Sample college appeal letter

I got a call from my local Disability Determination office that my CDR exam with a psychologist was cancelled. But I hadn't received a letter or other notification that it was scheduled. I finished submitting my CDR forms a couple of months ago.
I called the employee back, and he said my CDR case is still going on. They might reschedule in the future, but they don't know when. My disability benefits will continue in the meantime. I asked if this might go on indefinitely, and he said yes.
I'm feeling nervous about all this, especially since I suffer from anxiety, social anxiety, mild depression, and low energy. I get easily stressed. Can I call back the employee and ask if I can not have a CDR exam, even if it's pretty far in the future? Any idea when it will be scheduled, if it will?
Can I just provide more information instead of going in for an exam? I hadn't been prescribed meds for mental health in while, since I got bad side effects, and I'm afraid I'll get more if I tried other meds. I'm concerned about the long-term effects of meds, too. Through the years, I've taken a long list of psychiatric meds, and they weren't helpful. Also, I hadn't seen any therapists or psychiatrists for a while, since they haven't been helpful, and they've been rude, hurtful, and condescending to me. They're often like that to patients they don't like, and I'm unlikeable due to a number of factors, including being a very stigmatized ethnicity in my area (and the world), and automatically seen as more unlikeable, less empathic, and less warm than other ethnicities.
I hadn't worked since getting disability about 11 years ago, except for sometime as a caregiver for my mother. I know about the SGA, but I couldn't even work other jobs to meet the SGA, ever. I'm a pretty severe case, though a lot of it is also severe stigmas against me, and how my ethnicity is bullied a lot more, with anxiety and a soft demeanor encouraging people to be rougher and nastier to me, making my life very painful and stressful whenever I have to interact with anyone. I'm unable to network, I have no friends or partner, I get severe anxiety for interviews, and I do poorly in interviews. And that's just the beginning - if I do get a job, I'm bullied endlessly because of shyness, anxiety, and a soft demeanor, in addition to my ethnicity often being bullied and looked down upon.
I was with the DOR on and off all these years, and got nowhere. That itself is proof of how I can't work. People generally are incredibly rude and condescending to me, so I can't get anywhere with people.
I suffer from ADHD-like issues as well, and haven't been able to do self-employment all these years, too.
In the past several years, I was very unsuccessful trying out community college for a few separate semesters, and couldn't finish or get past the first few class meetings, and was stuck with the fees.
I'm still in an online bootcamp, and have barely moved forward after being in it for almost a year, with some pauses and freezes. I had to switch mentors and advisers 3 times already because they were condescending, and I couldn't move forward with them. I also met with a career coach, she was rude as well, and I'm not seeing her again. I'm seen as shy and awkward, and that's magnified because my ethnicity seen that way, and generally looked down upon and poorly treated, with people feeling domineering instead of respectful, without the camaraderie they have towards people of other ethnicities.
Sorry about the longish post. What should I do? Should I call the employee back and explain some of this to avoid the CDR exam, if it's finally scheduled at some time? I'd feel nervous not knowing when it's scheduled, and it could be a long time later. Should I send additional information? This includes doing poorly with the latest hospital I was at (they barred me from going back), not getting anywhere with multiple counselors at DOR, not being able to complete or get anywhere at a community college (had to quit within a few class meetings), not getting anywhere in an online bootcamp, not having any friends/partner, and only interacting with my parents. I suffer from a lot of pain and anxiety due to being treated poorly, and people devaluing me. Life has been nightmarish for me.

