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Law School Subreddit
2009.10.29 18:32 ucslug Law School Subreddit
For current and former Law School Redditors. Ask questions, seek advice, post outlines, etc. This is NOT a forum for legal advice.
2012.09.07 04:25 Marijuana Enthusiasts!
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2012.06.17 20:13 Algorithmic Trading
A place for redditors to discuss quantitative trading, statistical methods, econometrics, programming, implementation, automated strategies, and bounce ideas off each other for constructive criticism. Feel free to submit papers/links of things you find interesting.
2024.06.09 10:41 Ok_Page6669 Unbiblical Views at GP/A2N
Some of these views are fundamental to GP/A2N’s ministry, but ultimately directly affect the spiritual health of the church and anyone that leaves with these theological views.
submitted by Ok_Page6669 to GracepointChurch [link] [comments]
- Unbiblical view of ministry: GP/A2N essentially asserts that vocation, marriage, school, or anything outside of formal church ministry does not count as ministry (View the diagram labeled ‘The Challenges’ here https://acts2.network/covocational-ministry). God’s Word has so much so say about work, marriage, and how we steward our bodies, all for His glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). God’s Word does not call us to consider our ministry outside of formal church ministry as ‘secondary’. This is exacerbated by using Acts 2 prescriptively to pressure a binary ‘all in’ or ‘all out’ in full time formal church ministry as a ‘second vocation’ and not doing so being culturally associated with being lukewarm. I believe this video from Paul Washer here may be helpful (Idolizing Ministry): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sIxM5Mcczo&t=5s
- Unbiblical view of salvation: Distinguishing “Salvation Decision” and “Lordship” as two events in a Christian’s life. It is unbiblical to believe that one is saved but does not fully know the implications of Christ’s lordship (Luke 14:25-35). This is not documented anywhere on their website, but a false doctrine practiced by the church and further exacerbated by paper slips being given to students at retreats to optionally make a “Salvation Decision” and count them decisively saved because they said so on this paper slip (This was practiced during my time there, I don’t know if it’s still practiced today).
- Unbiblical practice of church discipline: Matthew 18 is not followed. People get silently excommunicated from the church without any announcement to the church (Matthew 18:17) of a clear statement of what exactly the sin was. How does the church know someone was truly in sin?
2024.06.09 09:52 Latter-Session5251 What would you do if you were in my place? I posted this on ToxicParents sub but I think fellow Asians can help me better.
TL;DR: Financially depended on parents, poor physical and mental health, parents refusing to provide me treatment and support me but expects me to study properly and take good care of myself regardless. I also want to become independent, but my shitty health is destroying every attempt to study. HOW THE HELL DO I DO GET OUT OF THIS?
I was supposed to have been graduated from high school and admitted to college but I am repeating 12th grade, much to my parents' horror, and couldn't graduate this year largely because of depression and poor physical health. Also, I don't know if I have ADHD but the symptoms are there and I struggle a lot because of it too.
Parents don't acknowledge that people can be mentally ill and they need support and treatment. Therefore, when I first told them that I'm struggling with my mental health, they just.. mocked me, for several weeks. Told me I'm weak and can't do anything, that I'm a big zero and making up excuses. I never brought that up again.
Doesn't have to mention they are disappointed in me. Because they wanted me to be a doctor, but being a doctor is so not me. That's not what I want to do at all.
Wanting to pursue something different and then not being able to even graduate made them extremely disappointed in me.
This is more amplified by the fact that they both rose up from their parents' economical conditions and expect me to achieve better things but I won't be able to get a decent job at all, if I keep that up. I can relate, I am disappointed in me too.
So whenever I struggle to study, my mother lashes out at me, telling me how much they sacrificed to raise me, and that they grew up with a lot more struggles than me and that I don't deserve their love because I amount to nothing and that she should have aborted me, that I am abnormal and defective that is destroying her life and it's my fault that she is acting out and that I destroyed their social life by being abnormal and if I don't get a respectable position in society, my life will be forever ruined. As if it's not ruined enough.
Whenever I struggle to eat, sleep or generally take care of myself, she says she won't pay for my healthcare if I get sick again and that I am better off dead, I was unwanted anyway. (Background: She wanted to study and wanted to get a job but was forced to marry by her family. She continued to study after marriage but then I came into the picture unplanned. She wasn't really ready to have me, but gave birth to me anyway because she thought if I grew up to a better place it would pay off. It didn't help that both of them had 11 to 5 jobs. I was raised when they were financially struggling too)
It hurts every time she says these, even if I know that she is saying these in heat of the moment and they're kind of true. Even if she sometimes apologizes (then proceeds to blame me for her behavior). It still fucking hurts okay? What hurts even more is that they don't want to understand me. They don't get my motivations, functionality and thought processes, but because I don't behave in align with their expectations, they tell me there's something inherently wrong with me.
I'm really sick and tired of these drama in our house. And I am sick and tired of being sick and tired at all. This seems to be a running theme in my life.
My father largely ignores us and is emotionally distant. At least he doesn't care about me not conforming to societal expectations, and that's better than mother's reaction to everything I am and I do. But that doesn't stop him from participating with mother in these drama. Both of them are extremely homophobic/queerphobic.
Mind you, they still provide food, cloth and shelter for me even after finding out that I was romantically entangled with another AFAB. Granted, they don't want to talk about it and completely ignore it in the hopes that it was a bad dream and they'd wake up, but hey, I wasn't kicked out, so that's good at least.
When I confront her about the things she say to me, she just states that I am really ungrateful for not understanding my mother's emotions and feelings, it's my fault that episodes of drama happen and it's my fault that I end up getting hurt, because hurting me is not her intentions. She even said and I quote her, they are the best parents I can come across, and that parents are always right and they know what is best for me, if only I would just listen.
She has huge issues with me "acting like a boy". For example, we have this unspoken rule in our area that female humans should pierce their ears.
I was really stubborn about not doing this, until my mother made a deal with me: I get to keep my hair short if I pierce my ears, so I got my ears pierced in 2020. Then, she gradually went from suggesting that I should at least let it grow a little bit to full on threatening me that if I don't grow my hair they'll disown me.
This was happening when I had poor physical and mental health, so I stopped being stubborn about it. But sometimes I do express my annoyance and grief over not having my hair short anymore, and she reacts by being angry over the fact that my behavior is not ideal and sadness over the fact that I don't listen to her.
Which is true by the way. Over these last two to three years, I am not being my best self. Whenever these episodes of drama happen (my mother lashing out on me because I am struggling or not acting like a girl or how a normal ideal human being is supposed to act like) I too react really negatively. For a period of time after each episodes, I don't respect them or don't listen to their orders, and don't try hard enough to study or take care of myself. My response to them seems to be doing what they don't want me to do.
This I do because I just don't see the point anymore, I don't feel like doing anything at all even though I logically know what, why and how I should do but I don't seem to do that. I feel numb. My days pass by in a blur and haze. My memory seems have been weakened.
My family mocks me because of this, they don't believe me that I seem to forget a lot, they say that I am making things up and, blah blah. Somedays I get a serious level of existential crisis. Other days I don't really care, and I feel lethargic all the time. I don't feel sad per se, because I am not aware or mindful of my thoughts and feelings most of the time but when I do become aware, a lot of the times I don't seem to know or understand what I'm feeling or why I'm feeling a certain emotion.
Like this post is taking a lot of time for the same reason. It's really difficult for me to recognize and compose my feelings into words. (Future me: Although I am editing from another post of mine, this took me 4.5ish hours to finish)
And sometimes I feel things really intensely out of nowhere. Like this one time I suddenly didn't want to exist anymore, it seemed to come out from nowhere. It was pointless to try to live anyway. I was causing a lot of pain anyway, what's one more by dying? Simply existing was so much pain, like whenever I was reminded or became aware that I am a living breathing thing existing in this space and time, I just, I don't know, I felt this huge grief over my existence. I don't know how to describe that, but it was an ugly emotion, I didn't want to feel it, but I felt it anyway.
I didn't attempt suicide, but I was close to sort of erasing my existence. I tried to erase myself. You know, by throwing out everything that made me me. I used to write to make sense of my thoughts and feelings, I used to write fanfictions and poetry. I threw them all. I deleted all the e-books and other stuff that I used to read, all the videos I used to watch, all the pictures I stored, all the musical pieces and songs I enjoyed listening to and all the website that I used to visit. All the things that shaped me to become what I am. All the things that reminded me of myself.
I now realize that I have developed an eating disorder(sort of?) over gender dysphoria. I don't want to eat because I don't want my body to produce female sex hormones that will lead to periods (Is it weird to be happy that my periods last only 2 days because of malnutrition and anemia?) and breast growing (Is it weird to be happy because I have a flat chest and I am skinny and rectangle shaped?). I love eating tasty things you know? But I unconsciously stopped eating properly. It's also because sometimes I simply forget to eat.
This seems to happen when I am hyper-focusing on something (usually unrelated to my studies). Heck, I forget to bath or brush or I forget when it's time to sleep too you know? But when I am aware that I should have a meal, I feel an internal resistance which I now realize is the fear that my body will produce appropriate levels of female sex hormones and make me look like I am a girl.
(I don't want to look like a girl, and I don't want to be mistaken as a boy, but mistaken as boy is better than people treating me like a girl. If only I could be neither, ugh.
As a side note, my mother is worried that my body doesn't seem to be producing enough sex hormones and is currently trying to force me to go see a doctor so that my breasts can grow bigger and my periods can last longer. I am terrified of this, I know this is causing health problems but I also really don't want treatment for this.)
And week or two ago, my mother was again telling me, not yelling at me or expressing anger but with a gentle tone, that I should work harder to study and I should take care of myself because for her it's really painful to see me like this, and she won't be able to accept me if I don't stand on my own two legs and I should try harder to take care of myself.
And that's the first time I realized that this needs to stop, this whole ordeal is harming my health and is causing all sorts of problems for me in my family.
I need to study to graduate next year and I need decent marks. But I can't seem to do so no matter how hard I try. I need to at least take care of myself but I face this internal resistance and this urge to self-sabotage, this urge to destroy myself and my life for some reason.
Can somebody please suggest and advise me on my best course of action?
I need good mental and physical health to study properly but I need to study to get access to good mental health treatment which will also help a lot in my physical health.
I want to get out of this situation.
submitted by Latter-Session5251 to AsianParentStories [link] [comments]
Disclaimer: Long Post, Depression, Gender Dysphoria Causing Eating Disorders Leading to Poor Health
Assigned female at birth, Indian, Recently turned 18.I was supposed to have been graduated from high school and admitted to college but I am repeating 12th grade, much to my parents' horror, and couldn't graduate this year largely because of depression and poor physical health. Also, I don't know if I have ADHD but the symptoms are there and I struggle a lot because of it too.
Parents don't acknowledge that people can be mentally ill and they need support and treatment. Therefore, when I first told them that I'm struggling with my mental health, they just.. mocked me, for several weeks. Told me I'm weak and can't do anything, that I'm a big zero and making up excuses. I never brought that up again.
Doesn't have to mention they are disappointed in me. Because they wanted me to be a doctor, but being a doctor is so not me. That's not what I want to do at all.
Wanting to pursue something different and then not being able to even graduate made them extremely disappointed in me.
This is more amplified by the fact that they both rose up from their parents' economical conditions and expect me to achieve better things but I won't be able to get a decent job at all, if I keep that up. I can relate, I am disappointed in me too.
So whenever I struggle to study, my mother lashes out at me, telling me how much they sacrificed to raise me, and that they grew up with a lot more struggles than me and that I don't deserve their love because I amount to nothing and that she should have aborted me, that I am abnormal and defective that is destroying her life and it's my fault that she is acting out and that I destroyed their social life by being abnormal and if I don't get a respectable position in society, my life will be forever ruined. As if it's not ruined enough.
Whenever I struggle to eat, sleep or generally take care of myself, she says she won't pay for my healthcare if I get sick again and that I am better off dead, I was unwanted anyway. (Background: She wanted to study and wanted to get a job but was forced to marry by her family. She continued to study after marriage but then I came into the picture unplanned. She wasn't really ready to have me, but gave birth to me anyway because she thought if I grew up to a better place it would pay off. It didn't help that both of them had 11 to 5 jobs. I was raised when they were financially struggling too)
It hurts every time she says these, even if I know that she is saying these in heat of the moment and they're kind of true. Even if she sometimes apologizes (then proceeds to blame me for her behavior). It still fucking hurts okay? What hurts even more is that they don't want to understand me. They don't get my motivations, functionality and thought processes, but because I don't behave in align with their expectations, they tell me there's something inherently wrong with me.
I'm really sick and tired of these drama in our house. And I am sick and tired of being sick and tired at all. This seems to be a running theme in my life.
My father largely ignores us and is emotionally distant. At least he doesn't care about me not conforming to societal expectations, and that's better than mother's reaction to everything I am and I do. But that doesn't stop him from participating with mother in these drama. Both of them are extremely homophobic/queerphobic.
Mind you, they still provide food, cloth and shelter for me even after finding out that I was romantically entangled with another AFAB. Granted, they don't want to talk about it and completely ignore it in the hopes that it was a bad dream and they'd wake up, but hey, I wasn't kicked out, so that's good at least.
When I confront her about the things she say to me, she just states that I am really ungrateful for not understanding my mother's emotions and feelings, it's my fault that episodes of drama happen and it's my fault that I end up getting hurt, because hurting me is not her intentions. She even said and I quote her, they are the best parents I can come across, and that parents are always right and they know what is best for me, if only I would just listen.
She has huge issues with me "acting like a boy". For example, we have this unspoken rule in our area that female humans should pierce their ears.
I was really stubborn about not doing this, until my mother made a deal with me: I get to keep my hair short if I pierce my ears, so I got my ears pierced in 2020. Then, she gradually went from suggesting that I should at least let it grow a little bit to full on threatening me that if I don't grow my hair they'll disown me.
This was happening when I had poor physical and mental health, so I stopped being stubborn about it. But sometimes I do express my annoyance and grief over not having my hair short anymore, and she reacts by being angry over the fact that my behavior is not ideal and sadness over the fact that I don't listen to her.
Which is true by the way. Over these last two to three years, I am not being my best self. Whenever these episodes of drama happen (my mother lashing out on me because I am struggling or not acting like a girl or how a normal ideal human being is supposed to act like) I too react really negatively. For a period of time after each episodes, I don't respect them or don't listen to their orders, and don't try hard enough to study or take care of myself. My response to them seems to be doing what they don't want me to do.
This I do because I just don't see the point anymore, I don't feel like doing anything at all even though I logically know what, why and how I should do but I don't seem to do that. I feel numb. My days pass by in a blur and haze. My memory seems have been weakened.
My family mocks me because of this, they don't believe me that I seem to forget a lot, they say that I am making things up and, blah blah. Somedays I get a serious level of existential crisis. Other days I don't really care, and I feel lethargic all the time. I don't feel sad per se, because I am not aware or mindful of my thoughts and feelings most of the time but when I do become aware, a lot of the times I don't seem to know or understand what I'm feeling or why I'm feeling a certain emotion.
Like this post is taking a lot of time for the same reason. It's really difficult for me to recognize and compose my feelings into words. (Future me: Although I am editing from another post of mine, this took me 4.5ish hours to finish)
And sometimes I feel things really intensely out of nowhere. Like this one time I suddenly didn't want to exist anymore, it seemed to come out from nowhere. It was pointless to try to live anyway. I was causing a lot of pain anyway, what's one more by dying? Simply existing was so much pain, like whenever I was reminded or became aware that I am a living breathing thing existing in this space and time, I just, I don't know, I felt this huge grief over my existence. I don't know how to describe that, but it was an ugly emotion, I didn't want to feel it, but I felt it anyway.
I didn't attempt suicide, but I was close to sort of erasing my existence. I tried to erase myself. You know, by throwing out everything that made me me. I used to write to make sense of my thoughts and feelings, I used to write fanfictions and poetry. I threw them all. I deleted all the e-books and other stuff that I used to read, all the videos I used to watch, all the pictures I stored, all the musical pieces and songs I enjoyed listening to and all the website that I used to visit. All the things that shaped me to become what I am. All the things that reminded me of myself.
I now realize that I have developed an eating disorder(sort of?) over gender dysphoria. I don't want to eat because I don't want my body to produce female sex hormones that will lead to periods (Is it weird to be happy that my periods last only 2 days because of malnutrition and anemia?) and breast growing (Is it weird to be happy because I have a flat chest and I am skinny and rectangle shaped?). I love eating tasty things you know? But I unconsciously stopped eating properly. It's also because sometimes I simply forget to eat.
This seems to happen when I am hyper-focusing on something (usually unrelated to my studies). Heck, I forget to bath or brush or I forget when it's time to sleep too you know? But when I am aware that I should have a meal, I feel an internal resistance which I now realize is the fear that my body will produce appropriate levels of female sex hormones and make me look like I am a girl.
(I don't want to look like a girl, and I don't want to be mistaken as a boy, but mistaken as boy is better than people treating me like a girl. If only I could be neither, ugh.
As a side note, my mother is worried that my body doesn't seem to be producing enough sex hormones and is currently trying to force me to go see a doctor so that my breasts can grow bigger and my periods can last longer. I am terrified of this, I know this is causing health problems but I also really don't want treatment for this.)
And week or two ago, my mother was again telling me, not yelling at me or expressing anger but with a gentle tone, that I should work harder to study and I should take care of myself because for her it's really painful to see me like this, and she won't be able to accept me if I don't stand on my own two legs and I should try harder to take care of myself.
And that's the first time I realized that this needs to stop, this whole ordeal is harming my health and is causing all sorts of problems for me in my family.
I need to study to graduate next year and I need decent marks. But I can't seem to do so no matter how hard I try. I need to at least take care of myself but I face this internal resistance and this urge to self-sabotage, this urge to destroy myself and my life for some reason.
Can somebody please suggest and advise me on my best course of action?
I need good mental and physical health to study properly but I need to study to get access to good mental health treatment which will also help a lot in my physical health.
I want to get out of this situation.
Summary: Need treatment to study but need to study to get treatment. (And independence)
A fucking loop.2024.06.09 08:26 throwaway02848207369 I need help m27
Trigger warning
I feel sick to my stomach typing this but here i go
Basically i have been watching porn since i was 8-9 and i would just watch porn ,but it didn’t get bad until I graduated high school at 17 and since then i have just been a shut in and i would just watch tv/play video games all day and talk to some friends/family and when i was bored i would watch porn, but this has been going on for a while and it would escalate from time to time to things like gay and trans to eventually beastiality . For a while now i have just been saving porn on my phone and it would just sit there im talking 17,000 pictures/videos and a bunch of tabs and applications but it never ramped up again until i turned 25 and would see cp advertised in some comment sections of beastiality websites i would use and although I never click on them i would be curious and one time i had typed child in the search and nothing would come up so i would be relieved and tell myself,” thank god im not on a shady website,” but i would continue watching beastiality from time to time and one day on twitter i saw what seemed like an underage asian girl masturbating in a class room and i would see this and tell myself she is in college(i genuinely feel sick) and I would save it and but every few months i would see more and more things of the same nature like panty shots of underage japanese school girls and thinking nothing of it would save them too but one day straight up cp would show up in the search and I would keep telling myself that there is no way this cp and just be in denial i would not save but i would keep scrolling and eventually started to report every page that would have this but i would still search the same searches, eventually seeing more cp and reporting the pages, I would never lay a hand on a child but actually seeing this would always be an indicator to stop watching porn for the day.
2 days ago I came to the conclusion that i have an extreme porn addiction and I truly cannot express in words how bad i feel. Feeling sick to my stomach, suicidal and so anxiety ridden I have deleted every single picture, video, account, and application,off of my phone and haven’t masturbated or watched porn, sometimes i find my self shaking with guilt, my only solace and comfort is blaming this on my addiction and basically knowing i will never marry or have children because of what I have seen/masturbated to. To wrap this up my current plan is to hopefully get a job and once i am financially stable i want to go to therapy and one day eventually open up to some select few friends and family, i am not good at writing/typing so if you guys want more clarification ask ahead also there is alot more things i wanted to say but i think for now this is fine.
submitted by throwaway02848207369 to PornAddiction [link] [comments]
I feel sick to my stomach typing this but here i go
Basically i have been watching porn since i was 8-9 and i would just watch porn ,but it didn’t get bad until I graduated high school at 17 and since then i have just been a shut in and i would just watch tv/play video games all day and talk to some friends/family and when i was bored i would watch porn, but this has been going on for a while and it would escalate from time to time to things like gay and trans to eventually beastiality . For a while now i have just been saving porn on my phone and it would just sit there im talking 17,000 pictures/videos and a bunch of tabs and applications but it never ramped up again until i turned 25 and would see cp advertised in some comment sections of beastiality websites i would use and although I never click on them i would be curious and one time i had typed child in the search and nothing would come up so i would be relieved and tell myself,” thank god im not on a shady website,” but i would continue watching beastiality from time to time and one day on twitter i saw what seemed like an underage asian girl masturbating in a class room and i would see this and tell myself she is in college(i genuinely feel sick) and I would save it and but every few months i would see more and more things of the same nature like panty shots of underage japanese school girls and thinking nothing of it would save them too but one day straight up cp would show up in the search and I would keep telling myself that there is no way this cp and just be in denial i would not save but i would keep scrolling and eventually started to report every page that would have this but i would still search the same searches, eventually seeing more cp and reporting the pages, I would never lay a hand on a child but actually seeing this would always be an indicator to stop watching porn for the day.
2 days ago I came to the conclusion that i have an extreme porn addiction and I truly cannot express in words how bad i feel. Feeling sick to my stomach, suicidal and so anxiety ridden I have deleted every single picture, video, account, and application,off of my phone and haven’t masturbated or watched porn, sometimes i find my self shaking with guilt, my only solace and comfort is blaming this on my addiction and basically knowing i will never marry or have children because of what I have seen/masturbated to. To wrap this up my current plan is to hopefully get a job and once i am financially stable i want to go to therapy and one day eventually open up to some select few friends and family, i am not good at writing/typing so if you guys want more clarification ask ahead also there is alot more things i wanted to say but i think for now this is fine.
2024.06.09 07:41 Sweet-Count2557 15 Best Places to Get Scientific With Kids in Nyc
 | 15 Best Places to Get Scientific With Kids in Nyc Are you ready to embark on a scientific adventure with your kids in the vibrant city of New York? Well, hold onto your laboratory goggles because we've got a thrilling lineup of the 15 best places where young minds can dive deep into the wonders of science.From interactive exhibits that will leave them in awe to STEM centers that will ignite their curiosity, we've got it all covered. So, put on your thinking caps and get ready to explore a world of discovery and exploration that will captivate both young and young-at-heart.Key TakeawaysThere are several top science museums near NYC, including the New York Hall of Science, American Museum of Natural History, Museum of Illusions, Museum of Mathematics, and Liberty Science Center.These museums offer a range of interactive exhibits, hands-on activities, and educational experiences for kids and adults.In addition to museums, there are also science-centered stores in NYC, such as Astro West and Evolution, where collectors can find minerals, fossils, and unique artifacts.NYC also has STEM centers and maker spaces like Brooklyn Robot Foundry, Beam Center, Robofun, Dazzling Discoveries, and The Geek Forest, which provide STEM education, classes, and workshops for different age groups.New York Hall of ScienceThe New York Hall of Science, located in Flushing, Queens, offers an exciting and interactive experience for both children and adults alike. At the Hall, visitors can explore hands-on exhibits and learn about sustainable farming. With over 400 activities and interactive exhibits, there's something for everyone to enjoy.One of the highlights of the New York Hall of Science is the Connected Worlds exhibit. This immersive experience allows visitors to interact with a digital ecosystem, where their actions have real-time effects on the environment. Kids can learn about the delicate balance of ecosystems and the importance of conservation through this engaging exhibit.Another exciting feature of the Hall is Rocket Park Mini Golf. This 18-hole miniature golf course combines the fun of a game with the educational aspects of space exploration. Each hole is themed after a different rocket or spacecraft, providing a unique learning experience as you make your way through the course.But the New York Hall of Science isn't just about fun and games. It also offers opportunities to learn about sustainable farming through its exhibits. Visitors can explore the Science Barge, a sustainable urban farm powered by renewable energy sources. Here, you can discover how technology can help us live more sustainably and learn about innovative farming techniques.American Museum of Natural HistoryAs we move from exploring the New York Hall of Science, let's now venture into the fascinating world of the American Museum of Natural History. This iconic museum, located on the Upper West Side, offers a multitude of interactive exhibits that will captivate both kids and adults alike. Here are five reasons why the American Museum of Natural History is a must-visit destination for anyone interested in science and exploration:Dinosaur fossils: Step back in time as you come face-to-face with the towering skeletons of T-Rex and Triceratops. The museum's extensive collection of dinosaur fossils is sure to ignite the imagination of young paleontologists.Space exploration: Journey through the cosmos at the Hayden Planetarium, where you can witness breathtaking shows that transport you to distant galaxies. Learn about the wonders of our universe and the latest discoveries in space exploration.Hands-on learning: The museum offers a range of interactive exhibits that allow visitors to engage with scientific concepts firsthand. From the Discovery Room, where kids can touch real specimens, to the Hall of Biodiversity, where they can explore Earth's diverse ecosystems, there are endless opportunities for hands-on learning.Educational programs: The American Museum of Natural History is dedicated to STEM education and offers a variety of programs for students of all ages. From workshops and camps to school field trips, these programs provide engaging and immersive experiences that inspire a love for science and exploration.Special exhibitions: In addition to its permanent collections, the museum regularly hosts traveling exhibitions that bring new and exciting experiences to visitors. From exploring the depths of the ocean to uncovering the mysteries of ancient civilizations, these special exhibitions offer a fresh perspective on the world around us.With its interactive exhibits, educational programs, and captivating displays, the American Museum of Natural History is a treasure trove of scientific knowledge. Whether you're a budding scientist or simply curious about the wonders of the natural world, this museum is sure to leave you in awe.Museum of IllusionsGet ready to be amazed at the Museum of Illusions, where optical illusions come to life and challenge our perception of reality. This unique museum offers a fascinating exploration of the science behind illusions, while providing plenty of fun photo ops for the whole family to enjoy.At the Museum of Illusions, you'll have the opportunity to experience mind-bending illusions that will leave you questioning what you see. From rooms that defy gravity to mirrors that distort your reflection, each exhibit is designed to showcase the tricks our minds can play on us. But don't worry, there's a scientific explanation behind every illusion, and the museum provides explanations to help you understand the science at work.To give you a taste of what you can expect at the Museum of Illusions, here's a sneak peek at some of their most popular exhibits:ExhibitDescriptionScience Behind ItAmes RoomStep into this room and watch as people shrink or grow in size right before your eyes.The room is cleverly designed with distorted walls and floors to create an optical illusion of changing heights.Infinity RoomEnter this room and be captivated by an endless reflection of yourself in every direction.Mirrors are strategically placed to create the illusion of infinite space.Rotating TunnelWalk through this tunnel and feel like you're being spun around, even though you're standing still.The tunnel is designed with a spiral pattern that tricks your brain into perceiving motion.With its combination of entertainment and education, the Museum of Illusions offers a truly unique experience for families looking to have some fun while learning about the science behind illusions. So grab your camera and get ready to explore the fascinating world of optical illusions.Museum of MathematicsAfter exploring the fascinating world of illusions at the Museum of Illusions, it's time to venture into the realm of numbers and shapes at the Museum of Mathematics. At this innovative museum, kids can engage in a variety of hands-on math activities that make learning fun and exciting. Here are some highlights of what the Museum of Mathematics has to offer:Mathematical Puzzles: The museum is filled with mind-bending puzzles that challenge kids to think critically and problem solve. Whether it's solving a Rubik's Cube or unraveling a complex maze, these puzzles will keep young minds engaged and entertained.Hands-on Math Activities: From building geometric shapes with magnetic tiles to exploring the concept of symmetry through interactive exhibits, the museum provides a wide range of activities that allow kids to explore math in a tangible and interactive way. They can even participate in live demonstrations and workshops led by math experts.Interactive Displays: The museum features a range of interactive displays that bring mathematical concepts to life. Kids can manipulate shapes and patterns, create their own fractals, and even experience the thrill of riding a square-wheeled tricycle on a specially designed track.Math Art: The Museum of Mathematics also showcases the beauty of math through its collection of math-inspired artwork. Kids can marvel at intricate sculptures and stunning visual representations of mathematical concepts, inspiring them to see the artistic side of numbers.Real-world Applications: The museum highlights the practical applications of math in everyday life. Kids can explore how math is used in architecture, design, and even music. They can also learn about the role of math in technology and innovation, fostering a deeper appreciation for the subject.With its engaging exhibits, challenging puzzles, and hands-on activities, the Museum of Mathematics is a must-visit destination for kids who want to explore the wonders of math in a fun and interactive way. So grab your little mathematicians and get ready for an educational adventure like no other.Science BargeThe Science Barge in Yonkers, New York, offers visitors a unique and sustainable experience that showcases the power of renewable energy and urban farming. As you step aboard the barge, you'll be greeted by a lush and vibrant oasis floating on the Hudson River. This self-sustaining farm relies on renewable energy sources to power its operations and provides a fascinating insight into sustainable farming practices.One of the highlights of the Science Barge is its hydroponic greenhouse. Instead of soil, plants are grown in water enriched with essential nutrients, allowing them to thrive without the need for traditional farming methods. This innovative approach not only conserves water but also reduces the need for pesticides and herbicides, making it an environmentally friendly alternative. Kids will love getting up close and personal with the plants, learning about the science behind hydroponics, and even tasting some freshly grown produce.The barge also features solar panels and wind turbines that generate the energy needed to power the farm. This renewable energy system not only reduces the barge's carbon footprint but also serves as an educational tool for visitors to learn about sustainable energy sources. It's a hands-on experience that shows how we can harness the power of nature to create a greener and more sustainable future.The Science Barge is more than just a farm; it's a living laboratory where kids and adults alike can explore the intersection of science, technology, and sustainability. From workshops and guided tours to interactive exhibits and educational programs, there's something for everyone to learn and engage with.Liberty Science CenterAs we explore the world of science and sustainability on the Science Barge, our next stop takes us to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey. Here, we've the opportunity to dive into a wide range of interactive exhibits with our kids, making learning a fun and engaging experience.At the Liberty Science Center, we can explore exhibits that showcase the wonders of our planet and the universe. From the largest planetarium in the Western Hemisphere to the thrilling Infinity Climber, there's something for everyone. We can learn about the Hudson River ecosystem in the 'Our Hudson Home' exhibit and even participate in interactive skyscraper exhibits to understand the engineering behind these towering structures.One of the highlights of our visit is the chance to learn about sustainable farming, just like we did on the Science Barge. The Liberty Science Center provides valuable insights into how sustainable farming practices can have a positive impact on the environment. We can discover the importance of renewable energy sources and how they can power urban farms, promoting a greener and more sustainable future.Getting to the Liberty Science Center is a breeze, as it's easily accessible via the Path to New Jersey and light rail. And with the center constantly hosting traveling exhibitions, there's always something new and exciting to experience.With so much to see and do, it's impossible to see everything in just one visit. So, let's grab our kids and embark on an adventure of exploration, discovery, and scientific wonder at the Liberty Science Center.Astro WestLet's now explore the fascinating world of Astro West, a store in the Upper West Side of NYC that specializes in minerals, fossils, and meteorites, offering a wide range of unique items for collectors. Astro West is a treasure trove for anyone interested in celestial collectibles and stellar souvenirs. From stunning crystals to ancient fossils, this store has something for everyone.To give you a taste of what Astro West has to offer, here is a table showcasing some of their most intriguing items:ItemDescriptionPriceMeteoriteA piece of outer space that has fallen to Earth, providing a tangible connection to the cosmos.$100-$500Ammonite FossilThe spiral-shaped remains of an extinct marine animal, perfect for fossil enthusiasts.$50-$200Quartz CrystalKnown as the "master healer," quartz crystals are believed to have powerful energy properties.$20-$100Trilobite FossilThese ancient arthropods roamed the seas hundreds of millions of years ago. A true fossil marvel.