So, I live in a town with fair amount of schools but the good ones dont have commerce stream which im planning to pursue. so, i was considering boarding schools as an option but I dont know if i will be able to study in those hostel rooms with bunch of other students around me. I have to prepare for clat too, for that i would require a quite space as it involves a lot of reading and comprehension. So finally i have considered the followig options:

1. Take up science in a school in my hometown.
2. Take up boarding school.

As I will be changin my board from cbse to state(mh) in 11 and 12. So my question is will state board be easier for me as I come from a cbse school? And will i have time to prepare for clat if i take up state board science in 11 12? How much study time would be required for science for scoring a decent number of marks in boards? thank you

I'm a level 4 apprentice who works for a very large aerospace engineering company in England, at the start of my apprenticeship we were told we'd be on a new apprenticeship framework, a highly specialised level 4 standard as opposed to the traditional NVQ with bolt on HNC qualification.
Over the three years of the apprenticeship (we started in January 2020) it became clear to us apprentices that the standard was not fit for purpose, we were sent to college to sit in on multiple HNC and an HND class, completing all assignments and exams but since we were not enrolled on them we do not get any qualification from these. We could quite clearly see against the criteria for our standard that what we were learning was wrong and would not prepare us for the end point assessment (EPA), these concerns were raised even during our first year to our managers and we were totally ignored.
We also raised concerns that a standard by itself is an almost worthless qualification holding no real value other than providing a framework for the apprenticeship, we were repeatedly told that this is not the case and that it would be equivalent to an HNC however we can find no evidence to back this up, nor did they provide any.
We were the first year to run the qualification, the year below us was the final, the year below them were put on a much more general standard with a HNC bolt on with HND top up which to me moots any point about a standard being remotely equivalent to an HNC.
We even went as far as begging them to let us pay for the HNC's ourselves but they would not let us do this, they changed the HNC course we were following multiple times which would not have made this possible however none of the courses we studied were actually relevant to the learning we needed to pass the standard.
At this point please bear in mind the stress this placed on us, for three years we raised our concerns, genuine, serious, concerns we had that would have severe ramifications on our apprenticeships and careers and at every point we were met with "don't worry about it" "trust us it's under control" and other dismissive messages, at times it felt like we were imagining it and to say it affected our mental health is an understatement.
Fast forward to our EPA and it becomes instantly apparent that we have not imagined it, the point of contention is the multiple choice test (MCT), as soon as we get the spec everyone realised that we have not been even remotely prepared, in total we had 5 mock tests all of which we failed. It's not like we had gaps in our knowledge but rather that we had been taught entirely the wrong subject matter, to try and fix this they gave us a series of virtual lectures crammed into a space of 3 months before going through the EPA to make up for the 3 years of irrelevant teaching. We all passed the observation and professional discussion portions of the assessment but out of 16 apprentices in our year only 3 have passed the MCT.
Our employers are trying to get the MCT thrown out through appeals and other avenues going as far as speaking to members of parliment but frankly it's too late to fix this, if they'd taken our concerns seriously in the first place maybe they could have fixed it but it's too late now, our contracts have already been extended by 6 months and there's less than 2 months left.
Even if they do manage to get us this qualification the standard is virtually worthless by itself and we will be at a disadvantage to every other apprentice that has ever been or will ever go through through the apprenticeship program given that contrary to what they promised a standard is not equivalent to a HNC.
We're just a group of engineering apprentices and we don't know what to do from here, we all have jobs and are working in the company since January, we have these jobs regardless but we didn't sign up to an apprenticeship just for the job, we signed up to get qualified and they have failed to provide this qualification, many of us would like to leave the company on account of how we have been treated however we cannot because we have no recognised qualification, we are in essence trapped in this company until we gain enough experience to leave several years down the road.
Many of our colleagues in the workforce have suggested we find legal counsel but with the post apprenticeship pay some of us can barely make ends meet, we have involved the union and they were very helpful in getting us into the EPA however they seem reluctant to help towards and kind of settlement or legal action. Please don't think of this as some money grab, this company has wasted three years of our lives and most of us would genuinely consider them the worst three years of our lives, we can't help but feel like we've been wronged and most people in the company outside the early careers team agree.
Recently our apprentice manager was let go and on last day he confessed that he had been lying to us, telling us that the standard is an equivalent qualification when he knew it was not and that he only told us this to keep us from giving up, in effect gas lighting us for three and a half years straight in to believing we would come out of this as qualified engineers.
I'm guess I'm asking if someone who knows what they're talking about agrees with us, there are 16 of us in my year based across the country and another 15 in the year below who will soon be in the same position. Would we have a leg to stand on in a lawsuit and what would the best way to go about this be?

So, I live in a town with fair amount of schools but the good ones dont have commerce stream which im planning to pursue. so, i was considering boarding schools as an option but I dont know if i will be able to study in those hostel rooms with bunch of other students around me. I have to prepare for clat too, for that i would require a quite space as it involves a lot of reading and comprehension. So finally i have considered the followig options:

1. Take up science in a school in my hometown.
2. Take up boarding school.

As I will be changin my board from cbse to state(mh) in 11 and 12. So my question is will state board be easier for me as I come from a cbse school? And will i have time to prepare for clat if i take up state board science in 11 12? How much study time would be required for science for scoring a decent number of marks in boards? thank you.

