Pain i have had on and off for 12 years right abdomen

Liabilities in current roles (i.e. not good enough) so ideally moved this window:

• Harry Maguire. Great chap. But he cannot play a high line due to poor mobility, and is a liability on the build. Being paid too much to be a bench player.
  
• Raphael Varane. Lacks competitive fire. Whines about too many matches (yes he is right), and when he's not paired with a stud like Martinez he is hit and miss.
  
• Jonny Evans. As with Harry a top class person but simply a liability in how this club wants to play. You cannot press high with him on the pitch.
  
• Sofyan Amrabat. Liability in speed, ball control, passing, etc. Would not be a bad depth option but Utd can probably fill that and also find some upside.
  
• Donny Van De Beek. Linkup and possession option for a lower level club.
  
• Anthony Martial. Not healthy enough and even on rare occasions he is healthy he is hit and miss.
  
• Jadon Sancho. Similar to Donny he is miscast with Utd. Needs to go to a second tier club who like to possess so his linkup skills can shine.
  
• Mason Greenwood. I have gone back and forth on this player. I would be fine with keeping him as a development option but that ship has probably sailed. Time to cut bait and get what you can I suppose.
  

Good enough for current role but may be sold this window or next:

• Christian Eriksen. Quality offensive boost off the bench but was hurt by a back line that required gap to avoid being overrun. For that role he won't be happy, and the club is better served by a defensive sub, though if he sticks around I am fine with it.
  
• Luke Shaw. Pains me to put him here but it is what it is. Class player but not healthy enough.
  
• Scott McTominay. Natural striker who was shoehorned into midfield. He has the timing in the box you cannot teach, the instincts for where to position for rebounds and feeds. Lacks some of the ball handling agility, so for that reason is a depth striker ideally. Problem is Utd will probably be able to sell him for more than what they'd get from him off the bench.
  
• Marcus Rashford. Doesn't do the work on the pitch. Seems like a confidence player who lacks confidence far too often. Likely he will net the club more than continuing to hope he can put it together.
  
• Antony. Obviously the club overpaid for him. That is not his fault. The guy had off field issues that submarined his second season, but you can see he has some quality. Also his first year he did some good things. So I would keep him for now because there are other players above I would prioritize moving first.
  
• Casemiro. He really dropped off quickly from last season to this one. Almost put him in the list above in fact. But I put him here because he is flexible, mentally tough and resilient, and gives this roster experience even if he is overpaid for a bench role. They simply won't be able to move everyone this season. So he's a player who does have some positives and might help us if we upgrade those above.
  

Core players for the future:

• Andre Onana. This guy is quality. He took a while to settle in but long term I think we have the right keeper.
  
• Lisandro Martinez. Needs a top pairing partner, but he is the type of player who will be in line for league accolades if he can stay healthy. Fantastic addition and a heart and soul player.
  
• Diogo Dalo. I remain an enormous fan of his. He gets a lot of stick but this is the type of core player you want, the one who will work his ass off to constantly improve. RB is good due to him, and I like AWB as a matchup role player behind him.
  
• Bruno Fernandez. I think I would play Bruno at DM next season. He is high energy on defense and covers a ton of ground, is capable of line breaking passes from depth, and playing deep limits the liability of his tendency to turn the ball over. World class without a doubt in spite of that, but with a top CB pairing behind him I think he'd be excellent in a DM role.
  
• Kobbie Mainoo. Deep lying playmaker type role for him is ideal right now, and putting him in a holding role next to Bruno would give us two solid defenders with hustle and two line breaking passers. Let him run the build, use the both of them to take shots downfield when appropriate, and watch them settle in together.
  
• Rasmus Hojlund. Felt he was a very shrewd signing last window instead of throwing money at Kane because building for the future felt right. Continuing to add young players with high talent and the right mindset should be our approach. Hojlund I think is going to be an epic and long term stud for us.
  
• Alejandro Garnacho. Can't say enough about this kid. He's not a huge raw talent, isn't rare in speed or ball handling or even his strike but you cannot measure heart. I'd add competition for him via replacements in that first group and hope he continues to develop. And I hope he's in red for a long time.
  

A look ahead:
There are some young players outside of those mentioned above who are potentially capable of helping us, or emerging next season. Not going to list them simply because I don't want to count my chickens with them in terms of planning or guessing the offseason moves. If they continue to develop great. If not no worries, the plan is in place. If you read this far thanks for sticking with it. I didn't intent to get this wordy but this was a therapeutic outporing of words in a lot of ways for me and I welcome those counter takes.
Cheers all and let's hope for a fantastic summer window.

Hi
I am feeling pressured to sign a new tenancy agreement/variation with a higher rent (10.5% increase). We are 10 months in to the first year of our 2-year fixed term tenancy.
The property manager and supposedly his solicitor are in agreement that they have the right to increase the rent after the first 12 months and that I am misunderstanding the RTA and my rights. He essentially tells me that he has been a property manager for many years and to trust his words. He has quoted RTA Schedule 1 found here: https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/DLM96428.html#DLM96428
Section 24 however states that it must be the provisions of the tenancy agreement that permits the increase of rent.
https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/DLM95057.html#DLM95057
Our tenancy agreement is the template off Tenancy Services website where Page 2 states "Also for rent to be increased in a fixed-term tenancy, it must be stated in the tenancy agreement."
From Section 24, he stated that " The provisions referred to in subsection (1)(g) may take the form of the provisions set out in Schedule 1. " means that it doesn't matter what the rest of Section 24 states as this line means that any one of the provisions in Schedule 1 applies to our situation even if it is not explicitly stated in our tenancy agreement.
Tenancy services website states "For fixed-term tenancies, landlords can only increase rent if the tenancy agreement allows this."
I believe that the provisions are as the word states, something merely provided for use in the tenancy agreement which is also mentioned in Section 24 and it also states about the provisions "Select one of the following".
Walking my way through this post also gives me the impression that I am right.
Am I right and have I picked the right hill to die on or should I do what my family members have said and just agree to whatever he asks?
Also a side note, while this goes on we nearly got flooded out the other night if I had not looked out the door and been sweeping water into another drain for an hour. Still need to address this with him...
Any and all help is appreciated.

This is my first reddit post and honestly it's a lot so please bear with me. I'm still trying to figure out how to process everything and make sense of it all. I guess we will start at the very beginning. My boyfriend,( we will call him michael) and I just passed 6 months together. Honestly, hes been great. We clicked pretty fast and have a great bond. I feel safe and comfortable around him and can communicate in a way ive never been able to before. It just kinda works. I definitely fell hard and fast for him and from what I could gather, the feeling was mutual. We had met on tinder in early October and went on our first date in November. We made it official shortly after our first date.
After we started dating, he had briefly mentioned that he had a friend who had a bit of a crush on him. I told him I didn't mind and I trusted him. As long as he kept things respectful to me, it didn't matter. He then explained that her crush was a bit obsessive and he actually wanted to push her out of his life and needed advice. Apparently, this friend, (we will call her beth) was pregnant and wanted Michael to be her baby's God Father. He said that she would follow him and got jealous when he was with other girls. I found this kind of odd but he swore they were just friends, so I told him the best way to let her down gently and let him do his thing. About two weeks later, he told me she was out of the picture. I didn't really care either way but the communication was cool.
Anyways, I pretty quickly forgot about all of that because it was irrelevant and I wanted to focus on our relationship. One night when we were hanging out, he got a snapchat notification. He turned away from me to respond to it but I didn't think much of it, just asked who that was. He said it was just a friend (we will call this one Jen) and they were catching up. I had never heard of her before but I didn't care, I just said cool and dropped it. Just like before, I quickly forgot about that conversation because again,it was irrelevant and I had better things to think about. I trusted him so why should I care who he talks to? He is his own person after all and I understand the importance of friendships.
Fast forward about another two weeks later, him and I had our first argument. I dont remember what it was about. Most likely something small and pointless because I had a stressful day at work but nothing too serious. We did not talk much that day. Later that night, I apologized and we talked it over. Everything was fine. He then told me that earlier in the day, an old friend that he had removed off social media readded him and messaged him. We will call her Molly. Apparently she had just noticed she was removed and was upset and wanted to know why. He told me that he sent her a message explaining that he didn't see her in his life long term and doesn't feel the need to keep someone around who won't be around forever so he didn't want to be friends anymore. He then removed her again. At this point I thought the way he acted was odd. I had never heard of molly before, he waited until he had already removed her before telling me about the conversation, she only came into the picture when we had our first argument and it got me thinking about the other girls who were just friends. I definitely started to over think a bit and was more than curious about who these people were and what their relationship to him was. But he swore they were all just friends. So I continued to believe him.
We went a long period of time without anything coming up so once again I forgot about it and moved on with my life. Him and I were doing great. We were young dumb and in love. I felt truly happy, something I hadn't experienced in a long time. I felt like I genuinely found someone who was right for me and I didn't need to second guess whether or not he was gonna cheat on me. He occasionally would ask to see my phone but I didn't have anything to hide so I allowed him. I had set a boundary with him that if he ever felt concerned or needed reassurance, he needed to bring it up to me first. After we talked it over then he could see my phone, but we would always go through it together. This seemed fair to me. My phone was never off limits, there just needed to be open communication. Anyways, he would always offer for me to see his phone in return but I would decline. I didn't feel the need to and I had learned from past experiences that if you go digging, you will most likely see something you can't unsee.
Then one day he needed to have his wisdom teeth removed. I dropped him off in the morning for his surgery and I was told I needed to hold on to his personal belongings and wait until the operation was over. No big deal. I know this is wrong and I shouldn't have but finally curiosity got the best of me and I looked on his phone. At first it wasn't malicious. I genuinely was just curious. But of course, I saw things I wish I could unsee. It started off on tiktok. In one of his conversations with a friend, he poured his heart out, explaining how he was still so in love with his ex and missed her like crazy. Of course it stung a little to see the things he said but I knew there was someone before me so it wasn't that surprising. That was until I saw those messages had been sent in mid October. So of course i was like huh.we started talking early October and dating early November. So clearly he wasn't over his ex when he met me. But I was willing to forgive it. It wasn't a deal breaker. But Instead of putting the phone down to protect my peace and his privacy, I kept looking. And boy did I find a lot. I found lots of old text messages from contacts that were not saved. Most of then were hard-core sexting and flirting. This dude literally acted like a dog.And yeah it was again hard to see but it was before me and he wasn't like that anymore. With me, he was gentle and respectful and never treated me like an object. Some people just go through a phase and that's okay. Again, it wasn't a deal breaker. But finally i found some very passionate, lovey, intimate messages with an unsaved contact. I was immediately drawn in by the kind words and heartwarming love messages. Whoever this was, they cared for eachother very strongly. I almost immediately felt heartbroken. Not because she was a past love interest, but because he had never spoken to me the way he spoke to her. I read all the way from the top of the conversation. Months worth of love confessions, paragraphs of strong feelings, longing to be with one another, etc. But finally halfway through in one of the paragraphs I see a name. Molly I was shattered. Molly was the girl who supposedly was removed months before him and I even met. The one that was "just a friend" who messaged him and he removed her because he didn't want to be friends anymore. Yeah clearly they were more than just friends. I was livid and felt crushed. Why did he feel the need to lie about something so unnecessary? I wouldn't have been mad if he had told the truth about who she was. But then it got me thinking. Was Beth truly just a friend? Was Jen truly just a friend? What was the actual relationship? I gathered up as much as I could but then the nurse came to the lobby to tell me he was awake and ready to go home. I kind of panicked and in my hurry, I forgot to delete the screenshots out of his phone.
We get in the car and I give him his phone, he's still pretty loopy. Obviously I had a million questions to ask him but I knew he wasn't in the right state of mind to have that conversation so I put my feelings aside and decided it could wait. Well he wanted to take pictures of his bloody swollen face and send it to his uncle. In the process, he sees the screenshots i had forgotten to delete off his phone and immediately screams what the f*** is this? I tried to talk calmly and explain that now wasn't a good time to talk about it and it could wait. He kept pressing "what the f*** did you do? Who the hell is this?" In my mind I thought "uh dude, you tell me." But didn't want to escalate it while he was drugged up. I decided the best option was to simply say that I wasn't mad , I stilled planned on taking care of him while he recovered and that we would need to have a conversation when he was in a better state of mind. He just started sobbing. Oh boy. I kind of ignored it as much as I could. I drove us to the store to get ice cream and other soft foods he could eat before taking us back to my apartment. I helped get him set up in my bedroom and he still was crying. So much so he started coughing out blood. It smelled awful and got everywhere. He was a wreck. I felt bad for everything. I felt guilty for going on his phone behind his back, for leaving the screeshots on his phone and for him crying. It took several hours but eventually I got him to calm down. I kept my word and continued to take care of him until he was recovered.
Finally when enough time had passed I decided it was time to sit down and talk about it. I explained that obviously I had found messages and i wanted an explanation. He told me molly was just a friend, and very clearly it was more than that. I also explained that I had a suspicion that he was not fully honest about his relationship with Jen and Beth either. He looked me dead in the eyes and said he had no idea what I was talking about and they were just friends. I remained calm and explained that I won't be mad at him or leave him. I told him I didn't want to fight. I just felt as though I deserved to know the truth if I was going to continue to be with him, especially since he was still in contact with Beth and Jen while we were dating. We continue to go back and forward for several hours with no progress. I decided then if he didn't feel I deserved the truth, I would find out for myself. I took the screenshots I had found and reached out to the contacts one by one.
Let's start with Beth. She was the quickest to respond. I briefly explained who I was and that I was hoping to ask some questions about my partner because I felt like i was being lied to and was hoping she could fill in some of the gaps. She texted back and simply asked "do you work at blank" I responded that yes, I did. She then asked if I lived at a specific apartment complex. I said yes and was creeped out. She knew where I worked and lived. She then asked if she could call me. I agreed. For some context, he told me that she was a friend he had met in school. He explained that she had gotten out of a rough relationship and he wanted to make sure she was okay when it happened. That's how they became close. He explained that they would hang out all the time and eventually she became obsessed with him. Well during my phone call with her, I heard a very different story. Yes, they met in school and initially started off as friends. But, slowly with time as they started to spend more and more time together, they started to catch feelings. He said I love you first. And she proved this with screenshots. She also sent me pictures of them holding hands and kissing. She explained that they never officially started dating but they definitely were more than just friends. Their relationship was much more physical and romantic than platonic. She also told me that they had hooked up about 3 times. She explained that they had eachothers location and pretty frequently they would make plans then he would last minute cancel. So she would see what he was doing and would see him at two very specific addresses. Visiting my work or my apartment. She eventually asked him where he was and he told her that I was his cousin and was trying to get out of a rough relationship so he was helping me. I felt sick. No wonder why she was "obsessed" he was borderline dating her, telling her he loved her, and then started to ditch her when he made things official with me. Then it killed me to realize that even though they never had an official title, he was dating the two of us at the same time. I didn't know what to do. I ended up apologizing to her for everything he did and told her I never would have agreed to be his if I knew he was entertaining someone else. Michael overheard this phone call between us and looked like he had seen a ghost after. All he did was started crying, said she was lying, and that she was only a friend. I asked "so....these screenshots and pictures are all made up?" No response. He knew he was busted.
I decided I needed to take some time to process that information and I didn't want to say something I would regret. I let him stay at my place because he had nowhere else to go and I went to stay with a friend. He kept calling and texting but I couldn't deal with it. I cried all night. I was a mess. I should have just accepted that I was cheated on and lied to but I couldn't leave. I needed to know the truth. So I kept reaching out. Next up was Jen. I never was able to reach her, but I found out through Michael and Beth that Jen was Beth's best friend. But even more than that, I found out the three of them had a threesome together. He had told me previously that he had never been interested in a threesome and would never want to have one. Then I found out not only did he have one and lied about it, but it was with two girls he told me were just friends.
I went back to my apartment the next day and tried to talk stuff out. He just continued to say they were just friends. I finally snapped. I screamed and cried and told him that I just wanted to know the truth. That I deserved the truth. He looked me in the eyes, pinky promised me no more lies. We talked for a while and basically he explained that he never had an official title with Beth. They were very close but he basically just used her to pass time because he had nothing better to do. He said he loved her because that's what she wanted to hear and he treated her like a partner without ever having any real feelings for her. He knew as soon as he met me that he wanted me but didn't want to hurt her so he just kind of pushed her to the side but kept her in the picture. I felt so sad for her. He used her. He led her on. He treated her like an object and then threw her to the side when he met me.I asked why he lied about having a threesome. He said he felt ashamed Apparently they started to do it and then he chickened out so he didn't really count it. That made sense to me. I was pissed that he lied but at least it made sense. Next I asked why he told me Beth and Jen were just friends instead of being honest about the relationship. He said he never had feelings for either and they never had the official title so he didn't think it was important and he did not want to scare me off. I explained to him that although I understand why he lied to me, I didn't forgive him. I warned him that I would not tolerate anymore lies and obviously for the time being I did not trust him. I told him I wouldn't break up with him but if I found out he lied again, he would lose me. I also told him I considered what he did as cheating since he was seeing us at the same time after him and I became mutually exclusive. After we concluded our conversation about Beth and Jen, I started thinking about molly and the messages I had seen. I asked him what their relationship was, he said just friends. I freaked and told him to give me his phone. I found their old messages and told him to read them. "Hey goofball, you awake? Well if you're not I have something impossible to say to you. You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars. I love you lots and want you to know that no matter what happens I will always care about you. To me you are perfect. Amazing. And attractive asf. You are also very sweet and caring and adorable. Don't think about the negative things about yourself that will drag you down. You are way more than that. This is an official goodnight and I love you goofball." This is just one of the MANY messages sent back and forward. He reads the conversation and just goes oh. He then says he didn't remember any of that happening. We began to argue and the story he tried to spin was that his life must have been so traumatic that his brain literally deleted his past memories and replaced them with false memories where he didn't do these things that he is ashamed of. He got caught in lies and after so long was just like...whoa I did that? I had no idea I didn't remember. Technically I didn't lie because I told what I thought the truth was the way I remembered it. I told him I wanted to break up and he cried and begged me to forgive him and stay. I listened.i tried to move on and make things normal again but I couldn't stop thinking about all the lies and what else he might have been lying about. Then randomly one day, Molly added me back on social media. She was the last and took over 1.5 months so honestly I figured I'd never get ahold of her. I was genuinely surprised to see her show up on my friend list and reached out. Once again back story, he told me that she lived in Wisconin and they had never met. He said he was also using her for nudes and to pass time, same way he used Beth. He had told me that he removed her off social media months before him and I even met and aside from that one night she reached out, he hadn't heard from her in forever. I found out from her that she did not live in Wisconsin, she lived in the same state as us That to her, they were definitely dating and in love. I also saw a messaged saved on snapchat where he had been texting her in October (after we met) and even sent her the same pickup lines he had sent me. he had cheated with not just one, but two (at least that I know of) other girls.
At this point I had been broken so bad I didn't even feel the pain anymore. I just went numb. I had no more tears left to cry and couldn't be bothered to care anymore. I stopped eating and taking care of myself. I just went to work, came home, slept and repeated. I had watched the man that I loved and adored, one that made me feel so safe and happy turn into a monster right in front of me. He wasn't him anymore. I finally could see him for who he was. But I still didn't leave. He told me that he had only ever slept with three girls. I later found out it was actually six. He told me he had never been in love before. I later found out he tells basically every girl he's ever talked to that he loves them AND genuinely was in love with his ex before me. He told me after his ex and him broke up, he had a rebound but he only hooked up with her once before ghosting her. I found out they actually dated for several weeks, hooked up several times, and she had taken cute couple pictures with him and posted them on social media. He said that he never wanted to take those pictures, she made him put his Hands on her and pose and if he didn't cooperate, she would throw a tantrum like a child. One last thing I think that is important to mention,when we went on our first date, I told him I don't do hookups. We stayed out late and hit it off really well so I offered for him to stay the night at my place. I said I was okay with cuddling and whatever but I did not want to have sex. He seemed okay with it. I went to bed and then when I woke up, my pants were off and he was inside me. He claimed he didn't know I was asleep and thought I wanted it because apparently my butt kept rubbing against him while we were spooning.
It's been about a month since all that and I'm still just meh. I haven't exactly forgiven him but I also don't hate him. Things are normal. I act normal we still do couple things. But I can't help but wonder if he is just using me the same way he used them. I mean after all, he lives in my apartment rent free and asked me to buy him a truck for his birthday. He says I should forgive him because he genuinely doesn't remember doing these things and he didn't mean to lie to me. He said he's so ashamed of who he was but isn't like that anymore. He doesn't associate with who he was and wants to be given a chance to show that he is different. But can I ever forgive him? Should I? Where do I go from here? I feel so lost and confused. I dont think I'll ever be able to trust his word again. I dont feel secure. He broke me so bad I can't even feel anymore. Am I crazy and somehow making this a bigger deal than it is? Can I ever have the man I fell in love with back? I'm sorry if this was confusing. I'm typing this all out in one sitting. Please help me because I genuinely am so lost and I don't want to tell any friends because I don't want them to hate him.