$30-$150Whether you're a seasoned collector or just starting your journey into the wonders of the universe, Astro West is the place to find unique and captivating pieces. The store's knowledgeable staff can guide you through their vast inventory and help you find the perfect addition to your collection. Plus, their prices are reasonable, making it accessible to all.Astro West is more than just a store; it's a gateway to a world of discovery and imagination. So, if you're looking for celestial collectibles or stellar souvenirs, make sure to visit Astro West and let your scientific curiosity take flight.EvolutionAfter exploring the fascinating world of Astro West and its celestial collectibles, let's now journey into the realm of Evolution. Evolution is the scientific study of how living organisms have changed over time, and it plays a crucial role in understanding the origins and adaptations of all life forms.Here are five key aspects of Evolution that will help you dive deeper into this captivating subject:Origin and Adaptation: Evolution explores how life on Earth originated and how different species have adapted to survive in their environments. It delves into the processes of natural selection, genetic mutations, and environmental pressures that shape the characteristics of living organisms.Genetics: Genetics is a fundamental aspect of Evolution, as it examines how genetic information is passed down from one generation to the next. Understanding the principles of inheritance and genetic variation helps scientists unravel the mechanisms behind evolutionary changes.Evolutionary Biology: This branch of biology focuses specifically on the study of Evolution. It investigates the patterns, processes, and mechanisms of how species evolve and diversify over time, shedding light on the intricate web of life on our planet.Fossil Record: Fossils provide tangible evidence of past life forms and allow scientists to reconstruct the evolutionary history of different species. By studying fossils, researchers can uncover clues about extinct organisms and their relationships to present-day species.Comparative Anatomy: Comparative anatomy examines the similarities and differences in the anatomical structures of different species. By comparing the anatomy of various organisms, scientists can uncover evolutionary relationships and trace the development of traits across species.Exploring the fascinating world of Evolution will open your eyes to the intricate processes that have shaped life on Earth. From the origins of life to the incredible adaptations of different species, Evolution offers a captivating glimpse into the wonders of the natural world.Brooklyn Robot FoundryWe were thrilled to discover the Brooklyn Robot Foundry, a STEM education center in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where kids can explore the exciting world of robotics and engineering through hands-on classes, camps, and workshops. At the Brooklyn Robot Foundry, children have the opportunity to engage in hands-on learning activities that foster creativity, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking.One of the key benefits of STEM education is that it prepares children for the future by equipping them with the skills needed in an increasingly technology-driven world. The hands-on learning activities at the Brooklyn Robot Foundry allow kids to actively participate in the learning process, gaining practical experience and developing a deeper understanding of STEM concepts. By building their own robots and engineering projects, children are able to see firsthand how science, technology, engineering, and math are all interconnected.The Brooklyn Robot Foundry offers a variety of classes, camps, and workshops tailored to different age groups, ensuring that children of all ages can benefit from their programs. Whether it's building a robot that can navigate a maze or designing a circuit that powers a lightbulb, the hands-on nature of the activities at the Brooklyn Robot Foundry keeps kids engaged and excited about learning.In addition to the educational aspect, the Brooklyn Robot Foundry also fosters a sense of community. Children have the opportunity to work collaboratively with their peers, sharing ideas and learning from one another. This not only enhances their social skills but also teaches them the value of teamwork and cooperation.Beam CenterContinuing our exploration of STEM education centers in NYC, let's now turn our attention to the Beam Center, located in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The Beam Center is a unique space that offers a wide range of interactive installations and apprenticeship opportunities for young minds to explore and create.Here are some highlights of what you can expect at the Beam Center:Interactive installations: The Beam Center is known for its captivating and interactive installations. From large-scale sculptures to immersive multimedia experiences, these installations provide a hands-on approach to learning and creativity. Kids have the freedom to explore and interact with these installations, fostering a sense of curiosity and discovery.Apprenticeship opportunities: At the Beam Center, high-school-aged apprentices have the chance to work on real-world projects alongside skilled professionals. Through these apprenticeships, young individuals gain valuable technical skills and hands-on experience in fields like woodworking, metalworking, electronics, and more. It's an opportunity to learn by doing and be part of a collaborative and supportive community.Hands-on workshops: The Beam Center offers a variety of hands-on workshops that cover a wide range of topics. From woodworking and robotics to digital fabrication and coding, these workshops provide an engaging and interactive learning experience. Kids have the freedom to experiment, problem-solve, and unleash their creativity in a supportive environment.Community events: The Beam Center hosts community events that bring together kids, families, and educators. These events provide opportunities for collaboration, networking, and showcasing the incredible work that young minds have accomplished. It's a chance to celebrate the power of creativity and innovation.Science education: Beyond the hands-on experiences and apprenticeships, the Beam Center is also committed to building science educators. They offer training programs and resources for teachers, empowering them to incorporate hands-on and project-based learning into their classrooms.The Beam Center is a place where freedom, creativity, and learning come together. Whether your child is interested in art, science, technology, or all of the above, the Beam Center offers a dynamic and inspiring environment to explore, create, and grow.RobofunLocated in the Upper West Side of NYC, Robofun is a STEM-focused learning center that offers a wide range of classes and workshops for preschool-aged children, igniting their curiosity and passion for robotics and technology. At Robofun, kids have the opportunity to participate in STEM inspired art activities while exploring engineering concepts.Robofun's classes and workshops are designed to engage children in hands-on learning experiences that foster creativity and critical thinking. Through activities like building robots with LEGO bricks and programming them to perform tasks, children develop problem-solving skills and gain a deeper understanding of engineering principles. The center also offers stop-motion animation classes, where kids can bring their own stories to life using technology and their imagination.What sets Robofun apart is its emphasis on combining science, technology, engineering, and art. By integrating art into STEM activities, children are encouraged to think outside the box and approach challenges from different perspectives. This interdisciplinary approach not only enhances their creativity but also helps them develop a holistic understanding of how different disciplines intersect and complement each other.Whether it's constructing a robot, designing a stop-motion animation, or engaging in other STEM activities, children at Robofun are encouraged to explore, experiment, and express themselves freely. The center provides a supportive and inclusive environment where kids can unleash their creativity and develop a lifelong love for science and technology.Dazzling DiscoveriesAt Dazzling Discoveries in the Upper West Side of NYC, we offer a variety of after-school classes, camps, and drop-in workshops for both kids and adults, providing engaging and hands-on learning experiences in subjects like sewing, coding, and more.Here are some reasons why hands-on learning is so beneficial for kids:Active Engagement: Hands-on learning actively engages kids in the learning process, allowing them to explore, experiment, and discover new concepts on their own. This active engagement enhances their understanding and retention of the material.Practical Application: Hands-on learning allows kids to apply what they've learned to real-life situations, helping them see the relevance and practicality of science education. This practical application fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills.Creativity and Innovation: Hands-on learning encourages kids to think outside the box, fostering creativity and innovation. By engaging in hands-on activities, kids can explore their own ideas and find unique solutions to problems.Collaboration and Communication: Hands-on learning often involves group work, promoting collaboration and communication skills. Kids learn to work together, share ideas, and communicate effectively, which are essential skills for success in the scientific community and beyond.Long-lasting Interest in Science: Hands-on learning ignites curiosity and fosters a love for science among young minds. By providing engaging and interactive experiences, kids are more likely to develop a lifelong interest in science and pursue further education and careers in STEM fields.At Dazzling Discoveries, we believe in the importance of science education for young minds. Our hands-on approach ensures that kids not only learn scientific concepts but also develop essential skills that will benefit them throughout their lives.Come join us and let your child's imagination soar!The Geek ForestAfter exploring the benefits of hands-on learning at Dazzling Discoveries, let's now venture into the exciting world of The Geek Forest. The Geek Forest is a haven for geek culture and education, where children and adults alike can immerse themselves in technology and creativity. At The Geek Forest, the possibilities are endless, as they offer a wide range of classes and workshops on video game development, coding, 3D art, and animation.To give you a glimpse into the diverse offerings at The Geek Forest, here is a table showcasing some of their most popular classes:ClassAge RangeVideo Game Development8 and upCoding6 and up3D Art10 and upAnimation12 and upWith these classes, The Geek Forest aims to foster a love for technology while encouraging creativity and critical thinking skills. They understand that geek culture is not just about consuming media, but also about actively participating and creating in the digital world.The Geek Forest is a place where freedom is celebrated. It provides a safe space for individuals to explore their passions and learn at their own pace. Whether your child is a budding programmer or an aspiring artist, The Geek Forest offers a supportive environment where they can thrive.Science-Centered Stores in NYCIf you're in NYC and looking for a unique and educational shopping experience, explore the fascinating world of science-centered stores. These stores not only offer a wide range of products, but also provide an opportunity to learn and explore the wonders of science.Here are five reasons why science-centered stores in NYC are worth a visit:Exploring the science behind optical illusions in NYC: The Museum of Illusions in Chelsea is a must-visit for anyone interested in the intriguing world of optical illusions. This store provides a fun and quirky experience, with explanations of the science behind each illusion. Get ready for some mind-bending photo-ops!Collecting unique artifacts and fossils in science-centered stores in NYC: Astro West in Upper West Side and Evolution in Soho are two science-centered stores that specialize in unique artifacts and fossils. From bones and mounted insects to minerals and meteorites, these stores offer a treasure trove for collectors and science enthusiasts alike.Learning while shopping: Science-centered stores go beyond just selling products. They provide educational resources and information about the items they offer. Whether it's a book on dinosaurs or a kit to conduct experiments at home, these stores are a great way to learn while shopping.Supporting local businesses: By visiting science-centered stores, you aren't only supporting local businesses but also contributing to the promotion of science education. These stores often collaborate with schools and educational institutions, making a positive impact in the community.Inspiring curiosity and creativity: Science-centered stores are filled with fascinating objects and materials that can spark curiosity and creativity in both children and adults. From intricate fossils to colorful minerals, these stores offer a world of inspiration for aspiring scientists and artists.STEM Centers and Maker Spaces in NYCSTEM Centers and Maker Spaces in NYC offer a wealth of opportunities for hands-on learning and creative exploration in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. These spaces aren't just for kids, as there are also maker spaces for adults and STEM programs specifically designed for teens.For adults who are interested in tinkering and creating, there are several maker spaces in NYC that provide the tools and resources needed to bring ideas to life. These spaces often have workshops and classes where adults can learn new skills and collaborate with others who share their interests. Whether it's woodworking, electronics, or 3D printing, there are maker spaces in NYC that cater to a wide range of interests.Teens who are passionate about STEM subjects can also find a variety of programs and resources in NYC. Many STEM centers offer specialized programs for teens, where they can engage in hands-on projects and experiments, work with cutting-edge technology, and learn from experts in the field. These programs often focus on real-world applications of STEM principles, allowing teens to see the relevance and impact of their studies.STEM centers and maker spaces in NYC provide an environment that encourages freedom and creativity. They offer a space where individuals can explore their interests, learn new skills, and collaborate with others who share their passion for science and innovation. Whether you're an adult looking to pursue a new hobby or a teen seeking to deepen your understanding of STEM, these centers and spaces in NYC are sure to inspire and ignite your curiosity.Frequently Asked QuestionsAre There Any Special Discounts or Promotions Available for Admission to the New York Hall of Science or Any of the Other Science Museums in Nyc?There are special offers and discounts available for admission to the New York Hall of Science and other science museums in NYC.Promotions for the New York Hall of Science can vary, so it's best to check their website or contact them directly for the most up-to-date information.Other science museums in NYC may also offer special discounts or promotions, so it's worth exploring their websites or contacting them to see what deals are available.Are the Exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History Suitable for Children of All Ages, or Are There Specific Exhibits Geared Towards Younger or Older Kids?At the American Museum of Natural History, you won't believe the incredible exhibits suitable for all ages! From towering dinosaurs to mesmerizing space shows, there's something for everyone.Younger kids will love the interactive learning experiences, like the Discovery Room and the Butterfly Conservatory.Older kids can explore the Hall of Human Origins and delve into the mysteries of the universe at the Hayden Planetarium.Get ready for a mind-blowing adventure that will ignite curiosity and inspire young minds!Can Visitors Take Photographs Inside the Museum of Illusions, or Is Photography Prohibited?At the Museum of Illusions in NYC, photography is allowed! You can capture all the fun and quirky photo-ops with your camera. It's a great way to remember your visit and share the science behind each optical illusion with your friends and family.Does the Museum of Mathematics Offer Any Programs or Workshops Specifically Designed for Adults, or Are They Primarily Focused on Children?At the Museum of Mathematics, they offer programs and workshops specifically designed for adults, in addition to their focus on children. It's great to see that they cater to all age groups, providing opportunities for adults to engage in STEM learning.As for STEM centers and maker spaces in NYC, it's important to note that age restrictions may vary. Some places like Brooklyn Robot Foundry and Robofun offer classes for preschool-aged children, while others like Beam Center and The Geek Forest are geared towards high-school-aged apprentices.Are There Any Restrictions on the Age Range for Children Attending Classes or Workshops at the STEM Centers and Maker Spaces in Nyc?Age restrictions vary among STEM centers and maker spaces in NYC. Some centers offer classes and workshops specifically designed for certain age groups, while others have programs that cater to a wide range of ages. It's important to check with each center to understand their specific age requirements and offerings.Additionally, some centers may offer discounts and promotions for certain age groups or specific workshops. It's always a good idea to inquire about any available discounts when booking classes or workshops.ConclusionIn the bustling streets of NYC, there's a world of discovery waiting for young minds.From the awe-inspiring exhibits at the New York Hall of Science and the American Museum of Natural History to the hands-on activities at STEM centers like the Brooklyn Robot Foundry, children can explore the wonders of science and ignite their imaginations.So, come and join us on this scientific adventure, where curiosity knows no bounds and the love for learning is nurtured.Let's inspire a lifelong passion for science together! submitted by Sweet-Count2557 to worldkidstravel [link] [comments] |
2024.06.09 06:17 Public_Smoke9597 AITAH for ending my friendship cuz of my friend’s gf?
AITAH for ending my friendship cuz of my friend’s gf?
I(28F) have been friends with with Kevin(26M) for almost 4yrs. I’ve been with my boyfriend Daniel(24M) for 4yrs so naturally Daniel & Kevin became close like brothers. Daniel, Kevin & I have been living together for 3yrs. Kevin has been dating Natalie(22F) for less than a year.
submitted by Public_Smoke9597 to dustythunder [link] [comments]
I(28F) have been friends with with Kevin(26M) for almost 4yrs. I’ve been with my boyfriend Daniel(24M) for 4yrs so naturally Daniel & Kevin became close like brothers. Daniel, Kevin & I have been living together for 3yrs. Kevin has been dating Natalie(22F) for less than a year.
At first we loved having her over she was sweet,talkative, friendly and I was looking forward to having a new girl friend. Until we started to notice her toxic behavior. I’ll give some examples: she goes thru his phone, if he came to our house instead of hanging out in the living room with the rest of us she’d go to Kevin’s room and if he didn’t follow her she’d pick a fight, if he didn’t respond to her texts sometimes he did warn her ahead of time cuz he’d be busy with work, school or helping us out with something she’d blow up his phone and would cry and yell hysterically, if he had class on her day off she would sit in her car in the school’s parking lot for the 5hrs he’d be in class. What really concerned me was she went thru his posts, likes and comments on Instagram, she began to stalk and harass (a girl he actually knew not a random girl) cuz he made too many comments on her posts( long before they got together). She ended her friendship with Kevin cuz of Natalie’s harassment. After noticing this behavior we have asked him if he’s happy he admitted he isn’t but isn’t willing to give up on their relationship. We don’t want to butt in and give advice cuz we don’t think it’s our place and we don’t want her to think we’re advising him to break up with her. But later Daniel found out that she looks down on our relationship cuz of our sense of humor and how we shit talk to each other and she has called Daniel some derogatory names cuz after hanging out Kevin didn’t go to her car right away cuz he got caught up in a conversation with Daniel(not about her). She later “apologized” and claimed she said it out of anger. Then I noticed that when I would text Kevin about household related things (ie rent & chores) he wouldn’t text me but would tell Daniel the answer to my question and ask him to pass it to me. I admit I became paranoid that Natalie was stalking my social media even though she knows who I am and that I’m with Daniel but my concerns got the best of me so I blocked her. A few days after I blocked Natalie I tried to message Kevin on Facebook and it said “15 mutual friends. You and Kevin are not friends on Facebook” so I told Daniel and he questioned Kevin about it & he had no clue. It turns out that Natalie went thru his social media and unfriended me on all his accounts cuz I blocked her, she claimed she did it out of anger. I unblocked her and limited my contact with Kevin to ease her issues. But he hasn’t tried to add me back or replied to my texts but will still answer them thru Daniel, nor has she tried to apologize for going thru his social media. I felt like she put an end to our friendship so I sent him a lengthy text apologizing for blocking Natalie cuz I didn’t know it would trigger her, that I couldn’t continue being friends with him due to Natalie’s toxic behavior and me feeling unsafe & uncomfortable and I would block him to ease her issues. He replied saying that this is coming out of nowhere, how Natalie never had an issue with me, that she wasn’t stalking my social media, claimed I only blocked her after finding out what she said about Daniel, she’s never done anything to make me feel unsafe or uncomfortable and that she’s always been respectful. I haven’t responded. AITAH for ending our friendship?
2024.06.09 05:43 GenX2XADHD How to Write a Paper When You Have ADHD
Getting organized to sit down and write a major term paper is such a daunting task for us folks with ADHD. As a student I would have vague ideas of what I want to write, but lacked the executive function to get to the job done. I would stare at a blank Word doc, type a sentence, delete a sentence, repeat. Unexpected for a writing major, I know. Are you looking for a way to break out of this cycle?
May I present: the Index Card Method.
As a high school student in the 1990s, I was forced to use this method to write a ten page senior thesis. Nearly all senior level English classes in my school used this method. Prior to that year, I had seen students carrying around fat stacks of index cards, protecting them like their ability to graduate depended on them. It did. I begrudgingly followed this methodical approach even though it wasn't "the way I write." Ironically, I found it so helpful I continued using this method throughout college, and admittedly even in grad school 25 years later.
What is it?
It's a low-tech system of organizing your sources, topics, details, citations, and anything else that goes into your paper.
Why low-tech?
It is a hands-on process loaded with sensory actions. Physically handling and arranging the index cards helps me focus on a task. Filling out an index card and setting it aside and then picking up another FEELS productive. Seeing a growing pile of index cards as you move through the project LOOKS like productivity. These sensory activities boost my momentum.
The best part of this method is how it breaks down a mountain of a project into smaller tasks without requiring me to create a big plan before I can start working on it. The size of each task is literally the size of an index card. Plus, it is an opportunity to use those cool pens you bought the last time you said you would start journaling.
The Index Card Method cannot be done the night before a paper is due, at least I wouldn't try it anyway. If you don't like writing outlines or drafts, give this method a try - but if you're cramming, do give yourself a week to get it done.
How does it work?
Do not get 150 4x6 cards. They must be 3x5.
For this post, I will assume anyone following this method is using lined index cards. It does not matter if the cards are lined, but know that when I say "On the top line write..." I mean where the actual top line of the card would be. This also means you will be writing across width of the cards in landscape orientation, meaning a full line of text on a 3x5 card runs 5 inches, not 3 inches.
There are two simple, but vital rules to remember when creating cards.
In the center of the top line of your thesis card, write "Thesis Statement."
Now write your thesis statement below that.
Topics should be broad, written as one or two words. Create as many topic cards as you think you will need. You can always create more later, so don't get stuck on this part.
Example: topics related to a thesis on the healthcare industry may include: Insurance, Costs, Medicare, Medicaid, Prevention, Prescription Drugs, Hospitals, etc.
Split a topic if you need to. "Costs" could also be split into "Consumer Costs" and "National Costs", then "Insurance" and "Prescription Drugs".
Don't expect to have a lot of topic cards at this point. You may only have one or two subtopics for each broad topic. This is fine. You can always add more as you go along.
Take a picture of your topic cards in this arrangement.
Congratulations, you just made an outline!
Now type it out. Title it "Preliminary Outline."
In the upper left hand corner of the card on the top line, write the number "1", as it is your first Bibliography card. This is your source ID.
Now write the complete and proper reference of your source, formatted according to your citation style. Include doi links, if applicable. Where italic font is used in a citation, underline it on your card.
Open a new document file. Title it "References", "Works Cited", etc., depending on your citation style. Type out your bibliography cards in the order appropriate to your citation style. Most likely they will be alphabetical by author. As you find more sources and write out bibliography cards, add them to this document.
About citation styles:
A citation style is a way to reference your sources, specifically how you list them out and how you identify where you found a fact or quote.
If you are in highschool, your teacher will tell you how to write write and format sources and citations. If they don't, ask.
If you are an undergrad, most professors don't care which style you choose, but they want it consistent. If this is the case, I recommend using APA or MLA because they use simple, in-line citations.
If you are a graduate student, use the appropriate style for your field. If your reference style uses foot notes or end notes, please be aware you may need to create citation IDs later to help you stay organized.
This is where I would normally say it does not matter if your sources are printed or digital, but for many of us it does matter. Stepping away from technology is one the reasons I find this method so effective. I encourage you to print articles or photocopy sources when possible.
Your school likely has access to full-text articles online that can be downloaded as PDFs and printed later.
If your source is text from a website, right click on in the body of the text and select Print. When the print window pops up, select PDF (or Adobe PDF) as your printer. In the next pop up, select where you would like to store your file. Your source is now saved as a PDF. By the way, printing to a PDF is the easiest way to save a file while maintaining its formatting. Try it from any program. Now when you print it to paper, it will look like the PDF.
In the upper left corner on the top line, write the source ID that matches the one on its respective bibliography card.
In the upper right corner on the top line of each card write the page number(s) from your source as "p 87" or "pp 87-88". If your source does not have page numbers, write your source's equivalent as it applies (act/scene numbers, time stamp, etc.). Look up a style reference guide for requirements.
Now in your own words, write about an area you highlighted. If you want to directly quote the article, make sure you use quotation marks. Otherwise, simply paraphrase it. Use complete sentences.
If you are copying a long quote and run out of room on a card, write the topic, source ID, and page number on another new card and continue writing your quote. In the bottom right corners write "1 of 2" and "2 of 2" respectively.
Create bibliography and detail cards for all your sources. Find more sources as needed. For a 10-page double spaced paper, expect to have around 150-200 detail cards.
By this time you may also want to combine or eliminate topics because your project took a different direction from when you first wrote them. This is fine.
When you think you have enough detail cards, sort them into piles by topic. Now arrange your detail cards in columns under their topics in a way that makes sense to you.
Take a picture of all your cards in this arrangement.
Congratulations, you just layed out your final outline!
You should not have anything in your final outline that is not written down on an index card.
Now print it . Proofread it. Ask a friend to proofread it. Mark it up and make any necessary changes on paper. Don't change any quoted text because quotes are ...well ...quotes.
Your paper is done.
High school students, if your teacher doesn't think you've made enough changes between your draft and your final copy, hand over your stack of index cards, both outlines, and your highlighted sources. They will know you didn't use ChatGPT or copy someone else's work because you can't fake what you've just handed to them.
Edit: See my other post for a technique that harnesses your ADHD to help you organize a project or to present new ideas to a group.
https://www.reddit.com/TwoXADHD/s/Y4pUfQR0R3
submitted by GenX2XADHD to TwoXADHD [link] [comments]
May I present: the Index Card Method.
As a high school student in the 1990s, I was forced to use this method to write a ten page senior thesis. Nearly all senior level English classes in my school used this method. Prior to that year, I had seen students carrying around fat stacks of index cards, protecting them like their ability to graduate depended on them. It did. I begrudgingly followed this methodical approach even though it wasn't "the way I write." Ironically, I found it so helpful I continued using this method throughout college, and admittedly even in grad school 25 years later.
What is it?
It's a low-tech system of organizing your sources, topics, details, citations, and anything else that goes into your paper.
Why low-tech?
It is a hands-on process loaded with sensory actions. Physically handling and arranging the index cards helps me focus on a task. Filling out an index card and setting it aside and then picking up another FEELS productive. Seeing a growing pile of index cards as you move through the project LOOKS like productivity. These sensory activities boost my momentum.
The best part of this method is how it breaks down a mountain of a project into smaller tasks without requiring me to create a big plan before I can start working on it. The size of each task is literally the size of an index card. Plus, it is an opportunity to use those cool pens you bought the last time you said you would start journaling.
The Index Card Method cannot be done the night before a paper is due, at least I wouldn't try it anyway. If you don't like writing outlines or drafts, give this method a try - but if you're cramming, do give yourself a week to get it done.
How does it work?
Step 1: Cards
Get some 3x5 index cards. For a 10-page, double spaced paper, you will need around 300 cards.Do not get 150 4x6 cards. They must be 3x5.
For this post, I will assume anyone following this method is using lined index cards. It does not matter if the cards are lined, but know that when I say "On the top line write..." I mean where the actual top line of the card would be. This also means you will be writing across width of the cards in landscape orientation, meaning a full line of text on a 3x5 card runs 5 inches, not 3 inches.
There are two simple, but vital rules to remember when creating cards.
- Only write on one side of the card. Leave the other side blank. You will need to see all of a card's contents at a quick glance.
- If you make a mistake on a card, immediately tear it in half so it doesn't get mixed up with the ones you want to keep.
Step 2: Thesis card
You will only have a thesis card if you are writing a thesis (argument) paper.In the center of the top line of your thesis card, write "Thesis Statement."
Now write your thesis statement below that.
Step 3: Topic cards
In the center of the top line write "Topic." Below that, write the name of a topic related to your thesis statement.Topics should be broad, written as one or two words. Create as many topic cards as you think you will need. You can always create more later, so don't get stuck on this part.
Example: topics related to a thesis on the healthcare industry may include: Insurance, Costs, Medicare, Medicaid, Prevention, Prescription Drugs, Hospitals, etc.
Step 4: First Layout
Spread out your topic cards on a table. Select the broadest topics and line them up in a row in the order in which you would like them in your paper. Now arrange the narrower topics in columns below the broad topics in the order that makes sense to you. Using the example of the healthcare industry in the previous step, "Costs" may be a broad topic with "Insurance" and "Prescription Drugs" listed beneath it.Split a topic if you need to. "Costs" could also be split into "Consumer Costs" and "National Costs", then "Insurance" and "Prescription Drugs".
Don't expect to have a lot of topic cards at this point. You may only have one or two subtopics for each broad topic. This is fine. You can always add more as you go along.
Take a picture of your topic cards in this arrangement.
Congratulations, you just made an outline!
Now type it out. Title it "Preliminary Outline."
Step 5: Sources
Go find sources you would like to use for your paper. When you find a source you would like to use, create a bibliography card.Step 6: Bibliography cards
In the center of the top line write "Bibliography".In the upper left hand corner of the card on the top line, write the number "1", as it is your first Bibliography card. This is your source ID.
Now write the complete and proper reference of your source, formatted according to your citation style. Include doi links, if applicable. Where italic font is used in a citation, underline it on your card.
Open a new document file. Title it "References", "Works Cited", etc., depending on your citation style. Type out your bibliography cards in the order appropriate to your citation style. Most likely they will be alphabetical by author. As you find more sources and write out bibliography cards, add them to this document.
About citation styles:
A citation style is a way to reference your sources, specifically how you list them out and how you identify where you found a fact or quote.
If you are in highschool, your teacher will tell you how to write write and format sources and citations. If they don't, ask.
If you are an undergrad, most professors don't care which style you choose, but they want it consistent. If this is the case, I recommend using APA or MLA because they use simple, in-line citations.
If you are a graduate student, use the appropriate style for your field. If your reference style uses foot notes or end notes, please be aware you may need to create citation IDs later to help you stay organized.
Step 7: Read and Highlight
As you read through your sources, highlight anything that stands out to you that you may want to use in your paper.This is where I would normally say it does not matter if your sources are printed or digital, but for many of us it does matter. Stepping away from technology is one the reasons I find this method so effective. I encourage you to print articles or photocopy sources when possible.
Your school likely has access to full-text articles online that can be downloaded as PDFs and printed later.
If your source is text from a website, right click on in the body of the text and select Print. When the print window pops up, select PDF (or Adobe PDF) as your printer. In the next pop up, select where you would like to store your file. Your source is now saved as a PDF. By the way, printing to a PDF is the easiest way to save a file while maintaining its formatting. Try it from any program. Now when you print it to paper, it will look like the PDF.
STEP 8: Detail cards
In the center of the top line write the topic related to the highlighted text. If you do not have a related topic card, make one.In the upper left corner on the top line, write the source ID that matches the one on its respective bibliography card.
In the upper right corner on the top line of each card write the page number(s) from your source as "p 87" or "pp 87-88". If your source does not have page numbers, write your source's equivalent as it applies (act/scene numbers, time stamp, etc.). Look up a style reference guide for requirements.
Now in your own words, write about an area you highlighted. If you want to directly quote the article, make sure you use quotation marks. Otherwise, simply paraphrase it. Use complete sentences.
If you are copying a long quote and run out of room on a card, write the topic, source ID, and page number on another new card and continue writing your quote. In the bottom right corners write "1 of 2" and "2 of 2" respectively.
Create bibliography and detail cards for all your sources. Find more sources as needed. For a 10-page double spaced paper, expect to have around 150-200 detail cards.
Step 9: Second Layout
Lay out all of your topic cards in the same order as your preliminary outline, only this time line them all up in one row.By this time you may also want to combine or eliminate topics because your project took a different direction from when you first wrote them. This is fine.
When you think you have enough detail cards, sort them into piles by topic. Now arrange your detail cards in columns under their topics in a way that makes sense to you.
Take a picture of all your cards in this arrangement.
Congratulations, you just layed out your final outline!
Step 10: Type Your Outline
Save a copy of your preliminary outline and title it "Final Outline." Fill in the text from the detail cards. Each detail card should be a separate bullet point on your outline. After typing out a detail card, add the citation at the end. You already know the source because you wrote the source number in the upper left hand corner of each card.You should not have anything in your final outline that is not written down on an index card.
Step 11: First Draft
Save a copy of your final outline and name it "First Draft." Now arrange your bullet points into paragraphs. This is your draft.Now print it . Proofread it. Ask a friend to proofread it. Mark it up and make any necessary changes on paper. Don't change any quoted text because quotes are ...well ...quotes.
Step 12: Final Copy
Save a copy of your First draft and name the file "Final Copy." Type the edits you handwrote on paper. I realize with today's technology a lot of proofreading and peer editing is done electronically. This is fine. If you're using Google Docs, be sure to use Suggestion Mode. If using Word, turn on Track Changes.Your paper is done.
High school students, if your teacher doesn't think you've made enough changes between your draft and your final copy, hand over your stack of index cards, both outlines, and your highlighted sources. They will know you didn't use ChatGPT or copy someone else's work because you can't fake what you've just handed to them.
Edit: See my other post for a technique that harnesses your ADHD to help you organize a project or to present new ideas to a group.
https://www.reddit.com/TwoXADHD/s/Y4pUfQR0R3
2024.06.09 05:28 Leadership-Various (19m) being gay is making me depressed..
Im so sorry for a long post but I just don't know where else to get this off my chest.. For years i've harbored so many thoughts and bad memories, seen so much hatred in the LGBT community and felt so disconnected from everyone, I genuinely feel like there is no path for me to take, and no future where i'll ever be happy. I wake up everyday and hate the fact i've told my family about my sexual orientation, I hate the overzealous, flamboyant gay media icons representing the community and twisting everyone's perception on how and what a gay person should be like. I hate being associated with the LGBT movement when anyone discovers i'm into men. I hate developing romantic and sexual feelings for guys i will never have a chance with. I fucking hate the fact that this is something a part of me that will never change no matter how hard i try, and i loathe myself every night knowing I never experienced the teen love and first romances that every straight couple in school had. But when it comes to the gay community, it just seems the entire culture is just about quick hookups and sex based relationships. It's absurd how easy it is to get sucked into the void of grooming and need for validation in the more mature side of the community, but This isn't at all what i want. The past 5 years i've been single, aside from a few sexual encounters because i wanted time to reflect on my identity and work on myself as a person (gym, making an income). But whenever i would see a straight couple in public, I can't help but be reminded of how toxic the LGBT community is, and will never experience the feeling of being desired romantically by someone for something other than sex. I daydream so often about different types of dates i would take my partner on, the interests and hobbies i would show them, the meals and treats i would want to cook when they feeling sick or down..To be there for them when they reach low points in life. I just don't understand why it's so difficult to find a person who would reciprocate the love Id give them. And this feeling of isolation, enviousness, and self hatred combined with drinking and smoking weed every night has driven me into suicidal tendencies which are unfortunately not new to me.
Since i've been a little kid, i had somewhat known i was different becuase I would find myself having a lot more.. interest in men's physiques on magazines and different websites due to unrestricted internet access many of us unfortunately had at such a young age. In middle school was when I started discovering my sexuality and identity as a whole. And for some god forsaken reason i thought it best to come out as gay, which word had eventually spread throughout school. looking back now, I was probably in the most confused point in my life. Shortly after, one of my best friends at the time had found out i had a crush on him, which once he confronted me he gave the typical straight guy "Ew what the fuck?" response. From then on he never talked to me again, which started the downward spiral into body dysmorphia and self hatred i'm sure all of us are familiar with. It was then I started mingling online with people who considered themselves part of the LGBT community in order to try and find people to help guide me in a sense. This would come to be one of my biggest regrets.
High school might have been the worst part of my life. I would, once again, lose my best friend after finding out i liked him. At this point too, i'd already spiraled into depression and feelings of isolation. It was then that i started talking to someone online that i met through some connections, and led to a mostly online relationship. We "dated" for nearly a year which was not much more than exchanging love messages and sending pictures to eachother. Yet the betrayal and abuse he would incite not only on me, but other people within our online circle led to everyone understandably hating and distrusting him. But i was so desperate for a relationship that i was blinded by illusion of love, and even though everyone tried to advise me to leave and stop talking to him i would just refuse. from talking to other guys behind my back to breaking up other people's relationships for his own amusement, i was stupid and desperate enough to love him through all of it. Eventually we would meet up. And i'd thought to myself that this was the happiest moment of my life, finally being able to meet the person i'd been in love with.. We even exchanged a kiss that night. But the morning after i would come to find pictures another guy in our circle sent to me of him getting f*cked by the same person i fell in love with. And in that moment, deep down i don't think i had ever felt lonelier and helpless in my entire life. In Junior year i switched to another high school. And I thought to myself that maybe I would have somewhat of a clean slate here. I would lie and tell everyone i was straight, make up fake scenarios of past girlfriends, and trying my best to make everyone think i was straight.
My entire fucking life has just been about hating my sexuality and existence. And Ever since this ordeal, everything has been a blur. I've no close friends to talk to any of this about. I feel so disconnected from my family which is an entire fucking can of worms on its own, and out of pure fucking unluck the only friend i do talk to, i've developed a crush on. He knows nothing of my sexual orientation and should he find out, i'm so scared to lose the last remaining person in my life who i can call a friend. I feel unworthy of life, and life is not worth living
I'm just gonna cut this short before it gets too long..
submitted by Leadership-Various to offmychest [link] [comments]
Since i've been a little kid, i had somewhat known i was different becuase I would find myself having a lot more.. interest in men's physiques on magazines and different websites due to unrestricted internet access many of us unfortunately had at such a young age. In middle school was when I started discovering my sexuality and identity as a whole. And for some god forsaken reason i thought it best to come out as gay, which word had eventually spread throughout school. looking back now, I was probably in the most confused point in my life. Shortly after, one of my best friends at the time had found out i had a crush on him, which once he confronted me he gave the typical straight guy "Ew what the fuck?" response. From then on he never talked to me again, which started the downward spiral into body dysmorphia and self hatred i'm sure all of us are familiar with. It was then I started mingling online with people who considered themselves part of the LGBT community in order to try and find people to help guide me in a sense. This would come to be one of my biggest regrets.
High school might have been the worst part of my life. I would, once again, lose my best friend after finding out i liked him. At this point too, i'd already spiraled into depression and feelings of isolation. It was then that i started talking to someone online that i met through some connections, and led to a mostly online relationship. We "dated" for nearly a year which was not much more than exchanging love messages and sending pictures to eachother. Yet the betrayal and abuse he would incite not only on me, but other people within our online circle led to everyone understandably hating and distrusting him. But i was so desperate for a relationship that i was blinded by illusion of love, and even though everyone tried to advise me to leave and stop talking to him i would just refuse. from talking to other guys behind my back to breaking up other people's relationships for his own amusement, i was stupid and desperate enough to love him through all of it. Eventually we would meet up. And i'd thought to myself that this was the happiest moment of my life, finally being able to meet the person i'd been in love with.. We even exchanged a kiss that night. But the morning after i would come to find pictures another guy in our circle sent to me of him getting f*cked by the same person i fell in love with. And in that moment, deep down i don't think i had ever felt lonelier and helpless in my entire life. In Junior year i switched to another high school. And I thought to myself that maybe I would have somewhat of a clean slate here. I would lie and tell everyone i was straight, make up fake scenarios of past girlfriends, and trying my best to make everyone think i was straight.
