This morning I called to the school after days of anxiety and stress.
and they confirmed me that Design BA "acceptance" letters were out last friday. So basically if you didn't receive any email last friday then you are either rejected or waitlisted.
Just informing for the ppl who might be under a lot of anxiety due to uncertainty. 🙂

Next Patreon Ko-fi Discord
PRs: u/anakist & u/BroDogIsMyName
- - - - -
The cave was dark, its luminescent crystals having long since faded, the shattered shards sprinkling onto the stone floors as inert fragments. Once intricate brickwork was now rubble and crumbled debris, their murals and etchings now lost to deterioration. Countless tunnels and subterranean floors had filled in over time, reducing the monument of his efforts to but a solitary room nested within an unremarkable hole in the hillside, far beyond the township he called home. Or so he assumed, anyway. There was no way of knowing where he was, nor if said home even existed anymore, though he was doubtful it did. It had been far too long since he entered this promise-turned-prison, and he had no more heart to ache.
An ashen glow of sunlight penetrated the pitiful, dreary depths he was once prideful of. The luminance fought against the haze of dust and miasma, but never quite brought its warmth inside, teasing him. He’d forgotten what it felt like to stand in that brightness. To experience the gentle breeze and soft rustle of leaves. Admittedly, the touch of nature’s blessing was one he never often experienced, making for those sparse moments of sunkissed relaxation to be amongst the first memories to dissipate. There were things he still recalled, of course—the days before a single well-intentioned decision changed everything.
The days before he knew only regret.
Altier could still picture the modest farmland that his brothers and father worked on, and how he watched from behind the moss-laden shutters of his room, a frail smile worn on his emaciated face. His two siblings were well and hearty; they quickly grew up to be strong men, becoming apprentices under the village’s herbalist and leatherworker respectively. One would always help their father tend to the crops while the other was off gaining the experience required to take over the storefronts of their eventual occupation.
Their father would regularly be seen wiping the sweat off his brow and wearing a proud grin whenever his young men came back to ramble about what they learned, even if the elder man never understood much of it. That hardly mattered to him; knowing his boys were happy was enough for him to listen with rapt attention, and he repeated their words to his spouse, pretending to know why what he talked about was impressive. The matron of the family always winked Altier’s way when his father would start his usual boasting, letting her adorable fool of a partner take pride in their children for wrapping their heads around whatever he couldn’t. She loved him anyway, calling him playful names with a serene and adoring smile. The sound of her laughter at her husband’s antics could warm even the coldest of winters.
She cared for Altier when she wasn’t busy tidying the home his father built with his own two hands, the structure degrading over time, yet cared for all the same. She would heat the iron stove they had saved up for, her enchanting singing softly reaching those who listened. His father purchased it from a promising blacksmith just to spare his poor wife the trouble of maintaining a fireplace; it cost them years of being frugal, but the delight she showed at no longer needing to bear the direct heat when preparing meals made it worth every coin.
Altier still blamed himself for wasting her time with his needs, but his main regret was the toll his birth took on the angel of a woman. Her constitution wasn’t the best even before his addition, and although she was far from crippled by it, the thin woman couldn’t quite hide the struggles it caused. She never explicitly said why she was so weak, but he assumed she didn’t want him to shoulder the blame for something she decided herself. He pretended not to.
Unfortunately, such a frailty was carried on to their youngest son, yet done so in the worst of fashions. Ever since Altier was but a babe, he struggled with even the simplest of tasks, his body brittle and his lungs temperamental. A gaunt, bedridden figure showed his pale flesh clinging to nigh useless musculature, with sunken cheeks and eyes shadowed by omnipresent illness. The doctors that visited their village only did so twice a year, and being seen by them cost a proportional sum. Yet his parents wasted their coin every fall and spring, hopeful that their child would be cured. They told him that it was subsidized by the crown when he asked how they could afford it, assuring him that it wasn’t making his family financially suffer. He kept quiet and smiled, hiding the fact that he could see the effects of their dwindling coffers.
The answer never changed. ‘Mana deficiency,’ the learned man had called it, recommending that the corpse of a boy channel energy from rare stones to ease his ailment. The doctor even offered to procure an appropriately attuned gem himself, which Altier’s parents latched onto, evaporating their meagre savings and relegating the hopes of hiring help for the fields to being but a dream. The first element, Nature, was what most people held some affinity for, and even if his alignment was dismal, a concentrated stone would curb the worst of his symptoms.
