#stem majors pay the most for college

[articroses]

I’ll be honest: I really don’t think it’s the end of the world if a college student bs their essay with chatGPT

[jaggedamethyst]

circuit breaker 🔬🌌 (part three)

tutor!jayce talis x reader college au

content: adding tutoring to an already packed schedule has gotten overwhelming. there's so much to do, yet not enough time, it seems.

pining (but im not saying who lmaooo), mentions of mental health (panic attacks, anxiety, etc).

notes: hiii. i am addicted to writing for this i fear so don't be surprised if i just keep updating randomly. i've also just started school so this is all in my free time!! but chat...its about to get good af *smiles mischievously*

word count: 1.2k

series masterlist

⭑·ﾟﾟ·*:༅。.。༅:*ﾟ:*:✼✿　　✿✼:*ﾟ:༅。.。༅:*·ﾟﾟ·⭑

You didn’t enjoy this, scrambling for the countless time today to make a meeting. Even more so, you hated the idea of being late to see Ekko, again. He was always so empathetic—understanding. Even if he was upset with you, and you knew he was, he would never make you feel bad about it. He understood things happened. 

It didn’t stop you from speeding into the dining hall and turning to your usual table in a complete frenzy, though. “Ekko, I am so sorry. Time literally got away from me today.” 

He grips a chain he’d been holding, a locket at the top, and pushed it back into his pocket quickly. “It has a way of doing that…time I mean.” 

You sat down, immediately feeling way worse than you already had. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be, I’m sure you had a reason, right?” 

“Yes,” you sighed. “I was at tutoring with Jayce. We went over vectors and I finally understand it better.” 

His eyes lingered on the table, “Mm.” A hum from him, seemingly half paying attention. 

“Mm?” You mimicked the sound he made, “What’s mm?” 

“It’s just that I definitely could’ve helped you with that…being a STEM major and all…” 

“I know that…of course I know that but-“ 

He cracked a smile, “I’m joking.” 

You couldn’t help the smile on your face, the lightheartedness finally returning to you both. “I hate you, truly.” 

“You don’t…and that’s okay! I’m extremely lovable.” 

You nodded sarcastically, “Sure, I’ll let you keep believing that.” You looked around, finally taking in how desolate the dining hall actually was. It was a bit after peak hours now, considering you showed up a bit later than normal. A yawn escaped you, then, the day catching up to you. 

Ekko perked up a bit, “You hungry?” 

You tilted your head, “Always.” 

He turned to grab a paper bag from inside his backpack—pushing it across the table to you. Your order down to the sauces, no tomatoes, extra pickles. 

“Oh my gosh, I love you so much Ekko…you’re actually the best.” 

He watched you inspect the bag, each little detail perfect. There was a glint in your eye; it was rather humorous that it was about food, but he appreciated it nonetheless. 

You weren’t looking at him, but he was locked in on you. A genuine and soft look was on his face. “I love you…too.” 

The fries you were eating fully occupied your mind and nothing besides the comfort of your bed could get your mind off of them. Ekko didn’t say much after, letting you eat in silence before offering to walk you back to your place. The sounds of the busy city filled the space between you, him occasionally ushering you ahead with a soft nudge. Neither of you spoke until you were outside your door. 

You leaned in for a hug, “Thank you…I’ll see you tomorrow?” 

“Yup.” He hugged you back, leaning his head into yours, inhaling deeply. “Tomorrow.” 

“On time,” You pulled away, “I promise.” 

His hands found his pockets, nodding simply. “On time.” 

Exhaustion was creeping up on you. At this point, you had class most days of the week, Ekko meetings daily, and tutoring at least twice a week. On top of all of this, you desperately needed a job. Even with the hours that passed and the rest you got, the looming feeling of doom was making you feel anxious. There was a bubbling thought in you that in a few days time, you might genuinely have a panic attack. The signs were there, a fleeting feeling of irritation—the need to constantly be doing something. If you didn’t you’d be left alone with your thoughts and that never worked out well. 

The next day's hours squished themselves together. Despite the feeling, you plastered on a smile and made your way to do everything you had to. You couldn’t chance anyone, especially Ekko, knowing that you weren’t feeling the best. Yet, the emotion often found you in silent cries. You took the long way to tutoring, walking on side roads you knew never had many people on them. In one ear, you let music play, sinking into the emotion as best you could with the consistent sounds of the world around you. It was best you cry now, you thought. You had to focus during tutoring. 

You didn’t sob, but rather let the tears run freely. The cool sensation helped usually—a way for you to identify that you were present in the moment…in your body. You let your legs carry you to the resource center eventually, mindlessly walking toward the room Jayce had reserved. Truthfully, you were glad to see he wasn’t here yet. 

You got comfortable, wiping your face free of the proof of your small breakdown. You straightened at the sound of footsteps approaching the door. 

“Hey,” Jayce backed into the room, a small bag in his hands. He slowly turned, closing the door behind him. You weren’t looking his way, purposely avoiding his gaze—hiding your reddened eyes. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m good,” a sniffle, “Just had a hard day…lot on my plate.” 

He nodded, sitting across from you. “Well…I guess it’s good I made sure to bring some encouragement then.” You finally looked at him. His face contorted briefly at the sight of you before handing you the bag he walked in with. “Here…this should help.” 

Confused, you reached for the bag. “But-“ 

“I asked Viktor,” he interrupted, “He said you would like some of these.” 

“You really didn’t have to, I was just joking-“ 

“I wanted to,” he spoke quickly before pausing. He looked at you, swallowing the already lessening amount of moisture in his mouth. He needed some water. “Besides, the store was on the way here.” He cut himself off, gulping some of the water from his bottle. 

You didn’t speak, just looking at your favorite snacks in the bag. The gesture was a lot to take in, but it was appreciated.

“Can I say something?” 

You nodded, “Of course.” 

“I kind of relate to you…what you said about school. I have a scholarship, too.” 

“You do?” 

“Yup. It’s just me and my mom and we can’t really afford it.” He repositioned in his chair, “I worked really hard before this…for years to make sure I could get a full ride. I couldn’t stand the thought of putting that burden on my mom. But, when I got here, it was like the burden was on me now, to not fail…you know?” 

“Right…” 

“I don’t want you to feel…you shouldn’t feel like it’s all impossible.” He didn’t acknowledge the way you started to cry a little—he thought better of it and you thanked him internally. Instead, he reached for a paper towel. “Sorry, this is all we have…with the white boards…” 

“Thank you,” you chuckled a bit. 

“So…are you gonna eat any of those or can I have it back.” 

“I might be willing to share.” 

Jayce rubbed his hands together, “That’s what I like to hear!” 

The session was great, as usual. You were feeling even more comfortable—confident enough to take the next physics quiz. 

More importantly, you made it just in time to see Ekko’s look of surprise when you got there before him. 

“On time?” 

“On time.” 

chapter four

taglist

@juskonutoh @sseleniaa @aerina127 @sleepysoldier @bxxerry

[i-cant-sing]

Saya want know how Qasim look,are you have proposal?(≡・x・≡)

(pics below) Qasim, the brother, is older than reader by 5 years. He has chocolate brown hair, thick messy locks, and green eyes. He's gifted with eiditic/photographic memory which made him excel in school and he obviously had a high IQ as well. Doesnt mean reader thinks he's intelligent. Sure, Qasim is book smart, but he's not- street smart. Y/n has been the one to often make him realise that his friends were taking advantage of him by making him do their homework, or that they were laughing at him not with him because of his intellect. But reader chalks it up to his sweet nature, her goody-two-shoes of a brother who was hafidh (memorised the Quran) would always be the forgiving person. Its not that he was a pushover, he just... preferred to be the bigger person. Always. He'd chuckle and ruffle your hair "so what if I cleaned up their mess? it only took me 5 minutes and the job was done. Its okay, Y/n." He's always so selfless. You used to worry that he'd get hurt because he's too kind, you used to think he couldnt stand up for himself because he just didnt know when to- but no. Qasim was quite protective over you. When he saw you trying to tackle one of his so-called bullies, the boy towering over you (but you dont consider the height advantage, not when youre a raging kitten), Qasim stepped in and landed a single punch that knocked him down. (then big bro had to spend the rest of the day consoling u because you made him fight someone- and in ur head, that was the biggest sin u made him commit).

Qasim in Arabic means "the generous one" or "the one who shares", and being the older bro, he took his name quite literally. You were the younger sibling, the spoiled brat, the princess! But Qasim never had any problems with sharing anything with you, be it materialistic things or advice or even knowledge. You memorised Quran by his help (because u were competitive) and he had the extraordinary patience of a saint. You two would often participate in competitions at the local mosque just to get the cash prize and help your parents a bit (they never took ur guys money, encouraging u to either save it or spend it on something). Since both of your parents worked long hours, you two were left unsupervised for a long time and that only meant genius yet chaotic shenanigans, including prank calls to the pentagon hq.

Qasim grew up to get a lot of full ride scholarships from top colleges, and once he did his masters (a STEM major), he decided to start his own travel agency, surprising everyone because it seemed like something he wouldnt do? Everyone expected him to go into sciences, but he said he liked to travel and see the world, and Qasim told you that he enjoys running his own business, being your own business.

