not to mention sentience and powers beyond your wildest imagination? Irresistible!

The Fair Folk won’t touch you with a ten-foot pole, of course, but that only makes it more intriguing.

In a way, the other science majors have it easy. The things they study stay in place, mostly. The things they observe don’t tend to stare back. Of course, you could look away, but where’s the fun in that?

I’ll warn you beforehand, it’s not easy studying biology here. Unless, of course, you have a whole heap of self-control and patience stored up. Yes, the Art and English majors get taken most frequently. Yet when it comes to mysterious disappearances and weird unexplainable accidents, biologists take the lead. We’re magnets for trouble, sneaking around the boundaries and putting our noses where they do not belong. Prying and spying and generally being a hassle to the Fair Folk. Suddenly finding your life returning to crushingly normal as They retract their hands and even their eyes from you is said to be the most favourable outcome.

You’ll get to hear the stories anyway, though. After all, biologists are and odd breed of scientists. Jacks-of-all trades, we learn a bit of everything. Some chemistry, physics, math and statistics. They even put us in philosophy class every now and then to everyone’s great displeasure. As if we’re the ones who should be most concerned with morality and ethics on these grounds! Either way, you’ll get to know a lot of people from different studies as well, so even if the gentry decide to turn their back on you, the gossip will reach you nevertheless.

And after all, there’s plenty of cool things to study that aren’t magical at all! From ancient crab species with blue blood, saturated with copper, to jellyfish that keep turning back into their larval state, rendering them essentially immortal. Plants who’s body temperature rises with fifteen degrees when they flower or bacteria that eat plastic, form rock-hard spores or breathe sulfate. Not to mention fungi the size of a football field. No magic required!

Other students say we take after our subjects too much, and I guess they’re right. When it comes to creatures it’s universal among biologists that we like it bizarre! And yeah, we fit the bill. I know from experience many have the tendency to take their ‘work’ home with them. From odd exotic plants to weird, unfamiliar pets. Rooming with a biologist means there’s always chance of finding preserved carcasses in your fridge, or sometimes boxes with seeds that need to be kept cold until April, then they can be planted in the topsoil during the full moon. Be careful when watering the plants, some are from the desert and can easily be drowned. Mind the small tree with the massive, hand shaped leaves in the windowsill! Three seeds are enough to kill a human. The leaves aren’t that bad but you should still wash your skin thoroughly with soap after touching them.

It doesn’t matter if you’re an ecologists, cell biologists or geneticist. We all love nature, living things (and dead things, on occasion) and will try to keep them close. Your dorm will never be silent with the cries and scurrying of unfamiliar animals or rustling leaves as background noise.

Come to our labs if you have a free afternoon, they’re the prettiest this university has to offer! We have plenty of flowers in all colours, a small palm tree on the workbench and a huge aquaria full of colourful fish. Plus a cage with over forty species of beetles, shining like gemstones. Also a big collection of super-rad skeletons! Regular animals, fish, some beasts with too many limbs that look like the art students were in charge of the assembly. Most look unnerving (except the centaur, that one just looks dumb) and others can never quite tell if they’re perhaps Fae in origin or just weird-ass earth creatures (the biologists like it bizarre, after all). If you figure it out, don’t tell them!

And plants, so many plants. Don’t water anything though! Leave it to the professionals. Also if you see any empty pots, for the love of everything don’t throw them away! There’s no telling what’s beneath the dirt. There might be a living plant hibernating down there! Or maybe something else.

Please don’t touch the dead things either! Both for your own safety and for our sake, a few of those have yet to be dissected. Also, some of them might not be as dead as you think.

Oh and, oh what? The plant in the corner, you mean? Don’t worry about that, it’s not actually glowing. It’s just covered in a layer of thin, purple hairs! We suspect it’s to protect it from UV light. Nothing magical about it! We think. We’re still not entirely sure how it keeps making those sad humming noises though, but we’re bound to figure it out soon!

Also keep an eye out for the various pets the biologists are keeping, it’s a very interesting bunch. Much more varied than your typical cats and dogs. I’m still not entirely sure if keeping pets is allowed in the dorms but whatever, no stopping us. The lab rats used in the ‘animal behaviour’ practicum of the ‘development and growth’ course supposedly get disposed of after the experiments are finished, so they are free for the taking. Just bring a bulky jacket with a hidden pocket. Quite some biologists have one, although it’s a chore to smuggle them out.

Some of them are somewhat… odd, even though we didn’t do anything with them except observe their behaviour. Perhaps it’s the exposure to Fae magic? They make good pets, nevertheless.

(There’s another odd advantage to caring for plants and animals. Pets don’t normally do favours, and aren’t bound by promises, but this place has a way of altering things. It’s no certainty but perhaps one of the creatures you take care of may one day repay the favour. There are many friends to be found for the lifesavers. And as a biologist on Elsewhere’s grounds, you need all the friends you can get. Just make sure you treat them well.)

You may find injured creatures on campus occasionally. Just remember to check if any potential pets are sentient, deadly or collared before you take them. And remember, the crows and the lone fat skunk are absolutely off limits. Be wary of the swans, as well. Always be wary of the swans.

[x]

[femslashrevolution]

On the Beauty of Women: Becoming a Femslash Author

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

I was well into a decade of writing Silmarillion fan fiction before I became a femslash author. For years, I supported femslash–my archive, the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild, had signed on as an official participant for the International Day of Femslash beginning in 2008, and in the interest of civic spirit, I had occasionally written something for it–but it would be another five years before I would identify myself as a femslash author.

My excuses were myriad. I was straight and married–not only married but happilymarried to my high-school sweetheart. And the Tolkien fandom was conservative. When I joined the fandom in 2005, slash was controversial, and femslash was nonexistent. Slash writers tended toward their own sites and communities where they were safe from incessant objections to their stories: homophobia disguised as canon. These fans wanted to celebrate, share, and squee over Tolkien’s world just like the rest of us, and I do not blame them for avoiding the unremitting criticisms they endured in many mainstream fandom spaces, but their absence from my experience meant that I lacked models, inspiration, the impetus to see Tolkien’s world as a more diverse place than my heteronormative interpretation had heretofore allowed.

These were my excuses.

The truth is that I struggled to see the same value in women’s stories that I saw in the stories of men. I struggled to find their stories worth my time to tell them. I struggled to see their beauty.

And I struggled to see all of these things in myself.

I was the kind of woman who was always more comfortable with men than with other women. I can trace back the reasons. I was tormented by my peers in elementary school, and that torment came almost entirely from the girls in my class. I found much more acceptance from the boys. I had a group of girlfriends in the eighth grade, but those relationships were stretched to the breaking point when I opted to attend a magnet school for math, science, and computer science rather than my home high school. One of those girlfriends went with me to that school, and when I began dating the boy who would one day become my husband at the end of our ninth-grade year, our friendship was unable to weather the balance I couldn’t achieve between my best friend and my new boyfriend. From that point forward, my closest friends were almost always men.

I was the only girl from my high school to go to the university I attended for undergrad, but several boys went, and we remained friends. I worked as a cook in a family restaurant through university, in the kitchen subculture that was hypermasculine: foul-mouthed and physically grueling. I was proud of my ability to lift cases of fries and ice cream or deep fryers full of scorching-hot oil, just as well as any man, and I rebuked anyone who suggested otherwise. After graduation, I went to work as a statistician for a law enforcement unit; there were never more than two women working there besides me during my six years there. One of them had been the first woman allowed into the state police academy; feminineness was stricken to signal equality. When I became a teacher–traditionally a woman’s profession and one where nurturance is assumed prerequisite–I accepted a position at an alternative high school for boys with emotional and behavioral disabilities. It was a hands-on school staffed almost entirely by men; I was taught to break up fights and restrain young men who were sometimes twice my size. And I did. Many women stood aside from the physical encounters our job occasionally produced. I started weight training to minimize my chance of injury. I wasn’t invited to happy hours by my few female colleagues, but I earned cred among my male colleagues for being fearless and a reputation for sharp-tongued ribbing liberally sprinkled with four-letter words of Anglo-Saxon origin.