The light green gemstone failed to so much as warm within his palms.
His doting mother and strong-willed father were undiscouraged. In fact, they were delighted; they voiced enthusiastic speculation on what affinity their troubled boy might have, seeing as how something considered ‘common’ was unsuitable. Altier was of a different mind, seeing the blinds of optimism veiling the impending downfall of reality. The pair couldn’t fathom anything but excellence from their offspring, and although they never forced unrealistic expectations upon their young, they were ignorant of just how crushing that faith could be.
They never saw how strained his smile became as gem after gem lay inert in his hands, while their excitement only grew, though that too came to an end. Altier’s hopes of recovery vanished when his father was the one to break the news; the doctors had no more stones to give. They had tried them all, and anything more potent was well outside their means. He was promised that the search for a solution would continue, neglecting the fact that they had already borrowed funds from most of the village to afford what they already found.
His father held him in a tight embrace that night, reassuring the stock-still boy. Altier never noticed how his eyes had gone wide at the information. He didn’t even feel the rivulets of tears pouring down his sickly skin. No, he simply remained frozen as he connected the dots as to why his mother wasn’t the one delivering the news.
She wouldn’t be able to hide the fear in her eyes.
Though beleaguered he might be, Altier was not so ignorant as to forget the one gemstone they never tried—the only affinity that had yet to be tested, and never would be.
Decay.
Reviled by the church and woven into the concepts of death and entropy, Decay was what stalked heroes in tales of old. Decay was what bled from graveyards and followed the monstrous attacks that left bustling townships as little more than crumbled ruins. Decay was powered by pain, suffering, and bloodshed, using the gathered energies to bring forth yet more horrid atrocities.
And he was one of the accursed few who manifested an affinity with such a voracious element. It fed off his own vitality, consuming him to fuel its demands. He would never be healthy as long as he stayed quiet and kind; every ounce of growth would be combated by ever-increasing requirements. Eventually, the pittance he supplied might not be enough, and therein lie the fear he remembered in his mother’s visage.
He would be killed by his own affinity…or kill to provide for it.
Unwilling, unintentional death would be stripped from the cloth of others’ survival.
The bedridden young man became further withdrawn after that, turning away visitation to immerse himself in daydreaming. They still loved him, and they were sure to remind him constantly, yet he couldn’t help but notice that even the most assertive interaction never brought them closer than the doorway. He smiled regardless, escaping into books read by candlelight. The stories made his isolation less painful.
Altier lived vicariously through tales of knights combating orcs and goblins, suave merchants persuading harpies and lamia to relinquish their collections, and impeccable heroes who stood atop slain menacing dragons. It was a pastime of his that arose when his father acquired an old storybook from a roaming trader; he would turn the final page, then try to guess where fact ended and fiction reigned supreme. He had heard of the many monsters while eavesdropping from his window, but they all were either settled in distant lands or subdued by the army before they became a problem. A peaceful township like his benefited greatly from being so far from the uninhabited wastes beyond the kingdom’s borders, yet also came with its detriments—the lack of apothecaries was a notable one.
He was surprised when he heard the hushed whispers from beyond his room, the earthen pathways of their village set alight by curious voices. Men, women, and children alike gathered in front of their homes and workplaces to watch as soldiers of the king’s army politely marched through the streets, stopping in front of the humble abode belonging to a family of five.
At first, he feared that the financial toll of his condition had hindered his parents from paying due tax, earning the crown’s ire. But no, they came with a proposition; one of the king’s aides had received a letter from a doctor providing someone with elemental stones, and the news of a decay affinity was apparently quite intriguing to them.
He listened to parents refusing to part with their son, yet he also heard his brothers citing just how miserable their youngest was, begging their father not to imprison a child inside the cage of good intentions. It was hard to place both arguments inside the same frame, but it was clear that everyone still cared for him in spite of his affinity. The talking turned to shouting, then flipped to sharpened silence when the stairs creaked beneath his feet, drawing attention to the thin form of his weakened body. He took advantage of the guilty looks and curious new faces to ask what the offer was.
