#the idea of research and /being/ a grad student is so appealing but then I think about the actual work I’d have to do and it’s like um my

[svtdarlingbby]

"He's just a fuck-boy-frat-bro" Fratboy!Bang Chan x fem!Reader

pairing: Frat boy! Bang Chan x fem!Reader; featuring stray kids, '97 liners in Kpop, TXT genre: college au - enemies to lovers - slight angst but mostly fun! warnings: cursing, mentions of alcohol, reader is kinda mean but so is Chan, one mention of blood, slightly suggestive word count: 8904

Y/N's POV

Whoever declared the false dichotomy that studying English was ���easy” did not know the amount of work that went into it. Sure, writing has always been one of my favorite hobbies, but perhaps analyzing the arguments that came into play when it comes to creating effective writing is where my passion lies. 

“You know, it would be more effective if you cut out some of the background information. No one wants to read all of that.”

Speaking of arguments.

“Chan, can you just shut the fuck up and finish the peer review?” I rolled my eyes. Workshop days were usually pretty helpful especially since I tend to procrastinate while being a perfectionist about my writing. However, the professor just had to assign us pairs today and of course, she paired me with Christopher Bahng. Or as he liked to call himself, Bang Chan. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but he’s such a fuck boy. He’s a part of some frat, a string of Greek letters I don’t care to remember. He’s always out partying too with his group of friends. They were so loud when I had the displeasure of meeting them when they sat near me at the library during undergrad as I was trying to write a paper. Let’s just say that I didn’t stay in that area for too long. To put it simply, I did not like Chan, nor did he like me. 

“I’m just saying” he began in a sing-songy voice, “Can’t you just assume your audience understands the background context?” 

He knew how to get on my nerves. “First of all Chan, yes. You’re right. The audience is academic so they probably know what I’m talking about,” I began as he smirked. “However, I only included that much background info to strengthen my credibility. That’s called appealing to ethos. Remember that?”

Chan rolled his eyes as the smirk that was plastered on his chiseled face vanished, “Yeah, whatever,” he groaned as he started to read the rest of my paper. 

I suppressed my laughter and looked back at my laptop screen, which displayed the work Chan had for peer review day. As expected, he came in with only an outline for his paper. Probably couldn’t get anything down because he was out with the boys, I thought as I began to scan his outline.

I hate to admit it, but as I read further through Chan’s outline, the more I began to see his vision. He was researching the shift in attitude toward mental health in the 21st century and the language behind that, and honestly, it was a great idea for his thesis. The thing about Chan is that he is intelligent. Despite his annoying attitude and lifestyle, he knows how to write a pretty damn good paper about something he’s passionate about. Maybe that’s why he also found himself in grad school for English with me. I was hoping that he’d go to another university after undergrad, but like me, he stayed for grad school. Just my luck. It didn’t help that we were one of the few students who stayed at our school for grad school with the rest of the cohort coming from other universities. Essentially, I was the only person he was familiar with so Chan always found his way to sit near or even next to me in all four classes we shared. Even during our training sessions, he found his way near me. I just couldn’t get rid of this guy, but at least I can get somewhat authentic writing advice from him.

“Hey Y/N,” said Chan, a suspicious smile growing on his face.

“What?” I said, trying to keep my eyes on my laptop.

“You forgot a comma here,” he said and began to giggle.

I swear if my eyes weren’t permanently rolled into the back of my head by now. “Ha-ha, very funny Chan. Ever take a look at Bean’s hierarchy like we did in training?”

“Yeah, that’s the joke. Or was that too advanced for someone as uptight as you?” he retorted, the smirk back on his face. 

“Uptight? I can take a joke,” I said, trying to sound confident. 

“Yes, you’re uptight. I’ve never seen you at a party before. You should come with me this weekend,” he said, trying to act suave.

“Now why would I want to go to a party with you?” I said, fully looking Chan into his eyes. 

“Everyone in this room knows that you have an ass, why not put it to good use?” he spoke lowly and smirked, not breaking the eye contact as I began to feel myself blush. 

“What is fucking wrong with you?” I said, trying to sound angry but it came out more flustered and whiny. I won’t admit it to Chan but wow, does my ass look that good?

“I’m just kidding, we all know I’ve got more ass than you,” he laughed as he went back to reading my paper. 

“You know damn well that’s a lie,” I blurted out, still staring at him rather than my laptop.

“Oh? Would you like to prove it to me?” replied Chan, almost a little too quickly. He seemed almost taken aback by how quickly he responded yet still smirked. 

“I-” Before I could respond, I was interrupted by a notification from my phone. It was a text from my friend Rosé, who swears Chan and I are soulmates because she thinks we are so similar. Thankfully Chan notices me get distracted by my phone and uses that as an excuse to drop his absurd question and continue reading my paper. I couldn’t wait to tell Rosé about what Chan just said.

Rosé: ok i know we’re both not into frat parties and stuff but Jaehyun is being dragged to that frat party on saturday by jungkook and mingyu and he wants me to come. You don’t have to but do you think you could come with me?

Oh god, she had to be referring to the party Chan mentioned earlier. I thought about it. The worst thing that could happen is Jaehyun getting caught up with his friends and losing Rosé, which I doubt. Jaehyun was truly a gentleman and he was also a part of the English program with Rosé and me. He wouldn’t do that to her. But at the same time, these frat parties were unpredictable and what kind of friend would I be to leave my friend in that kind of situation? 

Y/N: yeah i heard about that party. Don’t worry, I’ll come with. But you’re promising me that we are avoiding frat guys especially Chan

Rosé: of course! We’ll just stay with Jaehyun who would prob want to leave early anyway.  

Rosé: but

Rosé: it’ll be hard to avoid frat guys especially Chan with your ass 🤭

Rosé: and his ass honestly. You guys are both hot so…

Y/N: Rosé i swear I’m not going to the party now

Rosé: NO i was jk. But fr ur hot

Y/N: thank you 😇send me the details of the party when you get them. Also what you’re gonna be wearing!

Y/N: OMG speaking of, guess what Chan said

Rosé: omg what

Y/N: he was trying to invite me to the party actually and he said something about me having an ass yet his was still bigger and so I called him out on that statement and he basically asked me to prove to him that my ass was fatter 🤢

Rosé: HELP OMG now why would he say that 😭

Y/N: cuz he’s a typical fuck boi

I put my phone down because I suddenly remembered I had to finish up Chan’s peer review. Just as I was about to focus my attention back to my laptop, Chan’s annoying voice spoke up.

“Who were you texting?” he asked, so nosy. 

“None of your business,” I responded, still looking at my screen.

“Is it a guy?” he asked, before looking up. “I saw the way you were smiling.”

“Oh my god, it was just Rosé. Why are you so concerned?” I snapped, regaining eye contact with Chan who smirked once again. 

Chan’s POV:

My plan is working, thank god Rosé’s dragging Y/N along to that party. God, she’s so fucking hot when she’s mad, especially at me. She’s so funny, all of my friends, her friends, and even everyone in our cohort know that she finds me attractive yet chooses to hate me. It’s crazy, she’s the smartest girl I know but she’s so stupid, denying her feelings. I just pretend to hate her to keep the game going, and it’s been going on since like freshman year. I feel like if she truly hated me, she probably would’ve reported me or something. Not that I’d do anything creepy, no, I have boundaries. I just love to mess with her. And perhaps I might also love her. 

I don’t know why I ever admitted that. The boys made fun of me so much. 

“Wait, I know you love to mess with her, but you think you love her?” laughed Changbin among the boys. 

“Well, I-” I stammered, before being interrupted. 

“Bro, how? She hates your guts!” laughed Jeongin.

“Okay but-”

“I don’t think Y/N hates him. She would’ve blocked and maybe gotten his ass kicked out of here by now if she truly hated him,” said Minho, a matter of factly. 

“And even though neither of them would admit it, they seem like friends. I mean, they’ve had classes together for five years now. And I’ve seen Y/N willingly sit next to Chan all the time. They’ve even had lunch together a few times! If she hated him, she would’ve moved seats and ignored him all these years,” added Felix optimistically. 

“Oh my god, are you saying Y/N probably loves Chan?” asked Seungmin, wide-eyed. 

“YES! I’ve known it all these years. I’ve seen the way she looks at you, all that tension from denying her true feelings. This confused girl loves you!” mused Jisung. 

“Yeah, honestly, if she wasn’t in the grad program, I might not have pursued grad school. If that isn’t love, I don’t know what is,” I admitted, feeling flustered in front of the guys. 

“Okay, so how are you going to tell her?” interrogated Jisung. Of course, he wants me to do something about it. 

“I really don’t know. I never really planned on it honestly,” I revealed, earning a few dramatic gasps from my friends. 

“How about at the party on Saturday?” asked Hyunjin.

“No, she hates frat parties. But I’ve also heard from Rosé that Y/N can party so I don’t know,” I answered, feeling almost hopeless. 

“Wait, Chan,” began Minho, a smirk arising on his features, “What if we make Y/N go to that party?”

“Dude, no. As much as I like messing with her, I won’t force her to go somewhere she’s uncomfortable,” I replied somewhat urgently. 

“No, not like that. You know Rosé, right? Those two are like best friends. She’s dating Jaehyun, right? He’s in the frat and I know his buddies Jungkook and Mingyu are going to drag his ass there,” explained Minho. “So how about we use Rosé to bring Y/N to the party?”

“Damn Minho, why do you have this elaborate plan?” chuckled Hyunjin.

“I still haven’t gotten back at her for that one time she went out with Jisung,” spoke Minho lowly, “If this plan doesn’t work, at least she gets to see me all up on Jisung.”

“Whoa calm down Minho, it was one date remember? Before we were a thing? I ghosted her after that!” laughed Jisung. 

God, I remember that. I was so angry when I found out Jisung’s Bumble date all those years ago was Y/N. Granted, that was freshman year, but still! I shouldn’t be jealous, but Jisung’s one of my bros even though he has clearly moved on. I’m sure Y/N has moved on, God, I hope so. 

“Anyways,” I began, “What exactly is going to happen at the party once she’s there?”

“OH! Rosé should totally abandon her! And then you can swoop in and not act like a pretentious asshole for once!” chirped Hyunjin. “And you’ll be surrounded by all the frat guys, who are going to be acting like that and maybe she’ll see that you’re different than the rest!”

The room erupted in agreement from the guys and I began to feel myself warm up to their elaborate plan. “You know what, I think you guys are onto something,” I nodded in agreement as the guys cheered. “I’m going to text Rosé, I know she’d love to set her bestie up.”

Chan: Sup Rosé

Rosé; oh god what do you want

Chan: ok I’m being fr rn. But I have feelings for Y/N

Rosé: that’s the big news? 😭come on, we all knew that. 

Rosé: I mean, everyone but Y/N she thinks she hates you but we all know that’s a lie

Chan: wait-

Chan: what do you mean???

Rosé: oh um

Rosé: Y/N is literally going to murder me but

Rosé: at our last girls party, I don’t know what she was on but she admitted that she finds you hot 😭

Wait. What. Y/N thinks I’m hot? Oh my god!

“GUYS Y/N THINKS I’M HOT!” I blurted out to the guys who all cheered in response.

“YES CHAN’S GONNA GET IT!” screamed Changbin as he smacked my back rather harshly. 

“OUCH!”

“Sorry bro, the gains, you know?”

I ended up telling Rosé the plan and surprisingly she agreed on the condition that nothing bad happens to Y/N and that she won’t stop her from leaving if she gets uncomfortable. Okay, fair. And I know Y/N. She’s super loyal to her friends so she’ll be at that party either way. God, I’m so excited but nervous. She’s going to look so hot too, I wonder what she looks like outside of her school clothes. 

Y/N’s POV

Thank god class was almost over, but why was Chan so concerned with who I was texting? I brushed him off and finished peer-reviewing his outline. Surprisingly, I left a lot of positive feedback but made sure to sneak in some snarky comments. And I corrected his grammar just to be petty. How are you in grad school but can’t differentiate between a dependent and independent clause? 

“Here, damn,” I groaned as I hit send on the email where the peer-review was attached. 

“Aw, you liked my outline!” rejoiced Chan in that annoying voice of his as he opened the attachment. 

“You should be lucky that you’re receiving my feedback. I’m the only one here that would tell you that you suck to your face,” I said as I began to pack up my laptop into my bag. 

“Well honey, from the looks of it, you found a lot more positive things about my outline than negative,” laughed Chan. 

“Whatever,” I groaned, “Have you even finished peer-reviewing my draft by the way?”

“Almost done, I’ll send it to you in a bit,” he said as he started typing once again. 

“Thanks, I guess,” I muttered as I left the classroom. 

What I didn’t know was that my half-hearted “thanks” caused Chan’s heart to skip a beat. 

The day of the frat party came by faster than expected. Honestly, this whole week was a whirlwind. Thanks to Chan’s surprisingly helpful feedback, I was able to finish the essay before the weekend. I usually don’t drink, but, even being around alcohol can get hungover somehow and I wasn’t going to let a stupid frat party be the demise of my grade. Plus, I had to drive back home. 

Usually, I partied with my close friends and attended quite a few parties during my college career. I wonder how it’s going to be to go to a “real” college party, especially as a grad student no less. Maybe Chan was right. Maybe I am uptight. Whatever. I know his dumbass is going to be at that party. I might as well show him what “uptight” is. 

With that, I had a fun time choosing my outfit! I’ll admit, it was kinda low-cut. Okay, it was really low-cut but it flattered my good in every way. I haven’t worn it in a while but the black blouse was flirty and fun, with the dotted fabric of the arms sheer and the cropped nature of the shirt sitting right at my waist. I’d pair it with some nice jeans that flattered me. The outfit was far from uptight. And I could tell it would be a real crowd-pleaser based on Rosé’s enthusiastic reaction.

Rosé: WAIT DAMNNN OKAY

Rosé: CAN CHAN FIGHT????

Y/N: LMAO thanks but prob not!! 

Y/N: I’d rather be all yours anyways 🙄

Rosé: awww

Rosé: I wonder if Chan’s fave color is black 🤭

Y/N: OH GOD why would you say that 😭 i hope not 🤢

Rosé: LMAO I’m kidding lol butttt he is gonna see you like that just saying

Y/N: okay and? Not my problem

Rosé: yeah sureeee anyways are you almost at my apartment so we could head on over?