I considered myself a feminist but not particularly feminine, and I never noticed the dissonance in that. To be equal was to be invited to the same playing field as men; it was not recognition that maybe the rules of the game themselves were all wrong.

Fandom began to change that.

Less than 4 percent of the Tolkien fan fiction community identifies itself as male. When I began my fanfic career as a solidly genfic writer, I developed deep female friendships for the first time since I was a young teenager. My fandom friends were incisive and brilliant, opinionated, and strong-willed–and they were also generous and warm and compassionate and unabashedly women: as seemingly unafraid of being tender or sexual as they were to immerse themselves in the textual minutia of a male-dominated geek culture.

Because there was that too: geek culture and fandom was often male-dominated–even aggressively masculine–in its mainstream form. But then there was fan fiction: This room of our own that we’d carved for ourselves out of the larger fandom. While men argued on forums over whether Balrogs had wings and computed the sizes of the various armies of Middle-earth, we wrote Maedhros and Fingon–two of the most battle-blooded characters of The Silmarillion–in tender love with each other and reverse-engineered their deeds to prove that love as canonical. Where Tolkien turned his attention to the colonialist business of conquest and settlements and battles, we turned our attentions to the friendship, families, sex lives, social customs, and everyday existences of characters the books rarely showed without a sword in hand. When Tolkien dismissed a character’s actions under easy explanations like “pride” or “heroism,” we delved deep into the minds of people–human beings–capable of such acts and plumbed out the motives and the rationalizations and the pain of those acts. And we wrote those stories for each other, for none of the rewards–money, influence, fame–that the world of men had told us signaled our worth.

We were widely dismissed by many in the Tolkien fandom and, of course, the male-dominated, capitalist business of mainstream publishing. Our writing was dismissed as escapism and wish fulfillment, and we were accused of wanting to change ourselves and change men from our (and their) supposedly inherent natures, for we weren’t so beautiful and so brave, and men didn’t love as we imagined they did. No one ever considered that we weren’t trying to change ourselves or men as much as we were trying to change the world.

Writing slash began for me as a political act. Although I began as a genfic writer–one who once professed to “not get slash”–I got it quickly enough and read it from time to time and once even wrote a Maedhros/Fingon story for a friend. But I didn’t become a slash writer until my sister invited me to lunch one day and told me that she was bisexual, she was leaving her fiancé, and she was in love with a British woman she’d met online.

If writing fan fiction is supposed to be escapism, then why was it the only way I found to make sense of where I suddenly found myself? I’d always supported LGBTQA+ people in the vague, detached way of someone doing her duty as a good progressive but who has no skin in the game. I am not proud of that, but in my university years, I cared more about injustice against animals than against LGBTQA+ people. But in the midst of the Bush II years, sitting opposite my sister in that restaurant, suddenly that administration’s attacks on LGBTQA+ people wasn’t an abstraction; now it was my family, people I loved, who were suffering. If my sister’s relationship worked out–and it did; they’ve been married more than ten years now–that meant that I would lose one of my best friends to the bigoted laws of my country that would sooner drive one of its own daughters from its shores than to accept the woman she soon after made her wife. My body didn’t seem big enough to hold my rage.

A friend dared me to write a PWP of Fëanor/Erestor, two characters who appear thousands of years apart in the canon. She knew I didn’t write slash, but she was a good enough friend to shove me into unfamiliar waters and trust that, as I flailed and bobbed along on the waves, I wouldn’t accuse her of trying to drown me. I wrote a novel in response. I remember it bleeding from me, from some angry, wounded place, in gouts of words. It remains one of the finest stories I’ve ever written.

But it was M/M, not F/F. In retrospect, I wonder at this, that I would choose to unknot the conflict between my love for my motherland and that nation’s cruel disregard for my sister by writing a novel about the love between two men. Of course, there was the convenience of my friend’s challenge to me, and there was the fact that, in the Tolkien fandom, femslash didn’t really exist yet. I could probably count on one hand the number of femslash stories I’d seen before that point. There was the fact that I still hadn’t learned to value the stories of women, despite being a woman myself in a community of women, representing in my writing a distinctly feminine worldview (although I didn’t yet recognize the latter).

At that point in my life, I still lacked woman friends in my offline life. I still took pride in my characteristics that marked me as masculine and dismissed or downplayed those that marked me as feminine. I thought of the former as strong and the latter as week. I still believed that what I wrote was a fantasy: not what the world was like at all.

Becoming a femslash writer was likewise a political act.

But it was subtler in how it happened. There was no provocation, no epiphany, no angry hemorrhage of emotion. Becoming a femslash writer was not a statement–as my becoming a slash writer had been–and more a slow evolution, shaped by fandom, by the women I admired and loved in that community, and by my art. It was an awakening to the fact that I wanted to use my art to express that women are beautiful and the world we, as women, have the potential to make is also beautiful.

It wasn’t fandom alone that provoked this realization. In my work with disadvantaged, emotionally disabled young men, I was physically strong, I was fearless, I broke up fights, I expanded my repertoire of swear words, and I was unflinching (even when I was scared). Yet none of those reasons were why I was successful with those students.

These young men suffered for a lack of love: often abandoned by their families, cast adrift in a careless succession of foster and group homes, shuffled from one school to another that didn’t want them, affixed with labels to justify the isolation and injustice to which they were subjected. And I imagined myself full of so much love to give them. There were days that I could feel it pushing to be free of the bounds of me. “The love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay,” I would say to myself. “Love isn’t love till it’s given away.” This wasn’t masculine, that claimed that they needed to be shoved and squeezed into the expectations of our society. This was feminine, that sought to understand, to love, to heal.

I began to realize my power, and it didn’t lie in my impersonation of masculinity.

The world of women is beautiful. It is a world of compassion and understanding. It is just. It does not make pecking orders; it does not lock horns. I began to understand that, for me, feminism was not only access to the same playing field as men but the power to change the rules of the game. To say that conflict, competition, warfare, and strife were not the only ways by which the world could be governed. To insist that acceptance, love, justice, and peace deserved equal consideration, and that as feminists, we must lay aside our conviction that the way men have done things for all these thousands of years is superior and advocate for a better way.

If fan fiction is wish fulfillment, then this is a wish that could only be fulfilled in its entirety through femslash. As I have been told by more than one man explaining to me why Tolkien wasn’t sexist, there are so few women in his books because they are books about war. And war is the province of men. Fair enough. Then to fulfill my wish of imagining a world without war, then I must also imagine a world with women at its center. For even in the gentlest of slash fanfics about Tolkien’s characters, the hands that caress so tenderly know or will know the stains of blood. They will become toughened by spear and sword. The minds that love will turn also upon plans of treachery and war; the hearts capable of passion and devotion can be hardened also against mercy and compassion. Even in the prelapsarian innocence of Valinor, their love is shadowed by what they will–what they can–become in the world of men.

But not the women. The Silmarillion is a posthumously published prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where the Elves are brought by the godlike Valar to inhabit an “deathless realm,” isolated behind impassable mountains and illuminated only by the light of two sacred trees. When one of the Valar rebels and destroys the Two Trees, plunging the land into darkness and murdering one of the Elven kings as he goes, the son of the slain king swears vengeance and pursuit of his father’s killer into Middle-earth. But Tolkien’s Elven women largely rejected the flight to Aman, which in The Silmarillion was preceded by an attack by the armed and armored Noldor upon the Teleri, who wielded only light bows, after the Teleri would not give up their ships to the Noldor. And even though these women are possessed of little more than names and a place in a family tree populated almost entirely by men, Tolkien bothered nonetheless to explain one woman’s motive for remaining: “Fingolfin’s wife Anairë refused to leave Aman, largely because of her friendship with Eärwen wife of Arafinwë … though she was a Noldo and not one of the Teleri.”