You supposed it made sense because he was a polyglot and he did enjoy learning new things and seeing new places, their history, etc. Due to his job, he would be gone for long months at a time, but he never returned empty handed. His arms full of souvenirs and sweets and BOOKS! Its not that he bought them for u, no. He bought those books for himself, but once he read them- he's already memorised it and he doesnt have anymore space in his home for more books, so he's always dropping them by your place (as kids, u made him memorise the phonebook before hiding the entire neighbourhoods phone books and had people pay to use your brother's memory for contacts, which was a good business until your father busted it down).

Qasim is the softest, kindest, most generous person. Even though he has a busy schedule due to work, he always made time for you. Whenever he came by, especially during your finals season, not only did he help you study, but he would also stock up your fridge and made sure to do some maintenance around your house. Fridge not working? Qasim has the tools, and if you werent so tied up with studying, you wouldve freaked out over him disassembling your fridge like lego. Sink clogged? No need for the plumber, Qasim knows the right potion of chemicals to unclog it. He's always been the one to prefer to do things himself, by his hand rather than relying on help.

what do u guys think???

[biibini]

Hii!! After mizu graduates college, what type of job do you think she'd have? Would it have to do with sports or maybe something way different? (I absolutely love your writing and headcanons !! 🩷🩷)

modern!mizu post-college life headcanons

tags: post-grad life, engineering mizu, stable work life, a woman in stem, moving in with reader, basketball with mizu, mizu join fencing club, peaceful post-grad life (the dream)

a/n: ngl the thought of post-college life is tripping me out,,, im a junior in college rn and the thought of it just kinda doesnt?? exist?? also ive heard too much info from my friends' rants ab their engineering degrees and switching majors from mechanic to electrical back to mechanical engineering,, theyre fucking nuts

modern!mizu would prob be in the engineering sector of jobs

wooo stem baby (i am a digital marketing major i should not be talking)

bc hello?? money???

also let’s use that mechanical engineering degree to good use

she didn’t leave home for nothing

with her technical skills from eiji

modern!mizu would probably be a CAD engineer

CAD aka computer aided design

technically speaking, it would allow her to work from home or hybrid

and she can easily transfer her mechanical and on-hand knowledge to a digital format

like she’s smart yall

she just got some troubles w procrastination

but dont we all?

(coping so hard)

this job would also allow her free time and flexible hours to do her job

and i feel like modern!mizu opts for a good work-life balance

if she wishes, she can take the day off snd just go out with u or go to the gym

the freedom of choice while staying comfortable at home?

sign her tf up

she can have her tea time, gym time, spending time w u time, and her self care time

the self care in question: enjoying the silence

and realistically, its a well paying job thatll keep her and u afloat while helping eiji financially if need be

modern!mizu hopes her work and smarts can help her provide for others and herself

its ab time she doesnt let herself depend on a man for money

yeah thats a fuck u to u, m*k*o

shes made the mistake once

shes not gonna make it again

just bc postgrad modern!mizu isnt in sports doesnt mean she’ll stop playing

she needs to get her exercise and movement some way some form

basketball with taigen

and always aim for the three-pointers

and is successful most of the time

and then proceed to aim for the half court shots

and fail most times

fencing with eiji whenever shes back home

she’ll def try to teach u

and its fun at first but

she wants to stretch her wings out

modern!mizu would prob join a fencing club

it would be a great for her to fully practice and spar

not just against her old man

or go soft w u

but also go against ppl her age

modern!mizu would move into a place w u

nothing grand but a small apartment where u could refresh and build the place to be ur own

ringo is a good friend

a true best friend she could trust

but it was time to move in w u

and not be wary of ringo hearing u when he comes home

modern!mizu would be more adventurous in hobbies

yeah she has basketball and fencing and her tea collection

but now she has a stable job

no need to worry about grades

and just to live life one step at a time

she would probably try out pottery with u

definitely practice her cooking with ringo's and ur help

all in all, a very patient life

(she deserves it)

[mycatsaidwhat]

things i’ve heard college students say pt. 29

-you may be into Sucky mpreg but some people believe the holocaust didn’t happen

-humans should have a mating season where we all congregate in a river once a year to find love like salmon 

-granted, there is a difference between being a momma’s boy and being Normon Bates 

-Only in a poli sci class would you get a picture of the live action winne the poo and Kim Jon un next to one another 

-“get ready for the met gala with me!!” influencer vlogs showing up on my suggested as if I don’t make $10.73 an hour 

-no way that dog had a blog, dogs can’t read 

-in god we bust

-every guys wants to be a golden retriever boyfriend until they wake up with no balls 

-graphic design majors are like the diet soda of the art world 

-if i could choose between having a successful career and lying down i would choose lying down 

-today’s graduation is sponsored by plan b

-going down on a woman and tying her fallopian tubes with my tongue like a cherry stem 

-most of the world’s problems would be solved if more billionaires disappeared in submarines 

-you come face to face with god at a 24 hour ihop

-she lemony on my snicket until there’s an unfortunate event

-took a shit in the gender neutral bathroom, call that a she/it

-the tornado dodged us cause someone told it that it had to pay a cover for every bar it destroyed

-can I have a cars 2-themed blowjob, please

-the best thing Taylor Swift has done recently is get some girls to consider that they may be the problem

-“I’M LITERALLY SO FERAL” no Ava you’re just drunk and white

[ss-shitstorm]

Hey I know you’ve probably already been asked this but what type of chemistry do you use for breaking bread like biochem and where did you learn this or have any book recommendations to pick it up? Also ty in advance I love your writing!!💕💕

oh my fucking god. oh my god. buddy. buddy you have made my fucking LIFE ASKING THIS OH GOD

So like, most of the chemistry I've used so far has just been Genchem and O Chem(with a wee few modifications to make it believable as a Cybertronian discipline, like Transformium being able to hold 4 bonds like Carbon but preferentially forming bonds w metals and needing an EMP pulse to interact w more electronegative atoms) I may wind up needing to get into a bit of Inorganic chemistry, but that's probably fewer and further in between. If you want a better handle on the stuff I'm writing or if you just want to learn more in general, then I'd recommend giving yourself a lil crash course in Genchem and then delving into O chem a bit more extensively (protip : you need WAY less Genchem then you'd think to fully understand O chem. God I wish someone had told me this 5 years ago. If you search "Genchem for non majors", you'll probably learn enough that way.)

THAT SAID : here's a chaotic, not really in any order list of the books/youtube channels/etc that I've directly used/am using for this fic.

Books :

Caveman Chemistry, Kevin R Dunn - Alot of hands-on old timey historical chemistry lessons w detailed instructions on how to complete them.(YOU GET TO MAKE YOUR OWN ASPIRIN AND DRAIN CLEANER!) Delivered with a delightfully occult bend.

Back To basics,(Reader's Digest) - Survivalist homesteading bible. Not strictly chemistry but has alot of earthy hippy ways of generating energy( biofuels my beloved)

An Introduction to Fire Dynamics, Dougal Drysdale - Honestly this, and any other firefighting manuals are worth their weight in gold for figuring out how to not set yourself and your neighborhood on fire while playing with, well, fire. Trying to look this info up online is like playing russian roulette with intentional misinformation and your fbi guy.

(there's another book I have that's even more detailed but I can't find it right now or remember the name. I'll update this list when I can!)

Organic Chemistry, John Mcmurray 8th edition : generic but good college O chem textbook. You can search around and find free versions to download relatively easily.

The Organic Chem Lab Survival Manual, James W Zubrick - Also a very good way to learn how to not set yourself and your neighborhood on fire when playing with glassware/gases. Very in-depth instructions on setting up and using lab equipment without breaking anything or your brain. Has a fuckton of pictures. Author has a massive sense of humor and makes this heavy subject easy to read. Again, easy to download/find in archives

Unfortunately I do not have any recommendations for Genchem books. I mostly used free online courses like Khan Academy to learn what I did.(I would def. recommend them though)

Youtube Channels :

The Organic Chemistry Tutor : Dude puts everything from reaction mechanisms to retrosynth problems down in the simplest possible terms. Does not beat around the bush with euphemisms or stories, gets right to business. If you have trouble paying attention, or lose your mind when a professor goes off on a tangent, this man is your savior. I have crippling unmedicated ADHD and no STEM background whatesoever and this man still managed to teach me 2 separate ways to execute a Gabriel Synthesis

Nile Red : World's most inefficient and most powerful wizard. I am not entirely convinced he's human. Does shit like turning plastic gloves into drinkable grape soda or making sweeteners out of his own piss and somehow makes it explainable to trash goblins like me who only need the science for warlord pussy.

again, anon, holy shit thank you so much. Like you wouldn't believe the amount of damage you've just undone. i have been beating myself into a pulp and spiraling into anxiety about this fic an trying to do everything right and you've given me enough moxie to fuel me for at least the next 10 chapters. If you have any more questions or more specific questions, please do not hesitate to ask! I can't guarantee I can answer them, but damnit I'll try. Take care and happy learning you funky lil moonbean.