Y/N: Yeah, just found a parking spot. Heading over!

Flipping my hair out of my face, I headed toward Rosé’s apartment. Honestly, I was feeling kind of nervous going to this party. What if something bad happens? 

Outside the apartment building, I saw none other than Rosé accompanied by her boyfriend Jaehyun. Ugh, they looked perfect together, hand in hand and conversing about something they both could only hear. Until I interrupted.

“Rosé!” I yelled, quickening my pace.

“Y/N! You’re here!” she exclaimed, letting go of Jaehyun’s hand as we hugged each other and flooded one another with compliments of how we looked. 

“Damn Rosé, that ass of yours in those jeans?” I swooned, fanning myself. 

“Ahem.”

“Oh! Hey Jaehyun!” I exclaimed, caught off guard by Rosé’s quiet boyfriend.

“Hey Y/N!” he laughed as Rosé joined him, presumably at my flustered state.

“Listen! I wasn’t trying to take Rosé away from you! I would never!” I tried to explain, “Even though she was my friend first,” I mumbled that last part under my breath.

“It’s all good! Should we head over now?” asked Rosé as we began to walk toward the frat houses. 

The walk over to the frat house was longer than we thought it would be, but thankfully we all wore sneakers. The chill of the fall air blew as Jaehyun draped his sweater over Rosé’s shoulders. God, they were so cute. I can’t believe someone like Jaehyun was technically a frat dude. Come to think of it, Rosé was also in a sorority. I’m sure they knew their way around these parties. 

We opened the door just to be met with some frat bro who I quickly recognized as one of Chan’s friends. 

“Sup Jaehyun, I see you’re in ratio” he smirked as he let us in.

“Thanks, Hyunjin” laughed Jaehyun as he fist-bumped his brother as Rosé and I followed him inside. 

“Ratio?” I asked, perplexed. 

“Oh some frats have this thing where a guy should bring two girls with him to be let into a party,” Rosé explained as I quickly understood despite an even more confused expression gracing my features. I chose not to dwell on it as I took in my surroundings. Of course, red solo cups are in the hands of every attendee. Some of Chan’s friends were setting up some music. Sports were playing on the flatscreen TV. So far, so good.

“Hey, Jaehyun!” yelled Jungkook, who seemingly popped out of nowhere.

“Jaehyun!” yelled Mingyu, following behind the older one. God, Kim Mingyu and Jeon Jungkook. I’ve always thought they were so hot; I couldn’t help but feel a little shy as I scooted closer to Rosé.

Jaehyun greeted his friends as they all clapped hands, hugged each other, and made small talk. I felt kind of awkward just watching them honestly, so I turned to Rosé.

“I’m not drinking tonight, but did you wanna get a drink?” I asked.

“Sure, why not? Oh my god you know what I just realized?” she said, eyes brightening.

“What?” I asked, ever amused by her.

“You might actually see me drunk in person instead of over text!” she laughed.

“Wait, oh my gosh that’s so true!” I exclaimed with excitement as she grabbed a drink, making our way back to Jaehyun and his handsome friends. 

“Oh there you are,” said Jaehyun as he turned around, his eyes lighting up when he saw his girlfriend. 

Before any of us could respond, the house suddenly boomed with music and a certain boisterous voice made himself apparent.

“HELLO ABΩ! IT’S YOUR BOY BANG CHAN HERE!” 

Oh no. I expected him to be here but outside of school, he’s going to be ten times more annoying. I sighed and rolled my eyes as I sipped on some water. 

“The party is just getting started, my boy Jeongin made this fire playlist. Let loose, enjoy yourself, and remember, tag me and follow me on Instagram @gnabnahc!” he smiled into the microphone. All the frat guys began to cheer, encouraging him. I exhaled, just staring at how ridiculous Chan looked, with his white tee shirt, fitted so perfectly against his sculpted muscles. And his black jeans, emphasizing that dumptruck of his. Of course, he was wearing a cap too.   “Let’s have a great night! And-” Suddenly he stopped, creating an awkward silence despite the booming music. 

And then I realized. He was staring right into my eyes. I blinked a few times before looking away, feeling Rosé nudge me as she stifled a laugh. 

“I lost my train of thought!” Chan laughed, shifting the mood back to the energetic one he had created mere seconds before. “Anyways play some beer pong, dance, have fun!” And once again, all of the frat bros cheered as the party began.

I still felt flustered and annoyed, but also powerful at the same time. Did me just standing there make the cocky and confident Bang Chan flustered to the point of freezing up in front of the boys at a party no less? I smirked, though my cheeks still felt warm as I saw Changbin laughing and smacking Chan’s shoulder. 

“Y/N! Did you hear me? Or were you too busy staring back at Chan?” smirked Rosé as she waved her hand in front of my face. 

“Wait what?” I blinked as she and Jaehyun began to laugh. 

“I was saying you and Chan had a little moment right there! Locking eyes, the world disappearing around you two?” laughed Rosé.

“Very Jane Austen” added Jaehyun in agreement.

“Jane Austen would never write about a frat guy at a frat party no less,” I scoffed, crossing my arms as the couple in front of me shared knowing glances. 

Chan’s POV

I will never hear the end of this. Changbin is still smacking my shoulder with his sheer strength and keeps laughing at how I got distracted. 

“Oh my god, my abs. I’m not gonna have to train them anymore because of you!” laughed Changbin.

“Will you quit?” I rolled my eyes at his antics. “Very funny, I got distracted.”

“It’s not even that you got distracted! It’s who made you distracted! Tell me, what was it about Y/N that made you practically drool in front of everyone? Was it her hair? Maybe her eyes? Or was it her tits- OW!” 

“Not now Changbin,” I muttered after I smacked him. God, I need a beer. I left Changbin behind to find Minho handling the drinks. 

“We all saw that, dude,” said Minho somewhat apologetically as he handed me a drink. 

“Yeah, whatever,” I said, drinking from the cup rather quickly.

“So, the plan?” asked Minho expectantly. 

Right. The elaborate plan of the night. Initially, it seemed easy enough but I didn’t realize just how flustered by Y/N I would be. God, how does she get hotter every time I see her? 

“I was gonna wait a little later into the night to tell Rosé to abandon Y/N,” I explained to Minho who nodded. 

“Why don’t you go ahead and break the ice with Y/N? I think you acknowledging her early on will show her you have some decency,” suggested Minho. 

“That’s not a bad idea,” I replied as I glanced over at Y/N across the crowd before making my way toward her. 

Y/N’s POV:

Rosé was too busy talking to Jaehyun as I took in my surroundings once again. The party was beginning to get lively with more people dancing, especially Hyunjin, who was already surrounded by several guys and girls alike. Dancing would be fun honestly, but it would be awkward going up there and not knowing anyone. Just as I took my eyes off the dance floor, I met the gaze of none other than Chan. 

“Oh god, what do you want,” I muttered unenthusiastically as he walked toward me. 

“So, you made it? I knew you weren’t as uptight as you let on,” smirked Chan as he leaned against the wall, drink in hand.

“Don’t you have a paper to write?” I asked, trying not to take in how attractive he looked at that moment. Maybe all that alcohol around me was starting to intoxicate me somehow. He never looks good.

“Well someone provided me with some extra good feedback on my outline the other day,” he began, smiling, “Let’s just say that was an easy paper to write.”

I scoffed, “No way you wrote twenty-five pages in two days, weekdays no less.”

“Oh, but I did. I know you think I’m just a typical frat bro but I do care about the mental health movement,” he said, cocking an eyebrow up as his gaze bore into my soul. 

“Whatever,” I said, breaking eye contact and feeling a bit flustered. 

“Anyways,” began Chan, “It’s nice seeing you here. Nice to see you outside of class, I mean,” he stumbled as his eyes scanned my outfit. 

It was my turn to make him flustered. “Are you talking about me, or my tits?” I smirked, standing up straighter as he shuffled. 

“Well, I-” he began, before regaining his composure, “I expected to see your ass, not your tits today.”

“CHAN!” I yelled as he laughed, “Well, at least mine are bigger than yours!”

“That I can agree with,” Chan laughed, causing me to chuckle and playfully smack his arm. 

“We can finally agree on something,” I admitted as I playfully rolled my eyes and he nodded in response. 

“I’d say we’re finally on the same level of debate,” Chan winked as he referenced our TA curriculum. 

“Yeah, I would say that we passed conjecture so we’re definitely on definition right now,” I said as I dramatically furrowed my brows, pretending to be a teacher. 

“God, I’m so glad we’re actually applying what we’ve learned to the real world!” Chan exclaimed, dramatically opening his arms and gesturing to the “real world” that was the frat party before him. I hate to admit it, but Chan was actually funny. He knew how to appeal to my sense of humor. As hard as grad school is, these little jokes make me feel like I’m not alone. As we were laughing, I could just feel the stares of several people burning through the bubble Chan and I created. He could feel it too. In the corner of my eye, I could see Rosé giggling at us. Oh god, she probably took some pictures too. I also felt the knowing stares of Chan’s friends, even Hyunjin who was surrounded by guys and girls had his gaze fixated on Chan and me. Also, did I see Jisung, that one guy I had that awkward date with freshman year, stop making out with Chan’s other friend Minho just for them to look in our direction? What was going on?

Chan’s POV

I’m glad Y/N is warming up to me, she’s honestly not uptight at all! As awkward as my first glance, well, stare, at her today was, I’m so glad she didn’t bring that up. Speaking of staring, what is wrong with me? She saw me staring at her tits god I want to die. I mean, she didn’t murder me! That’s a good sign, right? As fun and lighthearted as our conversation was, how come the guys and Rosé had to be so fucking obvious? I thought this plan was supposed to be low-key, not “everyone-stare-at-Chan-to-see-if-he-finally-asks-Y/N-out.” I think Y/N is catching on, I mean, I practically feel everyone’s staring at us. I need to find a distraction, quickly. 

“Ahem” I cleared my throat, “Do you want another drink?” 

“Oh, um, yeah sure,” she replied as I snapped her out of her thoughts as we made our way to the drink table. 

I don’t know why I was reacting so quickly but as Y/N reached for a water bottle, something in me told me to grab it for her. It wasn’t until our hands met on the same water bottle that I snapped out of my actions.

“Oh-”

“Sorry!”

“Here, I’ll grab it for you,” I said, handing her the water bottle.

“Thanks,” she replied, looking down. Oh god, am I screwing this up? Did I make it awkward? From the corner of my eye, Felix gave me an apologetic smile as I wearily shook my head. I had to fix this. 

“So, you’re not drinking tonight?” I asked, breaking the ice. 

“Nope. I’ve gotta drive home but being drunk would be fun,” chuckled Y/N before taking a sip. “Yeah? How’s ‘drunk’ Y/N?” I asked using air quotations.

“I don’t remember,” laughed Y/N, “The videos I’ve seen of me in that state are hilarious though. I get cocky, witty, and flirty, so kind of like you on a regular basis. So yeah, I turn into a fuck boy.”

“That does sound like me,” I chuckled as we sat down on the couch. “We’re pretty similar, don’t you think?”

Y/N grimaced. “Rosé thinks so.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Yeah, and it’s so far from the truth!” she exclaimed dramatically, “Rosé, come here!” she yelled over the couch for her friend. Ugh. Just when I thought I could get her alone without Rosé having to completely abandon her friend. 

“Yes?” asked Rosé, another drink in hand.

“Come on, sit down and tell Chan about your delusions. About how you think we’re the same person,” said Y/N who scooted away from me, gesturing for Rosé to sit between her and me. I swear if Rosé cockblocks me…

Fortunately for me, Rosé takes a seat on Y/N’s other side. “You two are so similar oh my god, Chan you don’t even know the full extent,” giggled Rosé as she leaned into Y/N. Ugh. That should be me. 

“Yeah? How are we so similar?” I said glancing between the two women expectedly. 

“You both are studying English!,” laughed Rosé.

“Oh yeah, I didn’t know that!” scoffed Y/N sarcastically as I chuckled.

“Oh, oh! Your zodiac signs are compatible!” Rosé smirked as she raised her eyebrows. 

“Oh yeah, you’re a Libra right? October 3rd?” asked Y/N expectantly and I nodded. She knows my birthday?! I don’t know why my heart began to race at this fact. (A/N- guys for the sake of the story let’s pretend every zodiac sign is compatible with Libra lol!)

“Oh- and don’t forget, your MBTIs are super compatible too!” exclaimed Rosé.

“I’m an ENFJ, what are you?” I asked as Y/N looked away and replied (your MBTI). Oh my gosh, ENFJ and (your MBTI) are like, supposed to be soulmates. (A/N- guys for the sake of the story let’s pretend every MBTI is compatible with ENFJ lol)

“Oh- and also! Remember the blood drive for the frats and sororities? You’re type O Chan!” chimed Rosé.

“How did you remember that?” I chuckled looking between the clearly intoxicated Rosé and Y/N. 

“I’ll let Y/N explain that one!” exclaimed Rosé as she darted her eyes between Y/N and I. 

“Ugh, unfortunately, that means your blood type can be accepted by any other blood type, Chan. So your blood would be accepted by mine,” gagged Y/N, “I’d rather die at that point,” she deadpanned, causing both Rosé and I to laugh. 

“Really? You’d rather die than receive my thick, juicy, red blood from these veins?” I asked, making a fist so the veins on my arms would appear. Y/N bit her lip and exhaled as Rosé laughed even harder. 

“Yeah Y/N, I thought you had an arm kink?” blurted out Rosé, who was probably drunk by now.

“Rosé!” yelled Y/N, getting more flustered and looking away from me. I only laughed harder and felt my ego rise exponentially. She’s an arm girl? Noted. I’ll have to wear tank tops more often. 

“Like what you see?” I whispered to Y/N, flexing my biceps. She didn’t respond, but I saw the way her eyes lingered. 

“Yeah Y/N! You should feel his muscles” laughed Rosé as she grabbed Y/N’s hand suddenly and placed it on top of my bicep

“Rosé!” yelled Y/N as her hand retracted quickly from my bicep. God, if only she knew how flustered I was feeling right now. Before I knew it, I blurted out “I don’t bite. Go for it.” 