This obscure line about two women barely characterized would become the canonical basis for my femslash OTP, but more importantly, it would define the world of my fantasy. What woman would forsake her husband and her children for a friendship? One guided by compassion for the stricken; one whose sense of justice will not allow her to condone a journey–however just in and of itself–that was inaugurated with an act of violence. One with little interest in conquest or vengeance. One who believed in a world that could be founded upon love and justice and knew that the bloodshed perpetuated by the Noldor upon the Teleri had no place in that world. In The Silmarillion, one of the Valar curses the departing Elves–“tears unnumbered ye shall shed,” he forewarns–but though accurate in his prescience, we need not blame the curse: We need only to look at the world built by men, where violence multiplies in the ways of the proverbial Hydra’s heads. Their world is our world, and I dream of something better.

In one of my earliest stories, Anairë and Eärwen coordinate the governance of their people whose kings have chosen exile after their land was deprived of light. In later stories, these women became lovers in their youth and pillars in each other’s lives as they navigated their roles in the Eldarin monarchy, became wives and mothers in accordance with duty and tradition, and resisted the division of their people. They are keepers of a vision of the paradaisical realm of Aman that is neither that of the autocratic Valar nor the power-lusting Noldor but a distinctly feminine vision that seeks to heal and progress.

My feminism has changed; my view of women–and of myself–has changed.

I used to imagine that gaggles of women were inherently frivolous and that I’d be unwelcome by default because I wasn’t interested in babies, mani-pedis, or shopping. I was a loner or a friend of men. My fandom friends taught me differently, and I began to open my heart to–even to seek–friendships with the women in my life.

If my stories are a vision of what it means to be human, then writing femslash freed me from the idea that every story worth telling was a precursor and an explanation for a future violent act, or a reaction of the heart against inhumanity. My femslash stories let me explore a world untouched by war (though not violence or injustice), where the conflicts were centered on love and justice. They kindled in my mind possibilities I’d never imagined in our own world.

Writing always awakens me to what is important. Fan fiction made me realize that I wanted nothing more than to teach the love of words to young people, especially underprivileged young people. Now my work as an author has convinced me that I must be an active artificer of the world I hope to see, which is very different from the world I have.

Three weeks ago, I journeyed with a dozen other women on a twelve-hour overnight bus journey from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom to the Women’s March on Washington. I was new to Vermont–a flatlander–but they accepted and welcomed me. We shared toothpaste and wine on the bus; we held hands when the crowds thickened and threatened to separate us; we stood in the middle of the sidewalk with signs held high, calling like crows until we located anyone separated from the group. We watched out for and took care of each other in the midst of an event that was physically and emotionally overwhelming: not only the crush of a record crowd but the sudden manifestation of a movement inspired by many of our ideals.

We weren’t even back for a few hours before we were planning our next steps. Our first meeting was standing-room only and opened with a series of swift commitments: inclusiveness to all who wanted to join and an approach that sought common ground and resisted partisan dogma. In the midst of the meeting, I realized how happy I was to be there, building this world by women.

About the Author

Dawn is an author and archivist in the Tolkien fandom. She is the founder of the

Silmarillion Writers’ Guild

and moderates on the

Many Paths to Tread

archive and for

Back to Middle-earth Month

. Sometimes she gets dressed up fancy and presents at Tolkien conferences. Dawn is a Vermont teacher and activist with big dreams of raising milk goats, living off-the-grid, and changing the world.

[asklyss]

Hey Lyss! I’m 21 and have never even kissed a guy, let alone had a boyfriend. I don’t know what’s wrong with me! I’m not ugly, I would say I’m pretty and more attractive than other girls who have many boyfriends. I do go out drinking, clubbing with friends sometimes but the guys I like don’t really ever show any interest in me. It’s only really guys I don’t like or find attractive to think I am. Idk what do. What I want to know is, how can I get guys to like or notice me?

PART 2: and if a guy I like likes me back I’m too terrified to do anything with him, especially if I haven’t had any alcohol to give me confidence. How can I fix my issues lol

Hello!!!K so I love all my followers and I really don’t judge but I just cannot help you without first pointing out how very disturbingly horrible your question is. But let’s get 2 things straight: 1) This is NOT your fault for feeling this way and I blame society, not you. And 2) I’m no statistician but I think about 90% of young people have felt the exact same as you in one way or another at one time or another. So you should feel comforted by the fact that you are definitely not alone in feeling this way, but at the same time sort of disturbed because that means SoOoOo many other people have fallen into this distorted way of thinking.Let me start of by saying that I too have felt this way many years ago. When I was around 14 and all my friends were getting boyfriends or somehow getting their crushes to like them back, I was baffled as to why this wasn’t happening to me too! I did the math like you: “I’m prettier than her, I’m smarter than her, I’ve got better x y and z than her… so how is she getting the attention?!” I didn’t realise that the problem wasn’t her, it was me. I am never going to be her, so what is the point in comparing myself?? The funniest part was, when I was focussed on me, and not trying to catch guys, guys came to me. Maybe because I didn’t reek of desperation and jealousy anymore! My mum used to tell me the way to get a guy is to stop chasing them, and I thought that was the dumbest advice I’ve ever heard… why would they want a girl who acts like she doesn’t need a man to be happy and content? Well funnily enough I realised thats EXACTLY what they want. I’m not saying to act like you’re above them, or that you are too special to give them the time of day. I’m saying show them confidence, show them independence, and couple that with friendliness and approachability… and that’s a recipe for success. I know lots of blogs tell you that if you flick your hair like this or touch his shoulder like that, you’re destined to score. But I don’t know, I don’t think it requires that much overthinking. Life is truly that hilarious: the less you think these types of things are important, the more you get them.If you want to be more noticed by guys, you can do things like taking care of your appearance, initiating conversations, exuding positive open body language (not fidgeting or looking distracted or unhappy to be there, etc), but as for getting them to like you, that would require me to cast out some form of mind and body control over him that I am terribly afraid I do not have the capacity to do! I know, it sucks. Can we please stop equating a guys interest in us with our self-worth. I’ve been in short and long relationships, I’ve been single, I’ve dated, I’ve been with guys who I wanted to start a life with, and I’ve been with guys just for fun. And over the course of all of that my confidence has fluctuated just like everyone else does. Want to know when my confidence was at it’s peak? When I made it a priority to date and love MYSELF. Shortly after I did that, I met a great guy and he was supportive and loving, but that love and confidence he gave me was only an EXTRA to that which I had before he was in the picture. That way, when we had to break it off, he left but didn’t take my self-worth and confidence with him. A partner should just be ADDING to what self-love, contentment, and confidence you already feel inside… not filling missing piecesHave a read of this response I gave to a past question. I shared a bit more about my past experience of wanting to find a boyfriend ASAP and you’ll see how I overcame this over time.Good luck, I really hope I helped clear up that distorted perspective you’re stuck in, and I really appreciate this question (and your honesty) because I know this will relate to A LOT of readers and help them too! xx

[lesliepump]

Podcast #153: Building a Future-Centric Law Firm, with Peter Aprile & Natalie Worsfold

In this episode, we’re joined by Peter Aprile and Natalie Worsfold to talk about the way they think differently about building Counter Tax. Learn how they use a long view, process, and firm culture to make big bets on the future.