This is a really long story with lots of context so I'll do my best to organize it into current situation, then his backstory and hers. I'm also not using real names or specific locations for any of this to try and keep this private. This also has some contradicting stories and because of how their relationship is structured relies mostly on information I have gotten from my sister, so I'm telling you the story I got from her first and then adding in what I've found out. I'll try to tell this as unbiased as I can but it's been a huge issue in my family for a long time now and that's a little difficult for me to do.
My sister (Olivia, 24F) has been dating this guy (Trevor, 25M) since 2021. When they started dating, she talked about him fairly often, sent a few pictures of them, ect., but then after a month she stopped mentioning him/ was cagey when we (me and my mom mostly) asked how he was so we assumed it just hadn't worked out. Then two months later she insisted that my parents and I all come to visit her college to meet Trevor before he went into the Army (she lived several hours away from my parents and several hours from my college, so I had to get a bus ticket and my parents had to get a hotel room to do this. We only met him once for dinner). Now they've been dating long distance for three years after a three month in-person relationship. She is in nursing school and is planning on moving across the country (literally opposite corners of the map) to live with him and is not applying to any residency programs outside of the Army base area (limiting her choices a LOT from her original goals and narrowing employment opportunities).
Olivia met Trevor on several dating apps, matched with him, but didn't really want to go out with him. He was really persistent, so her friend convinced her to go out with him. She lied about the way they met to our parents and told them they met at the gym through a mutual friend (she lied to me about this at first too and told me the truth about 3 months after they started dating). At the time, Trevor was working as a used car salesman and living at home (~45 min. away from Olivia's school in a rural area) because his sports scholarship had been dropped before his Senior year due to covid at the college he had been attending out of state. The university was unaccredited (I later did some internet stalking and found out it was accredited), so his credits would not transfer and he would have to start over. He was saving up money to attend school in state at the large college Olivia attended so he could go back to school. **Our state has crazy low tuition costs in-state and a full-tuition scholarship program for good high school GPA and SAT scores. There was also a "feeder" community college that had half the cost per credit hour that a lot of people would go to before the larger university if they didn't get in straight out of high school.**
Olivia told me that Trevor had applied to her college and not gotten in (she later told me he HAD gotten in but been unable to afford tuition). Either way, he decided to join the Army because his father had been in the Army. The Army would take his credit hours and he would be able to finish his degree during his 5 year contract or use the GI bill once he got out. **She is comparing the situation to our father, who joined the Army directly out of high school and used the GI bill to go to college after his 2 year contract because his parents wouldn't pay for school. He was a medic in the military, worked as an EMT through college, and then went to nursing school.** The original plan was that Trevor would be a Green Beret (special forces, linking the training pipeline here: https://www.reddit.com/greenberets/comments/xwdbta/current_sf_pipeline_correct_me_if_im_wrong/ ), he completed basic training and and got several months through the NC training before failing the running portion of a physical by about 10 seconds and being dropped from the selection process. He then decided that he wanted to be a Ranger (another elite position). He got sent back to GA, then to the Ranger school base in WA (it took a couple of months before he was sent to WA). Again, he got partway through the training before failing the running portion of a physical by a few seconds. He is now not sure if he will be continuing Ranger school (failing the physical means no, but commanders may pass him anyways if they think he should continue). For a while, Trevor told Olivia that he might not stay at the base in WA if he wasn't in Ranger school and there were a variety of different bases he could be sent to, including somewhere in Italy, so she wasn't sure where to look for jobs. In the past month, Trevor told Olivia that he would likely stay in WA regardless of the Ranger school results.
Through this all, Olivia has visited Trevor at the different military bases countless times, driving from as far as south FL to NC and putting over 30,000 miles on a brand new car over the course of the 1.5 years she's owned it. Before she had the car, she paid for plane tickets to see him and hotels whenever she visited. At the time, she told me that he was paying for all of these trips because he was unable to visit her, was making an income that wasn't being spent, and she was working to save for nursing school and later was living off of student loans and savings during nursing school. She later admitted to me that she had paid for almost all of the expenses except for food when they ate out together and part of a hotel room one weekend.
A few odd things (to me) between Olivia and Trevor over the course of their relationship:
About a month into their relationship, Trevor got Olivia an over $300 christmas gift. He has not gotten her anything nearly that expensive since, and hasn't sent flowers for things like her college graduation or a severe emergency surgery she had last year. I don't care about monetary value or sending flowers, but I do think it is odd that he spent so much before moving away when he ostensibly didn't have much money, but now that he has an income and military sign-on bonus, he has not spent that much again.
Trevor's father left Trevor, his siblings, and his mother, but Trevor has a hat that his father gave him that he wore often. The hat says "Red Man" across the top of a picture of a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. He has worn this hat several times around Olivia's friends and they told him they didn't like it and that it was racist. They also asked him to not wear it when he was with them and he refused because it was special to him and his father gave it to him. Olivia then told him to stop wearing it and he eventually agreed (Olivia told me that he stopped wearing the hat after this). A few weeks after this, I facetimed Olivia and Trevor was with her. She turned the camera so I could say hello to him, and he was wearing the hat. I talked to Olivia about this later and she told me that that was the first time he'd worn the hat in a while and it wasn't a big deal. Olivia has always been liberal and never racist, and I am uncomfortable that she was okay with him not only wearing the hat, but being with him while he had it on.
They dated for a little over 3 months in person before he joined the military (recently, Olivia told me that they actually met several months before she told everyone about him and that they actually dated for 6 months before he left). For the next two months in basic training, he was only able to use the phone for 15 minutes total once a week to talk to family and her. Throughout the different training programs he has completed he had sporadic and limited access to phones to communicate, and only in the past 6 months he has had access to his phone to facetime, text, and call (but sometimes he goes for a week or two without phone access). Olivia told me that they wrote letters during the time he didn't have consistent phone access. **I don't think that this is odd, I understand the military limits phone usage, etc., but I don't think they have been able to have an "average" long-distance relationship**