The crown’s minister of magic wanted to hire him—an absurd thought, but one he confirmed by having them repeat it twice. Decay seemed to be an exceedingly rare affinity, and was sparsely documented outside its occasional mention in yarns tumbling past the lips of horribly scarred and inebriated adventurers. He was wanted for study, and after receiving clarification that the process wouldn’t be harmful, he almost considered it. Why wouldn’t he? As much as his family tried, they were terrified of what he might become or do. He was tired of placing a burden upon them, never being able to help with the farm or clean around the house, and he was disgusted with how much more difficult his parent’s life was just by his existence. Of course, his mother and father had countless gripes they brought to light when they saw his contemplative expression, but the knight at the table placed down the final counterpoint.
A writ of promised compensation and a pouch of coin clinked against the aging furniture. The king himself had signed the document, and although neither of his parents received much education, they were both able to read the amount. As long as Altier continued to work, the crown would pay a portion of his earnings directly to his family. The house could get desperately needed repairs, the fields would see new farmhands, and his mother could hire help. They could have everything Altier had taken from them since his birth…and all he had to do was say yes.
So he did.
He ignored the protests, gathered his things, then hugged his parents and siblings farewell the next morning, promising to send them letters on how he was whenever he could. They were less than thrilled—hearing from him once a season at best wasn’t preferable—but they eventually wished him well when he explained that he hoped to control his affinity. His mother wept upon realizing he was aware of her concern over all those years. He cried when she told him that it pained her to remain so distant. The fear for her own life was something she didn’t feel at all; she just didn’t want him to blame himself if something happened that he couldn’t control.
“I brought you into this world to be loved,” she whispered into his ear as she held him, her voice damp and cracking, yet filled with familial affection. “I knew what it would cost me when I learned I was pregnant again; I just didn’t consider how you could think it was your fault. I would never forgive myself if you suffered because of something I decided. Death is too kind a punishment for what it would do to you.”
It took a while, but he did manage to collect himself enough to walk with his escort to the village’s limits, one of the soldiers helping him stay upright without an order or word of protest. They brought him to a carriage, then set off for the mainland, the view of his home shrinking until it was a mere speck in the distance. He could almost still see his parents’ faces filled with pride and sorrow, awestruck by his selflessness yet torn by his departure. His brothers had kept their facade of confidence and a jovial demeanour, but their concern bled through strained smiles. He fell asleep to the sounds of horses and the crackle of rocks against wooden wheels.
Some time passed without much of note occurring. Altier was examined by kind people of a town that was still rather far from the city, but no one had specifically said he was going there, so he wasn’t sure why he didn’t think to ask. Nevertheless, his affinity was documented using tools he couldn’t identify, and the answers he got for his inquiries passed straight through his ears. He was worried his lack of education would irritate the obviously more well-off researchers, yet the soft-spoken academics didn’t dislike him for his ignorance. They tried explaining things to him in ways he could understand, but switched to more general conversation when he was still struggling to comprehend. It was fine, though; he enjoyed the company.
Despite the long wait for a reply, the first letter he got back from his parents was a reassurance he didn’t know he needed. They had received their first payment since he left, and the pages were scrawled edge to edge with their praises, worries, heard gossip, and a single mention of his brother courting a woman. Altier wrote how glad he was that they were well, told them of all the interesting sights, his disappointment at not being in the capital proper, and how kind everyone was. He chuckled to himself after handing the letter off to be delivered, a last minute thought having him jot down a request for his mother to tease the nascent couple in his stead. He wondered if the next reply would include a relationship or not.
Things took a turn after a year. His eldest brother was still seeing his sweetheart, while the middle sibling had yet to have anyone catch his eye, his sights set on his work with the herbalist. Their mother mentioned how she suspected he was interested in the older woman in charge of providing salves and poultice for the village’s ill, and although she was hoping for him to find someone his own age, she put his happiness over having grandchildren. Their father was just as supportive, putting down his own sloppily written query on how their ‘brave boy’ was doing in romantic endeavours.
Altier smiled as he read, updating his family on how he had been moved to a more isolated region since their last correspondence, and thus wasn’t really able to meet anyone he could see himself with. He insisted he was fine, scattering well-wishes and the like while he avoided speaking of events he had promised not to mention. The response came off as somewhat stiff, but he was sure they would understand. All that really mattered was that they were happy and healthy.
His profession as a research subject came to an end, in a way. After collecting what information they could, there was a period where no one bothered to visit the Decay-afflicted young man. He dwelled within his humble accommodations in the middle of a forest, but he didn’t press when the people assigned to deliver food refused to answer where he was. It was fine; he had new books brought to him regularly, and knowing that his family was being taken care of by his ‘work’ was enough to dissuade him from complaining. He stayed quiet even as he got sicker and sicker, some nights spent shivering next to the fireplace with the most recent letter being held by trembling hands. The look of contentment on his face was genuine despite the insufferable pain.