This is going to be long, I'm sorry. It is my first reddit post, and I feel desperate. I'm just wondering if anyone here has ever mended their family ties?
To give context, me (22F), my older brother (25M), and younger sister (17F) grew up in an immigrant household (my brother and I are immigrants, sister first gen) with both mother and father around. Overall, we had a happy childhood. We had family friends and my mothers first cousin living in the same city as us, with her two children around the same age as my brother and I. Fast forward a couple of years, there was family drama and an ending of the family friend group that we had due to petty fights between moms, and we stopped having contact with these people. I was a pretty extroverted child, as was my sister, but my brother was pretty introverted. He had great interests as a child, he loved astrology, reading, and knew everything about cars. My sister loved drawing (as did I), making slime, and reading as well (she's an excellent writer). I had a good relationship with both of them, sometimes getting into fights, but nothing really abnormal. We would go outside to play all of the time, and I would take my sister to the pool with me and my friends during the summer. My brother then got very into video games in high school. It was more of a hobby then, which I think is good and healthy, his grades were still good and he was on the volleyball team so he was socializing and fit. His work ethic was not good though, as he would wait until the last minute to finish his assignments. When he was applying to colleges I remember he didn't really want to do anything. It was a big fight between him and my parents. He started college as a commuter, but this was a pretty difficult time for him and he got pretty depressed. He still had the same work ethic and studying habits that he had in high school. My mother then started to deal with depression, as she was close to my brother and became socially isolated at this time. Her age didn't help, and she started dealing with sciatic pain. I then felt like I had to help her, so I would help her with the house, my sister, and the garden. I enjoyed these things, as I feel my nature is pretty nurturing. I love children and found a love in gardening during this time as well. I worked in retail when I was 17, and have been working in the restaurant industry for about 2 years now. My brother never had a job. My brother was always the golden child and got most of the attention and praise, which I didn't mind because in a way it was motivation for me to do well and live up to him. I was still close with him and my sister during his college years. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in three years, and everyone was so proud of him. This was the year I started at the same college as him, but for biochemistry as I was pre-med. This was the year COVID started. My sister was 12, and I was 18, and my brother 21. My brother didn't apply to any jobs after graduation and would just sit at home playing video games. He played for a year and a half, and my parents got frustrated at him for just sitting at home doing nothing. I spoke to him during this time, and he said he was severly depressed during college, and on the first day he knew he didn't want to do it and wanted to drop out instead. I couldn't understand him, as I always saw education as a privilege and gaining knowledge/learning was so rewarding for me (THINK MALALA). My parents told him he had to get a job or go for his masters. He ended up applying for his masters in computer science, and finished that in two years. Since then, December 2022, he has just been in his room locked away playing video games all night and sleeping all day. My mother has been dealing with depression since he started college, and it took a toll on me during COVID trying to help her. This in turn took a toll on my younger sister as we shared the same room and we had a very close relationship. I ended up developing an eating disorder during the time of COVID (I think due to bad stress management), and I was depressed and weighed close to nothing. I ended up graduating with my undergraduate degree in Biochemistry a year early like my brother, but at the end of my studies I decided I could not become a doctor. I studied for my MCAT and was working on applications and all that, but looking forward, I felt the path of becoming a physician did not align with what I wanted in life. The four years of medical school was fine with me, as I love medicine and would study it for the rest of my life if I could, but the hours in residency and the non-existent balance between work and life during those years (along with the debt of medical school) was not something I could justify doing. I wanted to become a mother (sooner rather than later (which feels stupid now as I don't even have a boyfriend and the disloyalty i've seen in men (not my father) makes me have trust issues)). I was lost and wasn't in a good mental state to begin with. Then, my best friends (American) turned on me and isolated me which made me feel even worse. My sister then became the person that I trauma dumped to, which I see was not a good thing, and she started to become aggressive and took turns on who she would isolate in my family. First it was my dad, then my brother, then my mother, then me. She had phases of who she would consider a friend, and who she hated. It was hard on my whole family. During June of 2022, my grandfather (mothers side) became ill with sepsis due to an untreated UTI (he was a farmer and hated the doctor), and she went back to our country for the first time in 20 years. I wanted to go with her, but I had to stay back and take care of my sister. When she came back after my grandfather's death and funeral, my grandmother was all alone, so I went back to my country to stay with her as her caretaker until she passed in November. During that time, I worked on myself and became healthier. It was easier because I had so much family around, and I made new and great friends who I could relate to. The culture is a lot less stressful and on-the-go than American culture, so I found myself seeing the beauty in life like I did as a child. I was in the village surrounded by nature, which I love, and I finally felt like I fit in, whereas in America I never REALLY fit in. When I came home, my sister was still not talking to me.
Fast forward to recently, I am in a great place mentally and physically. I am back to my normal weight (although I do have issues with my hormones due to my former ED, which makes me scared that I am infertile). I am in school in a direct-entry masters in nursing program, working as a server on weekends, and volunteering with the elderly community with a few very close friends that I love. I've done a lot of self work, and have the mindset of not letting my past define me or stop me from bettering myself. My relationship with my family members is pretty great, individually. My sister is doing better mentally, as she dropped some friends feeding her depression, made some new friends in high school, is working as a host in the restaurant I work in, and has taken up martial arts. She is a very bubbly and laughy person, but she can be very cold if she "hates" you. Her relationship with my mother and brother are still very rocky. My mother still deals with depression due to my brother's "wasted potential", although I think I have helped since coming back because I feel much stronger and know now what I have to do to stay strong for my family and for myself. I understand my sister with both of them. I was also initially frustrated with my mother around my sisters age, but I understand what my mother is/has gone through. My sister deems her as crazy, which I told her was wrong. Her and my brother were never very close, and I feel for her frustration with him. He is always in his room playing video games, never helping around the house, and gets mad at her when she says mean things to my mother. I, too, was frustrated with him. However, I know now that the only thing I can really do is fix myself, I can't fix others if they don't want to change. I understand him in a way too. I think that he blamed school for his depression, but I think he still deals with it in a way today and video games is his outlet. When me and him were her age, we would not even think about saying half of the things she says to my parents. I caught my siblings in a screaming match one day when they thought I had left the house. He was screaming at her about being a b**** (I hate curse words, I think they feed anger) because she called my mother and brother fat a**** that morning for eating some leftovers we had (which I think is terribly wrong on two fronts, as one should never say this to another person let alone their own family, and all of the food we have is for everyone, not just for one person), and she was screaming at him to tell her what he wanted to say for the past 17 years. I intervened and started telling them that it was wrong to be screaming at each other, and that we have to be there for each other because we are siblings. We are each other's first best friends in life, and no one else will understand what we went through together. My sister and I also recently had an argument because she told me that my mother and father were very hard on her for her schooling as a child and that she remembers my mother about to throw a chair at her because of some bad grade, but that I stopped her from throwing it. I don't remember this happening ever. I remember that me and my brother were disciplined as children, and that I would get the most punishment (because I was a more mischievous child), and they were hard on us for school, but I knew it was for our better (remember Malala?). She was much younger than us, so their parenting changed significantly by the time she was born. As a child, she never got hit. I think that she might believe that this actually happened, and the feeling of fear was probably true, but this scene did not happen. My parents were older when they had her, so they were not as playful as they were with us as children, but they did their best. I would always try and give her everything I never had at her age, buying her food and taking her shopping. However, she now eats some form of fast food every day, takes my dad to buy her snacks that she won't share with us (which I told my dad is not okay, even if it is a bonding moment between them which he clings onto, he should teach her to share), and she has no interest in dressing up like she did as a child (she used to change her outfit three times a day, always fashionable). I don't think the fashion thing is a big deal, but I want to give her all of the clothes I wished for at her age.
TL;DR
ANYWAYS, after all that, has anyone ever dealt with a bright child older brother turning into a video game addict with no drive? and a younger sister with aggression and resentment towards family? I want to believe that my sister will get better. I think she should go on vacation with my mother to our home country this summer, as we have cousins her age, and she can see how happy my mother is in our country (instead of the depressed version she is in America). As for my older brother, can I do anything to help him see that life is far more beautiful with real-world social connections, that work can be rewarding (whatever it is that he wants to do), and that his past does not define him or who he could be (even if it takes a lot of self-reflection and work)? If so, how can I do this? Or is it better for me to just focus on my own life, make the goals I want happen, and pray/hope they can find the contentment I have found in life? I don't want to intrude too much, but I want to help them. Family is a very important value in my life, and I think it is for them as well.

So, I live in a town with fair amount of schools but the good ones dont have commerce stream which im planning to pursue. so, i was considering boarding schools as an option but I dont know if i will be able to study in those hostel rooms with bunch of other students around me. I have to prepare for clat too, for that i would require a quite space as it involves a lot of reading and comprehension. So finally i have considered the followig options:

1. Take up science in a school in my hometown.
   
2. Take up boarding school.
   

As I will be changin my board from cbse to state(mh) in 11 and 12. So my question is will state board be easier for me as I come from a cbse school? And will i have time to prepare for clat if i take up state board science in 11 12? How much study time would be required for science for scoring a decent number of marks in boards? thank you.