Last year, Olivia drove to GA to visit Trevor the weekend before Valentine's day. He had plans for them to take a pottery class, go on a hike, and have dinner at a nice restaurant. The day she got there, Trevor's barracks had their off-base privileges revoked because one of the guys had contraband. She would still be able to visit him on base though. Somehow, Trevor was able to get off base for long periods of time to her hotel, but unable to do the other activities he had planned for them.
In the past year, Olivia told me that she and Trevor were going to immediately marry when she got to WA so that they could move in together because they had to be married to live together anywhere. I and our dad- who was in the military- told her several times that this was not true, but she insisted it was. Then, his barracks were given an allowance to live off base in apartments because the barracks were being renovated/ rebuilt, so she backed off on the idea of getting married immediately after several long conversations with me. She is still insistent on moving in with Trevor, who lives with a roommate, when she moves to WA.
Some background on Olivia:
Olivia has ADHD and anxiety, and struggled particularly badly with the anxiety/ some depression after being broken up with by the boyfriend she dated before Trevor (he broke it off very abruptly, told her he just didn't love her anymore with no previous indications). Olivia is very pretty (objectively, not just because she's my sister), but had bad acne that she ended up going on accutane for at the time she started dating Trevor and was very insecure about it. She had also decided to not go to medical school, and pursue nursing instead around the same time she met Trevor. This was a very upsetting decision for her because she had been taking very hard courses and was burnt out but had told everyone she was going to be a doctor and thought that she would be letting us down by switching paths. Also around the time she started seeing Trevor, Olivia began being very cruel towards our mother (our mother had been borderline emotionally abusive in the past, but Olivia and I were both in college by then and fixing our relationships with her. She has been much better recently and Olivia and I believe that she had some mental health struggles that went unchecked that contributed). Now, several years later, Olivia told our family that she had acted like that because she was rpd by a friend of her ex-boyfriend's after her ex broke up with her. This person also gave her an STD.
I always believe people who say they have been S A'd, and we believed Olivia when she first told us, but some things have come to light that make me and my family question that. Right after Olivia and her ex broke up, Olivia told our cousin that she had gone out with one of his friends and had revenge/ breakup sex with him because he had also been dumped recently. Once my cousin told me this, I remembered that Olivia had told me about a guy she had a one night stand with after she was dumped. She showed me a picture of him, talked about how cute he was, etc. (no distress whatsoever). I know sometimes people behave in ways you wouldn't expect when a traumatic event occurs to them, but I really don't understand how or why Olivia would brag about this guy if he really did S A her.
Three months ago, Olivia was arrested for stealing a set of sheets from Walmart (incidentally, right before Trevor came to visit her on leave). She used the self check-out and only bought a small $5 item and the sheets. She held both in one hand and scanned each side because she had a cut on the other hand and was holding her wallet with it. She saw a 5 in front of the total number and thought it looked right because the total should have been about $50, paid, didn't get a receipt, and walked out. An employee at the door asked to see a receipt, which Olivia didn't have, so she pulled up her transaction history on her phone to show she had paid. At this point, the employee called the police and took Olivia into an office, where she was questioned and charged with shoplifting. (Olivia can get very emotional and probably got upset when the police questioned her, which may have led them to believe she was lying). Luckily, Olivia has managed to get the charges expunged, but the process is still ongoing. Because of her ADHD, if anyone genuinely made this mistake, I would believe it from her, but Olivia has been improving a lot on organization and being more attentive recently. It is extremely uncharacteristic of her to steal- she was honest to a fault as kids- she would break down from guilt and admit things to our parents that we would have gotten away with if she hadn't said anything.
Right now, my parents have met Trevor twice in person, and I've met him once in person and several times in passing over facetime. I personally don't think that Trevor seems to keep up with my sister or that they make each other shine, and that opinion is shared with family friends and family that have met Trevor. Olivia doesn't mention Trevor in front of our parents often because his name has become a topic of contention and argument between them. My parents don't think Trevor is right for Olivia. She has almost 2 college degrees and plans to become a nurse practitioner in the future, and he hasn't finished college and doesn't seem to have any drive to do so. Olivia is also well traveled and enjoys going to museums, concerts, etc., while Trevor has lived in rural FL his whole life (this is not Trevor's fault, and I don't think he is a lesser person because of it, but I don't see a lot of common ground between them). Trevor has not seemed very well spoken when I have talked to him and I just don't see a lot of qualities in him that Olivia values.
If you've gotten this far, I just don't know what to do. Olivia and my parents have a huge rift in their relationship right now and any mention of Trevor, with her around or not, explodes into a huge argument, discussion, or just icy silence. I want Olivia to be able to talk to me about him, and we are able to discuss things much better than she is with our parents. My parents have also started asking me about Olivia and Trevor because they know Olivia shares more with me, and it makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to betray Olivia's trust, but I'm also very worried about her. I know I can't control her actions and I'm having a really hard time trying to balance supporting Olivia but not supporting the relationship (I'm not going to lie to her about how I feel, but I don't want her to feel alienated or unloved by our family, because that is NOT the case). I also think that Olivia is romanticizing the fact that our parents don't like him because my father's parents had a rift with him over our mother when we were very young (this is a whole other story, but basically, his parents always favored his sister, his sister got (I think) jealous when he did well for himself and married my mother, who his parents initially likes, and she made up rumors/lies about my mother that turned his parents against her (this was way before our mother's suspected mental health struggles, which occured when Olivia and I were in middle/high school).
Please share any thoughts you have on the situation (am I reading too into things, is this not as bad as I think it is?), and any advice you have on navigating the relationships.