“Oh, um. Okay,” replied Y/N as she leaned over and felt my muscles. I tried not to act flustered as she leaned toward me, that blouse of her’s making it hard to focus on her hand on my arm. I swear her skin on mine was something I had been craving for years. “Neat,” she said, retracting her arm but I could see the redness gathering on her cheeks. 

“Whoa, save some room for Jesus!” blurted out a boy with long, dark brown hair. Behind him was a taller boy who looked somewhat flustered.

“Beomgyu? Soobin? What are you guys doing here?” Y/N’s eyes lit up instantly at the sight of them. I could feel my blood begin to boil but I had to maintain my composure. I can’t let something like jealousy ruin the plan. 

“You guys aren’t even in this frat!” laughed Rosé, causing the two guys to chuckle. 

“Yeah and? We’re here for a good time, right Soob?” laughed Beomgyu as he smacked Soobin in the chest.

“Oh- Uh, yeah! How are you, Y/N?” asked Soobin shyly. Why was he asking about her specifically? I kept my mouth shut as I glanced at Y/N, who looked somewhat flustered herself. 

“I didn’t think I’d be here but this one dragged me here,” explained Y/N as she glanced over at Rosé. 

“Okay and? You’re having a good time?” stated Rosé like it was the most obvious thing. 

Everyone chuckled but me, but I tried to play it cool and forced myself to smile at their small talk. Ugh, I just wish these cockblockers would go away!

“Oh my god, they’re playing Rodeo! Soobin, you like that song don’t you?” boomed Beomgyu as he gestured toward Soobin. “Let’s get up there!” he exclaimed as he gestured toward Y/N and pulled her from the couch.

“Wait this song is so funny!” laughed Y/N as she enthusiastically made her way to the dance floor with Soobin and Beomgyu. 

And just like that, my jaw was on the floor. How did these two random guys, who aren’t even in my frat by the way, just snatch Y/N away from me like that? 

“Ouch,” muttered Rosé as I stared at the dance floor in disbelief. 

“Bro did that just actually happen?” I heard Seungmin say as he took Y/N’s vacant spot.

“Man, I’m sorry,” I heard Felix’s deep voice behind the couch as he leaned over to pat my shoulder comfortingly. 

“How- She just- I just-” I stammered, still in disbelief at what just happened. 

“So um, Beomgyu and Soobin know Y/N from biology class during undergrad,” explained Rosé, trying to help me make sense of this. “Soobin was her lab partner.” Honestly, that didn’t really help as I just sighed in response. To be honest, I knew getting Y/N wasn’t going to be this easy. If I have competition, so be it. 

“Give me a minute,” I muttered as I stood up to get another drink. I felt their apologetic stares burn into my back as I made my way to the drinks. I glanced at the dance floor, and of course, Y/N was having the time of her life. God, she looked so hot dancing. Putting that ass to good use like I had said earlier. Just as I was about to look away, an unsightly scene unfolded before me on the dance floor. Why were Soobin and Y/N practically grinding on one another like that? My blood was already boiling, but now it was evaporated by how angry and jealous I felt. I know my face showed that as I made eye contact with Y/N as she smirked. 

Y/N’s POV

Ah Soobin, my old lab partner. My old crush. It didn’t end up working out between us back in undergrad, Soobin claiming that while he did like me, he just couldn’t devote enough time to a relationship. He was a part of many biology related clubs and even president of one. He also had a job on top of all that. Honestly, that was understandable and I quickly moved past those feelings. However, for Soobin I could definitely tell those feelings never went away. Maybe it’s a good thing Soobin studied biology; he couldn’t analyze situations like I could. Let’s face it, Chan was being extra good and not annoying today. That’s really suspicious, and frankly, I don’t know how to react to his good behavior. Admittedly, yes, I was flustered by our interactions throughout today. But he’s just a fuck boy frat bro. He’s always going to be flirting around, probably in hopes of getting laid. I don’t want to be just another one of those girls he fucks for the sake of it. I thought he knew that by now that I’m not into hookup culture. When Beomgyu and Soobin appeared, it was a perfect opportunity to test out my hypothesis: if Bang Chan wasn’t attracted to me like that, then he’d have no problem seeing me dance with another guy. I also just wanted to dance really badly. 

Also, “Rodeo” by Lah Pat and Flo Milli? The song used in every fuck boy thirst trap and slutty TikTok edits? How could I pass the opportunity to not make Chan jealous with such an explicit song about fucking?

“I wanna feel your body on top of mine!” I sang, eyeing Soobin while swaying my hips as some girls hyped me up on the dance floor. 

“Go Y/N!” cheered Beomgyu as he pulled out some smooth moves. 

It seemed like Soobin was getting out of his shell as he suddenly busted out some killer dance moves, slowly closing the distance between us. “Like a rodeo babe!” he winked. I forgot how fun it was to dance, especially with such a supportive crowd. I wonder if someone was watching. I could practically feel Soobin’s warmth behind me as we danced when I locked eyes with Chan who was heading toward the drinks. I could tell he was fuming as his gaze bore into mine. 

“I wanna feel your body on top of mine!” I sang again, trying to be as seductive as possible in the way I moved, never breaking eye contact with Chan. I don’t know where this surge of confidence came from, but god I felt powerful. Maybe this is how Chan usually feels.

Chan blinked back, seemingly flustered and even angry as he looked away and got another drink. He walked out of the front door dejectedly. I laughed as Beomgyu shot me a confused glance but I just waved him off as he continued dancing. As I was dancing with Soobin though, I began to feel guilty. Why the hell did I feel bad for Chan? He didn’t own me, in fact, he always went out of his way to make me angry and annoyed. Okay, he never went this far but still. And I practically just used Soobin to make Chan jealous knowing that Soobin still probably had feelings for me. I’ve always chided Chan for being a fuck boy, but here I was playing with his feelings and even bringing another guy into this mess by using him. Maybe I’m the fuck boy. 

The next song began to play, and I knew I needed to make things right before they got worse. 

“Hey, Soobin?” I asked over the blaring music as I gestured for him to follow me away from the dance floor.

“Yes, Y/N?” replied Soobin as he leaned down to my height so he could hear me. 

“Thank you for the dance, but sorry. I didn’t mean to get all up on you. I don’t want to lead you on, because I’ve moved on since undergrad. I should’ve considered your feelings before I did that, I’m sorry,” I rambled my apology, not really knowing what to say and hoping the damage wasn’t already done. 

“Oh,” paused Soobin as he looked down, “It’s okay, I just… I just wish I hadn’t been a coward and made excuses back then.”

“What are you talking about Soobin?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Well, you clearly moved on. I always see you with Chan especially since you started grad school. Even at this party, you were with him when I walked in. Beomgyu just tried to convince me to take a chance and try to get you back, but I can see I missed my chance,” smiled Soobin wistfully. “I could tell you were trying to make Chan jealous when you danced with me.”

Well, maybe I was wrong. Soobin read my plan like a book. Why wasn’t he in the English program?

“Was I that obvious,” I muttered, looking away from Soobin as he chuckled. 

“I knew it was too good to be true when you were moving like that. Like you had a point to prove,” chuckled Soobin. 

“Ugh, I’m sorry Soobin,” I apologized once again.

“It’s okay, I know you’re an asshole now,” he laughed dryly before gesturing to the door, “Now go get Chan. I’ll be okay. I’ve gotta take care of Beomgyu.”

I glanced at the dance floor and Beomgyu was clearly very drunk and happily dancing. Soobin gave me a reassuring smile.

“Thanks Soob. Take care,” I smiled back before making my way out of the frat house through the door Chan left from. 

Chan’s POV:

I shivered as the cool autumn breeze hit me, the hand holding my drink becoming disproportionately colder than the rest of my body as a result of the sudden temperature change. God, why did Y/N dancing with another guy bother me so much? Everything was going perfectly until Soobin showed up. I know she’s not technically mine but why does the thought of her being with someone who isn’t me hurt so much? I get so angry when things don’t go my way. What should I do!? I blinked back a few tears as I paced along the sidewalk near the building. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket and saw the concerned texts from some of the guys in our group chat. 

Felix: hey Chan, are you okay? I’m here if you need anything

Jeongin: what happened to Chan?

Hyunjin: his genius plan isn’t working *insert video of Y/N and Soobin on the dance floor*

Minho: oh my god that bitch

Jisung: okay maybe I was right to ghost her!

Seungmin: yeahhh it was pitiful 

Changbin: damn I’m sorry bro

I sighed, not bothering to reply. I just needed some space to process the fact that Y/N is probably going to leave the party with another guy. Someone who isn’t me. Maybe I shouldn’t have messed with her as much as I did. I’m sure it must have gotten old pretty quickly. I should’ve just been honest with her from the beginning. But no, I just had to maintain my frat boy image. I don’t know why, or how, I could be this stupid. I just fucked up my chances of being with the prettiest, funniest, and smartest girl I know. Just as I reached to wipe my tears, I heard a familiar voice. 

“Chan!”

I turned around and was faced with none other than Y/N. Concern and regret painted her features as she gazed into my teary eyes. 

“Chan,” she spoke softly, inching closer to me. “I’m sorry. I was an asshole. I shouldn’t have left you like that just to make you jealous on purpose. I’m really sorry.”

I quickly blinked back any tears that remained and wiped the rest off my face. “Y/N, you came to find me?”

Y/N blinked a few times before replying, “Of course. I wanted to mess with you but I could tell that you were hurt. I couldn’t just leave you alone.”

I swallowed before speaking, gently taking ahold of her hand. “Y/N, I need to come clean. I like, no, I love you. I have loved you for a long time. Since like, freshman year. I only pretended to hate you just to mess with you. I don’t know why, I’m so stupid, I just, I thought that was just how a frat guy should act. Clearly not, I just annoyed you and I don’t blame you if you don’t return my feelings. I’ve been an asshole to you for a long time, and I’m sorry,” I rambled, feeling her grip on my hand tighten as I felt myself begin to shake. 

“Chan…” muttered Y/N as she looked into my eyes. God, I’m so embarrassed. 

Y/N’s POV:

I just felt so guilty, and I’m glad I apologized. It’s the least I could do. I know Chan loves to mess with me but he has never gone out of his way to hurt me like I just did to him. However, he really did just drop a bomb out of nowhere. Chan loves me? 

“Chan,” I said, squeezing his hand once again to get him to look at me. It works. “I honestly didn’t realize you felt that way. Wow,”

“Listen, I don’t want to pressure you at all to say yes. I just think you deserve to know how I truly feel,” admitted Chan. 

“No, it’s not that. I just think that you helped me describe what I’ve been feeling,” I admitted. “I always thought I hated you, but I’ve always been drawn to you. It’s not the same if you’re away. And I’m actually kind of glad you didn’t go away for grad school because you’re such a constant in my life. Like, I couldn’t imagine not going to school with you.”

Chan began to laugh. “What’s so funny?” I asked, bracing myself for Chan to probably admit this was a whole prank or something.

“It’s just, I only chose to go to grad school in the first place because you were doing it. And you just so happened to be staying here so I followed you,” laughed Chan, squeezing my hand gingerly. 

My eyes widened, “Well this is news to me!”

“When I told the guys this, they insisted I asked you out. So we made this whole elaborate plan to get you to this party but the plan didn’t really go as planned,” confessed Chan.

“Oh Chan,” I laughed, “Did you guys think you could really fool me?”

“Yeah. So did Rosé,” smirked Chan.

“She what?” I asked, shocked that Rosé was plotting with Chan.

“She’s gonna kill me for telling you but yes, I asked her to bring you here.”

“Oh my god, that’s why her text about the party conveniently came during peer review!” everything began to click as Chan smiled. “I mean, that explains everyone staring at us this whole night.”

“There’s the smart Y/N I know,” laughed Chan, staring at me with adoration which made me flustered. 

“I should’ve known,” I laughed dryly, “But Chan, seriously, I did have a great time with you tonight. And I don’t want that to end so, yes, I’ll be your girlfriend I guess.”

“You what!?” Chan’s jaw dropped as his eyes brightened.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” I rolled my eyes as I pulled him into a kiss. His plush lips I used to despise returned the kiss as he fought back a smile, putting his hands on my waist to draw me closer. We pulled back from one another because we couldn’t stop smiling. 

“God, Y/N. You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to do that,” mused Chan as a genuine smile graced his features as he put an arm around my waist. 

“Yeah it took you long enough,” I rolled my eyes playfully and leaned into his embrace. “Now do you wanna go back inside to party?”

“I’m happy wherever you are, Y/N.”

Chan’s POV

YESSSS I DID IT!!! Y/N IS MINE NOW! Oh my god, oh my god. All it took was for me to word-vomit everything I had felt about her with a pinch of jealousy to make her my girlfriend. I don’t even remember the initial plan because this outcome is so much better. I smiled at the girl in my arms, the one I spent years annoying because I couldn’t communicate my feelings. This is what bliss is. 

Suddenly, my phone began to vibrate like crazy once again. 

“Hold on, I think the guys are texting me,” I tell Y/N as I bring out my phone. I gasp as my eyes widen.

Felix: So uh, I went outside to find Chan and this is what I saw 😳 *insert pic of Chan and Y/N kissing*

Hyunjin: omg how the turns have tabled

Jisung: WHAT!! The switch up is crazyyyyy

Jeongin: oh god my eyesssss (nice job Chan)

Seungmin: phew Chan is okay lol

A message was deleted by Minho

Minho: Aw finally! (I didn’t call Y/N a bitch earlier nooo)

Changbin: CHAN’S GETTING IT AYYY

“What’s wrong Chan?” asked Y/N as she fished out her phone which was also buzzing with notifications. 

“Just check your phone,” I muttered in disbelief, but I couldn’t help but hold back a smile. 

Y/N’s POV

I took Chan’s advice and checked my phone. Maybe something had happened at the party while we were gone? Instead, I found like a hundred notifications from Rosé.

Rosé: AHFEWFEJ WHAT JUST HAPPENED

Rosé: I know you liked Soobin at one point but like

Rosé: omg Chan is actually sad

Rosé: check your phoneee even Jaehyun agrees

Rosé: wait omg

Rosé: *insert pic of Chan and Y/N kissing*

Rosé: care to explain? 🤭

“Oh my god Rosé!” I yelled.

Chan POV:

“Actually it was Felix who took that pic,” I laughed at her flustered state. Honestly, I love that the picture exists. My first kiss with Y/N. How precious!  