practically a rant. if you guys are don’t with ur exams congrats! now that you have the spare time. please share ur revenge ideas for me.
situation: im currently sitting my last IB exams today and tomorrow, and haven’t had time to do anything else but study. My IB Art teacher is making me finish a project (that hasn’t been started) for a school grade (not even towards my ib grade at this point). i have expressed to her multiple times in person and over email, that i won’t be able to finish this piece on may 17, as i will still have my exams. She is quite stern on the deadline, regardless of me offering to turn it in after the weekend first thing on monday.
context: She isn’t a nice teacher at all. she’s been snarky towards students, and overall doesn’t provide a good student-teacher healthy relationship. For the past 2 years, it’s felt like you’re walking on thin ice, and at any moment, she’s ready to give you a bad grade based on how she’s feeling (it’s a school policy that a teacher grades the work that is submitted fairly regardless if it’s overdue). I’m a type of person that doesn’t have a short temper, and can pretty much brush off any attitude that is faced at me…by her.
goal: Since this is my final school grade, i don’t really care abt how she feels abt it. I’m glad i don’t have another year with her, cause tension would be a major issue. This project is due over the weekend (as of my timeline), and i want to make the grading for her really hard. I don’t want it to be sloppy work, i just want her to have a hard time marking/ grading my work and i need ideas on to go about this.
So i’ll do the piece as normal, but she wants me to write a critique (evaluation) on my piece (she prefers it to be digital) but i don’t mind if i write it by hand (my handwriting is practically chicken scratch). i REALLY want her to have a hard time grading it because she deserves it.. she’s givin me a hard time for 2 years, idc if she has a hard time grading one assignment.

I recently received an admission offer for the MS in Computer Science program at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). While I'm excited about the opportunity, I'm facing some concerns and uncertainties, particularly given the current job market and the significant investment required for this degree.
A bit about my background: I am currently working as a Software Development Engineer in India. I've been with the company for three years, growing from an intern to SDE 2. Although my job is well-paying, I'm looking for new experiences. Pursuing a master's degree abroad has been a dream of mine, but given the current circumstances, I'm unsure if it's the right time.

Questions About the Program and Academics

1. Program Quality
   • How would you rate the quality of the MS in Computer Science program at CSULB?
   • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the program?
2. Faculty and Resources
   • Can you tell me about the faculty and their expertise?
   • Are there sufficient resources like labs, libraries, and research facilities?
3. Curriculum and Specializations
   • How flexible is the curriculum? Are there opportunities to specialize in areas of interest?
   • How up-to-date and industry-relevant is the coursework?
4. Class Size and Interaction
   • What is the average class size for graduate courses?
   • How accessible are professors and how often can you interact with them?

Questions About Career Opportunities and Networking

1. Internships and Job Placement
   • How supportive is the university in terms of helping students secure internships and jobs?
   • What is the success rate of graduates in finding employment in their field?
2. Alumni Network
   • How strong and active is the alumni network?
   • Are there opportunities to connect with alumni for mentorship and job opportunities?
3. Career Services
   • How effective are the career services offered by the university?
   • What kind of support is provided for job search, resume building, and interview preparation?

Questions About Campus Life and Support

1. Student Life and Community
   • What is the campus culture like?
   • Are there clubs, organizations, or activities for graduate students?
2. Support Services
   • What kind of support services are available for international students, such as academic advising, mental health support, and career counseling?
3. Housing and Living Conditions
   • What are the housing options like for graduate students?
   • How affordable is living in Long Beach, and what is the cost of living like?

Questions About Financial Considerations

1. Tuition and Funding
   • Are there any scholarships, assistantships, or other forms of financial aid available for graduate students?
   • How manageable is the cost of tuition and living expenses with part-time work or internships?
2. Return on Investment
   • Given the current job market, do you feel the investment in this degree has paid off for you and your peers?
   • How long did it take for you and your peers to repay any student loans?

Questions About Future Prospects

1. Market Situation and Future Outlook
   • How has the current job market affected recent graduates from the program?
   • What are the prospects for international students in terms of securing jobs and work visas?
2. Personal and Professional Growth
   • How has the program contributed to your personal and professional growth?
   • Would you recommend this program to someone in my position, and why or why not?

Personalized Context Questions

1. Transition from India to the USA
   • How was your transition from India to the USA in terms of academics, culture, and lifestyle?
   • What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?
2. Balancing Work and Studies
   • Is it feasible to work part-time while studying to help with expenses?
   • How demanding is the program in terms of time and effort?

Any insights, experiences, or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
These are a lot of questions but if someone can spare time to get back with suggestions and answers I would greatly appreciate it.
PS: I had also applied to selective top colleges but couldn't make it in any one of them. UCs, Umass, UIUC, Purdue.
Thanks!

Most of my life I had a blood pressure that averaged 80-90 on the top number and 40-60 on the bottom. No symptoms, no problems. I was healthy and active and ate a healthy diet. I still eat healthy, but I am a smoker.
Now here’s where it gets confusing for the doctors. Once my blood pressure started to inch up little by little, I began to have symptoms that seemed to be heart failure. Even had several blood tests show something the heart releases when it’s failing. After 10 years I finally have what is a “normal” blood pressure for most people and I keep having heart failure symptoms.
Every night when I lie down my heart rhythm goes out of whack, heavy breathing and pounding heart after the rhythm straightens out, with heavy sweating. This also happens during the day and has begun causing me to pass out. I actually smashed my face into pavement one day and shattered an eye socket and fractured my forehead and lost a good chunk of cartilage from my nose because I passed out and went over like a bowling pin. Nausea, vomiting, headaches, dizziness, extreme fatigue, what I call hot flashes (though I’m much too young and am not in menopause), My vision changes from day to day. I have been wearing glasses my whole life and now sometimes they work and other times I see better without them. Especially up close. My abdomen and legs stay so swollen I can barely eat or walk due to the pain.
My primary care doctor noticed my blood pressure was changing. But she knew I needed the water pills until I could see a cardiologist. She did caution me and told me to only take them every 3 days because I tend to have low blood pressure and water pills lower blood pressure. It was a concern. Well, I immediately felt about 50% better. Both the frequency and severity of my symptoms decreased.
My cardiologist said this:
Why would she put you on water pills?
Me: well because of how swollen I am with water retention.
Him: well you probably have (condition in my legs where the vessels stretch and blood flow gets messed up or stops) we will do the procedures for that. As for the water retention, your heart isn’t strong enough to pull the water out of your system the way it should. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with your heart
Me: that makes no sense (has ultrasound and confirms vessel condition in legs and has 4 procedures done) cardiologist releases me and says I should be fine now. No change including in leg swelling.
My primary then represcribes the water pills and adds a beta blocker. Diagnosis: high blood pressure. Frequency of symptoms reduced by 60%. Severity of symptoms reduced by 80%. Haven’t passed out since or had dizziness or nausea and vomiting. Headaches have been minimal. Eyesight is still a bit wonky.
Primary care doctor moves to another state. New primary care doctor thinks I and my previous doctor are insane and that my “normal” blood pressure is fine and my other symptoms are my imagination. Now I’ve been without meds for an entire month and I’m worried.
Are there ANY studies or doctors who have experience with a person whose normal blood pressure is low and high blood pressure reads as normal? I’m desperate at this point. I’m way too young to die of a heart attack or stroke and leave behind 3 kids without a mom. I’m only 44.
Edit. About 3 years ago I suddenly found that everything I ate or drank, even water, was like eating straight salt. I now can’t stand the taste of salt and can’t have it in any of my food. I lost 60 lbs in 8 weeks without changing anything. I have an extremely healthy diet, am very active (I teach 3rd grade, am a trauma recovery coach, and walk 3 miles with my daughter 3 times a week), I’m a light smoker (5-8 a day), not diabetic, healthy checkups, normal cholesterol and all that. The only thing I’ve ever had an issue with was my thyroid. I had 7 rapidly growing nodules that eventually stopped growing but haven’t been checked in 3 years since the radiologist said it was no longer necessary. All nodules were looked at through sonogram or ultrasound and biopsies every 2 years for 15 years. No kidney issues that I’m aware of. And NO the cardiologist and other doctors have NOT done ANY tests other than blood and CT scans to check my heart. They refuse. Yes I have good insurance. Family history includes mitral valve failure, mitral regurgitation, and non specific heart attack. Without the water pills I weigh about 240 lbs, with them I stay around 170.