Tagged as humor because otherwise I’ll cry. I’m a teacher at a high school but I also work at an elementary school for after-school care. At that elementary school, we have a 2nd grader who’s on the spectrum. His mom and dad are divorced, and while his dad and I get along, his mom seems to hate me. Today, her little angel was shouting “what the fuh” while we were playing in the gym. Now, he didn’t say the full word, but we’ve got kindergarteners in our program who will repeat that, which wouldn’t be a fun conversation with their parents. So this 2nd grader is shouting “what the fuh” and the director of the program and I both heard it. The director was like, “hey come sit out for a minute, you can’t say that here and we’ve already talked about why you can’t say that.” (He says it a lot and the director and another staff member talked to him about his language yesterday). He starts crying and claiming he didn’t say anything AT ALL. That he didn’t say any words at all. Now that’s not true, as both I and the director watched and heard him say it. But he eventually sits down. Then mom shows up almost at the exact same time, and as he’s walking to grab his backpack, he stops in front of his mom, points at me, and starts crying again saying that I had said that he said the f word when he really didn’t. So I clarify for the mom what he had actually said, and he says that I’m lying. So I say, “but buddy, both [director] and me heard you say it..” His mom starts off saying that she’s heard other kids at the program say way worse things and “you’ve gotta be kidding me” that he got in trouble for that. I clarified that when we hear anyone using language that includes swears or things that are very nearly swears, we sit them out and talk to them about it. Then she says that I had set her son off by “being so [she puffed out her chest to sort of imply that I was being too forceful].” I sort of just looked at her waiting for more explanation and then she said that the way I talked to her and her son was making her “irritated.” I said I didn’t understand what I had done wrong, and she says “he’s on the spectrum; he feeds off of YOU,” implying that I had upset her son and caused whatever issue he was having (she doesn’t believe that he actually said anything, and so whatever problem there was had been caused by the staff). When I asked what I could do better next time she cut me off and said “you’re doing it RIGHT NOW.” She asked to talk to my boss and then the two of them talked for 5 minutes without me until she finally left with her kid. When my boss came back over, she asked “What the heck did you say to her?? She says she doesn’t like how you were talking to her or her kid.” My boss is on my side, because the mom has been difficult before, but this was way more than any other time. She’s gonna call her boss and ask how to proceed.
Now, I’m a 24 year old black male and I’ve worked in childcare since I was 16, so I’ve got at least one theory as to why she doesn’t like me. I deliberately was speaking calmly and politely because I don’t want to be misunderstood or set anyone off, but oh well 🤷🏾‍♂️. Don’t really want to go into work tomorrow if I’m gonna have to see or interact with that woman again. Hopefully his dad picks up; he and I get along great.

First of all, I'm so grateful for each person here who has shared about their experience with Ballet 5:8. I found ex58 after a random TikTok search one night last November, on the off chance anyone on TikTok had a negative experience there like I did. I found a series of videos from one ex-dancer at 5:8 who shared her experiences and mentioned this subreddit, and I debated about making a post for a while. Part of me was terrified that J would see it and figure out who I am and hate me even more for it (which is definitely my people-pleaser tendencies + trauma coming through), but I really don't care anymore. Hi J, if you're there. 👋
I was a staff member at Ballet 5:8 for four-ish months, which is a minuscule amount of time compared to many of you. It's heartbreaking to hear what you endured. I guess my four months there demonstrate how quickly J and the culture she's created can completely shatter a person's self-worth, faith, and beyond.
I was fresh out of college and desperately looking for a job. "Desperately" because I was in the midst of a season of rough mental health and family dynamics, and I needed something to keep me occupied. Up to this point, I had done PMarketing/Advertising for a few agencies as internships and part time, but nothing full time. I stumbled across a LinkedIn job post for an open staff position at Ballet 5:8 that seemed to align with my skills perfectly. It seemed to be some sort of match made in heaven that Ballet 5:8 was also a Christian organization and I was a Christian who had danced for 10+ years. All I needed to do was move across the country to Chicago. What could possibly go wrong?
The First Red Flags

• Turnover Rate - While I was interviewing, my soon-to-be-boss (not J) mentioned that 5:8 had been looking for someone to fill this role for at least a year, but the past few people they had chosen to fill the role either left or moved on to other opportunities. Huh. Despite multiple different people filling the role, there seems to be a common denominator...wonder who...
• Salary & "Benefits" - My high-school-age brother, who worked as a cashier at Panera at the time, made slightly more than what I made as a salaried employee at Ballet 5:8. Oh, and health insurance? Definitely not. It's laughable. I know you're a non-profit organization, but if you're going to try to hire someone to promote your entire brand, you might want to consider paying them more than Panera.
• Love Bombing - During my second round of interviews and as they were preparing to tell me I got the job, I remember Julianna saying something similar to, "We've been searching and praying for this role to be filled for years and we've finally found you. You're the person we've been waiting and praying for." Yeah, yeah. It was music to my people-pleaser ears at the time, but deep down I knew it was a load of crap to get me to sign on and drink the B58 kool-aid.
• Job Description - They made it sound like I'd be managing and directing a team, which is something with which I did have prior experience. However, they failed to mention that the rest of the "team" was currently a product of their imagination and they were planning to one day hire more people to support my role. This part alone led to a vast amount of stress on my part and infinite expectations on J's, because at least they had one person now, rather than none. Maybe I'll tell some of those stories here someday, which make up the bulk of the horrors. They had absolutely no idea what they needed, but they had a precise vision for the miraculous outcome that would follow each project and task I was assigned. A massive TikTok following overnight! A whole perfect Wikipedia page! Becoming bigger and "more obnoxious marketing-wise" than Shen Yun! Yes, those were a few of the goals.

I know those red flags should've been more than enough to make me run for the hills rather than accept the job. Hindsight truly is 20/20. Without my already terrible mental health clouding my judgement, or the love bombing mixed with my people-pleasing tendencies, there is no way in hell I would've ever agreed to work there.

1. BTN > College Graduation? Beyond the Nutcracker is ridiculous in my opinion, but unfortunately that's not what this is about. This is about the fact that Julianna & my (other) managedirect boss (who has since left 5:8) wouldn't let me go to my own college graduation ceremony because Ballet 5:8 was *far more important,* despite me requesting to attend my graduation 4+ months in advance and already making arrangements for a hotel, flights, and my grandparents to come. For context, I took summer classes and graduated during the summer term, so my university's next commencement was in December. Why did Julianna need me at 5:8 so desperately at that time? None other than to have me help operate the damn BTN ticket booth. I wish I could say I quit then and there when they told me I couldn't attend my graduation, but I stayed. My last day with Ballet 5:8 was working that Beyond the Nutcracker show, which otherwise would've been my graduation day.
   
2. Merry Christmas By late Novembeearly December, I was completely broken. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't focus, I couldn't even cry anymore. I could, however, feel the most overwhelming sense of anxiety at the thought of giving my two-weeks notice. I will never forget the night I pressed the send button on that email, going directly to J and my boss. If I thought J's intimidation tactics during the previous 3.5 months had been hell, I hadn't seen anything yet. Unfortunately, the morning after I submitted my two-weeks notice was a work day, so I went in early and tried to prepare myself for J's rage. It came, but through snarky comments under her breath, rushing past me on her way into her office, the silent treatment, and multiple vague and dramatic messages in the all-staff Slack. "Nothing like a good punch to the gut right before Christmas!" Oh please. You've managed to control and/or traumatize an entire organization for years. Don't let me, a barely 20-year-old at the time, intimidate you. There's a grinch or scrooge joke in here somewhere. In brief, she didn't speak a word to me for the last two weeks of my time there.
   
3. Chicago (Again) It's been a few years since Ballet 5:8. I moved back home. I'm married now. And I'm moving back to Chicago now. My husband's job is requiring us to move there for at least the next four years, and while I'm excited at the chance to redo my time in Chicago, I'm also terrified that the bad memories will be too much and I'll be living in fear the entire time. That being said, what were/are some of the things you've enjoyed in Chicago? I'm open to any recommendations. 😅
   

If you managed to make it this far, thanks for reading. I've found so much comfort by reading all of your stories and I'm grateful to have the space to share parts of mine.