Someone did eventually visit his little hovel in the woods. A man who introduced himself as a ‘Technician’ entered, accepted some simple tea, and made polite conversation for a while. It was a pleasant experience for someone who had grown used to solitude. Once they had both finished their drink, the Technician called for an aide to bring in an unexpectedly opulent box. The gold trim parted to reveal a strange orb—a ‘core’ the man called it, though he was reticent on what it was or did. All Altier was told was to spend the night’s rest with it in his hands, and by the morning, he would no longer suffer from his affinity.
“There is still much for us to learn, Altier,” the Technician promised, putting the younger man’s worries to rest. “Tomorrow, you will be stronger than ever. I would wager your parents will be ecstatic once you tell them.”
“W-what are we studying next?” Altier stuttered out, feeling the weight of the strange stone as it was laid into his unsure grasp. It was no larger than an apple, yet the smooth obsidian sphere somehow dragged him downward by the heart, the flawless surface captivating his attention in a way he both liked and despised. Light bent as he inspected the object, almost avoiding its very presence. He settled it on his lap after a moment, conflicted about how he would be healed by something the very world seemed to reject.
“We,” the newcomer started, flourishing an arm towards Altier, “are going to prepare. With your help, we can create the heroes from those stories you so love.”
It was a bitter memory in retrospect, yet the sickly boy at that table was entranced by what was promised to him. His soul would be captured by the orb, and he would be given the ability to make a Dungeon—the very same he read about hundreds of times. His body would be taken care of, suspended until he returned to it, which he was assured would be whenever he wanted.
That assurance came with a stipulation, however. Were he to decide that he was done, he would lose his new abilities, return to his old form, and be sent on his way, fully healed. But—and there was always a ‘but’—his parents would no longer receive compensation. The king had been withholding from implementing a tax increase in his village, and once the reason for it was no longer employed, then the other ministers would place immeasurable pressure until he capitulated. Altier’s whole world before leaving would fall under the demands. The Technician wore a sombre, sympathetic gaze as he expressed how difficult things would be for the boy’s parents.
Stupid, gullible Altier agreed, thanking the stranger for the opportunity. He went to bed with hope in his heart and wonder on his tongue.
[Initializing…]
[User identified: Altier
Affinity: Decay
Status: Deteriorating (Insufficient mana supply)
Inherent Ability: Avatar of Decay]
[Error: Insufficient Mana. System will acquire the excess from suitable sources as dictated by the User.
Error: User is unable to designate a suitable source.
Searching based on default requirements…Source found.
Converting source to Mana…Success.
Synchronizing…Success.
Updating libraries…Success.
Implementing framework…Success.
Establishing Domain…Failure. Insufficient Mana. Insufficient Authority.
Modifying criteria…Success.
Establishing Domain…Success.]
[Dungeon established! Generating assignment…Success.]
[Priority assignment: Prevent the End—324:450:3247:345:34:12]
[Priority assignment: Prevent the End—324:450:3247:345:34:11]
[Priority assignment: Prevent the End—324:450:3247:345:34:10]
- - - - -
When he awoke, it wasn’t to the small room where books threatened to take over every available surface, but to a claustrophobic darkness that crushed him as much as left him weightless. He had been warned that the experience would be disorienting, so he clenched the jaw he learned was no longer there, took a breath that could no longer be taken, and waited like he was supposed to.
Thankfully, the Technician was a man of his word, and he came back shortly after Altier had managed to figure out the basics of…well, of whatever he was turned into. He found a way to ‘see’ the world around him, though ignoring the sense of vertigo that came with having sight of everything at once was difficult. There was text that he could summon or dismiss at will, but it only really displayed a countdown he wasn’t familiar with. Truth be told, he wasn’t quite sure what to think of things back then, but he remembered feeling relieved when the Technician brought droves of researchers.
The first thing he noticed with his new senses was that he was underground. The second was that he didn’t know how to talk without a mouth. Apparently, his new company had a list of expected inquiries, and they set out to answer as many questions as he might have.