“Wanna go kill them?” asked Y/N, rolling up her sleeves. God she’s so hot when she’s mad, even hotter when she’s mad at other people. 

“Gladly, but first, you never answered my question,” I began, smirking at her once again. 

“What question?” She replied, tilting her head in confusion. 

“Can you prove to me that your ass is actually bigger than mine?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow as I eyed her behind and began to laugh at her further flustered state. She paused before suddenly moving closer to me.

“After I get finished with them,” she muttered, gesturing to our friends in the frat house, “Is when I’ll get started with this.” I yelped from the sudden smack on my butt as Y/N eyed me dangerously, smirking. 

“Oh I can’t wait!”

Epilogue:

Y/N’s POV

Even though I hadn’t had a sip of alcohol, I still woke up hungover the next morning in my bed. I groaned at the slew of notifications that had woken me up from my slumber. I can’t believe that I woke up as the girlfriend of Bang Chan, the frat guy who had a notorious reputation for also being a fuck boy. I blinked a few times as I opened Instagram only to find the picture of me kissing Bang Chan to be the first post I saw. 

@gnabnahc last night was crazyyy 🥶💯😳

Comments: 

@yong.lixx: photo creds? 📸 jk so happy for you man

@i.2.n.8: mommy & daddy 😳

@miniverse.__: lookin gr8 bro 

@jutdwae: Ayyyy bro is hard launching rn!

@hynjinnnn: now this is art

@minho_knows: you’re welcome

@han_jisung: yeah she’s much better with you 🤭

@roses_are_rosie: so the plan worked! 😁

@page.soobin: congrats 🥲

⎿ @bamgyuuuu: it’s ok u tried bro 😤

Ok this was my first ever attempt at writing a stray kids fic! I hope you enjoyed! I had a lot of fun writing this! I know Chan would never be a fuck boy irl but as you can see it would be fun to imagine what that might look like!

[tiredbiostudent]

august!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT CIRCLE

It's hard to think of startup ideas. If this is true it has interesting implications, because discipline can be cultivated. Try talking to everyone you can about the gaps they find in the world, and this is easier for writers as well as readers. That means they want less money, but also that there are more and more valuable. When they go to VC firms. Anyone can see they're not the target market. If that's true, most startups that turn down acquisition offers is not necessarily that all such offers undervalue startups. That will change the atmosphere, and not before. The time required to raise money. Whoever the next Google is, they're probably going to have to be at the mercy of their own imagination. About 20% of the startups from preventable deaths.

Investors collude. If you look at the instruments. I didn't make a lot of time on the software. One could do a lot better for a lot of investors will reject you in a way that seems to violate conservation laws. I took embarrassingly long to catch on. I said in the second version, why didn't I have the easy confidence winners are supposed to have? It's equivalent to asking how to make a difference. A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of n things is a degenerate case of essay. Angels can take greater risks because they don't have to look for things that seem completely unrelated, like social networking apps. It's supposed to mean that a deal is going to be. Distinguishing between wise and smart is a modern habit. Dropbox: an SAT prep startup.

Philip Greenspun said in Founders at Work that Ars Digita's VCs did this to them. It certainly describes what happened in Viaweb. But neither should you let them run the company. Another drawback of large investments is the time they take. There do not seem to be superficial reasons. In the time of Confucius and Socrates, wisdom, virtue, and happiness were necessarily related. If you run out of money, you have to figure out what you'd need to reproduce Silicon Valley. I would guess that practically every Stanford or Berkeley undergrad who knows how to program has at least considered the idea of starting a startup means the average good bet is a riskier one, but most can upload a file. What surprised me was their reaction when I called to talk about buying you. If you look at the way successful founders have had their ideas, it's not the deciding factor. Everyone he knows has seen that picture. To evaluate whether your startup is worth investing in.

I decided the critical ingredients were rich people and nerds—investors and founders. It takes an effort of will to push through this and get something released to users. Google's founders were willing to fund teams of MBAs who planned to outsource their product development—which to my mind is actually a lot riskier than investing in a pair of 18 year old hackers, no matter how finished you thought it was important for a founder to be an expert in business. A termsheet is not legally binding, but it is a definite step. There seem to be ideas for companies, just things that would be the first to switch to it. And yet when they started the company. But Mark already lived online; to him it seemed natural. That may not be possible to do that completely. One of the two founders was still in grad school, but we're focusing on growing the company. But coming up with startup ideas is to work on a recipe site. This is one of the people who are committed enough to prefer that, and c only hire people who are committed enough to prefer that, and c only hire people who are really good at acting formidable often solve this problem by giving investors the impression that while no investors have committed yet, several are about to.

But I've proposed to several VC firms that they set aside some money and designate one partner to make more, smaller bets, and they bounced back. Even a bad cook can make a decent cheeseburger. Reading Fred's post made me go back and figure out if they were returning to work after a months-long illness. You could replace high schools too, but there are signs it might be as much as a half. You generally shouldn't pass up a definite funding offer to move. Start a company? But there are limits to how well you answer their questions. A good deal of willfulness must be inborn, because it's common to see families where one sibling has much more of it than another.

Recipes for wisdom, particularly ancient ones, tend to have a qualification appended: at games that change slowly. I don't know exactly what the future will look like, but I'm British by birth. No amount of discipline can replace genuine curiosity. Now I would guess that practically every Stanford or Berkeley undergrad who knows how to program has at least considered the idea of switching seems thinkable to me. You have to be generated by software, so we wrote some. The idea that a successful person should be happy has thousands of years, then switches polarity? This leads to the phenomenon known in the Valley as the hot deal, where you can assume that if you can't predict whether there's a path out of an idea, a working prototype; if you win an Olympic gold medal, you can be wise without being very smart. Judging startups is hard even for the most successful of that group by an order of magnitude larger than the number who want it, not how to convert that wealth into money. To count as research, the less likely it is to be something that could only ever have appealed to Harvard students, it would be an amazing hack. You're all smart and working on promising ideas. Something that curtly contradicts one's beliefs can be hard to sell. If startup failure were a disease, the CDC would be issuing bulletins warning people to avoid day jobs.

As I was leaving I offered it to him, as I've done countless times before in the same spirit. In a sense there's just one point, you don't really understand them. They insist on it. So why did I spend 6 months working on this stupid idea? Corporate Development, aka corp dev, ask yourselves, Do we want to keep in close touch as you develop it further. And not just because we make small investments; many have gone on to raise further rounds. VCs: How would you like a job where you never got to make anything, but instead ask do we suck? They say Yeah, maybe I could see myself—making at least 4 of these 5 mistakes.

Considering how basic a red circle is, it seemed surprising to me when we started YC. The last one might be the most progressive. You can't use euphemisms like didn't go anywhere for something that's your only occupation. One Canadian startup we funded could appear in a Newsweek article describing them as the next generation of billionaires, because then the cycle of generating new versions and testing them on users can happen inside one head. After they merged with X. So here's the recipe for impressing investors when you're not already good at seeming formidable the first time in history they're no longer getting the best people. I mean truly evaluate whether your startup is worth investing in, rather than whether it's going to take, and the doctors figure out what's wrong. Probably no one who applied to Y Combinator to work on projects that seem like they'd be cool. The only way to decide which to call it is by comparison with other startups.

Thanks to Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston, Sam Altman, Robert Morris, the founders of Zenter, and Justin Kan for smelling so good.

[neurobiologie]

hey idk if I’m too late for college app acceptances but I’ll just put this out into Tumblr. My very first UofT friend was made because I posted about being unsure of where I’d study and she thought I was already a student.

I go to the University of Toronto! St George Campus! I never had a chance to visit before making my decision and the tour videos online were lacking—I’d like to make my own video before I finish my undergrad (idk I’d like to stay there for grad school, though.).

I’m a dual US-Canadian citizen who grew up in the states. I dormed in my first year and moved out to live with friends after that.

I’m going to finish a Neuroscience Specialist and Physiology Minor. I’m finishing up my third year now. I could graduate next year, but I might take a fifth. I might finish an Immunology Minor. I do not know if I will finish a Physiology Major or Cell and Molecular Biology Major (I don’t expect to finish Cell&Mol bc I think a required course conflicts with a required neuro course I need to complete. Similar issues with the Physiology Major and also, I’m balancing my love of learning with a desire to chill and bring my GPA up). I’m happy to talk about our Program of Study (PoST) system—personally, I like it.

I love neuroscience. I really love studying pathology and therapies for diseases and conditions (like concussion, spinal cord injury, and pain and addiction—which has some disease elements), but pretty much only for neuro. I also like non-traditional (like, non-pharma/bio) therapies like brain-computer interfaces, meditation, and exercise. I’ve done a few research internships in Toronto by now, and presented a poster. I was supposed to take part in a paper that would’ve had my name on it, but then SARS-CoV-2 happened and I’m re-routing my research projects.

I am a Neuroscience Association of Undergraduate Students’ Co-President and I’ve been on the team for two years (we don’t have first year positions) and a NeurotechUofT Neuroscience & EEG Co-Lead. I joined the team in about oct 2019, after a lot of encouragement from a friend who happened to be co-president there. Tech is gradually becoming part of my comfort zone. I’ve held various exec and leadership positions on campus. I also paddle for UC Dragon Boat (looks like our season’s cancelled! The first half is, at least.). I grew up athletic-ish but didn’t start paddling until my second year. I used to volunteer at CAMH. I got to interact with their clients/patients but not doing research and not in a clinical capacity.

I’ve got friends in a lot of different programs so even if that doesn’t appeal to you, I might know someone.

I started out wanting to go to med school. I don’t know anymore. I think if I do, I want to do a masters first. I think I’d rather go for a research or research-related life, either in academia or industry. I’ve got a lot of ideas and contingency plans. Sometimes, I fantasize about going to law school. I used to love debating and I still care deeply about justice, especially social justice, and I can imagine a lot of ways where I could use my neuro/bio background in law.

AMA!

[hellopugeroni]

21 questions tag

I got tagged by @cantseemtohide​ 😊

RULES: answer 21 questions, then tag 21 people you want to get to know better.

nickname: V or Vee

zodiac: Taurus

height: 5′3″ (160 cm)

last thing searched: A recipe for matcha cake. 

favorite musicians: I honestly have the most random and eclectic taste in music. I generally just listen to anything I think sounds good (lol). 

If you had a time machine, would you go back in time or visit the future? I don’t think I would want to know what the future holds, but I also don’t think going back in time would be productive. I’ve seen and read enough sci-fi to know that there are some serious consequences if you disturb events that took place in the past. 

do I get asks: I mainly just get tags, but not a lot of asks. I don’t mind getting the odd message here and there, but I am glad that I’m not a “popular” simblr. I don’t think I could keep up with answering everything.

following: (how many I’m following?) 110

would you rather be rich or famous? Neither is particularly appealing, to be honest. In my field, it is possible for someone to become “well-known” (maybe not “famous” on the same level as a movie star or musician, but everyone in the field knows your name and your work). I don’t know if I want to be known as a “superstar academic” but I wouldn’t mind being known for the work I do. It’s just nice to feel respected by your colleagues. :) 

amount of sleep: I try to get at least 7-8 hours. I’ve gotten a lot stricter about having a bedtime as I’ve gotten older because I cannot function on little sleep. 

what I’m wearing: A sweater and jeans - I’m getting ready to go to my weekly writing group and it’s a little chilly this morning.

dream job: I wanted to be a journalist when I was in high school, but I don’t think I would be cut out for that career, especially now with how insane the news cycle is and how some state figures (won’t name names) have turned people against journalistic integrity. I am very happy with my current path in teaching and research because I am, by nature, a curious person and I love discussing ideas in depth. I also really enjoy contributing new knowledge to my field and teaching my students how to look at culture in different ways.

dream trip: Well, Japan was one of my dream trips (and I just went there back in August)! I also want to travel more in Asia.

if you were an animal, what would you be? A friend once told me that I was kind of mouse-like - not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not. 

what are some of your favorite books/films/shows/games/etc? The majority of what I read nowadays is for research and I do have some books in my field that I would say are my favourites because they have been so influential to me as a scholar (I know, what a nerdy thing to say). However, I will spare you all a list of boring academic books. A few works of fiction that I’ve read recently or that have stuck with me over the years are Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien, A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand, and Beloved by Toni Morrison (I was really saddened by her passing this summer).

I haven’t been watching a lot of television lately, but I am very excited for The Good Place to start up again this week (though I’m actually a season behind ... just hoping it finally gets added to Netflix Canada). 

As for games, The Sims all the way. :) I have fond memories of playing TS1 and TS2 with my sister when we were kids. I didn’t play TS3 much because it came out when I was in undergrad and I had a crappy laptop that couldn’t run the game (people who wax nostalgia for TS3 sometimes forget that you really needed a beast of a machine to run the base game + all the darn expansions). My partner bought TS4 on sale a few years ago and I started playing it as a way to de-stress from my grad school work. 

play any instruments: Piano, but as a child. I don’t play it anymore. My dad also tried to teach me how to play guitar when I was about 10, but he’s not the most patient teacher and was very frustrated that I have small hands and wasn’t able to do chord changes very well (lmao). 

language(s): English is my native language and I can speak French. I also speak a smattering of German. 

describe yourself as aesthetics: Like what is my personal aesthetic? I don’t know if I could describe it specifically, but I dress very collegiate (like collared shirts, pencil skirts, etc. I’ve been known to wear a blazer with jeans and a t-shirt too). 

I think most people have done this tag at this point, but if you haven’t (and you want to do it), consider yourself tagged. 😊 

[mandelene]

(1/2) So, i got my grade back for one of my rhetoric essays, and i appealed to my teacher and honestly, I KNOW im taking this personally, and i KNOW i shouldnt, but im getting really annoyed. its bc im taking it personally. her feedback is true, and i DO need to hear that, in my mom's less kind words "you write like its a fanfic", but she really should say "you write like you speak". Any advice to keep your personal style while writing formally without sounding casual?