“Pick one of the weapons inside, and you'll be a warrior." Guardmaster Harian stood with his thick arms folded over the embroidered livery on his tabard. “Pick your feet up and put’em down, boy.” He was frowning at Broin Ven’Maerl, the candlemaker’s son. “I’ve no time for dawdling.”
“Yessir.”
Paidrag leaned out from his position last in line and watched Broin duck a halfhearted cuff from the Guardmaster and hurry through the armory door. A moment later, he called out to the Guardmaster, his voice muffled by the stone wall.
“Something’s holding this sword, sir. Won’t budge.”
Guardmaster Harian tilted his face to the ceiling and heaved a great sigh. “If you can not lift the blade, it is not for you. Choose another.”
Sullen silence followed, and a few minutes later, Broin emerged from the armory holding a polished steel Warhammer. Guardmaster Harian stopped him with an outstretched hand, examined the weapon, looked the boy over, grunted, and motioned for Broin to keep moving. “Report to the Proving Ground.”
Paidrag watched the other three boys in front of him all enter the armory one after another and emerge with their chosen weapons held awkwardly in hands lacking the callouses to wield them. They were grinning proudly. And why shouldn’t they? The Guardmaster went through the same ritual with these three as he had with Broin, inspecting their weapons and looking them over, his face impassive. He then waved them away. “Get you to the Proving Ground.”
There was one boy left in front of Paidrag—the shoemaker’s son. Harian called the lad forward, and Paidrag’s mind turned inward.
Which weapon would he choose when it was his turn? Not a bow; that was not the warrior way. Last year, his brother picked a fine-looking blade of folded steel honed on both sides to a razor edge with a leather-wrapped hilt and cross guard fashioned to resemble two claws. Paidrag had tried Jarrod’s blade, but it felt awkward and unwieldy in his hand; a sword was not the weapon for him. What then? He was a fair hand with a quarterstaff, more than fair; he’d won the games earlier this year in the weapons category. Youngest to ever take the top spot in Keep history.
“Come on, boy,” Guardmaster Harian’s deep growl broke into Paidrag’s thoughts. His great red beard bobbed as he spoke. “Haven’t got all night for you to stand there like a simpleton. Wife has supper waiting, and I need to get to it. Move.”
Paidrag felt his cheeks flush and heard snickers from the nobles and wealthy merchants gathered within the Keep’s armory to witness the once-a-year Quendling when each boy from the lower villages would choose his weapon and become a man, a warrior in training.
He swallowed and stepped forward, looking at the arrogant faces of men dressed in silks and satins worth more than he’d earn in a lifetime. But they didn’t matter. His heart pounded. Sweat beaded his brow. This was his moment.
He stepped through the door.
Inside, shelf after empty shelf covered the stone walls. Footprints made crazed patterns in the dust on the floor, and the only weapons in sight rested on an ornate emberwood rack traced in ivory and gold.
Seeing nothing else, he shuffled over to the rack and felt his eyes drawn past an exquisitely crafted sword with a jeweled handle, past a handsome spear carved to look like a red dragon, to a weapon the likes of which he’d never seen before. He reached out with a trembling hand and laid a finger on the long handle, polished until it gleamed warmly in the torchlight. It looked like a quarterstaff, carved with mighty griffons in silver and boasting leather to strengthen his grip. But this was no ordinary quarterstaff. A foot of fine steel glinted from one end, a blade slightly curved and engraved with fancy scrollwork. A blade that, when he touched it, left a hair-fine line of red weeping from his thumb.
Paidrag yelped and yanked his thumb away, lifting the cut to his lips, his brows rising at such a sharp edge. Then he grinned.
He lifted it from the rack with trembling hands and gave it a gentle spin, slow and careful at first but putting on speed as he went until it whirred in a blur through the air. He worked the bladed staff around the back and over his head, made a figure eight in front of him, grinning in surprise at how perfectly balanced it was, like no steel graced the end.
The staff whirled to a rest at his side, the blade pointed at the ceiling. An odd feeling came over him just then, warm and brotherly, a sense of acceptance. Almost as if the weapon itself approved of him. He shook it off and made his way out of the armory.
Guardmaster Harian’s eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets when he caught sight of the bladed staff resting on Paidrag’s shoulder. He recovered quickly.
“Hold there, lad,” the Guardmaster said, moving forward and extending a muscled arm to bar Paidrag’s way. “Auscheral chose you?”
Paidrag stopped. He glanced at his new staff. “You mean this?” he said, gesturing at the weapon.
“Aye.” Harian eyed the bladed staff with a mixture of reverence and surprise. “Weapons forged of magic have a mind of their own. They choose the hand to wield them. None have bonded in all the years I’ve been a guard here, nor in the days of my father and his father before him. That's why Broin couldn't lift the sword.”
Paidrag felt a stir of fear in his gut. Why was everyone so quiet? Why were they staring at him? He recognized the look staining their faces. Fear.
In Paidrag’s experience it wasn’t good to make men with title afraid.
“Fetch him to the Sage,” he heard someone say. And the next hour was a whirlwind of faces, questions and hands shoving him down winding corridors deep into the Keep and to a room lit by a single candlestick on a polished desk. Books filled the shelves built into the walls from the floor to the ceiling save where a stone hearth glowed red with sputtering embers. An old man sat there swaddled in deep purple robes with a ring of fine wispy white hair on the back of his head. His face was beyond ancient, spotted, deeply lined and paper thin, but his eyes reflected the candle’s fire and showed the vitality of the spirit within.
The Sage peered at him with those fathomless eyes. “Sit,” he said, and Paidrag found himself sitting in a rather uncomfortable wooden chair on his side of the desk but didn’t recall actually moving. He suppressed a yawn with the back of his hand. His eyes felt itchy.
“Yes,” the Sage said, taking Paidrag’s chin in skeletal fingers and looking into his eyes. “There is power here, a well vast and deep, but your future is uncertain.” His bushy white brows drew together. “Clouded. I cannot see the infinite lattice of your destiny. Yet, power churns around you like a sea in a storm.”
The Sage released his chin and sat back, regarding him with an unreadable expression. Paidrag didn’t like this conversation almost as much as he disliked the two hulking guards posted to either side of the chamber’s door.
The old man stirred from his thoughts. He drew out his pipe, stuffed the bowl with tabac, muttered a word Paidrag did not understand and it burst alight. “Such potential,” the Sage muttered in a voice soft as silk. “Could it be? After all these years…”
The Sage fell silent, puffing on his pipe and staring at Paidrag until the boy fidgeted in his seat. Then, the old man’s eyes refocused, sharp as dagger points. He leaned forward and spoke through the coiling smoke.
“Who are you?”
Paidrag opened his mouth to answer but the Sage cut him short.
“They fear you, fear what it means that a weapon chose you.” His eyes glittered with mischief. “They are right to fear.”

2003 Volkswagen Golf, 2L L4 8V, 01M 4A transmission
This is a very condensed version of my nightmare project of fixing our golf, which is our daily driver. I might include some random pics from throughout the process. If I do they'll be in chronological order. I AM NOT AN EXPERT OR A MECHANIC. I've worked on my own vehicles and worked in the auto industry for some years but I am not a technician nor do I think I am one 😬
This.. this is a tale best told around a moonlight campfire.. for it shall strike fear into anyone who hears it.. 😦
Here's a rundown of all the work done recently on the vehicle : • New power brake booster • New master cylinder • New rotors X4 • New pads front and back • New calipers X4 • New hose / soft lines on calipers X4 • New ABS sensors X4 • New brake light switch • Miscellaneous things like bulbs, wipers, air filter, cabin air filter, oil filter, oil change, gas cap, etc • Replaced all 7 solenoids in transmission, filter, gasket, etc etc
Previous issue that created the need for the work : • 3 calipers seized. 2 pistons seized, 1 E-brake lever on caliper seized, 1 caliper bleeder threads disintegrated. • Everything was / is VERY rusty. • I sanded / resurfaced all brackets etc. After replacing all pads, rotors, calipers, the brakes were dragging. Would kill the speed immediately after letting off gas. • Replaced the hoses / soft lines, all ABS sensors, and new brake light switch. • Brakes still dragging 🤬 • Then replaced the master cylinder and booster. I had some difficulty adjusting the pushrod in the new booster, trying to adjust brake engagement distance because the aftermarket part was different size and shape than stock. Aftermarket was 2 piece adjustable, stock was 1 piece non-adjustable. Finally got it set correctly! • The car still feels sluggish and won't shift out of third gear. Bring the car to the dealership to get the computer relearned and Throttle Position Adjustment but lo and behold it turns out one of the solenoids in the transmission is stuck open and guess what systems that specific solenoid impacts? B1 and B2 braking 😑 this car has been a fucking nightmare. 😭🤬😵‍💫 • IMPORTANT NOTE FOR ANYONE THAT READS THIS!!!!!! • IF YOU DISCONNECT YOUR BATTERY, OR YOUR BATTERY IS 100% DEAD AND NO POWER IS GOING TO THE ECM, THE COMPUTER WILL FORGET ALL OF ITS BASIC OPERATIONAL VALUES AND REQUIRES A TRIP TO THE DEALER OR ACCESS TO VAGCOM/VCDS TO RELEARN THE COMPUTER AND PERFORM THROTTLE POSITION ADJUSTMENT. • DO NOT DISCONNECT YOUR BATTERY WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THIS AND BEING PREPARED TO DEAL WITH IT. DO NOT BE LIKE ME AND LEARN THIS AFTER THE FACT. • Speaking of electronics, the fuel filler door switch in the driver door MELTED!? And caused all of the interior lights to stay on 100% of the time repeatedly killing the battery.. Let me tell you.. That took awhile to track down 😑 I posted some pics of the switch in an earlier post. • previous owner "installed" a sound system that I discovered was held together with nothing more than electrical tape.. I mean I guess it worked for awhile..? So I cut, stripped, and connected all wires myself. • Then I replaced all 7 of the solenoids in the transmission, new filter, new gasket, and fancy German fluid. • Replacing the solenoids was probably one of the easiest things I did on the vehicle 🥴 apparently these transmissions are shit and the solenoids always fail so if that happen to you its fairly doable yourself. • The way that I have seen the fill process for the transmission described has been.. confusing.. it seems like different people have different opinions or processes to fill it but this is the easiest explanation I can think of for it : • I drained approximately 3.5 Litres of ATF, so pour in 3.5 Litres of new ATF. • Turn on engine, let engine idle for a couple minutes in Park. • With parking brake set, and foot on brakes, shift through the gears for a couple minutes each on each gear at a time, from top to bottom, P-1-P. • WITH THE ENGINE RUNNING and in Park go back under the car and take out the drain plug from the transmission pan. • If there are no drips, there is not enough fluid yet, KEEP THE DRAIN PLUG OFF and pour in more ATF through the fill port until you see ATF start to drip out of the drain plug hole. Put drain plug back in and close fill port. Wipe pan for any spillage so you can tell if there are leaks, go for a drive. • If the fluid is a steady stream out of the drain plug hole, there is too much fluid, wait until the stream turns into a "glug" and put drain plug back in and close fill port. Wipe pan for any spillage so you can tell if there are leaks, go for a drive. • If the fluid is a "glug" out of the drain plug hole, put drain plug back in and close fill port. Wipe pan for any spillage so you can tell if there are leaks, go for a drive. • So I took the car for a drive today and and I'll need to go onto the highways to make sure but from my small drive the car was shifting!!!!!! YAY!!! WOOOOOO!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳 • Many many many MANY hours of pain and work went into this and it took about 1.5 months of not having our only vehicle driveable. • I am very very very lucky to have some friends in my life, one of who has an Electric Kona, and still has their old car parked at their home. They have let me and my partner borrow their Kona so I'm able to get to work and get groceries etc etc while they drive their old car as their daily. He is genuinely a life saver and has helped us out in some of the worst times in our lives so none of this would have been possible without his help. So thank you Cory!! • After all of this I have personal beef with Volkswagen and I keep saying to my friends / family that at this point I either never want to work on a VW ever again, OR, start a business doing it 🤣 I've had to adjust the brake booster push rod so many times I think I could do it with my eyes closed 🤬🥴 • Hopefully some of this info helps someone at some point.. it has been a very very long and painful process with lots of learning and research required so I hope my pain can help someone else! • I'll sleep better tonight I know that much 😍

My (21F) dad (50s)’s brother (60s) is a criminal, who has mooched off my dad for years. He’s a degenerate man with multiple kids by different women, who has been to prison.
My dad grew up is extreme poverty, but made smart decisions and became well-off as an adult, while the rest of his siblings are still in poverty, committing crimes and living off welfare. We (my mom, me, and my sibling) don’t claim that side of the family at all, and we encourage my dad not to send them money. They’re always trying to get my family’s money.
My dad’s brother is squatting in a house, which my dad owns and pays for, on behalf of another relative. He is not welcome there, but we live too far away to keep him out. We found out that my dad’s brother destroyed the house again, and my dad got into a screaming fight over the phone with him. My dad called his brother the n-word, which is probably the worst thing he’s ever said, but his brother is a criminal loser who’s stealing our money.
My dad’s brother’s girlfriend, who is an equally low-life woman mooching off our family, called my house to yell at us. I couldn’t believe she had the nerve to call us, giving that these people are parasites mooching off my family. They should be grateful we don’t have them thrown on the street, because we could be using this money for vacations/college, as my mom always says. This woman said “how dare you call my boyfriend the n-word?” I said “because he is an n-word, and he’s a trashy bum stealing my dad’s money. You should be grateful we don’t have him sent to prison.”
It was my first time saying a racial slur, but my dad’s brother says the n-word all the time, so he has no right to get mad about being called that word in my opinion. Don’t say it if you don’t want to be called it. Of course, him and his girlfriend are outraged and telling that side of the family. We don’t care what that side of the family thinks about anything, but AITA?