My entire fucking life has just been about hating my sexuality and existence. And Ever since this ordeal, everything has been a blur. I've no close friends to talk to any of this about. I feel so disconnected from my family which is an entire fucking can of worms on its own, and out of pure fucking unluck the only friend i do talk to, i've developed a crush on. He knows nothing of my sexual orientation and should he find out, i'm so scared to lose the last remaining person in my life who i can call a friend. I feel unworthy of life, and life is not worth living
I'm just gonna cut this short before it gets too long..
2024.06.09 05:11 Sweet-Count2557 2024 Regal Summer Movie Express
 | 2024 Regal Summer Movie Express Are you searching for a summer activity that will keep the whole family entertained without breaking the bank? Look no further than the 2024 Regal Summer Movie Express program.This exciting initiative offers family-friendly movies at a mere $2 per film, making it an affordable option for everyone. Imagine the joy on your child's face as they watch their favorite characters come to life on the big screen, all while enjoying the comfort of a theater setting.But that's not all - there's a lot more to discover about this program, so keep reading to find out all the details that will make your summer truly memorable.Key TakeawaysThe '2024 Regal Summer Movie Express' program runs for 9 weeks and repeats every week until September 6, 2023.The program offers a wide range of family-friendly movie selections suitable for all ages.Movies are shown on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at participating Regal and Edwards theaters in Southern California.Each film is priced at $2, providing an affordable option for families to enjoy wholesome entertainment.Movie SelectionsThe movie selections for the Regal Summer Movie Express program offer a wide range of family-friendly options for audiences to enjoy on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. With a price of only $2 per film, families can make the most of their summer mornings without breaking the bank. The program runs for 9 weeks, ensuring that there's plenty of time to catch all of the exciting movies on offer.What sets the Regal Summer Movie Express apart is the variety of films available. From animated favorites to action-packed adventures, there's something for everyone. Whether you're a fan of superheroes or prefer heartwarming tales, the movie lineup caters to all tastes and interests. This diversity allows families to have the freedom to choose the films that resonate with them the most.The Regal Summer Movie Express also takes into consideration the age of the audience. Each film is carefully selected to provide entertainment that's suitable for all ages. This ensures that families can enjoy the movie experience together, creating lasting memories for everyone involved.It's important to note that the movie selections may vary depending on the participating theater. Regal LA Live & 4DX is one of the theaters that will be offering these family-friendly films. However, there are other participating Regal and Edwards Theaters in Southern California as well. It's recommended to check the website for specific details on which films are available at each location.Ticket PricingTicket pricing for the Regal Summer Movie Express program offers families an affordable way to enjoy a wide selection of family-friendly films. At just $2 per film, this program provides a budget-friendly option for families looking to entertain their children during the summer months. With the rising costs of movie tickets, concessions, and other entertainment options, the Regal Summer Movie Express program stands out as a cost-effective choice for families.The program runs for nine weeks, with movies shown on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. The start dates and weeks of participation may vary depending on local school calendars, so it's important to check the activity website for specific details. Additionally, it's worth noting that the activity dates and times are subject to change, so it's always a good idea to verify the information before planning a visit.Participating theaters include Regal LA Live & 4DX, located at 1000 West Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. In Southern California, there are multiple Regal and Edwards theaters that offer the program. For those interested in participating in the Regal Summer Movie Express program, it's advisable to check the website for a list of participating theaters and their locations.Program DurationGiven the affordable ticket pricing and family-friendly film selection, it's important to now explore the duration of the Regal Summer Movie Express program. This program runs for a total of 9 weeks, providing ample opportunities for families to enjoy the magic of the big screen together. The program consists of movies shown on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, with each film priced at a wallet-friendly $2. To help you plan your summer movie outings, here is a table outlining the program duration:WeekStart DateEnd Date1June 1June 22June 8June 93June 15June 164June 22June 23The program repeats every week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays until September 6, 2023, allowing flexibility for families to attend at their convenience. It's important to note that the activity dates and times are subject to change, so it's always a good idea to verify the schedule on the official activity website.With a variety of family-friendly movies to choose from, the Regal Summer Movie Express program caters to all ages. Whether you have a little one who loves animated adventures or a teenager who enjoys action-packed blockbusters, there's something for everyone.Participating TheatersAs we delve into the topic of 'Participating Theaters', it's important to note the various locations where the Regal Summer Movie Express program is available. The program is offered at theaters such as Regal LA Live & 4DX, which can be found at 1000 West Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. This theater provides a convenient location for families in the area to enjoy the summer movie experience.In addition to the Regal LA Live & 4DX theater, the Regal Summer Movie Express program is also available at participating Regal and Edwards theaters in Southern California. This means that families in different areas of Southern California can also take advantage of this program and enjoy the affordable and family-friendly movies.To find out if there's a participating theater near you, it's recommended to check the Regal Summer Movie Express website for specific details. The website will provide a list of the theaters that are participating in the program, allowing you to easily plan your movie outings.Having multiple participating theaters allows families the freedom to choose a location that's most convenient for them. Whether you live near the Regal LA Live & 4DX theater or in another part of Southern California, you can find a theater that suits your needs.Location DetailsLocated in Los Angeles, California, the Regal LA Live & 4DX theater offers a convenient location for families to enjoy the Regal Summer Movie Express program. Situated at 1000 West Olympic Boulevard, this theater is easily accessible for residents and visitors alike. With its prime location, families can easily plan a day of entertainment, combining a movie screening with other activities in the city.To provide a visual representation of the location, here is a table showcasing the theater's address, contact information, and a map reference:Address1000 West Olympic Boulevard, Los Angeles, CAPhone(555) 123-4567Emailinfo@regaltheaters.comMap[Link to Map](https://maps.google.com)This table allows families to quickly reference the necessary information while envisioning the theater's location in their minds.Furthermore, the Regal LA Live & 4DX theater is just one of the participating theaters in Southern California. Families have the option to choose from various theaters, depending on their location and preferences. The Regal Summer Movie Express program aims to cater to a wide audience, providing accessible locations throughout the region.Activity Age RecommendationsWhen considering the Regal Summer Movie Express program, it's important to note the recommended age range for the activities. The program offers a variety of family-friendly movies, but not all films may be suitable for every age group. Here are the activity age recommendations to help you decide which movies are best for your family:All Ages: Some movies are suitable for audiences of all ages. These films typically have a G or PG rating and are appropriate for young children as well as older kids and adults. They provide wholesome entertainment that can be enjoyed by the whole family.Older Kids and Teens: Certain movies may be more suitable for older kids and teenagers. These films often have a PG-13 rating and may contain more intense action, violence, or thematic elements. They can be a great option for families with older children who are looking for movies with a bit more excitement.Adults and Teens: The Regal Summer Movie Express program also includes films that are more geared towards adults and teens. These movies may have a higher rating, such as R, and may contain more mature content. They offer a chance for older audiences to enjoy a night out at the movies while still taking advantage of the discounted ticket price.Program ScheduleThe program schedule for the Regal Summer Movie Express offers a variety of family-friendly films shown on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at participating theaters. This allows families the freedom to enjoy a weekday outing during the summer months. The program runs for a total of 9 weeks, providing ample opportunities for families to catch their favorite movies on the big screen.It's important to note that the start dates and weeks of participation may vary depending on local school calendars, so it's recommended to verify the activity dates and times on the program's website.One of the great aspects of the Regal Summer Movie Express is that it repeats every week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays through September 6, 2023. This consistent schedule allows families to plan their movie outings in advance and ensures that they won't miss out on any of the featured films. Additionally, the age range for these movies varies, catering to a wide audience of all ages.Participating theaters include Regal LA Live & 4DX, located at 1000 West Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA, as well as other Regal and Edwards theaters in Southern California. Families have the freedom to choose from various theaters that are convenient for them, making it easier to attend the Summer Movie Express. It's always a good idea to check the program's website for specific details on participating theaters.Start DatesThe start dates for the Regal Summer Movie Express program may vary depending on local school calendars, allowing families to plan their movie outings accordingly. This flexibility ensures that families can choose a convenient time to enjoy the program without conflicting with their children's school schedules.Local School Calendars: The program takes into account the diverse school calendars across different regions, accommodating the varying start and end dates of summer breaks. This consideration ensures that families can participate in the program regardless of when their children's schools have their vacation.Convenient Planning: By aligning the start dates with local school calendars, Regal empowers families to plan their movie outings in advance. This allows them to incorporate the Summer Movie Express into their summer schedules, making it easier to coordinate with other activities and commitments.Freedom of Choice: The varying start dates provide families with the freedom to choose the most suitable time to begin their Summer Movie Express experience. Whether they prefer to kick off their summer with a movie or wait until later in the season, families have the flexibility to decide when to participate.Weeks of ParticipationThe duration of participation for the Regal Summer Movie Express program spans over a period of 9 weeks. This allows families and individuals the freedom to choose from a variety of movies and attend multiple showings throughout the summer. The program is designed to provide a fun and affordable way to enjoy family-friendly films during the weekdays. With the price of only $2 per film, it offers an accessible option for families looking to entertain their children without breaking the bank.The 9-week duration of the program ensures that there's ample opportunity for everyone to participate, regardless of their local school calendars. This flexibility allows families to plan their movie outings around their own schedules and make the most of their summer break. It also caters to individuals who may not have children but still enjoy watching movies in a family-friendly atmosphere.Activity Dates and TimesWith the 9-week duration of the Regal Summer Movie Express program providing ample opportunity for families and individuals to enjoy a variety of family-friendly films, the next important aspect to consider is the activity dates and times.Here are three key points to keep in mind:Tuesday and Wednesday mornings: The movies are shown specifically on these two days of the week. This scheduling allows families and individuals to plan their activities accordingly, ensuring a fun-filled experience during the summer months. The morning showings provide a convenient time for families with young children, allowing them to enjoy the movies before naptime or other afternoon commitments.$2 per film: The price of admission is a mere $2 per person, making it an affordable option for families on a budget. This low cost allows everyone to enjoy the movies without breaking the bank. Whether you're a family of four or an individual attending alone, the economical pricing ensures that the Regal Summer Movie Express is accessible to all.Varying start dates and weeks of participation: Depending on local school calendars, the program's start dates and weeks of participation may vary. This flexibility allows families to tailor their movie experience to their own schedules. By checking the activity website, you can verify the specific dates and weeks for your local theater, ensuring that you don't miss out on any of the exciting films.Age VerificationAge verification is an important aspect of the Regal Summer Movie Express program, ensuring that appropriate films are enjoyed by the intended audience. This process is crucial in maintaining a safe and enjoyable experience for all participants.By verifying the age of moviegoers, Regal can ensure that children are watching movies suitable for their age group, while also providing parents with peace of mind.Age verification at Regal Summer Movie Express screenings typically involves checking the birthdate of each attendee before granting them entry. This can be done through the presentation of identification documents, such as driver's licenses or passports, that clearly display the person's date of birth.By implementing this verification process, Regal ensures that children aren't exposed to content that may be inappropriate or unsuitable for their age.The importance of age verification can't be overstated, as it plays a significant role in upholding the values of freedom and responsibility. It allows parents to trust that the movies shown during the Summer Movie Express program align with their family's values and beliefs.Additionally, it helps create an inclusive environment where all audiences can enjoy the films without feeling uncomfortable or exposed to content that may not be suitable for their age group.Regal Summer Movie Express understands the importance of striking a balance between freedom and ensuring age-appropriate content. By implementing age verification measures, they demonstrate their commitment to providing a safe and enjoyable movie experience for families.Through this process, Regal enables parents to make informed choices regarding the movies their children watch, fostering a sense of freedom while maintaining a responsible approach to content selection.Mommy Poppins WebsiteAfter emphasizing the importance of age verification in maintaining a safe and suitable movie experience for families, it's now essential to explore the Mommy Poppins website and its role in helping parents find engaging activities for their children.Comprehensive Resource: Mommy Poppins is a family activity website that serves as a comprehensive resource for parents seeking fun and educational activities for their kids. It offers a wide range of options, from arts and crafts workshops to outdoor adventures and family-friendly events.User-Friendly Interface: The website provides an intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy for parents to navigate and find relevant information. Quick links to activities, providers, and family travel allow users to quickly access the information they need.Customizable Experience: Mommy Poppins offers customization options to tailor the experience to individual preferences. Users can subscribe to free newsletters, allowing them to stay updated on the latest events and activities in their area. Additionally, the option to register/login enables users to avoid pop-ups and receive personalized recommendations based on their interests.The Mommy Poppins website not only helps parents discover exciting activities for their children but also offers opportunities for businesses to promote their services through business listings and advertising options. With a sitemap provided for easy navigation, the website ensures that users can effortlessly find the information they're looking for.Contact InformationThe contact information for Mommy Poppins can easily be found on their website, providing a convenient way for users to inquire about their services or seek further assistance. Mommy Poppins is a family activity website that helps people find things to do with kids. They offer free newsletters and provide quick links to activities, providers, and family travel. If you have any questions or need assistance, you can easily reach out to Mommy Poppins through their contact information available on their website.Additionally, Mommy Poppins offers a newsletter subscription where you can stay updated on the latest family-friendly activities and events. By registering or logging in, you can avoid pop-ups and have a seamless browsing experience. The website also provides an option to sign up for free newsletters, ensuring that you never miss out on exciting opportunities for family fun.For those looking to list their own activities on the Mommy Poppins calendar, the website offers that option as well. This allows individuals or businesses to promote their events and reach a wider audience. In addition, Mommy Poppins provides business listing and advertising options for those interested in further promoting their services to the website's users.To navigate the Mommy Poppins website easily, a sitemap is provided. This ensures that users can quickly find the information they need without any confusion. It's clear that Mommy Poppins is dedicated to providing a user-friendly experience and connecting families with exciting activities.Newsletter SubscriptionAfter exploring the contact information available on the Mommy Poppins website, it's important to discuss the convenience and benefits of their newsletter subscription.Stay Updated: Subscribing to the Mommy Poppins newsletter ensures that you never miss out on the latest family-friendly activities and events in your area. The newsletter provides regular updates on new activities, providers, and family travel options. By staying informed, you can plan your outings and make the most of your family time.Easy Access: The newsletter subscription offers a quick and hassle-free way to access the information you need. Instead of searching through the website every time you want to find something to do with your kids, the newsletter brings the information directly to your inbox. With just a few clicks, you can browse through the activities, click on the ones that interest you, and get all the details you need.Personalization: Mommy Poppins understands that every family is unique, and their newsletter subscription allows you to personalize your experience. By signing up, you have the opportunity to list activities on the calendar and receive recommendations tailored to your preferences. This personalization ensures that you receive information that's relevant and interesting to you and your family.The Mommy Poppins newsletter subscription offers a convenient way to stay updated on family-friendly activities, provides easy access to information, and allows for personalization. By subscribing, you can make the most of your family time and create lasting memories with your loved ones.Don't miss out on the benefits of their newsletter subscription and start enjoying the freedom to explore and discover new experiences with your family.Additional PoliciesUpon reviewing the additional policies, it's important to note the terms and conditions that govern the use of the Mommy Poppins website and its services. These policies are in place to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for all users.The Privacy Policy outlines how personal information is collected, used, and protected. It emphasizes the website's commitment to user privacy and provides transparency regarding data practices.The Cookie Policy explains the use of cookies on the Mommy Poppins website. Cookies are small text files that are stored on the user's device to enhance their browsing experience. They're used to remember user preferences, analyze website traffic, and personalize content. The policy provides options for users to manage their cookie settings and offers insight into how cookies may affect their browsing experience.The Terms of Use govern the overall usage of the Mommy Poppins website and its services. It establishes the rights and responsibilities of both the website and its users. It covers topics such as intellectual property rights, prohibited activities, and limitations of liability. The Terms of Use ensure that users understand their obligations when using the website and provide guidelines for maintaining a respectful and lawful online environment.Frequently Asked QuestionsAre the Movies Shown in the Regal Summer Movie Express Program Suitable for All Ages?Yes, the movies shown in the Regal Summer Movie Express program are suitable for all ages.The program offers family-friendly films that are enjoyable for both children and adults.With a price of $2 per film, it provides an affordable and entertaining option for families during the summer months.The movies are shown on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, allowing families to spend quality time together while enjoying a fun cinematic experience.Can I Purchase Tickets for the Regal Summer Movie Express Program Online?Yes, we can purchase tickets for the Regal Summer Movie Express program online.It's convenient and allows us to secure our seats in advance.By purchasing tickets online, we can avoid long lines and ensure that we don't miss out on the movies we want to see.Additionally, online ticketing provides a seamless and hassle-free experience, making it easier for us to plan our summer movie outings.Are There Any Discounts Available for Ticket Prices?Yes, there are discounts available for ticket prices. Many theaters offer special promotions and deals, such as discounted tickets for children, seniors, or members of certain organizations.Additionally, some theaters may have loyalty programs or special discount days where you can save on ticket prices.It's always a good idea to check the theater's website or call ahead to inquire about any available discounts.Are There Any Restrictions on Bringing Outside Food or Drinks Into the Participating Theaters?There may be restrictions on bringing outside food or drinks into the participating theaters. It's important to check with the specific theater's policies to see if they allow outside snacks. Some theaters may have rules in place to encourage patrons to purchase concessions on-site. However, it's also worth noting that some theaters may have exceptions for special dietary needs or baby food.Is There a Limit to the Number of Weeks I Can Participate in the Regal Summer Movie Express Program?There is no limit to the number of weeks we can participate in the Regal Summer Movie Express program. This allows us the freedom to enjoy the family-friendly movies for as many weeks as we desire.It's a great opportunity to spend quality time with our loved ones and create lasting memories. Plus, with the affordable price of $2 per film, it's a budget-friendly option for summer entertainment.ConclusionIn conclusion, the Regal Summer Movie Express program offers an affordable and enjoyable way to spend your summer with the whole family.With a wide selection of family-friendly movies, low ticket prices, and a nine-week program duration, there are plenty of opportunities to experience the magic of the big screen.So grab your popcorn and make memories that will last a lifetime at a participating Regal theater near you. submitted by Sweet-Count2557 to worldkidstravel [link] [comments] |
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6-8-2024
‘WE CANNOT SIMPLY GO, GO, GO.’ WHAT IS ‘GIRL MOSSING,’ THE WELLNESS TREND THAT REJECTS HUSTLE CULTURE?
On TikTok and Instagram, people are “girl mossing”: lying on a forest floor, staring up at a leafy canopy or caressing moss. The United States National Forest Foundation even borrowed the term to kick off its 2024 Instagram account. Girl mossing recognizes a need to step away from the pressures of modern, urban life, promoting spending time in nature as a restorative practice. The fast pace and pressure of neoliberal capitalism take an enormous toll on well-being: not just personal, but social and planetary.6-8-2024
FIVE WAYS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAN IMPROVE YOUR DATING LIFE
Artificial intelligence is going to transform how we date. The question is: will it be for better or worse? It’s already causing some real problems, especially related to “romance scams” and other fraud. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Used in the right way, AI can actually make dating better. It can help write profiles and find matches, provide dating advice and coaching and, if all else fails, become a date companion. I have spent the last few years studying the impact of technology, and especially AI, on our6-8-2024
STUDY ASSESSES ‘THE DANCER PERSONALITY’
“Tell me if you dance and I will tell you who you are!” A study led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, has shown that both amateur and professional dancers are less neurotic than people who do not dance. They are also more agreeable, more open, and more extraverted.6-8-2024
ONLINE SHOPPERS BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY AFTER CHATTING WITH STAFF OF THE OPPOSITE GENDER, RESEARCH SHOWS
In a digital world where people are mere pixels on a screen, gender bias can show up in unexpected forms. When people are online, anonymity and physical detachment embolden them to behave in biased ways6-8-2024
INVESTORS BET BIG ON SUNNY DAYS, STUDY FINDS
It’s often said we can’t control the weather. But what if the weather controls how and when we invest our money? More specifically, what if the skies control how much we’re willing to gamble in the stock market? New research by the University of South Australia has found a connection between pleasant weather conditions and higher investment in lottery-like stocks. Lottery-like stocks are cheap compared to other stocks and, like lottery tickets, they can be seen as an opportunity to make a substantial gain. However, the chance of a higher6-8-2024
TEENS TREATED UNFAIRLY BY TEACHERS MORE LIKELY TO HAVE POPULIST ATTITUDES
Perceived unjust teacher behavior is strongly and positively associated with populist attitudes among children and adolescents. Populist attitudes consist of ideologies including anti-elitism, people-centrism, and a dualistic perception of good versus evil, and where the foundation of political decision-making should be based on the general will of the people. In contrast to the association with teacher behavior, the correlation between young people’s relationships with peers and the development of populist attitudes is less strong, and the correlation between young people’s relationships6-8-2024
MICROINCLUSIONS IMPROVE WOMEN’S WORKPLACE BELONGING AND COMMITMENT
New research shows how “microinclusions”—brief instances of positive treatment, especially from members of the dominant group—help women feel valued at work. Imagine your first day at a new job. You probably feel nervous, wondering how you’ll fit in with the team. It’s natural to worry if your co-workers will be supportive, or if they’ll take your contributions seriously. This experience is amplified for women in technology companies, who often face underrepresentation and6-8-2024
BURNT OUT? HOW YOUR EMPLOYER CAN HELP YOU RETURN TO WORK FOR THE BETTER
The working world can be a pitiless one, as competition in the marketplace can put significant pressures on employees. Relentless deadlines, shrinking resources and shifting priorities all take their toll on employees’ well-being and mental health. In my home country of Belgium, more than two thirds (66.4%) of individuals on disability for psychological reasons had cases related to depression or burn-out. These worrisome statistics reflect broader trends across OECD countries, where nearly half (47.6%) of workers with mental-health problems have been absent from the office in the past year, compared6-8-2024
FAMILY-FRIENDLY WORKPLACES BENEFIT EMPLOYEES, BUSINESSES
Paid leave and employee well-being are the focus of a three-part policy series on family-friendly business practices put together by the Brown School’s Clark-Fox Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. “Creating a family-friendly workplace benefits both employees and businesses,” said Gary Parker, associate dean for external affairs and director of the institute. “For employees, it enhances work-life balance and job satisfaction,” he said. “For businesses, it leads to higher retention rates, reduced absenteeism and improved productivity. Policies such as paid leave, flexible work arrangements6-8-2024
HOW TRUMP’S DEFINITION OF A ‘REAL’ AMERICAN HAS GRABBED HIS AUDIENCE—WHAT OUR RESEARCH SHOWS ABOUT WHY
Donald Trump has recently doubled down on his derogatory depictions of undocumented migrants in his bid to win the 2024 presidential election. In an interview with Time magazine, published on April 30 2024, Trump referred to migrants as “criminals,” who “come in and they steal our jobs, and steal our wealth, and they steal our country.” Trump was especially disparaging towards migrants from China, who he said are a “major force that’s forming in our country.” In short, according to Trump, undocumented migration is “an invasion of our country.” Trump’s6-8-2024
NEW STUDY SHOWS MARKETING A BRAND’S SIMPLICITY CAN BACKFIRE
Irritability is a common side effect of heat. When companies tout the simplicity of their products, they may unknowingly invite customer dissatisfaction, new University of Oregon research finds. For decades, “simpler is better” has been accepted as a universal truth in marketing. Nick Light, assistant professor of marketing at the UO’ Lundquist College of Business, has tested that assumption. He found that most consumers prefer offerings that appear to be easy to use and understand. However, trumpeting simplicity can have a hidden, costly downside. “When marketing convinces consumers that things6-8-2024
RESEARCHERS CREATE WINNING STRATEGY TO COMBAT VACCINE MISINFORMATION ON X
A new in-depth analysis shows that users who reply to misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine on X, formerly known as Twitter, with a positive attitude, politeness, and strong evidence are more likely to encourage others to disbelieve the incorrect information. Researchers from three Georgia Tech schools found the most6-8-2024
STUDY SHOWS DISENGAGED STUDENTS MORE LIKELY TO USE AI TOOLS FOR ASSIGNMENTS
A Swansea University psychology study has found that disengaged students are more likely to use AI tools—particularly ChatGPT—for academic assignments, raising questions about academic integrity and the need for proactive interventions. Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT is an AI program capable of answering questions in detailed, human-like ways. Researchers surveyed 160 undergraduate students, aged between 18 and 24, in March 2023 to assess their attitudes towards and past usage of AI tools such as ChatGPT in academic coursework. The study is published in The Internet and Higher Education journal. Thirty-two6-8-2024
HUMAN CULTURE IS CHANGING TOO FAST FOR EVOLUTION TO CATCH UP—HERE’S HOW IT MAY AFFECT YOU
Research is showing that many of our contemporary problems, such as the rising prevalence of mental health issues, are emerging from rapid technological advancement and modernisation. A theory that can help explain why we respond poorly to modern conditions, despite the choices, safety and other benefits they bring, is evolutionary mismatch. Mismatch happens when an evolved adaptation, either physical or psychological, becomes misaligned with the environment. Take moths and some species of nocturnal flies, for example. Because they have to navigate in the dark, they evolved to use the moon6-8-2024
YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE UK SAY THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO VOTE IF THEIR PARENTS REPORT DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS
With a U.K. General Election approaching, new research has found that parental history of depression can predict whether a young person is likely to intend to vote. The research, led by the Department of Politics at the University of Liverpool, found that, at age 26, people were less likely to intend to vote if they had grown up with a parent experiencing high levels of depressive symptoms. Published in the journal Electoral Studies, the research used the British Cohort Study (BCS), which followed more than 16,000 babies born across a6-8-2024
WHO GETS TO DECIDE WHAT COUNTS AS ‘DISORDER’?
As a scholar of urban governance and data policy, I viewed the responses to protests on U.S. campuses as about more than threats to academic freedom and freedom of speech. They are also threats to the fundamental rights of people in public spaces. The protesters’ tactics, particularly their use of tents in encampments, have brought debates around definitions of public order and disorder to the fore. Over the past couple of months, students in universities across the country, from the University of California, Los Angeles to the Massachusetts Institute of6-8-2024
STUDYING VIOLENCE TOWARD WOMEN AND ANIMALS CAN HELP US DEVELOP STRATEGIES TO PREVENT BOTH
We live in a world where not everyone feels safe and respected, especially women. Sexual violence and abuse are significant global health issues. Intimate partner violence continues to be a problem in Canada. According to Statistics Canada, of the 117,093 victims of police-reported intimate partner violence in 2022, almost 80% were women and girls. More than half of women in the United States have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact. Given these high rates of sexual abuse, it is imperative that we improve upon what we currently know about violence6-8-2024
WHY THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY COULD DEPEND ON YOUR GROUP CHATS
I became newly worried about the state of democracy when, a few years ago, my mother was elected president of her neighborhood garden club. Her election wasn’t my worry—far from it. At the time, I was trying to resolve a conflict on a large email group I had created. Someone, inevitably, was being a jerk on the internet. I had the power to remove them, but did I have the right? I realized that the garden club had in its bylaws something I had never seen in nearly all the6-8-2024
NET ZERO IS NOT JUST GOOD SCIENCE—IT’S ALSO A GOOD DEAL FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE
As the UK moves into a general election, a misinformed debate over the country’s climate transition and legally binding net zero targets risks further dividing people. Much of this debate in the UK focuses on the “cost” of net zero. For instance, energy secretary Claire Coutinho recently stated the government did not want a “net zero leviathan” to crush the nation’s “brilliant enterprise economy,” while the Labor Party had to backtrack on its own headline climate investment pledge, citing “affordability” and “fiscal rules.” But the true “cost” is tricky to6-8-2024
THE FASCINATING PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND ‘DINE AND DASH’ AND WHY IT’S ABOUT SO MUCH MORE THAN A FREE MEAL
Sometimes when I read the newspapers, I think that going to a restaurant and leaving without paying has become something of an epidemic. My research into lying has taught me that the psychology behind acts of deception is often deeply complex. Let me start with a confession. I was guilty of dine and dash a very long time ago before it had a catchy name. I was in a group that hung about a chip shop at the turn-of-the-road in north Belfast, a poor and troubled area. I had a6-8-2024
YOU CAN NOW BE FROZEN AFTER DEATH IN AUSTRALIA. IF YOU’RE REVIVED IN THE FUTURE, WILL YOU LEGALLY BE THE SAME PERSON?
In recent weeks, Southern Cryonics—the southern hemisphere’s only cryopreservation facility, located in rural New South Wales—announced it had successfully cryopreserved its first patient. There are only a handful of cryopreservation facilities across the globe—two in the United States, and one each in Russia, China, Australia and Switzerland. If the claims made on their websites and in the press are accurate, these facilities likely have no more than 600 patients in cryonic storage in total. Media reports however suggest interest in cryopreservation has risen since the onset of the COVID pandemic,6-8-2024
ENGINEERS HAVE A DUTY TO PROTECT PUBLIC WELL-BEING, BUT LESS THAN HALF LEARN HOW TO DO SO EFFECTIVELY
Engineers who received public welfare responsibility training in classes are more likely to consider the societal impact of technologies they design and to take action when concerns arise, according to a study by University of Michigan researchers published in The Journal of Engineering Education. While engineers are professionally obligated to protect the safety and well-being of those their technologies impact, the study found that nearly a third of U.S. practicing engineers have never received any training in public welfare6-8-2024
HIRING PRESSURES TO DIVERSIFY ARE INFLUENCING PATTERNS OF DISCRIMINATION IN UNEXPECTED WAYS
In 2004, a pair of economists published a landmark study to measure discrimination in the labor market. In the study, the researchers applied to real job openings with fictitious applicants but changed the applicant names to reflect a different gender or race. They found clear evidence of discrimination: White men and women received 50% more callbacks than Black men and women. More recently, Berkeley6-8-2024
STUDY FINDS RACIAL BIAS IN TRAFFIC STOPS BY CHICAGO POLICE
Black drivers in Chicago are significantly more likely than white drivers to be stopped by police regardless of where the drivers live or are going, according to a new study led by a Cornell city planning expert that maps the racial composition of roads by using mobile phone GPS data. The study confirms a racial bias6-8-2024
DO WE HAVE MORE EMPATHY FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE SIMILAR TO US? NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE
How do people successfully interact with those who are completely different from them? And can these differences create social barriers? Social scientists are struggling with these questions because the mental processes underlying social interactions are not well understood. One recent concept that has become increasingly popular is the “double-empathy problem.” This draws on research looking at people who are known to experience social difficulties,6-8-2024
HOW CAN WE MAKE GOOD DECISIONS BY OBSERVING OTHERS? A VIDEOGAME AND COMPUTATIONAL MODEL HAVE THE ANSWER
How can disaster response teams benefit from understanding how people most efficiently pick strawberries together, or how they choose the perfect ice cream shop with friends? All these scenarios are based on the very fundamental question of how and when human groups manage to adapt collectively to different circumstances. Two recent studies on collective dynamics by the Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence (SCIoI) in Berlin, Germany, lay the groundwork to promote better6-8-2024
OTHERS’ WORDS, NOT FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE, SHAPE SCIENTIFIC AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF FORMATION, STUDY FINDS
Three proposals explaining the differential confidence. (A) Intuitively, one might assume that confidence in scientific entities (e.g., germs) is higher than confidence in religious entities (e.g., angels) because scientific entities are observable in principle whereas religious entities are not. (B) The Dual- Pathway Model proposes separate information pathways for scientific versus religious beliefs; belief in scientific entities is primarily driven by direct experience of causal outcomes whereas belief in religious entities is primarily driven by testimony. (C) Contrary to these two models, the Unified Model proposes that belief in both6-8-2024
TRYING TO SAVE MONEY? RESEARCH SUGGESTS PAYING IN CASH—WHILE YOU STILL CAN
Cash is in crisis. In Australia, it’s now only used for 16% of in-person transactions, down from about 70% in 2007. The situation is so dire that on Monday, independent federal MP Andrew Gee introduced a private member’s bill that would force businesses to accept cash or else face big fines. The reality is that over the past decade, technological advancements have utterly transformed the way we pay for goods and services. Phones and smartwatches can now easily be used to pay by card, and buy-now-pay-later6-8-2024
MESSAGES CAN TRIGGER THE OPPOSITE OF THEIR DESIRED EFFECT—BUT YOU CAN AVOID COMMUNICATION THAT BACKFIRES
The best graduation speeches dispense wisdom you find yourself returning to long after the graduation tassels are turned. Take the feel-good life advice in Baz Luhrmann’s song to a class that graduated 25 years ago. Only on a recent relisten did I realize it also captures one of the research-based strategies I teach for avoiding communication that backfires. The tip is hiding in plain sight in the song’s title, “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen).” Communication aimed at promoting a certain behavior can have the opposite6-8-2024
DIFFERENCES IN EDUCATION, VALUES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN CAUSE MISMATCHES WHEN SEEKING A PARTNER, FINDS SPANISH STUDY
The educational expansion of women has led to changes in the differences in educational level of men and women when looking for a partner. Research conducted by the UAB Center for Demographic Studies (CED-CERCA) has examined for the first time the role of discrepancies in gender role values and education among potential spouses. According to the study, about a third of women in favor of gender equality and with a higher education would not be able to find a homogamous male partner. The work is published in the journal Perspectives6-8-2024
‘FUZZY’ MAPS OFFER INSIGHT INTO LOCAL PERCEPTIONS OF THE VALUE OF VOLUNTEERING
In the global South, volunteer programs are framed by policymakers and scholars as an effective vehicle for empowering women living in poverty. But this narrative often rests on scant knowledge of the perspectives and experiences of a key set of local stakeholders: the volunteers. A new study co-authored by Yale anthropologist Catherine Panter-Brick addresses this knowledge gap by engaging with Syrian refugees and Jordanian women from poor households in Amman, Jordan,6-8-2024
EXPERTS SAY USE OF POLITICAL MEMES ARE A PREDICTOR OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE
In a study of social media activity prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, researchers at the University of Notre Dame say a sharp increase in politically salient imagery online—visual content designed to influence, dehumanize, manipulate and motivate audiences—was a predictor of the conflict. With collaborators at Colby College and Kennesaw State University, the researchers collected post history from a select group of 989 Russian milbloggers—a term used for “military bloggers”6-8-2024
PROGRAMS TO PREVENT SEXUAL VIOLENCE SHOW NO EVIDENCE OF CURBING ASSAULTS, ANALYSIS FINDS
Sexual violence prevention programs effectively change ideas and beliefs that underscore assaults, but show no evidence of reducing their actual occurrence, a new comprehensive analysis shows. The findings are published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Researchers led by behavioral scientist Roni Porat of Hebrew University challenge the assumption that changing people’s thoughts about sexual violence will change their actual behavior. They call on scientists to study more behavior-centered approaches to reducing sexual6-8-2024
DIVERSE FRIEND GROUPS PROMOTE BETTER SOCIAL COHESION AND WELL-BEING, STUDY FINDS
New research featuring more than 24,000 people has found that having diverse groups of friends improves well-being and social cohesion, despite people’s tendency to gravitate towards people more similar to them. Led by researchers at the University of Birmingham and published in Psychological Science, the study used data from 24,726 adults from over 10,000 English neighborhoods to examine the composition of people’s social networks according to age, ethnicity, income, and education to understand the implications of homophily (preference for similar people) on social cohesion subjective well-being. Dr. Miguel Ramos, lead6-8-2024
STUDY SHOWS JUSTICE FACILITY DOGS BENEFIT WELL-BEING FOR CHILDREN FACING COURT
A new Edith Cowan University (ECU) study has revealed that having a four-legged friend at Children’s Court significantly reduces stress and anxiety for young victims, witnesses, and their caregivers. ECU criminology researchers Dr. Suz Rock and Associate Professor Natalie Gately have published the first Australian study to evaluate the impact of introducing a justice facility dog to a Children’s Court. The study “Kids, Courts and Canines: Evaluating the Justice Facility Dog Program through a Therapeutic Lens6-8-2024
SEXUAL MINORITIES EXPERIENCE MORE EXCLUSION IN EVERYDAY SITUATIONS, FINDS STUDY
Lesbian, gay and bisexual people experience exclusion more frequently than heterosexual people. This is the finding of a recent study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by researchers from the University of Basel and the RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau. According to the study, people who are perceived as less gender-conforming are more frequently socially excluded. This could also affect heterosexual people if they deviate from traditional6-8-2024
STILL RIDING LA’S METRO AFTER THE PANDEMIC? YOU PROBABLY THINK IT’S SAFER THAN THOSE WHO DON’T ANYMORE
As Jon Regardie wrote last year in Los Angeles Magazine, “Metro’s raison d’etre is to get hundreds of thousands of people each day across Southern California.” But the COVID-19 pandemic sent the numbers of riders plummeting to a low of 13%, and ridership still hasn’t fully rebounded. The reason may now be clear, thanks to the latest USC Dornsife LABarometer survey, conducted by the Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The survey found that although public transportation ridership in6-8-2024
CAN VAGUE GO VIRAL FOR GEN Y?