Peter Aprile and Natalie Worsfold

Peter Aprile is a tax controversy and litigation lawyer and the founder of Counter Tax Lawyers, a Toronto-based firm that develops innovative strategies for resolving tax disputes. Peter is also the co-host of the podcast Building NewLaw, along with fellow (cult member) Counter lawyer Natalie Worsfold.

A somewhat unconventional lawyer, Natalie spends her days turning the firm into the well-oiled machine of the future, usually by optimizing and building technology that eliminates inefficiency. She’s the co-architect behind many of Counter’s process workflows and their comprehensive knowledge-base, lovingly named Hank.

You can follow Natalie on LinkedIn and Peter on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Thanks to Ruby Receptionists and Clio for sponsoring this episode!

Listen & Subscribe

To listen to the podcast, just scroll up and hit the play button (or click the link to this post if you are reading this by email).

To make sure you don’t miss an episode of The Lawyerist Podcast, subscribe now in iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast player. Or find out about new episodes by subscribing to our email newsletter.

Transcript

This transcript was prepared by Rev.com.

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Lawyerist Podcast, with Sam Glover and Aaron Street. Each week, Lawyerist brings you advice and interviews to help you build a more successful law practice in today’s challenging and constantly changing legal market. Now, here are Sam and Aaron.

Sam Glover: Hi, I’m Sam Glover.

Aaron Street: And I’m Aaron Street. This is Episode 153 of the Lawyerist Podcast, part of the legal talk network. Today we’re talking with Peter Aprile and Natalie Worsfold about building a law firm by having the courage to make a bet on the future.

Sam Glover: Today’s podcast is sponsored by FreshBooks, Ruby Receptionists, and Law Pay. We appreciate their support and we will tell you more about them later in the show.

Aaron Street: So, today is our first episode of 2018, marking our fourth year of the Lawyerist Podcast, which is unreal to me.

Sam Glover: That’s awesome.

Aaron Street: It seems like a New Year’s episode is a great time to step back and do some strategic long-term thinking about where our firms and careers are headed. I think today’s conversation with Peter and Natalie about how they’ve built a future-centric law firm should be a really good topic to tie in your long-term strategic planning as you do some new years resolutions and goal planning for the year.

Sam Glover: Yeah. I think if you’ve listened to Peter and Natalie’s excellent podcast, Building New Law, then you’ll enjoy this one because in their podcast they talk much more about their guests than themselves. Today I sat down and asked them about themselves and I think it’s the perfect podcast to start out the new year for the reasons Aaron just said. They are always looking at the long view and building a process about it and making a bet on the future.

So, here’s my conversation with Peter and Natalie.

Peter Aprile: Hi. My name’s Peter Aprile and I am a tax lawyer and the founder of Counter Tax Lawyers. I’m also the co-host of a podcast called Building New Law.

Natalie Worsfold: And my name’s Natalie Worsfold. I’m also a lawyer at Counter Tax Lawyers and I work with Peter on the podcast as well.

Sam Glover: I feel like I should congratulate you guys on having the second best law practice podcast.

Peter Aprile: Really? You should really congratulate us for having the best law practice podcast, but …

Sam Glover: No. No I can’t. It’s just … I can’t go there.

Peter Aprile: I was recently listening to … Yeah, I’m not gonna lie, I did it. I listened to my Cleo speech and was listening to how I pumped your podcast so much from the stage.

Sam Glover: That was awesome.

Peter Aprile: Yeah, and I thought to myself why’d I do that?

Sam Glover: We’ll start out by saying no, I love your podcast. If our listeners are enjoying our podcast, they’re gonna like yours. It’s worth catching up on it.

Peter Aprile: That’s very kind of you. Like I told you before, you guys are a big inspiration for what we do and i certainly would say some of the reason why we started this and some of the reason why we continue to do this insanity that is a legal podcast, but there you have it. So, it’s all your fault.

Sam Glover: Aw, shucks. So let me back up, because I let you guys introduce yourselves and then I started making fun of you. I wanna talk about your firm, first of all, because that’s why I wanted to have you guys on. I love your podcast, but that’s not the focus that I wanna have. Let’s just start with the very front page of your website, which says that, “Counter Tax is a team of tax lawyers, legal professionals, mathematicians and technology experts.” What in the world are mathematicians doing at a law firm?

Peter Aprile: Being very sad.

Natalie Worsfold: I’d say it’s more what aren’t they doing. I mean, I guess the math side comes in it from two angles. Obviously we’re a tax litigation firm, so we’re dealing with numbers to some extent in terms of looking at what amounts are people fighting over, what could they win in various scenarios and things like that. Where I think the second aspect to it is; we’re very focused on return of investment, so client ROI and trying to calculate probabilities and chances of success and things like that. Although we may be great lawyers, sometimes we need some support in the math department. When we talk about mathematicians, it’s verging into statisticians and things like that as well.

Peter Aprile: The reality is, I think one of the themes that run through our law firm and our culture is quantifying everything we possibly can. As Natalie was saying, to the extent that we could have help in that regard, having people who are trained differently kind of make us better at doing that and learning from them as well as them learning from us kind of makes us all strong.

Sam Glover: I think what I’m hearing is you really go to great lengths, not just to address the legal problems, but to try and forecast probabilities of success for your clients and kind of draw them a roadmap for where their litigation might go. That seems really forward looking to me when you’re representing someone.

Peter Aprile: Well, I think it’s … Yeah. It’s certainly a key part of what we do. We’re building and continue to build some software that helps us do that. That will continue to expand in 2018 and beyond. That’s at the core of it. I think the fact that we’re building it into a software might be new. This is what lawyers do and what we should be doing. This is kind of what we sell. To the extent that we could become expert in that regard or improve is, I think, something that certainly this firm is focused on. We think all firms, certainly all litigations firms should be focused on.

To the extent that we could make that visual and involve our clients in those conversations by making these things visual so we’re not mapping our own risk tolerance and things like that or substituting our clients risk tolerance for our own. It really points us to having better conversations and leveraging our clients collective intelligence and hopefully being better lawyers in that way.

Sam Glover: You just dropped something in the middle there that I think is worth pulling out which is you’re building your own software on predictive analytics, right? Because like, I was a litigator and my clients would sit down with me and they would ask me, “How likely are we to win this motion?” And I would basically pull a number out of my ass. I would say, “I don’t know, it feels like about 70%.” But you’re actually trying to do that for real.

Peter Aprile: Yeah, trying. I don’t wanna over blow it or over hype it in any way. It’s early days and kind of we’re building to hopefully something more sophisticated. Where it starts, I think, or where it has started with us is just understanding what goes into increasing the accuracy of estimates and probabilities and recording that. Learning how to do that, getting more skilled at actually just making predictions as well as recording them as well as … part of that, I should say, trying to remove bias. Then, checking back, right? Looking and saying, “Was that probability accurate?” It’s … Even saying to somebody, “You have a 70% chance,” I think is a good start. That’s kind of early, early … Fine. That’s a great start. Frankly, the amount of professionals that avoid that advice or that type of statement like the plague is just staggering to us.

I think you start taking next steps when you start recording those probabilities and looking back at them in after action reviews or what have you to say, “Okay, I was accurate and why was that accurate and why was that a good estimate?” We learn more by when we’re not. So, what didn’t we see at the time? What bias did we fall into at the time? Was Natalie better at that and had a more accurate prediction than I did? What went into her analysis that we can draw forward for the next time?

Natalie Worsfold: I think it’s that discussion, actually, where I see the most value is focusing people around not particularly numbers, but trying to express their level of confidence using numbers, then provokes a discussion about why do you feel this? Why do you see this this way? Who else in the room is seeing it this way and why? I think that’s where I found it really valuable.

Sam Glover: I suppose if you can have a conversation with a client where you can say, “You have an 80% chance of success on this,” or an 82.5% chance if you’re getting really granular, you can help them figure out whether or not it’s worth the amount of money it’s gonna cost to take that step.