About me; Married dad, home repair career, moved across country 2 years ago.
I don't expect many views here, I know I'm just whining, and I know I'm not the only one feeling like I'm feeling. But, I'm just tired. I want to be back home. I hate my career choice/ path. I'm so overwhelmed.
Most recently, I switched from an easy, cushy, maintenacen supervisor position that was 2 minutes from home, to a handyman start up that needed a decent guy to help grow the business. I was urged to do so by a family member, I'm 2 days in and I realize I fucked up. I'm so fucking overwhelmed because the woman who owns the business is taking on jobs that are way too big IMO. Since before I officially came on, I have been following behind a fixing fuck ups that one of the other guys has done. I don't know why, but despite having done this work for 16 years, I suddenly have 0 confidence in what I'm doing. I feel like I'm fucking stuff up, despite getting calls to the owner about how happy they are with that I've done.
I've got a stupid ass tear in my eye right now from frustration. I want to just find a job that I can completely disconnect from at the end of everyday. Which is easy for everyone else(it seems), but I constantly run though every single thing that I worked on during the work day. I cannot disconnect, when my daughter reads to me at home, I cannot focus on that because I'm stuck in my head thinking about how frustrated I was at one second during the day, or I'm thinking about how I could have done something better, or how I need to go back and do something else because I didn't think it was up to my standards. I'm a perfectionist for alot of things.
I should have just stayed at my old job, I think to myself. But that wouldn't help me because all though the job was easy, I was the supervisor in charge of 3 properties and my mind would never let me have a second off. Thinking about things that need to be done, things that may happen in the future, things that would most likely never happen. "Don't take that home with you" My manager and my tech would say.. fucking easy to say. I was on call, and when I wasn't on call, I was on call because the tech would need assistance alot of the times. My mind doesn't just shut off work, especially being in this line of work where I feel like I have to please everyone. I've never heard of a complaint of my work, but In my head, noone likes the stuff I provide.
I couldn't take a vacation because All of my saved up pto this year was going to go toward 2 weddings and helping someone move from a few states away. I probably could have dealt with my last job if I had taken a break for myself. Maybe. I couldn't take any time off between jobs because I have to provide for my family. My wife works for money part time at home, but she works 24/7 homeschooling our daughter and housekeeping. True saint of a woman, who I love more than anything. Her getting a full time job isn't an option because we aren't comforatble putting our daughter into the public school near us after a sick fucking pervert teacher kissed her and other kids.
Well, I'll end this with who knows of a job that a non college educated person can switch to that pays 65000 a year atleast and that is easy to not bring home? I'm desperate

What it was like, what happened, and what it is like now... My sobriety date is January 10th, 2016. I had been coming in and out of the program of AA since I was 18 years old, I had a drawer full of white chips, and it wasn't until I was 33 years old that I had finally been beaten down enough and suffered enough consequences due to this disease that I was finally ready to surrender... not because I had any hope that things would get better, but because I was frightened of how they were on their way to getting worse.
I was finally ready to follow through in working all 12 steps with my sponsor, which I did over the course of a year. I moved onto a new sponsor, and worked them through again. I was hungry for this new life and I sought out the oldest of the old timers, women who had more years in sobriety than I had on this earth. I was desperate for change because I was faced with two choices: change, or face a life without my two precious children that had been wisely removed by the court and my ex-husband because of how I'd let this disease impact our lives like a category five hurricane. I learned quickly that it simply wasn't enough that my admission of powerless and taking of the first three steps stopped the proverbial winds of destruction from blowing; like a devastated city by the sea in the aftermath, I had a job of reconstruction ahead of me that wasn't going to be cleaned up over night... it was going to be a process of years before everything would come back together, and be restored to something better than I could have ever dreamed.
What I ended up discovering through the years of consistently working this program wasn't at all what I'd originally sought out. I just wanted the chaos to stop. I just wanted to be able to put down the bottle for good. I thought this was the alpha and omega of it. But this was just the barest beginning.
The cessation of drinking was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This program would do more than just divorce me from alcohol and substance abuse... it was going to completely transform me. Little by slowly, the working of the steps began to reshape my perspective as I had to accept a spiritual remedy or return to my own spiral of misery and the onward march to jails, institutions, and death.
Through the working of my inventory, my sponsors helped me to see that everything I resentfully blamed on my ex-husband, my abusive upbringing, my traumatic brain injury in early childhood, everyone who'd ever bullied or abused me had layers. Resentment would poison me; I had to forgive those against whom I harbored resentment not for their sake, but my own. Forgiveness, I discovered, set me free from this self-created prison. Letting go meant a greater freedom than I could have ever known.
And then, further on: most things I blamed on God for allowing to happen to happen to me, such as the loss of my precious children, my sponsors helped me to understand through my inventory were traceable back through so many actions I willfully chose that had a domino effect of consequences that I now had to face and accept as my responsibility. Whether or not other people were involved, I had to let this go, learning a new meaning of powerlessness and acceptance of things I could not change... namely, other people and their own actions... and focused on the only thing I could change: my own choices, moving forward. Understanding that the only way out was through. Bless them, change me wasn't just a catchphrase any longer... I was the only one over whom I had control. When I finally came to this realization, I was able to work through my own defects, see them for what they were, rise into the 6th and 7th steps to pray for their removal, to be taken to something better.
I was then able to identify and accept what "my part" had been in two decades of wrecked relationships with others. I was able to understand to whom I must make amends, and found the genuine willingness to do so, a long list made, a scouring of the internet and social media and looking up all the people upon whose lives I'd had a negative impact, people whom I had hurt. I owned my part, I made the amends and I was surprised at the response I got, overwhelmingly.... not one person told me to go to hell like I rightfully would have deserved, and none of them even expressed anger. Each of them shared with me in their own way how they knew I was very sick, very lost, and they knew inside somewhere I was a good person, I was just hurting and how they had always hoped that I would find recovery, find God, find a way to be who I was. They were happy for me. They had forgiven me long ago.
And as a result of working these steps, persisting through consequences I had to face and accept, finding that the only way out was through... my life was transformed. I was transformed. I got my children back... not instantly, but I began my journey in 2016 and by 2017, I had them back on weekends. By 2018, I had them back in a 50/50 arrangement. And by 2019, circumstances aligned so that they were returned to me full-time, and this was also the year the man who'd stuck by me during the worst moments of my disease and through the ups and downs of early sobriety asked me to marry him, and my girls and I had a whole new family, a whole new life... today, he is the man they call "Dad" and they have their biological father every weekend whom they call "Papa." He, too, has found recovery and is growing into a better life, he dated a great woman who adored my daughters in the same way my new husband has and he is marrying her this summer. As a show of love, she gave each of my daughters a special ring to symbolize her own commitment to them in how much she values the importance. We're now working together as a united front and a blended family for what's best for the girls and it is a blessing.
It has been a challenge, honestly, now that things have gotten better and the promises have come true to stick with a consistent practice of this program. Complacency is probably my biggest struggle, something I continually work on because it is so easy now to let all of the blessings of this program consume my life and cause the program not to take a first place priority. The reality is what it is though: if I forget where I come from, if I rest on my proverbial laurels, I will absolutely lose everything that I've gained and I will end up drunk. I am finding that it was ironically much easier to work the program diligently when I was at rock bottom and this was the only way to climb out.
As such, I know that today, my actions still have consequences, good and bad. Sometimes, as before, the consequences might not show up immediately, but they will always manifest. Fortunately, though, through the working of this program, especially in the initial few years of working through the steps and my inventory, I find that I am making more positive choices than I did once upon a time, and so just as I reaped what I had sewn early on in terms of negative consequences, I now find the same thing is true insomuch as I enjoy positive consequences perhaps to the same degree that I once experienced negative ones. The most solid part of all is the gift that the 12th step provides, practicing these principles in all my affairs, as well as Step 10 that I try my best to keep up with regularly, I am able now to much more quickly identify when I have made a wrong choice, when a resentment crops up, or when I owe someone an amends. It is just like keeping a house clean in a literal sense: doing small things each day maintains a level of consistent cleanliness that is much easier to maintain than letting things get messy and piled up and trying to go in and clean.
And most importantly of all.... when I came into this program, I reached for God and striving for the next right thing because it was either this, or worse consequences than I was already facing. As one day at a time began to flow into weeks, then months, then years, I found myself reaching for God and striving for the next right thing because I was seeing how it was bearing the fruit of my whole life improving. And now, as I am moving toward my 9th year of sobriety, so close to an actual decade... I have never forgotten these former two stages of my own evolution, which have merged into where I find myself now... reaching for God and striving for the next right thing, as it is written, "as unto Him", because I am in a new habit now of right living, right choosing, being a kind of active faith in which I know that, as a line in one of the devotional books said, "When we do the next right thing, all the power of God is behind you."
I can make these choices today especially in my classroom in devoting myself to my occupation as a labor of love, and this in and of itself being its own reward. I was nominated for "Teacher of the Year" this year, but I knew from this moment that it wasn't going to be God's will for me to receive such an accolade and I was perfectly at peace with this. Because doing the right thing as unto God for me today rests on a foundation of just how important anonymity is, in a way I never appreciated until recently. I think of the founders of AA, how Bill W. was offered an honorary PhD in Sociology from Harvard (I think this was he area), how they wanted to erect a huge monument over Dr. Bob and his wife's grave to mark them as founders... I can scarcely imagine how tempting these opportunities would have been, especially when we all have that ego part of ourselves that whispers, "I have worked hard for this and I deserve to be recoginzed!" But they turned these offers down, as so many others that came and went. Anonymity was and still is everything.
My oldest old timer sponsor--the one with more years sober than i had alive-- had to really work hard to make me see something I was stuck in around years 4-6: "I have worked SO HARD to get to where I am today!"
She told me over and over that I was missing the point: I made choices to do the next right thing, but I was incapable of getting myself anywhere but drunk on my own unaided will. It was God who you allowed to work through you.
I understand that a lot more today. I am proud of a strength I possess to be industrious. But "I" don't matter. I do my best to do the next right things because what really only matters is that God sees what I do. Through any talents, abilities, strengths He has given me, they are from Him, and they make me useful as a vessel to be of service. I am a sewer of seeds, and I may never know how my willingness to be of service impacts someone, but He does. My own anonymity protects me from me.
Of myself I am nothing, it is only through the grace of God and this program that I am where I am today. I ask daily in prayer to for Him to get me out of my way, to be made of service, for Him to show me the next right thing one moment at a time, and the power to carry that out.
And this is all that matters.

Hey guys,
So I’m currently into buying my first big purchase padel racket. Been playing on and off for the last two years since I’ve been travelling and not a lot of access to padel courts, but finally in a place where a Padel court has opened up nearby and looking to be regular again. Since I was on and off, I used to rent out the rackets at the courts.
As far as playing style goes, I’m pretty versatile when it comes to playing either left or right. If I had to pick I’d slightly lean to the left side just because I enjoy hitting a backhand slice from there, but easy going either way. I usually lean somewhat defensive but looking to start attacking more, so looking for a well balanced racket that I can also put some spin on the ball with.
After much deliberation, I’ve got it down to 3 rackets:
Nox AT Genius 18k 2024 Siux Diablo Revolution Pro 3 Adipose Ctrl 3.2
Does anyone have experience with these rackets and can help out with the decision making? I’ve heard great things about the Nox At 18K so leaning towards that but curious as to other people’s experiences. I’d like to test these out on my own and make a decision but unfortunately I’m not in an area where I’m able to test this out
Based on what I’ve read in other threads, this will most likely not be my only racket but I am looking to make this racket count.

Posting from an alt account because not everyone knows I'm pregnant yet.
I'm 9 weeks and this is my second pregnancy. The OB is nothing special but I had no problems and always felt addressed. I also live semi rural and don't have a lot of options.
This year, they keep calling to reschedule appt I made months ago which is whatever stuff happens. The last pregnancy was really easy- I had mild nausea and was given promethazine. I took it once and passed out for 14 hours and threw it in the trash because I missed work.
Anyway, pregnancy 2 is kicking my butt. I am nauseous 24 7 and vomiting occasionally. I went over the severity at my viability ultrasound and that I was on promethazine before with bad side effect (albeit a normal side effect, unfortunately) and said I had missed a few days of work but she dismissed me kind of and told me to try unisom and b6.
I have the same problem with unisom. I take one half hour before bed and wake up groggy/ have trouble waking. I tried to take it during the day and slept all weekend. I no longer do that because I need to be awake during the day. I manage my symptoms with the b6, the night unisom, nausea bands and ginger everything. It helps but not 100%
Anyway had another appt with a nurse today, went over the nausea again. Missed the equivalent of 3 work days deapite my best tries for nausea and am seeking fmla so i dont get fired. She said ya just bring fmla paperwork and we will pass it to the dr
10 min after I drop it off I get a call from the person that processes the papers and she said that hospitals policy (a large system) is no intermittent fmla, that she's never heard of taking intermittent fmla because of nausea, and that I need to just take the promethazine or Zofran and deal with it.
I'm obviously very upset and this doesn't sound right to me. I'm a manager and have people covered on fmla if they need to leave early or be away a little to deal with pregnancy related nausea. Am I being crazy and unreasonable or should I look for another ob? Is it even possible to switch 9 weeks in?
I don't really want to take meds that will knock me out so I can't work anyway and I don't want to get fired. My company offers no time off for this. Any advice?

As I stated in the title, I believe I know what causes male entitlement to women’s time, body or just women in general. At the very least what caused it for me, and how I (am breaking) free of it.
When I was 7, I would watch TV. There would always be an episode where a male protagonist gets a Girlfriend. Loses her to a dumb mistake. Tries to get her back, fails, tries again, and succeeds.
I’ve always been in favor of Womens Rights -er believed I was. As a little boy, nobody ever told me about love or women or relationships (especially considering I don’t have any sisters). I didn’t know how to talk to women, and I’m not attractive enough for them to come to me. But by some miracle for little me. When I was 12 going on 13, I got a girlfriend. She was the same age, let’s call her “Kelly”. I obviously cared deeply for Kelly, and I know she did for me too. I was just exploring my sexuality at the time (we’re both straight).
As we got closer together I rushed things, I would want to touch her, and she would let me. I would become focused on that. Long story short. I neglected her consent, not even intentionally. It just didn’t register to me. It didn’t occur to me because I don’t think I was subconsciously programmed to listen to Kelly, or any woman my age for that matter. So we break up and I move schools etc… but the misogyny doesn’t end there. That’s when the misogyny SURGES!
I move to another school. I was broken from the last year as it took a big toll on me. But burns stop being hot after at least a little bit. So i was ready?, for someone else. Well, I guess I was window shopping again thankfully. But this time it was different. I‘m high function autism, and it kinda? shows. But not enough that I need special classes or whatever. But regardless, I saw more attractive men, with better clothes, hygiene, social skills. They got girl’s attention. Well, they got the girls that got MY attention. Hot guys with Hot girls (what a shocker lol). But I felt angry, not at the other men. But at the girls, when I was at my worst, I saw a hot white girl with a tall lightskin dude. (I’m white male btw) And I thought to myself “of course HE gets her.” Even at my worst I rejected that kind of thinking. But that doesn’t change the fact that it came to me naturally.
I would see hot girls and internally label the h*es, sl*ts, you get the idea. Insert chudjak. I saw something on , it was a tweet that said “Nobody calls a woman a hoe more than a man who can’t fuck her”. And that’s when it hit me. I knew it was a me problem. But I just now I INTERNALIZE the idea. And I kept thinking, I‘ve heard people on TwoX talk about male entitlement. And I’ve seen places like and talk about it. I never understood what it meant to be entitled to a woman. But now I do. Think about it. I got mad at a hot white girl, who i have no connection to, with some hot dude. I had NO relations with her. But I was mad somebody else had her? I felt like a victim all along. A victim of what? Unfairness, or even injustice. But everyone get’s justice (morally). And if everyone gets it, everyone’s entitled to it, literally! So denial of my “right” to women is (from this flawed perspective) wrong to do. And logically, to resolve it. I can be given a woman.
If that sounds messed up, it”s because it is. Because when you put it like that, you seem crazy. But I never thought if it like that. And that’s why women pick up on that instantly.
So in conclusion, It’s occurred to me that young boys are taught that getting women is a right. And everyone is entitled to rights, so if you perceive women as the object of s right that you have, you (aware or unaware) will become entitled.
TLDR: Male entitlement to women stems from cultural rhetoric, and when access is denied, it sparks rage.