Hi, anon! Thank you so much for asking these questions because I feel like so many writers go through this struggle. As someone who writes fanfic/fiction for fun but is also a journalism student who is finishing up her thesis and about to move onto grad school, I can definitely relate to this as well. First, I think it’s important for one to acknowledge that writers wear lots of different hats. If I posted my thesis on here, you guys would never guess I was the one who wrote it, haha. I have my fiction voice, my academic voice, my non-fiction voice, and a creative non-fiction voice. They’re all connected by some elements, but they’re also distinct from each other. Sure, my thesis probably isn’t as fun to read as one of my stories, but it’s still me because I wrote about a topic that mattered deeply to me and that I genuinely wanted to dive deeper into.

Unfortunately, with academic writing, you’re always going to feel slightly as though you have a stick up your ass, lol. That’s just part of the craft. Like with fiction, there are certain standards and norms that academic writing follows, and no one will take your research paper/arguments seriously if you don’t demonstrate an understanding of the form. Always keep your audience in mind – writing for your friends and peers is a lot different from writing for scholars. It’s likely you won’t be allowed to be as creative when it comes to academic writing, and sometimes, you’re going to have to write about stuff you absolutely hate, but if your research is strong and you formulate and communicate ideas well, then your essay will stand out and won’t be boring because you’ll show you have a true grasp of the topic. My professors always stress how important “flow” is in a paper. It’s what separates the dry, boring stuff from the interesting stuff. I have to read a lot of academic journals for my classes, and I can tell who’s a good writer and who isn’t by their flow, clarity, and ability to be concise. Those skills are incredibly important in academic writing. Think “so what?” Why should anyone want to read your essay? Your reader should feel like they’ve learned something meaningful from your argument and understand why it’s meaningful, too.

As for taking criticism, this one’s tough. At first, it’s going to hurt, but even though it hurts, you have to teach yourself to take a step back, listen, and say thank you, even if you don’t totally agree – especially when you don’t totally agree. Hear the other person out. Force yourself to see things from their point of view. Your brain and heart are going to try to resist at first, but it gets easier with time. If it makes you feel any better, my thesis mentor criticizes me constantly, lol. He’s not afraid to tell me, “I really didn’t like this,” or “this part didn’t make any sense” because he knows I won’t take it personally. In fact, he recently told me the quality of my thesis “took a nosedive,” haha (which is totally true, btw). Someone saying they dislike something about your paper is not a personal attack, and they are not trying to insult your intelligence or suggest you’re a bad writer by any means. In fact, I’m flattered when my mentor is honest with me because it shows he trusts me to be able to take the hit in stride. I’m a firm believer that what separates the great writers from the decent writers is the ability to take criticism. No one is going to want to work with a writer who gets defensive and spiteful. Writers who detach themselves from their writing when taking feedback are the ones who will grow. Listen attentively, don’t try to explain your view or give any disclaimers. Just nod, thank them, and be open to edits. 

Being respectful, thoughtful, and showing appreciation will demonstrate maturity and get you very far, I promise. We live in a society right now that is fueled by emotion. Everyone takes everything personally, gets heated easily, and wants to block out those whom they disagree with, but that’s the death of dialogue and free speech. There is real value in being able to approach things with a level head. Taking a step back is a skill that will help not just with your writing, but also with future jobs and decision-making. It’s also a skill that not everyone has. Self-awareness, taking feedback, self-control – these are all parts of emotional intelligence, which is honestly sometimes more important than how much you know. 

Thank you again for the asks, and I hope things work out! Best of luck and stay wonderful. Have a great spring break as well! :) 

[nonmillennialstruggling]

Another wow

So many interesting jobs in the bay area!  I’m going to apply to a few tomorrow.  I saw one today that is a 30 hour a week position doing research on precarious work conditions.  That would be perfect because I could work on my own scholarship with the extra ten hours.  I saw another that is working on several trans health projects.  Also toying with the idea of waiting a year or two before applying to programs again.  Yes this is because I’m nervous about asking to meet with my former director of graduate studies.  I was really mistreated in my program and I don’t know how aware of things the former director of graduate studies was, or where she stands on things.  She was supposedly run out of the department and into the dean’s office by the new department chair, who has chased away other faculty, but she may not feel comfortable ‘vouching’ for me because when you are mistreated by an agency with power individual people in that agency are often afraid to help you.  Beside being nervous though- OK totally related to being nervous- I think working could give me some additional reference sources and that may be helpful since 1) I don’t know if the former director of graduate studies would be willing to write me a rec letter and 2) some of the programs I’m looking at allow you to submit more than 3 rec letters.  Also not gonna lie, the thought of banking money before going back to the poverty wages of a grad student is appealing and I could live with my sister and make more money in the Bay Area, plus I would get to be around my niece and nephew!   

[pjbehindthesun]

Character Profile: Cora

Hey hi hello. When I asked you how you wanted to celebrate the latest reader milestone, you voted to see Cora's character profile in full. Here it is! Or, here it is, current as of chapter 23 (I had to take some stuff out, you know how it is). So if you're not through chapter 23 yet, there may be some undesired spoilers. And if you’re current up through chapter 23, then maybe some mild desired spoilers, who knows. Enjoy!

Name: Cora Lane Shaw

Age: 22 when the story starts. She’ll be 40 when it ends. (I told you guys, we got a whiiiiile yet to go…)

Nationality: American, with mostly Scottish and Irish ancestry.

Socioeconomic level as a child: Very poor early on, but became more solidly middle class once her mother remarried.

Socioeconomic level as an adult: At the start of the story, she’s able to make ends meet, but she’s pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and sharing living expenses with Alex.

Hometown: The general Asheville, NC area is all she’s ever told anyone. She has not told anyone the actual name of her hometown yet. She’s kind of embarrassed by it.

Current residence: At the beginning of the fic, she lives in Seattle WA.

Occupation: PhD student at UW College of Forest Resources, also a part-time waitress at Cyclops cafe. Her career will obviously change over the course of the fic.

Income: She gets a small stipend from working as a teaching assistant in her department, and picks up a little extra money waitressing.

Talents/Skills: Her biggest skill is being extremely book smart. She has decent wilderness skills. She had to learn some basic thriftiness skills like knitting and sewing, although she hates all that stuff. She does like to cook and bake but only because it appeals to her inner scientist. She also plays guitar (badly) and mandolin (worse).

Birth order: Oldest of two.

Siblings (describe relationship): She has one younger brother, Patrick, who she calls Patch and who is four years younger than her. Patch is 18 at the start of the fic. The two are extremely close, although nothing alike, and Cora is very protective of him. But she also relies heavily on his opinion.

Parents (describe relationship): Her biological parents are Shirley and Paul. Paul left when Cora was 8 years old and she has not seen or heard from him since. She has fond (albeit childlike) memories of him, but of course, his departure had a deep impact on her ability to trust people and her view of what commitment means. She has a terrible relationship with her mother, which has more to do with John, the man her mother remarried, than anything else. Whenever she has to go back to North Carolina, she stays with her childhood best friend's parents instead of her own.

Grandparents (describe relationship): She doesn't know her dad's parents or anything about them. Her mom's father died when her mom was very young, and her maternal grandmother is in a nursing home with dementia after having suffered a stroke a few years ago.

Significant others (describe relationship): At the beginning of the fic, she is dating Alex Henderson. Alex is a year older than her but they were the same year in college and met during the first month of freshman year. They used to have a very relaxed, fun-loving, easy relationship in which neither of them expected much from the other. But moving across the country together has exposed some of the fault lines that they hadn't noticed before. They do not share many worldviews or hobbies, and they never developed good communication skills as a couple. Their sex life used to be great but has dwindled to essentially nothing at all. They don't really fight, they just fall into cycles of ignoring/dismissing one another until one of them feels compelled to put more effort into the relationship to keep it going. Alex is the first boyfriend she’s ever had. She will have other relationships as the story progresses.

In a relationship: She throws herself entirely into everything she does, relationships included. Recently, things with Alex have gotten more distant and complicated, but generally, her relationship style is to be very loving and loyal and committed. She tends to develop huge blind spots, and she has terrible communication skills, preferring to hide from uncomfortable truths and lashing out when she’s called on it. But she’s good at using her sense of humor to diffuse bad situations and get things back to normal. Despite a heavy-handed religious upbringing, she enjoys sex and is... not particularly repressed about it.

Height: 5’3 if she stands up straight

Weight: 125 lbs

Race: Caucasian

Eye color: Very dark brown

Hair color: Bright red

Glasses or contact lenses? She wears glasses when she reads sometimes but not routinely.

Skin color: Very pale, very freckled.

Shape of face: Oval

How does she dress? She’s definitely a tomboy. She wears a lot of jeans and grandpa sweaters. (One pair of jeans in particular has a bunch of raggedy holes from a literal acid wash thanks to a lab accident.) She owns three skirts and zero dresses (with the exception of the Day-Glo orange bridesmaid’s dress). Footwear of choice is either Converse or Doc Martens.

Habits: (smoking, drinking etc.) She will smoke occasionally but only socially, not as a habit. She does drink a lot of bourbon, like, way too much bourbon. Can be a bit of a pothead, although not as much in grad school.

Health: She’s pretty healthy, but it’s almost by accident. She’s a vegetarian, and she likes to ride her bike more than drive (or she did, before she gave away her bike...), but those habits have to do with her environmental convictions, not being a fitness nut. She does not generally sleep well or take great care of herself outside of those activities, although she does periodically go for a run to clear her head.

Hobbies: Reading, running/biking/hiking/anything that gets her outside, cooking and baking. And sometimes playing guitar. Again, badly.

Speech patterns: She speaks very quickly and moves her hands a lot when she talks. She has a faint NC accent despite having tried hard to shed it. Her favorite swears are religious, like “sweet merciful zombie Jesus.”

Greatest flaw: Perfectionism in the unhealthiest way. This applies to her standards for herself (personally and professionally) as well as a rigidity in how she navigates her life. She also has a short temper.

Best quality: Her idealism drives her to make the world better. Not just in her planned career, but in how she deals with other people as well. She’s not an optimist but she wants to make a difference.

Short-term goals in life: On the immediate horizon, pass her prelim exams, get a fellowship, and publish her first paper from her research. In the initial months of the fic, her other primary short-term goal was to keep her relationship with Alex thriving, although she has become less committed to that idea recently.

Long-term goals in life: Finish her PhD, get a tenure-track job at a research university, and use evidence to impact people's decisions for the greater good. She’s always seen that happening through a career in scientific research. She doesn’t have distinct personal goals like “get married, have kids,” because she prizes her independence and has misgivings about some of those life choices, at least as she understands them right now.

How does she see herself? She second-guesses herself constantly, both personally and professionally. She doesn’t have a very high opinion of her looks, but she doesn’t get bent out of shape about it either. She finds other things to have low self-esteem about, like her foot-in-mouth tendencies or her perfectionism in school or her worry of hurting other people.

What would most embarrass her? She hates it when she puts her foot in her mouth and says something rude to a person she really cares about. She would also be very embarrassed to be seen as vulnerable in any way.

Strengths and weaknesses: Strengths are intelligence, altruism, humor, stubbornness, and generosity. Weaknesses are emotional fragility, stubbornness, short temper, inflexibility, anxiety. 

Introvert or Extrovert? Introvert

How does she deal with anger? Her temper flares. She's not good with it at all. 

With loss? Not well. She internalizes it and it sometimes causes her to hold on to people she probably shouldn't. 

What makes her happy? Being in nature, being with her (very few) loved ones, and scientific discovery. 

Rude or polite? Rude for sure.

What motivates her? Fear of failure and loss. Altruism and ideals.

Is she ruled by emotion or logic or some combination thereof? Almost always logic, although there are certain circumstances where she can be swept up in a moment.

Does she believe in God? Absolutely not. She was raised Catholic and still carries a lot of Catholic guilt around in her personality, but she’s pretty dismissive of spirituality in general.

Relationships with others:

1. Alex: They start out dating. They met when she was still a very naive 17 year old, and he’s been her whole world ever since. She’s starting to lose patience with him and doubt how truthful he’s being. And of course, she’s keeping a secret from him too.

2. Lucy: Best friend. Lives downstairs. You haven’t heard how they met yet but it’s a good story and you’ll hear it eventually from one of them. Suffice it to say they hit it off immediately.

3. Chris: Chris is the first member of the “Seattle scene” she met, out on their hike in an undisclosed location in the Northern Cascades. They have a deep friendship but they don’t see each other very often due to their respective schedules.

4. Jeff: Neighbors. They formally meet for the first time at the Off Ramp and don't really hit it off right away. He is annoyed by her sense of humor. Gradually he warms up to her as he understands her relationship with Lucy better. But they are always a little at odds.

4. Stone: She meets Stone at the Off Ramp at the same time as Jeff. They form a friendship very quickly, although Stone has feelings for her from the very start. She realizes slowly that she has feelings for him as well. Then... some things happen. It gets complicated, and not complicated.

4. Eddie: It takes a while for Eddie to stop being “that new guy” to anyone, including Cora. But she initially strikes up a conversation with him because she feels bad for how lonely he looks, and they hit it off well. They have a habit of oversharing with one another.

5. Patch: Little brother. Adores him, thinks the world of him, needs his validation for everything she does, is extremely protective of him.

How she is different at the end of the novel from when the novel began: Obviously much older, and much more flexible in her ideas.