This is a really long story with lots of context so I'll do my best to organize it into current situation, then his backstory and hers. I'm also not using real names or specific locations for any of this to try and keep this private. This also has some contradicting stories and because of how their relationship is structured relies mostly on information I have gotten from my sister, so I'm telling you the story I got from her first and then adding in what I've found out. I'll try to tell this as unbiased as I can but it's been a huge issue in my family for a long time now and that's a little difficult for me to do.
My sister (Olivia, 24F) has been dating this guy (Trevor, 25M) since 2021. When they started dating, she talked about him fairly often, sent a few pictures of them, ect., but then after a month she stopped mentioning him/ was cagey when we (me and my mom mostly) asked how he was so we assumed it just hadn't worked out. Then two months later she insisted that my parents and I all come to visit her college to meet Trevor before he went into the Army (she lived several hours away from my parents and several hours from my college, so I had to get a bus ticket and my parents had to get a hotel room to do this. We only met him once for dinner). Now they've been dating long distance for three years after a three month in-person relationship. She is in nursing school and is planning on moving across the country (literally opposite corners of the map) to live with him and is not applying to any residency programs outside of the Army base area (limiting her choices a LOT from her original goals and narrowing employment opportunities).
Olivia met Trevor on several dating apps, matched with him, but didn't really want to go out with him. He was really persistent, so her friend convinced her to go out with him. She lied about the way they met to our parents and told them they met at the gym through a mutual friend (she lied to me about this at first too and told me the truth about 3 months after they started dating). At the time, Trevor was working as a used car salesman and living at home (~45 min. away from Olivia's school in a rural area) because his sports scholarship had been dropped before his Senior year due to covid at the college he had been attending out of state. The university was unaccredited (I later did some internet stalking and found out it was accredited), so his credits would not transfer and he would have to start over. He was saving up money to attend school in state at the large college Olivia attended so he could go back to school. **Our state has crazy low tuition costs in-state and a full-tuition scholarship program for good high school GPA and SAT scores. There was also a "feeder" community college that had half the cost per credit hour that a lot of people would go to before the larger university if they didn't get in straight out of high school.**
Olivia told me that Trevor had applied to her college and not gotten in (she later told me he HAD gotten in but been unable to afford tuition). Either way, he decided to join the Army because his father had been in the Army. The Army would take his credit hours and he would be able to finish his degree during his 5 year contract or use the GI bill once he got out. **She is comparing the situation to our father, who joined the Army directly out of high school and used the GI bill to go to college after his 2 year contract because his parents wouldn't pay for school. He was a medic in the military, worked as an EMT through college, and then went to nursing school.** The original plan was that Trevor would be a Green Beret (special forces, linking the training pipeline here: https://www.reddit.com/greenberets/comments/xwdbta/current_sf_pipeline_correct_me_if_im_wrong/ ), he completed basic training and and got several months through the NC training before failing the running portion of a physical by about 10 seconds and being dropped from the selection process. He then decided that he wanted to be a Ranger (another elite position). He got sent back to GA, then to the Ranger school base in WA (it took a couple of months before he was sent to WA). Again, he got partway through the training before failing the running portion of a physical by a few seconds. He is now not sure if he will be continuing Ranger school (failing the physical means no, but commanders may pass him anyways if they think he should continue). For a while, Trevor told Olivia that he might not stay at the base in WA if he wasn't in Ranger school and there were a variety of different bases he could be sent to, including somewhere in Italy, so she wasn't sure where to look for jobs. In the past month, Trevor told Olivia that he would likely stay in WA regardless of the Ranger school results.
Through this all, Olivia has visited Trevor at the different military bases countless times, driving from as far as south FL to NC and putting over 30,000 miles on a brand new car over the course of the 1.5 years she's owned it. Before she had the car, she paid for plane tickets to see him and hotels whenever she visited. At the time, she told me that he was paying for all of these trips because he was unable to visit her, was making an income that wasn't being spent, and she was working to save for nursing school and later was living off of student loans and savings during nursing school. She later admitted to me that she had paid for almost all of the expenses except for food when they ate out together and part of a hotel room one weekend.
A few odd things (to me) between Olivia and Trevor over the course of their relationship:
About a month into their relationship, Trevor got Olivia an over $300 christmas gift. He has not gotten her anything nearly that expensive since, and hasn't sent flowers for things like her college graduation or a severe emergency surgery she had last year. I don't care about monetary value or sending flowers, but I do think it is odd that he spent so much before moving away when he ostensibly didn't have much money, but now that he has an income and military sign-on bonus, he has not spent that much again.
Trevor's father left Trevor, his siblings, and his mother, but Trevor has a hat that his father gave him that he wore often. The hat says "Red Man" across the top of a picture of a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. He has worn this hat several times around Olivia's friends and they told him they didn't like it and that it was racist. They also asked him to not wear it when he was with them and he refused because it was special to him and his father gave it to him. Olivia then told him to stop wearing it and he eventually agreed (Olivia told me that he stopped wearing the hat after this). A few weeks after this, I facetimed Olivia and Trevor was with her. She turned the camera so I could say hello to him, and he was wearing the hat. I talked to Olivia about this later and she told me that that was the first time he'd worn the hat in a while and it wasn't a big deal. Olivia has always been liberal and never racist, and I am uncomfortable that she was okay with him not only wearing the hat, but being with him while he had it on.
They dated for a little over 3 months in person before he joined the military (recently, Olivia told me that they actually met several months before she told everyone about him and that they actually dated for 6 months before he left). For the next two months in basic training, he was only able to use the phone for 15 minutes total once a week to talk to family and her. Throughout the different training programs he has completed he had sporadic and limited access to phones to communicate, and only in the past 6 months he has had access to his phone to facetime, text, and call (but sometimes he goes for a week or two without phone access). Olivia told me that they wrote letters during the time he didn't have consistent phone access. **I don't think that this is odd, I understand the military limits phone usage, etc., but I don't think they have been able to have an "average" long-distance relationship**
Last year, Olivia drove to GA to visit Trevor the weekend before Valentine's day. He had plans for them to take a pottery class, go on a hike, and have dinner at a nice restaurant. The day she got there, Trevor's barracks had their off-base privileges revoked because one of the guys had contraband. She would still be able to visit him on base though. Somehow, Trevor was able to get off base for long periods of time to her hotel, but unable to do the other activities he had planned for them.
In the past year, Olivia told me that she and Trevor were going to immediately marry when she got to WA so that they could move in together because they had to be married to live together anywhere. I and our dad- who was in the military- told her several times that this was not true, but she insisted it was. Then, his barracks were given an allowance to live off base in apartments because the barracks were being renovated/ rebuilt, so she backed off on the idea of getting married immediately after several long conversations with me. She is still insistent on moving in with Trevor, who lives with a roommate, when she moves to WA.
Some background on Olivia:
Olivia has ADHD and anxiety, and struggled particularly badly with the anxiety/ some depression after being broken up with by the boyfriend she dated before Trevor (he broke it off very abruptly, told her he just didn't love her anymore with no previous indications). Olivia is very pretty (objectively, not just because she's my sister), but had bad acne that she ended up going on accutane for at the time she started dating Trevor and was very insecure about it. She had also decided to not go to medical school, and pursue nursing instead around the same time she met Trevor. This was a very upsetting decision for her because she had been taking very hard courses and was burnt out but had told everyone she was going to be a doctor and thought that she would be letting us down by switching paths. Also around the time she started seeing Trevor, Olivia began being very cruel towards our mother (our mother had been borderline emotionally abusive in the past, but Olivia and I were both in college by then and fixing our relationships with her. She has been much better recently and Olivia and I believe that she had some mental health struggles that went unchecked that contributed). Now, several years later, Olivia told our family that she had acted like that because she was raped by a friend of her ex-boyfriend's after her ex broke up with her. This person also gave her an STD.
I always believe people who say they have been sexually assaulted, abused, or harassed, and we believed Olivia when she first told us, but some things have come to light that make me and my family question that. Right after Olivia and her ex broke up, Olivia told our cousin that she had gone out with one of his friends and had revenge/ breakup sex with him because he had also been dumped recently. Once my cousin told me this, I remembered that Olivia had told me about a guy she had a one night stand with after she was dumped. She showed me a picture of him, talked about how cute he was, etc. (no distress whatsoever). I know sometimes people behave in ways you wouldn't expect when a traumatic event occurs to them, but I really don't understand how or why Olivia would brag about this guy if he really did sexually assault her.
Three months ago, Olivia was arrested for stealing a set of sheets from Walmart. She used the self check-out and only bought a small $5 item and the sheets. She held both in one hand and scanned each side because she had a cut on the other hand and was holding her wallet with it. She saw a 5 in front of the total number and thought it looked right because the total should have been about $50, paid, didn't get a receipt, and walked out. An employee at the door asked to see a receipt, which Olivia didn't have, so she pulled up her transaction history on her phone to show she had paid. At this point, the employee called the police and took Olivia into an office, where she was questioned and charged with shoplifting. (Olivia can get very emotional and probably got upset when the police questioned her, which may have led them to believe she was lying). Luckily, Olivia has managed to get the charges expunged, but the process is still ongoing. Because of her ADHD, if anyone genuinely made this mistake, I would believe it from her, but Olivia has been improving a lot on organization and being more attentive recently. It is extremely uncharacteristic of her to steal- she was honest to a fault as kids- she would break down from guilt and admit things to our parents that we would have gotten away with if she hadn't said anything.
Right now, my parents have met Trevor twice in person, and I've met him once in person and several times in passing over facetime. I personally don't think that Trevor seems to keep up with my sister or that they make each other shine, and that opinion is shared with family friends and family that have met Trevor. Olivia doesn't mention Trevor in front of our parents often because his name has become a topic of contention and argument between them. My parents don't think Trevor is right for Olivia. She has almost 2 college degrees and plans to become a nurse practitioner in the future, and he hasn't finished college and doesn't seem to have any drive to do so. Olivia is also well traveled and enjoys going to museums, concerts, etc., while Trevor has lived in rural FL his whole life (this is not Trevor's fault, and I don't think he is a lesser person because of it, but I don't see a lot of common ground between them). Trevor has not seemed very well spoken when I have talked to him and I just don't see a lot of qualities in him that Olivia values.
If you've gotten this far, I just don't know what to do. Olivia and my parents have a huge rift in their relationship right now and any mention of Trevor, with her around or not, explodes into a huge argument, discussion, or just icy silence. I want Olivia to be able to talk to me about him, and we are able to discuss things much better than she is with our parents. My parents have also started asking me about Olivia and Trevor because they know Olivia shares more with me, and it makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to betray Olivia's trust, but I'm also very worried about her. I know I can't control her actions and I'm having a really hard time trying to balance supporting Olivia but not supporting the relationship (I'm not going to lie to her about how I feel, but I don't want her to feel alienated or unloved by our family, because that is NOT the case). I also think that Olivia is romanticizing the fact that our parents don't like him because my father's parents had a rift with him over our mother when we were very young (this is a whole other story, but basically, his parents always favored his sister, his sister got (I think) jealous when he did well for himself and married my mother, who his parents initially likes, and she made up rumors/lies about my mother that turned his parents against her (this was way before our mother's suspected mental health struggles, which occured when Olivia and I were in middle/high school).
Please share any thoughts you have on the situation (am I reading too into things, is this not as bad as I think it is?), and any advice you have on navigating the relationships.