Peter Aprile: You’re absolutely right. That’s the next part of it. That’s kind of where Natalie started off in terms of that ROI idea. When I think of, how do we know we’re good at what we do? Winning at all costs isn’t … in some cases is easy. The question is how can I generate the highest ROI for the client, which is arguably viewed in a certain light … Some lawyers and people would think that’s contrary to our interest. We don’t view it that way. We did a great job if we can spend a dollar of the clients’ money and save him or her ten. We did an okay job if it’s five to five. We need to have that … We feel like, at least, we need to have that front and center for the client. We think that that’s part of what make a good lawyer.

Sam Glover: I’m curious now that we’ve talked a little bit about mathematicians and analytics. I was reading some of the bios on your website and I wonder if practicing law day to day looks much different at Counter Tax than it would at just a typical, traditional law firm, because it feels like you guys are using tools that aren’t present at normal law firms. So, I’m wondering if it looks different day to day.

Peter Aprile: We hear that it looks different. Yeah, it looks different. It’s funny, every five years we have a law society financial audit. We just had the law society auditor in here the other day going through our records and making sure we’re compliant with law society requirements and things of that nature. He walked in and said, “It feels like I stepped into the future.”

Sam Glover: Nice.

Peter Aprile: I’m like, “Well, that’s a bit extreme.” I don’t know, this is our normal. We do weird things, I guess. We do stand up huddles every day. The way we talk is kind of … Taking off of what Natalie was saying, the way we talk is very different. When we’re having conversations with other lawyers or clients, most of our clients are sophisticated and have other accounts for other areas of their business and what have you. We do get a lot of comments that we talk differently and we think differently.

I don’t think you walk in really and … We just got these new sound proof phone booths. Those look different, so you’re definitely … Shout out to Framery. It kind of looks different in that regard in terms of it’s open concept and all that other good stuff. Like I said, I think the biggest difference is how we talk to each other. It’s those types of conversations and the level of those conversations that I think I don’t see a lot of other lawyers or law firms having.

Sam Glover: What’s the … When you do talk to each other, what do you think it is that makes that different? When you talk to clients?

Natalie Worsfold: I’d point to the collaboration side of it. When I’ve seen [inaudible 00: 10: 16] spoken with the lawyers working in other practices it’s been less about collaboration and working together. I think what I see here is everybody being very focused on working together to find the best result or something like that. I would go collaboration. I don’t know what you see.

Peter Aprile: Yeah, I hate, I hate the word client-centric, because it gets thrown around so much. Natalie and I talk about as a firm we’re all in for each other. We’re also all in for our clients. It is our interest second to our clients. I don’t think that that happens, unfortunately, in too many law firms. I was talking to some tax lawyers somewhat recently, we were talking about our software and the showing our clients the analysis and putting our probabilities right out there. Saying the clients before examinations for discovery, “This is what I think your probability of success is.” Then after examinations for discovery maybe that probability changes, maybe it doesn’t.

The lawyer looked at me and said … After some other questions that I won’t go into, they looked at me and said, “Aren’t you worried that if your probability changes that might expose you to some sort of liability from the client or something like that?” I thought to myself, that’s exactly the wrong mindset. You just put your own interest in front of giving your client complete information.

Sam Glover: Yeah.

Peter Aprile: You know, doing the best that you can. I’m certainly not saying we have our probabilities down. Like I said before, we’re learning every day and we’re hopefully getting better at it every day. It’s that type of mindset that you just put yourself in front of your client. You’re more worried about your own liability or how this impacts you as opposed to putting that client first and saying, “I’m gonna do the best I can to give John or whoever the client is the most information possible to make the best result for him and for his business.”

Sam Glover: I think that feels like a good place to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. When we come back, I wanna kind of blow up that mindset that you talk about and spin off of something that you’ve talked about at the Cleo conference. We’ll take a quick break and when we come back we’ll keep going.

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Sam Glover: Okay, we’re back and Peter, part of the reason we’re talking is because I bullied you both. The other part of the reason-

Peter Aprile: Nudge, nudge, nudge.

Sam Glover: Well, I really wanted to have you on my podcast.

Peter Aprile: We so respect it.

Natalie Worsfold: It’s effective.

Peter Aprile: Yeah, it’s totally.

Sam Glover: The other reason is because we finally got to meet, the three of us, at the Cleo cloud conference this past year and you gave a presentation there where you talked about how you’re … It had some ridiculous title that didn’t really get the point across. What it was really about is kind of is that mindset; how your firm thinks about law practice and its business differently. You didn’t couch it as different, you just explained how you do it. I feel like I really wanna dive in and explain that and have you explain that and take it apart. I loved it. It really resonated with me. Do you remember what item number one was?

Peter Aprile: We started talking about how … Again, what I wanna underscore is we don’t have any of this mastered. We struggle to stay consistent in our thinking and not fall into, I guess, more traditional ways or different ways of thinking. With that, one of the things that we try to keep top of mind and try to keep as our north star is having the longest you in the room. That’s kind of where we kicked off the Cleo talk. The idea that everything we do, we do for 5, 10, or 15 years from now for or law practice. We think to ourselves what is our law firm going to need and what do we need to start building today to get there?

Sam Glover: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So essentially, what you’re saying is you’re trying to build your business for the future, not for the present. Is that right?

Peter Aprile: Yeah. No, that’s absolutely it. The theme that runs through this office is how can we be just a little bit better tomorrow than we are today? Then we try to multiply that out. When you say our business, I don’t wanna separate the business of law from the legal work that we do, because what it is about and one of the points that I was trying to make in that I think people sometimes gloss over or miss is that it’s about quality of work and it’s about becoming better lawyers. I think that everything will follow from that.

That is kind of our north star. It’s how do we become better lawyers? How do we make sure we’re giving value at the highest level for our clients? What does the law firm need to look like and what are the roles that need to be part of that law firm and who are the people that need to be here and what technology needs to exist in order to allow that to happen?

Sam Glover: I think lawyers bristle when you use the B word, business. It’s a business and a profession. To do it well, you have to keep those things in balance. Your right, a great business serves its customers in the same way that a great law firm serves its clients and invests in that future. I think it’s that investment piece that really strikes me about this idea, is that many, many law firms don’t invest. They take all of the money out all of the time and so there’s nothing left to say, “Well, here’s where I’m gonna be in five years and I’m gonna take a hit now so that I can build my firm to be what it needs to be for my clients so that they can win and I can win in five years.”

Peter Aprile: Yeah. That’s what we try to do every day. I think that we’re lucky, because the people that are this firm and that have been here for a while are all willing to do that. We’re very fortunate that everybody is very much behind the idea that … I think Jordan Furlawn calls it breaking the piggy bank and emptying it out at the end of every year. We can’t get to where we want to get to if we wanna do that. The question becomes what’s more important? Is it … If you truly want to be the best at what you do, it’s going to require some investment. It’s going to require you to make sacrifices today to get there tomorrow. There’s no way we could hire a developer or focus some of our time on the things that we’re building without sacrificing short term revenue and short term profit. Like I said, I’m just fortunate that we have assembled a group of people that put being a little bit better today and hopefully being a lot better ten years from now to cracking open that piggy bank and focusing on that short term buck.

By the way, the other thing about all that, that’s not in the best interest of our clients either. It is not in the best interest of our clients for the law firm that’s serving them to empty the piggy bank at the end of every year.

Sam Glover: I mean, what if you really want the BMW?

Peter Aprile: Yeah. By the way, our clients who are entrepreneurs, they don’t run their businesses that way either. They know better than that. If they had a better understanding of how some law firms are run, I think they’d be shocked at what’s actually going on. I think they would quickly realize some of the deficiencies of some service providers.