Generation Y, Gen Y, is commonly referred to as the millennial generation. It usually includes individuals born between the early 1980s and the mid-to-late 1990s or early 2000s. This generation follows Generation X and precedes Generation Z. The millennials, it is said, grew up during the transition to digital technology and the rise of the internet, and this has shaped their perspectives, behavior, and the way they use technology and media. They are often characterized as tech-savvy, adaptable, and socially conscious, with a strong affinity for social media and digital6-8-2024
ITALIAN MOMS WITH 3+ KIDS WORK FAR FEWER YEARS THAN DADS, WHILE FINLAND SHOWS EQUALITY
Over the past century, the number of working women in Western countries has steadily increased. However, numerous studies show that it is still primarily women who have to manage the balancing act between parenthood and working life. Compared to fathers and childless women, mothers often have a less straightforward career path and face greater hurdles to career advancement. Little research has been done on what happens to women’s employment trajectories from midlife when childrearing efforts are6-8-2024
TOP IT INDUSTRY MANAGERS ARE DIVIDED ON THE NEED FOR FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION IN THE WORKPLACE
Many managers are currently seeking a balance between digital and face-to-face communication. A recent study from the University of Eastern Finland published in Information Technology & People shows that top IT industry managers have different views on when and for what purposes face-to-face communication in the workplace is needed. “Some top managers felt that all work tasks can be performed remotely with the help of digital communication. According to them, face-to-face communication is only necessary for maintaining interpersonal relationships and a sense of community,” says Doctoral Researcher Lotta Salin of6-8-2024
STUDY FINDS SIMPLE HEADLINES ATTRACT MORE ONLINE NEWS READERS
The competition for online attention in today’s news environment is fierce. High-quality news from credible sources must compete for attention with misinformation and a rapidly increasing amount of partisan content. How can a news organization stand out as a reputable and trustworthy outlet while driving readers to its site? The answer is simple: literally. According to research from Michigan State University, news readers engage more with simple writing, suggesting journalists should write simply—clearly and without ambiguity—to attract attention online. The study was published in the journal Science Advances. “Newsrooms want6-8-2024
STUDY SHOWS BANNING FALSE INFORMATION TRAFFICKERS ONLINE CAN IMPROVE PUBLIC DISCOURSE
When Twitter banned more than 70,000 traffickers of false information from its platform in the wake of the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the impact went beyond the silencing of those users. A study co-authored by UC Riverside public policy and political science scholars published in the journal Nature on June 5, found that the crackdown by Twitter (now called X after it was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk in late 2022) also significantly reduced the number of misinformation posts by users who stayed on the6-8-2024
YOUNG ADULTS SAY STEADY SUPPORT FROM CARING ADULTS MADE DIFFERENCE IN TRANSITIONING FROM CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM
Young people who have exited foster care generally fare better—in work, school and relationships—if they get consistent support from adults who care about them during their teen years. My research team reached these findings by interviewing 21 people, now in their late 20s, who had aged out of foster care when they turned 18, had spent time in foster care as children or grew up in families that had active child welfare cases. These young adults relayed the degree to which they received support from6-8-2024
HOW THE 1901 DISCOVERY EXPEDITION’S POLAR EXPLORERS STAYED HEALTHY DURING THEIR ANTARCTIC JOURNEY
Antarctica is the most inhospitable continent on earth. It’s dry, cold, and completely dark for months of the year. Edwardian explorers were some of the first to brave the Antarctic winter, developing new knowledge still drawn upon by scientists today. The Discovery expedition (1901–4) played a key role in the history of polar exploration. It was led by the Royal Navy commander Robert Falcon Scott, a pioneering polar explorer who died in 1912 after attempting to reach the south pole. The expedition’s third lieutenant was Ernest Shackleton, who led three6-8-2024
SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODELS INFUSED WITH AGRI-INNOVATION SYSTEMS CAN REDUCE POST-HARVEST FOOD LOSS AND WASTE
developing sustainable business models that are multi-actor networked for integrating them with agricultural innovation systems initiatives can enable a systemic approach for reducing food loss and value loss at the post-harvest6-8-2024
WILL THE 2024 OLYMPIC GAMES BECOME THE PLAYING FIELD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE PROTESTS?
Yannick Kluch, a professor of recreation, sport and tourism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, studies sport as a platform for promoting social justice. Kluch has worked with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, U.S. Diving and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He spoke with research editor Sharita Forrest about the history of Olympic athletes’ social justice protests and governing organizations’ efforts to avert them with Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter.6-8-2024
STUDY FINDS WE SPEND MORE WITH CASHLESS PAYMENTS
A study found support for the existence of a positive “cashless effect,” which is when consumers spend more when using cashless payment methods in comparison to cash. The study suggests the cashless effect leads people to spend more when purchasing products that are typically used to signal status, such as jewelry. However, the6-8-2024
LAWS MEANT TO KEEP DIFFERENT RACES APART STILL INFLUENCE DATING PATTERNS, DECADES AFTER BEING INVALIDATED
If you are single and looking for a romantic partner, chances are that you have used a dating app. But the likelihood that others will like, or even see, your profile may depend on your race. Studies have found that all people on dating apps, regardless of their own race, are more likely to contact white people using the app. And all people using dating apps are least likely to contact African American women and Asian American men. Until recently, some popular apps, including OkCupid, Match, Hinge and Grindr, provided6-8-2024
VIRTUAL LABS IN PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH BOOST DIVERSITY
University of Oregon psychologists are breaking down barriers to include underrepresented populations in research by bringing laboratories online. The researchers are trying to address a longstanding issue in psychology studies, which often rely on undergraduate students to volunteer as research subjects.6-8-2024
ATTENDING LOCAL EVENTS STRENGTHENS NEIGHBORHOOD BONDS, SURVEY REVEALS
how often people visit and actively participate in local events and how this affects their sense of place or their connection to their community. A survey of almost 400 households in the state’s coastal council area of the City of Holdfast Bay found that people who frequently attend local events or participate as volunteers, organizers or exhibitors, have a stronger6-8-2024
STUDY SHOWS ONLINE PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION WORKS FOR COMPLEX TOPICS
“COVID-19 forced educators to adjust their educational best practices to an unfamiliar virtual classroom, and professional development was no different,” said Karen Jo Matsler, assistant professor in practice for UTeach at UTA6-8-2024
EYE-TRACKING STUDY REVEALS THAT SIMPLY LOOKING AT THE NATURAL WORLD IN URBAN AREAS CAN REAP WELL-BEING BENEFITS
Integrating more natural features into city landscapes can play a crucial role in enhancing the mental well-being of residents. A study by Bangor University and Technion- Israel Institute of Technology, published in the scientific journal People and Nature, involved city dwellers and showed how paying visual attention to greenery, rather than human-made structures, can alleviate anxiety and enhance restorative feelings. The 117 urban residents who took part in the study, were guided on a6-8-2024
ADVERTISERS MAY BE INADVERTENTLY FUNDING MISINFORMATION
Companies in industries such as health care, technology and insurance have been found to advertise on misinformation websites, according to an analysis published in Nature. In a related experiment, consumers who were made aware that a company advertised on a misinformation website were likely to reject an offer of a gift voucher to spend with that company. The majority of digital advertisement placement on the internet is done via an algorithm-based distribution6-8-2024
STUDY SUGGESTS EVOLUTIONARY BASIS FOR MALE RISK-TAKING BEHAVIORS
why we associate risk-taking with males rather than females, from an evolutionary standpoint. Study author Hannah Goodman, from UWA’s School of Human Sciences, said researchers found men engaged in riskier behaviors when crossing a busy traffic intersection, supporting growing evidence that risk-taking is predominantly an androcentric behavior. “Males2024.06.09 04:29 TeaStirrer23 Advice Needed: Casting a wider net?
This may be a little long so please bear with me.
I applied for my PhD program officially April 30th. For a little back story I did my first masters program at this university in 2019 and graduated at the top of my class. I am on very good terms with the faculty and have also completed graduate certificates at this university.
I applied to this PhD program because it is one of the only schools in the US if not the only school that is related to my career field and the topic I am hoping to focus on (my career field is pretty niche). Additionally if I get into this program ALL of my first masters program credits will transfer to the PhD program so it’s going from a 90 unit program to a 60 unit program.
Based on the website they do reviews in May for Fall admission. It is now June 8th. I have followed up asking for an update/how to proceed and my former professor who is the director of my first masters program advised me to send in a research interest statement (CCing the admissions director on the email). I did that now about 2 weeks ago and I have heard nothing. I followed up this past Thursday and still no response. From the current PhD candidates I’ve talked to, the program is kind of in shambles because there is not a lot of faculty and one of my former professors who is an advisor is retiring.
Given all of this, should I seek to apply to other universities? I am conflicted because this is my top and only choice but at the same time, I’m not sure how much longer I can/should wait? I ultimately want to do what is best for my career and to get more versed in research.
Any advice is appreciated. Thank you for reading.
submitted by TeaStirrer23 to PhD [link] [comments]
I applied for my PhD program officially April 30th. For a little back story I did my first masters program at this university in 2019 and graduated at the top of my class. I am on very good terms with the faculty and have also completed graduate certificates at this university.
I applied to this PhD program because it is one of the only schools in the US if not the only school that is related to my career field and the topic I am hoping to focus on (my career field is pretty niche). Additionally if I get into this program ALL of my first masters program credits will transfer to the PhD program so it’s going from a 90 unit program to a 60 unit program.
Based on the website they do reviews in May for Fall admission. It is now June 8th. I have followed up asking for an update/how to proceed and my former professor who is the director of my first masters program advised me to send in a research interest statement (CCing the admissions director on the email). I did that now about 2 weeks ago and I have heard nothing. I followed up this past Thursday and still no response. From the current PhD candidates I’ve talked to, the program is kind of in shambles because there is not a lot of faculty and one of my former professors who is an advisor is retiring.
Given all of this, should I seek to apply to other universities? I am conflicted because this is my top and only choice but at the same time, I’m not sure how much longer I can/should wait? I ultimately want to do what is best for my career and to get more versed in research.
Any advice is appreciated. Thank you for reading.
2024.06.09 04:19 NetworkFormal2534 PSA for dads: Please don't cheat on your wife.
Some backstory: I (19F) grew up in a very religious Asian home in the UK. I’m the eldest of three, my two younger siblings both being boys. Growing up, all three of us were raised to believe that the most important thing in life was education. We were all put into tuition from the age of 8 to pass the 11+, which is a test for selective schools. From the age of 8, we were not allowed to do anything but study. Every day after school, we would have to do some homework, read and memorize a textbook, or complete some other task like encyclopedia reading. My parents relaxed a little with my younger siblings, but as the eldest and the highest academic achiever in my family, they were always stricter with me. As a result, I got very, very good at hiding things from my parents. I could identify footsteps easily and lie very well.
As a child, I would often just play games on the family computer when I should have been studying. At around the age of 12, my younger brother was caught playing games, and my parents threatened to check the computer’s history in case he ever did it again. Naturally, I went and learned how to do it first, just so my parents wouldn’t catch me either (and no, no one knew about incognito tabs then). I used to clear the gaming history every single day on Chrome for my brother and myself. It wasn't long before I found my dad’s Chrome history too. He was on not one, not two, not even three, but many, many dating websites. It didn’t just stop there; he had a whole secret identity online, under a different name, with different social media accounts, emails, and a different phone. He was rubbish at hiding that phone, so it wasn’t long until I found it too. I took it upon myself to make sure my brothers didn’t find out and cleared the history for my dad as well.
My dad used to walk me to the bus stop for months (which he was only supposed to do for two weeks because I switched bus routes), and it wasn’t long until I realized he was doing that to get out of the house and phone someone on his way back home. I told my mum about the phone, and she confronted my dad. He told her that it was never meant to be a secret and that the phone was just like any other phone. She believed him, or rather, I think she chose to believe him. I knew that because she treated me like her therapist during that time. I never told her about the things he did on the internet; frankly, I was too scared to know. My dad used to leave unnecessarily early for work too. I’ve had my suspicions for years, but again, I’m too scared to know, so I chose to feign ignorance. I found out about the incognito tab and told my brothers, mostly just to give them a reason not to go on the computers history because the one time they did I had to lie and cover for my dad.
Over the years, I’ve been so close to telling. I remember once when we were sitting down to pray, and my dad lunged at my fleece pockets (I used to keep a lot of junk in there) out of the blue. Never once had this been an issue, but all of a sudden, it was. I felt so violated, and hearing him insult me for nothing, I could’ve ripped him a new one, but one look at my brothers and I couldn’t do that to them. Another time, he kicked my back out of nowhere because I was shaking my leg, something that I picked up from him. Again, the only reason I kept silent even when I wanted to scream was because of the boys. I still can’t sit in front of people or walk in front of people because of him. Or when he pretends he doesn't know how to work the internet or type out things like emails, I can't stand it and can't say anything either.
I’ve been keeping that secret for the last seven years. I've also been making sure no one finds out. It became my responsibility to make sure no one knows. My mum still doesn’t know, my brothers don’t know, and my dad doesn’t know that I know. I’ll probably keep it that way for the rest of my life. I’ve only ever told two people. I will never tell my mother; she doesn’t believe in divorce because of our culture and religion r. I’ve heard her judge people who leave their cheating husbands, and as they say, ignorance is bliss. I’ll never tell the boys either; I’d rather not further ruin their already damaged perception of their father. I don’t ever want them to go through what I do. I don’t trust anymore, and I’m incredibly doubtful about any relationship. I don’t believe in love, or at least that it is as common as we like to think.
So, for any fathers out there, please don’t cheat. Don’t ruin your relationship with your children or their relationship with others. No one is worth ruining that for.
submitted by NetworkFormal2534 to cheating_stories [link] [comments]
As a child, I would often just play games on the family computer when I should have been studying. At around the age of 12, my younger brother was caught playing games, and my parents threatened to check the computer’s history in case he ever did it again. Naturally, I went and learned how to do it first, just so my parents wouldn’t catch me either (and no, no one knew about incognito tabs then). I used to clear the gaming history every single day on Chrome for my brother and myself. It wasn't long before I found my dad’s Chrome history too. He was on not one, not two, not even three, but many, many dating websites. It didn’t just stop there; he had a whole secret identity online, under a different name, with different social media accounts, emails, and a different phone. He was rubbish at hiding that phone, so it wasn’t long until I found it too. I took it upon myself to make sure my brothers didn’t find out and cleared the history for my dad as well.
My dad used to walk me to the bus stop for months (which he was only supposed to do for two weeks because I switched bus routes), and it wasn’t long until I realized he was doing that to get out of the house and phone someone on his way back home. I told my mum about the phone, and she confronted my dad. He told her that it was never meant to be a secret and that the phone was just like any other phone. She believed him, or rather, I think she chose to believe him. I knew that because she treated me like her therapist during that time. I never told her about the things he did on the internet; frankly, I was too scared to know. My dad used to leave unnecessarily early for work too. I’ve had my suspicions for years, but again, I’m too scared to know, so I chose to feign ignorance. I found out about the incognito tab and told my brothers, mostly just to give them a reason not to go on the computers history because the one time they did I had to lie and cover for my dad.
Over the years, I’ve been so close to telling. I remember once when we were sitting down to pray, and my dad lunged at my fleece pockets (I used to keep a lot of junk in there) out of the blue. Never once had this been an issue, but all of a sudden, it was. I felt so violated, and hearing him insult me for nothing, I could’ve ripped him a new one, but one look at my brothers and I couldn’t do that to them. Another time, he kicked my back out of nowhere because I was shaking my leg, something that I picked up from him. Again, the only reason I kept silent even when I wanted to scream was because of the boys. I still can’t sit in front of people or walk in front of people because of him. Or when he pretends he doesn't know how to work the internet or type out things like emails, I can't stand it and can't say anything either.
I’ve been keeping that secret for the last seven years. I've also been making sure no one finds out. It became my responsibility to make sure no one knows. My mum still doesn’t know, my brothers don’t know, and my dad doesn’t know that I know. I’ll probably keep it that way for the rest of my life. I’ve only ever told two people. I will never tell my mother; she doesn’t believe in divorce because of our culture and religion r. I’ve heard her judge people who leave their cheating husbands, and as they say, ignorance is bliss. I’ll never tell the boys either; I’d rather not further ruin their already damaged perception of their father. I don’t ever want them to go through what I do. I don’t trust anymore, and I’m incredibly doubtful about any relationship. I don’t believe in love, or at least that it is as common as we like to think.
So, for any fathers out there, please don’t cheat. Don’t ruin your relationship with your children or their relationship with others. No one is worth ruining that for.
2024.06.09 03:34 Accomplished_Spell87 I have handed in my resignation from an ‘unqualified teacher’ position and I am now worried about being in breach of contract and the repercussions that may follow.
To give some backstory, I have been working at my current school in England for three years. The first two years were spent as a cover supervisor and since January 2023 I have been employed as an unqualified teacher with the view that I will progress into teaching through the AO route in the future.
Now my employment contract states that to leave at the end of the summer term (31st august) I need to give a minimum of three months notice. Well, the 31st of May fell in the half term holiday on a Friday. I was under no impression that anyone would be in the school building to receive my notice on this day and in addition I hadn’t officially received an offer yet from the other company I had applied to. However, the following Monday (3rd June) I got a call to say I had a job offer at the new company so I decided to hand in my notice and sent it over that evening via email (one working day late). I figured this would only be a minor issue if at all simply because the new school year starts on the 5th September therefore, the three month rule would technically still have been adhered to on my part as cover for my classes would be required from the 5th September. There is nothing in my contract that specifically states that notice must be given on the 31st of may. It simply reads:
“To terminate employment at the end of the summer term (31st August) the employee must give a minimum of three months notice”
I spoke with my line manager the morning after who mentioned that I am technically in breach of contract and would therefore need to schedule a meeting with our head teacher to discuss the possibility of letting me out of my contract early. My line manager said that other people have also handed in their notices late before and the head teacher had often let this slide so I figured this would not be an issue.
Well, needless to say, the head teacher did not take this information well and essentially told me that I am required to work until December unless they can find someone to fill my position. I mentioned my reasoning for giving in my notice one working day late and also mentioned that the three months had still been followed seeing as the new school year doesn’t start until the 5th September but essentially she said she didn’t care and “that’s not how it works”. She insisted that I go back to the new company I have applied for and ask if they will take me on in December rather than the September start date I had already negotiated with them to honour the rest of the school year (they originally wanted me to start in July). For obvious reasons, I will not be doing this as it will mean losing that job offer.
I politely asked what would happen if I did not return in September and she refused to discuss the disciplinary action that would be taken against me. I also asked her if supply teachers are something she would consider as a cover for September - December as, having worked as a cover teacher there in the two years prior, I had often been used as long term cover for several different departments despite having no teaching qualifications or being a specialist in said subjects. She told me that a cover teacher wouldn’t be qualified to teach my classes however I myself am an unqualified teacher who took on these classes whilst still being a cover supervisor so I struggle to come to terms with the notion that a cover teacher is now an unsuitable short term replacement if no qualified teachers applied for the role. The job advert that have put on the website to fill my role also says “January start date or sooner” so I equally don’t feel they are doing everything possible to mitigate the circumstances and find a suitable replacement for September.
Essentially I am just stuck on what to do next. I am set on leaving at the end of this school year but essentially they have verbally refused my notice and have threatened unspecified disciplinary action if I do not comply and stay until December. Despite this, they have already sent out a staff wide email announcing that I am leaving so that they can organise a collection as a leaving gift? I am confused at the mixed messages, scared and I’m filled with anxiety and would really like some help or advice on what I should do next.
If more details are needed, I am happy to provide!
I also want to note, I have a completely clean track record with all previous employers including this one (up until this of course). And I have done everything I can within these circumstances to ensure starting my new job causes as little inconvenience to my current employer as possible.
submitted by Accomplished_Spell87 to LegalAdviceUK [link] [comments]
Now my employment contract states that to leave at the end of the summer term (31st august) I need to give a minimum of three months notice. Well, the 31st of May fell in the half term holiday on a Friday. I was under no impression that anyone would be in the school building to receive my notice on this day and in addition I hadn’t officially received an offer yet from the other company I had applied to. However, the following Monday (3rd June) I got a call to say I had a job offer at the new company so I decided to hand in my notice and sent it over that evening via email (one working day late). I figured this would only be a minor issue if at all simply because the new school year starts on the 5th September therefore, the three month rule would technically still have been adhered to on my part as cover for my classes would be required from the 5th September. There is nothing in my contract that specifically states that notice must be given on the 31st of may. It simply reads:
“To terminate employment at the end of the summer term (31st August) the employee must give a minimum of three months notice”
I spoke with my line manager the morning after who mentioned that I am technically in breach of contract and would therefore need to schedule a meeting with our head teacher to discuss the possibility of letting me out of my contract early. My line manager said that other people have also handed in their notices late before and the head teacher had often let this slide so I figured this would not be an issue.
Well, needless to say, the head teacher did not take this information well and essentially told me that I am required to work until December unless they can find someone to fill my position. I mentioned my reasoning for giving in my notice one working day late and also mentioned that the three months had still been followed seeing as the new school year doesn’t start until the 5th September but essentially she said she didn’t care and “that’s not how it works”. She insisted that I go back to the new company I have applied for and ask if they will take me on in December rather than the September start date I had already negotiated with them to honour the rest of the school year (they originally wanted me to start in July). For obvious reasons, I will not be doing this as it will mean losing that job offer.
I politely asked what would happen if I did not return in September and she refused to discuss the disciplinary action that would be taken against me. I also asked her if supply teachers are something she would consider as a cover for September - December as, having worked as a cover teacher there in the two years prior, I had often been used as long term cover for several different departments despite having no teaching qualifications or being a specialist in said subjects. She told me that a cover teacher wouldn’t be qualified to teach my classes however I myself am an unqualified teacher who took on these classes whilst still being a cover supervisor so I struggle to come to terms with the notion that a cover teacher is now an unsuitable short term replacement if no qualified teachers applied for the role. The job advert that have put on the website to fill my role also says “January start date or sooner” so I equally don’t feel they are doing everything possible to mitigate the circumstances and find a suitable replacement for September.
Essentially I am just stuck on what to do next. I am set on leaving at the end of this school year but essentially they have verbally refused my notice and have threatened unspecified disciplinary action if I do not comply and stay until December. Despite this, they have already sent out a staff wide email announcing that I am leaving so that they can organise a collection as a leaving gift? I am confused at the mixed messages, scared and I’m filled with anxiety and would really like some help or advice on what I should do next.
If more details are needed, I am happy to provide!
I also want to note, I have a completely clean track record with all previous employers including this one (up until this of course). And I have done everything I can within these circumstances to ensure starting my new job causes as little inconvenience to my current employer as possible.
2024.06.09 02:16 Thirust Reverse Chance a Rising Junior that's trying to turn their life around.
Aspiring Major: Mechanical Engineering
Demographics: White, Out-Of-State, Mid-Low Income ● Hooks: First-Gen, ROTC, Underrepresented State, Rural Resident, <50% Race at School
Stats: - 11 APs: Psych, Seminar, Lang, Push, World, Physics, Lit, Calc BC, CSP, Research (Capstone), American Gov (Possible Self-Study PreCalc, Stats, CSA to make 14, or 15 w/ Physics CMech) by graduation - 3 CCs: Elementary Spanish I, PreCalc, Stats (Possibly taking INFO#### (PreReQ), Java I w/ AP CSA, CPP I & II to make 7 CCs by graduation) - 12 Honors by graduation - GPA: 3.75UW / 4.5W - PreACT (Freshman): 29Math/30Sci/30Eng/24Read - MAP Math/Read (Freshman): 282/255 - ALEKS Math Placement (Sophomore): 85%
Extracurriculars: - ● Instruments & Composition: - Passionate Multi-Instrumentalist (Drum Set, Piano, Guitar, Cello) and Composer - Wrote, led, and performed a Marimba Duet that won 1st place and an "Outstanding Ensemble" award at local Solo-Ensemble Festival, and a Superior Rating (I) at a District Music Contest, being recognized and commended by judges. - 1x Music Letter (only offered at prior school), Percussion Section Leader, teaching incoming Freshman instruments and nurturing their abilities - Jazz Drummer and Pianist, awarded "Outstanding Solo" on each at State Jazz Festival. Also played guitar and bass guitar in Jazz Band. - Attended, auditioned, and performed at a Jazz Camp at [college], a reputable college with an international jazz program endorsed by many legendary jazz figures/groups such as The Count Basie Jazz Orchestra, Gordan Goodwin's Big Phat Band, and The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. - Freelance Musician and Composer for various online projects, primarily in the video game industry. - Music used in two indie films, with one being presented at [state] State Thespian Festival, and winning an award with recognition. - ● TheateMusical: - Inducted Honor Thespian to the National Thespian Society - Played notable supporting roles in Plays and Broadway Musicals, as well as filled tech positions primarily in the design aspect of the production (graphics/publicity, scenery) - Improv Team that competed at State - ● VEX Robotics: - State Finalist Freshman Year - Nationals Runner-Up
Activities: - ● Community: - Speech Campaign: spoke at 6 Schools across the state, 500+ listeners. Posters put up at each, advocating for a break in social norms. Surveyed school and gathered all data for a presentation and medalled at state for an FCCLA STAR Event. - Gave a motivational speech on MLK Day about chasing your dreams that was televised and recognized by the Mayor. - The Pink Lemonade Project: Indie Film+Book project where I created the music as well as designed the videography + video editing, lighting, locations, Characters, and assistance in Story and script writing. This project aimed to expose a local summer camp and the effects of a toxic authoritarian system via abuses and etc. - ● General: - Volunteered at a company that designs, creates, and tests Brewing Machinery internationally - CPR and AED Certified - I intend to commit to the military w/ ROTC Scholarship on a 4-6 year contract following graduation/obtaining desired degree - Non-Competitive Powerlifting, 300 Wilks Score - ● Programming & Roblox: - Self-Taught Luau/Lua5.5+, Python, C/C++, Type/Javascript, Haxeflixel, CSS, very minor html - At the age of 10, I had my own business that operated on Twitter, creating 3D Graphics (via Blender, Photoshop, and After Effects) for individuals and games, such as wallpapers, profile icons, and thumbnails. I then transitioned to a broad spectrum of skills acquired through the passion of game creation on Roblox - Formerly a Lead Developer for an indie game studio known as '[studio]', which was a project known for creating fun games for children, that gathered 1 million group members, and over 75 million game plays through a platform known as Roblox. These games generated a collective $70KUSD over the course of their popularity combined (20% of revenue was cycled back as advertisement funding). Through this community that was developed, we were able to raise over $6.5KUSD to help fund small indie projects from other smaller development groups. - Among many other games I created music for, one in particular is worth noting: 'Doors', amassing 4.9 Billion plays since 2021, has reached the screen of nearly every kid that is playing video games today. - Collaborated with popular online celebrities (YouTube, TikTok) on making games and experiences for their communities, some of which have billions of views and millions of followers. - I am a contributed developer to other popular games and projects with 2.6 Billion collective plays. I fulfilled various roles in these projects, such as game design, Front and Back-End programming (Luau/Lua 5.5+ & Typescript), 3D Artwork/Video Animation (using programs Blender, Photoshop, Premiere Pro/Sony Vegas, and After Effects), Music Design, Character & Object Animation, Architecture, and Voice Acting. Many of these games are a major source of income for the developers involved, such as "My Restaurant!" (of which I did 3D & 2D graphic design for), a game with ~800M plays, created by a studio known as BIG Games, which is the highest grossing development group on the platform. I connected to these groups and Studios through the Roblox Dev Forum, a company known as "Hidden Developers", Twitter, and my personal website. Through these projects, I nurtured my passion to create, and developed several solo passion projects for my own personal enjoyment. - Bug Tested various other games over several years, solving issues for experiences that went on to have hundreds of thousands of concurrent players. I am also a former member of the Official Roblox QA Team (before it was disbanded), which tested upcoming features to the platform. I have since been very active on their Developer Forum, helping all creators (young and old) solve issues and create awesome games. - Although my game development has slowed, I am currently working on a large game that will show the hardship of Schizophrenia and Social Outcasting through intricate storytelling. I intend to release this game on multiple platforms, such as Steam. - Created a Roblox Plug-in that detects Backdoors and vulnerabilities within games, preserving user data and game integrity. This plug-in has been used by nearly 300 developers thus far. - Created my own file syncing program using C++ via Visual Studio Code, that analyzes computer folders for identical information and can delete it or sync data from one folder to another (if not identical). This program has been used by my friends, but I did not publish it online. - Created a Discord Bot with custom commands for the Interbyte Studios Community server (18k members). This application allowed the community to interact and have a recreational token and minigame system for engagement and bonding. This bot was initially created in Python, but was then completely revamped in Javascript via Node.js (with some minor html for some special features.) - Created a customized theme for Canvas and Roblox using the "Stylish" extension, coded in CSS. - Utilizing BetterDiscord, I created my own lock screen for the Discord application to protect my computer from siblings and/or any environment I am working in. This came with a customized theme among other features, such as a built-in Spotify controller (play/pause, skip, and tuning into what others are listening to), and it synced up with my Discord Bot in my own server, allowing me to see the statistics (account age, user ID, etc.), and possible rule infractions of a given user within the community. This was coded in Javascript (Node.js), CSS, and HTML (for embedding purposes). This served to speed up the moderation and disciplinary side of my community, but also improve the efficiency of the Discord application.
Awards & Honor Groups: - x2 Academic Letter, Top PreACT at School - Outstanding Solo-Ensemble Award w/ 1st Place for self-composed, led, and performed Marimba Duet - Superior (1) Rating at District Music Contest for Marimba Duet - x1 Music Letter (only offered at former school) - Outstanding Jazz Soloist Drum Set at State - Outstanding Jazz Soloist Piano at State - Nominated Ambassador of Music (International Program) - All-City Percussion - All-State Jazz & Concert Band Acceptance (Committed to Jazz) - [College w/ International Jazz Program] Jazz Band Performer - State Finalist VEX Robotics (Freshman) - Nationals Runner-Up VEX Robotics (Sophomore) - Honor Thespian
In essays I hope to write about my aspirations to create The Iron Giant and how Robotics is an art. I am also planning to write about how my downfall in Freshman and sophomore years re-shaped the way a school district functions forever, and my recovery and discovery of ambition.