Hello all,
Just looking for some stimulating conversation, open to friends with shared interests or even a girl to get to know on a personal level and it possibly turn into more. A little about me, I’m a thirty-five year-old divorced single daddy, and a late in life college student. Just finished my first associates degree with an English major and returning this fall for a semester to pick up the communications degree before moving on to getting my bachelors in fine arts.
I’m working towards becoming an English professor but I am also a writer of multiple genres and poetry as well. Huge lover of the humanities so TV, movies, music, and books are all favored topics. I’m also a Shakespeare lover and recently gained a new love for the theater.
I am a podcaster and advocate for the blind/ low vision community. Fun fact, I’m blind, so there is that.
I love traveling, exploring new places, experiencing new cultures and trying new foods.
If any of this sounds appealing I would love to chat with you and look forward to exciting conversation with some new people!

I want to go to graduate school for comparative literature. i'm and english major and a junior. i want to get a masters probably. everything going great until my junior year- 4.0 average in a major, 3.94 in non major. junior year hits, suddenly i'm extremely depressed and my eating disorder comes back to such an extent a seriously should have taken a semester off, but i was afraid of having my parents pay more money than they should. i was literally just trying to survive each day. have a extremely hard time speaking in class in general. take literary theory course, class i've been looking forward to my entire college career. the entire thing is graded based on speaking in class with one final paper at the end. i write the final in three days, impressed i even got it out, and obviously my speaking skills suck. professor hates me. B+. i'm not trying to make excuses, i should have gotten tf out of there.
this semester- i overbooked myself with extracurriculars so i don't get depressed again. it worked. get As in all my other classes (foreign language classes). the two english classes i was taking - i will probably get an A- and a B+. i really want to go to a top grad school. do i still have a chance if i get As in all my other english classes my senior year. please be honest. my letters of rec will probably be good to mid. i know literary theory is more crucial for comparative literature studies.
i am considering studying in Germany or America. i'm american.

I at last made younger me proud by fulfilling a lifelong goal: attending a 4-year and pursing my dreams of medical school.
Not so much med school any longer, but hopefully pave the road for a PhD in Chemistry a few years from now. I am fascinated by Materials Science, Biomaterials, pure Chemistry and how it can all be intertwined into developing and commercializing products derived from new Materials in health and neuro-regenerative applications. I applied Chemical Biology in CoC. I couldn't attend the Golden Bear welcome held a few weeks back, I asked for a day off work to drive up to Berkeley and do a self-guided tour next weekend. I figured it won't get better than Berkeley and was firm on my choice.
The week following Berkeley late-April into the past few days, I've been thrown the fastest curveballs of my life. I was given opportunities to Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, UChicago, John's Hopkins, Duke and just a few days ago Princeton, which as you may imagined made me cry tears of joy numerous times.
I think I narrowed it down to here and Princeton. My first thought was: Berkeley is one of the very few, if not the only with an entire college dedicated to Chemistry; that speaks volumes and perhaps doesn't get better than that. Then Princeton accepting me 4/5 days ago made me realize they have numerous labs in Applied Physics/Chemistry that made be appealing. The plane tickets are insanely pricey and I don't think I can go visit Princeton to solify a informed decision. Could anyone from CoC help talk about the ease of research and graduate opportunities? Thank you all!

I’m a 21 year old male. I’ve been in the national guard for about 3 years now. I work on blackhawks and got hired to work full time as a wg-10 a year ago. sounds great but the issue is, i don’t see myself doing this for my whole life. I’ve had the idea in starting up college online this fall in intelligence because i’ve always been interested in it. i’ve been out of school for 3 years i just hope i still got the brain power to do it, especially working full time. Is a bachelors in intelligence and good start?
I’ve just been panicking honestly for awhile now because my girlfriend already finished her degree and i’m still navigating my career. i have the opportunity to go thru college debt free but i just don’t want to waste it.
I’ve thought about doing something like cybersecurity but i have no idea what that really entails or how to do it. i just know it’s a growing field and plenty of jobs out there paying great money, but like i said i have more of an interest doing intelligence and maybe working for a three letter organization one day. but everytime i look up working for one of those organizations it seems almost not achievable. any help would be gladly appreciated. i’m just a lost kid.