Sam Glover: If you’ve got the longest view in the room and you’re building towards it, I think your second point was trusting the process. What do you mean by that?

Natalie Worsfold: We spent, I guess part of the investment story again. We invested a lot of time early on in mapping out all of our processes. Sitting down and thinking about how do I do this in reality/ what are all the pieces that go together for a legal submission or even for something as simple as we have a process mapped out for when a fax arrives in our office. Who does what with it? Where’s it gonna go and things like that. If everything is, I guess, identified as a process, you can have more confidence that it’s going to the right person. You know it’s going to be dealt with int he right way and then you can focus on … For me, I’d be focusing more on the legal side of things. For other people in our office who have different roles, they can focus on how they contribute to the larger value that’s being driven.

Peter Aprile: Again, going back to that earlier point. Those discussions about how we do things here, it’s part of that. It’s how do we wanna handle … It’s part of the steps that we’re going to do to put together questions for examination for discovery for the sake of example. Spending the time to have those conversations and what are the best practices that surround that? How can we do that better? How have we done that in the past or how did we wanna make sure that it’s done to maintain?

One of the big things that Natalie and I always talk about is it’s great to have a law firm and it’s great to grow, but the one thing that we’re always unwilling to sacrifice is quality, so how do we make sure we’re running that quality through the organization? Even for the articulating students and paralegals that join us, how do we make sure they’re being trained properly and in accordance with the system? How do train people that this is the level of quality and not only that but more importantly this is how you get there?

Like we were saying earlier, if you’re not taking the time to have those conversations, those conversations themselves have a significant amount of value. That’s at least what we found. Then, when you actually implement it into a system neat things start to happen.

Sam Glover: I’m curious, we are also very process oriented. I’m bought into that. I love seeing law firms build that process in because it’s quality control. It’s like having a checklist for cleaning up the operating room, just completely eliminates all of the transmission of diseases. Maybe not completely, but it has a huge thing in the medical community. Let’s bring that kind of quality control to law. One of the things that I’m curious about is how do you teach people when to break process? How do teach people how to recognize when something shouldn’t be done that way?

Natalie Worsfold: I think that’s more … We do a lot of after action reviews, so if somebody sees something that isn’t right in the process, then we have ways of talking about that. I don’t know if I would say we encourage people to break process so much as if you see something that’s wrong, stop everybody and just figure out why it’s wrong and what we should be doing instead, if that makes sense.

Sam Glover: Yeah.

Peter Aprile: Yeah. It’s that idea that you don’t get a free pass around here by saying … It happens in law firms all over the world. I followed the template or I followed the precedent. Just because it’s ours, doesn’t mean you follow it. Your job is to question everything, including what we’ve built, and make it better. That’s part of our interview process. We challenge people and we say, “Your job is to train us just as much as it is to train you. Your job is to grow me just as much as my job is to grow you.”

Talking about this earlier today with [Yoni 00: 22: 41], we need those questions. Either you’ll find something that we didn’t see before, which is great, you’ll make us stronger. We’ll tweak what we’re doing. Or, you’ll reinforce what’s already there. Both those things are really valuable. I’m not looking for people to simply blindly follow a process. It’s, “There it is, now question the heck out of it so that you can look for opportunities for all of us to make it better.”

Sam Glover: One of the things that I was struck by … I was listening to another podcast that was talking about those medical checklists and they tried to impose them on another hospital and it was totally ineffective because nobody understood why they were being asked to do the things on the checklist. It sounds like what you’ve done is you’ve got a team that understand why they’re doing what’s on the process and you’re encouraging them to continually look to improve that, but to have a process and respect it as well. Is that a matter of … how do you get those people on the team? Is that a matter of culture or is that a matter of building the process together and getting everybody on the same board?

I imagine if you tried to bring a procedures manual into most firms it would probably just collect a lot of dust and nobody would use it. How do you do differently?

Peter Aprile: Again, I wanna underscore we’re still learning how to do this. How did it start? It started with us doing it really poorly. We didn’t communicate effectively, we didn’t tell people why we were doing this. I said in the Cleo talk that we were a small group and we thought as a small group. We didn’t have communications issue or maybe we didn’t have to communicate because we were in an open office together. The long and the short of it is we did a poor job when we first went down this line and suffered for it. We went slower and had some disagreements between us and members of the law firm. We would do things a lot differently. Thankfully, we made it through that and now it is part of our culture and it is one of the things that we talk about in interviews.

The other thing is, as soon as you come on board here, you’re building something. There’s nobody in this law firm that isn’t building something right now. Whether it’s a process map, whether it’s a relevance diagram, or whether it’s role definitions in the law firm, or whether it’s a checklist for examinations for discovery, there is not one person here who isn’t building something that is either part of or going to become part of the process. Through that, through everybody contributing, I think that it’s much easier to create a culture where people understand when you pick up something else, when you pick up some other process or template or whatever that’s built, you immediately understand because of your experience in building something the value of that thing.

Sam Glover: That’s awesome. So your final point that you made, I think, was about the courage to make a bet. Say more about that.

Peter Aprile: I’m pointing to Natalie and she’s pointing back at me. Yeah, I think it’s cheesy.

Sam Glover: I don’t think it’s cheesy. I’m not gonna let you get away with that.

Peter Aprile: Yeah. It’s … I was gonna say it’s cheesy and it’s so real.

Sam Glover: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Peter Aprile: Like I’ve been saying throughout this podcast, we’re learning, we’re trying to figure it out. I have no idea whether we’re making the right bets or have the right answers, I just know that this is right for us and this is our north start. We can’t practice any other way. It’s like supreme confidence and self doubt simultaneously. That’s the world that we exist in. We’re constantly thinking about, “Should we be doing this and wow are we crazy? Why don’t we just break the piggy bank at the end of the year? Is this going to quote unquote pay off?” But it’s the understanding that payoff isn’t what motivates us, that traditional payoff isn’t what motivates us.

It’s also the understanding that we can never know and like I said, you just have to … We think, for us at least, we just have to have the courage to step up and risk that. At the end of the day if we look back at our careers … I can’t even say that because I feel like we already have the payoff. When I look at how people grow here, when I look at people supporting each other and becoming stronger and relying on each other as well as the technology and systems and stuff like that and growing, it kind of feeds into this idea that this is the path that we wanna go and helps us in those moments of, I guess, self doubt or things of that nature.

Also, all that being said, its communities like this. The podcast has helped us. That’s why we started the podcast was to find other people who we thought were doing interesting things, because we kind of felt like we were doing this and felt alone. When we listened to you guys get the same thing and then when you go to Cleo Con. You meet a couple people that feel the same way and you sort of connect the community, which again, although it doesn’t cure those many, many, many moments of self doubt, it certainly helps.

Sam Glover: When you said this the first time, it reminded me of Peter Teal’s idea of the secret. Peter Teal is apparently the terrible person, but in his book Zero to One, he talks about what makes a successful start up. He explains that most start ups, these being the disruptive companies, not the ones who are just replicating other stuff, but most are built around a shared secret. Something that you know to be true about the world that most people don’t think is true. That sounds a lot to me like your idea that you are trying to figure out where things are going for you, for your clients, for your competition in 5, 10, 15 years and you’re gonna build that firm now so that you can get there first.

Your understanding of the future is your shared secret around which you’re building your firm. You could be wrong, but it sounds like even if you are wrong, you’re building a company and a firm that you really like having and that your clients enjoy in the meantime. Maybe you go out of business in 10 years, but between now and then it sounds like you’re gonna be pretty satisfied with your work.

Peter Aprile: Yeah. Maybe we will, no. Natalie and I often look at each other and say, “Why are we doing this?” The answer is because we can’t do it any other way. Like you see … We have assembled a group of people that see and opportunity to do things better, so when you see and opportunity to do things better, you do it better. To bastardize another quote, you be the law firm that you wanna see in the world. If I was a client that had a tax litigation matter, this is the type of law firm that I would want to retain. That’s the type of law firm we’re gonna build.