Hello!!
Sorry if this ends up being a long and unformatted post, but I need help from someone who understands a bit more than I do.
I (21F) unknowingly got a UTI back in October when I got my IUD put in. I'm assuming that's when it happened, because when they did my analysis I had two types of bacteria causing my uti, proteus mirabelis and klebsiella pneumoniae, and those two (specifically klebsiella) seem to come specifically from medical settings, and since my doctor was in a rush (I was his last patient of the day before having to go to the hospital for a delivery), I don't think he was being as careful as he should've been with washing hands and stuff. I didn't know that I had a UTI until almost a month ago when I went into the ER for excruciating pain, the worst pain I've ever felt.
I had none of the common symptoms of UTIs, but I was increasingly losing my appetite, vomiting, nausea, fatigue, severe pain in my right side and back... the whole nine yards. I thought it was either side effects from the IUD being put in (I was told these were all side effects to except for up to a year after insertion, don't really know if that's true) or from my PCOS, which often unfortunately causes pain in the same area that's so intense I am nauseous or vomiting as well.
When I went into the ER, they did a urine test (the urine was pretty bloody so they concluded I had an infection before even testing it, but they still tested it anyways), as well as doing a CT scan and ultrasound to make sure there wasn't anything else (cancer) going on.
In that CT scan, they found a 1cm kidney stone. However, they didn't tell me about it directly. They sent me home, stated that I had a UTI, and said that the antibiotics should take care of it in 7 days (I unfortunately don't remember what antibiotic it was now, but it's a general one that helps with the most bacteria since they didn't know what I had yet). I only found out about the stone after reading my chart and seeing pictures of the CT scan, where you can clearly see it.
After 7 days of that antibiotic, I started feeling bad again 24 hours after I was finished with them. I did a telemedicine visit, but what they ended up prescribing me is known to be ineffective with the types of bacteria I had, so I didn't even really bother and ended up just going to a minute clinic. At the minute clinic they did another test, said I still had a UTI, and put me on bactrim. I'm sensitive to bactrim, and it ended up giving me an ear infection... and then it still didn't completely fix the UTI either. I went to a minute clinic the third time after trying bactrim and they gave me amoxicillin, which finally seems to have worked for the UTI.
Unfortunately, today I had to give a tour to some employees. I work outside at a large property, and by the end of it the severe pain had come back in my right side and back and while it has dulled now, almost 10 hours after, it's still there. I took a UTI at home test and it came positive for leukocytes but not nitrites, which when I looked it up, says it may be due to antibiotic use, UTI, or kidney stone. Go figure.
I've been drinking lemon juice like crazy (I've heard that it can help you pass kidney stones), but I haven't passed anything so I'm assuming my leftover pain is from that. I'm not really sure what to do from here, because if the ER didn't even mention it, I'm not sure if any urologist will take me seriously and just will brush it off. I've never had kidney stones, so I'm not even really sure what the treatment is for it (I keep reading that it's painful... ladies with IUDs, is it better or worse than getting that inserted?) The bottom line is that I can't keep living like this, I'm confused why no one mentioned or seemed concerned about the kidney stone (the minute clinic people didn't really seem to care either), and I don't have insurance so it's getting really costly to keep going to the doctors and having them brush me off. I'm at my wits end, and it's making my depression bad again. Can someone please either give me knowledge you have past googling stuff (googling isn't really getting me anywhere past surface level knowledge, and no doctor really is explaining it to me) or what to do next?
Again, sorry this post is so long. I'm just hoping that someone reads it and is able to help me. I might cross post it, just not sure yet. Thank you.

Just need to vent for a moment.
I bought my 2017 Volt brand new in March 2017. No complaints. I absolutely love the car. Anyway, mid-January I get a “Propulsion Power Reduced” message on my dash along with a check engine light. I bring it to the dealership right away and it’s diagnosed as:

FOUND A LOT OF CODES. ALL CODES ARE ON THE SAME CIRCUIT AND THE FUSE IS BLOWN ON UNDER HOOD FUSE #3. FOUND EGR VALVE IS SHORTED INTERNALLY. RECOMMEND STARTING WITH REPLACING EGR VALVE.

They tell me they don’t have the EGR valve in stock right then but they placed an order and it should come in the next day. I get a call the next day telling me what many of you already know: They made a mistake and the part is actually on back-order. I ask what the wait time might be and am told “anywhere from a week to several months” — I.e., they don’t know. I ask if the car can be driven and they said I risked engine damage. My Volt is my only car, so I ask for a loaner. They told me it will be $50 a day. I declined.
I decided to do some research. Find out the EGR valve has been on back-order for over two years. Uh oh.
Two weeks pass. I’m getting rides to/from places from my partner, parents, etc. It’s a mild inconvenience but I’m in a privileged position that I know people who can help me out. I read that cleaning the EGR valve can actually fix the problem is some cases. I should have made the connection from the quote above that “SHORTED INTERNALLY” meant my problem was electrical, but I found a neighborhood mechanic who was willing to clean the valve for free. Obviously, it didn’t do anything.
We’re at about 3.5 weeks out now. While I’m dealing with getting my EGR valve cleaned, my dad offers to contact GM for me. He runs his own business and is pretty savvy when it comes to navigating these situations, so I let him go ahead. We start with their generic customer service number and are initially told that we need to wait a minimum of two more weeks before they will escalate. My dad pushes back, and they promise us that they will escalate to their parts acquisition team who will check their national network for the part. A week later we get a call back — they couldn’t find an EGR valve anywhere in the country. They would now check worldwide.
We’re at over a month out from the issue being diagnosed now, and my dad decides he’s going to start escalating on his own. He gets ahold of the regional manager of GM, and I don’t recall if they ever ended up having a conversation but it was basically a dead end. Now, I should clarify at this point that all I wanted was a loaner. That’s all I was looking for. Something I could use to drive to/from work myself instead of scrabbling together rides from people I knew. But I can’t afford $50/day indefinitely.
Anyway, a couple more weeks pass with no news. At this point I’m starting to look at Chinese EGR valves. Every lead is a dead end — I think I paid for three off of eBay, and without fail, each time I would get a message a couple days later with an apology from the seller that they don’t actually have the part in stock and they were issuing a refund.
Then my dad comes to me one day. “I called Mary Barra’s office.” Who’s that? “GM’s CEO.” I still have absolutely no idea how he managed to escalate my dumb EGR valve issue to the CEO, but when my dad gets determined, he doesn’t stop. My dad has a phone conversation with her assistant. He tells my dad that he will come back to us with a solution.
A week later we get the call: An assurance that the part will be entering production again “soon”, that my EGR valve will be covered under warranty, and that we should hear from the dealership soon. Sweet!
The dealership calls the next day. No, they won’t cover the repair under warranty because we don’t live in a CARB state. Furthermore, they still won’t issue me a loaner. The manager I spoke with advised me to just unplug my EGR valve and drive without it connected. I ask him if they’ll do that for me, he said that they will not and I will need to find an independent mechanic.
Turns out the EGR valve is super easy to disconnect on your own, so I just did it myself. Cool, I can drive my car again with the caveat that I keep an eye on the engine coolant temperature. Not ideal going into summer, but whatever. It’s now April. We’re getting ~weekly updates of “no news” from Mary Barra’s assistant.
The assistant called my dad again today, and my dad finally had enough. The assistant opened with that there’s no update about the part. My dad outright told him that GM should cover the repair when the part finally gets made. The guy tells my dad, “you know what, we’ll give you 10,000 Chevrolet points for each month you have to wait for the part.” So I’d have ~30,000 Chevrolet points so far. My dad asks if they can be used towards the repair. The guy says yes. My dad asks how much would that amount cover. ~$250.
Chevrolet points. You guys, I absolutely lost it when my dad told me this lmao. What the hell is a Chevrolet point. I just want a goddamn EGR valve or a loaner so that I’m not risking anything with the engine. This is the best the fucking CEO’s office can do?
Anyway, if you need an EGR valve it doesn’t seem like we’re any closer to them restarting production than we were a few months ago when they assured me it would be “soon”. Bummer.

I saw someone else did something like this recently and thought that I might have something to add to the discussion to help people figure out whether they think this program is right for them, or for people currently in the program to help them plan out classes.
My background is very heavy in statistics and finance (I'm an actuary), so my grounding in calculus, statistics, linear algebra, and business topics was considerably better than most of the other people I interacted with in this program. Conversely, I'm sure my programming skills were probably about average or maybe a little bit below compared to someone with a more targeted background towards those skills.
I started in Fall of 2020 and just finished up this month, Spring 2024. I started out just taking one class a semester and never changed up that plan, would highly recommend doing the same if you're working full time alongside; there's no reason to rush this program. I got a 4.0 GPA overall, although I never really stressed that much about it and definitely did not shy away from "harder" classes in order to bolster GPA. I did this to learn, not to get good grades. The classes I took, in order (my memory of some of the earlier ones might be a bit jumbled as so much time has passed):