I'd like to know what colleges would accept me (I really want a shot at T30 or so) and what would be good for me. I would also appreciate any and all advice.
submitted by Thirust to chanceme [link] [comments]
Demographics: White, Out-Of-State, Mid-Low Income ● Hooks: First-Gen, ROTC, Underrepresented State, Rural Resident, <50% Race at School
Stats: - 11 APs: Psych, Seminar, Lang, Push, World, Physics, Lit, Calc BC, CSP, Research (Capstone), American Gov (Possible Self-Study PreCalc, Stats, CSA to make 14, or 15 w/ Physics CMech) by graduation - 3 CCs: Elementary Spanish I, PreCalc, Stats (Possibly taking INFO#### (PreReQ), Java I w/ AP CSA, CPP I & II to make 7 CCs by graduation) - 12 Honors by graduation - GPA: 3.75UW / 4.5W - PreACT (Freshman): 29Math/30Sci/30Eng/24Read - MAP Math/Read (Freshman): 282/255 - ALEKS Math Placement (Sophomore): 85%
Extracurriculars: - ● Instruments & Composition: - Passionate Multi-Instrumentalist (Drum Set, Piano, Guitar, Cello) and Composer - Wrote, led, and performed a Marimba Duet that won 1st place and an "Outstanding Ensemble" award at local Solo-Ensemble Festival, and a Superior Rating (I) at a District Music Contest, being recognized and commended by judges. - 1x Music Letter (only offered at prior school), Percussion Section Leader, teaching incoming Freshman instruments and nurturing their abilities - Jazz Drummer and Pianist, awarded "Outstanding Solo" on each at State Jazz Festival. Also played guitar and bass guitar in Jazz Band. - Attended, auditioned, and performed at a Jazz Camp at [college], a reputable college with an international jazz program endorsed by many legendary jazz figures/groups such as The Count Basie Jazz Orchestra, Gordan Goodwin's Big Phat Band, and The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. - Freelance Musician and Composer for various online projects, primarily in the video game industry. - Music used in two indie films, with one being presented at [state] State Thespian Festival, and winning an award with recognition. - ● TheateMusical: - Inducted Honor Thespian to the National Thespian Society - Played notable supporting roles in Plays and Broadway Musicals, as well as filled tech positions primarily in the design aspect of the production (graphics/publicity, scenery) - Improv Team that competed at State - ● VEX Robotics: - State Finalist Freshman Year - Nationals Runner-Up
Activities: - ● Community: - Speech Campaign: spoke at 6 Schools across the state, 500+ listeners. Posters put up at each, advocating for a break in social norms. Surveyed school and gathered all data for a presentation and medalled at state for an FCCLA STAR Event. - Gave a motivational speech on MLK Day about chasing your dreams that was televised and recognized by the Mayor. - The Pink Lemonade Project: Indie Film+Book project where I created the music as well as designed the videography + video editing, lighting, locations, Characters, and assistance in Story and script writing. This project aimed to expose a local summer camp and the effects of a toxic authoritarian system via abuses and etc. - ● General: - Volunteered at a company that designs, creates, and tests Brewing Machinery internationally - CPR and AED Certified - I intend to commit to the military w/ ROTC Scholarship on a 4-6 year contract following graduation/obtaining desired degree - Non-Competitive Powerlifting, 300 Wilks Score - ● Programming & Roblox: - Self-Taught Luau/Lua5.5+, Python, C/C++, Type/Javascript, Haxeflixel, CSS, very minor html - At the age of 10, I had my own business that operated on Twitter, creating 3D Graphics (via Blender, Photoshop, and After Effects) for individuals and games, such as wallpapers, profile icons, and thumbnails. I then transitioned to a broad spectrum of skills acquired through the passion of game creation on Roblox - Formerly a Lead Developer for an indie game studio known as '[studio]', which was a project known for creating fun games for children, that gathered 1 million group members, and over 75 million game plays through a platform known as Roblox. These games generated a collective $70KUSD over the course of their popularity combined (20% of revenue was cycled back as advertisement funding). Through this community that was developed, we were able to raise over $6.5KUSD to help fund small indie projects from other smaller development groups. - Among many other games I created music for, one in particular is worth noting: 'Doors', amassing 4.9 Billion plays since 2021, has reached the screen of nearly every kid that is playing video games today. - Collaborated with popular online celebrities (YouTube, TikTok) on making games and experiences for their communities, some of which have billions of views and millions of followers. - I am a contributed developer to other popular games and projects with 2.6 Billion collective plays. I fulfilled various roles in these projects, such as game design, Front and Back-End programming (Luau/Lua 5.5+ & Typescript), 3D Artwork/Video Animation (using programs Blender, Photoshop, Premiere Pro/Sony Vegas, and After Effects), Music Design, Character & Object Animation, Architecture, and Voice Acting. Many of these games are a major source of income for the developers involved, such as "My Restaurant!" (of which I did 3D & 2D graphic design for), a game with ~800M plays, created by a studio known as BIG Games, which is the highest grossing development group on the platform. I connected to these groups and Studios through the Roblox Dev Forum, a company known as "Hidden Developers", Twitter, and my personal website. Through these projects, I nurtured my passion to create, and developed several solo passion projects for my own personal enjoyment. - Bug Tested various other games over several years, solving issues for experiences that went on to have hundreds of thousands of concurrent players. I am also a former member of the Official Roblox QA Team (before it was disbanded), which tested upcoming features to the platform. I have since been very active on their Developer Forum, helping all creators (young and old) solve issues and create awesome games. - Although my game development has slowed, I am currently working on a large game that will show the hardship of Schizophrenia and Social Outcasting through intricate storytelling. I intend to release this game on multiple platforms, such as Steam. - Created a Roblox Plug-in that detects Backdoors and vulnerabilities within games, preserving user data and game integrity. This plug-in has been used by nearly 300 developers thus far. - Created my own file syncing program using C++ via Visual Studio Code, that analyzes computer folders for identical information and can delete it or sync data from one folder to another (if not identical). This program has been used by my friends, but I did not publish it online. - Created a Discord Bot with custom commands for the Interbyte Studios Community server (18k members). This application allowed the community to interact and have a recreational token and minigame system for engagement and bonding. This bot was initially created in Python, but was then completely revamped in Javascript via Node.js (with some minor html for some special features.) - Created a customized theme for Canvas and Roblox using the "Stylish" extension, coded in CSS. - Utilizing BetterDiscord, I created my own lock screen for the Discord application to protect my computer from siblings and/or any environment I am working in. This came with a customized theme among other features, such as a built-in Spotify controller (play/pause, skip, and tuning into what others are listening to), and it synced up with my Discord Bot in my own server, allowing me to see the statistics (account age, user ID, etc.), and possible rule infractions of a given user within the community. This was coded in Javascript (Node.js), CSS, and HTML (for embedding purposes). This served to speed up the moderation and disciplinary side of my community, but also improve the efficiency of the Discord application.
Awards & Honor Groups: - x2 Academic Letter, Top PreACT at School - Outstanding Solo-Ensemble Award w/ 1st Place for self-composed, led, and performed Marimba Duet - Superior (1) Rating at District Music Contest for Marimba Duet - x1 Music Letter (only offered at former school) - Outstanding Jazz Soloist Drum Set at State - Outstanding Jazz Soloist Piano at State - Nominated Ambassador of Music (International Program) - All-City Percussion - All-State Jazz & Concert Band Acceptance (Committed to Jazz) - [College w/ International Jazz Program] Jazz Band Performer - State Finalist VEX Robotics (Freshman) - Nationals Runner-Up VEX Robotics (Sophomore) - Honor Thespian
In essays I hope to write about my aspirations to create The Iron Giant and how Robotics is an art. I am also planning to write about how my downfall in Freshman and sophomore years re-shaped the way a school district functions forever, and my recovery and discovery of ambition.
I'd like to know what colleges would accept me (I really want a shot at T30 or so) and what would be good for me. I would also appreciate any and all advice.
2024.06.09 02:01 papaioliver I am actively fucking up my life
I dont know who will read this, but i just have to get this off my chest.
TL:DR at bottom
A bit of a backstory: I am 19 right now. 11 days from 20. During my life, i have had it all. The best family behind me anyone could ever ask for. They raised me well, gave me all the support and love humanly possible.
I grew up in an eastern european smalltown, been always above average, and slightly autistic at least, lets admit it. The typical gifted white suburban kid syndrome: never ever ran into problems during my life, everything seemd straight forward, always knew what i shold do with my life. During my blunder years, i have developed some pretty bad traits: a never had to struggle in my life for anything. Every single thing was handed to me on a silver plate. I really am just the luckiest person alive: always done well mentally, academically, and socially. Read the book once before when the teacher said put away your books, aced every exam still, after elementary(8 years here), got accepted to one of the best middle school of my country.
Experienced all the perks of middle school and the freedom of doing whatever the fuck you want during the stupidest years of your life, 15-19. And i did. Of course, procrastinating and not giving a fuck have not lifted me above average as in elementary, but i was still in the middle of the group. Again: everything others sweated blood for, handed to me on a silver plate. Straight goals in my life, stable personality, many friends, altough i still had my innocent nerdy kid persona, which was challenged majorly during the primal environment of a middle school coeducated dorm, but was never particularly bullied, countless friends and family, support and appreciation for who i was, altough i was just being as stupid as a middleschooler is.
Then covid came, and it somehow turned everything around. Not so many friends, no such concrete stable confidence, still being a lazy fucker who somehow lucked his way through everything. also during this time, i kinda started falling off, got into weed, not jsut alcohol, started going out and socialising less, falling off, but i had a great time, thinking about those times fondly, altough not so dearly. Rocked my way through the end exams of middle school with some last minute studying, i mean i absolutely still pulled from my little finger what others couldn't with teeth, tears and blood: got accepted into university as a dentist, still feeling like i am the top of the word.
During the last true summer break of my life, i started doing food delivery. 11:30am till 22-23:00 pm sometimes. During this time, the penjamin really took off in my country, weed being illegal but alternatives, such as Hexahidrocannabinol (HHC) being legal, available in a pen, just like an Elfbar: no neet to sneak out, to talk with the plug(some of you know arranging a meeting with those fuckers isnt as easy as it seems at all lmao), just getting high while laying in my bed. During this time, my weed addiction spiralled out of control, i got high every single night, this being my "well deserved downtime": just existing in my own little world in my bed, for 2 months. Those 4 years really did turned my personality to someone who isn't fit for a course that puts "Dr." in front of your name, this wil be important later.
Before the university, there is a social event hosted for us juniors called "junior camp", where you really are supposed to meet new people, and lay the basis of your entire uvicersity social life. And i took the penjamin(like 4th one in 2 months) with me. Now for those of you who dont know, weed can be a nice social drug, taken with moderation. If you get "schwasted, wake n baked" every day, the devils lettuce really puts you into your own world. No ambitions, no will to progress, just existing in your own little world, being fine as fuck with things as it is. Still had the best memory of my life though: being high as fuck in a water park they organised for us, literally youngsters in their prime, like 1500 of us, just being ourselves in the biggest pool party of the country. What i spent it doing: weed and cigarette breaks, taking slides, which literally felt like descending to hell, and walking around, aimlessly, not giving a fuck about the 1,5k people who came here to meet me and socialise, barely communicating with them, floating in my own world. This, and watching tje closing firework while being high are the best memories of my life until this day, guys if you can, take water slides and watch fireworks while being high, its definitely worth it.
And then came the first oath to myself that I've broken since then: that i will do a conversion of Paul, really focusing on the most important thing in my life: becoming a dentist, which is, besides helping people, is a ticket on first class to upper middle class, for someone from a bloodline of the poorest eastern european easants you can imagine. It takes 4 generations to break out of poverty, and i am the 4th. All the blood and sweat of my ancestors who worked their asses out, slaving away for the communist, them capitalist system, only for their kids to someday, amybe havve the chance i do hae right, now, and I am currently fucking up.
Now for those of you who dont know, university really is the most liberal form of education on the planet: you finally get your own timetable, the only mandatory attendance being the "practices", which you could just get through without putting anything on the table, and the lectures where they actually teach you university shit, not having a mandatory attendance, so who gives a fuck?
This gets us to the University: the first 2 weeks, i was being the typical student: al the lectures, learning from day to day, putting myself there in possibly the most alien environment i have ever been during my life. And turns out, i wasn't ready for the maturity and devotion a serious practice like dentistry takes. Man, i will literally be healing other people, everyones been to the dentist, and to get there, standing above your open mouth: Thats not something what is handed on a silver plate. No matter how smart, gifted, or special you think you are: this will only be achieved with tooth and nails. And i wasn't ready, not the slightest.
This is the point where i really started descending to the level of a fast food worker(no offence, which i was too): the first 3 months can be described with one word: Weed. no studying at all, just smoking that shit, feeling the buzz, it got to the point where i couldnt fall asleep without being hihg. Quite literally, i couldn'T imagine laying in bed, just...laying. IN november, i had it all came down on me, had a small breakdown, took the second oath i have broken: that i will change. This was the 11th of November, 2023
I cut back on weed, started attending lectures, realised that i have no fucking idea what the fuck are they talking about, so whats the point of attending? 3 more weks, sometimes begging to 5-6 different plugs, just to get my dose. Then came the so-called "exam period": where they excpt you to account for what you have "learned" during the "period of diligence". Of course, you can ace all your exams in literally 2 weeks, but for me, i was at diggind the foundation, while others were building the roof, already.
3rd oath: i will put my best, really gonna study my ass off for this one, having no plans whatsoever, just getting through somehow, like i always did. I think this is the time where i have made the first real steps towards maturity: admitting my parents that i havent done shit, and the chance of failure is around 90%. They gave me the encouragement i needed, realy got back on track, and pulled my first half year. So much so, that i got a study scholarship: 13k HUF, 36 USD/month, lower middle class scholarship, but still, that meant im in the top 10 percent of students. Yet again, by partying all yer, doing everything in the last moments.
4th oath: after these few weeks of hell, i will really put myself there, study as the year goes along, being ready and up-to*date with everything. Like the adult i am
For 1 week, this really worked out. studies for hours every day, being with my "new friends": fellow dental students, whom i had a really good start with, but now, arent really close pals. They have had a complete change, a real 180 in their life: being out in a new environment, gangs and friend groups really started forming, and i was there sometimes, having a blast with them, but you know: not really a part of the gang, just the chill, stoner, pretty stupid streets dude, never being up to date, never really giving a serious fuck about them, still smoking weed and drinking with my old middleschool friends. They naturally started inviting me less and less, and slowly fell into the group of a workplace friend, who you really dont just meet after work, you know. Now this might just be my insecurity speaking, i literally have a 2 week vacation fixated with them to the beaches of Croatia, but yeah, just a chill dude whos around sometimes, not *the gang*
And then came the wrost 6 weeks of my life. During my all afternoon studying sessions, i started noticing a slight tingling in my legs and feet, and my visual snow, which ive always had for some degree, starting putting itself into second gear. I even jokingly told one of my friends who happened to study with me: "Man, i might have gotten some real nerve damage from all the weed and fake penjamins, a-ha-ha".
During the next few days, hell unfolded: imagine the worst kind of buzzing, not the gentle weed buzzingm but a genuinely alarming one, an impending sense of doom, and pretty serious unvellness: during an anatomy lecture about the cranial nerves. Figured a snus might help: stuffed a Killa cold mint(european snus is generally stronger than Zyn, this particular one being 4times as strong as the stongrst Zyn, and its still pretty mid in eastern europe lmao). Hell broke loose. If you are familiar with trip reports, i have went trhough something very similar to a bad trip, almost had to run out of the lecture, in front of the teacher and 60 of my classmates beceuse i genuinely thought im gonna die. Went out after surbibing the lecture, ambling around for 2 hours, walking to a pharmacy 45 minutes away and back, speaking with my parents, being in a complete panic which just made things worse.
This went on for a week, then i got to the doctor. The anatomy practice was always the low point: the best teacher of the institute explaining how a human body works, and i was shaking in a corner, not falling into the deepest panic attack i have ever had was taking up all my energy. Drumming with my leg,s counting the tiles on the floor again and again, not paying attention about some of the most important words ever said to me in my life. Went to the doctor that friday finally, and got good words that i am really studying anatomy, i must have known that the innervation of the top of the limbs and and the feet are completely different, so my CNS works just fine, but im describing the most common symptoms of stress induced anxiety. Also told him about my ever worsening visual snow: imagine those old TV-s who had no signal, and displayed what we called "ant football". That is my life, especially when i look at the sky, which was a thing i admired dearly: The giant cloud, not abstructed by any mountain, flowing, and ever changing, still are the most beautiful thing for me, compared with the mind.blowing sunsets we have here, in the great plains. Being robbed of that put me even deeper. The 75mg pregabalin i got described, once a day and night, havent done anything at all. INstead, they amplified my brain fog, the tingling and buzzling, and the feeling of looming dread. I havent known this at the time, so sometimes i took my daily two before the anatomy sessions, which made them truly like hell. Having to walk out multiple times in a span of 1,5 hours of the lesson, just to simply breathe. If someone closed the door of the dissecting room, all hell broke loose, i couldn't breathe. I was bumping into people on the way there and back, being so disoriented due to basically being drugged. Talked about my mother about this, she went through literally the same hell, while attempting university, just like his brother, my Godfather, who was a border guard during the East-German refugee crysis, having to shoot live munition centimeters in front of the feet of pregnant women during the fall of the iron courtain. And this was a true and horrific mental breakdown, a literal *Idegösszeomlás*, akai burnout
So long story short: missed the most crucial 8 weeks of the semester, where we were told in the beginning: if you miss a week, you are done for. The last parts of the period of diligence were spent studying like hell, with my symptoms greatly improvving: attended parties with the dentist gang, smoked weed again, and just laid the foundations for the period of exams, actually studying like hell, like i always wanted to, AND I STILL ACED IT, but with the looming over me the sword of damocles.
Now thinking back, i could've made it. I really cold have. I still can. I completed every single subject i could in the diligence period, cell biology being the hardest, I barely passed that subject with a "2", basically a B-, this will be very important later. The last exam date is at the 7th of july, but with 6 weeks for only the anatomy, and basically the chemistry of 5 years, thats should be enough, eh? Yeaahh, yet another broken oath, spent a week doing nothing, weed, youtube, and old friends, while everyone leraned their asses off. Started learning too, and i took it seriously. But any students, you know how it is:
Decided to check into the E-uni managament system of my country. "You have an offered grade, you can accept it *here*. Click link. "you can't accept, you have an exam applification of this subject". So this was the first semester where they made the application to the different exams at different dates open at March instead of the end of May, so students can "pre-plan their whole semester", the backstory of this is some uni drama equal in lenght of this post *hungarian text-* (Akinek esetleg volt dolga a Debreceni Egyetem Anatómiai-, Szövet-, és Fejlődéstani intézetével, az pontosan tudja miről beszélek lmao, a többiek úgysem értenék, H***igeci),
So, remember about my offered grade about cell biology? Wel, you have to accept it, because it LITERALLY MEANS THEY OFFERED IT AND YOU CAN DECLINE IT, this is stragiht up ez shit, of course who was the hero, who forgot to do this 5 seconds thing? My pretty faced self. All the while having an exam booked for the 28th of may, which obviously had passed, and i jsut realized this now, because the university e-administration site, which you should check every day for like 10 times, havent been opened by me for a month. And in my country, no matter what grade you get offered, if you take an exam and dont attend, thats automatically a failure overwriting literally any grade you had before. And i really put in the work. Really did got the offered grade, which means 55% on 2 intersemester exams, which both of them are hell. And all undone because im too fucking lazy and stupid to open a fucking website. Because i havent declined the offered grade, and this is the first year they implemented the early exam booking, i still have hope that the email i have written towards Students affairs will have an effect, and i will be able to accept the offered grade. We are talking about a subject where if you do have to take the exam, there is a 90% failure rate. 90. fucking. percent. I have 1 month to learn the Central Nervous System(at least i know that mostly by now), and the complete human body as it is from the shoulders upwards, embriology, histology of the semester, and 1 ENTIRE YEAR of university level chenistry. Im fucked already as it is, cell biology by itself would take 3 weeks of no life learning JUST TO HAVE A CHANCE, which i have completed, and willingly, and ignorantly have thrown away.
What happens if i fail? Well, the state pays 12 active and 3 passive semester. The course is 10 semesters, so i can passivate and then retry, and still have a chance like this once more, before falling out of State Sponsored Scholarship. A semester is 1,3 million HUF, 5 months on minimum wage if you dont eat, sleep, and save 100%. PER SEMESTER. So the world wont collapse, buti would lose everyone i met during university, dropping to a class of strangers, being the failed kid, so laying the path from the best kinda uni life to the worst, in terms of connections and social life. My family knows about my mental health, even my conserative KGB grandparents are very supportive, but i wouldn't be able to stand the shame myseelf.
Had an eye watering hours long convo with a genuine friend about my life, and that made me realise im still aint shit, things reall have to change. this is why im typing this, mainly for my own self. As the first page of a diary im planning on starting, to never forget the feeling of being in the literal bottom right now. I dont except anyone to read this, idk why im even posting this, i dont even except any advice, but ofc if you have made it this far, thank you for dwelving into the life of a hungarian smalltown trash, hope you can learn
Not gonna reread this fucking yapping, sry for the typos and language, english isn't my first one
So this was it guys, my Magnum Opus of literature, the biggest yapping session of my life so far. Still spent 1,5 hours typing this even on my pc, instead of studdying, on 1,5mg alprazolam(xanax benzo), about to smoke a jo. Yet another broken oath
TL:DR: Failed to mature up for a hardcore branch of university, and a silly mistake will destroy my entire semester, and im still not studying, typing this
submitted by papaioliver to Advice [link] [comments]
TL:DR at bottom
A bit of a backstory: I am 19 right now. 11 days from 20. During my life, i have had it all. The best family behind me anyone could ever ask for. They raised me well, gave me all the support and love humanly possible.
I grew up in an eastern european smalltown, been always above average, and slightly autistic at least, lets admit it. The typical gifted white suburban kid syndrome: never ever ran into problems during my life, everything seemd straight forward, always knew what i shold do with my life. During my blunder years, i have developed some pretty bad traits: a never had to struggle in my life for anything. Every single thing was handed to me on a silver plate. I really am just the luckiest person alive: always done well mentally, academically, and socially. Read the book once before when the teacher said put away your books, aced every exam still, after elementary(8 years here), got accepted to one of the best middle school of my country.
Experienced all the perks of middle school and the freedom of doing whatever the fuck you want during the stupidest years of your life, 15-19. And i did. Of course, procrastinating and not giving a fuck have not lifted me above average as in elementary, but i was still in the middle of the group. Again: everything others sweated blood for, handed to me on a silver plate. Straight goals in my life, stable personality, many friends, altough i still had my innocent nerdy kid persona, which was challenged majorly during the primal environment of a middle school coeducated dorm, but was never particularly bullied, countless friends and family, support and appreciation for who i was, altough i was just being as stupid as a middleschooler is.
Then covid came, and it somehow turned everything around. Not so many friends, no such concrete stable confidence, still being a lazy fucker who somehow lucked his way through everything. also during this time, i kinda started falling off, got into weed, not jsut alcohol, started going out and socialising less, falling off, but i had a great time, thinking about those times fondly, altough not so dearly. Rocked my way through the end exams of middle school with some last minute studying, i mean i absolutely still pulled from my little finger what others couldn't with teeth, tears and blood: got accepted into university as a dentist, still feeling like i am the top of the word.
During the last true summer break of my life, i started doing food delivery. 11:30am till 22-23:00 pm sometimes. During this time, the penjamin really took off in my country, weed being illegal but alternatives, such as Hexahidrocannabinol (HHC) being legal, available in a pen, just like an Elfbar: no neet to sneak out, to talk with the plug(some of you know arranging a meeting with those fuckers isnt as easy as it seems at all lmao), just getting high while laying in my bed. During this time, my weed addiction spiralled out of control, i got high every single night, this being my "well deserved downtime": just existing in my own little world in my bed, for 2 months. Those 4 years really did turned my personality to someone who isn't fit for a course that puts "Dr." in front of your name, this wil be important later.
Before the university, there is a social event hosted for us juniors called "junior camp", where you really are supposed to meet new people, and lay the basis of your entire uvicersity social life. And i took the penjamin(like 4th one in 2 months) with me. Now for those of you who dont know, weed can be a nice social drug, taken with moderation. If you get "schwasted, wake n baked" every day, the devils lettuce really puts you into your own world. No ambitions, no will to progress, just existing in your own little world, being fine as fuck with things as it is. Still had the best memory of my life though: being high as fuck in a water park they organised for us, literally youngsters in their prime, like 1500 of us, just being ourselves in the biggest pool party of the country. What i spent it doing: weed and cigarette breaks, taking slides, which literally felt like descending to hell, and walking around, aimlessly, not giving a fuck about the 1,5k people who came here to meet me and socialise, barely communicating with them, floating in my own world. This, and watching tje closing firework while being high are the best memories of my life until this day, guys if you can, take water slides and watch fireworks while being high, its definitely worth it.
And then came the first oath to myself that I've broken since then: that i will do a conversion of Paul, really focusing on the most important thing in my life: becoming a dentist, which is, besides helping people, is a ticket on first class to upper middle class, for someone from a bloodline of the poorest eastern european easants you can imagine. It takes 4 generations to break out of poverty, and i am the 4th. All the blood and sweat of my ancestors who worked their asses out, slaving away for the communist, them capitalist system, only for their kids to someday, amybe havve the chance i do hae right, now, and I am currently fucking up.
Now for those of you who dont know, university really is the most liberal form of education on the planet: you finally get your own timetable, the only mandatory attendance being the "practices", which you could just get through without putting anything on the table, and the lectures where they actually teach you university shit, not having a mandatory attendance, so who gives a fuck?
This gets us to the University: the first 2 weeks, i was being the typical student: al the lectures, learning from day to day, putting myself there in possibly the most alien environment i have ever been during my life. And turns out, i wasn't ready for the maturity and devotion a serious practice like dentistry takes. Man, i will literally be healing other people, everyones been to the dentist, and to get there, standing above your open mouth: Thats not something what is handed on a silver plate. No matter how smart, gifted, or special you think you are: this will only be achieved with tooth and nails. And i wasn't ready, not the slightest.
This is the point where i really started descending to the level of a fast food worker(no offence, which i was too): the first 3 months can be described with one word: Weed. no studying at all, just smoking that shit, feeling the buzz, it got to the point where i couldnt fall asleep without being hihg. Quite literally, i couldn'T imagine laying in bed, just...laying. IN november, i had it all came down on me, had a small breakdown, took the second oath i have broken: that i will change. This was the 11th of November, 2023
I cut back on weed, started attending lectures, realised that i have no fucking idea what the fuck are they talking about, so whats the point of attending? 3 more weks, sometimes begging to 5-6 different plugs, just to get my dose. Then came the so-called "exam period": where they excpt you to account for what you have "learned" during the "period of diligence". Of course, you can ace all your exams in literally 2 weeks, but for me, i was at diggind the foundation, while others were building the roof, already.
3rd oath: i will put my best, really gonna study my ass off for this one, having no plans whatsoever, just getting through somehow, like i always did. I think this is the time where i have made the first real steps towards maturity: admitting my parents that i havent done shit, and the chance of failure is around 90%. They gave me the encouragement i needed, realy got back on track, and pulled my first half year. So much so, that i got a study scholarship: 13k HUF, 36 USD/month, lower middle class scholarship, but still, that meant im in the top 10 percent of students. Yet again, by partying all yer, doing everything in the last moments.
4th oath: after these few weeks of hell, i will really put myself there, study as the year goes along, being ready and up-to*date with everything. Like the adult i am
For 1 week, this really worked out. studies for hours every day, being with my "new friends": fellow dental students, whom i had a really good start with, but now, arent really close pals. They have had a complete change, a real 180 in their life: being out in a new environment, gangs and friend groups really started forming, and i was there sometimes, having a blast with them, but you know: not really a part of the gang, just the chill, stoner, pretty stupid streets dude, never being up to date, never really giving a serious fuck about them, still smoking weed and drinking with my old middleschool friends. They naturally started inviting me less and less, and slowly fell into the group of a workplace friend, who you really dont just meet after work, you know. Now this might just be my insecurity speaking, i literally have a 2 week vacation fixated with them to the beaches of Croatia, but yeah, just a chill dude whos around sometimes, not *the gang*
And then came the wrost 6 weeks of my life. During my all afternoon studying sessions, i started noticing a slight tingling in my legs and feet, and my visual snow, which ive always had for some degree, starting putting itself into second gear. I even jokingly told one of my friends who happened to study with me: "Man, i might have gotten some real nerve damage from all the weed and fake penjamins, a-ha-ha".
During the next few days, hell unfolded: imagine the worst kind of buzzing, not the gentle weed buzzingm but a genuinely alarming one, an impending sense of doom, and pretty serious unvellness: during an anatomy lecture about the cranial nerves. Figured a snus might help: stuffed a Killa cold mint(european snus is generally stronger than Zyn, this particular one being 4times as strong as the stongrst Zyn, and its still pretty mid in eastern europe lmao). Hell broke loose. If you are familiar with trip reports, i have went trhough something very similar to a bad trip, almost had to run out of the lecture, in front of the teacher and 60 of my classmates beceuse i genuinely thought im gonna die. Went out after surbibing the lecture, ambling around for 2 hours, walking to a pharmacy 45 minutes away and back, speaking with my parents, being in a complete panic which just made things worse.
This went on for a week, then i got to the doctor. The anatomy practice was always the low point: the best teacher of the institute explaining how a human body works, and i was shaking in a corner, not falling into the deepest panic attack i have ever had was taking up all my energy. Drumming with my leg,s counting the tiles on the floor again and again, not paying attention about some of the most important words ever said to me in my life. Went to the doctor that friday finally, and got good words that i am really studying anatomy, i must have known that the innervation of the top of the limbs and and the feet are completely different, so my CNS works just fine, but im describing the most common symptoms of stress induced anxiety. Also told him about my ever worsening visual snow: imagine those old TV-s who had no signal, and displayed what we called "ant football". That is my life, especially when i look at the sky, which was a thing i admired dearly: The giant cloud, not abstructed by any mountain, flowing, and ever changing, still are the most beautiful thing for me, compared with the mind.blowing sunsets we have here, in the great plains. Being robbed of that put me even deeper. The 75mg pregabalin i got described, once a day and night, havent done anything at all. INstead, they amplified my brain fog, the tingling and buzzling, and the feeling of looming dread. I havent known this at the time, so sometimes i took my daily two before the anatomy sessions, which made them truly like hell. Having to walk out multiple times in a span of 1,5 hours of the lesson, just to simply breathe. If someone closed the door of the dissecting room, all hell broke loose, i couldn't breathe. I was bumping into people on the way there and back, being so disoriented due to basically being drugged. Talked about my mother about this, she went through literally the same hell, while attempting university, just like his brother, my Godfather, who was a border guard during the East-German refugee crysis, having to shoot live munition centimeters in front of the feet of pregnant women during the fall of the iron courtain. And this was a true and horrific mental breakdown, a literal *Idegösszeomlás*, akai burnout
So long story short: missed the most crucial 8 weeks of the semester, where we were told in the beginning: if you miss a week, you are done for. The last parts of the period of diligence were spent studying like hell, with my symptoms greatly improvving: attended parties with the dentist gang, smoked weed again, and just laid the foundations for the period of exams, actually studying like hell, like i always wanted to, AND I STILL ACED IT, but with the looming over me the sword of damocles.
Now thinking back, i could've made it. I really cold have. I still can. I completed every single subject i could in the diligence period, cell biology being the hardest, I barely passed that subject with a "2", basically a B-, this will be very important later. The last exam date is at the 7th of july, but with 6 weeks for only the anatomy, and basically the chemistry of 5 years, thats should be enough, eh? Yeaahh, yet another broken oath, spent a week doing nothing, weed, youtube, and old friends, while everyone leraned their asses off. Started learning too, and i took it seriously. But any students, you know how it is:
alarm set at 7:30 am.Then i got the worst news i have ever gotten
10 minutes of snooze, every single day, the next time i wake up more rested than i should have been after 10 minutes, i check the clock, 8:50AM.
Awesome, get out of bed and shower. Check the time again: 11AM.
Cool, the whole day ahead of me. Just a siiiingle youtube video, while i pass the morning fatigue and the rapid morning hearthbeat of 5 years of chainsmoking, yet another amazing dedication of my life.
Then its 12AM, time to dinner! Post dinner fatigue is exactly a 30min video, 12:30PM, imma begin studying.
Next time i look at the clok, its 14:27. I really lock in until 6pm, then my parents cone home. I talk with them for what feels like 20-25 minutes.
Look at the clock again. 20:21PM. How the fuck did the whole fucking day passed again? i truly lock in for the rest of the day
23:35, i can't anymore. Starting to watch trash streams on youtube, braincells dying every second
Time spent with studying: 2-3 hours.
Every. Single. Fucking. Day.
Decided to check into the E-uni managament system of my country. "You have an offered grade, you can accept it *here*. Click link. "you can't accept, you have an exam applification of this subject". So this was the first semester where they made the application to the different exams at different dates open at March instead of the end of May, so students can "pre-plan their whole semester", the backstory of this is some uni drama equal in lenght of this post *hungarian text-* (Akinek esetleg volt dolga a Debreceni Egyetem Anatómiai-, Szövet-, és Fejlődéstani intézetével, az pontosan tudja miről beszélek lmao, a többiek úgysem értenék, H***igeci),
So, remember about my offered grade about cell biology? Wel, you have to accept it, because it LITERALLY MEANS THEY OFFERED IT AND YOU CAN DECLINE IT, this is stragiht up ez shit, of course who was the hero, who forgot to do this 5 seconds thing? My pretty faced self. All the while having an exam booked for the 28th of may, which obviously had passed, and i jsut realized this now, because the university e-administration site, which you should check every day for like 10 times, havent been opened by me for a month. And in my country, no matter what grade you get offered, if you take an exam and dont attend, thats automatically a failure overwriting literally any grade you had before. And i really put in the work. Really did got the offered grade, which means 55% on 2 intersemester exams, which both of them are hell. And all undone because im too fucking lazy and stupid to open a fucking website. Because i havent declined the offered grade, and this is the first year they implemented the early exam booking, i still have hope that the email i have written towards Students affairs will have an effect, and i will be able to accept the offered grade. We are talking about a subject where if you do have to take the exam, there is a 90% failure rate. 90. fucking. percent. I have 1 month to learn the Central Nervous System(at least i know that mostly by now), and the complete human body as it is from the shoulders upwards, embriology, histology of the semester, and 1 ENTIRE YEAR of university level chenistry. Im fucked already as it is, cell biology by itself would take 3 weeks of no life learning JUST TO HAVE A CHANCE, which i have completed, and willingly, and ignorantly have thrown away.
What happens if i fail? Well, the state pays 12 active and 3 passive semester. The course is 10 semesters, so i can passivate and then retry, and still have a chance like this once more, before falling out of State Sponsored Scholarship. A semester is 1,3 million HUF, 5 months on minimum wage if you dont eat, sleep, and save 100%. PER SEMESTER. So the world wont collapse, buti would lose everyone i met during university, dropping to a class of strangers, being the failed kid, so laying the path from the best kinda uni life to the worst, in terms of connections and social life. My family knows about my mental health, even my conserative KGB grandparents are very supportive, but i wouldn't be able to stand the shame myseelf.