I think that at the end of the day, it’s really, really that simple. If you can … If I can figure out a way to do better quality work, if I can figure out a way to train junior lawyers to be better, if I can figure out a way to heighten my analysis and get better at quantifying risk and probability and stuff like that, I feel like there’s no choice. You have to do that, don’t you? He laughs.

Sam Glover: I laugh because I understand. When you see the world in a certain way, you don’t have any choice about how you move through it. You just go with it.

Peter Aprile: Yeah. That’s why when we met face to face at Cleo conference, Natalie and I left and what really came through in meeting you … kind of see your own kind from a distance over the internet.

Sam Glover: Like wolves, we can smell each other out.

Peter Aprile: Yeah. But that interaction is … You kinda left and you think that’s one of us. It’s really, really neat and really powerful when you see and when we see it in other law firms. It’s a really, really cool thing. I just wish there was more of us.

Sam Glover: Yeah. I mean, I don’t wanna get all promotional, but that’s hwy we started organizing the TBD law conference, because it is so powerful to go from trying to do neat things in your own … Seeing the world you do building your neat things and then getting together with 50 or 60 other people who also see the world in similar ways, it’s really powerful.

Peter Aprile: Yeah. Then, it’s a balance of … What’s interesting about that and then it’s a balance of contributing to that community while maintaining what you’re doing in your own practice and balancing that and seeing how you can kind of play both. That’s not an easy balance either, but definitely when you get a bunch of people in the room who are trying to do better, good things happen.

Sam Glover: So, we’ve mentioned your podcast, Building New Law, which is a phenomenal podcast with actually … You guys put more effort into the production value than we do and it shows. People should listen to it. Where can people find out more about it?

Natalie Worsfold: You can go to our website. So it’d be bulidingnewlaw.ca, and you can also find us on Twitter. I believe it’s @buildingnewlaw.

Sam Glover: We didn’t mention it, I don’t think at any point during your podcast, but you’re a Canadian law firm.

Natalie Worsfold: Yes.

Sam Glover: Hence, the ca’s. You were using terms that sound more Canadian than American, and I don’t think we mentioned that at any point, but for those listeners who are not Canadian, that’s why. There you go.

Peter Aprile: I have no response for that.

Sam Glover: So go to buildingnewlaw.ca to listen to the Building New Law podcast. Is there an episode that you think best embodies the podcast that people should start with?

Natalie Worsfold: That’s a tough one.

Peter Aprile: Yeah.

Sam Glover: No disrespect to any of the other guests, but …

Natalie Worsfold: My favorite is still the Closed Focused podcast, which I think it’s seasons one, episode three with Andrew Currier.

Sam Glover: Oh yeah.

Peter Aprile: So I would say this. If you want the philosophical one, kind of that underlying purpose one that really stands out is we did an interview with Seth Godin that I think a lot of people responded to and a lot of people know who Seth Godin is. I agree with Natalie. From kind of a nuts and bolts practical perspective, Andrew Currier talking … Us nerding out with another law firm who build a bunch of process maps and the journey that we went through to get there is I think … We’re proud of that one.

Sam Glover: And that’s season one, episode six. If I had to pick, I’d pick two. I would pick Jordan Furlong part one and two.

Natalie Worsfold: Yeah, that’s a good one.

Peter Aprile: Yeah. Jordan’s book … What was it called? Laws of Buyers Market?

Sam Glover: Yeah.

Peter Aprile: You know, you read so many of these types of quote unquote new law books or whatever we wanna call them, and they lack a practical element to them. Jordan’s book does not fall into that trap. I can read that book and have read that book more than once. I’ll probably do it again. Yeah, that’s a good choice.

Sam Glover: Peter and Natalie, thank you so much for being with us today. I really enjoyed having you on our podcast.

Peter Aprile: Thank you so much.

Natalie Worsfold: Thank you.

Aaron Street: Make sure to catch next week’s episode of The Lawyerist Podcast by subscribing to the show in your favorite podcast app. Please leave a rating to help other people find our show. You can find the notes for today’s episode on lawyerist.com/podcast.

Sam Glover: The views expressed by the participants are their own and are not endorsed by legal talk network. Nothing said in this podcast is legal advice for you.

Podcast #153: Building a Future-Centric Law Firm, with Peter Aprile & Natalie Worsfold was originally published on Lawyerist.com.

from Law and Politics https://lawyerist.com/podcast-153-peter-aprile-natalie-worsfold/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[braindamageforbeginners]

Campbell’s “The Highwayman”

So. I'm starting treatment tomorrow. Which means this might be my very last post. Sort of.I should point out that, although I'm afraid of dying (that's hardly unique), that's never been my chief fear. Don't get me wrong, I'm very scared of that possibility (and it's still one of the likelier options), but, far and away, the greater fear has always been that I'll suffer some sort of severe, permanent brain damage resulting in noticeable neurocognitive defects. Or, to make that less cerebral (as, indeed, my oncologists will make me - literally), I'm worried that treatment will make me dumber. Or mess up my memory abilities. Or steal my scientific literacy. Or steal my literacy. Or just make me less... well, me. I'm not great at being myself; I think I'd be hilariously bad at being someone else.

I've written elsewhere about how neat and strange individuality is - just on a biological and biochemical level (I’ll be repeating and/or paraphrasing some stuff I’ve written elsewhere, so forgive me if you’ve read this). To help me out this time (because I no longer have enough time to be direct), I thought I'd use Zeno's Paradox. Zeno was an ancient philosopher, who came up with the following hypothetical, and I've updated it for the modern reader (you're welcome). Let's put LeBron James in a race against a tortoise; however, that's hardly fair, so we'll give the tortoise a 20 ft (6 m, to my communist friends) head-start. LeBron will never even reach the tortoise, because, before he can overtake the tortoise, he has to cross half of those 20 feet (10 feet); before he gets there, he has to cross half of 10 feet (5 feet), and so on. The numbers get ridiculously small, but you get the idea - you have to cross infinity to get anywhere (which is also what it feels like convincing the insurance company to pay for radiation treatment, but that’s a different topic for a different time). The fact that people walk didn’t deter or invalidate Zeno’s hypothesis (philosophy, while fascinating, has very little practical application); then, many centuries later, in one of those moments I live for, science and math overtook philosophy and invalidated it. In this case, it came in the form of calculus, which takes all those infinite little fractions and adds them together to get a real, usable number (unlike philosophy, mathematics is enormously helpful, albeit sometimes in highly specific situations). The biological punchline of all this is that you are the end-product of countless interactions, collisions, mistakes, and encounters, from the sub-atomic level to the moon’s gravitational force on Earth (the tides are important for life on this planet). Human beings are very similar; it takes a lifetime of small, slight, random encounters, interactions, and collisions to make you who you are; perfectly formed by countless infinitesimal incidents that we can’t recreate.

The second part of this concept requires a little help from you, dear reader (I know, homework; I’m sure there are a few of you would switch places with me to get out of it)(also, if that swap were possible, I guarantee you that I would take it, no questions asked). Make a list of things that make you who you are - in excruciating detail, and including the most minute and irrelevant details; from the stuff that barely counts (”has a weird recurring dream about Godzilla”)(I can’t be the only person that happens to) to the big stuff (”loves spouse/kids/dog”). To connect this to Zeno; this is an endlessly long list. You want to write a lot of assorted details (”fully remembers details from Thanksgiving 2010″) and random quirks. Now, you’re going to hand that list to a random stranger and ask them to cross off five items on this list; those things are no longer a part of you. According to Zeno (and my oncologists), those things probably aren’t important in the grand scheme of things, and you will still be you. But will you, really? Will you know who you are? Will you know what’s missing from that list? And can you get it back, or is it gone forever, or is it not worth it to recover what’s missing? And when do you stop being “you?” Obviously, there are a few big-ticket items that would permanently - and terribly - alter you (see that “loves spouse/kids/dog” one), but, if you look at that list, it’s not a dozen major things that define you, it’s the countless, tiny, unimportant things (I realize there’s some overlap with the Theseus’ Ship, but I like math). Again, according to Zeno and my oncologists, these probably aren’t worth fretting over, but it’s not them on the chopping block.