1. CSE 6040 - I mentioned how my programming background was weaker relative to my mathematical background. However, reflecting on my experience in this class, it was probably still pretty strong. This class is focused on generalized programming skills, you don't really get into the analytics and modeling that much; it's more of a primer on things like functions, recursion, computer memory management, etc. It's been a few years, but I don't remember struggling with this class at all, and most of the concepts covered (object oriented programming, things like byte encoding, hexadecimal forms, recursion, etc.) were things I was already familiar with in another programming language (this class was in Python) or was relatively easy to pick up. From what I remember, the assignments were auto-graded and you had unlimited attempts, not to mention the fact that most of the prompts were to produce some predetermined result... and, as long as you were able to verify that your code produced that result, you got full points. I didn't miss a single point in this entire class. I believe there were "final exams" which were really just timed window coding assignments much like the homework, and you could do the assignments at any point during a 4-day window or something like that.
2. ISYE 6501 - This class was R-based and focused on basic analytics models. The material was much more applied than 6040. Similarly, the material was not difficult, and I was familiar with a lot of the basic models already (such as GLMs) from having worked with them in my job. The grading was done on a peer-grading framework; based on who anonymously is assigned your homework to grade, you can get someone who's a stickler for every point on the guide, or people who are a bit more lenient. I never really worried much about how things were graded in this class; yeah, I did miss some points arbitrarily, but nothing that made that much of a difference. If you generally put in the work and understand the material, your peers will recognize that. I found this a bit more interesting than 6040 because, rather than a deterministic "right answer", there was some more creativity implied here to solve each problem. There was a final project for this class where you walked through a hypothetical analytics problem and explained how you would go about solving it. I found this an interesting thought exercise and enjoyed this class. The pacing felt a little fast, as you basically had an assignment due each week, but the assignments were small. Like 6040 I found this class to be quite easy but I didn't 100% it due to the peer grading thing.
3. MGT 8803 - I almost applied to be exempt from this class, as my background intersects a lot with the material. The accounting and finance modules for this class literally did not teach me anything new. Supply chain was new for me and I found it interesting. I'm trying to remember what the other module was. I think it was marketing? I didn't like it. Overall I found this class quite easy for the aforementioned reasons, however I've heard from a lot of the other folks without business backgrounds that this class was pretty tough so take my opinions with a grain of salt. Taking this in the summer cut out one of the modules, normally there are 5 but in Summer there are 4. I figured this made sense to take during the truncated semester because I was unlikely to cover that much new material, and it turns out I was right about that. Each module lasted 2 weeks (I think in a normal semester it lasts 3) and has a timed multiple-choice test at the end. A lot of people didn't like this format compared to ISYE 6501 and CSE 6040; I'm not really sure how else this material could've been covered. This class was OK, the material is not really that deep but it's a pretty good primer on a large number of business topics.
4. ISYE 6740 - The first class I took that was actually pretty challenging, which makes sense considering the first 3 courses were just the basic core. This is pretty much an intro to machine learning as a discipline, and the first time I remember digging into academic papers that discuss some machine learning topic and attempting to recreate the results (this is something we did a lot in the more advanced classes going forward and incidentally now that I have graduated is probably one of the best ways to go about learning a new topic). I remember this class as having a format similar to ISYE 6501/CSE6040 in that you had large programming assignments to do, as well as open-book "exams" which were really just timed programming assignments. Assignments are not auto-graded; TA's review each one and thus the assignments have much more of a focus on explaining your findings than producing the exact expected output (unlike 6040). Some of the theory questions have you applying complicated matrix algebra rules that I'm not surprised a lot of people struggled with. The TA responsiveness in this class was pretty good from what I remember, but your mileage may vary. I remember getting 3 weeks to do each assignment but I also remember not thinking that was a lot of time, these assignments are very extensive, have many parts, and take a long time to get through. Like with 6040 I ended up not missing a single point in this class but I did find it difficult and spent significantly more time working on it than in prior classes, probably 10-15 hrs a week, give or take.
5. ISYE 6644 - I was familiar with maybe 50% of the material we covered due to my extensive statistics background, however I was not aware of the exact mechanics of random number generation or the concept of a batched mean, for example. I remember this class having several "check your understanding" quizzes that focused on the mathematical foundations. Didn't struggle with this much in terms of difficulty and found the material very useful. Setting up custom simulation environments is very useful and arena is pretty cool even if it's unlikely you'll ever use it. Some assignments feature similar tools in Python (simpy). There might have been some coverage of R in this as well, or at least the accommodation for people that wanted to use it. There was a project for this class, but you didn't have to come up with the topic on your own, you could pick from a list, and you could do your project on your own if you wanted (which, given the option, was always the choice I made, due to the inherent randomness in picking the right members of a group). However you can do a group project if you want.
6. MGT 6203 - The first of the classes I took that required a group project. I recommend you are proactive in putting together groups in situations like these, posting threads on Ed/whatever the forum is as soon as the class begins. My group was alright; not everyone in it was great, but we had enough going overall to make up for the weaker group members. The project has some arbitrary guidelines from what I remember - you need to put together a midterm report and video presentation that is no more than ~2 minutes long or something like that (if it's 2:01 you get penalized) and the final report is 5 minutes or less, and everyone in the group needs to speak. I honestly don't remember much else about this class, it was pretty forgettable, but not horrible. Not overall that difficult, another business class so a lot of topics I was already familiar with, but there was more new here than in 8803.
7. CSE 6242 - Another class with a group project. Again, I was proactive, and again, overall, my group was... okay. Some people who were really good, some who were... not. This class is characterized by a lot of assignments that are autograded, like 6040, but the assignments are a bit more difficult. Overall not that difficult with the exception of the D3 assignment, but that's more due to the fact that I'm not really sure how the autograder works for that; it tries to determine based on some internal structure of your html code whether or not you're fulfilling the requirements. I got a perfect score on all of the assignments, and they give you the chance to score over 100% on I believe either assignment 1 or assignment 2. A lot of people bombed the D3 assignment (I think it's assignment 2) but still did well in the class because it's not that hard to do well on everything else, so keep that in mind. This class does a great job of exposing you to a lot of new technologies, but there isn't that much depth to it. That's not really the point of this kind of class though, it equips you with the tools to explore things deeper if you so choose.
8. ISYE 8803 - I was a big fan of this class. It's taught in MATLAB but you can use Python if you so choose, you'll see in reviews of this class that you should really just use MATLAB since a lot of the sample code etc. is not in other languages, so that's what I did. However, they must've recently added Python and R code for sample solutions, so feel free to use what you want. MATLAB was interesting, there were parts of one assignment I also used R for (grouped lasso in R is a lot more straightforward). This class is all about high dimensional data and representing it in a more simplified and comprehensive way, think about something like sonar which might have datapoints separated by milliseconds and thus a very dense representation of a signal captured over a short period of time. After ISYE 6740, I found this to be the class that taught me the most up to this point.
9. CS 7642 - Taking this class in summer is kind of rough. There's 6 homework assignments that are autograded, similar format to CSE 6040. There are 3 projects which are much larger programming assignments for which you'll write papers explaining methodology, results, etc. These projects take a while, particularly project 3. I did well on projects 1 and 2 and decently on 3, although I spent the most time on 3 by far; it involves reinforcement learning to simulate a soccer environment and train agents how to play against an AI developed externally. The AI baselines are hard to beat, and I didn't manage to beat them, but I wrote a decent paper explaining what I did. The final exam for this class should be dropped as it doesn't add value to the class, people regularly score extremely low on it, the average score in the class was something like a 45%. I scored a bit lower than average but still got an A in the class because it was heavily curved. Reinforcement learning is a very interesting topic, though, and I would highly recommend this class as a primer on the material. It's probably a good idea not to take it in the summer, though.
10. CS 7643 - This class was pretty difficult but I still think 6740 was tougher. The material is extremely dense. There are parts of programming assignments that are autograded, but also short answer portions that are reviewed by TAs. Grading on those were pretty subjective. This is the only class I can remember really needing to discuss things with TAs to understand what was being asked a little better. Unfortunately, the TAs in the semester I took this weren't the best. They seemed more concerned with unintentionally giving away a bit too much information in any of their responses. I can understand this, but it came off as intentionally opaque most of the time. There was a group project for this course as well, and my group was excellent, probably the best experience I had with a group in this program. I can imagine how much this course would've sucked if I would've had a mediocre/bad group. Based on discussions with my group, some of the grading seemed highly arbitrary, with some TAs grading similar responses to the same question differently. Like I said above, though, I never really worried about this. I never once in this program ever disputed a grade, and I continued with that in this class as well.
11. CSE 6748 - Practicum and final class. For this class you get to choose between a number of pre-determined Georgia Tech sponsors, or form your own project for your own employesome external entity. It was a lot more work to do this, so I just went with one of the pre-determined GTech ones. I really enjoyed this one, I had constant communication with the sponsor as I developed my project and came up with something that I was quite proud of. I wanted to explore a natural language processing task, so I picked a project that I thought would allow me to do this, and was very satisfied with the result. There's a number of videos you have to watch that explain some overarching aspect of analytics that were pretty interesting as well, you can watch all of these in a single day and then focus on the project if you like. It's possible to finish the entire semester's work in just a few weeks, I was able to do the entire project and write the final paper in about a month's time, at which point I coordinated with the sponsor to tailor the work I did to a format that they would be able to implement for their business problem if they wanted to.

I can't comment on the job placement prospects of this program, as I just finished it and was actively employed the entire time I was in it. As an actuary there's not much this program does that my exam certification process didn't in terms of career prospects. However, it did position me much better within the context of the expanding role of data and analytics in insurance going forward, and also opens me up to similarly mathematical roles with a firmer grounding in big data and also some business elements (quantitative finance/data science roles). There were also things I learned in this program that I was able to apply directly to my day-to-day work. If you're considering this program, I would recommend you think about a few things:

1. I'm pretty shocked at how many people I saw during my program who didn't really think that much about why they're doing this. I get that the barrier to entry is low, but it's a serious commitment if you're actually trying to graduate. Most of the people who start this program don't finish, so consider whether you're ready to spend almost 4 years going to school part-time, or if you're able to double up on classes for some of the semesters. Most of the people I know in the program doubled up at least once, I never did but I was never in a hurry. If you must double up, don't make it your first semester. Dip your toe in the water, see how it is, and then reassess. But, above all else, think about why you want to do this, and use that as your guiding goal to bring you through to the end.
2. Something I tended to see pretty much without fail in most of my classes - a lot of the graduate students in this program spend way too much time worrying about minute, particular details that don't really matter. Maybe it was just my philosophy that I would probably never dispute a grade, or that I was never really that concerned with getting a perfect GPA, etc. but I was always marveling at what I saw asked in Ed posts. People would ask whether they could use a certain programming language for an assignment, what packages they were allowed to use, would post screenshots of bugs and ask for TA's to help walk them through it, etc. Generally, without fail, the TAs would respond along the lines of: use whatever programming language you want, as long as you can display your output/submit it in a way that we can verify by running ourselves, we'll make the effort; use the debugger to step through your code to find the problem; etc. Generally, in most cases, the assignments and questions are designed in a way to teach you something, to get you to realize/understand some pattern or data concept that has some underlying logic that makes sense. For example, the idea of saliency maps on image processing takes the 3-channel RGB color pixel shading representation of an image and condenses it into a single channel, and, as a result of that, loses some resolution in suggesting parts of the image driving a model result that might be different depending on the channel; i.e., an image with a very heavily blue-shaded part that detracts from a certain result, but with a red-shaded part somewhere else that increases the probability of the modeled result. This was part of a conceptual question on how saliency maps differed from other pixel influence attribution methods in Deep Learning, and is part of what you should logically understand since it reduces the channels of the image representation from 3 (R, G, B) to 1 (usually grayscale). I think people tend to run to the TA the second they have difficulty with something and don't stop for a second to think it through, one exercise I might recommend is to consider: if you ran into this problem out in the world and you didn't have a TA/managesome other authority figure to explain the answer to you, what do you think it might be? Does the answer even matter? If it still matters and you have no idea how to solve it, maybe then you can go to the TA.
3. In every single group project I worked on, we had an initial planning session where we determined the scope of what we wanted to do. For most of the projects, this was an essential deliverable in addition to the final paper. However, in almost every case, someone in the group was always playing some game of runaway scope where they kept on wanting to add methods/questions to exploration beyond what was initially planned in ways that I intuitively knew would be impossible to manage in just one semester. I often had to say something along the lines of "if we have time we'll do that" or "when we write up our paper, we can put that in the avenues for future exploration section" or something similar. It turns out that we never had time to look into these things, and our initial scope was usually well-defined considering the time we had. I'm not sure why this was always so front-and-center in my focus, maybe since I used to work in consulting and project budgeting/scoping is so unbelievably important in that context. Whatever the case may be, understand that you won't be able to change the world every time you do a project. Make some incremental improvement, reflect on the results, and then include some notes in a "potential avenues for future exploration" section. I was pretty surprised at how many people had so much trouble putting the pencils down at the end. I can practically guarantee that, for the classes where I did a project on my own, I probably did substantially less work than other individual groups for precisely this reason. In general, you probably don't have to do as much work as you think you do.

So, would I recommend the program overall? Absolutely. It's not perfect, I found some of the formats annoying - CS 7642 has no business having that final exam, it adds nothing to the class at all, is arbitrarily extremely difficult and the class is good enough and complete enough with the removal of that exam that its inclusion to me appears to be the result of some arbitrary quota somewhere. I also don't really like the group project format and profoundly disagree with the reasoning that GTech and most other academic institutions give as to why group projects are even good or necessary, however I do acknowledge that from a logistics and resource standpoint it's unmanageable to grade individual projects for every single person in a given class and group projects do decrease the number of papers that TAs will have to read. Considering the scale of what GTech has managed to do, and how many students enroll each year, I'm surprised the program is as well-managed as it is. Yes, it does require a lot of self-teaching, but in most cases you can actively engage with TAs multiple times a week if you're struggling with topics and from what I've seen they were very responsive.
Anyways just wanted to give my perspective as someone who just finished this program and still thinks it's worthwhile despite its flaws.

Vulvovaginal pain for 10+ years
Hormonal causes
Hello, I’ve been dealing with vaginal pain for most of my life, and I thought it was caused by hormones but now I’m unsure. Most of my pain is in my vestibule, however it’s sometimes in the vulva and clitoris (although not as much as the vestibule). I have never been able to have penetrative sex, and have done pelvic floor therapy and mental health therapy. I got my hormones checked, and was told it is because of low progesterone. I have been on a progesterone hormonal cream since January (now May) and I saw some improvements but not completely. I’m not sure if I should keep sticking with it, or try something else. I included a picture of my hormone panel above.
My vulva and especially vestibule is always red and uncomfortable, and certain ways of sitting and walking make it uncomfortable. I pretty much always have a discharge, and it is cream colored and somewhat thick, mostly around my period. I get a burning brown/black discharge before I start my period and after it ends, and it feels like lava.
I used to be on hormonal birth control pill for about 4 ish years (I’ve now been off for about 6 or 7 months) for heavvvvvyyy periods. My compounding pharmacist who made me the progesterone cream also said my adrenals are likely taxed, because I have had very high stress than the normal person (I am working on it, things are improving) and have high cortisol. She also thinks that my ovaries are probably not ovulating as they should, maybe because I had a restrictive eating disorder about 8 years ago during which I lost my period for about a year and had acne for the first time in my life after as well as osteoporosis. I’ve gotten STD panels and always been negative, and once the doctor gave me meds for a yeast infection and didn’t swab me. Next day went to someone who did swab me and it came back with zero yeast.
I’m saying all these symptoms to hopefully hear from people who have insight, since I’ve been to so many doctors and none seem to help me. I’m currently in urgent care as I write this because I believe I may have a yeast infection, although my symptoms are almost always like this.
I really want some help, I want a sex life, and I don’t want to live with this pain any longer. Please help! <3 I’m trying to remain positive.

My TSH high (12), my TPO antibodies are high (215), my TgAb is high (20.9) also had an ultrasound done and am supposed to start levothyroxin.
My u/s said “Slightly heterogeneous thyroid without increased Doppler flow, as can be seen with nonspecific thyroiditis. Recommend correlation with thyroid function tests”
All she has said is my “thyroid is out of whack” and is putting me on levothyroxin. My thyroid has never been like this before. It’s always been 2.3-2.5. I do have lupus and am afraid it will be blown off to lupus.
I have lost clumps and clumps of hair, feel like I could sleep 12-15 hours a day, I’m in bed all day, I went on antidepressants last month when I thought it was depression (I’m now thinking it was thyroid). I had a massive rage fit 2 weeks ago (before I knew my labs) which is super unusual for me. I even told my husband I did it know why I was feeling so much anger and everything was setting me off.
*edit to add I’ve gained about 30lbs this year alone.
Thank you!

Vulvovaginal pain for 10+ years
Hormonal causes
Hello, I’ve been dealing with vaginal pain for most of my life, and I thought it was caused by hormones but now I’m unsure. Most of my pain is in my vestibule, however it’s sometimes in the vulva and clitoris (although not as much as the vestibule). I have never been able to have penetrative sex, and have done pelvic floor therapy and mental health therapy. I got my hormones checked, and was told it is because of low progesterone. I have been on a progesterone hormonal cream since January (now May) and I saw some improvements but not completely. I’m not sure if I should keep sticking with it, or try something else. I included a picture of my hormone panel above.
My vulva and especially vestibule is always red and uncomfortable, and certain ways of sitting and walking make it uncomfortable. I pretty much always have a discharge, and it is cream colored and somewhat thick, mostly around my period. I get a burning brown/black discharge before I start my period and after it ends, and it feels like lava.
I used to be on hormonal birth control pill for about 4 ish years (I’ve now been off for about 6 or 7 months) for heavvvvvyyy periods. My compounding pharmacist who made me the progesterone cream also said my adrenals are likely taxed, because I have had very high stress than the normal person (I am working on it, things are improving) and have high cortisol. She also thinks that my ovaries are probably not ovulating as they should, maybe because I had a restrictive eating disorder about 8 years ago during which I lost my period for about a year and had acne for the first time in my life after as well as osteoporosis. I’ve gotten STD panels and always been negative, and once the doctor gave me meds for a yeast infection and didn’t swab me. Next day went to someone who did swab me and it came back with zero yeast.
I’m saying all these symptoms to hopefully hear from people who have insight, since I’ve been to so many doctors and none seem to help me. I’m currently in urgent care as I write this because I believe I may have a yeast infection, although my symptoms are almost always like this.
I really want some help, I want a sex life, and I don’t want to live with this pain any longer. Please help! <3 I’m trying to remain positive.