Had an eye watering hours long convo with a genuine friend about my life, and that made me realise im still aint shit, things reall have to change. this is why im typing this, mainly for my own self. As the first page of a diary im planning on starting, to never forget the feeling of being in the literal bottom right now. I dont except anyone to read this, idk why im even posting this, i dont even except any advice, but ofc if you have made it this far, thank you for dwelving into the life of a hungarian smalltown trash, hope you can learn
Not gonna reread this fucking yapping, sry for the typos and language, english isn't my first one
So this was it guys, my Magnum Opus of literature, the biggest yapping session of my life so far. Still spent 1,5 hours typing this even on my pc, instead of studdying, on 1,5mg alprazolam(xanax benzo), about to smoke a jo. Yet another broken oath
TL:DR: Failed to mature up for a hardcore branch of university, and a silly mistake will destroy my entire semester, and im still not studying, typing this
2024.06.09 00:26 Particular-Ball7753 The Signs of Rue 21 Going Bankrupt
As most of you probably know, Rue 21 has filed for bankruptcy and has closed all their stores by now. A lot of ex-empployees were shocked to hear this sudden news, I personally believe the signs were already there that the company was bleeding for a couple of a years prior to the announcement. Here I will share my experience working for Rue21, the things I believe were signs of the impending, and things I believe led to the company's failure.
Let's start with the first red flag, the sign of the impending:
The payroll hours: sometime in 2022 after the holiday season was over our store was allocated 125 store hours and we were not to go over under any circumstances. This continued into our busier summer, back to school, and even our holiday seasons of that year. My store manager was actually worried, saying she hoped the company wasn't in any financial trouble. The company of course was silent on that end. Now for those who do not work in retail may not know that 125 hours is less than bare bones minimum needed to run our store. We were short staffed during hour peak business hours and closing managers had to take lunches literally 1 hour after clocking into their shift. The sales plan forecasts were growing bigger and yet the payroll hours stayed the same. Before, the company would always increase hours as sales plans grew, but no. It did not happen. This was not just our store, I believe all the stores in our district were affected as my SM talked with another SM at another store who had a much bussier store and she was stressed with all the boxes she had in the back due to the 125 hours she was operating on. Not enough hours for staff to process shipment in a timely manner. Concerns about these hours were brought up to our DM, but the only thing the company gave us was an instruction sheet on how to 'flex' these 125 hours and schedule effectively to clean the store and process shipment. We did recieve a temporary increase an hours when visuals came in, but then went back to 125.
Higher and higher sales plans: right before I left in 2022 we were getting all these insane store goals that had no reflection of business the previous year. we obviously did not make those plans. I feel like this was so the company would not need to pay bonuses for managers since we would get a bonus if we made the month's sales plan and over. Not sure if this happened in other stores.
No Merit Increase: the year I left, merit increases were promised to come around April or August. I had a great review and the DM said merit increases would happen, but they never came around. Prices were going super high at the time, food was going up, the cost of fuel was up, so a merit increase made sense to help ease the burden and then it never happened. Our store never got them and the DM told my SM who broke the news to us. Again I am not sure if it was just our store or the other stores as well, but we did not get them that year. Appearently, they used the excuse of getting a low finanical score store rating to deny us these plans. My SM said why would we get more money when we weren't doing our jobs. The company had increased our work once fitting rooms opened up again and ship from store was a go. We were definietly doing our jobs and doing more.
Ship from Store adjustments: in 2022 we recieved a memo that if we cannot find a product in an order, cancel it so another store gets the order in hopes they have all the items and the customer would not recieve multiple packages. This was a change from the previous directive where we were to partially reject the order and send what we were able to fulfill to the customer. I definitely see the pros to that, mutiple packages sounds like a haggle. The company added in its memo that it costs them 10 dollars to ship every package, i found it odd they say that since customers generally pay for shipping themselves when checking out. Unless it hit the free shipping threshold. Again, this might have been an oversite on the company's part.
The loss of online shipping: a while after I left the company, I noticed on the website that shipping to home was no longer available at all for any product. The website advertised, buy online and pick up in store during this time. So any rue 21 customer without a store nearby is basically cut off from buying from them ever again. Bye bye to the online customers. This continued up until the company announced bankruptcy, although it was partially restored as the company brought back online exclusive products but a very, very small selection. If this was not a signal the company was doing bad I don't know what is. I went back to the store to visit one if my old managers and she said it was costing the company too much money to ship items.
The reports of restructuring and financial woes: this was after leaving the company. I read a handful of articles saying Rue21 was hiring consulting firms to help bolster sales and financing as the company kept earning negative ebitda and store sales were declining. I beleive they partnenred with at least 2 or 3 different firms to help reorganize themselves, but to no avail. The conpany still went under. I even heard from my old co workers that the company put our DM in another district and all districts doubeled in size, I also heard most of the RDs were let go.
Here are the tings I believe contributed to the conpany's fall:
More stores open: This may come as a surprise, but during the pandemic era, the company had actually expanded their stores. I believe 15 stores were opened during this time. An article I found online confirm's their decision to open more stores as they say this was backed by customer data and trend forecasts. I am not sure what figures they were looking at but this was definetly a bad idea as stores started underpeforming once inflation rose sky high, price gouging, and food costs all up. Everything went up.
Tunnel vision with certain KPIs: During the same pandemic area our store and I think the whole district got traffic counters installed so they can add conversion to their KPIs, basically its a percentage you get by dividing transaction counts by store walk ins, we initially started off with a 27-28% goal in our store than I belive right before i left it was lowered to 22%. Our DM was really on us saying no stores are to hit below 20% conversion and that any stores that do will have a conversation with the executive team about why their store is that low. A vague threat that never came to fruition because that never happened to us nor did i hear from other stores about this. We had missed this goal several times. The company became way too focused on this saying that numbers tells a stroy in the store and that we are leaving X amount of money on the table every time we miss our conversion goals. They got this figure assuming the difference in percentage of the goal and ADS, but that was all theoretical. I could have made my sales plan with a 49 dollar ADS and conversion rate of 15% at closing. I would rather have that than a 32% conversion rate, missing sales plan for the day, and an ADS of 10 dollars. The culture the DM spread around was toxic, to her it doesn't matter if you miss your other KPIs just dont miss your conversion. I feel we did pretty well with this conversion thing, but it was ridiculous what corporate was trying to tell us with conversion. Also the DM mentioned that when stores would go under 20% conversion she would get a call from her RD at 5am in the morning asking why the store went that low, if true this was super toxic, the DM is not gonna know that answer at 5am while they are still sleeping and the business day has yet to start. This move to conversion focus with less empahsis on other KPIs was crazy. Also we would have the same customers that would walk in and out of the stores several times going to meet families and their friends and then walk back in, artifically inflating the true amount of cusotmers we actually had, now we had to get them to buy things again but realistically that didn't happen. Also this thing counted strollers and other such things so again this conversion rate was not an accurate reading of our performance here. An amazing coversion rate was not gonna make my sales plan, but is only one factor to how business was that day!!!
Loyalty program: just like most other retailers, you sign up with your basic info and you get points for your purchases which lead to discounts or 'rewards' is what they called it. Our store did fairly well most of the time, but there were times on weekends our sign up rate would go down since our store was in a tourist hot spot and several tourists would refuse the loyalty program because there was no Rue 21 near them nor would they shop online. Our DM heavily micromanaged this aspect. I heard several conference calls were she would call out the underperfoming stores in the district and give everyone overall a lecture about it. Due to this what seemed like company wide culture, corporate sent us a memo for managers to sign saying we were not to falisfy rewards accounts because appearently this was happening in the company. Probably managers desperately trying to make the goals. There was even a store in my district that claimed customers were not allowed to make a purchase without signing up for loyalty/needing to give a phone number. Not sure how true this was, but it could have happened. My DM even went as far to say if employees were not getting their loyalty sign ups up then replace them with new hires who will. The thing is were where these new quality employees gonna come from? Compared to Rue 21 in my state, their starting pay was very low compared to the other retailers in my outlet center. You want quality employees, but you gotta up your ante to stay competitive and Rue 21 was not being competitive in this area for Associates and Managers.
Credit cards: this one was a big one. Just like how every retailer has credit cards now, so did Rue21. They wanted us to have at least 1 approved card application a day. It was tough getting people to try and sign up, especially with the high interest rates at the time. Again, corporate was toxic with the credit card thing as my DM said she would get fired if she doesn't get enough credit cards. The RD was visting our store with her at the time and she said that around her and she didn't even say anything to refute this. Her silence meant everything! What do they want? To have a Wells Fargo situation to happen to them. This was at a time when inflation was up and less people were trying to spend money so credit cards made no sense. We would get nasty emails when we missed our credit card goals from our DM. The conference calls weren't any fun because of that either. Also, Rue21's motto was always fast and friendly at the cash wrap, but with all these extra things poppinh up, the BOGO deals, fragrances, loyalty, and now credit cards! The fast part kinda went away and is now a maze of information bombardments to the customer. All these things tacked on much more time than neccessary and some customers even felt overwhelmed by it too. We were all nonstop talking to the customers at the wrap about these things I was out of breath with every single transaction! It was exhausting!
Lastly, the reason I believe Rue 21 failed, pure greed! It is outrageous to think that the customer base for in-store shopping was there during the panedmic era. I can still remember the time the company annouced more stores, the year during the pandemic with tax returns, unemployment money, and stimulus checks coming in, I think that was in 2020 or 2021. We had so much business company wide, they came out with a memo saying that the sales volume/foot traffic mirrored Christmas shopping season. Our store specifically made 200-400% over our daily sales goals during this time. The rush would not stop and during this time the company increased our converision goal 1% saying that the extra percent is equal to 1 million dollars more in revenue for the company. Rue 21 also changed all of its merchandise to normal price to make more money, then the memo that the new stores were coming. The sales seemed boundless, until it all came to a gridning halt with gas, food, rent, utilities, and just about everything else went through the roof and then the company slashed payroll hours outrageously low. This was pure greed, instead of focusing on the stores they already had and paying down debts, investing in their employees and customers, the company expanded and tried to cash in even more on this ride of money, but it all came crashing down under them in the end and this was probably their undoing. Greed.
Well that's a wrap!
Any ex-Rue 21 employees out there who want to talk about the company? I would love to know your experience and whether you observed the same findings I did. Did we all go down to 125 hours company wide in the past years leading to the bankruptcy? Were merit increases denied? Did coprorate contribute to any toxic/negative attitudes to making conversion, loyalty, and credit cards?? I would love to know! Thanks!
submitted by Particular-Ball7753 to antiwork [link] [comments]
Let's start with the first red flag, the sign of the impending:
The payroll hours: sometime in 2022 after the holiday season was over our store was allocated 125 store hours and we were not to go over under any circumstances. This continued into our busier summer, back to school, and even our holiday seasons of that year. My store manager was actually worried, saying she hoped the company wasn't in any financial trouble. The company of course was silent on that end. Now for those who do not work in retail may not know that 125 hours is less than bare bones minimum needed to run our store. We were short staffed during hour peak business hours and closing managers had to take lunches literally 1 hour after clocking into their shift. The sales plan forecasts were growing bigger and yet the payroll hours stayed the same. Before, the company would always increase hours as sales plans grew, but no. It did not happen. This was not just our store, I believe all the stores in our district were affected as my SM talked with another SM at another store who had a much bussier store and she was stressed with all the boxes she had in the back due to the 125 hours she was operating on. Not enough hours for staff to process shipment in a timely manner. Concerns about these hours were brought up to our DM, but the only thing the company gave us was an instruction sheet on how to 'flex' these 125 hours and schedule effectively to clean the store and process shipment. We did recieve a temporary increase an hours when visuals came in, but then went back to 125.
Higher and higher sales plans: right before I left in 2022 we were getting all these insane store goals that had no reflection of business the previous year. we obviously did not make those plans. I feel like this was so the company would not need to pay bonuses for managers since we would get a bonus if we made the month's sales plan and over. Not sure if this happened in other stores.
No Merit Increase: the year I left, merit increases were promised to come around April or August. I had a great review and the DM said merit increases would happen, but they never came around. Prices were going super high at the time, food was going up, the cost of fuel was up, so a merit increase made sense to help ease the burden and then it never happened. Our store never got them and the DM told my SM who broke the news to us. Again I am not sure if it was just our store or the other stores as well, but we did not get them that year. Appearently, they used the excuse of getting a low finanical score store rating to deny us these plans. My SM said why would we get more money when we weren't doing our jobs. The company had increased our work once fitting rooms opened up again and ship from store was a go. We were definietly doing our jobs and doing more.
Ship from Store adjustments: in 2022 we recieved a memo that if we cannot find a product in an order, cancel it so another store gets the order in hopes they have all the items and the customer would not recieve multiple packages. This was a change from the previous directive where we were to partially reject the order and send what we were able to fulfill to the customer. I definitely see the pros to that, mutiple packages sounds like a haggle. The company added in its memo that it costs them 10 dollars to ship every package, i found it odd they say that since customers generally pay for shipping themselves when checking out. Unless it hit the free shipping threshold. Again, this might have been an oversite on the company's part.
The loss of online shipping: a while after I left the company, I noticed on the website that shipping to home was no longer available at all for any product. The website advertised, buy online and pick up in store during this time. So any rue 21 customer without a store nearby is basically cut off from buying from them ever again. Bye bye to the online customers. This continued up until the company announced bankruptcy, although it was partially restored as the company brought back online exclusive products but a very, very small selection. If this was not a signal the company was doing bad I don't know what is. I went back to the store to visit one if my old managers and she said it was costing the company too much money to ship items.
The reports of restructuring and financial woes: this was after leaving the company. I read a handful of articles saying Rue21 was hiring consulting firms to help bolster sales and financing as the company kept earning negative ebitda and store sales were declining. I beleive they partnenred with at least 2 or 3 different firms to help reorganize themselves, but to no avail. The conpany still went under. I even heard from my old co workers that the company put our DM in another district and all districts doubeled in size, I also heard most of the RDs were let go.
Here are the tings I believe contributed to the conpany's fall:
More stores open: This may come as a surprise, but during the pandemic era, the company had actually expanded their stores. I believe 15 stores were opened during this time. An article I found online confirm's their decision to open more stores as they say this was backed by customer data and trend forecasts. I am not sure what figures they were looking at but this was definetly a bad idea as stores started underpeforming once inflation rose sky high, price gouging, and food costs all up. Everything went up.
Tunnel vision with certain KPIs: During the same pandemic area our store and I think the whole district got traffic counters installed so they can add conversion to their KPIs, basically its a percentage you get by dividing transaction counts by store walk ins, we initially started off with a 27-28% goal in our store than I belive right before i left it was lowered to 22%. Our DM was really on us saying no stores are to hit below 20% conversion and that any stores that do will have a conversation with the executive team about why their store is that low. A vague threat that never came to fruition because that never happened to us nor did i hear from other stores about this. We had missed this goal several times. The company became way too focused on this saying that numbers tells a stroy in the store and that we are leaving X amount of money on the table every time we miss our conversion goals. They got this figure assuming the difference in percentage of the goal and ADS, but that was all theoretical. I could have made my sales plan with a 49 dollar ADS and conversion rate of 15% at closing. I would rather have that than a 32% conversion rate, missing sales plan for the day, and an ADS of 10 dollars. The culture the DM spread around was toxic, to her it doesn't matter if you miss your other KPIs just dont miss your conversion. I feel we did pretty well with this conversion thing, but it was ridiculous what corporate was trying to tell us with conversion. Also the DM mentioned that when stores would go under 20% conversion she would get a call from her RD at 5am in the morning asking why the store went that low, if true this was super toxic, the DM is not gonna know that answer at 5am while they are still sleeping and the business day has yet to start. This move to conversion focus with less empahsis on other KPIs was crazy. Also we would have the same customers that would walk in and out of the stores several times going to meet families and their friends and then walk back in, artifically inflating the true amount of cusotmers we actually had, now we had to get them to buy things again but realistically that didn't happen. Also this thing counted strollers and other such things so again this conversion rate was not an accurate reading of our performance here. An amazing coversion rate was not gonna make my sales plan, but is only one factor to how business was that day!!!
Loyalty program: just like most other retailers, you sign up with your basic info and you get points for your purchases which lead to discounts or 'rewards' is what they called it. Our store did fairly well most of the time, but there were times on weekends our sign up rate would go down since our store was in a tourist hot spot and several tourists would refuse the loyalty program because there was no Rue 21 near them nor would they shop online. Our DM heavily micromanaged this aspect. I heard several conference calls were she would call out the underperfoming stores in the district and give everyone overall a lecture about it. Due to this what seemed like company wide culture, corporate sent us a memo for managers to sign saying we were not to falisfy rewards accounts because appearently this was happening in the company. Probably managers desperately trying to make the goals. There was even a store in my district that claimed customers were not allowed to make a purchase without signing up for loyalty/needing to give a phone number. Not sure how true this was, but it could have happened. My DM even went as far to say if employees were not getting their loyalty sign ups up then replace them with new hires who will. The thing is were where these new quality employees gonna come from? Compared to Rue 21 in my state, their starting pay was very low compared to the other retailers in my outlet center. You want quality employees, but you gotta up your ante to stay competitive and Rue 21 was not being competitive in this area for Associates and Managers.
Credit cards: this one was a big one. Just like how every retailer has credit cards now, so did Rue21. They wanted us to have at least 1 approved card application a day. It was tough getting people to try and sign up, especially with the high interest rates at the time. Again, corporate was toxic with the credit card thing as my DM said she would get fired if she doesn't get enough credit cards. The RD was visting our store with her at the time and she said that around her and she didn't even say anything to refute this. Her silence meant everything! What do they want? To have a Wells Fargo situation to happen to them. This was at a time when inflation was up and less people were trying to spend money so credit cards made no sense. We would get nasty emails when we missed our credit card goals from our DM. The conference calls weren't any fun because of that either. Also, Rue21's motto was always fast and friendly at the cash wrap, but with all these extra things poppinh up, the BOGO deals, fragrances, loyalty, and now credit cards! The fast part kinda went away and is now a maze of information bombardments to the customer. All these things tacked on much more time than neccessary and some customers even felt overwhelmed by it too. We were all nonstop talking to the customers at the wrap about these things I was out of breath with every single transaction! It was exhausting!
Lastly, the reason I believe Rue 21 failed, pure greed! It is outrageous to think that the customer base for in-store shopping was there during the panedmic era. I can still remember the time the company annouced more stores, the year during the pandemic with tax returns, unemployment money, and stimulus checks coming in, I think that was in 2020 or 2021. We had so much business company wide, they came out with a memo saying that the sales volume/foot traffic mirrored Christmas shopping season. Our store specifically made 200-400% over our daily sales goals during this time. The rush would not stop and during this time the company increased our converision goal 1% saying that the extra percent is equal to 1 million dollars more in revenue for the company. Rue 21 also changed all of its merchandise to normal price to make more money, then the memo that the new stores were coming. The sales seemed boundless, until it all came to a gridning halt with gas, food, rent, utilities, and just about everything else went through the roof and then the company slashed payroll hours outrageously low. This was pure greed, instead of focusing on the stores they already had and paying down debts, investing in their employees and customers, the company expanded and tried to cash in even more on this ride of money, but it all came crashing down under them in the end and this was probably their undoing. Greed.
Well that's a wrap!
Any ex-Rue 21 employees out there who want to talk about the company? I would love to know your experience and whether you observed the same findings I did. Did we all go down to 125 hours company wide in the past years leading to the bankruptcy? Were merit increases denied? Did coprorate contribute to any toxic/negative attitudes to making conversion, loyalty, and credit cards?? I would love to know! Thanks!
2024.06.09 00:23 Saturdead The Red Hive
I used to make videos. Not to a large following, just little interesting clips about life in a small town and the various people who live there. It wasn’t just content for the sake of content, it was a record to show what life was like in the 2020’s for the folks of Tomskog, Minnesota.
I’d done a couple of videos already. One was about the old couple running the corner pub, one was about a landlord, and another was about the principal of the local high school (and their apparent pool troubles). Long story.
I was doing a shorter video about a woman named Marla. She was a beekeeper who worked with moving intrusive hives. This kind of content gets a lot of views, so I figured I’d do a more compact but better edited video this time around. I’d done my research, prepped my gear, and was rearing to go.
I met Marla on a Thursday morning in late May. We took her pickup, had a gas station sandwich for breakfast, and stopped for a quick coffee. I talked to her a bit about her job, her life, and her aspirations. Small town stuff. She was the kind of woman who was happy as long as she could keep up with her payments and have a bit left over for a Netflix subscription. Wholesome.
She drove me out to the site of the day, talking to the camera as we went. We were turning further and further off the paved roads as the suspension struggled against weeds, rock, and gravel.
“There’s a hive near a walking trail,” Marla explained. “A couple of folks called in about their dogs getting scared. It should be fine, but we’re gonna gear up just in case they’re mistaken.”
“You expect us to get stung a lot?” I asked.
“Not really,” she smiled. “Not if you know what you’re doing. But there’ve been times when folks have called in about a hive and it turned out to be paper wasps.”
“Not as pleasant as honeybees.”
“No,” she laughed. “No, they really aren’t”.
We passed through a section of trees that covered both sides of the road; the branches hanging low enough to scrape the hood of the car. Emerging on the other side, a field opened up to our right. A large, wide-open field, covered from end to end in blue sunflowers; a local variety that is, apparently, sort of rare. I asked Marla about them.
“The blues? Yeah, they were introduced as a sort of gimmick back in the… 1930’s, I think? 1940’s maybe? They’re actually quite invasive. I’m surprised there aren’t more of them around.”
“But bees can make honey on them?”
“I guess,” she nodded. “They’re just sunflowers.”
“Have you tried it? Is it blue?”
“Can’t say that I have,” she laughed. “But I’m sure it’s fine. Ordinary sunflower honey is fantastic. Kinda earthy.”
We got out and suited up. It felt like putting on a tent. Marla shared some interesting bee factoids that I didn’t manage to catch on camera, but I made a mental note to ask her to repeat it later. Of course, I wouldn’t. I’m kinda forgetful.
I hadn’t seen a single bee yet, but Marla was already heading out into the field. The sunflowers reached about waist-high, and there was this strange, almost chemical smell in the air. Sort of a mix of chlorine and ammonia. As we got further out, Marla pointed out a couple of flowers to me.
“Right there,” she said. “Get a clip.”
I zoomed in, spotting two bees chilling on a blue sunflower petal. They were just sort of sitting there. They had a slightly more reddish tint to them than I expected. Marla didn’t seem to mind, or notice.
It didn’t take long before we got to the hive. I immediately started filming as we approached. The buzzing got louder as bees started to poke and prod at my defenses, curiously checking for gaps in my gloves and neck. Thankfully, Marla had helped me secure it. Still, the buzzing kinda gave me the creeps. Never been a fan of bugs.
“Yeah, alright,” Marla laughed. “No wonder there are bees. Someone set this up.”
It was a man-made hive, framed with sheets of mahogany. A series of wooden squares with hollow cork pipes lining the inside. The bees had really taken to it, transforming it into a sturdy hive.
“We usually call these bee hotels,” Marla said. “Some kind-hearted local set it up, but as this isn’t private property we have to take complaints into account. I’m gonna make sure we move it to a better location with more nutrition for our free-bee friends here, where they won’t spook any dog-walkers. And of course, we’re keeping the hive. Someone put a lot of thought into this.”
I got a nice video out of it. How she unsecured the hive, moved the sections one by one, and pointed to interesting pieces for the camera. She found the queen and scooped her up in a separate container. Marla stopped for a moment though; apparently, the queen was larger than she’d anticipated. I didn’t really have a frame of reference, so I had to take her word for it.
We wrapped the hive up under a tarp on the pickup and made our way back to Marla’s property. I was afraid all the bumps in the road would shake the bees loose, but they seemed perfectly content. I guess it helped that Marla was a very calm driver, despite some curious bees making their way inside the cabin. We still had the suits on, luckily.
There was a cute hand-painted sign of a bee as we entered Marla’s land. When you live in the middle of nowhere, most folks can get away with owning more land than they need; especially if they don’t mind having spotty internet or a fair drive to the nearest supermarket. One look at Marla showed that she didn’t mind either of these things.
We took some time offloading the hive, finding a good spot on the eastern side of her property. There were plenty of wildflowers for the critters to feast on, and Marla seemed confident in her choice. There wasn’t much more to it; we set it up, captured a couple of finishing thoughts, and called it a day.
As I packed up my gear and took off my suit, I got a moment to speak with Marla without the camera. She was excited to have a new hive, but there was something about her expression that seemed a bit… off.
“I’d love to try some of their honey,” I said. “I think it’d make a great end to the video.”
“Yeah, I’ll keep in touch,” she nodded.
There was an oppressive silence as she stared into the distance. I tilted my head, trying to catch her attention.
“You alright there?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I, uh… I’m just anxious. New responsibilities, you know?”
“Is there a problem?”
She bit down on her lip, squinting.
“Maybe.”
A couple of days later, I started getting updates. Marla was having some trouble with the hive. It was more aggressive than she’d previously thought, and a lot of the bees had been dying off at alarming rates.
“It happens when you move them sometimes,” she sighed. “It’s rare, but it happens. They can have trouble adapting.”
She managed to get a little honey, but she wasn’t too happy about it. Apparently, it wasn’t as sweet and sugary as she thought it’d be. There was just something off about it, texture-wise. She was gonna make me a little bottle of it either way, for the video, but she advised against eating it.
Returning to my day job, I was looking forward to hearing more from Marla. Out of all the people I’d worked with, she’d been the most eager to contribute to my channel. We kept in touch over the week, discussing future collaborations and other ways we could make content. She suggested making a couple of DIY videos to showcase some neat tricks for would-be hobby apiarists.
The following weekend, we met up again. Another early morning, this time with a light drizzle spattering against the hood of her pickup. The moment she came around, I could tell something had happened. She had these bright red spots on her arms, and she was a lot less talkative than usual. Before I got the chance to talk to her about it, she explained.
“Got swarmed yesterday,” she said. “Never happened before.”
“Those are all stings?”
“That’s just the thing,” she scoffed. “It isn’t. They’re bites.”
“I didn’t think honeybees bit people.”
“They don’t.”
We just looked at one another for a moment. Her marks were pretty nasty, some of them swollen enough to burst. The conclusion was obvious; these weren’t ordinary honeybees.
We made our way back out to the field where we’d found them. I did a little filming, but Marla was self-conscious about her arms. She was scared that it might dissuade people from working with bees, and she kept repeating how it was “her fault” for not handling them correctly. She said it so many times I couldn’t help but to feel she was trying to convince herself rather than me, or an audience.
We made our way out into the field. Marla flipped open a pocketknife and bent down to check on the flowers. Cutting one off at the stem, she examined it for a moment. She held it up for me to see for myself. I looked it over but couldn’t see anything strange – apart from the obvious blue color.
“You gotta touch it,” she said. “Check it.”
So I did. As soon as I touched it, a few petals came loose. The flower was clearly dead and dry.
Checking out a couple more, we came to a startling realization. The entire field was, in fact, completely dead. Bone dry of pollen and sustenance. And, according to Marla, it must’ve been dead for months. I didn’t really understand why that was such a big deal.
“Because,” Marla explained. “The hive flourished out here, in the middle of the field. If they couldn’t survive here, they would’ve migrated, but they didn’t. So what the hell have they been eating?”
“Whatever it was, it’s what must’ve made the honey taste weird.”
“Not just taste,” Marla said, shaking her head. “The smell is the worst. Like stale bacteria and methane.”
Things started to fall into place. Whatever they had been eating out here in the field wasn’t available at Marla’s place; hence why they had been dying and getting more aggressive. Getting back to the pickup, Marla was deep in her own thoughts, drumming her fingers on the dashboard. She couldn’t figure it out. I tried to cheer her up with a pat on her shoulder, which caused her to flinch a little. I probably poked a bitemark.
“Sorry,” I said. “But you know, maybe that’s why they swarmed you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe they tried to eat you up,” I chuckled, pointing to her arms.
“Bees don’t do that,” said Marla, her face stern.
“I know,” I nodded. “Sorry, bad joke.”
But I could tell I’d planted something in Marla’s thoughts. Something that worried her.
As we went back to her property, she explained that there was indeed a kind of bee that was carnivorous. There was a type of bee called the ‘vulture bee’ that fed exclusively on meat. Mostly carrion though; they weren’t active hunters. They couldn’t be, as they were stingless.
“You think these might be vulture bees then?” I asked.
“They live south of the border,” she explained. “Can’t imagine them just, uh… popping up. And even so, they wouldn’t be this aggressive.”
“Would explain the honey though.”
Marla’s face went pale. Had she been eating meat honey?
I decided to hold off on posting my video. This was turning into something more interesting, and I wanted to see it through. I filmed a couple of shots where Marla got to explain the intricacies of vulture bees. She did it in the frame of an interesting fact rather than a suspicion, but I could tell something had changed. She wasn’t as certain anymore, and a bit of eagerness had run out of her. There was a tangible worry there.
As we went out back to check out the hive, Marla stopped. Her eyes widened.
“Turn off the camera,” she hissed.
Three dead pigeons; covered in bees.
From that point on, I was fully invested. This was something neither of us had seen before; unfamiliar ground. It didn’t take long for Marla to confirm that the honey she’d harvested did, indeed, contain a meat protein. After that, it was just a matter of observation.
Yes, the bees ate flesh. They bit instead of stung. But they weren’t vulture bees.
These were larger, more aggressive, and had a wider abdomen. Their mandibles were longer, and they had a slightly reddish tint to them. It was difficult to tell whether the color was a result of mutation or blood. The dead pigeons were stripped to the sinew in surprisingly little time.
Marla didn’t know what to do. She’d been working with preserving bees since she was a teenager, and this whole situation was testing her. She didn’t want to just kill the hive, but she couldn’t let them spread either. These could be highly invasive.
But she took too long to decide. Just a couple of days later, two of the other hives on her property had been completely decimated. The red bees had killed and devoured all of them; leaving only empty chambers and hollow carapaces behind. When Marla facetimed me about it, she couldn’t hold back the tears.
By now, I considered myself a friend of hers. We’d talked a lot and got along really well, and it wasn’t just about content anymore. I didn’t want to see her like that; she deserved better. I offered to drop by and brainstorm a bit. I figured she needed the company. She’d done at least two dozen of these bee rescues, and the one time someone came to cheer her on it all went to hell. That had to suck.
So I dropped by one day after work. The sun was setting. Dark clouds on the horizon.
I noticed them the moment I stepped out of my car. A handful of red bees climbed the white picket fence outside Marla’s house. A few others were clustered in a particular spot near the edge of the house; no doubt feasting on a small bird or a rodent. I went up to the door and rung the bell, ducking from a couple of curious bees trying to make themselves comfortable in my rough post-work hairdo.
Marla invited me into her kitchen, offering me homemade lemonade. She had these custom-made coasters with cartoon bees on them, along with the logo for her rescue. I could tell she’d taken a couple of sudden precautions. There were tape lining the edges of the windows, as well as a plastic sheet covering the ventilation duct. No wonder the air felt stale.
“No one knows what to do,” she sighed. “I called the Wyatt brothers, South Bound Api… they can’t even believe it. They actually don’t believe that I have what I say I have.”
“And what is that? What is it you have?”
She sighed, scratching her eyebrows. A kind of nervous tic.
“There’s no name, but… I mean, I know what they do. I know now. They’re like the vulture bees, but…”
She threw her arms up in surrender. I could tell she was tired. One of her eyes drooped a little lower than the other. Might’ve been from a bite too.
Marla spent the better part of an hour showing me websites, witnesses to similar bees, drawings, and descriptions. She talked about the application of pesticides, mutations, climate change, GMOs, and microplastics. Hell, at one point, she was bringing up 5G towers as a possible culprit. She was all over the place, and I could tell her heart wasn’t in it. It was all just desperation; grasping at straws.
After a couple of hours, well into the dark of the evening, we’d gone from homemade lemonade to lukewarm, well-nursed beers. We’d run out of ideas and topics. Instead, we just stood by the kitchen window, watching the red bees crawl across the glass. Marla put down her bottle; this time without using one of her cartoon bee coasters.
“Check this out,” she said.
She placed her hand on the window, and the bees outside immediately swarmed to it. Within seconds, there was a cluster of at least 40 crowding around her hand, on the other side of the glass.
“Give them a minute,” she continued. “It’s kinda crazy.”
They started to move in a pattern. A sort of pulse, moving counter-clockwise from a perfect circle into a four-armed spiral. Their wings pattered in unison; a buzzing noise that scratched against the windowpane.
“I can’t explain that,” she said. “I can explain following my hand, or killing other hives, but that?”
She shook her head, not looking away.
“I can’t explain that.”
It got a little bit too late, and I’d had a couple of beers too many, so I decided to crash on her couch. I wrapped myself in a blanket and pulled a pillow up to my ear, so I wouldn’t have to hear the buzzing outside. It wasn’t loud, but it was such a distinct sound that I couldn’t un-hear it. Marla didn’t seem to share the same issue though, she just walked into her room and that was that. Out like a light.
I had an uneasy sleep, falling in and out of surface-level dreams. I remember forcing my eyes open - just to see if I could. I was uncomfortable, and I couldn’t stop hearing that buzzing noise. Even when things were quiet, I kept imagining myself hearing it. I’d see little black spots on the windows as they landed and disappeared, looking for a way in.
Somewhere in the early morning hours, I was finally out cold.
I didn’t notice those first few sounds. How the tapping against the window got louder. How the patterns got bigger and clearer. I was finally asleep, and it was already too late when I woke up.
I was lying on my side as I popped open a single eye, only to see a red bee on my hand calmly brushing itself clean. I didn’t notice the droning noise at first, until I realized the background noise of the room was different. Looking beyond that first red bee, towards the window, I realized something.
The pattern of bees was on the inside of the window.
There were hundreds of bees already inside the room.
But the sound was closer than that. It was all around me, and somewhere in the background, I could hear a breeze. Was the front door open?
I tried to stay completely still, but I could feel something in my chest tightening. I wanted to brush the bee off, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Something was holding me back, keeping me from just waving my arms around and getting out. There was something more to this.
Seconds later, there was a noise. A rising murmur, like a moving mass. Best way I can describe it is a vibrating burlap bag followed by meaty footsteps. Not loud, but not quiet either. Someone didn’t care too much about waking me.