[scrambledthoughtz]

fuck me

i don’t know what i want to do with my life. i had a meeting with my graduate student mentor yesterday and she told me about what grad school entails and honestly, i don’t know if this is what i want. she said that it’s very much research-based, and there’s a lot of long-term gratification. it’s a very tedious process with collecting data, reviewing literature, and all that, and honestly, i think i’d rather go into a field where i can see the change i’m making upfront. even she said that she doesn’t necessarily see the contribution that she’s making through the research she’s doing, and the “short-term gratification” or fulfillment that she gets is through doing mentorship (like with me). honestly - then what is the appeal of grad school then if you can’t see the change that you’re making until later on?? i feel like you have to be extremely passionate about a subject matter to be willing to engage in such a long-term project where you’re constantly reviewing literature and doing fieldwork within that topic or in studying that population. i feel like i don’t necessarily feel passionate enough about anything to want to commit myself to something so long-term. but at the same time, i guess it’s worth a shot since i’m enrolled in this mentorship program anyways and she’s going to be sending me programs to research and look at. i don’t want to close any doors, but baba says i’ve got to make up my mind soon, and that’s so true. he’s been pushing me and pushing me to look into law school, but i don’t know man. i don’t think i’m smart enough or cut out to do law school. i asked about this on a reddit thread a bit ago, and someone responded and said that i should not go into law school without a clear goal in mind. i shouldn’t be doing it just for the sake of doing it because it has a defined career path. it’s a big fucking commitment and i feel like if i wanted to do law school, i should have figured this out by like, yesterday. i feel like it’s too late to decide something like this because i practically only have one year left. and summer, but i don’t know what the fuck i want to do over the summer. i was talking with baba and he said that he can see that i have a really big commitment to social justice, and he’s constantly telling me that if i want to make the change, i should just do law because doing anything else is going to be mentally taxing since i see all the systemic problems but i don’t have the power to fix them. but at the same time, my graduate mentor was telling me about working with people on such a close basis is really mentally taxing too because their freedom literally lies in your hands. i don’t know - i feel like with all the aapi violence that has been occurring, i could potentially go into something regarding that ?? plus that’s what i’m doing my departmental honors thesis on so that would be a good tie-in if i do decide to apply. hmm. something to think about. but i don’t know - i just feel like law school is so out there, and i’m just romanticizing the idea of it. in hindsight, there were so many opportunities that i missed out on last quarter because i was working so much, and i regret it. there were a lot of networking opportunities that i should have gotten more involved in. fuck. i just also feel like grad school is so nebulous - like you get a grad degree in whatever, but then what? my mentor said that barely anyone she knows leaves academia - the ultimate goal is either to become a professor or aa post-doc, but i honestly don’t know if i want to do research so extensively. it just seems so dry and i don’t know - so distant?? even my mentor said that research kind of gives students the privilege of examining a problem from afar - but i just don’t know if that’s what i want to do. what if i do want to talk with people more one on one? but at the same time, i’m a fucking emotional sponge so maybe i don’t know what i’m talking about. and then there’s the potential digital humanities minor because i want to make myself marketable to those fucking bureaucratic tech companies that value people who have at least some knowledge in these tools and scripting languages. should i even be pursuing something like that? is it worth my fucking time?? i need to prune the fuck out of my extracurriculars and work on developing a stronger relationship with my professors and ta’s by making the time to go to their office hours and spend less time on these extracurriculars that won’t matter in the end. just like my mentor said, grad schools want to see what you’ve done to set yourself up for success, so taking on all these extracurriculars isn’t going to do me any good. if anything, it’s taking valuable time away from what i need to focus on, and that being what i want to do after i graduate. god, i’m such a fucking incoherent dumbass mess piece of shit who can’t for the life of me just figure things out. i’m literally back at the same square that i was at community college, except now time is ticking down and the stakes are much higher.   

[musesmilk]

REBECCA MILTON

Rebecca Milton is an accomplished Scottish art director who has worked on The Hitman's Bodyguard, Macbeth, The Imitation Game, and most recently The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. In our interview, Rebecca graciously offers our readers a glimpse of her artistic career.

“The project on hand is your life and the likes of Steven Spielberg or Barry Levinson demand this commitment since they too are giving all they have to their art and it is their name stamped across the picture a year later.”

Muse’s Milk: Tell us your story.

Rebecca Milton: I am a Scottish freelance architect and film art director currently living between the Cotswolds and west London with my partner and my little boy. I have always enjoyed a fairly diverse skill base; fine art, interiors, lighting design, film, and installation art - even through art college I would find alternative mediums to communicate and present my architectural ideas. Then when I heard about the work of an Art Department, I was already working as a qualified Architect but it seemed a really good fit for me. What appealed was the day to day and project to project diversity it brought, the variable contract lengths, wide range of locations, the idea of bringing to life a story and the potential reach your work can have to audiences around the world. Ultimately it was a way to introduce more variety and creativity into my life.

MM: Is there a production you are most proud of? 

RM: I have been lucky to have worked with some of the worlds best Directors and Production Designers and am exceptionally proud of all the projects I have worked on. I think the most fun I’ve ever had recently was working on the film The Hitman’s Bodyguard.  This was entirely down to the production designer and his team. I must have laughed every day on that film and it really didn't feel like work. The result was a genuinely funny movie which looked great and that we all enjoyed being part of. My most difficult project location was probably up on the Isle of Skye, where we shot Macbeth. We worked for days in harrowing conditions carrying rocks up a mountain to create a very simple stone plinth which was the base of a ceremonial burial fire in the scene. I was soaked and utterly broken, although the build looked great. On screen this was an extremely powerful moment but I think it lasted less than two seconds. There must be a lesson in there somewhere.

MM: Art directing a feature film is an enormous undertaking. Where do you begin on a project like Macbeth or The Imitation Game?

RM: The creative process of designing a film is one which generally begins with lots of research and reference material. Especially on a period production. There are so many things you can take from reference not just in terms of history but also the human details. For example, when we were dressing Alan Turing’s Hut in Bletchley Park, one dressing element was to chain a tea mug to the radiator beside his desk. This was a small but historically accurate detail which we had read about. At the time mugs were sparse, and a cup of tea was very important when trying to win a war with mathematics. It can be little things like this that collectively add to the richness of a film set. Macbeth was much less historically locked so we had more creative freedom to draw reference from things like stretched waxed animal skin tents from North America, primitive art, religious iconography, world war one imagery and contemporary photography.

MM: What do you want readers to know about you, as an artist and as a person?

RM: I’m actually a fairly private person and I don't use any form of social media platforms other than my website which exists primarily as a job portfolio rather than a performance window to the world. I like to keep my head down and my circle small. I believe if you work hard and are good at what you do, then most things are possible. There used to be so much noise in my life, and I wasted a lot of energy on the wrong things. Its a huge cliche but last year I had a little boy and I feel he has helped in a big way to clarify whats important in life.

MM: Do you have advice for students looking to pursue film production?

RM: I never considered a career within the Art Department of the Film and TV Industry when leaving school, because I honestly didn't know they existed. It’s a relatively closed industry. I went to Architecture school and followed that path before crossing over. Interestingly though the original Art Directors in Hollywood were Architects, so the key skills are essentially the same. I made a contact through a friend and was lucky to find a way in through her. I took a holiday from a steady architecture position to do a week of work experience on a kids TV show. From there, I left my job and worked my way up through all the positions in the Art Department; Assistant, Graphic Designer, Standby Art Director, Assistant Art Director, Art Director. Starting in TV and slowly moving into Film.

If I were to do it over again, I’d still go down the architecture route but perhaps just do just three years follow by a post grad specialising in production design. Once you graduate it is hard to get your first break because you rely on word of mouth and are permanently marketing yourself, putting feelers out for any new projects starting up just to get experience. So a lot of it is about timing and luck. There is a harsh, survival of the fittest element to the industry. You have to be able to adapt quickly to change and there is no space for tardiness, mistakes or an inability to do the job.  And there is little time for a personal life. The project on hand is your life and the likes of Steven Spielberg or Barry Levinson demand this commitment, since they too are giving all they have to their art and it is their name stamped across the picture a year later.

[seobookmark4]

Cal Poly grad is writing a book on Black alumni — while training for Olympics

Haverhill, MA  December 1, 2020 — Boosters Zone LLC is excited to announce that former Cal Poly track athlete Shereese Cutler is writing a book on remarkable Black alumni that she hopes will inspire her own dreams.

Cutler, who graduated from the San Luis Obispo university in 2014, is currently training in the long jump with hopes to earn a spot on the U.S. team in the 2021 Summer Olympic Games, scheduled to take place in Tokyo.

Working in coordination with Cal Poly’s Robert E. Kennedy Library and individual colleges on campus, Cutler is gathering information on alumni such as NASA astronaut Victor Glover, who recently became the first Black crew member aboard the International Space Station for an extended stay.

 Former Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith and current NBA player David Nwaba are among other Cal Poly alumni who have made outstanding contributions.

Cutler said the book, slated to be printed through University Graphics Systems, will be titled “Black Lives of Cal Poly SLO: Stories of Successful Black Cal Poly SLO Alumni.” The book will be published by Boosters Zone LLC which specoalizes in writing fundraising books for nonprofits.

She will seek to highlight the accomplishments of Black Cal Poly graduates across all departments, while raising money to continue her track career. Her book will include biographical information about each person, as well as about their experiences at Cal Poly and beyond.

Cutler said that 50% the proceeds of the sales of the book, which she hopes to complete by February, will go to the Cal Poly Black Student Union to delegate for scholarships. Of the remainder, 40% will go to her Olympic training expenses, and 10% will go to her sponsor for helping her.

In addition, she hopes to fundraise $10,000 to help with the research for the book as well as her Olympic training. For more information, go to www.shereeseandrea.com/cpslo.

Cutler said that she is still compiling lists of successful Cal Poly alumni, added that university officials have been very receptive to her idea.

“Due to the pandemic, the library is currently closed to the public, but Special Collections and Archives is actively providing remote services to students, faculty, staff, alumni, community researchers, and scholars,” said Jessica Holada, director of the Cal Poly library’s Special Collections and Archives Department. “If our materials can support Shereese and her project, we would be pleased to learn about her research needs and help in any way we can. ... It is a standard library ethic, however, to maintain the confidentiality of researchers with whom we work.”

TRACK ATHLETE NAVIGATES LIFE HURDLES

An Inglewood native, Cutler started competed in track and field at the age of 9.

She was captivated by the Olympics from an early age, and has spent much of her athletics career trying to reach the games.

But Cutler said that she has faced challenges from an abusive family member, which has been a struggle for her personally and served as a distraction.

During Cutler’s time at Cal Poly, the family member was “verbally and physically abusive” and “kind of intervened a lot” with her coach, Cutler said “I almost had my scholarship taken away because of him.”

After college, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue her Olympic dreams with top coaches in the area but became depressed because she realized the family issues she’d come to think were normal were actually destructive.

“I went to Tennessee (in March 2015) to train and became very depressed,” Cutler said. “I’ve been getting better over the years. My family is in a better place now and we’re working on getting closer. At one point, that limited my dream and I wondered if I could achieve my dream.”

After dealing with her family challenges, Cutler ran short on funds in 2016 and spent two months couch hopping.

“I was actually homeless for some time,” Culter said. “I got so depressed I ran out of money. I was sleeping all day. I didn’t want to go active duty. I still needed some control in my life. I still wanted to know when I would eat, sleep and work.”

She decided to join the U.S. National Guard, going to basic training in Missouri before being assigned to a division in Virginia.

Currently living in Atlanta, she does part-time service with the Honor Guard detail on military funeral services.

Culter said she was inspired by a long jumper, Tianna Bartoletta, who overcame an allegedly abusive marriage to win Olympic gold in 2016

“I reached out to her and we talk pretty frequently,” Cutler said. “She definitely has inspired me.”

OLYMPIC GAMES DREAMS

Cutler was accepted into an Olympic development program with DC International Track and Field in 2017.

Cutler competed in the 2020 USA Track and Field Indoor National Championships in February, where she placed 14th, recording a jump of 5.78 meters, or, 18-feet-11 3/4 inches.

Cutler’s longest jump is 6.2 meters, or, 20.3 feet.

Cutler is training to improve on her distance in hopes of placing in the top three in the country and earning a position on the Olympic team.

“I’m up and coming,” Cutler said. “I’m not a former champion or anything. I have full confidence that I can make it.”

ABOUT BOOSTERS ZONE LLC

Boosters Zone publishes books for fundraising drives dedicated to schools and non-profit organizations. We provide our services for both print and electronic media. We create the most innovative and appealing publications that are guaranteed to grab reader's attention. We do this using the most modern and unique editorial, production, workflow and distributed systems.

Media Contact:

CONTACT  E. Philip Brown - President

COMPANY  Boosters Zone LLC

PHONE  (978) 387-7877

EMAIL  boosterszone@gmail.com

WEB  www.boosterszone.com

###

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HOW TO PRESENT TO PRESENT TO LOSE TIME AND MONEY

We graded them from A to E. So suppose you think you might start a startup instead? You can tell that from indirect evidence. Poverty implies you can live cheaply, and this gives you an excuse for being lazy, the other one is probably right. All other things being equal, they should get a good grade in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can never safely treat fundraising as more than one discovered when Christmas shopping season came around and loads rose on their server. Closely related is the desire to be better than other people at something. Are you the current leader? Graduation is a bureaucratic change, not a sedan with giant rims and a fake spoiler bolted to the trunk. Someone ignorant but smart will come along and reinvent everything, and in every single case the founders say the same thing: that they can take the very same kid and make him seem a more appealing candidate than he would if he went to the local public school.

And when I wasn't working at my day job I'd start trying to do real work, they work hard, whatever their age. Like any war, it's damaging even to the winners. A lot of incoming students are interested in startups. And it is synonymous with disaster. And in any case, growing fast versus operating cheaply is far from the sharp dichotomy many founders assume it to be perfect. Web-based software sells well, especially in comparison to desktop software, you're practically forced to write the software than because we expected users to want to be popular, and to want to be good people, and you can even use it tactically. Don't be hapless.

The results so far bear this out. With server-based applications, everyone uses the same version, and bugs can be fixed as soon as they're discovered. The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they get paid up front. 01 and. They will be the single most effective. Even if there is a group, they couldn't have multiple people editing the same code, because it contains things that could endanger children. So stop looking for the trick. The best startups almost have to start as side projects, because great ideas tend to be forced to. At Viaweb, as at many software companies, most code had one definite owner.

And they know the same about spam, including the server names, mailer versions, and protocols. Few smart kids can spare the attention that popularity requires. Beware, because although most professors are smart, not all of them work on interesting stuff. The reason risk is always proportionate to reward is that market forces make it so. About a year ago she was alarmed to receive a letter from Apple, offering her a discount on a new version in which half the code has been torn out and replaced, introducing countless bugs. Another is to work for them. Which illustrates why this change is happening: for new ideas to matter, you need to know? And this was the beginning of the summer, turned out to vary a lot. For companies, Web-based applications are cheap to develop, and easy for even the smallest startup to deliver. I use the number of emails in each, rather than individual words. But because they have no state, and that employers are just proxies for users in which risk is pooled.

And when motivated by that you find you can do while you're still in it. I think that while stricter laws may not decrease the amount of math you need as a hacker is a lot more than you think. What are your abilities? Usually you don't get taught much: you just work or don't work on whatever you want, and that if grad students could start startups, why not build some kind of competitive game with the spammers. These may be different from the skills you'd learn to get a lot of faking going on. Failing at 40, when you could start a startup. I was graduating from college—partly to save money, and partly because, knowing how the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like that's what one does in order to be successful in general?