The concept that we’re working toward is a working understanding/empathy of what it’s like to live with brain damage/neurocognitive impairment/neurodegenerative disease, so I’ll be a little more blunt. Imagine a life in which you are unable to remember where you put your keys, phone, and wallet. The minute you set them down, bam, they’re gone from your mind, even if you leave them in the exact same place you always leave them. If you want to leave the house, you have to physically look for them until you find these items. You’ll still experience the same aggravation and frustration as anyone else, the only difference is, you’re usually unaware that there was a time - very recently - when this wasn’t a real problem. Those are the good days - the ones when you’re smart enough to observe these sorts of deficits. Other days - and these constitute at least 75% of your time - are when you don’t have that frame of reference; you’re just aggravated and upset that leaving the house now takes 45 extra minutes. And tired. And, a philosophical question that I can answer; what’s worse than being dumb? Being not-quite smart enough. Imagine a world where you’re intelligent enough to be ambitious - but not intelligent enough to accomplish those ambitions. That’s the fun little parting gift from neurosurgery #1. This is why I’m get a little paranoid whenever a clinician admits that there will be some brain damage - it’s like statisticians using the word “dismal,” it’s got to be really bad if they’re going to warn you about it prior to starting treatment. And there are still no guarantees that this will work, or even that it’ll buy me anything more than a few months, and that’s just a few months of my heart beating. What if this is as good as I will ever feel, for the rest of my life? I’m not feeling great right now, but the thought that this is as good as it gets is, to say the least, exceptionally unpleasant (on Thursday, in the final pre-serum screening, I was given three words to remember - “truck,” “apple,” and “blue” - and I couldn’t remember them at the end of a ten-minute interview. Not exactly hopeful, since I haven’t even started treatment, but the stress and lack of sleep is definitely a factor to consider). And that’s definitely not going to get better in the near future, unless my doctors start prescribing me more powerful drugs (with my luck, I come down with a horrible disease the minute the medical establishment starts getting paranoid about opiate precriptions)(but, hey, thinking positively, marijuana will be legal here in a few weeks)(I mean, uh, drugs are bad and you should never take them, kids)(unless they’re nearly-fatal drugs prescribed by a licensed doctor to, uh, kill very specific pieces of you)(yes, that’s how this medieval cancer treatment monkey-business works).

I’ve also thought a lot about the stages of grief, like you do when you’re mostly just waiting to either die or the treatment to work (and this sort of horrible uncertainty is - far and away - the most unpleasant emotional situation I’ve ever experienced), however, no one seems to have informed my limbic system, because I’m hitting all five of those simultaneously. Sort of, I’m still stuck in “bargaining,” I still can’t escape the idea that, maybe, with the right treatment and doctors, I’ll make it past this one - of course, the basic mathematic probability that I’ll almost certainly die within the next decade hasn’t really sunk in, but that’s also because I’m so exhausted and scared all the time that basic planning beyond a 72-hour window is completely beyond me (this might be some sort of self-preservation thing).

This is not to say that I’m automatically opposed to change, but the potential for dramatic and immediate neurocognitive change is dangerously high. Imagine the sorts of personality and emotional changes that occur just due to hormones, or antidepressants, or other drugs, and you can imagine the changes that can occur by dramatically altering my anatomy. Sort of; this is more like slowly stripping out pieces of me, and potentially who I am. Which is unpleasant enough, but, because I’m still tumbling down the rabbit hole, I recently learned something just as problematic: you only get one radiotherapy course per organ per lifetime. Which means I am pretty much all in on this gamble, and if this disease ever returns (spoilers; this is the second time I’ve come developed a malignant (or potentially malignant) glioma), thanks for playing. I will probably, thanks to my lab rat connections, be in line for whatever crazy new, experimental treatments that science can concoct, which is a good thing. But, how many AIDS patients died waiting for science to catch up to them? And, since we’re cutting funding for health insurance and medical research, is that realistically a good gamble? These things bother me in an abstract sense, but that 72-hour planning window is helpful in this situation.

This blog exists to painstakingly document my path so that the next person in my position might have an idea of what to do (or not to do), but, more importantly (to me, anyway), I’m doing this for the exact reason any human has ever done anything - from making the great pyramids to having children (although I realize the stated rationale at the time might be slightly different) - that there might be some small scrap of me that remains in the world, if the battle goes ill. It’s sort of like scribbling “Kilroy was here” in wet cement (and blog sites owned by Yahoo will last forever, right?). I’m not going to leave any grand legacy for the ages, unless everything goes much, much better than expected and, even then, I’m not likely to change the world (for all you future generations that might be reading this, your self-confidence decreases dramatically when faced with a grisly ending). This blog is also, if everything goes right, a baseline, a form of self-reflection for me to figure out a way to get back here, if everything goes well (again, even if everything goes flawlessly and better-than-expected, there are still going to be some neurocognitive changes). I don’t know who will be writing this thing in 24 hours, or in several weeks (major side-effects and problems are expected to start showing around Week #3), hopefully that guy won’t be too different from the person typing all this, and, if that’s the case, hopefully this will be some sort of guide to get back to normal (well, “normal” for me). And maybe someone else can get similar use out of this thing.

Obviously, there are going to be some days where I don’t feel like writing (if I go weeks without checking in, you can start to panic), or I’m too busy (if, God forbid, you develop cancer, you’ll spend many, many happy hours in the hospital), so I thought I’d just give a quick run-down, starting with height and weight (I realize those are mostly-irrelevant, and I won’t mention my height again, unless that changes). Hopefully, that won’t be too hard to keep up with over the coming weeks. HEIGHT: 6′ (183 cm) WEIGHT: about 210 lb (95-ish kilos) CONCENTRATION: Good, though I’m somewhat distracted; ability to start and focus on tasks is great, although completion isn’t always guaranteed (I still haven’t finished watching the latest episode of “Happy,” for example). Basic tasks are still pretty easy, but you don’t get many points for that outside of a psych researcher’s office. MEMORY: Not good, for me (I usually have close-to-eidetic memory), but still better than the average person’s. Still, using myself as a baseline, there’s been some noticeable-but-not-significant deterioration in that area, but, again, I’m not getting much sleep and I’m super-stressed. Still, I’m not forgetting the important stuff, yet. APPETITE: Good. I’m still eating as much as I usually do, which is a lot. ACTIVITY LEVEL: Good. I didn’t go to the gym today or yesterday, but since I went to the gym four or five times over the last week, I’m not going to beat myself up too much for it. SLEEP QUALITY: Nowhere near good, but much better than it was two weeks ago (but that’s not saying much, since I’ve gotten about 2-6 hours of sleep, on average, over the last month). Still, I’ve never slept very well (and I’m probably never going to sleep well again, not counting general anaesthesia), so it’s a little hard to gauge that. COORDINATION/DEXTERITY: Much, much, much better than it was this time a month ago, but my whole left side is still about 5-15% below-normal. I’m readily completing basic two-handed tasks, but I’m not going to be a concert pianist any time soon. Or in the next life, come to that (assuming there is a next life).

Tune in soon for the continuation of the reality-TV remake of “Flowers for Algernon.” And a very merry fuckin’ Christmas.