I started attending church again recently after being an atheist for a few years. I started going to a protestant church at first. It was nice for a while and I liked a lot of the people I met, but the more I learned about Christianity, the more Protestantism started to seem shallow to me, like it was missing something. It seemed as if there were a lot of underlying and unstated assumptions in the background, as if it was standing in the shadow of something.
My father had become interested in Eastern Orthodoxy late in his life, so I decided to give it a try. Here I found many of the things that I had been looking for and that were missing from Protestantism. I loved reading the works of Eastern Orthodox writers such as Seraphim Rose, felt inspired by the amazing lives of the saints, and thoroughly enjoyed the divine liturgy -- especially thee ancient hymns. I began fasting, and through this, reading my father's Eastern Orthodox study bible, and talking to other Christians at coffee hour, I could feel myself growing spiritually. I decided that I wanted to become a catucmen and signed up for a "spiritual counseling" meeting with the priest at my parish. However, he inexplicably canceled at the last minute and told me we needed to reschedule. For some reason, I felt that God was telling me to delay becoming a catuchumen, and the priest never followed up with me.
Then I had another experience that made me question Orthodoxy. After Pashcha, my parish had a barbecue. At the barbecue, someone started delivering a 45-minute anti-Catholic rant, warning us about how the Catholic church was run by the Illuminati and Satanic pedophiles, and how we had to beware of ecumenicism, which was the religion of the anti-Christ that the Pope was apparently going to attempt to mislead all of the world's Christians into following. This rubbed me the wrong way. It was like I was suddenly back in my Protestant church, hearing about how Catholics were actually pagans and worshipped Mary. I had already learned enough about Christian history to know that these were lies. And it was not the first time I had heard these sorts of sentiments. There seemed to be a general attitude in the Orthodox church of snobbery and elitism that seemed frankly un-Christlike. Whats more, I had always found the arguments against the Papacy to be rather flimsy. The Orthodox agreed that Peter was the "first among equals," they simply disagreed with certain aspects of his authority, such as Papal infalibility. The Catholics that I had met before had nothing but nice things to say about the Orthodox, and seemed quite willing to compromise with them in order to heal the schism. I had even read that Eastern churches that had reunited with Rome were not required to add the filioque to the creed. Orthodox, on the other hand, did not return the charity and demanded nothing less than complete capitulation from Catholics.
This experience was the final straw for me, so I decided to try attending a few masses. But I didn't really feel the same spiritual connection I had at the divine liturgy. The contemporary music and less traditional liturgy felt a lot like a Protestant service, and I didn't get a lot out of them. After the service was over, everyone just left and went home. At my Orthodox church, we were a tight knit group of mostly converts and I learned so much by going to the coffee hour after the services. If I had a question and needed some spiritual guidance, I could just ask the priest at the table next to me. At the Catholic church, I don't get this same sense of community. I don't even know any other Catholics.
So, I am torn. I feel that intellectually, Catholicism makes the most sense. But I feel that I have grown so much in my faith in the Orthodox church. I really just want to make a decision soon so I can get baptized. Should I go with my mind, or my heart?
tl;dr
Things I like about Catholicism:

1. I think the Pope is the legitimate leader of the Church
2. I think Christians should be united under one church, makes sense that it should be Peter's
3. The theology makes more sense

Things I don't like:

1. Don't like the contemporary mass, doesn't make me feel a spiritual connection
2. Lack of community

Things I like about Orthodoxy:

1. More traditional, liturgy makes me feel I am in a holy place
2. Tight knit community
3. Makes me feel connected to my father
4. Has helped me grow a lot spiritually.

Things I don't like:

1. Snobbishness towards other Christians, espeically Catholics
2. Some theological disagreements, especially regarding the Papacy (I'm on the fence about other disagreements, such as divine simplicity),
3. A little too foreign, especially with the liturgical calendar

I was seeking a provider offering a certain, somewhat esoteric lab test. Under the online list of providers offering this test, a cardiologist was the closest provider with the soonest appointment. I see a different cardiologist every few years as I had a ventricular septal defect repair as an infant. As it stood prior to this office visit, my heart has always been structurally and functionally normal. Anyway, an ECG was done at my appointment, as they're done on all patients. All my ECGs in the past have been normal, with the occasional false-positive machine interpretation (ruled out on subsequent echos), as it's known to do. ECG 5 months ago was normal. An echocardiogram about a year and a half ago was normal. I have zero cardiac symptoms. I just went in to get this lab test ordered. The cardiologist says I have "a little right atrial enlargement" based on the amplitude of a P wave on lead II, which was still below the 2.5mm diagnostic threshold (between 1.5 and 2mm). He tells me it's nothing serious and it could've been a machine and/or lead placement error. He asks if I have palpitations, chest pain, or exercise intolerance, and I say no to all. He asked about my cholesterol, and I said at one point, my LDL was briefly at 188 (sedentary and poor diet during the pandemic), but I got it back down to well within the normal range shortly with diet and exercise. He told me he'll order my lab test but only under the condition I do a stress test first to "see if I'm healthy enough to exercise" and that I "could have a heart attack walking up the stairs." I'm in my late 30s and exercise regularly. I went home and looked on the patient portal, and he diagnosed me with right atrial enlargement, atherosclerosis of the native coronary artery of the native heart, mixed hyperlipidemia, and atrial septal defect. 1 - the P wave on the ECG didn't meet the criteria for right atrial enlargement. 2 - it is my understanding right atrial enlargement can only be definitively diagnosed via echocardiogram, CT, or MRI. 3 - my ECG showed zero signs of ischemia. Having a high LDL level at a brief moment in time does not equal atherosclerosis. It is my understanding atherosclerosis can't be diagnosed via ECG unless there are ST abnormalities or other indicators. My ECG showed nothing. Nothing else about the ECG was mentioned to me. 4 - I do not have an atrial septal defect. I have a repaired ventricular septal defect. I mentioned this via the patient portal and to the receptionist, and the diagnosis was never removed or corrected. This was just a plain error. 5 - My lipids have been normal for 3 years and many years before that pandemic reading. I'm not sure how I currently have mixed hyperlipidemia.
I finally got in touch with him (I had to do it via telehealth as he only responds to patients if he's getting paid, apparently) and, regarding the right atrial enlargement diagnosis, all he could say was, "The machine is accurate. It's not heart disease and it's not gonna harm you" and that the readings are like blood pressure in that, on another day, it likely would not have shown the P wave at that amplitude. Regarding the atherosclerosis diagnosis, he said it was a presumptive diagnosis, so insurance would cover the stress test. On the visit report on the patient portal, it said it was a presumptive diagnosis and would be ruled out with a stress test. I got the idea he ordered stress tests for all new patients. I confirmed the reasons for the diagnoses with him, and he said, "You seem to have a good understanding," condescendingly. I never followed through with the stress test, so now I have a diagnosis of coronary atherosclerosis cemented on my health record. I'm in the United States. My main concern is how this will affect my insurance rates when I shop for private insurance. I'm also concerned it will somehow preclude me from being able to access my ADHD meds in the future. If I have these conditions, fine. The whole experience just didn't seem right.
My questions are: Does this seem like medical malpractice, and can these presumably false diagnoses affect my insurance rates or my access to certain medications in the future? With these diagnoses being visible to other providers, will this affect my treatment for other conditions in the future?