I’m a 21 year old male. I’ve been in the national guard for about 3 years now. I work on blackhawks and got hired to work full time as a wg-10 a year ago. sounds great but the issue is, i don’t see myself doing this for my whole life. I’ve had the idea in starting up college online this fall in intelligence because i’ve always been interested in it. i’ve been out of school for 3 years i just hope i still got the brain power to do it, especially working full time. Is a bachelors in intelligence and good start?
I’ve just been panicking honestly for awhile now because my girlfriend already finished her degree and i’m still navigating my career. i have the opportunity to go thru college debt free but i just don’t want to waste it.
I’ve thought about doing something like cybersecurity but i have no idea what that really entails or how to do it. i just know it’s a growing field and plenty of jobs out there paying great money, but like i said i have more of an interest doing intelligence and maybe working for a three letter organization one day. but everytime i look up working for one of those organizations it seems almost not achievable. any help would be gladly appreciated. i’m just a lost kid.

Just wanted to share my experience with all of the underclassmen I see panicking about college. I am a fairly prestigious student, I take the most challenging classes my school offers, have good grades, and do a good amount of extracurricular activities. Going into the college admissions process, I felt confident, right up until I got denied from 3 of my reaches and waitlisted from the other. I was devastated. MIT was my dream school since I was a little child, and I was heartbroken that they rejected me. However, a few weeks later I heard back from the school that waitlisted me (it’s a very small engineering school in the area that is very project based). They told me that they had read my letter of continued interest, and that they would love to have me attend. Looking back on the process, I really don’t think MIT would have been the right fit for me. I value projects and realized knowledge over theory and high competition, and I truly think that the school I am going to is much better for me in the long run. So to everybody who is worrying about T20s, know that wherever you end up is the right place for you and you will excel there.

I really struggled in my first two years of college. I was at a religious university with relatively strict rules yet I wasn’t practicing the religion. That weighed heavily on my mental health as I dealt with guilt and fear. I also spent those first two years studying a STEM program that I felt pressured to be in by my parents. They were hopeful I would study something in the STEM field and I didn’t want to disappoint them. All of that being said, I was in a very hard place and didn’t do well. I wasn’t passionate about my school work and was actively phasing out of a high control religion, leading me to earn a 2.9 GPA after 2 years and 47 credit hours.
Eventually I gained the courage to leave the school and change my major to something I felt excited about. I transferred schools and started to doing a lot better. I just graduated from the university I transferred to with a 3.68 GPA from 83 credit hours, 1 published paper, and a semester of relative research experience. I made good connections and feel confident in my letters of recommendation.
My question is, how much will my experience and GPA at the first university impact my ability to get into PhD programs? Will that be weighed equally to my newer GPA? I plan to explain some of the reasons for my low GPA at my first school, but don’t know how appropriate my reasoning is (religious struggle, pressure to study something I despised) ? Is there a good way to explain this without sounding like a weak sob story?
Lastly, with my GPA(s) and experience, would I appear competitive for higher tier programs? I don’t plan to apply to top programs or any Ivy League schools, but would really love to attend a well respected university.
Thank you in advance. These are questions that I have struggled to find answers to without directly asking here myself.

Good evening y'all (it's 11 pm EST)
I'm currently a college student pursuing an IT degree and I was speaking with my father in law about an idea for a writing skills development program. The basis of the program/website is to teach students from Elementary school to the highschool and collegiate level on how to write essays. He posits that his students he has worked with do not have a good grasp on how to format their essays and papers, which then falls short in their future academic courses and he wants to make a program that will help them step by step.
My general layout right now is that it will be split into different levels of writing. From Levels 1 through 5: Elementary, Middle School, High School, College Prep, and Collegiate level writing skills. Within each level, I'll have writing tips and exercises to help the students learn the proper way to write their essays, with the Five Paragraph Essay as the format they will be learning.
Level 1: Sentence Structure, Formatting, and Composition. This includes things like spelling, capitalization, punctuation, etc.
Level 2: Adding in proper grammar, sentence continuation, paragraph structure, readability and comprehension, editing skills (rereading to make sure it is grammatically correct, has proper punctuation, sounds academically thought out, etc). We'll introduce how to write and connect multiple paragraphs as well as intro, body, and conclusion.
Level 3: Here we'll reinforce sentence structure for Intro, body, and conclusion paragraphs as well as citation and source material research. We'll start on how to properly write a Five paragraph essay with the hourglass/pyramid format (Broad introduction that gets more specific when it gets to the thesis sentence, body paragraphs with point evidence and example sentences, and then specific reintroduction of main points to a broad conclusion of the thesis). [I may have this in the Middle school Level 2 section as this is something I learned in middle school] We will also introduce different types of essays such as Argumentative, Systhesis, Compare and Contrast, Narrative, Persuasive, etc.
Level 4: In this level we will introduce the importance of rough draft, revise and polish, editing and formatting, and college entrance essays and college application questions. This section will mostly be open to Junior (11th) and Senior (12th) grade students who are preparing for their academic life outside of Highschool. We will also be introducing how to write cover letters, resumes, and exploring the other side of life outside of High school.
Level 5: Collegiate level writing will focus on precision writing, using the fewest words necessary to accurately convey an idea. Objectivity, using accurate, clear and relevant information. Logical Structure, using precise word choice and structure. Researching, Formatting, time management, and consistence and conciseness. We will also go back to resume and cover letter writing for those who are looking for a career after a degree. We will be adding a section to help students with term paper writing as well as advancement (Masters and Doctorate level) writing.
I wanted to reach out to former, current, and aspiring English Teachers to ask for feedback on this idea. Is this something that you would use in your class as a teaching tool for your students? What can be done for this to be implemented in your classes if this website/program gets published? What things should be added, removed, improved, or changed in the current idea to make it go alongside the current English course curriculum in your school district? What else should be included to facilitate user interaction with this website?
Please give me as much feedback as you can think of, whether that is directly on this post or in a direct message. My hope and goal is to be able to develop the future generation and to move away from using AI as a writing tool because it takes away the practical skills that is severely lacking in some, if not most, of the students today.