[mariacallous]

A telling moment at a recent Thanksgiving dinner captured the changing gender landscape of technical education. A first-year engineering student at Cornell University was happily sharing details about her semester project—a computer game she was designing with another female classmate, reminiscent of the 1980s arcade classic Asteroids. She suddenly broke into an even broader smile. “Half of the class is women!” she exclaimed, beaming with pride. “It’s so cool!” Her experience reflects a remarkable decadeslong transformation at institutions like Cornell, where engineering programs are at or approaching gender parity.

This progress exemplifies a broader trend at postsecondary institutions serving students with high math achievement. Over the past two decades, the universities serving students with the highest math achievement (over 750 for an average math SAT score) have made impressive strides in attracting, retaining, and graduating women in physics, engineering, and computer science (PECS) majors. At these institutions, on average, men are still more likely than women to graduate with degrees in these majors. However, the male-to-female relative ratio shrunk from about 2.2:1 in 2002 to 1.5:1 in 2022.

But this progress runs in contrast to a troubling phenomenon at institutions serving students with lower math achievement. In these institutions, the gender representation gap has dramatically widened. Among the institutions serving the lowest math-achieving students (average math SAT around 450), the male-to-female relative ratio climbed from about 3.5:1 in 2002 to 7.1:1 in 2022.

These findings come from an analysis that we recently published in the journal “Science.” It uses a near-census of over 34 million bachelor’s degrees awarded in American colleges and universities to reveal this stark and growing divide. We classify institutions based on the average math SAT scores of their students during the period from 2002 to 2022. We focus on average math SAT scores because, relative to other institutional characteristics such as tuition, admissions rates, student-faculty ratios, or expenditures, this measure was the most predictive factor of the gender gap in PECS.

These findings matter because the institutions struggling the most with gender equity are precisely those serving most American students, particularly those serving most students of color and students from lower-income families. When researchers talk about the “STEM gender gap,” we’re usually talking about research, policies, and programs focused on institutions serving students with the highest math achievement. But by overlooking the widening chasm at other institutions, we’re failing millions of women who could benefit from these high-paying technical careers.

The financial stakes for these women are very real. Even at institutions serving students with lower math achievement, graduates with degrees in PECS command higher salaries than their peers in other fields. Research suggests women may actually receive a larger earnings premium from PECS degrees at less selective institutions compared to more selective ones. In fact, while men tend to see greater financial benefits from PECS degrees at highly selective schools, there is no such gender disparity in the earnings advantage at less-selective institutions. These majors lead to well-paying jobs, and these schools often serve students who need or prefer to stay close to home. The solution isn’t to limit these opportunities for men, but rather to extend them to women who could equally benefit from these career paths.

Making sense of the divergent patterns—and what to do about them

This divergence in trends is clear in our analysis—and reflected in Figure 1, below. What explains the divergence isn’t quite as clear.

The different patterns across institutions serving high scorers and low scorers can’t be chalked up to the usual explanations of men and women having different interests and confidence in math and science, aspiring to different occupations, or having different academic preparation. For example, men scoring in the lowest percentiles of math achievement are as likely to major in PECS as women scoring in the 80th percentile. This isn’t about inherent math ability or men clustering in the upper tail of achievement. Even so, when we accounted for all these (and more) student-level factors, the pattern of bigger gaps at institutions serving students with lower math achievement remained.

This suggests that something is happening at institutions serving students with lower math achievement that is not happening at institutions serving students with higher math achievement—something that is keeping men in PECS majors, but not women.

Our research shows that institutions serving students with lower math achievement face a double challenge: they increasingly struggle both to recruit women into PECS majors and to retain them once enrolled. The pipeline isn’t just leaky—it’s barely flowing. Interestingly, this polarization doesn’t exist in other STEM fields like biology, chemistry, and even mathematics, where gender ratios remain more balanced across all types of institutions. This suggests there’s nothing inevitable about the PECS gender gap—it’s a product of specific barriers we can address.

It is tempting to think that institutions serving students with high math achievement are improving the gender balance in PECS majors because they tend to have the institutional financial resources to devote to it or a larger applicant pool to choose from. While those factors do matter, they are dwarfed by the importance of the average math achievement of students. This suggests it’s not just about having money, but more likely, environmental factors and supportive programs, which are no doubt easier to implement with funding, but are not synonymous with it.

So, what can we do about it?

First, while institutional resources alone don’t determine success, external support targeted specifically at promoting gender equity can make a difference. For example, the National Science Foundation has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in promoting gender diversity in STEM faculty, but half that funding has gone to institutions whose students are at or above the 80th percentile of average SAT math achievement—precisely where the gender gap is already narrowing. While this investment has helped increase female representation among faculty and likely contributed to women’s persistence in PECS at these institutions, it’s time to experiment with greater support for institutions facing the biggest challenges.

Second, we should translate proven interventions like undergraduate research opportunities and peer mentoring programs to less-resourced institutions. These strategies have shown particular promise for retaining women and students of color in STEM fields. While well-resourced research universities often have the means to provide these experiences, we need creative partnerships to extend similar opportunities to all institutions. Expanding these opportunities may also require additional resource and service investments. We have ample evidence that related programs focused on belongingness and other social-psychological factors for student success that work at institutions serving students with high math achievement may not be as effective elsewhere, often because other supports are not in place.

External partners and organizations have a crucial role to play in addressing these disparities. While organizations like Girls Who Code conduct valuable outreach work, their impact could be amplified by strategically focusing their programs on schools and communities that feed into institutions where gender ratios are most imbalanced. Industry partnerships and internship programs should similarly prioritize building pathways for women at these institutions. This targeted approach should extend to community colleges as well, particularly since they serve as key feeder institutions to many less-selective four-year schools. Current research suggests that community college PECS programs often create unwelcoming environments for women, suggesting an urgent need for intervention and support at this critical entry point.

The narrative of progress in closing the STEM gender gap masks a troubling reality: We’re making gains at institutions serving students with the highest math achievement while losing ground everywhere else. The good news is that we know change is possible—the success of institutions serving students with high math achievement in narrowing their gender gaps, combined with the continued gender balance in other STEM fields, shows that these disparities aren’t fixed in stone. But achieving similar progress across all institutions will require acknowledging where we’re falling short and committing to change. Until we reckon with this disparity and allocate resources accordingly, claims of progress ring hollow for the majority of women who could benefit from technical education.

[dragoneyes618]

The major lesson that reviewer Christine Rosen extracts from Rob Henderson’s new memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, is: “The people who control a great deal of our cultural and political conversations are a rarified elite with little understanding of how most people live their lives.” (I have not yet read Troubled, though I’m eager to do so. What follows draws primarily on Rosen’s review in the Free Beacon and on Henderson’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.)

To comprehend the gap between those elites and the vast majority of Americans, consider a recent Rasmussen survey of what the authors call “elites” — more than one post-graduate degree, an annual income of $150,000 — and a subset of those “elites,” who attended an Ivy League school, or another elite private school, such as Stanford or University of Chicago, whom Rasmussen dubs “super-elites.”

Three-quarters of the elites and nearly 90 percent of the super elites describe their personal incomes as on the upswing, while almost none describe their incomes as on the decline. For all Americans, however, nearly twice as many view their income as worsening as view their financial situation as improving — 40 percent to 20 percent.

Despite having eventually made it to Yale as an undergraduate in his mid-twenties and later earning a PhD in psychology at Cambridge University, Henderson most certainly did not stem from the elite class from which so many of his classmates came. Students at Yale from families in the upper 1 percent of wealth are more numerous than those from the bottom 60 percent.

One of Henderson’s Yale classmates, who had attended Phillips Exeter Academy, America’s top prep school, once lectured Henderson on his white privilege — even though he is actually half Asian and half Hispanic. Yet it would take a certain obliviousness to label Henderson a child of privilege. One of his earliest memories is of his drug-addict mother being pulled away from him in handcuffs and hauled off to jail, when he was three. He never knew his father.

After that, he was shuttled between various foster homes, none of them stable, until he joined the US Air Force after high school. The discipline of the military helped him overcome some of the chaos that had characterized his life until then. But many of the old demons remained, including his penchant for self-medicating with alcohol, and he ended up in a detox program, where a talented therapist helped him work through some of those demons.

One of the central messages of Henderson’s memoir is that a non-stable childhood family life is not just bad because it hurts your chances of getting into an elite college or attaining a high-paying job later in life, but also because those raised in such an environment experience “pain that etches itself into their bodies and brains and propels them to do things in the pursuit of relief that often inflict even more harm.”

Given their difference in backgrounds, Henderson found many of the social rituals of his classmates incomprehensible. One example was when the Yale campus erupted in hysteria over an email from Erika Christakis to the students of Silliman residential college, of which she served as co-master with her husband Nicholas, suggesting that they were old enough to work out themselves which Halloween costumes to wear, without asking the administration to issue an elaborate set of rules to avoid “microaggressions” or “cultural appropriation” — e.g., a white student wearing a sombrero. After the childhood and teenage years he experienced, a fellow student in a sombrero did not seem like such a big deal to Henderson.

Erika was eventually force to resign her position in Silliman and on the Yale faculty, much to Henderson’s disappointment, as he had been eager to take her course on early childhood development. Meanwhile, the black undergraduate who confronted Nicholas Christakis in the Silliman courtyard, in an expletive-laden tirade, in front of a group of students cheering her on, was given an award for extracurricular excellence at the next Yale graduation.