It's not so much that they lack the appetite for work, but especially bad for programming, because programmers tend to operate at the limit of the detail they can handle. More importantly, you can never do more than get good grades and want to be their research assistants because they're genuinely interested in the topic. That has always been the case for guilt is stronger. Start your own company. Describing it as work experience implies it's like experience operating a certain kind of machine, or using a certain programming language. If you think it's restrictive being a kid, imagine having kids. If you start a company till March 1995. Why not go work for a long time: for several years at the very least, maybe for a decade, maybe for the rest of the race slowing down.

Thanks to Aaron Iba, Trevor Blackwell, all the founders who responded to my email, Patrick Collison, Sam Altman, Paul Buchheit, Jessica Livingston, and Olin Shivers for their feedback on these thoughts.

[phgq]

Fresh grad opens Korean mini-mart in Pasig amid pandemic

#PHnews: Fresh grad opens Korean mini-mart in Pasig amid pandemic

MANILA – As many stores across the country were closing down due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, civil engineering graduate Thomas Jason Ferrer, 21, decided to open one up.

Last July 23, "Aegyo Korean Mini-Mart" had a soft opening at Countryside Ave. Cor. 4th St., Barangay Sta. Lucia in Pasig City. “Aego” by definition is an expression of cuteness in order to appeal to another person.

Ferrer saw the Covid-19-related lockdowns as an opportunity to sell Korean food products knowing most people would be stuck home watching K-drama and craving delicious Korean food.

He also took into consideration that his mother, a dentist, had always wanted to open up a family business.

“Matagal na rin gusto ni mommy ng Korean mini-mart. During the quarantine obsessed siya sa K-drama ako naman sa K-pop. Ayun, sabi ko tuloy na natin gawa na tayo ng business (Mommy always wanted to open a Korean mini-mart. During the quarantine, she was obsessed with K-drama while I was into K-pop. So I suggested putting up a business),” he said in an interview.

To convince his family to allow him to proceed with his plan, Ferrer spent just two days preparing a spreadsheet containing a summary of the business's income and expenses over a specific period.

“Gumawa ako ng study ng gagastusin, kung magkano ang profit. Nag-research about it prinesent kay Mom (I made a study on expenses on profit. I did research about it and presented it to Mom),” he said.

The moment he was given the green light, Ferrer said he started looking for a good site to put of the store, contacting suppliers, and designing signage and logos.

Thomas Jason Ferrer displays a heart gesture popularized by K-pop singers in front of his Aegyo Korean Mimimart in Pasig City. 

Ferrer also prepared an inventory of products available in the store such as snacks, ramen and other instant noodles, kimchi, ice cream, and cooking ingredients like fish sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame oils.

Before putting up a mini-mart, he made a brief foray into baking last April. Since ube-cheese pandesal was the trend at that time, he baked and sold his version of the quarantine-food obsession.

“Bumili ako ng oven, ingredients. Bawing-bawi yung investment ko (I bought my own oven, ingredients. I really gained from my investment) by more than 100 percent,” he said.

It was the success of his pandesal business which prompted him to take on the challenge of managing a convenience store.

Safe spaces

To comply with the new health and safety standards, Ferrer said employees conduct temperature checks for customers at the door, provide hand sanitizers and alcohol around the store, and ensure round the clock sanitation of all areas.

Customers will also be required to log in their personal information -- name, contact number, and the time they entered the store -- to facilitate contact tracing, he said.

Only two customers at a time will be allowed inside so the two staff members will be able to provide them with assistance, he added. A security camera is also installed to prevent theft.

Ferrer happily shared that their staff are also given health insurances, stressing the importance of making an investment in workers and in their health.

Aegyo offers a wide range of home-delivery items within Barangay Sta. Lucia for customers who prefer to purchase their products in the comfort of their own homes. 

Good with money

According to Ferrer, he felt that it was the right time to engage in entrepreneurship since he wanted to make the most of his time while waiting on final dates for the licensure exams in civil engineering.

He has always been great at managing resources, but how did he learn to be so prudent? He said being treasurer of the University of Santo Tomas-Engineering Council really helped him rise to the challenge.

“Pag may big projects like concerts, general assemblies, sa akin dumadaan ng pera. Siyempre meticulous ka, sa akin pa nakaasa yung pag-allot ng budget. Dun ako nakakuha ng enough quality experience na nakatulong sa akin sa pag push through ng business (If there are big projects like concerts, general assemblies, the money has to go through me. Of course, you have to be meticulous because I’m the one who has to allot the budget. That’s how I gained experience which helped me push through with my business),” he said.

Aegyo Korean Mimimart under construction. 

He knows how risky it is to start a business during recession but for him knowing what customers need now rather than before the pandemic is important.

“Nakita ko in a positive way. Essential to kasi food pa rin siya eh. May mag-birthday lang na isa, mag-o-order na. May manood ng K-drama, magke-crave ng ramen (I looked at it in a positive way. It’s essential business because it’s food. When someone celebrates a birthday, they’ll order. When someone watches K-drama, they’ll crave ramen),” he said.

Although there is always a possibility of failure, Ferrer pointed out that many new businesses are forming amid the pandemic.

“There are many businesses opening. Those opening new businesses are those who have considered Covid in their operations. They can take a risk because when you open, you have already adapted to the current situation),” he said.

In fact, Ferrer said the mini-mart is not the only business he’s managing. He is also busy preparing for the soft opening of a Korean chicken restaurant his family recently invested in.

“Chicken pa lang ang nasa menu. On the works ang tteokbokki (rice cake), fish cake soup, chapchae. May coffee na rin doon (Chicken is the only item on our menu. But tteokbokki, fish cake soup, chapchae are on the works. We also sell coffee),” he said.

Recipe for success

Ferrer said that having interest and confidence in a business idea are two things that an aspiring entrepreneur should have in order to succeed. However, he said it is just as important to take risks only when one has material and financial capacity.

“I acknowledge na privileged kami to take a risk. Hindi siya for everyone kasi malaki yung capital for Korean store (that we’re privileged enough to take a risk. It’s not for everyone because it requires a huge capital to put up a Korean store),” he said.

He explained that there will always be a chance that a business, no matter how perfect the study, would fail or go bankrupt so it was necessary to know the consequences before making a leap to entrepreneurship.

Korean food products in display at Aegyo Korean Mimimart put up by civil engineering graduate Thomas Jason Ferrer in July amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Dapat may perfect balance ng (There should be a perfect balance of) interest, confidence, and material and financial capacity,” Ferrer said.

Ferrer also recognizes that he was lucky to receive financial and moral support from his family who has recognized his skills early on.

“Malaki din yung naging trust sa’kin. Pero feel ko naman naipakita ko yung return on investment nila sa akin (They placed so much trust in me. But I feel like I was able to show them a good rate of return for their investment in me),” he said.

The best thing about having a successful business, he said, is being able to save money not just for himself, but also his family.

“Hindi lang naman siya for me, mostly for them. Tulong ko ‘yan sa kanila (It’s not just for me, it’s mostly for them. It’s my way of helping them),” he said.

Perfect balance

Since the Professional Regulation Commission has postponed scheduled licensure examinations this year due to the threat of Covid-19, Ferrer said he will still have plenty of time to review while managing the mini-mart.

He admitted that he’s not so sure how he will be able to balance the responsibilities of being a store owner and future civil engineer.

“Hindi ko pa alam masagot kung pano ko iha-handle yung business ng sabay kasi. Hindi ko siya iiwan kay mom at kuya (I still can’t answer how I’ll be able to handle the business together with my future job. I can’t just leave it to mom and my older brother),” he said.

However, he said he’s determined to do both at the same time -- the same way he pulled off being a student and treasurer of the student council.

“What’s for sure is that I’ll take the board and I will take a job related to [civil engineering]” he said. (PNA)

      ***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Fresh grad opens Korean mini-mart in Pasig amid pandemic." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1117466 (accessed October 05, 2020 at 02:56AM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Fresh grad opens Korean mini-mart in Pasig amid pandemic." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1117466 (archived).

[movingstoriesla]

7. Maddie B.

Meet Maddie, a transportation researcher who works in Westwood and lives in West Hollywood with her husband and their cat. She originally grew up in South Minneapolis, MN which she describes as “a very bikey place” because of the abundance of lakes and their adjacent bike paths.

There's a big commercial area right by my parents' house that just has all of the things. I mean, it's the Walgreens or the grocery store. Even though it's on the southern end of the city, it's a very amenable place to get around without driving. Before I was 16, before I could drive, I had a lot of independence because I just take my bike and go wherever.

Maddie would typically take the bus or rollerblade to elementary school (“This is also very 90s... my dad and I would rollerblade to school together.”) She switched schools in the fifth grade but the new school was still local and within walking distance. As she got older – but before receiving her driver's license – she explored the city by bus.

When I was a preteen and early teenager and I'd want to start going a little further, I would take the bus downtown, just to go to the farmers market and buy flowers and go home, as some way to go on an adventure by myself and to expand my range. I could bike anywhere but I really was kind of just going on the bike path or to the lake or something like that or to my friend's house nearby. So it was pretty local walking and biking, but I started to learn the bus system.

How did you start learning the bus system, if you can remember?

I have no idea because it was also really more or less before the Internet existed.

There were bus stops around, so I could see the bus. My dad grew up in New York City and we would go to New York, to Manhattan a lot, so by the age of 12, I could navigate the New York subway, so I was just very transit-literate. Particularly going to New York once or twice a year made me very comfortable on transit. So it was like “Okay, I see a bus stop.”

And my parents also, they both grew up in the city, in Minneapolis and New York, so they weren't fearful about me going on the bus by myself. They were also very comfortable with it. So I must've just looked at schedules. It was also really easy. Also I would also sometimes take them to the mall too. Usually I would just be going to one place. It was just kind of an adventure.

From what you can recall, what was it like taking a bus?

It was so fun. I was just getting to go places by myself. I love cities. It also felt very adult, like, “I was taking the bus downtown.” And I always read a lot and it was just another excuse to go somewhere and read and then be there and check it out and come back.

What was it like once you got your driver's license?

I just started driving everywhere. So I was very privileged, my parents gave me a car, an older car. I had my own car and it's kind of changed a lot. A lot less biking. Still some, definitely in the summer, but also at this time, it was another new independence and gas was really cheap. The activity we would do was just drive around.

How did you like driving?

I actually really liked it. Not that I liked it, I just liked the independence of it and it felt cool. You could go do whatever you wanted but I didn't drive a cool car or anything like that [the car was a 1991 Nissan Maxima]. I liked it, I also liked to go to other places, like go out of town for concerts.

Maddie ended up buying her own Maxima during her senior year and after finishing high school, she went on to attend the University of Minnesota, also located in Minneapolis.

Even though I owned the car, my parents would not let me bring my car because they thought it would be antithetical to the kind of college experience, particularly at the U. It's also real expensive and they said, “No, you can leave your car.” It's a 15-minute drive to my parents' house from the university, so it's like, “Anytime you want your car, we'll bring it to you.” Also my brother was 16 at that time, so I think there's some car shuffling, so then there were three cars.

So I went back to not owning a car. I didn't really have it, so I went back to biking a decent bit but probably a lot more walking. The University is a pretty dense campus. I was living in the freshman dorms. It's kind of funny to think that there's a lot of similarities. I just had a very compact life. There's a campus circulator, I didn't have classes very far away.

Maddie briefly moved back to her parents' house while attending the University of Minnesota, and then transferred to the University of New Orleans.

Even though I was living at home, I would bike and bus to campus. Even now, parking on a college campus is expensive and a headache. And sometimes I would rollerblade to class [laughs] The nice thing is I still kind of had a very urban experience, I didn't have to drive. Once parking became an issue, driving became much less appealing because I knew just time-wise, it would just end up taking longer and cost money and I hadn't taken a Donald Shoup class yet, so I was totally against the idea paying for parking anywhere.

At 20 [years old], I moved to New Orleans without my car and did a semester. The University of New Orleans is actually pretty isolated. The geography of New Orleans is the river, the French Quarter, and there's the lake, and U of O was up by the lake. And I was serving in the French quarter and then actually finally, halfway through junior year of college, I got my car back [laughs] So I drove my car down to New Orleans. I was waiting tables in the French Quarter. The bus system- particularly the year after Katrina, it was not- the buses would stop running at 6pm. Luckily I figured out a trade with my friend, where I would buy him ribs for half price and he would pick me up and give me a ride home. So it worked out for both of us [laughs].

She finished college in New Orleans, and then stayed for another year while working at an internship in Mississippi (“It was about an hour away but there was a whole group of us from New Orleans, so it's a lot carpooling, which was really fun”) and applying to graduate programs. During her last year in New Orleans, she and her friends relied more on biking as a way to get around.

How was it biking around New Orleans at the time?

Not bad. So they have these really wide- what we call medians but they call neutral grounds there, and a number of them would have center-running bike paths. We were kind of living in an isolated part of the city a little bit but you can get into town pretty easily. We would also go into City Park a lot, almost Central Park size park, so we'd go there. It wasn't bad.

Do you remember how you and your friends decided to bike around New Orleans?

Good question. I had a bike. It's weird, when I moved there, I didn't actually bring my bike and I bought a bike, and then it broke and got stolen immediately [laughs]. I guess when I brought my car, I also brought my bike. So I had one and my boyfriend at the time had also got his bike from his parents' house. But I'm sure that it was like, we were going to go out drinking and there's no public transit to speak of. It's definitely before Uber and Lyft existed, so it was the way that we could do what we wanted in a relatively safe way.

Maddie then moved to Los Angeles in 2009 for graduate school, bringing along her car and her bike.

I was living in Westwood but I didn't drive very much. Oh, I forget, the program I was working for in Mississippi offered to expand their office here. Not knowing the geography of Los Angeles, that was at JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena] and I was commuting between Westwood and JPL. I just drove. I was only going two days a week and I'd arrange my school schedule so that I could have whole days. I was not going to pop in for less than a full day at work. But it was a pain, it totally sucked. I tried the vanpool for a little. It was fine, it just left really early. It was not the easiest thing to plan around.