If there was ever a time to get up, to run, or to fight – that was it. But all I did was lie there, staring at that one red bee on my hand, listening to something slowly approach from behind. It’s as if I knew how badly outmatched I really was.
I could feel something shift as the side of the couch was grabbed. Creaking noises as fingers dug into old leather.
Snapping sounds. Sinew and muscle stretching and realigning under a thin layer of skin. Forced breathing and hissing descending on me from above. Little sniffs – then silence. I held my breath.
“…y o u t o o k m y h i v e.”
Less of a voice, and more of a collision of wings and carapaces. A shaped buzzing. The red bee on my hand looked straight into my eyes. Not a single twitch. Nothing.
“I didn’t,” I whispered under my breath, trying not to move my mouth. “I-I… I didn’t.”
There was a pause. A sudden shift as someone stepped back. A little moving mass came loose, dropping on top of my blanket. A handful of red bees, carefully spreading out to investigate me. Behind me, footsteps – leading into Marla’s bedroom. I could hear her deep breaths from here.
I stayed completely still. I was unharmed. I’d be fine - I just had to wait. Every nerve in my body felt like it was put through a white fire – still, controlled, and desperate to explode into action. As little creatures made their way across me, carefully looking me over, the pores on my skin were screaming at me to move, itch, and shudder. I could feel the hairs on my neck rise; only to be tugged on by eager mandibles.
Then, a scream.
Marla screamed. A bloody, mind-piercing, screech. The kind of scream that you just know means pain. Hearing it was like feeling a physical push, and I couldn’t hold myself from acting any longer.
I rolled off the couch, trying to shake the bees off. The cluster on the window exploded into a disorganized attack, swarming every piece of me, and the room, and the adjoining kitchen. They were inside my clothes, in my hair, in my eyebrows, and they were going to eat their fair share. Every bite was white-hot fire, followed by a sudden stinging cold.
I ran outside. I remember taking off my clothes, waving my shirt around. Shoeless and burned by bites, I ran from her house; making as much space between me and the hive as possible.
There was this blur of buzzing, biting, flailing, and screaming. Some of it mine, some if it Marla’s, in the distance. Little red spots crawling across my waving shirt. I threw myself on the ground, rolling in the grass. I smacked my body with the palm of my hand over and over, ensuring me that the little tickle I felt wasn’t another one of them.
Then I just lay there, panting in the grass. They were gone. A single red bee on the palm of my hand remained, carefully brushing itself, before casually flying off.
I could feel the soothing morning dew on my cheek. I slowly sat back up, leaning against a tree. I could see Marla’s house in the distance as I gasped for air. There was a heaviness to my lungs, like I couldn’t completely fill them.
A man stepped out. Or at least the shape of a man, it was hard to tell at that distance. It was as if he wasn’t completely solid; his silhouette kept shifting even as he stood still. He stopped in the doorway, looked me way, and just sort of… dissolved.
I burst into action.
My phone was still inside, but I had a backup in my car. I wrestled it out of the glove compartment, staining the driver’s seat with spots of blood. My fingertips were bleeding, making it hard to call emergency services. My cheek and tongue were swollen, making it even harder to speak.
I made my way back inside as I frantically explained what’d happened. What would you even call it? An assault? Marla wasn’t in her bedroom, but there was plenty of blood. There was a sound further in. Her shower was running.
She’d made it to her bathroom and dropped into her tub. She’d turned on the water, hoping to keep them off. The end result was her ending up swollen and unconscious in the bathtub; dead bees bobbing in the water around her. Some still twitching.
It was horrifying. She was bitten, and it wasn’t just from bees. There were miscolored marks from all kinds of stings, coloring her skin both a burning red, a pale white, and a faint green. Her neck was almost as thick as her head.
But she was alive.
Emergency services arrived. They managed to keep her alive, but she had to be put on a ventilator. They claimed she’d had a massive allergic reaction. They said something similar about me; completely ignoring the eyewitness account of a strange intruder. It didn’t help that neither me or Marla could say the slightest comprehensive thing about their appearance or identity.
It took some time, but I recovered. Marla too. By the time she got back home, not a single hive was left. Every single one had been butchered and devoured. And the red bees, well, they were just gone – along with their handmade hive.
Not too long ago, I talked to a friend-of-a-friend who worked at the Sheriff’s office. I told them where we’d found that first hive. He asked me at least three times if I was sure that that was the specific spot. Of course I was. I even had a clip of it.
Turns out, that place had been the discovery site of at least half a dozen unidentified bodies a couple of years ago.
Which, in turn, made me wonder. A couple of wanderers in the area had spoken about finding dead animals on the trail, only for them to be gone the next morning. It wouldn’t surprise me if that field was littered with bones. But with the way these things work, there is no telling what else might’ve gone missing along that trail.
That conversation is what spurred me to write this all down. Marla and I will never publish that video, and for all intents and purposes, neither of us will bring it up. This never happened. This couldn’t be real. We can’t move on with our lives if we keep talking about it, because there is nothing we can say that will make it alright.
Instead, she has new hives. She has a new smile.
And for a while, I think we can lie to ourselves just enough to make it.
submitted by Saturdead to nosleep [link] [comments]
I’d done a couple of videos already. One was about the old couple running the corner pub, one was about a landlord, and another was about the principal of the local high school (and their apparent pool troubles). Long story.
I was doing a shorter video about a woman named Marla. She was a beekeeper who worked with moving intrusive hives. This kind of content gets a lot of views, so I figured I’d do a more compact but better edited video this time around. I’d done my research, prepped my gear, and was rearing to go.
I met Marla on a Thursday morning in late May. We took her pickup, had a gas station sandwich for breakfast, and stopped for a quick coffee. I talked to her a bit about her job, her life, and her aspirations. Small town stuff. She was the kind of woman who was happy as long as she could keep up with her payments and have a bit left over for a Netflix subscription. Wholesome.
She drove me out to the site of the day, talking to the camera as we went. We were turning further and further off the paved roads as the suspension struggled against weeds, rock, and gravel.
“There’s a hive near a walking trail,” Marla explained. “A couple of folks called in about their dogs getting scared. It should be fine, but we’re gonna gear up just in case they’re mistaken.”
“You expect us to get stung a lot?” I asked.
“Not really,” she smiled. “Not if you know what you’re doing. But there’ve been times when folks have called in about a hive and it turned out to be paper wasps.”
“Not as pleasant as honeybees.”
“No,” she laughed. “No, they really aren’t”.
We passed through a section of trees that covered both sides of the road; the branches hanging low enough to scrape the hood of the car. Emerging on the other side, a field opened up to our right. A large, wide-open field, covered from end to end in blue sunflowers; a local variety that is, apparently, sort of rare. I asked Marla about them.
“The blues? Yeah, they were introduced as a sort of gimmick back in the… 1930’s, I think? 1940’s maybe? They’re actually quite invasive. I’m surprised there aren’t more of them around.”
“But bees can make honey on them?”
“I guess,” she nodded. “They’re just sunflowers.”
“Have you tried it? Is it blue?”
“Can’t say that I have,” she laughed. “But I’m sure it’s fine. Ordinary sunflower honey is fantastic. Kinda earthy.”
We got out and suited up. It felt like putting on a tent. Marla shared some interesting bee factoids that I didn’t manage to catch on camera, but I made a mental note to ask her to repeat it later. Of course, I wouldn’t. I’m kinda forgetful.
I hadn’t seen a single bee yet, but Marla was already heading out into the field. The sunflowers reached about waist-high, and there was this strange, almost chemical smell in the air. Sort of a mix of chlorine and ammonia. As we got further out, Marla pointed out a couple of flowers to me.
“Right there,” she said. “Get a clip.”
I zoomed in, spotting two bees chilling on a blue sunflower petal. They were just sort of sitting there. They had a slightly more reddish tint to them than I expected. Marla didn’t seem to mind, or notice.
It didn’t take long before we got to the hive. I immediately started filming as we approached. The buzzing got louder as bees started to poke and prod at my defenses, curiously checking for gaps in my gloves and neck. Thankfully, Marla had helped me secure it. Still, the buzzing kinda gave me the creeps. Never been a fan of bugs.
“Yeah, alright,” Marla laughed. “No wonder there are bees. Someone set this up.”
It was a man-made hive, framed with sheets of mahogany. A series of wooden squares with hollow cork pipes lining the inside. The bees had really taken to it, transforming it into a sturdy hive.
“We usually call these bee hotels,” Marla said. “Some kind-hearted local set it up, but as this isn’t private property we have to take complaints into account. I’m gonna make sure we move it to a better location with more nutrition for our free-bee friends here, where they won’t spook any dog-walkers. And of course, we’re keeping the hive. Someone put a lot of thought into this.”
I got a nice video out of it. How she unsecured the hive, moved the sections one by one, and pointed to interesting pieces for the camera. She found the queen and scooped her up in a separate container. Marla stopped for a moment though; apparently, the queen was larger than she’d anticipated. I didn’t really have a frame of reference, so I had to take her word for it.
We wrapped the hive up under a tarp on the pickup and made our way back to Marla’s property. I was afraid all the bumps in the road would shake the bees loose, but they seemed perfectly content. I guess it helped that Marla was a very calm driver, despite some curious bees making their way inside the cabin. We still had the suits on, luckily.
There was a cute hand-painted sign of a bee as we entered Marla’s land. When you live in the middle of nowhere, most folks can get away with owning more land than they need; especially if they don’t mind having spotty internet or a fair drive to the nearest supermarket. One look at Marla showed that she didn’t mind either of these things.
We took some time offloading the hive, finding a good spot on the eastern side of her property. There were plenty of wildflowers for the critters to feast on, and Marla seemed confident in her choice. There wasn’t much more to it; we set it up, captured a couple of finishing thoughts, and called it a day.
As I packed up my gear and took off my suit, I got a moment to speak with Marla without the camera. She was excited to have a new hive, but there was something about her expression that seemed a bit… off.
“I’d love to try some of their honey,” I said. “I think it’d make a great end to the video.”
“Yeah, I’ll keep in touch,” she nodded.
There was an oppressive silence as she stared into the distance. I tilted my head, trying to catch her attention.
“You alright there?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I, uh… I’m just anxious. New responsibilities, you know?”
“Is there a problem?”
She bit down on her lip, squinting.
“Maybe.”
A couple of days later, I started getting updates. Marla was having some trouble with the hive. It was more aggressive than she’d previously thought, and a lot of the bees had been dying off at alarming rates.
“It happens when you move them sometimes,” she sighed. “It’s rare, but it happens. They can have trouble adapting.”
She managed to get a little honey, but she wasn’t too happy about it. Apparently, it wasn’t as sweet and sugary as she thought it’d be. There was just something off about it, texture-wise. She was gonna make me a little bottle of it either way, for the video, but she advised against eating it.
Returning to my day job, I was looking forward to hearing more from Marla. Out of all the people I’d worked with, she’d been the most eager to contribute to my channel. We kept in touch over the week, discussing future collaborations and other ways we could make content. She suggested making a couple of DIY videos to showcase some neat tricks for would-be hobby apiarists.
The following weekend, we met up again. Another early morning, this time with a light drizzle spattering against the hood of her pickup. The moment she came around, I could tell something had happened. She had these bright red spots on her arms, and she was a lot less talkative than usual. Before I got the chance to talk to her about it, she explained.
“Got swarmed yesterday,” she said. “Never happened before.”
“Those are all stings?”
“That’s just the thing,” she scoffed. “It isn’t. They’re bites.”
“I didn’t think honeybees bit people.”
“They don’t.”
We just looked at one another for a moment. Her marks were pretty nasty, some of them swollen enough to burst. The conclusion was obvious; these weren’t ordinary honeybees.
We made our way back out to the field where we’d found them. I did a little filming, but Marla was self-conscious about her arms. She was scared that it might dissuade people from working with bees, and she kept repeating how it was “her fault” for not handling them correctly. She said it so many times I couldn’t help but to feel she was trying to convince herself rather than me, or an audience.
We made our way out into the field. Marla flipped open a pocketknife and bent down to check on the flowers. Cutting one off at the stem, she examined it for a moment. She held it up for me to see for myself. I looked it over but couldn’t see anything strange – apart from the obvious blue color.
“You gotta touch it,” she said. “Check it.”
So I did. As soon as I touched it, a few petals came loose. The flower was clearly dead and dry.
Checking out a couple more, we came to a startling realization. The entire field was, in fact, completely dead. Bone dry of pollen and sustenance. And, according to Marla, it must’ve been dead for months. I didn’t really understand why that was such a big deal.
“Because,” Marla explained. “The hive flourished out here, in the middle of the field. If they couldn’t survive here, they would’ve migrated, but they didn’t. So what the hell have they been eating?”
“Whatever it was, it’s what must’ve made the honey taste weird.”
“Not just taste,” Marla said, shaking her head. “The smell is the worst. Like stale bacteria and methane.”
Things started to fall into place. Whatever they had been eating out here in the field wasn’t available at Marla’s place; hence why they had been dying and getting more aggressive. Getting back to the pickup, Marla was deep in her own thoughts, drumming her fingers on the dashboard. She couldn’t figure it out. I tried to cheer her up with a pat on her shoulder, which caused her to flinch a little. I probably poked a bitemark.
“Sorry,” I said. “But you know, maybe that’s why they swarmed you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe they tried to eat you up,” I chuckled, pointing to her arms.
“Bees don’t do that,” said Marla, her face stern.
“I know,” I nodded. “Sorry, bad joke.”
But I could tell I’d planted something in Marla’s thoughts. Something that worried her.
As we went back to her property, she explained that there was indeed a kind of bee that was carnivorous. There was a type of bee called the ‘vulture bee’ that fed exclusively on meat. Mostly carrion though; they weren’t active hunters. They couldn’t be, as they were stingless.
“You think these might be vulture bees then?” I asked.
“They live south of the border,” she explained. “Can’t imagine them just, uh… popping up. And even so, they wouldn’t be this aggressive.”
“Would explain the honey though.”
Marla’s face went pale. Had she been eating meat honey?
I decided to hold off on posting my video. This was turning into something more interesting, and I wanted to see it through. I filmed a couple of shots where Marla got to explain the intricacies of vulture bees. She did it in the frame of an interesting fact rather than a suspicion, but I could tell something had changed. She wasn’t as certain anymore, and a bit of eagerness had run out of her. There was a tangible worry there.
As we went out back to check out the hive, Marla stopped. Her eyes widened.
“Turn off the camera,” she hissed.
Three dead pigeons; covered in bees.
From that point on, I was fully invested. This was something neither of us had seen before; unfamiliar ground. It didn’t take long for Marla to confirm that the honey she’d harvested did, indeed, contain a meat protein. After that, it was just a matter of observation.
Yes, the bees ate flesh. They bit instead of stung. But they weren’t vulture bees.
These were larger, more aggressive, and had a wider abdomen. Their mandibles were longer, and they had a slightly reddish tint to them. It was difficult to tell whether the color was a result of mutation or blood. The dead pigeons were stripped to the sinew in surprisingly little time.
Marla didn’t know what to do. She’d been working with preserving bees since she was a teenager, and this whole situation was testing her. She didn’t want to just kill the hive, but she couldn’t let them spread either. These could be highly invasive.
But she took too long to decide. Just a couple of days later, two of the other hives on her property had been completely decimated. The red bees had killed and devoured all of them; leaving only empty chambers and hollow carapaces behind. When Marla facetimed me about it, she couldn’t hold back the tears.
By now, I considered myself a friend of hers. We’d talked a lot and got along really well, and it wasn’t just about content anymore. I didn’t want to see her like that; she deserved better. I offered to drop by and brainstorm a bit. I figured she needed the company. She’d done at least two dozen of these bee rescues, and the one time someone came to cheer her on it all went to hell. That had to suck.
So I dropped by one day after work. The sun was setting. Dark clouds on the horizon.
I noticed them the moment I stepped out of my car. A handful of red bees climbed the white picket fence outside Marla’s house. A few others were clustered in a particular spot near the edge of the house; no doubt feasting on a small bird or a rodent. I went up to the door and rung the bell, ducking from a couple of curious bees trying to make themselves comfortable in my rough post-work hairdo.
Marla invited me into her kitchen, offering me homemade lemonade. She had these custom-made coasters with cartoon bees on them, along with the logo for her rescue. I could tell she’d taken a couple of sudden precautions. There were tape lining the edges of the windows, as well as a plastic sheet covering the ventilation duct. No wonder the air felt stale.
“No one knows what to do,” she sighed. “I called the Wyatt brothers, South Bound Api… they can’t even believe it. They actually don’t believe that I have what I say I have.”
“And what is that? What is it you have?”
She sighed, scratching her eyebrows. A kind of nervous tic.
“There’s no name, but… I mean, I know what they do. I know now. They’re like the vulture bees, but…”
She threw her arms up in surrender. I could tell she was tired. One of her eyes drooped a little lower than the other. Might’ve been from a bite too.
Marla spent the better part of an hour showing me websites, witnesses to similar bees, drawings, and descriptions. She talked about the application of pesticides, mutations, climate change, GMOs, and microplastics. Hell, at one point, she was bringing up 5G towers as a possible culprit. She was all over the place, and I could tell her heart wasn’t in it. It was all just desperation; grasping at straws.
After a couple of hours, well into the dark of the evening, we’d gone from homemade lemonade to lukewarm, well-nursed beers. We’d run out of ideas and topics. Instead, we just stood by the kitchen window, watching the red bees crawl across the glass. Marla put down her bottle; this time without using one of her cartoon bee coasters.
“Check this out,” she said.
She placed her hand on the window, and the bees outside immediately swarmed to it. Within seconds, there was a cluster of at least 40 crowding around her hand, on the other side of the glass.
“Give them a minute,” she continued. “It’s kinda crazy.”
They started to move in a pattern. A sort of pulse, moving counter-clockwise from a perfect circle into a four-armed spiral. Their wings pattered in unison; a buzzing noise that scratched against the windowpane.
“I can’t explain that,” she said. “I can explain following my hand, or killing other hives, but that?”
She shook her head, not looking away.
“I can’t explain that.”
It got a little bit too late, and I’d had a couple of beers too many, so I decided to crash on her couch. I wrapped myself in a blanket and pulled a pillow up to my ear, so I wouldn’t have to hear the buzzing outside. It wasn’t loud, but it was such a distinct sound that I couldn’t un-hear it. Marla didn’t seem to share the same issue though, she just walked into her room and that was that. Out like a light.
I had an uneasy sleep, falling in and out of surface-level dreams. I remember forcing my eyes open - just to see if I could. I was uncomfortable, and I couldn’t stop hearing that buzzing noise. Even when things were quiet, I kept imagining myself hearing it. I’d see little black spots on the windows as they landed and disappeared, looking for a way in.
Somewhere in the early morning hours, I was finally out cold.
I didn’t notice those first few sounds. How the tapping against the window got louder. How the patterns got bigger and clearer. I was finally asleep, and it was already too late when I woke up.
I was lying on my side as I popped open a single eye, only to see a red bee on my hand calmly brushing itself clean. I didn’t notice the droning noise at first, until I realized the background noise of the room was different. Looking beyond that first red bee, towards the window, I realized something.
The pattern of bees was on the inside of the window.
There were hundreds of bees already inside the room.
But the sound was closer than that. It was all around me, and somewhere in the background, I could hear a breeze. Was the front door open?
I tried to stay completely still, but I could feel something in my chest tightening. I wanted to brush the bee off, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Something was holding me back, keeping me from just waving my arms around and getting out. There was something more to this.
Seconds later, there was a noise. A rising murmur, like a moving mass. Best way I can describe it is a vibrating burlap bag followed by meaty footsteps. Not loud, but not quiet either. Someone didn’t care too much about waking me.
If there was ever a time to get up, to run, or to fight – that was it. But all I did was lie there, staring at that one red bee on my hand, listening to something slowly approach from behind. It’s as if I knew how badly outmatched I really was.
I could feel something shift as the side of the couch was grabbed. Creaking noises as fingers dug into old leather.
Snapping sounds. Sinew and muscle stretching and realigning under a thin layer of skin. Forced breathing and hissing descending on me from above. Little sniffs – then silence. I held my breath.
“…y o u t o o k m y h i v e.”
Less of a voice, and more of a collision of wings and carapaces. A shaped buzzing. The red bee on my hand looked straight into my eyes. Not a single twitch. Nothing.
“I didn’t,” I whispered under my breath, trying not to move my mouth. “I-I… I didn’t.”
There was a pause. A sudden shift as someone stepped back. A little moving mass came loose, dropping on top of my blanket. A handful of red bees, carefully spreading out to investigate me. Behind me, footsteps – leading into Marla’s bedroom. I could hear her deep breaths from here.
I stayed completely still. I was unharmed. I’d be fine - I just had to wait. Every nerve in my body felt like it was put through a white fire – still, controlled, and desperate to explode into action. As little creatures made their way across me, carefully looking me over, the pores on my skin were screaming at me to move, itch, and shudder. I could feel the hairs on my neck rise; only to be tugged on by eager mandibles.
Then, a scream.
Marla screamed. A bloody, mind-piercing, screech. The kind of scream that you just know means pain. Hearing it was like feeling a physical push, and I couldn’t hold myself from acting any longer.
I rolled off the couch, trying to shake the bees off. The cluster on the window exploded into a disorganized attack, swarming every piece of me, and the room, and the adjoining kitchen. They were inside my clothes, in my hair, in my eyebrows, and they were going to eat their fair share. Every bite was white-hot fire, followed by a sudden stinging cold.
I ran outside. I remember taking off my clothes, waving my shirt around. Shoeless and burned by bites, I ran from her house; making as much space between me and the hive as possible.
There was this blur of buzzing, biting, flailing, and screaming. Some of it mine, some if it Marla’s, in the distance. Little red spots crawling across my waving shirt. I threw myself on the ground, rolling in the grass. I smacked my body with the palm of my hand over and over, ensuring me that the little tickle I felt wasn’t another one of them.
Then I just lay there, panting in the grass. They were gone. A single red bee on the palm of my hand remained, carefully brushing itself, before casually flying off.
I could feel the soothing morning dew on my cheek. I slowly sat back up, leaning against a tree. I could see Marla’s house in the distance as I gasped for air. There was a heaviness to my lungs, like I couldn’t completely fill them.
A man stepped out. Or at least the shape of a man, it was hard to tell at that distance. It was as if he wasn’t completely solid; his silhouette kept shifting even as he stood still. He stopped in the doorway, looked me way, and just sort of… dissolved.
I burst into action.
My phone was still inside, but I had a backup in my car. I wrestled it out of the glove compartment, staining the driver’s seat with spots of blood. My fingertips were bleeding, making it hard to call emergency services. My cheek and tongue were swollen, making it even harder to speak.
I made my way back inside as I frantically explained what’d happened. What would you even call it? An assault? Marla wasn’t in her bedroom, but there was plenty of blood. There was a sound further in. Her shower was running.
She’d made it to her bathroom and dropped into her tub. She’d turned on the water, hoping to keep them off. The end result was her ending up swollen and unconscious in the bathtub; dead bees bobbing in the water around her. Some still twitching.
It was horrifying. She was bitten, and it wasn’t just from bees. There were miscolored marks from all kinds of stings, coloring her skin both a burning red, a pale white, and a faint green. Her neck was almost as thick as her head.
But she was alive.
Emergency services arrived. They managed to keep her alive, but she had to be put on a ventilator. They claimed she’d had a massive allergic reaction. They said something similar about me; completely ignoring the eyewitness account of a strange intruder. It didn’t help that neither me or Marla could say the slightest comprehensive thing about their appearance or identity.
It took some time, but I recovered. Marla too. By the time she got back home, not a single hive was left. Every single one had been butchered and devoured. And the red bees, well, they were just gone – along with their handmade hive.
Not too long ago, I talked to a friend-of-a-friend who worked at the Sheriff’s office. I told them where we’d found that first hive. He asked me at least three times if I was sure that that was the specific spot. Of course I was. I even had a clip of it.
Turns out, that place had been the discovery site of at least half a dozen unidentified bodies a couple of years ago.
Which, in turn, made me wonder. A couple of wanderers in the area had spoken about finding dead animals on the trail, only for them to be gone the next morning. It wouldn’t surprise me if that field was littered with bones. But with the way these things work, there is no telling what else might’ve gone missing along that trail.
That conversation is what spurred me to write this all down. Marla and I will never publish that video, and for all intents and purposes, neither of us will bring it up. This never happened. This couldn’t be real. We can’t move on with our lives if we keep talking about it, because there is nothing we can say that will make it alright.
Instead, she has new hives. She has a new smile.
And for a while, I think we can lie to ourselves just enough to make it.
2024.06.08 23:58 Prudent_Bug_1350 🎤🔥Claudia at The Peoples Red Line action in DC: “We understand that the reason we are suffering a housing crisis, that we cannot access healthcare or education, that our migrants are being attacked is for the same reasons the U.S. imperialists launch war against poor people everyday.”
 | Video Source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79uC_9OD2Z/?igsh=MWNsODN6ZXB1ZDlxbA%3D%3D submitted by Prudent_Bug_1350 to socialism [link] [comments] “We’re in a middle of a public health crisis, we’re in a middle of a climate crisis, an economic crisis, an educational crisis and all these politicians can do is fan the flames of and start a new wars and try to prepare us…psychologically for a nuclear war.” - Karina Garcia https://www.reddit.com/WorkersStrikeBack/s/tGvX51FYB2 “The people of the United States have a historic role to play in building international solidarity. That means as we wage our struggle, which is class struggle in this country, we have a role to play in the liberation of humanity and saving the planet.” -Claudia De la Cruz https://www.reddit.com/WorkersStrikeBack/s/slbthJCc1l Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia are on the ballot in Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, California and, South Carolina. If you want to help them get on more ballots, volunteer or donate to their campaign. If for some reason you can’t get in contact with them through their campaign website, follow @claudia_karina2024 and @pslnational on Instagram and get updates or get in touch with them there: https://linktr.ee/votesocialist2024 Unlike ruling class politicians, whose allegiances are crafted by their financial backers, presidential candidates Claudia and Karina are connected by their shared commitment to the working class in all its struggles.: https://www.instagram.com/p/C20MFrtOKsU/?igsh=MWxnYWt4dG0xZzNjYg== But what about Trump? Answering the “lesser of two evils” argument: https://votesocialist2024.com/statements/answeringlesseroftwoevils Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States by the Party for Socialism and Liberation: https://www.liberationstore.org/products/socialist-reconstruction-a-better-future-for-the-united-states Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States by the Party for Socialism and Liberation - Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Socialist-Reconstruction-Audiobook/B0CFNBBDRQ Why we are running in the 2024 Presidential race - Liberation School: https://www.liberationschool.org/why-we-are-running-in-the-2024-presidential-race/ “Left-wing” communism and the movement today: https://www.liberationschool.org/left-wing-communism-and-the-movement-today/ Party for Socialism and Liberation linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/pslnational?fbclid=PAAaa6LA0JR1iqXLIiVCbm5Cue5AzGUuR6OvxnJnwPh-jLU48lgGl-nYGmwtg_aem_AebkYpswi8zp8FDbspXG32O4iszAmNZcNaz9AocdI8UPc3eQiGay0KYQyNqlZptIO_0 How Fascism Serves Capitalism FULL DOCUMENTARY: https://youtu.be/Mn_RwIcL7cg?feature=shared Democrats Are Not "The Radical Left" Renegade Cut: https://youtu.be/H99GErf-nBI Why Are Democrats Funding The Far Right?: https://youtu.be/kqgP9Ft_1CY?feature=shared 52 countries voted at the UN AGAINST the resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism: https://www.reddit.com/GreenAndPleasant/s/9IgzSWJnVs West votes against democracy, human rights, cultural equality at UN; promotes mercenaries, sanctions: https://youtu.be/qyl2JsTTOVs?feature=shares USA Corporations Keep Donating to GOP Campaigns Despite Post-Trump Pledge to "Protect Democracy": https://youtu.be/9ToyB7DZLzw?feature=shared Understanding Fascism + Right-Wing Social-Political Movements: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXUFLW8t2snuoK0BxaO1QpiYXHPTVhOIo&feature=shared What would you do if your neighbor was starving? This is not a hypothetical. Right now the U.S. government is deliberately starving the Cuban people 90 miles to our South. We all must act now! This cannot stand. All people of conscience in the United States have to speak up and take action to let Cuba live. We’ve all been outraged to see the urgent aid for Rafah blocked at the border, while famine stalks the Palestinian people. We can’t allow the same thing to happen directly to our south. Please make a donation today — give bread to our neighbor. https://secure.givelively.org/donate/peoples-forum-inc/let-cuba-live-bread-for-our-neighbors?utm_source=brevo&utm_campaign=Bread%20For%20Our%20Neighbors%20Let%20Cuba%20Live&utm_medium=email https://rapidsave.com/info?url=/InformedTankie/comments/1dbdqt7/claudia_at_the_peoples_red_line_action_in_dc_we/ |
2024.06.08 23:58 Prudent_Bug_1350 🎤🔥Claudia at The Peoples Red Line action in DC: “We understand that the reason we are suffering a housing crisis, that we cannot access healthcare or education, that our migrants are being attacked is for the same reasons the U.S. imperialists launch war against poor people everyday.”
 | Video Source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79uC_9OD2Z/?igsh=MWNsODN6ZXB1ZDlxbA%3D%3D submitted by Prudent_Bug_1350 to TheDeprogram [link] [comments] “We’re in a middle of a public health crisis, we’re in a middle of a climate crisis, an economic crisis, an educational crisis and all these politicians can do is fan the flames of and start a new wars and try to prepare us…psychologically for a nuclear war.” - Karina Garcia https://www.reddit.com/WorkersStrikeBack/s/tGvX51FYB2 “The people of the United States have a historic role to play in building international solidarity. That means as we wage our struggle, which is class struggle in this country, we have a role to play in the liberation of humanity and saving the planet.” -Claudia De la Cruz https://www.reddit.com/WorkersStrikeBack/s/slbthJCc1l Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia are on the ballot in Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, California and, South Carolina. If you want to help them get on more ballots, volunteer or donate to their campaign. If for some reason you can’t get in contact with them through their campaign website, follow @claudia_karina2024 and @pslnational on Instagram and get updates or get in touch with them there: https://linktr.ee/votesocialist2024 Unlike ruling class politicians, whose allegiances are crafted by their financial backers, presidential candidates Claudia and Karina are connected by their shared commitment to the working class in all its struggles.: https://www.instagram.com/p/C20MFrtOKsU/?igsh=MWxnYWt4dG0xZzNjYg== But what about Trump? Answering the “lesser of two evils” argument: https://votesocialist2024.com/statements/answeringlesseroftwoevils Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States by the Party for Socialism and Liberation: https://www.liberationstore.org/products/socialist-reconstruction-a-better-future-for-the-united-states Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States by the Party for Socialism and Liberation - Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Socialist-Reconstruction-Audiobook/B0CFNBBDRQ Why we are running in the 2024 Presidential race - Liberation School: https://www.liberationschool.org/why-we-are-running-in-the-2024-presidential-race/ “Left-wing” communism and the movement today: https://www.liberationschool.org/left-wing-communism-and-the-movement-today/ Party for Socialism and Liberation linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/pslnational?fbclid=PAAaa6LA0JR1iqXLIiVCbm5Cue5AzGUuR6OvxnJnwPh-jLU48lgGl-nYGmwtg_aem_AebkYpswi8zp8FDbspXG32O4iszAmNZcNaz9AocdI8UPc3eQiGay0KYQyNqlZptIO_0 How Fascism Serves Capitalism FULL DOCUMENTARY: https://youtu.be/Mn_RwIcL7cg?feature=shared Democrats Are Not "The Radical Left" Renegade Cut: https://youtu.be/H99GErf-nBI Why Are Democrats Funding The Far Right?: https://youtu.be/kqgP9Ft_1CY?feature=shared 52 countries voted at the UN AGAINST the resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism: https://www.reddit.com/GreenAndPleasant/s/9IgzSWJnVs West votes against democracy, human rights, cultural equality at UN; promotes mercenaries, sanctions: https://youtu.be/qyl2JsTTOVs?feature=shares USA Corporations Keep Donating to GOP Campaigns Despite Post-Trump Pledge to "Protect Democracy": https://youtu.be/9ToyB7DZLzw?feature=shared Understanding Fascism + Right-Wing Social-Political Movements: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXUFLW8t2snuoK0BxaO1QpiYXHPTVhOIo&feature=shared What would you do if your neighbor was starving? This is not a hypothetical. Right now the U.S. government is deliberately starving the Cuban people 90 miles to our South. We all must act now! This cannot stand. All people of conscience in the United States have to speak up and take action to let Cuba live. We’ve all been outraged to see the urgent aid for Rafah blocked at the border, while famine stalks the Palestinian people. We can’t allow the same thing to happen directly to our south. Please make a donation today — give bread to our neighbor. https://secure.givelively.org/donate/peoples-forum-inc/let-cuba-live-bread-for-our-neighbors?utm_source=brevo&utm_campaign=Bread%20For%20Our%20Neighbors%20Let%20Cuba%20Live&utm_medium=email https://rapidsave.com/info?url=/InformedTankie/comments/1dbdqt7/claudia_at_the_peoples_red_line_action_in_dc_we/ |
2024.06.08 23:54 Prudent_Bug_1350 🎤🔥Claudia at The Peoples Red Line action in DC: “We understand that the reason we are suffering a housing crisis, that we cannot access healthcare or education, that our migrants are being attacked is for the same reasons the U.S. imperialists launch war against poor people everyday.”