Henderson offers an invaluable term to describe the opinions expressed so fiercely and with no tolerance of opposing views by his fellow undergrads: “luxury beliefs.” Luxury beliefs, as Henderson defines them, “confer status on the upper class at little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.” The conspicuous displays of wealth and leisure activities that broadcast elite status in Thorstein Veblen’s time have been replaced by opinions and beliefs that give proof of one’s elite education. After all, Henderson notes ironically, how many non-Ivy-League-educated Americans can easily toss off terms like “cisgender” or “heteronormative”?

Mantras such as “defund the police” are luxury beliefs because their impact on those living in gated communities or the most affluent neighborhoods is likely to be negligible. Henderson comments about the policies implemented to combat white privilege, “It won’t be Yale graduates who are harmed. Poor white people will bear the brunt.”

He recounts the story of a refugee from the North Korean police state, attending Columbia University, who raised concerns about the anti-free speech movement on campus, only to be taunted with “Go back to Pyongyang” on a social media site for Ivy League students. Normally, nothing will earn faster exile to social media purgatory than telling an immigrant, “Go back to where you came from,” but this particular refugee was deemed deserving of insult, writes Henderson, because she “undermined these people’s view of themselves as morally righteous.”

Incidentally, I would rank as near the top of “luxury beliefs” the familiar chants about Israeli genocide and apartheid. They cost their proponents nothing, yet effectively broadcast one’s moral righteousness and humanity, not to mention elite education, especially when terms like settler-colonialism and intersectionality are thrown into the mix.

Henderson is primarily concerned with the way that bad ideas — e.g., dismissal of matrimony and monogamy as passé, decriminalization of drugs — filter downstream in the culture, where they wreak havoc. As Charles Murray thoroughly documents in Breaking Apart, rates of marriage, children living in two-parent homes, and attendance at religious services have remained more or less constant in the most affluent quintile of the population, while plummeting in the lower quintiles. But on elite campuses, marriage is more likely to be portrayed as a prison for women, just as the same students for whom the words “capitalist oppression” roll trippingly off their tongues can be found the same day lining up for interviews with Goldman Sachs.

But the danger posed by the holders of luxury beliefs lies not only in their pernicious cultural influence. Holders of those views are quite comfortable with the use of coercion to advance their beliefs. Four-fifths of the super elites, interviewed in the Rasmussen poll cited above, would ban gas-powered cars. Just under 90 percent support strict rationing of meat, gas, and electricity, and 70 percent would ban all nonessential air travel.

The impact of these restrictions on the most affluent would likely be relatively small. They can afford electric cars, and would buy carbon offsets to circumvent some of the most onerous rationing or purchase them on the black market. And dollars to donuts that their air travel would be deemed necessary. The impact of such policies on the less affluent doesn’t figure into their calculations.

Elite campuses have been focal points for the limitations on free speech, and over half of the super elites educated on those campuses describe Americans as possessing too much freedom. That goes with a general contempt for markets, which allocate equal weight to the choices of the unenlightened and the enlightened.

That concern with “too much” freedom goes together with a remarkable trust in government among 70 percent of the elites and 90 percent of the super elites. Government is beneficent, in their eyes, because it can force people to do what the enlightened have determined is good. The elites know that their hands will be on the levers of coercion, particularly administrative agencies. (I would wager that the majority of those lower-level staffers staging mini-rebellions in the White House and the State Department over American support for Israel’s war on Hamas are holders of elite credentials.) Ronald Reagan’s quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’ ” does not resonate with the elites.

Sixty years before Rob Henderson first stepped onto the Yale campus, another man already in his mid-twenties entered Harvard as an undergraduate. Like Henderson, Thomas Sowell came from a deprived background and served in the military before entering college. He was born in the Jim-Crow-era South, in a home without electricity, and served in the Marines during the Korean War, after dropping out of high school.

The 1969 black student riots at Cornell, where Sowell was an economics professor, and subsequent pressure at UCLA to lower his standards for students, soured Sowell on academia, which he left for a position as senior fellow at the Hoover Institution almost half a century ago.

Over 50 years and almost 40 books, most still in print and many of them standard texts in economics, and ten volumes of collected columns, Sowell has leveled a sustained critique at the dominant intellectual doctrines of our day, in particular those of his fellow black intellectuals, whom he views as having spectacularly failed the black masses by advocating for policies that may serve their interests but not those of the large majority of American blacks. (Only about one-third of his writing concerns issues of race, and he has penned classic works in intellectual, social, and economic history.) Jason Riley’s intellectual biography of Sowell is appropriately titled Maverick.

In a short new work, Social Justice Fallacies, which I would commend to every college student and social justice warrior, Sowell fleshes out many of Henderson’s observations, including the detachment of elite theorists from the lives of those whom they purport to advocate, and their sometimes subtle, sometimes not, contempt for those whom they view as their inferiors.

The second chapter compares the Progressive movement of the early decades of the 20th century to present-day progressives. At first glance, it would appear that little connects the two groups, apart from their position on the political left of their day. A strong streak of racial determinism characterized the early progressives, and many of their leading lights fretted about the disastrous impact of an influx of people of inferior races to America. By contrast, today’s progressives start from the premise that there are no differences between races and that all differential outcomes are a result of systemic racism.

In the earlier period, Professor Edward Ross, the chairman of the American Sociological Society, warned that America was headed toward “race suicide” by virtue of being inundated by people of “inferior types.” American universities and colleges taught hundreds of courses in eugenics, defined as the reduction or prevention of the survival of people considered genetically inferior. The most famous economist of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, was founder of the Eugenics Society at Cambridge.

Irving Fisher of Yale, the leading monetary economist of the period, advocated for the isolation or sterilization of those inferior types. Or as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “Three generations of idiots are enough.” Sowell remarks upon how casually Fisher spoke of imprisonment of those who had committed no crime and the denial of normal life to all regarded as inferior. Not by accident did Hitler yemach shemo term a work on eugenics by Madison Grant, a leading conservationist and advocate for national parks and the protection of endangered species, his Bible.

At first glance, today’s progressives could not seem further removed from their namesakes. They are the opposite of racial determinists. In the modern progressive creed, all differences in outcomes between people of different races can have one and only one explanation: discrimination by the majority group.

Despite the opposite views on race, Sowell finds important continuities between the progressive movement of the early 20th century and that of today. Today’s progressives share, according to Sowell, their predecessors’ aversion to confronting empirical evidence that challenges their fixed verities, and a similar inclination to respond to empirical challenges with ad hominem insults — racist being the most powerful — rather than with counter-arguments and evidence.

And they are similarly inclined to use government power to coerce the less enlightened to behave in accord with their “expert” opinions, and too frequently oblivious to or unconcerned with the impact of their policy prescriptions on those constituting the “lower orders,” in their minds.

Woodrow Wilson, perhaps the leading figure of the Progressive era, served as president of Princeton before being elected president. Like many of his fellow progressives, he was an unabashed racist who insisted that black employees in government offices be physically segregated.

But what joins him to present-day progressives is his enormous confidence in government by experts. He presided over a massive expansion of the federal government and the creation of many of the largest administrative agencies, run by “experts.” He viewed the Constitution as outmoded for a modern age. But not to worry, government agencies headed by experts would usher in a “new freedom,” albeit not quite the freedom of a constitution limiting the power of government and enshrining individual rights.

Today, DEI bureaucracies on almost every campus seek to enforce right-thinking and enter into every aspect of university governance, including faculty hiring. Those mushrooming bureaucracies account for a large part in the explosion in higher education costs.

Sowell takes aim at the racial theories of the early progressives and contemporary ones alike. He seeks to empirically refute the claim that each race has a different “ceiling” for intelligence. (If anecdotes were data, his own genius would serve as refutation.) He met with and debated Professor Albert Jensen, one of the leading modern proponents of that view.

Sowell argues that environment, not inherent ceilings, underlies much of the difference in IQ between races. For instance, those raised in the Hebrides Isles and the hill country of Kentucky, though of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, have IQs comparable to American blacks. And like American blacks, their IQs tend to decline from childhood to adulthood. Social isolation appears to be the key. Sowell cites another study that blacks raised by white adoptive parents had IQs six points above the national average.

As an amusing example of the fallibility of IQ tests as measures of inherent capabilities, Sowell quotes Carl Brigham, who developed the SAT test. Brigham claimed on the basis of army mental tests administered in World War I that the myth that Jews are on average highly intelligent had been refuted. At least he had the good grace to admit by 1930, as Jews excelled on standardized tests, that his earlier conclusions had been without merit, and had failed to take into account that most immigrant children were raised in non-English-speaking homes.

Sowell is equally effective skewering the present-day progressive belief that all differences in outcomes are explained as products of racial discrimination. He chafes at the resultant cult of victimization that stands in the way of examination of cultural behavioral factors that prevent black advancement.

He insists that behaviors count and explain a great deal of the differences in income levels between different racial groups. For instance, black married couples have experienced poverty rates of less than 10 percent for decades, which is less than the national poverty rate for all families. And black married couples have higher income levels than white single-parent families. The problem is that black marriage rates overall are lower.