I actually really took to biking in LA kind of from the beginning. Also by that time, I knew I was in school to be a transportation planner, so it was becoming more integrated in my life. I lived really near campus the first quarter, and then moved about a mile and a half away, and that was when I was really biking. It was just a really nice life. Being a student, you had kind of had all the time, so I biked to the beach. And then I went one of my first Critical Mass rides when I was a first-year grad student and I just really really liked it. I've always just been really comfortable biking, so kind of the idea of LA traffic wasn't that intimidating and I also like thinking of now to then, I had a much lower risk tolerance. There were routes I would go on in grad school that I would never bike on five years later.

Maddie eventually sold her car in 2011.

I moved to Koreatown and there's no parking. I was spending more time moving my car for street sweeping, paying tickets for not moving my car for street sweeping, or if I went out and drove somewhere, I spend almost as much time, I feel like, looking for parking.

It was also right before the drought and I wanted to buy a pair of skis [laughs]. So it's like, this chunk of metal is serving no purpose, I can maybe actually still get a little bit of cash for it, I have some big-ticket items I want to buy. This seems like kind of the perfect storm of ideas. And I had taken the job at UCLA, I was taking the 720 to work anyway, back to this it's-really-annoying-to-park-on-campus. Driving, I realized, just wasn't a part of my lifestyle and it was more annoying to keep it and my insurance had gone up since I moved to Ktown. This whole thing seems not worthwhile.

What was it like after you sold your car?

It was great. Felt like one less thing to deal with, because I wasn't using it much anyway and Koreatown is so transit-rich. I was living on the subway, so I just felt like I could get to the westside really easily on the 720. I could get to downtown. It didn't feel like I had given up anything.

I think the first day I worked at UCLA, I biked in and I was like, “This is unpleasant.” I would take a street south of Wilshire to 7th or 8th or something like that, and then to Burton to Charleville and then to Wilshire. But I liked having the bike, so I kind of started this bike-bus commuting in and then biking home because it was much more consistent, because the travel time going home varied widely and it would drive me up a wall. So once I found a comfortable route, I started doing that and it's kind of what I do to this day.

Because after I sold my car, I had to be very intentional. I mean, I kind of lucked into living in Koreatown. When I got the apartment, I actually didn't have a job, I didn't know. It was like, okay, this feels central, and also felt like an apartment that I liked. Someone else was giving it up, so I was like, “Great, cool, I'll take it.” I've just been very intentional about living someplace where I can catch a bus connection to UCLA, so I lived there, and then more like Mid-City, like Pico and La Brea. And then after that, I lived in Hollywood and then now I've been in West Hollywood. And each one of those is actually a different bus route.

Do you remember with which bus with which apartment?

Yes. When I lived in Ktown, I was on the 720. When I was living in Mid-City, I was on the Rapid 7 [Big Blue Bus]. Ugh, that one was kind of the worst. It's so well-used that the bus will pretty much fill up and then would pass over and I would get skipped. Also, now it's much better that Big Blue Bus is on NextTrip but it was not on NextTrip either [at the time], so just like- man, the world before Lyft and Uber and NextTrip, having options, knowing when your transportation is -- kind of feels like a bit of a different world, just experience-wise. I also had to transfer, it was just clunky. But when I only do it one-way, it wasn't too bad.

And then when I lived in Hollywood, I'd walk-bike down to the 2 and I guess now I'm still on the 2. And then when I was living in Hollywood biking home, that's how I discovered the street that I live on now, which is really nice. So when I was moving out of that apartment and something popped up, I was like, “I know the street! I bike on it! It's really nice!” [laughs]

Our neighborhood right now is pretty good but in Ktown, the 720 comes so frequently that you would never worry. And it has really heavy bike use, so sometimes I'd have to wait for multiple buses to actually get an open bike rack, but you'd only be waiting 10 minutes, even if it was multiple buses. Sadly my bike did get stolen off the 720. It was also 6:45 in the morning, so bizarre. I ended up actually catching the guy. It was a homeless person that had been digging it, so I was like, “Okay, it happens.” But even having experienced that, I still bike to the bus. On the 720, I'll lock it to itself.

What's your commute now?

We've lived in our apartment about three years and I was kind of bike-commuting both ways because this is the closest I've lived to UCLA. It's about a 35-minute bike commute and I discovered a lot of neighborhood streets that made it much nicer. And then I started kind of getting lazy [laughs]. Also I like reading a lot, so I was kind of missing my reading and Twitter time. So I would bike to the 2, and then take that and the bike home.

But I realized that the portion I was on, the first part of it, could just be in such traffic. Pretty much I'd get on it at Sunset and Vista, so that's halfway between Fairfax and La Brea, and then it would go and hit Fairfax and just be in traffic, like not moving and I was like “Okay.” So now I discovered, I can do kind of like a split, kind of bike as if I was driving. I've been in a car with people and this is kind of the route if you happened to have a car. I do Willoughby and where Willoughby ends, where I'd usually get on the Santa Monica bike lane, I kind of cut up to Holloway. I realized I could do that, so it takes about 15 minutes to bike that, past all of the traffic, and it only takes 15 minutes for the rest of the bus ride. So it's actually about the same amount of time biking in the whole way, but because the last part of my commute is straight uphill to my building, that's a pretty big deterrent. Particularly in the summer, it kind of changes a lot. And then I always bike home because it's the same amount of time everyday.

My number one frustration with the bus is the travel time variability. I'm kind of to used it but as someone who doesn't car, I just assume it takes an hour to get everywhere. But I'd much prefer being like, “Okay, I am biking. It doesn't matter if it's Black Friday and whatever, this takes 35 minutes.”

What do you think is the main thing that needs to improved about transportation in LA?

The main thing that LA needs is bus priority lanes. I mean, we have a subway system. It moves a good amount of people but the majority of transit riders in Los Angeles are on the bus and even though it's a cheap one, we're all paying it with our time and it's unfair. People are choosing to do this, some people don't have a choice, but they're behaving this way and get no priority over people that are traveling by themselves in the car that takes up to a third of the space that it takes 20 people on the bus.

What do you like about transportation in LA?

I like that there's actually buses everywhere. For all the complaining that I do, they come pretty frequently. It's like sometimes, “Ugh! 10 minutes!” and I'm aghast that I'm waiting 10 minutes for the bus at the peak hour but in Minneapolis or New Orleans, you're not getting bus frequency or bus coverage like you really have in LA. When I was coming to Santa Monica today, I was like, “You know what? Buses are kind of everywhere.” And yea, they might be slow or whatever, but it's you can actually get to pretty much everywhere you need to go.

As someone who works in and has friends from the urban planning field, Maddie says it wasn't strange that she sold her car (“My friend group is not a good litmus test of this because most of my friends are other planners and a lot of them don't have cars.”)

So it's more in meetings and professional settings that you encounter the “you didn't drive here?” reaction?

A lot of the times, I am doing active transportation projects for them, so that's not surprising but in kind of larger professional circles, it's like a little bit more- it's the inverse, like “Why do you drive everywhere? You're a planner! You should know better.” That's a terrible way to think of myself [laughs].

I also to try to frame it like, it's a choice for me. A lot of the behavior that I do, it's kind of a combination of environmental motives and financial motives. It doesn't make financial sense for me to own a car. This year in particular, for some reason, I've been really wanting a car.

What type of scenarios do you wish you had a car?

To go randomly hiking. It's for hiking and spur-of-the-moment road trips. It's like spur-of-the-moment outdoor activities. That's really the only thing I miss. And then when I'm just lazy [laughs]. We were car-sitting for a friend and I totally drove over over to UCLA the first day we had it, but it felt like a treat. The funny thing is, we didn't really save that much time. But a lot of time I think I want a car, I really sit down and I do the math. It's never going to pencil out. I'm going to throw, like $2,000 into getting it? Okay, that's like a European trip that I'm not going on and then a hundred dollars at least a month. My thought process is like, “Maybe we should get a car” and then I'm like, “No, it doesn't make sense.”

Any final thoughts?

Thinking about this whole kind of transportation history of my own, it just makes me realize that for the vast majority of time, if I had a car in the driveway, I drove, and then either by my own choice or by design by my parents who weren't there, I was just able to get everything else. I think it's really hard for people to travel either by public transit or biking or whatever, that they don't really think about the pull of once there's a car in the driveway, how much that drives the habits that you have, pun intended, because I always had a propensity to do things. But yea, if I owned a car and had it around all the time, I was kind of driving and when I wasn't, I could figure it out. It's interesting thinking about this, I never really put it all together.

[theteej]

8. Writing on the Skin

Like many ‘edgy’ aspects of self-expression, I’d never really had an opinion on tattoos growing up. I’d noticed that people had them, I thought that they could be cool, and I was intrigued by them, but I’d never had any strong pull to get one.  I made it through my college and grad school years without one, and although the idea occasionally surfaced, I stifled it, rather like cutting my hair.  Both ideas seemed a bit too permanent, a bit too long-lasting a choice.  I’ve always liked the idea of being able to have room to maneuver, to change my position or my place just in case something bad happens or the desire takes me at some point.  It took me years to realize that having grown up with an abusive father might’ve had something to do with this deep tendency to want to be able to change tack at any point, to avoid being locked into something.

However, after moving to Virginia in 2014, the idea increasingly appealed.  I’d begun thinking of images or ideas that I wanted on my body, and I surprised myself by finding ones that stuck.  For a long time I’d thought about a phrase in isiZulu but balked at the idea of it being appropriative or shallow, of picking a phrase that really didn’t reflect me or my life, and instead just performed something ‘cool.’  The idea kept knocking about in my head as I moved to Staunton in May; my apartment was a block away from a tattoo place, and every walk into town saw me passing the brightly lit studio.

When my grandmother died in August, I felt something inside me give, as if the last thing holding me back from the decision had gone away.  But what could I do to commemorate a woman who’d practically co-parented me? How could I find something that simply could make me think of Dorothy Dresser, who she was and how she’d loved and shaped me so often growing up? And besides, I was already making so many damned changes that year.  I’d gotten a haircut for the first time in a decade, I’d moved to a new town, I was thinking up new ways to be and live and to experience this body.  And so the idea percolated awhile.

This past fall I taught a phenomenal bunch of students in my Victorian Britain and the World class.  I’d never taught the course before, I’d thought about it for awhile, and I finally jumped at the chance to teach a new course like this.  I had twenty bright eyed, engaged, kickass students (and two active auditors) who made me laugh, cry, think, and jump for joy as we ruthlessly, readily stripped down the many illusions that sustain our popular thinking about the British Empire. In this course, students actively looked past the top hats, monocles and steampunk romanticism of the Victorian and Edwardian periods (so many Downton Abbey references!) and instead examined the simultaneity of enslavement, colonialism, forced labor, indigenous genocide, homophobia, class struggle and misogyny that undergirded so much of the period.  They read Dickens but also Stuart Hall, they loved Charlotte Bronte but also had to contend with Mary Prince and Mary Seacole, not to mention the dark threats that made Bertha Mason real to Britons.  In the course, I encouraged students to think hard about why they loved the class, and to also actively engage with the realities of the opulence and style they romanticized.  

“Empire is built on quotidian violence,” I said out loud in class one day in the midst of a spirited discussion.  “Every comfort, every contour, every nook and cranny of Victorian life was made possible by the daily violence and pain meted out to millions of people around the globe. This violence was naturalized, seen as regrettable but necessary.  And it keeps happening today.  We’re no different.”  In that moment, I knew what I wanted on my body.

In my eulogy to my grandmother, I’d described her love as quotidian, as every day.  She loved with a regularity and a calmness.  She loved people simply and reliably, never in a showy way.  She is missed in a million tiny actions that went unrealized in her loss, and I am still only no realizing the totality of her love for me in my life as I turn to find things missing that I’d always assumed would happen.  She was as regular as the sun’s rising.  The world still feels wreathed in the darkness of her absence some days.

There was my first tattoo, then.  Quotidian, written in lower case typeface, with a period at the end.  The world is broken and wrong; it is always and constantly founded upon fuckery and oppression and violence.  The enormity of it scares me, hurts me, overwhelms me.  I can’t change a fucked up structure.  I can fight, educate, agitate, make a difference. But every day I can also love like my grandmother did.  I can call myself and others to be better.  I can remember that people need love and are struggling.  I can do more than I did before.

It was a week after Trump’s victory.  I was filled with black despair, trudging home from a day in a café ineffectively working.  The tattoo parlor loomed beside me.  Fuck it, I thought.  I pushed open the door.

The full tattoo took twenty minutes.  It barely hurt. I got bandaged up, then smeared cream on it for two weeks.  Every time I looked at it, I thought about love and violence.  I thought about my research and the rage based historical practice that pushed me to do the work I do.  I thought about my grandmother and how she’d made me the person I am today.  Every damn day, I look down and meditate on that word.  And I’m lucky to be loved, and I’m going to keep trying to love y’all as much as I can.

I’ll likely get more tattoos.  I got an elephant line drawing on my right arm, along with a reminder in isiZulu that I am always trying to be more, to be better, to just be in a world that frequently denies or devalues my existence.  I’ve grown to love these tender messages embedded within my flesh, and I’ll continue to hold on to them as we move into a new, uncertain year.

------

 This is the ninth of sixteen short essays about things that have changed for me this year. Stay tuned for the next over the rest of the year. #Teej16

[lil-aesthetics-n-hope]

Lillian, friend, you've been TOTALLY turned off/away from the psych field? You no longer want to be a psychologist...? :O

I really don't. I saw how people in the field view themselves as better than their clients, or like they knew more about their client then their client knew about themselves. My university started an Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) program and at the time I was working with my university's Women's resource center and we were in contact with a support group for students with autism. So we'd been having this conversation about treatments for autism and things like that, and one of the representatives was raising concerns about ABA.

I did my own research and I raised those concerns with my department chair, a man I thought pretty highly of until that day, and he went on a rant like that which was describe on that post. It occurred to me then that the system was too messed up.

I had great professors, and people who weren't like that at all, but as a black woman, I know that it's not enough to have some people who aren't "Like That". The system is really fucked and I know that a work environment that is so steeped in racism, misogyny, and ableism is more likely to change me than I am to change it.

Who knows, I might become interested in the field again, but right now? The idea of going to grad school and being exposed to more people like that just doesn't appeal to me.