Hi all! I took a gap year in the middle of college due to the pandemic and ended up doing full-time research for a year with a lab and was an author on a publication with them. However, I was wondering if it would be necessary to get a recommendation letter from that PI if I have other, more recent research experiences which I have done for longer (i.e. I've been working at my current lab for 2 years) and are more relevant to the narrative of my application?
Additionally, I don't think the PI who I worked with on my gap year really knows me that well and is not a strong writer in general, so I was wondering if it would be better to get a recommendation letter from a professor who knows me better?
(BTW I am only applying to MD programs, not MD-PhD)

Demographics

• Gender: Male
• Race/Ethnicity: white
• Residence: socal :)
• Income Bracket: middle class
• Type of School: public
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): n/a

Intended Major(s): (write here)
international relations or poli sci (depending on the school)
Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 3.87/4.59
• Rank (or percentile): n/a
• of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 11 aps
• Senior Year Course Load: academic decathlon, ap lit, ap stats, apah, ap french, ap gov/ap micro

Standardized Testing

• ACT: 34 (36E, 32M, 33R, 33S)
• AP/IB: ap euro (4), ap lang (3), ap spanish (5), apush (5), apes (4)

Extracurriculars/Activities

1. academic decathlon president
2. shift leader at parents' small business
3. spanish national honors society treasurer
4. varsity discus and shot put captain
5. religious school post-confirmation
6. local library volunteer
7. spanish and french tutor
8. local climate change awareness organization
9. summer program at prestigious university
10. youth leadership program

Awards/Honors
List all awards and honors submitted on your application.

1. a handful of academic decathlon medals from county competitions
2. scholar athlete
3. national spanish exam bronze medal
4. ap scholar with distinction

Letters of Recommendation
ap spanish: 9/10
apush: 5/10
counselor: 6/10?? idk
Interviews
brown video: 4/10 it was pretty bad and i had a terrible time filming it
american u: 7/10 it was my first one and my only one in person, i thought it went good
washu: 6/10 i didn't get one with an alum but i got one with a current student, so im not certain if it counted
occidental college: 4/10 i did not click with my interviewer at all lmao
syracuse: 9/10 i accidentally missed my interview originally but my interviewer was super understanding and we rescheduled and it went great
northwestern: 9/10 i felt like this one went really well, and i really clicked with my interviewer
georgetown: 8/10 nothing really remarkable that i can remember, i just remember feeling good afterward
Essays
im going to keep this anonymous just in case im recognized from this (i hope im not lol). i think on the whole everything was pretty decent.
Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)
brown ED: rejected
maryland EA: accepted+merit
wisconsin EA: accepted
uc davis RD: accepted
uci RD: waitlisted -> withdrew
sdsu RD: accepted
american u RD: accepted+merit
uw RD: accepted
ucla RD: rejected
ucsb RD: waitlisted -> withdrew
washu RD: rejected
oxy RD: accepted+merit
syracuse RD: accepted
gwu RD: accepted+merit
northwestern RD: rejected
georgetown RD: rejected
cal poly RD: rejected
cal RD: rejected
DECISION: MARYLAND CO '28!!!! GO TERPS
Additional Information:
i go to a pretty competitive high school in a relatively wealthy area and learned about the process, got high hopes, and honestly got a little prestige obsessed around my junior year. I had five dream schools (brown, ucla, washu, northwestern, and georgetown) and ended up getting rejected from all of them which was both a total punch in the gut and a much needed wake up call. the decision for me based on fit and financials came down to maryland, washington, and davis, and as a result of the really generous merit aid i recieved at umd as well as the university's perfect location near washington DC, it was just the perfect fit. After visiting the school, I totally fell in love with the campus, the culture, and having a big 10 sports program definitely didn't hurt it. looking back on everything, i was totally naïve and applied to a ton of schools, which thankfully worked out for my targets, but i was at one point certain that i would get into at least one of my reaches. in the end, im really glad that i didnt get into any of them because i would have never considered maryland, a school i almost didnt even apply to. also, as a jewish student, the thriving jewish community on maryland's campus is really comforting, especially with everything going on right now at colleges. congrats to all of this years seniors and good luck to all the incoming seniors with their apps! and if youre going to maryland next year, hmu!!!

I know this is for high schoolers but I don’t think College will appreciate 😬
Looking for T30 (hopefully better) MA in data science, bioinformatics, or computational biology as a rising senior in undergrad at a T40
Demographics: female, wasian, mid income, NJ
Major: Biology Minor: computer science
GPA: 3.9 with upward trend
Courses: all classes that come with a bio major and CS minor, plus basic stats, calc 1-3, discrete math, probability, linear algebra. By spring 2025 (after applying) I’ll have theory of statistics, intro data science, calc 4
Experience:
-Tutored genetics and physics for 4 semesters. - Research at an immunology lab with data analysis for 4 semesters - Summer fellowship at the same immunology lab - third name on 1 research paper in that lab - upcoming bioinformatics summer Internship at Bristol myers - Research at a cancer lab with data analysis for 2 semesters
Awards/others:
-deans list for all semesters
-Phi beta kappa starting this semester - an asian american award for a project - student ambassador for life sciences - one of the student representatives/faces of the bio department
Info: - I’m pretty good at interviews but I’m not amazing - Not sure about my LoR yet, one will be really good, the other two will probably be okay unless I ask this non-stem prof who ik will write me a glowing letter - haven’t written my statement of purpose yet (apps due dec) but I think it will be…ok? I don’t know what I’m writing about yet. Def not gonna write about being lgbt or race or smth tho