It is often said that the high illegitimacy rate in the black community is attributable to the “legacy of slavery.” But for nearly a century after slavery, the rates were relatively low. In 1940, they were one-quarter of what they are today. Sowell suggests that the rapid expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s explains much of that rise, as births to single mothers have also risen rapidly in Sweden, the welfare paradise, where there is no legacy of slavery.

Evidence cited to show discrimination against black children by “white supremacists” — e.g., discipline rates two and a half times those of white students — proves the opposite, Sowell suggests. For white students are themselves twice as likely to be disciplined as Asian students. Perhaps, then, disruptive behavior, rather than discrimination, explains differential rates of discipline. To get rid of school discipline in the name of equity leads to schools in which it is impossible to learn, and ends up harming black students, he argues. Attacks on discriminatory school discipline is thus another one of those “luxury beliefs,” like defunding the police.

One of the major causes of the burst housing bubble of 2007, which Sowell predicted, was government pressure on lenders to greatly reduce credit requirements for mortgages. The regulators’ theory was that blacks were being discriminated against in the mortgage market, as evidenced by the higher rate of rejection for black mortgage applicants. The only problem with the discrimination hypothesis, Sowell shows, was that black-owned banks rejected black mortgage applicants at even higher rates.

The hypothesis that different income levels are exclusively a function of discrimination founders on the fact that other minority groups — e.g., Asians — have, on average, incomes well above the medium national income, and dark-skinned Asian Indians earn on average $39,000 more per annum than full-time, year-round white workers.

The victimization narrative, in Sowell’s eyes, is not only unhelpful but damaging to blacks, as it shifts the focus from one of encouraging the types of behaviors that are associated with success. In the immediate wake of slavery, and for nearly a century afterwards, almost all graduates of all-black Dunbar High in Washington, D.C., went on to college. Black and Hispanic kids in New York City charter schools are six times as likely to pass city math proficiency exams as their counterparts in the regular public schools. Why? Sowell wants to know.

Focusing on the behaviors that foster success rather than wallowing in a narrative of discrimination — which he personally experienced in his younger years and does not deny still exists today — is for Sowell the key to black advancement. And that requires more empirical study and less airy theorizing.

Many of the panaceas that derive from au courant theories have been conclusively refuted on the ground. Black political power in most of America’s largest cities, for instance, has done little to change the lives of the vast majority of black citizens. And affirmative action has, in Sowell’s view, reinforced stereotypes of black inferiority, among whites and, even worse, among blacks themselves, while doing little to help inner city blacks.

Without a clear-eyed attention to empirical evidence and an openness to debate based on facts and logic, in Sowell’s terminology, we are forever consigned to the realm of “luxury beliefs.”

[juceynightmare]

dating 101 (18+) part 3 - cody rhodes x reader

my masterlist

dating 101 (18+) masterlist

pairing(s): cody rhodes x reader, roman reigns x reader

warning(s): swearing, sexual harassment, protective!cody

genre(s): college!au, slow burn, fluff

|| previous part || next part ||

the rest of the day was filled with walking, stopping to talk about a building, more walking, stopping by the dining commons to eat, more walking, talking to a few people y/n had met that had created their own sub-group amongst the group, and even more walking. did she mention how much walking they had to do? the group was currently sitting down at a table for dinner at one of the many dining commons on campus, and y/n was seated between two people who were definitely not cody, but that was because cody was part of his own sub-group already.

on one side of her sat a girl she met named sasha, a fellow woman in stem who was majoring in biomedical engineering, and on the other side of her sat a computer science major named dolph. y/n had wanted to get to know sasha, she was part of the same sub-group as y/n and they had similar majors. however, most of her time talking and socializing amongst the group was stolen by dolph.

dolph was nice, she determined. she didn’t know it was possible to meet someone who was more into his own looks than cody, but dolph had proven her wrong. beside the man’s self-indulgent personality, he had been complimenting y/n and actually listened to her rambling. they had sat beside each other at every meal of the day and were always at the back of the group talking amongst themselves unless someone else addressed them.

y/n had finished her dinner quickly, not having grabbed as much food as she wasn’t feeling too particularly hungry. she laughed at dolph’s exaggerated telling of his high school days and how rambunctious he was.

“see, i don’t know why you expected a different outcome.” y/n scolded playfully, nudging dolph with her elbow. “if you’re going to decide to do donuts in the school parking lot, why don’t you do it, oh i don’t know, not during school hours maybe?” she teased, flashing dolph a wide smile.

that was the first time y/n had initiated any physical contact with dolph, and although she meant it in a teasing manner, dolph seemed to have taken it as the ok to be more touchy with y/n. he slung his arm across her shoulders, letting it hang there as he argued, “where’s the fun in doing it when others aren’t there to witness?”

dolph may not have noticed it, but cody sure had noticed the way y/n had tensed up under dolph’s arm. he shoveled the last bite of his food into his mouth, nodding at eve’s words as she spoke beside him, although he wasn’t paying much attention. cody knew that you weren’t exactly the touchy type, especially when others touched you, which was why he and ted had always made it a point to only lay a hand on you if absolutely needed. knowing this, he made a note to keep an eye on dolph. the braindead hunk couldn’t even notice how much you had tensed up.

hunter came by around the table, and announced to his group, “alright looks like everyone’s done eating. as you all know, after this is the football game but it isn’t a mandatory event so you’re free to head back to your dorms if you’d like. if you’re coming to the game, follow me! if not, then it was great having you all around and welcome to the university!”

everyone immediately scooted their chairs out and stood up, picking up their dishes so they could drop it off at the dish return. y/n was one of the first to stand up, letting dolph’s arm fall off her shoulders as she light out a breath that she didn’t know she was holding him.

it’s ok. she reminded herself. dolph doesn’t know that i don’t like being touched. maybe he’s also one of the touchy ones like how the boys are.

as she reached for her plate, it was quickly scooped up by dolph who smiled down at her. “don’t worry, i got it. don’t forget your bag though.” dolph reminded her, nodding to y/n’s tote bag that hung off the side of the chair.

y/n thanked him as she grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulders. “are you going to the game?” dolph asked her, walking alongside her as they followed the group to drop off their dishes.

“no, i’m going to head back to the dorm and go watch some videos maybe.” y/n told him, already searching around the mass of people in front of them for her tall brunette manwhore of a friend.

“mind if i join you?” dolph asked, dropping off their dishes.

she thought about it for a moment. would it be a bad idea to have dolph come over? ah, who cares? she’s had ted over to her room without cody being there and vice versa, what made dolph any different.

“i don’t mind at all, besides, i think my friend is going to the game to score.” she laughed, nodding towards cody.

eve was practically hanging off of cody’s arm, feeling up on his bicep as they talked with their already forming friend group.

“but let me go double check first, come with me.” she told dolph, motioning dolph to follow her as she made her way over to the group. she tapped cody’s shoulder, smiling when he turned to greet her.

“oh hey y/n! you going to the game? you can tag along with us!” he told her, turning towards the group. he opened his mouth, about to introduce y/n to them, in case they forgot her introduction from this morning, when he was cut off.

“oh actually, dolph and i are gonna head back to the dorm. i can trust your smart self to make it back safe right?” she asked, not noticing the way cody had immediately began to size up dolph.

“oh! i’ll bring him back it’s okay.” eve piped up, squeezing cody’s arm as she stared up at the man.

y/n smiled politely, trying not to say anything about the way eve was trying way too hard to get cody’s attention. she knew, ted knew, and cody knew, that if you truly wanted to get into cody’s bed, it wasn’t all too much of a challenge.

“alright, we’ll see you! come on dolph! have fun codes!” y/n called out, waving goodbye to the group before turning on her heel and making her way out of the building. she knew dolph would be able to catch up to her - the perks of having long legs.

“so, what building are you in?” dolph asked, walking beside her with his hands in his pockets.

“celadon.” she answered, turning to look at him when she heard him gasp.

“no way. i’m right beside you. i’m in viridian.” dolph smiled.

“looks like i’ll be seeing a lot of you around, huh?” she mused as they walked up to the door of her building. she swiped her id card which served as the key, and dolph opened the door for her.

“you just met me and you think you can get rid of me so soon?” he teased, stepping off to the side to let her walk in first.

dolph followed behind y/n as she lead the way to her dorm room, and once they arrived, dolph couldn’t hide his excitement.

“i didn’t know you were in a single room. and no neighbors either?” he questioned, walking into the room and noting how y/n had kept the door wide open.

“nope! i heard enough terrible roommate stories to scare me away for a lifetime, so i decided i wanted my own room. i got real lucky with the no neighbors though.” y/n laughed. she pulled out her chair for dolph to sit in, “please sit! welcome to my humble abode.”

dolph sat down in the chair, leaning back on it and turning to face y/n as she sat up on her bed. he scooted closer to her, positioning himself to be right in front of her.

“so, do you always keep the door open when you invite guys over?” dolph questioned, his voice lowering to a sultry tone.

of course, with y/n’s inexperience, she hadn’t thought too much about the change in tone. it didn’t change too much from how he was speaking to her earlier.

“well, i’ve only ever had cody or ted over. cody’s the guy from our orientation group and ted’s his roommate. but yeah, it’s usually wide open throughout the day. i only close it if it’s quiet hours and we’re still in here, if i’m going to sleep, or if i’m just not in the room at all.” she answered, tensing up once dolph’s hand had found its resting place on her knee.