So I’ve been dating this guy for about 2 months now.I really like him, we’ve been on dates, we text everyday and ft everyday or every other day, we do like Bible studies together over FaceTime and everything, it’s just been really good. The only thing that’s been bothering me is the distance and how much he works, we live maybe 1 and 30 /2hours from each other but he works a lot and so he can’t spend as much time with me as I would like and it really bothers me :( like I get really sad whenever we have to hang up or leave each others company and I think it’s because I genuinely enjoy being in his company. I understand that we’re grown and we have to work to survive but I really wish we could spend more time together in person. Has anyone else experienced this how’d you deal with it?

So I've got a big exam that I'm all in for that is coming in about 2 months. I have to study a lot for it.
Should i not masturbate between the study sessions? Because someone told me that it will flood dopamine in my brain and make me lesser motivated to work.
I do not masturbate with porn and i haven't watched porn since a year.
How true is this? Is our brain really that rigid I keep overthinking about all this. I am also diagnosed with ADD and OCD.

Admitting we have a problem is the first step in solving it! Author is a Eugenean talking about her experience with rising crime in the city, never saw this story but hey, still relevant today. Found this little gem by random chance. Title is a hopefully relatable quote from the article. You can agree or disagree with the author, but it's actually pretty well written with sources included. (just including the whole article, for people who don't want to click links!)

I Caught Two Men Stealing From My Home. The Aftermath Was Absurd—and All Too Typical.

This experience crystallized Oregon’s deeper problems.

BY REBECCA SCHUMANJUNE 21, 20225:40 AM
Typically, guys wearing power-company vests don’t leave the houses they’re working on laden down with backpacks—let alone power tools, a scooter, and a Nintendo Switch. But that was the scene I happened upon at 6:30 p.m. on a Tuesday in mid-April when I puttered into my driveway in Eugene, Oregon, my 7-year-old ensconced in the back seat.
For a second, my brain tried to normalize the incident: This is just my daughter’s dad stopping by—except there are two of him, and they’re dressed as electricians for some reason? Then, a second later, everything whooshed into place: Oh, wait, I’m being robbed. Or, rather, I was being burgled. I would get reminded of this distinction later, when I made the dubious choice to join the chorus of aggrieved buttinskies on Nextdoor, where my well-meaning post to warn the neighborhood would turn me into an accidental vigilante hero for a day.
Unfortunately, it’s true: My reaction to this burgle was the lived-out fantasy of many who have been on the business end of a property crime. As the two goons took off on foot down my street, I went into fight-or-flight mode—and I chose fight.
“Well,” I said to my confused child, “let’s go see if we can get our stuff back.”
I peeled my 2005 Subaru back onto the street and easily overtook my two targets, who then hurtled themselves into an alley, whereupon I cornered one by the driver’s side window as the other made haste across the adjacent parking lot.
“Just give it back, bro!” I yelled out my window. “Just give it back! I’m a single mom! Just give it back.”
I repeated this until either I reminded him too much of his meanest teacher or he realized he’d been caught in broad daylight. “Fine,” he said. “Just fucking take it.”
He shoved a backpack through my driver’s side window. Inside it was both my laptops and my daughter’s iPad from school. Back at home, I would discover these guys had used channel lock pliers to force open the back door, but that the general chaos of my home had prevented them from locating my passport, jewelry, or sole item of irreplaceable value: the Montblanc fountain pen that my father, who died in a bicycle accident two years ago, had gotten for his law school graduation. My cat was unfazed.
I can honestly tell you that this little caper of mine was thrilling and deeply satisfying. It was also the exact wrong thing to do. Even this fanatical open-carry gun website implores: “Don’t chase criminals.” What if these two dipsticks had been armed? As unlikely as that was—property crime in my town is often driven by addiction, and weapons are worth money, which can buy drugs—I put myself and my child in potential danger. And for what? Three grand worth of electronics. As any reputable expert will tell you, you’re never to give chase to a thief, because human life is not worth possessions. As much as I admit to enjoying being called a “badass” by everyone I told this story, plus the listeners of KLCC Oregon, I should not have done this.
I did call the police, on the nonemergency line, because the dudes were long gone and nobody was hurt. I declined the dispatcher’s offer to send two officers to fingerprint a bunch of stuff I’d already touched. At best, that would have just added two more sets of prints to my town’s burgeoning roster of perennially at-large property criminals.
There are larger issues here, issues much more important than my would-be cool story. First, it’s an example of how in Eugene, small-scale property crime is now de facto legal. It is largely nonviolent, so it’s rarely seen as worth police resources to track down the goods. At the same time, it is so prevalent that any time one vest-wearing bozo gets nabbed, three more spring up in his place. This was my house’s second break-in in six months, and my fourth property crime total in the three years I’ve lived here as an adult. Eugene is my hometown, so I can also add the four times my childhood house, where my mother still lives, has been burgled since the early 2000s. When I was little, we left our front door unlocked so regularly that I wasn’t aware front doors had locks on them until I was much older. By the time I turned 30, however, every door in my parents’ house had been pried open at least once. (“Time to finally get that alarm system!” said my dad for three straight decades.)
Still, it’s a mistake to treat this trend solely as a vexing crime problem. Eugene’s descent into its property crime epidemic has been concurrent, unsurprisingly, with two addiction epidemics: First, the methamphetamine nightmare of the 1990s—when pseudoephedrine pills were still unregulated—hit Oregon and other Western states particularly hard. That wave segued all too naturally into the opioid and fentanyl crisis of the present. Meanwhile, not only did meth never really leave, but its use in Oregon also surged with the pandemic, with three Oregonians per day currently dying a drug-related death.
Since our conversation was necessarily brief, I don’t know the housing or drug situation of the guys who broke into my place. But local statistics point to them as two more casualties of these plagues. (Granted, those statistics are from nearby Portland, and they are police-sourced, so take them how you wish.)
For all the ambivalent empathy that the opioid epidemic has engendered, the local property crime scourge has set off a fierce public backlash. My incident brought out an unsurprising chorus of bloodlust on Nextdoor and elsewhere, when I shared it because I wanted to give my immediate neighbors a heads-up: “You should have kicked their asses,” they wrote. “We need to rise up and defend our property.”
This town’s petty crime is often attributed, at least in the national conservative press, to our West Coast government’s decision to temporarily allow urban camping during the pandemic. (That policy has now officially ended, for what it’s worth.) Towns like mine have often been characterized in the popular imagination as unlivable crime-addled hellholes. I will be the first to admit that our tent cities are sometimes blatant open-air drug markets, but this is the case even as our property values inflate to absurd proportions—and our crime is actually on the decline. Still, Oregonians like me currently have about a 2.7 percent chance of being burgled, which, at almost 30 percent higher than the national average, is very high. I learned very efficiently how anecdotes like mine get around (I can’t help it if I’m a dynamic storyteller!) and attract the righteous indignation of other former victims, so many often feel, incorrectly, like we few honest vanguards are awash in a sea of riffraff.
This atmosphere, in turn, inspires my locality’s equally unreasonable political extremists to put forth and exacerbate their own untenable solutions. Even in a hyperpolarized American environment, Oregon is more polarized than most. For decades, our liberal enclaves have made Portlandia look understated, while our conservative areas make Texas’ look progressive.
For example, during the heyday of Eugene’s recently dismantled and infamous Washington Jefferson Park tent city, a larger break-in at a bicycle store was traced at least partially back to the encampment. The police swept the tents and made a flurry of arrests. Some of the bikes were found. This resulted in part in outrage over using resources to hassle the city’s most impoverished residents: “A stolen bike, yes, that sucks,” an advocate for the unhoused told a local news outlet. “But what are your priorities? And I’m sorry, but a stolen bike isn’t the priority.”
Well, trust me, in this town, it definitely isn’t. Recovering those bikes was an anomaly; in Eugene, most of these burglaries go unsolved. In fact, 87 percent of burglaries in the whole country do, too. The get-tough-on-property-crime proponents assert that statistically, this sends a message that stealing is fair game, and sure, that is a message I do not condone. But I also agree with a somewhat less rabid version of the opposing view: Property is replaceable, these crimes are nonviolent, and everyone currently rifling through houses and dealing drugs out of tents in my town is human. They deserve a chance to get their lives on track.
So, what should be the town’s priority? Fixing the addiction epidemics is a perilously long way away from happening, for reasons that are as polarizing as addiction’s consequences. In the sobering and excellent Dopesick, author Beth Macy goes into painfully exacting detail about opioids’ near-inescapable hold on the human brain. Macy argues that the true way out of this epidemic is “low-barrier treatment,” which includes supportive housing and medical interventions such as safe injection supplies, fentanyl testing strips, buprenorphine access, and supervised consumption sites. All of these options, however, are a tough sell even in a “progressive” town like Eugene, where supervised consumption sites are what NIMBY nightmares are made of, and low-barrier treatment can run up against deeply held moral stigma: Gas is $5 a gallon, and my taxes are going to some junkie?
In the meantime, while some admirably advocate and vote and wait for those breakthroughs, what should we do about the burglaries themselves? Should we pursue more law enforcement, or more compassion toward the burglars? More arrests that allegedly might deter this, or policies that might alleviate income inequality? Does—as approximately 83 percent of the suggestions from my Nextdoor thread contended—every house in town need a tripwire that handcuffs trespassers on sight? Or should all businesses be taxed at 500 percent, and the proceeds used to furnish every fentanyl dealer in town with a nice apartment and mad cash? The debate has degenerated such that these are the sorts of cartoonish positions each side believes they’re fighting—and, in fact, are the only available choices. Just check out Eugene’s Reddit section any day, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The actual blight on small American towns like mine isn’t property crime. It’s that any tenable solution to it has been swallowed up into a churning abyss of extremism and perceived counterextremism. No one seems to have a convincing answer to the most basic question: So what should we do? What should I do?
Burglaries don’t have to be largely unsolvable, and more property criminals could be apprehended. But while I don’t want those dudes or any of their buddies to come back to my house, I also don’t want them in an American prison, where their “rehabilitation” will consist largely of learning better ways to commit even bigger crimes when they get out, and their options for alternative forms of acquiring money will be even more limited than they are now. Lacking any meaningful restorative justice program for petty thieves in my town (which would, in turn, necessitate locating and apprehending them), I decided my own problems could be solved, for now, with a padlock on my back gate.
And then, not long after the break-in, a Nintendo Switch appeared on my town’s Craigslist. Its included components and color combination were identical to the set stolen from my house. I debated, briefly, bringing my vigilante justice alter ego Super Annoying out of retirement, answering the ad and showing up to shrill my wrongdoers into returning what was mine. But this time, I thought better of it. My life is not worth much, but it’s probably worth more than Mario Kart. I can only hope the console’s new owners enjoy it as much as my daughter did—at least until someone steals it again.