At the world’s top college of magic and technology, every day brings a new discovery -and a new disaster. The advanced experiments of the college students tend to be both ambitious and apocalyptic, with the end of the world only prevented by a mysterious time loop, and a small handful of students who retain their memories.
Surviving the loops was hard enough, but now, in his senior year, Vell Harlan must take charge of them, and deal with the fact that the whole world now knows his secrets. Everyone knows about Vell’s death and resurrection, along with the divine game he is a part of. Now Vell must contend with overly curious scientists and evil billionaires hungry for divine power while the daily doomsday cycle bombards him with terrorists, talking elephants, and the Grim Reaper himself -but if he can endure it all, the Last Goddess’s game promises the ultimate prize: power over life itself.
[Previous Chapter][Patreon][Cover Art]
“Should I be worried?”
Why would you be worried?” Kim said. “Dean Lichman loves us.”
Dean Lichman had asked the two of them to stop by his office, though his brief message had not said what for. That left Vell to concoct nightmare scenarios in his head.
“He doesn’t love all of us.”
“Alex doesn’t count as ‘us’,” Kim said. She was a looper in purely a technical sense, mostly due to her own refusal to be a team player. “Besides, she’s been behaving lately. She’s only been an asshole, not an active liability.”
“That we know of.”
“If we don’t know about it, Dean probably doesn’t either,” Kim said. “It’s fine, Vell, he probably just wants to ask us for advice or deal with some problem he has.”
“That’s not much better,” Vell said. “How weird would things have to be that the Dean is asking us for help personally?”
“Only one way to find out,” Kim said. She gestured to the door to the Dean’s office.
Kim entered first, and found it in much the same state as it always was. The desk piled high with paperwork, a small bowl of assorted candies shoved into the corner of the desk, and Dean Lichman behind it, frantically tapping away on a laptop. Vell had not been in this office for several years, and it was vastly different than the last time he’d been here.
“Ah, there you are, come in, have a seat,” Dean Lichman said. “Unless you’d rather we have our conversation elsewhere, Vell.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Well, it’s my understanding you haven’t been in this office since my, uh, predecessor,” Dean Lichman said.
“Oh, right, the kidnapping,” Vell said. “No, I’m good, I don’t really get traumatized by things anymore.”
Vell had been killed too many different ways in too many different places to have a functional trauma response. A few days ago he’d gotten his legs chewed off by a vending machine, and still stopped by it to pick up a soda on his way to the office.
“That’s a very concerning response, Mr. Harlan.”
“Yeah. Anyway, what did you need?”
Dean Lichman gestured for the duo to take a seat, and both did so. He folded desiccated hands in front of himself before beginning to speak.
“I would like to ask you two to take a look at an experiment that will be occurring later this week,” Dean Lichman said. “I don’t have any reason to believe it poses a threat, but I would like to be assured it is a safe and ethical environment, and, well, you two have a knack for identifying trouble spots.”
“You could say that,” Kim said. It was more accurate to say that trouble had a way of identifying them -and then leaping at them and ripping their heads off.
“I’d appreciate it if the two of you could simply examine the laboratory and give it your approval, or disapproval, as the case may be,” Dean Lichman said. “Though if you’re too busy, I fully understand.”
“If you don’t think this is dangerous, why are you asking for our help anyway?”
“Simply for my own peace of mind, frankly,” Dean Lichman said. “The school’s policies on animal experimentation are...satisfactory, I suppose, but I do want to take extra precautions when the subject is a creature as smart as an elephant.”
“An elephant?”
“Yes, a resident of a reserve in Thailand,” Dean Lichman said. “An older elephant by the name of Mae Noi. She has cancer, apparently, and she is submitting to experimental treatment in the hopes it will be useful for younger elephants.”
Kim’s digital face briefly flashed with a facial expression of concerned skepticism.
“‘She’ is submitting to treatment? As in the elephant?”
“Yes. Apparently the elephant can talk,” Dean Lichman said. “No, I don’t know how it works, they said it was ‘more impressive in person’.”
“Well now I kind of want to go just to see the talking elephant,” Vell said.
“Same.”
“Well, do try to take a few glances at the experiment’s safety while you’re there,” Dean Lichman said.
“Sounds like a plan,” Vell said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“I’ll be there too,” Kim said.
“Excellent. Thank you both, and I’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” the Dean said. He then bid them both a polite goodbye and returned to his mountains of paperwork. Vell took a step out of the office and then took a sip from the soda he’d recently retrieved from the evil vending machine.
“So, what do you think?”
“I think I really do want to see the talking elephant,” Kim said.
“Obviously, yeah, we all want to see the talking elephant,” Vell said. “I mean the whole situation. You think the elephant thing is going to be the daily apocalypse for that day?”
“Well, on the one hand, an elephant seems like the kind of thing that would kill us,” Kim said. “But on the other, I feel like the fact we have advance warning means it’s not going to happen.”
“True. The universe probably wouldn’t make it that easy for us.”
“Yeah, but the elephant thing still feels pretty threatening,” Kim said. “Only way to find out is to wait a few days, I guess.”
A FEW DAYS LATER
“Hello you two,” Dean Lichman said. “And Hawke.”
“Hey,” Hawke said.
“He also wanted to see the talking elephant,” Kim explained.
“Well, that’s not a problem, it was an open invitation,” Dean Lichman said.
“Thanks. Still, sorry for not saying I was going to show up in advance,” Hawke said. “It took me a long time to make up my mind whether I was more interested in or afraid of a talking elephant.”
“They are rather large, aren’t they? I suppose that could be intimidating.”
“I’m okay with elephants on their own, it’s the talking part that doesn’t sit right with me,” Hawke said. “What if the elephant doesn’t like me? What if I’m the first person to ever get insulted by an elephant?”
“You’re less afraid of getting trampled by an elephant than insulted by one?”
“I’m a little afraid of trampling, but elephants are chill,” Hawke explained. “They wouldn’t attack unless provoked. I kind of feel like one might call me a dipshit unprovoked, though.”
“You have oddly specifics fears, Mr. Hughes,” Dean Lichman said.
“Yeah.”
In spite of those fears, Hawke happily stepped through the door to the zoology lab. It did not take a long time to locate the elephant in the room, as it was a literal elephant. The towering pachyderm was in a makeshift pen in the center of the lab, with an ample supply of food and a strange pedestal in front of her.
“Dr. Chanthara,” Dean Lichman said, with a polite wave to one of the researchers in the room. “Good to see you. These are the students I told you about.”
“Hm. Nice to meet you,” Dr. Chanthara said. He was, perhaps not unreasonably, skeptical of why three seemingly random students were in charge of a safety inspection. The fact that one of the three was a robot made him even more skeptical.
“Hi, nice to meet you too, and, uh, don’t mind us,” Vell said. “We just have an eye for weird things other people might miss.”
“Sure. I- wait. Aren’t you that kid who got chosen by a god?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Vell said. “And her too, technically.”
Kim shrugged. She didn’t care for any extra attention on that point.
“Right,” Chanthara said. He was beginning to see why these students might know their stuff. “I suppose we should start by introducing you to Mae Noi. Say hello, Mae.”
The elephant shifted on her feet and poked her trunk at the wide pedestal in front of her twice.
“Hello. Friends,” a synthesized voice droned. Vell stepped a little closer to the pedestal, just enough to see that there were an array of buttons on the side facing Mae Noi.
“Oh, it’s kind of like a keyboard,” Vell said. He’d seen similar things used with dogs, though usually in a much simpler fashion. Mae Noi seemed to have a few dozen buttons at her disposal.
“Smart,” Mae Noi said, with another prod of her trunk.
“We initially put it into our sanctuary as a bit of a novelty, something elephants could choose to interact with,” Dr. Chanthara explained. “Mae Noi took to it a bit better than most. Especially once she found out she could use it to ask for food.”
“Food. Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin.”
“No, Mae, no food until after experiment,” Dr. Chanthara scolded.
“Experiment,” Mae Niko said with a prod. “Pumpkin.”
“Yes, experiment then pumpkin,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“That’s not really a talking elephant, is it?” Hawke said.
“It’s more talking than most elephants,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“Elephant. Smart,” Mae Niko said. “Smart.”
“Yes, uh, right, elephant smart,” Hawke said. He took a step back, to avoid any further offense and any further risk of being insulted by Mae Noi.
“You’re very impressive, Mae, don’t mind him,” Kim said. “How many words does she know?”
“Our platform back home has around three hundred words, though she’s still learning some of them,” Dr. Chanthara said. “The ‘travel’ version we put together only has a hundred, just enough to make sure she can get her basic needs met and communicate about the experiment.”
“Right, speaking of, I do believe we should put some time into our reason for being here,” Dean Lichman interjected. “You’re welcome to stick around afterwards, at Dr. Chanthara and Mae Noi’s discretion, of course, but we should get underway.”
“We probably should get to business, yeah,” Kim said. She tapped the side of her metal head. “I’m going to scan the lab. Vell, you talk to the elephant and make sure everything’s above-board.”
“Abov- oh, right,” Vell said. “Sorry, not exactly used to being able to ask animals if they agree to animal experimentation.”
“Experiment,” Mae said.
“Yeah, experiment,” Vell said, as he turned to Mae. “So, Mae Noi, this experiment might hurt, do you know that?”
“Experiment. Hurt. Elephant,” Mae Noi prodded. “Experiment. Help. Elephant. Help. Baby.”
“Help baby?”
“Baby. Baby. Elephant. Sick. Baby. Sick.”
“We’ve explained the nature of her condition to Mae Noi as best we can,” Dr. Chanthara said. “She has several children, and is concerned they might be similarly affected.”
“Help. Baby,” Mae Noi said. “Experiment. Help.”
The way Mae Noi frantically tapped the buttons tugged at Vell’s heartstrings, but he choked those emotions down.
“So you want to do this experiment to help baby, got it,” Vell said. “Even if it hurts you?”
“Elephant. Old,” Mae Noi said. “Hurt. Okay. Help. Baby.”
“Huh. Well, that does sound like informed consent to me,” Vell said. “Passes ethical muster, at least.”
The campus rules allowed students to be experimented on, with their consent, so Vell saw no reason not to apply the same standard to an elephant.
“You speak up if you change your mind about the experiment, okay?”
“Stop. Stop. Stop,” Mae said, mashing the same button a few times. “Yes.”
“You got it. I’m going to go help my friends check things out,” Vell said. “Good talking to you, Mae.”
“Good. Talk. Friend,” Mae said. She waved goodbye with her trunk, and Vell waved back. He wandered away from Mae Noi’s pedestal and found Kim and Hawke carefully examining rows of beakers and various other supplies.
“Nothing sus yet, boss,” Hawke said.
“Nothing caustic, mutagenic, or explosive?”
“Well, something mutagenic, but it’s supposed to be,” Kim said. She had scanners built into her body much like those that had once been in Vell’s glasses, allowing her to analyze the complex chemical formulas at a glance. “They’re going for some gene editing similar to what we’ve tried to do on human cancer patients. Low success rate, but not harmful. Some adaptations to work on elephants, of course.”
“Run it by any of our chemistry and biology student friends yet?”
“A few,” Kim said. “Haven’t gotten anything back yet, though.”
“Maybe run it by Skye, too,” Vell said. “She’d recognize anything that’d mutate an animal.”
“She does love to mutate things,” Kim said.
“Benevolently,” Vell insisted. “Just show her. I’m going to check for any stray equipment.”
The presence of an unusually large test subject had resulted in the lab being rearranged and reshuffled, so Vell did a quick scan for any misplaced equipment that might pose a threat. He found, to his surprise, a tidy and well-organized environment, with any and all extraneous materials securely locked away. There wasn’t so much as a shrink ray out of place. Vell did another loop just to be sure, but returned to his friends empty-handed.
“This place has less safety hazards than my lab,” Vell said. Hawke stared at him for a while.
“Why does your lab have safety hazards?’
“I do runecarving, there’s like, hammers and chisels,” Vell said. “Those can hurt people.”
“Mm, true,” Hawke said. “So you really didn’t find anything?”
“Nothing,” Vell said. “This place is secure as I’ve ever seen a lab be.”
“It’s like I said,” Kim began. “We got an actual warning about it, so obviously nothing’s going to go wrong. That’d be too easy.”
“Maybe,” Vell said. “Things can get teleported in, or someone could cast a spell, or something.”
“Yeah, but that applies to anywhere, at any time,” Kim said.
“Kim’s right,” Hawke said. “I say we go business as usual.”
“I guess,” Vell said. “We have to branch out a little, at least. Can’t keep an eye on one room all day.”
The trio stopped sulking around the outskirts of the lab and returned to Dean Lichman and Dr. Chanthara.
“Everything looks good,” Kim said. “Probably the safest lab I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“We have very high safety standards here at the Einstein-Odinson,” Dean Lichman said, defensively. “Relatively speaking. Innovation requires some risk.”
“I understand perfectly. So does Mae.”
“Hurt. Okay,” Mae said.
“Not that okay,” Vell said. “Nice meeting you, Dr. Chanthara. You too, Mae.”
“Wait.”
Mae prodded one of the buttons on her pedestal and then pointed her trunk at the three of them. Hawke looked deeply concerned, but stepped forward alongside Vell and Kim. Mae Noi appraised them with massive brown eyes, and then moved her trunk back towards the pedestal. Vell noticed a distinctive scar on the bridge of her long nose just as Mae Noi pressed another button.
“Joke.”
“...Joke?”
Dr. Chanthara sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Just go along with it,” he said. “She likes to tell her joke.”
“Uh, okay,” Vell said. “Let’s hear it.”
“What. Elephant. Favorite. Part. Tree.”
“Umm...I don’t know, Mae,” Vell lied. He’d heard this joke from a kid, once. “What part?”
“Trunk,” Mae said. She gave a loud bray of amusement and then slammed her trunk down a few more times to emphasize the punchline. “Trunk. Trunk.”
“Oh, ha, I get it,” Kim said, hoping her feigned laugh was convincing. She’d never tried to lie to an elephant before. “Good one, Mae.”
Mae Noi shifted from side to side, looking pleased with herself, while the trio took a step back and stopped their feigned laughter.
“Did you give her buttons just to tell that joke with?”
“She gets upset,” Dr. Chanthara said. “I’m not even sure she understands the pun, she just likes people’s reactions.”
“As long as she’s having fun,” Hawke said.
“We’ll get out of your hair now,” Vell said. “Good luck with the experiment, feel free to let us know if you need a hand with anything.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Dr. Chanthara said. Some of his earlier skepticism seemed to have softened, but he did not seem entirely onboard with three strangers mucking about with his experiment. Vell and his friends left before they stretched what little goodwill they had any further. Mae Noi waved her trunk goodbye as the three left the lab and stepped back onto the quad.