“and do you always wear outfits like this? you’re absolutely breathtaking.” dolph whispered, his eyes lingering over y/n’s form.

oh. this was not where y/n had expected this to go. but maybe she was reading the situation wrong.

dolph stood up, resting his hands on y/n’s waist and leaning down to bring his face near hers.

okay, no she was reading the situation completely correct. y/n placed her hands on dolph’s chest and slightly pushed him as a warning.

“please don’t.” she whispered, her voice shaking with something like fear.

“then why’d you invite me in here, baby. i’ve been chatting you up the whole day, you invite me back to your room, and you expect me to not make a move?” dolph questioned, pulling y/n in closer to him which caused her to yelp.

���dolph, no. i don’t want to do this with you.” y/n let out another yelp when dolph began to lean in, turning her head so he kissed her cheek instead. “dolph no, stop!” she squeezed her eyes shut and attempted to push him away as he continued to pull her in closer.

suddenly, dolph disappeared. his touch was removed from her and she could finally breathe.

“hey asshole, she told you to stop.”

she opened her eyes at cody’s voice, turning to see cody holding dolph close to him by the collar of dolph’s shirt. dolph had his hands raised up defensively, clearly not wanting to start a fight with cody.

“my bad bro. i didn’t hear her.” dolph defended as cody began to drag him out of the room. although, it didn’t seem like dolph made little effort to struggle against him.

“even if you didn’t hear her, you still could see how she’s physically reacting. now get lost. if i see you near her, i’ll beat your face in.” cody threatened, shoving dolph down to the ground of the hallway.

cody slammed the door shut in dolph’s face, glaring at him until his vision was cut by the door. although he knew that the doors could only be opened with a key, cody turned the deadbolt of the door for good measure.

“cody i-“

cody turned to look at y/n, and that was when y/n had made a note to never get on cody’s bad side. the man looked furious, his face quite literally a dark shade of red from anger.

“are you okay?” he asked, walking over to y/n. “he didn’t get any farther right? i got here in time?” cody continued to question, looking over y/n’s figure before quickly turning his head to face the wall. “your, your skirt. he flipped it up.” he told her.

y/n’s face turned beet red as she quickly flipped down her skirt to cover herself up. she squeezed her legs tight together and cleared her throat. “you can look now. and i’m okay… thank you.” she said softly, looking up at cody as he met her gaze.

she could tell her answer wasn’t good enough for him, so she gave him a reassuring smile.

it did seem like her smile reassured cody enough, the man visibly relaxing and sitting himself down on y/n’s chair. he looked at her and sighed, bringing his hand up to pinch his nose bridge right between his eyes.

“what happened to that girl?” y/n questioned, realizing that it hadn’t been too long since her and dolph arrived at the dorms. “or those cheerleaders you were planning in flirting with?”

cody sighed again, bringing his hand down. he leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. “i got the ick.” he answered, to which y/n’s eyes widened in shock.

“you. cody rhodes. infamous manwhore. man who’s already fucked like 3 different girls since arriving in the dorms. man who allegedly has 4 baby mommas from high school. got the ick.” y/n let out, smiling sheepishly when cody’s head suddenly shot up to glare at her for her high school comments.

“first off, i already told you i never got a girl pregnant or even had a pregnancy scare, they’re just making rumors about me because they wish they got to sleep with me. and second!” cody began, pointing an accusing finger at y/n who had began to giggle like a little schoolgirl. he paused before bringing his hand down and leaning back into his seat. “yes, i got the ick.”

“well? what’d she do?” y/n asked, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. to say she was invested was an understatement.

cody groaned, rubbing his face with his hands. “she was a bad kisser. like, i don’t know how to describe it. you know how like when you have your first makeout session or sometimes even first kiss it’s typically really bad and messy? somehow this was worse than that.” he complained.

y/n paused at his words. when she didn’t say anything for a while, cody met her gaze. he couldn’t decipher what emotions were running through y/n’s mind.

“i… don’t know.” she admitted softly, her face turning red in embarrassment. y/n quickly turned her face away from cody so he couldn’t see how bad her blush was becoming.

“you don’t know what?” cody asked, confusion dripping down his chin as well as spilling out on to his face.

“i never kissed anyone.” she admitted, bringing her hand up to rub the back of her neck.

at this, cody’s eyes widened in bewilderment.

“what? like ever?” he questioned loudly, watching as y/n nodded her head in confirmation. cody could suddenly feel himself get angry once again. “well thank god i fucking came back. imagine if that shithead had been your first kiss. you probably would never want to kiss anyone after that. he can’t even tell when you’re uncomfortable so how would he know how to kiss?” he scoffed, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes in frustration.

she didn’t say anything in reply, lost in her thoughts. cody didn’t say anything either, letting his anger lull over although he kept picturing the scenario that he had walked in on. and to think that dolph guy thought he could pull a fast one on y/n. the silence that filled the room was tense for two different reasons: one of them was overthinking and the other was trying not to go on a manhunt.

“is… is it bad if i don’t know how to kiss though? like if i were to start dating someone in college, do you think they’d mind that i’ve never kissed anyone though?” y/n questioned, turning to look at cody.

“depends.” cody answered with a shrug, uncrossing his arms. “it genuinely depends on the person. me though? i’d prefer having someone that has experience, you know. i already went through the whole learning from someone and teaching another.”

y/n hummed in response, thinking over cody’s answer. looks like she’ll just have to hope that whoever she ends up liking, they won’t mind teaching her a thing or two.

she shuddered at the thought that dolph was almost her first kiss, and suddenly became hyper aware of all the places he had put his hands on her. y/n wiped away at her cheek where he had kissed her, and then moved on to wipe at her hips.

“what are you doing?” cody questioned as he watched his friend suddenly go feral with wiping away at her body.

“i was thinking about the fact that dolph was almost my first kiss and now i’m like hyperaware of all the places he’s touched and - it feels so wrong.” she complained, her wiping becoming more frantic as she began to process more of what had almost happened if cody hadn’t stepped in.

suddenly, she felt cody grab her hands to stop her. she looked up at him with wide eyes, not even catching that he had stood up from his seat and that he had even moved over to her.

“c’mere y/n.” cody whispered, guiding y/n to wrap her arms around his waist before wrapping his own arms around her. y/n felt cody hug her gently, and she tensed up in his arms. it wasn’t long before she melted in his embrace, relaxing against him and pressing her face into his chest.

“you’re very warm… and smell good.” she mumbled against his chest. she felt him laugh, causing her to smile against him. y/n pulled her face out of his chest so she could look up at him with a wide smile.

“is this better than his touch?” he questioned as he looked down at her.

she nodded her head tightening her arms around his waist as she pressed the side of her face against his chest. she shut her eyes and breathed out,

“that shouldn’t even be a question.”

|| next part ||

[fieldbears]

Hi! Thank you for doing this AMA! How did you get started in on your career path? I feel like I keep hearing either "know somebody who has faith in your ability to write technical documents" or "write technical documents for fun" both of which I'm not certain how to start.

Great question! In grade school, my friends and I were little nerds who wrote and traded stories with one another. We were giving honest feedback, learning, writing more, rinse and repeat. A couple of summers, we took writing workshop classes. We learned the general style of workshop critiquing. Being able to deliver and receive criticism is a valuable life and career skill.

Fast forward, I went to college, majored in English with an informal focus on modern literature, and took more creative writing classes! Having been in a workshop environment as a kid REALLY helped prepare me for the ones in college. Not everyone in those classes knew how to receive even very gentle criticism. Learning how to re-calibrate for them was its own learning experience. Another skill!

Fast forward again and I'm in the job market. I thankfully had a friend whose company was hiring, and that started my personal ball rolling. I got in through a friend, yes, but my career advances have been because I'm incredible. :)

But don't get it twisted. Most of the stuff in my background was completely unnecessary to getting an entry-level position. They helped me keep the job, and get more jobs, and get promotions, but nobody is expecting all that workshop experience. If you have average or higher people skills, you can teach yourself how to gently deliver the news that someone is functionally illiterate and you need to fix their work.

What you should have: a 4-year degree majoring in English, a relevant STEM field, or Communications, in that order. You should be ready to clean up a "test" document as part of your interview. You should probably pay close attention to the job description you're applying for, because 'technical documentation' is a really broad field and you need to be able to prove you're ready for whatever flavor they're asking for. Are you writing instructions (how to operate a device)? Processes (how to onboard an employee)? How much of your job will be interviews with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts)? Are you writing a new document at all or updating something that's outdated or untested? You can do some light testing of software, right?

If the interviewers are smart, they will ask you your plan when you're asked to make a new document. Have an answer ready. The information I always want first is: who is this for? Let's say it's an internal guide for some software your company uses. Is everyone on the project an engineer who's very familiar with computers? Or, is it a more generic office, where a 64-year old named Eustace will need very clear instructions on where the start button is? That information is a starting point for figuring out what your document should be.

So tl;dr: 1) Have a relevant degree. 2) Know the specifics of the position. 3) Be ready to walk interviewers through the steps you'd start taking to make a requested document.