This comes from Cults and Nonconventional Religious Groups: A Collection of Outstanding Dissertations and Monographs, "Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism and the Soka Gakkai in America: The Ethos of a New Religious Movement", Jane Hurst, 1992, pp. 152-153.
Context:

The years from 1966 to 1976 were the time of NSA's (former name of SGI-USA) greatest growth and most fervent activity. Source

Here's what was happening organizationally:

Although NSA was born the child of a highly bureaucratic Soka Gakkai organization, its communication with American potential members always took place on a one-to-one basis. The pattern of propagation was similar in most cities and towns in which NSA eventually gained a following. A core of Japanese immigrant Soka Gakkai members, most often wives of American servicemen who had been stationed in Asia, would begin to hold discussion meetings. After receiving guidance from NSA, these Japanese women would conduct a shakubuku campaign of street solicitation, going out on the streets and inviting people to a "Buddhist meeting." As soon as they had enough guests, they would hold a discussion meeting in the nearby home of a member. These meetings would most often be led by American converts to NSA, especially the husbands of these pioneering women. At the meetings, the basic principles of Buddhism were explained and the guests taught to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Sometimes several meetings would be held on one evening of street shakubuku.

When I joined in 1987, NSA (still called that at that time) was still (or again) doing "street shakubuku", concentrated during the "Shakubuku Months" of August and February, but otherwise done on the weekends and some evenings - going to parks to accost strangers, knocking on strangers' doors ("Have you ever heard of 'Nam myoho renge kyo'?") and just standing on a busy street corner trying to collar someone who will listen. It was gross.

The stories told of these early days inevitably mention both the struggle and the exhilaration of those times. It was very difficult to build a core of strong members out of a random group of people invited in off the street.

Then as now.

As NSA tells it, the determination of the early members and their faith in the Gohonzon are all that made it possible. Many of these same Japanese-Americans are among the strongest members of NSA today.

The highest-caste members (then as now) due to their being Japanese-from-Japan, the Soka Gakkai believing that the Japanese were THE superior humans.

In any case, the obstacles to NSA's recruitment of American members were gradually overcome.
In Philadelphia, for example, the 1970's saw NSA's headquarters move from the living room of one of the members, to a rented townhouse on Delancey Street in Center City, to rented office space in the suburbs, and finally to a large NSA-owned and renovated Community Center in a central location. Growth followed a regular pattern. Each NSA District, the level at which discussion meetings were held, would increase to a size considered too large for good communication (40 or 50) and would then split in half. The group grew geometrically as the various Districts, and then Chapters and General Chapters, would divide over and over again.

Wow, huh? Here is a first-hand account from someone who was involved during this time period (1965). The account is continued here.
These district "splits" weren't always successful, though - in Mark Gaber's memoirs "Sho Hondo" and "Rijicho", chronicling his experience in NSA starting around 1970, one of the subcurrents periodically emerging throughout his narrative is how the district he initially joined, Topanga District, was so strong and vibrant that NSA leaders decided to split it - except that they moved the strongest leaders to the new district, leaving just Gaber (pseudonym "Gilbert") and a weak men's division leader behind in what was left of Topanga District afterward, and how Topanga District ended up just an empty husk of its former vitality.
It's been decades since anywhere in SGI-USA saw that kind of dynamic. Now, the SGI-USA's Buddhist centers sit empty, dark, locked up. Even when they're open, few show up. The local organizations run on skeleton crews:

In my 5-ish years in SGI, I never, EVER saw a district split due to high membership. I only saw them dissolve into each other. At least 3 times across 2 different Regions! I can confirm that Diminishing membership is an issue across the entire SGI USA. Source

Yeah see that was the thing, it was the same 2-3 members and rarely if ever a new member or guest ever showed up! My life got too busy for this nonsense and lack of buddhist study made me want to leave which I did in the end.
This is in San Diego which is a big city of 2 million+ people as well. We may have 500-1000 members here if that and more leave each year and never return. Source

In fact, the San Diego Center was closed down years ago, supposedly with a "turnkey ready" replacement facility waiting, and nothing has happened.