“I’m going to try and sneak some classes in,” Hawke said. “Later.”
“I’ll check some of our usual hot spots,” Kim said, before she too left. Once again alone, Vell headed to one of his own classes, and called up Samson.
“Hey, Samson,” Vell began. “See anything interesting while we were playing with the elephant?”
“Well, I thought I clocked someone acting suspicious, but it turns out he was only sneaking around to go see his boyfriend,” Samson said. “Nothing apocalyptic, but I did get called a homophobe, which is pretty emotionally devastating.”
“I’m sure you’ll recover someday,” Vell said. “Keep an eye out. Usually the safer things look, the more dangerous things end up being.”
“Will do,” Samson said, before saying goodbye and hanging up.
***
Vell got increasingly nervous the longer the day went without its daily disaster. He thought about checking in on Mae Noi again, but then recalled Kim’s warning about it being too obvious, but then remembered that nobody had seen anything suspicious anywhere else, but then remember that Mae Noi’s lab had looked perfectly safe-
“Vell.”
“Huh?”
“You’re spiraling,” Kim said.
“I’m not spiraling, I’m just,” Vell said, with a pause for contemplation. “Considering multiple options.”
“In a spiral fashion,” Kim said. “Eat the damn french fries. Honestly, what’s the point of ordering so many if you’re just going to let them get cold?”
“It’s not like they’re going to go to waste,” Vell said. The same time loop that allowed him to eat massive amounts of french fries without fear of gaining weight also allowed him to avoid food waste. One of the upsides of life in a time loop.
“Just eat, Vell,” Kim said. “You worry too much about all this shit.”
“I’m in charge, it’s my job to worry about it,” Vell said.
“It’s your job to handle it,” Kim said. “There’s no point thinking about this shit before it happens, you spend all day thinking about an elephant and then the universe drops, like, a bat with tentacles on your head. Just deal with as it comes, Vell.”
Vell leaned on the table and managed to chomp down on a french fry or two.
“You know, next year, when I’m not running the show anymore, I’m going to call and see if you still think it’s that easy.”
“I sure hope so,” Kim said. “I’m saying all this shit trying to make myself believe it too.”
“Oh good, you’re lying to both of us,” Vell said. “That’s cool.”
“Fake it ‘til you make it, Vell, that’s how it goes,” Kim said. “Eat your damn french fries.”
Vell rolled his eyes and returned to his fries, which were now starting to cool. Thankfully he would not have to worry about finishing them. A loud crash from across campus interrupted him mid-bite and nearly made Vell choke on his fries. He painfully swallowed the half-chewed food and then looked over his shoulder.
“Son of a bitch, finally,” Vell said. A few years ago he’d found it weird whenever he was relieved about a disaster, but now he was just genuinely glad to get it over with. The waiting was as killer as the apocalypse. He tossed his fries in the trash and headed toward the sound of chaos, with Kim right behind him.
“Already told everybody?”
“Well, I may or may not have left Alex and Helena out of the loop…”
“Kim.”
“They’d find out anyway,” Kim said. “I got to use my brain parts to get in touch with them, even over wi-fi that shit feels dirty.”
“Just get in- stop.”
Vell held out his hand. Kim froze in place and did not move. Not intentionally, at least. There was a small amount of unintentional movement. The ground was vibrating.
“Always love a good earthquake,” Kim said.
“That’s not a quake,” Vell said. “That’s...footsteps!”
Vell grabbed Kim and dove out of the way just in time for something to barrel through the walls of the dining hall and stampede across the room. Tables, chairs, and more than a few students were crushed under the feet of a hulking, brown-furred behemoth as it charged. Kim picked herself and Vell up off the floor and tried to trail its progress.
“That’s a- oh fuck me,” Kim said. “Please don’t say you told me so.”
Vell got his bearings and looked across the room at the titanic form of a woolly mammoth. Though it was definitely recognizable as an archaic mammoth, the ancient creature was also heavily mutated, unnaturally large even by mammoth standards, and with multiple curled, jagged tusks protruding from a slobbering maw.
“Well that could be unrelated,” Vell said. “Mammoths can come from a lot of places, cloning accidents, time machines…”
The mammoth reached a wall, and rather than barreling through, turned around, facing directly towards Vell. A prominent scar covered the bridge of its broad trunk.
“Oh, nope, that’s definitely Mae,” Vell said. The scar was in the same place and at the same angle. Even a clone wouldn’t have an identical scar.
Once the revelation had struck, Mae took her turn. Vell found himself staring straight down the barrel of a very angry mammoth coming right at him at Vell-squishing velocity. Luckily he’d been charged at by a lot of creatures over four years of looping.
Vell jumped up and to the side, and latched on to one of the curled tusks, which made for very convenient handlebars. Kim did the same on the opposite side of Mae, and punched her in the head.
“Wait, wait, hold off on the violence for a second,” Vell shouted. He tried to wave at Kim to stop, but Mae was thrashing so violently he had to grip the tusks with both hands.
“Good plan,” Kim shouted. “Can you get Mae on board?”
Another set of tables got crushed underfoot. Thankfully the other students were out of trampling range by now, but Mae Noi’s feet were still coated in the blood of earlier victims.
“Mae’s smart, maybe we can calm her down,” Vell said. He then ducked to dodge a swat from Mae’s mutated trunk.
“Call me crazy, Vell, but I think this is more than just a bad mood,” Kim said, as she climbed up Mae’s seven jagged tusks like a ladder.
“We have to try,” Vell said. The loopers rule against hurting other intelligent life forms had some flexibility for blood-crazed mutants on violent rampages, but they had to at least try to reason first. Vell climbed up on of Mae’s tusks and looked into one of her bloodshot eyes for any sign of recognition. “Mae! It’s Vell, do you remember?”
The only response Vell got was an enraged trumpet, which he didn’t think was a “yes”.
“Come on, bud,” Vell said. “What’s an elephant’s favorite part of a tree, right? The trunk?”
The massive brown eye staring at Vell blinked, and he felt a brief glimmer of hope. He then felt a brief glimmer of his lungs being crushed as Mae swung her head and slammed her tusks into the wall, and Vell along with them. Kim punched Mae in the throat and then jumped across the tusks to grab Vell and carry him to safety.
“You okay, Vell?”
He opened his mouth to respond, and a pint or two of blood came out instead.
“Apparently not,” he mumbled. “I might be down a few ribs. And a lung. Or two.”
Kim carried Vell a safe distance from the fight and set him down on the ground, where he promptly spat out another mouthful of blood.
“Okay, uh, you just lie there and try to die peacefully, I guess,” Kim said.
“Way ahead of you.”
***
“Was that last bit as funny as I thought it was?” Vell asked. “I think the blood loss was affecting my sense of humor.”
“It was kind of hard to appreciate in the moment,” Kim said. “But as far as dying jokes go, it was pretty good.”
Vell and Kim walked into the lair for their morning meeting and joined the loopers that had already gathered.
“Okay, what’d I miss while I was dead?”
“Well, after Alex was done getting herself killed,” Samson began.
“You’re saying that as if it’s something to be ashamed of,” Alex said. “Vell also died.”
“Yeah, but he got killed trying to do something good. You got killed trying to do something stupid.”
“Trying to eliminate a threat is not stupid,” Alex said.
“We don’t kill intelligent creatures,” Hawke said. “Sometimes we punch them into a coma, but we don’t kill them.”
“When a dog bites, you put it down, I don’t see why the same principle doesn’t apply to a mammoth that’s crushed seventy people.”
“That wasn’t Mae’s fault,” Vell said. “She got mutated, or something. On that note: did you guys figure out what happened to Mae Noi?”
“Nothing,” Hawke said. “Looked like Mae smashed up the entire lab, trampled everyone involved in the experiment too. Nothing left to investigate, and nobody left alive to interrogate.”
“Typical,” Vell sighed. “At least we have an easy out. Dean Lichman was really concerned about the ethics of that whole experiment. We raise some kind of complaint, we could probably get the whole thing shut down.”
“The problem is getting the complaint,” Hawke said. “That lab was airtight, Vell.”
“Apparently not completely airtight,” Kim said. “I can camp out in the lab and raise an entirely justifiable stink whenever something capable of making a murder-mammoth shows up.”
“And what if it happens so suddenly you can’t complain about it?” Samson asked. “For all we know that could’ve been some kind of dimensional rift, or time anomaly, or something. It might not be as simple as somebody just putting in the wrong syringe at the wrong time.”
“He’s got a point,” Vell said. “We might want to shut this down before it gets there.”
“Seems like our best option is to plant evidence, then,” Alex said.
Everyone else at the table spent a few seconds brainstorming ways to prove her wrong, and much to their frustration, could not.
“Okay, fine,” Vell said. “But it needs to be something incidental, not something anyone would get blamed for. We want to cancel the experiment, not get anyone in trouble.”
“I could have a seizure on some sensitive equipment,” Helena offered. “It’ll break something and nobody would dare get mad at me.”
“Can you fake a seizure?”
“No, but I’m allergic to elephants, so I’d probably have one anyway the moment I stepped in the lab,” Helena said.
“I don’t feel entirely comfortable sending you into anaphylactic shock for a bit,” Vell said.
“Offer’s on the table,” Helena said. “I’ll live. Wouldn’t have made it through that trip to the zoo otherwise.”
“Anybody have any non-medical emergency suggestions?”
“Seagull in the air vents,” Kim said.
“Will that work?”
“It happens now and then,” Kim said. “Seagull gets in, and Dean has to close down the whole lab for potential material damage and biohazard risks if they shit in the vents.”
“Really? We’ve never had to deal with anything like that,” Hawke said.
“It may shock you to learn that sometimes minor, tedious bullshit happens that we have nothing to do with,” Kim said.
“That is kind of surprising, actually.”
“Enough. Kim, can you grab a seagull?” Vell asked. He shouldered his bookbag, and stuck a hand into the extradimensional pocket that existed within it. “I can probably smuggle it in with my bag.”
“Yeah, I can get you a seagull,” Kim said. Since she did not need to sleep, she had to find ways to keep herself entertained at night, seagull-grabbing being among them.
“Alright, we’ll go grab one and put it in the bag,” Vell said. “The rest of you, be ready to meet us when I call.”
***
Roughly three minutes later, Vell put out the call and they reconvened in front of the biology lab.
“Yeah, that was much faster than I thought it would be,” Vell said.
“I’m great at grabbin’ birds,” Kim said. Seagulls were among the easier birds to snatch, even. They were suckers for food, and many of them were attracted to her shiny metallic body anyway.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Vell said. “I want this thing out of my bag ASAP.”
Even though the seagull was safely within a pocket dimension, Vell would swear he could still feel the bird thrashing and squawking inside his bag. He tightened his grip on the shoulder strap and led the way towards the zoology lab entrance. He grabbed the handle and held it as he froze for a second.
“Vell, what’s up? Is this bird escaping?”
“No, the handle’s vibrating,” Vell said. It was shaking the same way a wall near an incredibly loud speaker might. He pressed his ear to the door and listened closely. He opened the door immediately, and let all his friends hear the frantic trumpeting of a panicked elephant.
Inside the lab, Mae Noi was stomping her feet and trumpeting as loud as he long trunk would allow. She swayed from side to side in her pen, bumping against the walls not quite hard enough to damage them, but hard enough that it was clear she was doing it on purpose.
“What the heck is happening here?”
“Ah, Vell,” Dean Lichman said. He hustled over to Vell’s side and gestured to the entire room. “Maybe you can figure out what’s going on.”
Mae Noi stopped braying long enough to start mashing her trunk against her pedestal, mashing out the word “Bad” over and over again.
“Our test subject, Mae Noi, has been throwing an absolute fit ever since she got here,” Dean Lichman said. “Dr. Chanthara, these are the students I was telling you about earlier.”
While Vell reintroduced himself to Dr. Chanthara, Kim and Hawke stepped up to examine Mae Noi and her enclosure. It was a far cry from the peaceful, orderly scene they had examined on the first loop. They were half an hour earlier this time than before, but Kim found it unlikely that they had been able to calm Mae Noi down, clean everything up, and get back to work in such a short amount of time. They hadn’t mentioned any of this panic on the first loop either. They were soon joined in their confusion by Chanthara and Vell.
“We’ve tried everything; food, water, her favorite toys, even videos of her children,” Dr. Chanthara said. “We’ve even offered to call off the experiment, but she won’t listen.”
“She is an animal,” Alex said. “Sometimes they do things arbitrarily.”
“Not Mae,” Dr. Chanthara said. “Some of our sanctuaries residents from traumatic backgrounds can have outbursts, but Mae was injured in the wild. She’s never been like this.”
“Maybe some experiment on the island is upsetting her,” Vell said. “A sonic experiment only she can hear, or something…”
Vell stopped and thought about it. If there had been such an irritant, it would’ve been there on the first loop too. Everything always repeated exactly the same, except for-
“Could you, uh, take a step back for a second?” Vell mumbled. “I want to try talking to her.”
“Don’t get close,” Chanthara warned him.
“I’m not, I’m not,” Vell said. He didn’t need to get very close to tell a joke.
The massive brown eyes of Mae Noi stayed locked on Vell as he approached, and she continued to mash the “Bad” button on her pedestal.
“I know, I know, bad,” Vell said. “But, uh, do you want to hear a joke?”
Mae Noi stopped. She locked eyes with Vell for a few seconds, and then cautiously tapped a button on her pedestal.
“Joke.”
“Right, joke,” Vell said. He tried to recall the exact sequence of words Mae had used on the first loop. “What elephant favorite part tree?”
Mae didn’t blink.
“Trunk,” Vell said.
After a moment of contemplation, Mae Noi let out one final, fervent, trumpet, and then started mashing buttons on her pedestal again.
“Bad. Help. Help. Experiment. Bad. Help. Bad. Help.”
“Yeah, bad help, one second,” Vell said. He turned away from Mae Noi to look at Dean Lichman. “Hey, uh, excuse me, Dean? Hey, uh, if I remember correctly there are some pretty complicated rules on having intelligent animals on campus, yes?”
“Well, yes,” Dean Lichman said. After hearing of some questionable ethical practices involving an octopus back in first year, he had instituted a few clauses into the school’s ethical code of conduct regarding intelligent animals like elephants, octopuses, and dolphins. “Mae’s presence here is a bit of an outlier, but there were workaround, given her apparent consent to the experiment.”
“Yeah, about that, is she, uh,” Vell began. “Is she registered as a student?”
“Yes.”
Vell pursed his lips. It took a few seconds for his friends to catch on.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Samson snapped. He turned his back on the crowd and leaned against a wall while Hawke put his head in his hands.
“The first rule of looping,” Alex said quietly. “Loopers are randomly selected-”
She looked up and locked eyes with Mae Noi.
“From all registered students.”