Hope this helps <3

[rjzimmerman]

As a native of Gary, Indiana, and a former "summer employee" at U.S. Steel (to pay for my college education), I'm obviously invested in what happens to the Gary Works of U.S. Steel. This story answers several of my questions, and puts me on the "no" side of this proposal. Excerpt from this story from Grist:

U.S. Steel, once the world’s largest company of any kind, can take substantial credit for the growth of American industrial power in the 20th century. But in recent decades, it’s been shuttering mills and shedding workers. Now, the iconic Pittsburgh-based manufacturer is set to be acquired by a Japanese steelmaker, Nippon Steel — if the federal government allows the deal to proceed.

Earlier this month, reports emerged that the Biden administration is preparing to block the nearly $15 billion merger on the grounds that it presents a threat to America’s national security interests. The United Steelworkers union opposes it, fearing future layoffs and weaker labor protections under new ownership. So do both major candidates for president, who are vying for votes in the Rust Belt. Supporters of the deal, like the Washington Post editorial board and the nonpartisan think tank The Atlantic Council, have cast the politicians’ opposition as election-season pandering, and argued that the national security rationale on which Biden may block it is flimsy. But one area, in which the question of whether the merger goes through could be particularly consequential, has gone largely unremarked upon in the conversation: what it means for the climate.

Some environmentalists say the deal could slow the crucial progress that the steel industry must make in order to decarbonize. Their argument stems from the fact that both U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have been slow, compared to industry peers, to adopt the most impactful decarbonization technologies, even with federal funding available in the U.S. to do so.

The most common process by which primary steel is produced is massively carbon-intensive. The reasons for this lie in chemistry. Steel is made from iron, but the form in which iron ore occurs in the Earth’s crust is mostly iron oxide (similar to rust). In order to get usable iron from it, one needs to remove the oxygen. For centuries, iron-makers have accomplished this by using coke, a fuel made from coal, which is heated alongside iron ore in a blast furnace at such high temperatures that the iron melts into a liquid while the oxygen bonds with the carbon in the coke and produces carbon dioxide.

Blast furnaces are responsible for the lion’s share of carbon emissions from steelmaking, and the inextricability of carbon emissions from the ironmaking process is a large part of the reason why, overall, steelmaking is responsible for 7 percent of global carbon emissions, and a quarter of industrial carbon emissions. These percentages will likely grow as other sectors of the economy are decarbonized. In the U.S., demand for steel is also expected to grow dramatically over the next decade to provide the raw material of the industrial growth sparked by the Inflation Reduction Act and the planned buildout of clean energy infrastructure and transmission lines. For these reasons, the task of decarbonizing steel is as urgent as it is difficult and expensive.

Fortunately, there is a solution on offer that has recently become viable due to new technological advances — and one that the Biden administration has sought to heavily subsidize: replacing blast furnaces with a process called direct reduction, and using hydrogen as a reducing agent in place of carbon, ultimately discharging water rather than carbon dioxide. “The chemistry is sound, it’s being built, it’s been piloted and demonstrated,” said Yong Kwon, a senior advisor with the Sierra Club’s Industrial Transformation Campaign. “The question is now: Will industries adopt it?”

There are eight operating steel mills in the United States that make “primary” steel (newly created steel, rather than the generally lower-quality “secondary” steel produced from scrap metal). Three are owned by U.S. Steel. Cleveland-Cliffs, the owner of the other five, has also made an offer to buy U.S. Steel and has been much more proactive in making the shift to greener production. “The Department of Energy has made available a great deal of money to do partnerships with industry to demonstrate the value of decarbonized projects,” said Todd Tucker, director of the industrial policy and trade program at the Roosevelt Institute. Both Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel have availed themselves of such funding to embark on decarbonization programs. U.S. Steel has partnered with the Department of Energy on carbon capture projects at several of their steel mills, and funded research and development of hydrogen-based ironmaking technology. The company also plans to install a carbon capture program at a blast furnace at its steel mill in Gary, Indiana, which it says will turn up to 50,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually into limestone — a tiny fraction of that facility’s overall emissions. But critics note that U.S. Steel has yet to take a step as ambitious as its rival by actually replacing one of its blast furnaces with direct reduction of iron.

The stakes of the potential U.S. Steel-Nippon Steel merger are perhaps best illustrated in the city of Gary, Indiana, which was built in 1906 by U.S. Steel to house workers at its Gary Works steel mill. That mill is home to the country’s largest and most carbon-emitting blast furnace — and it’s nearing the end of its lifespan. This situation hypothetically presents the furnace’s owner with an ideal opportunity to switch to a cleaner technology, with federal funding on the table to do so. But in August, Nippon Steel announced its prospective plans for Gary Works, which include a $300 million investment in relining the furnace to extend its lifespan for another 20 years. With this announcement, Kwon said, “Not only have they back in Japan not pursued solutions that we feel are responsible; they’ve now explicitly come out and said that they’re not going to pursue the solution that is on the table for reducing the climate change and public health harms that are currently produced by the iron-making process.”

[loving-family-poll]

i fear we are departing from incest but i love to hear myself talk so i shall tell you about my sister's complex about me. first we have to establish some things: my sister is older than me (the oldest of us all, i'm second oldest, just mentioning it bc me not being the youngest feels important here), my sister has an inferiority complex that stems from me being the successful one (probably will come up later but i was a very smart kid and ended up skipping so many grades that i started college at 15), and that my sister has always had bad anxiety and is very very sensitive to rejection

so. let's start from the beginning. our father left us young, didn't pay child support, was generally an asshole, but most importantly he would visit for one reason: me. i was the favorite because, as i mentioned, i was a smart kid and he is very success-oriented so naturally he took to me (and off-topic but this happens so often. like very very success driven people have been weirdly into me since i was a little kid. weird shit but i've used it to my advantage cough cough getting a kid flunked and almost expelled) so anyway our father visits us just for me, even tells me about all the women he was cheating on my mom with before they got divorced. and my sister? my sister has bad anxiety, she's sensitive to being left out. and more than that she has very very strong rejection sensitivity. so how do you think it'd feel to be the oldest child and yet be ignored by our father (this did not affect my other siblings they were too young). so this puts me above her in her mind

she fails a lot in school and this wrecks her confidence, especially since i've always been greatly successful in school. she's pushed aside by her father for me, she's pushed away by her teachers for me (to the point that i would have a teacher for a short time before i'd test out and they'd still call her my name no matter how long she had them). she also has very poor social skills so she was never liked by her peers while i was funny and i was smart and i was such a goody-two-shoes brat but teachers adored me to the point that i could get away with anything i wanted (yes i was pulling shit i think i had a habit of attacking one of my teachers and everyone was cool with it) and she'd be scolded for any little issues because she wasn't as liked + she was more frustrating (she had untreated adhd for a hot minute). keep in mind that most of this was happening while we were both under 10/11

so. you'd think that she would have some deep-seated resentment against me. and you would be correct! now idk what you know about psychology and chances are it's bs anyway (<-psych major that does not trust the field in the slightest) but there's this nifty little concept called reaction formation. it's freudian so. take that as you will. but basically it's just when a strong emotion switches from one to another. for example: hate to love, love to hate… resentment to adoration?

so that's my theory for the basis of this. she has an inferiority complex and a sensitivity to rejection and i was everything she wasn't and for whatever reason her kid brain said hey, why not love my sister instead. and honestly this wasn't that like. prevalent until we teenagers, because i became very neurotic and anxious and developed some disorders you know how it is. and now we see something new in my sister: she likes to take care of people. if i couldn't do something she would do it for me, if someone was pushing my boundaries she would enforce them. i basically spent all of middleschool hiding away in our home (i was homeschooled atp) with only her for company since i'd hide in our room. so she;s taken on the role of being my protector. probably because if she would never be better than me, at least she could be the one protecting me. it made her important. it made her necessary. it made her feel needed. and that is when i catch on. i encouraged her a bit, started praising her, thanking her for any little thing she did, calling for her anytime i needed help because she just loves to feel needed so badly. and yeah maybe that was manipulative and maybe it was wrong but i was also like. 14 or 15 when i started doing this

anyway so she has this whole complex about needing to protect me so that she can feel needed and it's all fueled by her inferiority complex that honestly drives so much of what she does. i find it highly amusing.

so yeah. she's basically a dog to me. tell her she's good and give her a treat and she'll do what you want. and if she does something that makes me upset she folds so fucking quickly it's wild. it's that fear of rejection. she could never stand for me of all people to drop her

and to the person who wanted us in the tournament together sorry but we are just weird about each other in a not-so-incesty way but the vibes are kinda there

The way I was glued to this ask reading SO intently. What you two have going on is so much weirder than if you'd just fucked (complimentary)

[sexhaver]

How do u feel about ai? I feel like im “wrong” for being really fascinated by it (ik its a broad subject but its all so cool). Should i study ai and data science in college or will i be contributing to some like evil force idk

to the extent that AI is an "evil force" (pretty strong language imo), it's entirely due to how it's wielded by assholes for capitalist ends and not anything inherent to the technology itself*. that being said, like any other STEM field these days, the majority of your employment opportunities (and almost all of the high-paying ones) will probably involve using it for those "evil" ends because that's where the money is. this is endemic to STEM, unfortunately. my alma mater's career fair has reserved table spots for the Army, the Navy, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, etc. i could be making six figures right now if i hadn't turned down an offer from Lincoln Labs in 2019 to make missile guidance systems because i figured my conscience and ability to live with myself/sleep at night was worth more than that.

sorry, that kind of got away from me for a bit there. basically just study what you want because trying to force yourself into a sub-field of STEM that you hate will make you suicidal, but keep a finger on the pulse of the field because "the coolest/most useful thing to do with a given technology" and "the most profitable thing to do with a given technology" are so far apart it's actually insane i mean neurodivergent

[post-academic]

The Hamilton Project has published an illuminating interactive infographic that allows detailed exploration of the career distributions of various major graduates. In fact, researchers have found that in a diverse array of fields, a large majority of graduates do not end up working in the most common occupation in their specific major. Given that students’ post-college career paths are so difficult to predict based on their academic concentrations, it could be argued that looking at earnings by occupation or career track is perhaps more indicative than college major alone.