"Building a district" is a bullshit-ass phrase that they use to make you feel like you're contributing something to the SGI movement. It's completely misleading.
When you participate in "membercare" and planning meetings, you're just making the district barely survive. The term really should be "keeping your district alive and not die out".

In my time at SGI, there have been more mentions of dissolving districts rather than creating actual new ones. For those of you who don't know what "dissolving" refers to, that's when 2 neighboring districts have attendance so low and abysmal and have very little leadership presence (maybe there is only 1 or 2 leaders that are active) that you have to combine them into one district so that there are enough "leaders" to "take care" of all the members.

I have heard of people succeeding at keeping districts alive, but there was never one that was made from the ground up and caused more districts to exist. Source

Districts used to split but this hasn’t happened in a long, long time. SGI just reorganizes. Source
So so many people first hand burn out on activities under the banner of another campaign. Another campaign. Another campaign. All the wHile the organization never grew. Ever. More people leaving than staying. Good people. Forgotten. Written off. Slandered. Source

The Dead-Ikeda-cult SGI has been withering on the vine in the USA for decades now. In fact, this research from 1976 concluded: "Further rapid growth either of the parent body or the overseas offspring is doubtful."
Those researchers were RIGHT.

Hello everyone, A Little summary of my schooling to make you understand better about my case so maybe if at least even one of you can help me here
I have completed my 10th grade in the form of Cambridge IGCSE (basically 10th but from UK system, which is very popular in the and in India and is accepted) in the year of 2021
now, In my grade 11th. I shifted back to a CBSE school in Science stream and got less percentage mainly due to JEE prep being poor (I got 83% in Class 11th in PCM and 76% Overall in all 5 subjects) and I completed in April 2022)
Now for 12th grade, I once again changed schools and this time. I went to a State board school (Gujarat state board). However, when my 12th Board exams happened. i was very sick due and my health was very low and thus my 12th exam went bad and I was only able to get 66% in PCM subjects which are used for admission into Gujarat's colleges.
Thus I decided to give 12th class again and so I filled out the improvement form which required to give up my 12th result (where i got 66% marks) and thus it was now invalid (this was 2023)
in simple terms, I had to give my class 12th exams again like how a fresh student would and my former class 12th result's record no longer exist. so, now in 2024 I again gave my class 12th exams and was able
to achieve 96% in PCM and 93% overall, I was quite satisfied with it.
But I came to know of Germany and thus I was interested in that now. I want to study Mechanical Engineering there in TUM or KIT as those are part of TU9 and I like the cities as well
So as 12th class result is not sufficient for admission into German unis. I have to came know about the International A Levels (basically the same UK system in which i did 10th, now A Levels basically mean grade 12th). those can be used for direct admission.
and I most likely willl take them in oct-nov 2024 session and get my results in jan 2025 and will have about 9 months before i go to germany
Now there are several doubts of mine here:-
(1) How will my APS work if I have 12th result and A Level (A Level will be used for direct admission)
(2) Will this create problems in VISA or not
(3) has anyone u know or u yourself have took the path of Germany through A Levels
(4). my school leaving certificate is of 2023 only, as I gave 12th exam in 2024 as improvement exam and thus my school is not there now
(5) will I also have to TestAS in this case of me giving A Levels or not?
(6) do u need language certificate for APS compulsorily or nor
I will actually be starting my uni in India right now in August in Comp Sci (my father won't understand for Mech Eng in India, he says you can take Mech Eng in Germany only and that too he will consider first if he wants or no).
I know i can go to germany after 1st year if i wanna continue with CS but that route will be more hectic and less time for me. unlike here in case of giving A Levels. where i will have results in Jan 2025 and will be able to have good time for APS, Visa and uni application
I am already on B1 level (I came to know of germany in October 2023 and started with german after that).
hopefully by Feb 2025. I will get TestDAF (16/20) as well
my_qualifications: 10th (IGCSE) in 2021
11th (CBSE) in 2022
12th (Gujarat state board) in 2024 officially, 2023 one does not count and is invalid now

I was always the one that loved kids and wanted 4. I was always the one”who do you want around your future dinner table.” My husband had only wanted one but we settled on the idea of 2 We had a miscarriage in 2019 and then were faced with secondary infertility And then got pregnant in 2020 via IVF And then my son was born in 2021
I know I’m in the minority here but no real complaints during pregnancy. Birth could have been better but also could have been worse
Newborn stage was a dream. My son would wake up, nurse, and go right back to sleep Sure he was up a bunch but compared to what I hear- we got lucky with him
After he turned two we started the discussion on having a 2nd. We had two embryos in the freezer. We said if this didn’t work- we would stop at one and not go through the entire egg retrieval again Our transfer failed and I was more upset than I thought I’d be Jumped right into another and it took and I started getting positives However I also spiraled into depression It became paralyzing and all I did was cry
I had a lot of fears and anxieties. I was terrified of the next having any type of developmentally issues, medically complex issues and terrified of something happening to me. Sure I know things can happen anytime and also things can be fine but I was so afraid. I was afraid of what it would do to my son and how it could change him
It also brought back the anxieties I had while pregnant and the newborn stage. Analyzing every single sonogram and comparing it to “normal” ones on Google, stressing over every milestone, Dr appointment, vaccine.
The depression was real and debilitating. Since I found out so early with IVF about the positive test- I decided to stop the meds that were keeping me pregnant
It was the hardest decision to make Sometimes looking back on my fertility journey- I can’t believe I did it But I think it was more important for my mental health
I keep seeing all these birth announcements for the second baby and I am a bit jealous that I wasn’t strong enough mental But boards like this help and I just keep trying to focus on the positives of being one and done and being able to provide for my son and give him the world he deserves
If you read this far- thank you ♥️

Every room is the same. Every person is the same. The sky is blue - I don’t feel it. I don’t feel the “fresh air”. Nature is just nature. It’s hard to make eye contact without spacing out. I walk in a fast paste like I’m late for something, always. Time is all the same. The days of the week are all the same. Months of the year, all the same. Holliday aren’t even holidays anymore, I don’t feel excited for any of them, it’s just another day. The words that come out of my mouth I don’t even think about I just type and go with it, same as my speech. I feel like I need to drink 1-2 beers to feel calm and back to life. I am so out of touch with reality. I don’t know what I’m doin with my life. It’s like I am trapped in my head I can’t even see or put any real thought into anything I just act off of instinct. I’m back in the crisis again unfortunately and am gonna need to move back home and start meds again or do ect. I need to find a therapist who specializes in this shit because I’m a write off right now. I isolate from the world. Everybody at work thinks I’m a fucking crazy weirdo. I can’t walk by people on the street without having to look away or look down on the ground or pull out my phone because I just know I make them uncomfortable and seem weird. Great unc who was it Vietnam war told me I had the thousand yard stare - that’s a lot coming from what he’s seen and knows. I just don’t even fucking know anymore at this point. I want to delete myself because who wants to live in a world like this? “You are not alone” why do I feel like it all the time? I feel like I’m the most fucked up person on the planet, like nobody relates or can understand. Even if they do relate or say something I get schizo an take it personal. I want to low key die but to scared to, so I’m stuck living in fuckin hell. Literally this is hell on earth. The fact I am trucking through it all with no meds or therapy anymore or anything is a fucking recipe for disaster. That’s how dumb I’ve gottten, why do I think I am strong and can take this head on and just continue to live like this? Life is short man I need to get help as soon as possible. Even if it means to quit everything goin for me, again, and be a loser, again. I guess that’s better than suicide.
Sorry