Baby boy was born at 36 weeks gestation a few days ago. He is in the NICU due to having a pleural effusion that seems to be clearing. He also has pulmonary hypertension but they hope no surgery is needed right now. He is stable and doing well in the NICU. He doesn’t suckle or eat on his own because he is learning to swallow and breathe. Things we take for granted. I feel bad for my wife because she was looking forward to experience being a woman and breast feeding him.
They no longer have him intubated just on oxygen with the canula at 2 liters so we are making progress. Blood work came back positive for trisomy21. Asked Doctor about a microarray but she said he doesn’t need one?that he as tri21? I thought there were 3 types from what I am learning online.
Can’t say my wife and aren’t a little scared and confused. I did sign up today for down syndrome network news letter. I guess I just don’t know where to start since we are embarking on this journey.
I hope to give him the best life I can. I know early intervention is important but what exactly does that entail? What therapies should I be looking for to begin with? What recommendations or resources?
My wife is grieving and so am I a little because he is our first and I guess we had so many ideas of our marriage having a little one that would be our legacy in terms of growing up and growing older, college, girlfriends, maybe marriage and children for him but now I see he may never experience some of those things and we should be counting our blessings.
I have so many thoughts in my mind like what kind of life will he have and be able to live? Will he live a long quality life? Will he have independence? I get worried about who will take care of him when we die as I am 38m and wife is 36f. Then I read that I can expect his life expectancy to be maybe 50-60’s years of age and that some DS people live till 70’s maybe.
I know I should just enjoy the moment now of him being a baby but seeing the videos on you tube and realizing how much time and effort he will need to thrive scares me because he just won’t have a typical childhood. But I will do my best to be strong and be there for him and I want to give him the best start and base possible to thrive.
I see there was an institute for people’s potential and also know I will need to sign up for all the therapies I can. I know also I need him to have great nutrition and healthy lifestyle so he can carry himself with it for as long as he can because after my wife and I are gone he will really have no one else besides maybe a few nephews and nieces. Do I need to set up a trust or anything like that now or accounts to grow so he will have something in the future to use?
Thank you for reading my grief and cries here. I appreciate your experience and expertise on what I can do to give my newborn baby boy the best quality of life he can have.

My Upwork account has been permanently banned due to a brainless member of the Trust & Security Team.
My Upwork account had a Top Rated badge, which I worked hard to achieve, and they destroyed everything for me in the end.
One day, I noticed that my Upwork account was temporarily suspended, and their email informed me that I needed to upload government-issued documents and proof with an address.
This was normal, I know, and I complied.
I live in China. I uploaded a photo of my Chinese ID card.
As for the proof of address, since Chinese banks no longer send any paper mail, and the branches cannot provide any documents with an address, I uploaded a bank statement from my Singaporean bank account, which is sent to my address in China - this may be the reason for my permanent ban.
ALL REAL DOCUMENTS.
The next day, I received an automated email stating that my identity verification had been successful.
I checked Upwork, and my account was still not unbanned, so I replied to the ticket asking them to lift the ban.
A few hours later, they hit me hard.
They informed me that due to the inability to confirm my identity, my account had been permanently banned.
There was no opportunity to appeal. I wrote a sincere appeal letter, but no one replied.
They claimed that my balance had been refunded to the client. However, after confirming with a client via Slack, they had not received any refund.
Upwork had pocketed this money.
This client initiated a refund on Upwork, which resulted in me losing my Top Rated badge.
What's even more frustrating is that after my account was banned, I still receive emails related to this account, such as invitations to apply for professional certifications.
I contributed over $500 in income to Upwork through purchasing Freelancer Plus and connects, and paying fees. However, all this income has gone to feed the as*ho*es at the Trust & Safety Team.
Upwork can ban your account at will citing failure to verify identity. Please be careful.
Shame on Upwork.

Does anyone have any case recommendations for my 8th generation iPad? I’m using it for college so it needs a keyboard, and I want it to protective but also visually appealing. Thanks!

My professor emailed me this morning letting me know that I failed the portfolio. My professor recommended that I submit the edits to my reseach-based argument for the portfolio appeal. I'm transferring to another college for the Fall and they don't have gen-ed requirements. Should I be worried?

Hola a todos! A little bit of a weird update. I am not a dreaming Spanish purist, I would have been, had I found DS sooner. lol well it didn’t exist when I started to learn Spanish 😂😂.
Backstory I took 4 years of Spanish in high school (not great lol) followed by a year in college. I didn’t learn much and couldn’t speak, or understand any spoken Spanish. Well I gave up after that. Fast forward to Jan 2023 I decided to take my journey seriously and actually learn once and for all. I started trying to watch shows on TV that I couldn’t really understand much of but thought it was helping.
CI I discovered DS in the end of November 2023 and I wish I had discovered it sooner. I was able to understand intermediate and most advanced videos I watched and it boosted my confidence. According to the road map I gave myself 1000 hours of credit. Today I reached “1500 hours” well in reality it was 500 hours of CI due to my added hours. I’ve progressed tremendously but still have a long way to go. I’m enjoying the journey. I listen to podcasts and watch native content. Sit doesn’t feel like studying or learning. But it’s working!!
Reading I have read several books and am right around 500k words. Reading is getting easier and easier and I’ve learned a lot of vocabulary from reading. I read out loud every night to get my mouth used to pronouncing unfamiliar words and words/sounds I have issues with. I don’t count time read as a part of my input hours.
Speaking I take conversation classes, no grammar, but I get corrected as needed which helps a ton. Im getting more comfortable speaking and would feel comfortable going to a Spanish speaking country and getting by. I struggle with the past tense and other tenses but I get my point across. I make mistakes everyday but I keep trying.
I linked a sample of my speaking for anyone that is interested. It’s not the best, I need work on my accent and pronunciation as well as grammar. But I’m proud of my progress so far as it can only get better from here.
I’d like to do another update once I’ve got the full 1500 hours of input under my belt to see how much more progress reading speaking and listening will get me in 1000 more hours. I’d also like to finish the books I have now and move on to native books and not translated books as well.
I’m happy to answer any questions. But as the title says, I’m actually at 500 hours of CI. But with my prior background and what level of videos I could understand when I started. I put myself at level 6. Just wanted to make that clear so that it isn’t misleading to anyone. I think it’s important to always give information about prior exposure to the language.