In addition, The New York Times also finds that any earnings advantage that STEM majors hold over humanities majors fades by age 40. There are two major reasons that contribute to this - first is that technical skills become obsolete quicker as younger graduates enter the workforce. In a recent working paper, Harvard economist David Deming calculated the change in required skills for different jobs over time. He found that “help-wanted ads for jobs like software developer and engineer were more likely to ask for skills that didn’t exist a decade earlier. And the jobs of 10 years ago often required skills that have since become obsolete.” This higher skill turnover in STEM fields is correlated with the relatively slower earnings growth of STEM graduates between graduation and age 40. Let us take the example of the closing gap between computer science majors and history majors. Deming reports that “male computer science or engineering majors roughly doubled their starting salaries by age 40, to an average of $124,458”, which is compared to social science and history majors, “who earned $131,154 – an average that is lifted, in part, by high-paying jobs in management, business and law.”

The second reason for this closing gap is that a liberal arts education fosters soft skills that don’t tend to expire, such as critical thinking, people skills, and problem-solving skills. While much more difficult to quantify and while they do not create immediate pathways to high-paying first jobs, “they have long-run value in a wide variety of careers,” especially in managerial and leadership positions. Liberal arts and humanities majors are also more likely to enter careers where midcareer salaries are the highest - including in upper management and business occupations, as well as careers that require advanced degrees such as law.

[ettawritesnstudies]

Hi!! How do you balance writing and studying ChE?

I've been out of college for about a year now but I remember it wasn't easy lol. Most of these are more general tips that apply for any college student but especially for STEM majors!

Be gentle with yourself and manage your expectations: understand that your semesters will be busy seasons where your writing time or inspiration might dry up. Breaks might give you more time to write but you might also be dealing with burnout from the previous term or working to pay for school. NaNoWriMo overlaps with major projects and midterms. Try to know your body and your mindset as the seasons shift so you aren't forcing yourself to be productive when hibernating is a healthier activity.

Count small wins: I got a lot of out of writing short stories for my mailing list. This averaged out to 10 pages across 3 months. That's a tiny word count but these stories challenged my writing craft and I think I grew a lot from the exercise. (You could submit to competitions or your school magazine if there is one, but that's unnecessary pressure, only do that if it sounds fun). Now isn't the time to grind out a whole manuscript on a deadline. Play with some worldbuilding. Make character sheets. Outline the fun parts of an epic fantasy by commandeering the whiteboards in the library. Write fanfic. Just keep the creative spark alive even if it's something as small as jotting down a few lines of dialogue while waiting for class to start.

Make creative friends: I did this by joining the DnD club but there are tons of other clubs and organizations where you can find like minded people. Try the local county library off campus, the makerspace, an arts and crafts circle, or the fencing club (full of nerds). Attend write-ins if you can find a local group that still does NaNo stuff (even if they're not affiliated with the organization)

Schedule writing time: I kept a rigorous Google color coded calendar - yellow for classes, green for clubs and campus/department activities, red for my student research and work study at the makerspace, orange for working out, and purple for friend group get togethers or dnd. At this point most of my days were full, but if there were any empty slots of time, I'd mark a blue box for myself and guard it. That was my writing time. If anyone else wanted me to show up to an event I'd decline. It might just be an hour on a Saturday morning but it was mine. I'd try to go into these blocks of time with a plan so as not to waste them, but I also spent a lot of time sending Storyteller Saturday Asks. That was fun.

Take advantage of unexpected down time: this was an odd quirk about my campus, but the chemical engineering labs were on a separate campus that could only be reached by a one way bus loop (or driving through the frat houses and you'd get a parking ticket anyways). I did undergrad research as a work study/for credit across three semesters so I spent many hours round trip waiting for and riding the bus. I often used this time to listen to audiobooks but I also drafted on my phone in Google docs or my notes app. My research also involved a lot of waiting. Setting up the experiment and then observing for hours. I could multitask on homework or my writing while I waited. This isn't a universal solution, my advisor and the post docs were incredibly nice and chill, and I know that's rare. But if you find yourself in a similar position, don't doomscroll, use the time.

Don't be afraid of sharing your writing: pick trusted friends. You don't necessarily have to look for critique, there's no shame in going "hey I worked really hard on this scene and I love it a lot do you want to read it and geek out with me?" Positive feedback is a great motivator.

Take inspiration from your studies: chemical engineering is really cool! I hope you have a better experience than I did (1.5 semesters remote during COVID, 17 credits and a full time job, oof). You'll get to learn crazy chemical reactions and math and physics that makes you feel like a wizard. If your classes get boring, check out science YouTubers like Nile Red and Explosions and Fire. Some of my favorite worldbuilding has been scribbled in the margins of my notes. Take liberties with the laws of the universe. Lean into the dark academia aesthetic. Have fun with it even if you're suffering through thermochem. I believe in you.

[celestie0]

what do you think about grad school and maybe getting a masters or phd? like for you😭 i’m curious what more do you feel about academia

hiii bb!! ouu yeah i think with the way things are in job market rn, at least for a science degree, having a masters is a MUST and phd too if you want to teach or go into research...just an undergraduate degree for any STEM job i have noticed doesn't suffice unless you're like a comp sci major or have hella connections or something lmfaooo (or if you're a trust fund baby)

i'm actually going to med school so my four years of undergrad were spent working towards that goal, and not really with thoughts of phd or masters, but i did think about doing a masters during my gap year (which would've been this past year) since my school offered a few one years masters programs that i was interested in. it was gonna be a sort of back up plan for me in case i didn't get in anywhere, but ultimately i just had faith in my application n didn't want to spend money on a year of masters tuition haha

but it's hard for me to say for other fields, such as humanities, on what i think of the necessities of masters/phd programs...i'd imagine it's the same though, you'd probably need to pursue a lot of higher education to be qualified to teach or publish etc. in premed, you've got options of going to nursing school, PA school, med school, so i guess there are ways to pivot that don't involve masters programs if you still wanted to be a healthcare provider

i did watch an interesting video recently about the whole trap of the phd/masters pipeline, where students get a degree and think they'll be able to land a decent job post grad from wishful thinking, spend lots of time unsuccessful in the job market, then scramble to apply to grad school, and then even if they feel as though the phd program they're in isn't really giving them what they want from it, they don't want to quit because at that point it'll feel like sunken cost, and it damages their mental health and motivation and is basically this recurring loop where the system forces students to continuously stay in school and do excessive amount of research/work for criminally low compensation, just to become overqualified candidates for barely minimally paying jobs. ofc all in the name to benefit the insanely rich and wealthy. honestly most grad students i meet are stressed and so incredibly jaded, i can't imagine that it's easy on them at all. a lot of universities hardly pay them any sort of livable wage for the work that they do

as for academia in general, i think it's worth it to become educated, as it can open doors. obviously there are different paths for all people, some people choose not to go to school, some people go to trade school, others go to school much later in life. i remember i worked w this one doctor who was a mechanic for thirty years and he went back to school to get his undergrad degree and then went to med school, all while he was in his 50s, and now he's a practicing physician! i thought that was really incredible and inspiring. school is something that's there for you whenever you want it, need it, or feel ready for it. i think it's worthy to invest in your education, but you have to go into it knowing that you're going to make the most of it. in that, pursue higher education if you have a plan of why you're there and what you're going to do when you're there, and not just for the sake of earning a degree or putting off working because you'd rather just stay a student. the reason why someone from harvard might work at the same job as someone who went to community college is ultimately because the person who went to CC might've made more of their experience n harnessed connections/skills n probably had a much more clear idea of what they wanted to do with the education they were earning compared to someone who might've been coasting through a reputable school because once they got in, that was all they cared about (lol i sound bitter saying this, no hate to big name schools, but it's such a common misconception that just because you get a degree from like an ivy league, you'll be set for life. and same applies vice versa. some of the smartest ppl i know are people who did CC for two years and then transferred to a four year university. they saved hella money and got the same degree in the end, with the same exact if not better job opportunities. similarly, i've worked at clinics/hospitals where some of the doctors went to UCLA and others went to caribbean med school, but they all ended up at the same place in the end)

GOD THIS BECAME SO LONG i swear whenever i answer asks on my computer it becomes an essay loool but yea these are just my general opinions about college, higher education, and academia in general? i hope this answers and that i didn't misinterpret the question hahah but thank u for the ask bb!!