I seem to be at an impasse and I just can't seem to figure out this game. I just came from finishing Fallout3 to which I had a great time. I hopped into FNV after recommendations from the Fallout community, but so far it's gone.. not well and I'm really close to just giving up.
1) The food doesn't heal and wears off in seconds. The books of various topics also expires in seconds. Sleep and stimpacks can't be the only way to heal up in the midst of a gunfight, not to mention that Stimpacks are rare! I've been looking in all the usual places, med kit boxes, random containers, dead people, etc...
2) The guns suck! All of them. Even if fixed to 100%! I have a variety of weapons and have even modded a few, but I can't seem to kill anyone or anything with any semblance of regularity even with using VATS. If I don't get that first headshot off on a crit (with or without VATS), I'm going to die. If there's more than one person I'm battling, I'm going to die. I even have the DLCs and supposedly start off with good guns but not that I can tell thanks to the amount of times I've had to reload.
3) The Karma system seems to be completely screwed up. Why am I getting bad karma for stealing from .... the powder gangers? The same a**holes that just tried to blow me up with dynamite. I don't give two sticks about how the powder gangers think of me, I thought I was supposed to destroy them after what they tried in Goodsprings?
4) I can't go ANYWHERE outside of Goodsprings without getting owned by the wildlife! Radscorpions, bloatflies, more scorpions, a couple of centaurs, cazadores, raiders, viper clan thugs, powder gangers, etc. just seem to walk all over me.
5) Everything wants level 50! I can't pick this lock without 50 lockpick. Can't hack that terminal without level 50, can't fart without being level 50, oh but I can die a lot at level 1.
6) The bad-guy-detector in the HUD (the lines that show the cardinal direction and whether or not a particular entity is hostile) is laughably narrow in some cases and extends to ridiculous lengths in others. Using the dry lakebed as an example, I saw three scorpions that didn't even register in the HUD, meanwhile the HUD will show me a neutral party that's two miles away that I don't even have line of sight to. At least with FO3, the red dots were bad guys, the green dots were good guys, and it was fairly consistent 1/4 mi radius from the player's position.
I really need some guidance. I want to get to the story but I can't even exist without something taking a chunk out of me. I've already rebuilt my character twice, do I need to do it again? Are there any guides available that are trusted that can at least get me buffed up enough to even consider going to NV?
Steam says I've played for 12 hours, there's at least two character recreations, and countless reload-from-saves due to random encounters going generally poorly. 12hrs into Fallout3 and I already had a pretty effective arsenal up and was up to at least level 8 or 9.
Preferred playstyle: Sniper, not that I can find a sniper rifle to save my life. Close quarters combat even with the caravan shotgun seems to be more miss than hit even at point blank range and CQC with the grenade launcher (see the Powdergangers jail shootouts) really just seems to be adept at killing me and me only.
My current stats: Level 6
Skills: Barter 15 Energy Weapons 22 Explosives 22 Guns 47 Lockpick 37 Medicine 25 Melee Weapons 21 Repair 45 Science 30 Sneak 40 Speech 35 Survival 15 Unarmed 15
SPECIAL: Strength 5 Perception 6 Endurance 4 Charisma 1 Intelligence 9 Agility 8 Luck 9
Perks: Built To Destroy Educated Run 'n Gun Small Frame Swift Learner
Suggestions, tips, guidance is appreciated! Thank you.

Week two of trying to move on...
I am writing this hoping to get it out of my chest and maybe feel a little less lonely. I (27F) just had a really really heartbreaking and depressing breakup and this is the first time I've ever been this hurt. This is the worst feeling I've ever felt in my entire life, emotionally, mentally. Sobbing at the moment as of typing this and my tears just doesn't seem to stop. It just keeps on flowing and flowing since i woke up this morning it suprised me how much tears I have. My chest feels SO heavy I cannot breathe properly anymore and my head aches. I cannot pull myself to get up my bed, I absented to work and even to my postgrad school. I don't eat. I don't even feel hunger anymore. For someone who eats a lot, it surprised me that it is possible to not feel hunger and I don't desire food. All I feel is this heartache. This tightening and heaviness of my chest. This is unbearable. I loved this person so much too much. Even more than myself, I believe. I would do anything for him. I endured a lot for him. Because I love him so much. I would forgive him so fast because I love him so much. I am at my happiest state whenever I am with him. He is the first man I've ever loved. And when I love, I give my all, it's 110%! I keep on looking back and thinking that maybe if I loved him so much more, maybe if I did this, maybe if i did not say these things, maybe we will still be happy together. Maybe if i did not raise the issues, it would not lead to this. I am feeling alot of regret. Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut. But I was hurting too much I had to say those things. I am extremely sad, heartbroken, and down. I need help. I need someone to talk to. I need someone to cry with. I dont know. It hurts so bad. And I feel so alone. I am a big introvert and I only have a very very few friends and they are far far away from me. I don't think I'll ever be okay. I am in constant pain. Some might say keep yourself busy, get a hobby, but I cannot even focus on my work and school anymore how much more than that. I am messing up a lot of my work and I have my exam in 2 weeks and I haven't studied sht. :(
I love reddit and this has helped me so much in a lot of things. So, if I may, I would like to humbly ask the community of reddit, those who have been through the same experience, or just anyone who has anything to say, if you would be so kind as to lend me a tiny bit of your time and maybe drop in the comments something, anything really, that maybe would help make me feel better and a little less lonely. Thank you very much.
Reason: I raised the issues (that I feel) regarding our relationship. The talk did not go well. He let go of me.
How long:
Years of admiring him: 2yrs
Together: 2yrs

Hi there!
I'm Ari, a confident college freshman at Chico State University in California studying international relations. I aspire to become a diplomat or work in a profession that involves meeting people from different cultures, as I love to travel and make friends from all over the world. I'm excited about studying abroad in Bangalore, India this fall.
I have a goal of having kids by the time I turn 25. After the October 7 incident, I feel more determined to make Jewish babies and bring back the souls that were lost. I plan on having 2 to 4 kids, with the other two coming later in life to make things easier for my wife.
Although the Jewish community where I live is small and many of the women are already dating, I'm confident that I will find the right match. I'm planning on going to a Chabad yeshiva this summer to learn more about Judaism as I feel a bit disconnected. Although I don't know how to read Hebrew or speak the language fluently, I'm proud to be Jewish and do my best to observe Shabbat by avoiding electronics and work on Saturdays.
I come from a mixed ethnic background of Ashkenazi, Ari, and Mizrahi, but I mostly identify as Mizrahi culturally. Although I'm technically Ashkenazi under Jewish law, I honor my heritage and continue to practice my traditions.
If anyone can set me up, I'd be grateful.
Best regards,
Ari Sorokin

So I've got a big exam that I'm all in for that is coming in about 2 months. I have to study a lot for it.
Should i not masturbate between the study sessions? Because someone told me that it will flood dopamine in my brain and make me lesser motivated to work.
How true is this? I'm 17 and diagnosed with ADD and OCD.
I tend to overthink a lot about dopamine and all this shit. Is our brain really that rigid? can't i just study without regulating my dopamine and shit like that?