 | Video Source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79uC_9OD2Z/?igsh=MWNsODN6ZXB1ZDlxbA%3D%3D submitted by Prudent_Bug_1350 to WorkersStrikeBack [link] [comments] “We’re in a middle of a public health crisis, we’re in a middle of a climate crisis, an economic crisis, an educational crisis and all these politicians can do is fan the flames of and start a new wars and try to prepare us…psychologically for a nuclear war.” - Karina Garcia https://www.reddit.com/WorkersStrikeBack/s/tGvX51FYB2 “The people of the United States have a historic role to play in building international solidarity. That means as we wage our struggle, which is class struggle in this country, we have a role to play in the liberation of humanity and saving the planet.” -Claudia De la Cruz https://www.reddit.com/WorkersStrikeBack/s/slbthJCc1l Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia are on the ballot in Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, California and, South Carolina. If you want to help them get on more ballots, volunteer or donate to their campaign. If for some reason you can’t get in contact with them through their campaign website, follow @claudia_karina2024 and @pslnational on Instagram and get updates or get in touch with them there: https://linktr.ee/votesocialist2024 Unlike ruling class politicians, whose allegiances are crafted by their financial backers, presidential candidates Claudia and Karina are connected by their shared commitment to the working class in all its struggles.: https://www.instagram.com/p/C20MFrtOKsU/?igsh=MWxnYWt4dG0xZzNjYg== But what about Trump? Answering the “lesser of two evils” argument: https://votesocialist2024.com/statements/answeringlesseroftwoevils Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States by the Party for Socialism and Liberation: https://www.liberationstore.org/products/socialist-reconstruction-a-better-future-for-the-united-states Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States by the Party for Socialism and Liberation - Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Socialist-Reconstruction-Audiobook/B0CFNBBDRQ Why we are running in the 2024 Presidential race - Liberation School: https://www.liberationschool.org/why-we-are-running-in-the-2024-presidential-race/ “Left-wing” communism and the movement today: https://www.liberationschool.org/left-wing-communism-and-the-movement-today/ Party for Socialism and Liberation linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/pslnational?fbclid=PAAaa6LA0JR1iqXLIiVCbm5Cue5AzGUuR6OvxnJnwPh-jLU48lgGl-nYGmwtg_aem_AebkYpswi8zp8FDbspXG32O4iszAmNZcNaz9AocdI8UPc3eQiGay0KYQyNqlZptIO_0 How Fascism Serves Capitalism FULL DOCUMENTARY: https://youtu.be/Mn_RwIcL7cg?feature=shared Democrats Are Not "The Radical Left" Renegade Cut: https://youtu.be/H99GErf-nBI Why Are Democrats Funding The Far Right?: https://youtu.be/kqgP9Ft_1CY?feature=shared 52 countries voted at the UN AGAINST the resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism: https://www.reddit.com/GreenAndPleasant/s/9IgzSWJnVs West votes against democracy, human rights, cultural equality at UN; promotes mercenaries, sanctions: https://youtu.be/qyl2JsTTOVs?feature=shares USA Corporations Keep Donating to GOP Campaigns Despite Post-Trump Pledge to "Protect Democracy": https://youtu.be/9ToyB7DZLzw?feature=shared Understanding Fascism + Right-Wing Social-Political Movements: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXUFLW8t2snuoK0BxaO1QpiYXHPTVhOIo&feature=shared What would you do if your neighbor was starving? This is not a hypothetical. Right now the U.S. government is deliberately starving the Cuban people 90 miles to our South. We all must act now! This cannot stand. All people of conscience in the United States have to speak up and take action to let Cuba live. We’ve all been outraged to see the urgent aid for Rafah blocked at the border, while famine stalks the Palestinian people. We can’t allow the same thing to happen directly to our south. Please make a donation today — give bread to our neighbor. https://secure.givelively.org/donate/peoples-forum-inc/let-cuba-live-bread-for-our-neighbors?utm_source=brevo&utm_campaign=Bread%20For%20Our%20Neighbors%20Let%20Cuba%20Live&utm_medium=email https://rapidsave.com/info?url=/InformedTankie/comments/1dbdqt7/claudia_at_the_peoples_red_line_action_in_dc_we/ |
2024.06.08 23:50 Prudent_Bug_1350 🎤🔥Claudia at The Peoples Red Line action in DC: “We understand that the reason we are suffering a housing crisis, that we cannot access healthcare or education, that our migrants are being attacked is for the same reasons the U.S. imperialists launch war against poor people everyday.”
 | Video Source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C79uC_9OD2Z/?igsh=MWNsODN6ZXB1ZDlxbA%3D%3D submitted by Prudent_Bug_1350 to InformedTankie [link] [comments] “We’re in a middle of a public health crisis, we’re in a middle of a climate crisis, an economic crisis, an educational crisis and all these politicians can do is fan the flames of and start a new wars and try to prepare us…psychologically for a nuclear war.” - Karina Garcia https://www.reddit.com/WorkersStrikeBack/s/tGvX51FYB2 “The people of the United States have a historic role to play in building international solidarity. That means as we wage our struggle, which is class struggle in this country, we have a role to play in the liberation of humanity and saving the planet.” -Claudia De la Cruz https://www.reddit.com/WorkersStrikeBack/s/slbthJCc1l Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia are on the ballot in Hawaii, Idaho, Utah, California and, South Carolina. If you want to help them get on more ballots, volunteer or donate to their campaign. If for some reason you can’t get in contact with them through their campaign website, follow @claudia_karina2024 and @pslnational on Instagram and get updates or get in touch with them there: https://linktr.ee/votesocialist2024 Unlike ruling class politicians, whose allegiances are crafted by their financial backers, presidential candidates Claudia and Karina are connected by their shared commitment to the working class in all its struggles.: https://www.instagram.com/p/C20MFrtOKsU/?igsh=MWxnYWt4dG0xZzNjYg== But what about Trump? Answering the “lesser of two evils” argument: https://votesocialist2024.com/statements/answeringlesseroftwoevils Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States by the Party for Socialism and Liberation: https://www.liberationstore.org/products/socialist-reconstruction-a-better-future-for-the-united-states Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States by the Party for Socialism and Liberation - Audiobook: https://www.audible.com/pd/Socialist-Reconstruction-Audiobook/B0CFNBBDRQ Why we are running in the 2024 Presidential race - Liberation School: https://www.liberationschool.org/why-we-are-running-in-the-2024-presidential-race/ “Left-wing” communism and the movement today: https://www.liberationschool.org/left-wing-communism-and-the-movement-today/ Party for Socialism and Liberation linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/pslnational?fbclid=PAAaa6LA0JR1iqXLIiVCbm5Cue5AzGUuR6OvxnJnwPh-jLU48lgGl-nYGmwtg_aem_AebkYpswi8zp8FDbspXG32O4iszAmNZcNaz9AocdI8UPc3eQiGay0KYQyNqlZptIO_0 How Fascism Serves Capitalism FULL DOCUMENTARY: https://youtu.be/Mn_RwIcL7cg?feature=shared Democrats Are Not "The Radical Left" Renegade Cut: https://youtu.be/H99GErf-nBI Why Are Democrats Funding The Far Right?: https://youtu.be/kqgP9Ft_1CY?feature=shared 52 countries voted at the UN AGAINST the resolution on combating the glorification of Nazism: https://www.reddit.com/GreenAndPleasant/s/9IgzSWJnVs West votes against democracy, human rights, cultural equality at UN; promotes mercenaries, sanctions: https://youtu.be/qyl2JsTTOVs?feature=shares USA Corporations Keep Donating to GOP Campaigns Despite Post-Trump Pledge to "Protect Democracy": https://youtu.be/9ToyB7DZLzw?feature=shared Understanding Fascism + Right-Wing Social-Political Movements: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXUFLW8t2snuoK0BxaO1QpiYXHPTVhOIo&feature=shared What would you do if your neighbor was starving? This is not a hypothetical. Right now the U.S. government is deliberately starving the Cuban people 90 miles to our South. We all must act now! This cannot stand. All people of conscience in the United States have to speak up and take action to let Cuba live. We’ve all been outraged to see the urgent aid for Rafah blocked at the border, while famine stalks the Palestinian people. We can’t allow the same thing to happen directly to our south. Please make a donation today — give bread to our neighbor. https://secure.givelively.org/donate/peoples-forum-inc/let-cuba-live-bread-for-our-neighbors?utm_source=brevo&utm_campaign=Bread%20For%20Our%20Neighbors%20Let%20Cuba%20Live&utm_medium=email |
2024.06.08 20:31 Latter-Session5251 Please help. I just don't know what to do, where to go. I'm stuck. PLEASE HELP.
TL;DR: Financially depended on parents, poor physical and mental health, parents refusing to provide me treatment and support me but expects me to study properly and take good care of myself. I also want to become independent, but my shitty health is destroying every attempt to study. HOW THE HELL DO I DO GET OUT OF THIS?
I was supposed to have been graduated from high school and admitted to college but I am repeating 12th grade, much to my parents' horror, and couldn't graduate this year largely because of depression and poor physical health. Also, I don't know if I have ADHD but the symptoms are there and I struggle a lot because of it too.
Parents don't acknowledge that people can be mentally ill and they need support and treatment. Therefore, when I first told them that I'm struggling with my mental health, they just.. mocked me, for several weeks. Told me I'm weak and can't do anything, that I'm a big zero and making up excuses. I never brought that up again.
Doesn't have to mention they are disappointed in me. Because they wanted me to be a doctor, but being a doctor is so not me. That's not what I want to do at all.
Wanting to pursue something different and then not being able to even graduate made them extremely disappointed in me.
This is more amplified by the fact that they both rose up from their parents' economical conditions and expect me to achieve better things but I won't be able to get a decent job at all, if I keep that up. I can relate, I am disappointed in me too.
So whenever I struggle to study, my mother lashes out at me, telling me how much they sacrificed to raise me, and that they grew up with a lot more struggles than me and that I don't deserve their love and that she should have aborted me, that I am abnormal and defective that is destroying her life and it's my fault that she is acting out and that I destroyed their social life by being abnormal and if I don't get a respectable position in society, my life will be forever ruined. As if it's not ruined enough.
Whenever I struggle to eat, sleep or generally take care of myself, she says she won't pay for my healthcare if I get sick again and that I am better off dead, I was unwanted anyway. (Background: She wanted to study and wanted to get a job but was forced to marry by her family. She continued to study after marriage but then I came into the picture unplanned. She wasn't really ready to have me, but gave birth to me anyway because she thought if I grew up to a better place it would pay off. It didn't help that both of them had 11 to 5 jobs. I was raised when they were financially struggling too)
It hurts every time she says these, even if I know that she is saying these in heat of the moment and they're kind of true. Even if she sometimes apologizes (then proceeds to blame me for her behavior). It still fucking hurts okay? What hurts even more is that they don't want to understand me. They don't get my motivations, functionality and thought processes, but because I don't behave in align with their expectations, they tell me there's something inherently wrong with me.
I'm really sick and tired of these drama in our house. And I am sick and tired of being sick and tired at all. This seems to be a running theme in my life.
My father largely ignores us and is emotionally distant. At least he doesn't care about me not conforming to societal expectations, and that's better than mother's reaction to everything I am and I do. But that doesn't stop him from participating with mother in these drama. Both of them are extremely homophobic/queerphobic.
Mind you, they still provide food, cloth and shelter for me even after finding out that I was romantically entangled with another AFAB. Granted, they don't want to talk about it and completely ignore it in the hopes that it was a bad dream and they'd wake up, but hey, I wasn't kicked out, so that's good at least.
When I confront her about the things she say to me, she just states that I am really ungrateful for not understanding my mother's emotions and feelings, it's my fault that episodes of drama happen and it's my fault that I end up getting hurt, because hurting me is not her intentions. And I am ungrateful that she is trying to help me get over these crap. She even said and I quote her, they are the best parents I can come across, and that parents are always right and they know what is best for me, if only I would just listen.
She has huge issues with me "acting like a boy". For example, we have this unspoken rule in our area that female humans should pierce their ears.
I was really stubborn about not doing this, until my mother made a deal with me: I get to keep my hair short if I pierce my ears, so I got my ears pierced in 2020. Then, she gradually went from suggesting that I should at least let it grow a little bit to full on threatening me that if I don't grow my hair they'll disown me.
This was happening when I had poor physical and mental health, so I stopped being stubborn about it. But sometimes I do express my annoyance and grief over not having my hair short anymore, and she reacts by being angry over the fact that my behavior is not ideal and sadness over the fact that I don't listen to her.
Which is true by the way. Over these last two to three years, I am not being my best self. Whenever these episodes of drama happen (my mother lashing out on me because I am struggling or not acting like a girl or how a normal ideal human being is supposed to act like) I too react really negatively. For a period of time after each episodes, I don't respect them or don't listen to their orders, and don't try hard enough to study or take care of myself. My response to them seems to be doing what they don't want me to do.
This I do because I just don't see the point anymore, I don't feel like doing anything at all even though I logically know what, why and how I should do but I don't seem to do that. I feel numb. My days pass by in a blur and haze. My memory seems have been weakened.
My family mocks me because of this, they don't believe me that I seem to forget a lot, they say that I am making things up and, blah blah. Somedays I get a serious level of existential crisis. Other days I don't really care, and I feel lethargic all the time. I don't feel sad per se, because I am not aware or mindful of my thoughts and feelings most of the time but when I do become aware, a lot of the times I don't seem to know or understand what I'm feeling or why I'm feeling a certain emotion.
Like this post is taking a lot of time for the same reason. It's really difficult for me to recognize and compose my feelings into words. (Future me: Although I am editing from another post of mine, this took me 4.5ish hours to finish)
And sometimes I feel things really intensely out of nowhere. Like this one time I suddenly didn't want to exist anymore, it seemed to come out from nowhere. It was pointless to try to live anyway. I was causing a lot of pain anyway, what's one more by dying? Simply existing was so much pain, like whenever I was reminded or became aware that I am a living breathing thing existing in this space and time, I just, I don't know, I felt this huge grief over my existence. I don't know how to describe that, but it was an ugly emotion, I didn't want to feel it, but I felt it anyway.
I didn't attempt suicide, but I was close to sort of erasing my existence. I tried to erase myself. You know, by throwing out everything that made me me. I used to write to make sense of my thoughts and feelings, I used to write fanfictions and poetry. I threw them all. I deleted all the e-books and other stuff that I used to read, all the videos I used to watch, all the pictures I stored, all the musical pieces and songs I enjoyed listening to and all the website that I used to visit. All the things that shaped me to become what I am. All the things that reminded me of myself.
I now realize that I have developed an eating disorder(sort of?) over gender dysphoria. I don't want to eat because I don't want my body to produce female sex hormones that will lead to periods (Is it weird to be happy that my periods last only 2 days because of malnutrition and anemia?) and breast growing (Is it weird to be happy because I have a flat chest and I am skinny and rectangle shaped?). I love eating tasty things you know? But I unconsciously stopped eating properly. It's also because sometimes I simply forget to eat.
This seems to happen when I am hyper-focusing on something (usually unrelated to my studies). Heck, I forget to bath or brush or I forget when it's time to sleep too you know? But when I am aware that I should have a meal, I feel an internal resistance which I now realize is the fear that my body will produce appropriate levels of female sex hormones and make me look like I am a girl.
(I don't want to look like a girl, and I don't want to be mistaken as a boy, but mistaken as boy is better than people treating me like a girl. If only I could be neither, ugh.
As a side note, my mother is worried that my body doesn't seem to be producing enough sex hormones and is currently trying to force me to go see a doctor so that my breasts can grow bigger and my periods can last longer. I am terrified of this, I know this is causing health problems but I also really don't want treatment for this.)
And week or two ago, my mother was again telling me, not yelling at me or expressing anger but with a gentle tone, that I should work harder to study and I should take care of myself because for her it's really painful to see me like this, and she won't be able to accept me if I don't stand on my own two legs and I should try harder to take care of myself.
And that's the first time I realized that this needs to stop, this whole ordeal is harming my health and is causing all sorts of problems for me in my family.
I need to study to graduate next year and I need decent marks. But I can't seem to do so no matter how hard I try. I need to at least take care of myself but I face this internal resistance and this urge to self-sabotage, this urge to destroy myself and my life for some reason.
Can somebody please suggest and advise me on my best course of action?
I need good mental and physical health to study properly but I need to study to get access to good mental health treatment which will also help a lot in my physical health.
I want to get out of this situation.
submitted by Latter-Session5251 to toxicparents [link] [comments]
CW: Long Post, Depression, Gender Dysphoria Causing Eating Disorders Leading to Poor Health
Assigned female at birth, Masc Agender (He/She/They/Don't Care About Pronouns), Recently turned 18.I was supposed to have been graduated from high school and admitted to college but I am repeating 12th grade, much to my parents' horror, and couldn't graduate this year largely because of depression and poor physical health. Also, I don't know if I have ADHD but the symptoms are there and I struggle a lot because of it too.
Parents don't acknowledge that people can be mentally ill and they need support and treatment. Therefore, when I first told them that I'm struggling with my mental health, they just.. mocked me, for several weeks. Told me I'm weak and can't do anything, that I'm a big zero and making up excuses. I never brought that up again.
Doesn't have to mention they are disappointed in me. Because they wanted me to be a doctor, but being a doctor is so not me. That's not what I want to do at all.
Wanting to pursue something different and then not being able to even graduate made them extremely disappointed in me.
This is more amplified by the fact that they both rose up from their parents' economical conditions and expect me to achieve better things but I won't be able to get a decent job at all, if I keep that up. I can relate, I am disappointed in me too.
So whenever I struggle to study, my mother lashes out at me, telling me how much they sacrificed to raise me, and that they grew up with a lot more struggles than me and that I don't deserve their love and that she should have aborted me, that I am abnormal and defective that is destroying her life and it's my fault that she is acting out and that I destroyed their social life by being abnormal and if I don't get a respectable position in society, my life will be forever ruined. As if it's not ruined enough.
Whenever I struggle to eat, sleep or generally take care of myself, she says she won't pay for my healthcare if I get sick again and that I am better off dead, I was unwanted anyway. (Background: She wanted to study and wanted to get a job but was forced to marry by her family. She continued to study after marriage but then I came into the picture unplanned. She wasn't really ready to have me, but gave birth to me anyway because she thought if I grew up to a better place it would pay off. It didn't help that both of them had 11 to 5 jobs. I was raised when they were financially struggling too)
It hurts every time she says these, even if I know that she is saying these in heat of the moment and they're kind of true. Even if she sometimes apologizes (then proceeds to blame me for her behavior). It still fucking hurts okay? What hurts even more is that they don't want to understand me. They don't get my motivations, functionality and thought processes, but because I don't behave in align with their expectations, they tell me there's something inherently wrong with me.
I'm really sick and tired of these drama in our house. And I am sick and tired of being sick and tired at all. This seems to be a running theme in my life.
My father largely ignores us and is emotionally distant. At least he doesn't care about me not conforming to societal expectations, and that's better than mother's reaction to everything I am and I do. But that doesn't stop him from participating with mother in these drama. Both of them are extremely homophobic/queerphobic.
Mind you, they still provide food, cloth and shelter for me even after finding out that I was romantically entangled with another AFAB. Granted, they don't want to talk about it and completely ignore it in the hopes that it was a bad dream and they'd wake up, but hey, I wasn't kicked out, so that's good at least.
When I confront her about the things she say to me, she just states that I am really ungrateful for not understanding my mother's emotions and feelings, it's my fault that episodes of drama happen and it's my fault that I end up getting hurt, because hurting me is not her intentions. And I am ungrateful that she is trying to help me get over these crap. She even said and I quote her, they are the best parents I can come across, and that parents are always right and they know what is best for me, if only I would just listen.
She has huge issues with me "acting like a boy". For example, we have this unspoken rule in our area that female humans should pierce their ears.
I was really stubborn about not doing this, until my mother made a deal with me: I get to keep my hair short if I pierce my ears, so I got my ears pierced in 2020. Then, she gradually went from suggesting that I should at least let it grow a little bit to full on threatening me that if I don't grow my hair they'll disown me.
This was happening when I had poor physical and mental health, so I stopped being stubborn about it. But sometimes I do express my annoyance and grief over not having my hair short anymore, and she reacts by being angry over the fact that my behavior is not ideal and sadness over the fact that I don't listen to her.
Which is true by the way. Over these last two to three years, I am not being my best self. Whenever these episodes of drama happen (my mother lashing out on me because I am struggling or not acting like a girl or how a normal ideal human being is supposed to act like) I too react really negatively. For a period of time after each episodes, I don't respect them or don't listen to their orders, and don't try hard enough to study or take care of myself. My response to them seems to be doing what they don't want me to do.
This I do because I just don't see the point anymore, I don't feel like doing anything at all even though I logically know what, why and how I should do but I don't seem to do that. I feel numb. My days pass by in a blur and haze. My memory seems have been weakened.
My family mocks me because of this, they don't believe me that I seem to forget a lot, they say that I am making things up and, blah blah. Somedays I get a serious level of existential crisis. Other days I don't really care, and I feel lethargic all the time. I don't feel sad per se, because I am not aware or mindful of my thoughts and feelings most of the time but when I do become aware, a lot of the times I don't seem to know or understand what I'm feeling or why I'm feeling a certain emotion.
Like this post is taking a lot of time for the same reason. It's really difficult for me to recognize and compose my feelings into words. (Future me: Although I am editing from another post of mine, this took me 4.5ish hours to finish)
And sometimes I feel things really intensely out of nowhere. Like this one time I suddenly didn't want to exist anymore, it seemed to come out from nowhere. It was pointless to try to live anyway. I was causing a lot of pain anyway, what's one more by dying? Simply existing was so much pain, like whenever I was reminded or became aware that I am a living breathing thing existing in this space and time, I just, I don't know, I felt this huge grief over my existence. I don't know how to describe that, but it was an ugly emotion, I didn't want to feel it, but I felt it anyway.
I didn't attempt suicide, but I was close to sort of erasing my existence. I tried to erase myself. You know, by throwing out everything that made me me. I used to write to make sense of my thoughts and feelings, I used to write fanfictions and poetry. I threw them all. I deleted all the e-books and other stuff that I used to read, all the videos I used to watch, all the pictures I stored, all the musical pieces and songs I enjoyed listening to and all the website that I used to visit. All the things that shaped me to become what I am. All the things that reminded me of myself.
I now realize that I have developed an eating disorder(sort of?) over gender dysphoria. I don't want to eat because I don't want my body to produce female sex hormones that will lead to periods (Is it weird to be happy that my periods last only 2 days because of malnutrition and anemia?) and breast growing (Is it weird to be happy because I have a flat chest and I am skinny and rectangle shaped?). I love eating tasty things you know? But I unconsciously stopped eating properly. It's also because sometimes I simply forget to eat.
This seems to happen when I am hyper-focusing on something (usually unrelated to my studies). Heck, I forget to bath or brush or I forget when it's time to sleep too you know? But when I am aware that I should have a meal, I feel an internal resistance which I now realize is the fear that my body will produce appropriate levels of female sex hormones and make me look like I am a girl.
(I don't want to look like a girl, and I don't want to be mistaken as a boy, but mistaken as boy is better than people treating me like a girl. If only I could be neither, ugh.
As a side note, my mother is worried that my body doesn't seem to be producing enough sex hormones and is currently trying to force me to go see a doctor so that my breasts can grow bigger and my periods can last longer. I am terrified of this, I know this is causing health problems but I also really don't want treatment for this.)
And week or two ago, my mother was again telling me, not yelling at me or expressing anger but with a gentle tone, that I should work harder to study and I should take care of myself because for her it's really painful to see me like this, and she won't be able to accept me if I don't stand on my own two legs and I should try harder to take care of myself.
And that's the first time I realized that this needs to stop, this whole ordeal is harming my health and is causing all sorts of problems for me in my family.
I need to study to graduate next year and I need decent marks. But I can't seem to do so no matter how hard I try. I need to at least take care of myself but I face this internal resistance and this urge to self-sabotage, this urge to destroy myself and my life for some reason.
Can somebody please suggest and advise me on my best course of action?
I need good mental and physical health to study properly but I need to study to get access to good mental health treatment which will also help a lot in my physical health.
I want to get out of this situation.
Need treatment to study but need to study to get treatment.
A fckng loop.2024.06.08 19:45 hfbvm2 Experience 10 years after the rat race for placements
I have seen a lot of people going through a tough time with the results and I thought it would be a good idea to share my experience as an bright student turned failure.
1. Schooling
Like most of you I had 80% percentile in my 10th and 12th. I did not want coaching because I thought I was super smart. Instead I spent my time coding websites and making logos on freelancer and earning 100-200$ a month. Spent it all on a gaming pc. When my school ended I had to give AIEEE, and the other one for Architecht. For some reason I signed up for both, my AIEEE was in the lacs and my Architect exam went really well and I had good colleges. The IIT/NIT dream was up.
2. College
Nokia Morph was a concept phone that attracted me to nanotech, I saw othe inspirational future science videos and decided this obscure field was what I wanted to do. So I joined nanotech at Amity Noida in a dual degree Btech + Mtech. An year in all I wanted to do was party and sax sux. I was studying 39 minutes before an exam and passing it, so I started to care even less. What took me down was too less attendance and me and my friend failed. Had to take an year drop. I switched to Btech just to get the course done with. I hated research, it was the same thing every day, mixing chemicals, changing ph, changing concentration, baking more, baking less. I had an amazing project of purifying water, and my professor took the project to a research centre and now is working on bringing the technology to the world.
The biggest difference for me was how rich the people were there. In my first year I used to get 12,000 rs for my monthly expenses and my friends would be spending that in a night in a night club. But I never felt left out and I formed a lot of very close friendships.
3. Career
Tier 4 college and obscure field that I dont want to work in. CS had advanced a lot and the jobs I was getting were from startups paying 10k a month. Thats where the connections I made in college came in, A friend had a friend who gave a reference to the country manager in an FMCG for me. 3 months later I was working for them in a marketing role, Moot diya teri IIM ki degree pe. It was a team of 3 sales and 2 marketing. After an year the 3 sales quit, and then covid happened, company couldnt recruit and my manager moved to sales, I moved to managing the marketing. I started with the bare minimum salary and 11/2 years later I had doubled it, I moved to a sales role and again 11/2 year later I got an increase of 50%. The company has given me a roadmap that I should follow for my dream role of becoming a regional CEO. This week I have the opportunity to move to the biggest FMCG in the world. Again with references coming in, because I know someone who knows someone. Doesnt matter if I am competing with 15 years experience because I am at the top of what I am doing and I love doing it.
All fo my friends did well too, they stayed in the field, moved to Europe on Marie curie fellowship (70% of my batch and juniors are on this research grant in europe). They have received permanent residency + they can get Direct PGreen Card/Golden visa anywhere int he world due to their field. Those who left the field either already had rich parents and good connections or they now had friends who were rich with good connections.
4. The takeaway
Your college defines your future for just a very few people. 2.4 million kids were competing this year, when you will start your first job, you will be competing with 10-12 million people. To excel in life you have to know what is going to be needed in 4 years and the right people to get you there. My college is rightfully a shitty college selling shitty courses. My colleagues in Biotech and Mechanical are not doing well, the ones in Nuclear and Nanotech did well. Mostly because the professors cared, the institute had expensive machinery and the biggest credit goes to three courses, English, Behavioral sciences and Foreign language. All of which you can figure out on your own. Behavioural sciences is the key to sucess in your career, you come out polished and ready. Which is one of the big reason why the batch mates got to work in foreign universities, they aced their interviews, Even if they had shitty marks or backlogs. and were not IIT/NIT. Your MBA might get you an interview with an MNC in their graduate program, but half of those will go to people with references who perform well in interviews.
50% of the careers are not even visible to you right now. From my field we have :
Trade marketing : The bank guys that harass you in the malls, why they are there, the stand they have, the ROI is someone's job. Every random banner or physical advertisement is the job of someone, who is partially sales and partially marketing. They deal mostly with data, so engineers are preferred.
Revenue growth management : He decides the pricing of things you consume, combined role dealing with logistics, finance, sales and marketing. A role you cannot possibly study for and is one of the higher paid ones.
In my team we are all engineers working sales and marketing, because the skills needed for most roles are present in people with engineering degrees.
Other careers that are in demand but overlooked :
Nursing Specialists and other medical assistants : If you have a nursing degree (malaysia, UK, phillipines, not india) you can get direct Residency/Green card and a good pay in western countries. Most hospitals are trying to reach out and offer home services, especially dialysis. They prefer to hire male nurses and very high pay. Our country looks down so much on this field, while outside you will be well respected for being in the medical field, countries are trying to outdo each other to attract nurses. Doctory nahi mili toh dentist mat banna please. Physiotherapist, Mental Health profession, Nutitionists are more a boon than that, they do miracles everyday.
Veterinarian : If you can study outside and work, holy shit this field prints money. I have 4 cats and 5% of my salary is just vet bills for regular stuff. Dogs are even more expensive. And there is a huge shortage of them, because its a looked down on profession. My vet makes more money per hour than I do, but society will say wow to my field and look down on his.
Financial Analyst, Management Analyst : Highly prefer engineers who are presentable. You get paid amazing and they burn you out for 3 years day and night. You leave the job and join a relaxing job in an MNC at ananalyst position.
Nanotech, Nuclear, Automation / Robotics, Industrial Engineers : If you can breathe they will hire you, Arms and Legs Optional, college to bhul jao. Global talent visas can get you into any country once you have 2 years expereince.
This is not for people who got into Tier 1 & 2. Its for those who are still wondering where to go and what to do, One year into your career, your marks and ranking will be worthless and the rat race will start again. And the best advice I can give you is to not lose hope, work at a comfortable pace and be good looking. or charming.
You can ask me anything, and I will try my best to help you. I am only 30, so hopefully I am not that detached from reality.
submitted by hfbvm2 to JEENEETards [link] [comments]
1. Schooling
Like most of you I had 80% percentile in my 10th and 12th. I did not want coaching because I thought I was super smart. Instead I spent my time coding websites and making logos on freelancer and earning 100-200$ a month. Spent it all on a gaming pc. When my school ended I had to give AIEEE, and the other one for Architecht. For some reason I signed up for both, my AIEEE was in the lacs and my Architect exam went really well and I had good colleges. The IIT/NIT dream was up.
2. College
Nokia Morph was a concept phone that attracted me to nanotech, I saw othe inspirational future science videos and decided this obscure field was what I wanted to do. So I joined nanotech at Amity Noida in a dual degree Btech + Mtech. An year in all I wanted to do was party and sax sux. I was studying 39 minutes before an exam and passing it, so I started to care even less. What took me down was too less attendance and me and my friend failed. Had to take an year drop. I switched to Btech just to get the course done with. I hated research, it was the same thing every day, mixing chemicals, changing ph, changing concentration, baking more, baking less. I had an amazing project of purifying water, and my professor took the project to a research centre and now is working on bringing the technology to the world.
The biggest difference for me was how rich the people were there. In my first year I used to get 12,000 rs for my monthly expenses and my friends would be spending that in a night in a night club. But I never felt left out and I formed a lot of very close friendships.
3. Career
Tier 4 college and obscure field that I dont want to work in. CS had advanced a lot and the jobs I was getting were from startups paying 10k a month. Thats where the connections I made in college came in, A friend had a friend who gave a reference to the country manager in an FMCG for me. 3 months later I was working for them in a marketing role, Moot diya teri IIM ki degree pe. It was a team of 3 sales and 2 marketing. After an year the 3 sales quit, and then covid happened, company couldnt recruit and my manager moved to sales, I moved to managing the marketing. I started with the bare minimum salary and 11/2 years later I had doubled it, I moved to a sales role and again 11/2 year later I got an increase of 50%. The company has given me a roadmap that I should follow for my dream role of becoming a regional CEO. This week I have the opportunity to move to the biggest FMCG in the world. Again with references coming in, because I know someone who knows someone. Doesnt matter if I am competing with 15 years experience because I am at the top of what I am doing and I love doing it.
All fo my friends did well too, they stayed in the field, moved to Europe on Marie curie fellowship (70% of my batch and juniors are on this research grant in europe). They have received permanent residency + they can get Direct PGreen Card/Golden visa anywhere int he world due to their field. Those who left the field either already had rich parents and good connections or they now had friends who were rich with good connections.
4. The takeaway
Your college defines your future for just a very few people. 2.4 million kids were competing this year, when you will start your first job, you will be competing with 10-12 million people. To excel in life you have to know what is going to be needed in 4 years and the right people to get you there. My college is rightfully a shitty college selling shitty courses. My colleagues in Biotech and Mechanical are not doing well, the ones in Nuclear and Nanotech did well. Mostly because the professors cared, the institute had expensive machinery and the biggest credit goes to three courses, English, Behavioral sciences and Foreign language. All of which you can figure out on your own. Behavioural sciences is the key to sucess in your career, you come out polished and ready. Which is one of the big reason why the batch mates got to work in foreign universities, they aced their interviews, Even if they had shitty marks or backlogs. and were not IIT/NIT. Your MBA might get you an interview with an MNC in their graduate program, but half of those will go to people with references who perform well in interviews.
50% of the careers are not even visible to you right now. From my field we have :
Trade marketing : The bank guys that harass you in the malls, why they are there, the stand they have, the ROI is someone's job. Every random banner or physical advertisement is the job of someone, who is partially sales and partially marketing. They deal mostly with data, so engineers are preferred.
Revenue growth management : He decides the pricing of things you consume, combined role dealing with logistics, finance, sales and marketing. A role you cannot possibly study for and is one of the higher paid ones.
In my team we are all engineers working sales and marketing, because the skills needed for most roles are present in people with engineering degrees.
Other careers that are in demand but overlooked :
Nursing Specialists and other medical assistants : If you have a nursing degree (malaysia, UK, phillipines, not india) you can get direct Residency/Green card and a good pay in western countries. Most hospitals are trying to reach out and offer home services, especially dialysis. They prefer to hire male nurses and very high pay. Our country looks down so much on this field, while outside you will be well respected for being in the medical field, countries are trying to outdo each other to attract nurses. Doctory nahi mili toh dentist mat banna please. Physiotherapist, Mental Health profession, Nutitionists are more a boon than that, they do miracles everyday.
Veterinarian : If you can study outside and work, holy shit this field prints money. I have 4 cats and 5% of my salary is just vet bills for regular stuff. Dogs are even more expensive. And there is a huge shortage of them, because its a looked down on profession. My vet makes more money per hour than I do, but society will say wow to my field and look down on his.
Financial Analyst, Management Analyst : Highly prefer engineers who are presentable. You get paid amazing and they burn you out for 3 years day and night. You leave the job and join a relaxing job in an MNC at ananalyst position.
Nanotech, Nuclear, Automation / Robotics, Industrial Engineers : If you can breathe they will hire you, Arms and Legs Optional, college to bhul jao. Global talent visas can get you into any country once you have 2 years expereince.
This is not for people who got into Tier 1 & 2. Its for those who are still wondering where to go and what to do, One year into your career, your marks and ranking will be worthless and the rat race will start again. And the best advice I can give you is to not lose hope, work at a comfortable pace and be good looking. or charming.
You can ask me anything, and I will try my best to help you. I am only 30, so hopefully I am not that detached from reality.