Someone explained that they had already moved his body to a secure area, and in order to make use of his nascent abilities, his new form was taken to a suitable location. It made sense to him; if he was supposed to be a place where soldiers trained to fight monsters and get stronger, then they needed it somewhere hidden away from people who might accidentally wander in. Guards were apparently placed outside the entrance, but when he tried to separate his focus from the polished black orb, his sight grew dim and indistinct. They mentioned that sort of thing was expected, and once they placed him on a pedestal, he would be able to ‘feel’ his Domain more clearly.
He learned over time what a Domain was and how to use it, guided by the researchers and the occasional soldier or knight who stopped by to see how Altier was performing. He summoned his first creature using his stockpile of mana, though the spider wasn’t very threatening. Apparently, the pool of his new resource incremented passively based on how large he was, and would strengthen his abilities, but it also required an upkeep to maintain. He could get more by analyzing new materials, objects, or whatever else he hadn’t seen before, and he gained a larger amount by absorbing something—after inspecting it, ideally. Beginning as a single room, neither the upkeep nor income was particularly exciting, but the researchers also had a solution to that: Invaders.
‘Invader’ was a term that referred to any creature that entered his Domain, and although he gained mana during their occupation, they were also a threat to the core. His imminent concern for his safety was abated by the Technician quickly assuring him that, in the unlikely event that the core was destroyed, he would be transferred back to his body without any ill effects, but it would also bring an end to the agreement that prevented his family from being crushed by financial demands. He quietly reiterated the point until it stuck, then waited through the explanation until he had most of his questions answered.
Sadly, the Altier back then didn’t know what questions to ask.
Once he worked out how to summon and manage the most basic of creatures, his guides urged him to build and expand, which took some getting used to. A single room became a hub of connections, and despite the advice given, he metaphorically banged his head against the wall that was trying to close off his core. It just didn’t work; any walls would refuse to be built, containers would topple before they fell over him, and everything else he tried ended just as unspectacularly. Something would always be able to reach him if they had the desire to.
Eventually, he was put through mock ‘invasions’ where fresh trainees fought his creatures, reached the core, then stopped to place a hand on it before leaving, taking some of his mana as a reward. He didn’t understand how it worked, but he learned that people could ‘absorb’ some experience to fuel their affinity if they touched him. The more experienced he became, the more that invaders received, and the more experience he got from defending his core from increasingly powerful invaders. It was a cycle he could comprehend, and it put to rest the lingering fear that someone would try to break his core.
There was also something of an exchange going on; coloured motes were left behind on the core’s surface, then slowly absorbed. Each time it happened, he gained a little more insight on how to integrate new things into his dungeon—first a small pool of water, then a fire, then other things that seemed fairly removed from the concept of ‘Decay.’ As soon as a researcher noticed what was going on, the Technician encouraged Altier to specialize in a particular element, since that was apparently more efficient. With a few more long-winded explanations, he had figured out how to hide anything that wasn’t related to Decay within his ‘menu,’ and focused on making himself as strong as he could.
Mock invasions became a regular occurrence, each one taking place after he had the chance to patch holes in his strategy or adjust rooms. He discovered that expanding downwards was an option, but doing so meant that he needed a ‘Boss’ to precede the stairs. The selection unsettled and excited him. A skeleton was what ended up guarding the way deeper into his Domain, and at the insistence of his guides, he left the new creature…monster…? He left his new creation as it was and set about expanding the second floor. Thankfully, the task went smoother since he knew what to do, and soon enough, he was the proud owner of ten floors. Every boss focused on testing what the knights and soldiers knew about fighting and teamwork, and every floor down grew harder and harder to contest.
Altier’s first ‘victory’ was gained when his ‘invaders’ surrendered on the ninth floor. He had been proud of that; they weren’t expecting him to branch into using animal as well as humanoid skeletons. A well-placed Ox made short work of their forces, but stopped before doing more than bashing them around. The thrill of defending his core was incomparable. He also gained access to some more cosmetic options for his existing structures, including the ability to write on a sign if he so wished—though doing so was prohibitively expensive. He didn’t care; a sign was put near the entrance within seconds, asking if someone would mind letting him know when letters arrived from his parents, and to write his reply to send back.
To his relief, it wasn’t much longer before a letter did arrive. He was delighted to hear that all was well, yet sad when he wasn’t able to attend his brother’s wedding. It was a simple affair, true, but he would have liked to go. He asked the person who was kind enough to read it out for him to pen his response, then got back to improving his Domain. His family was doing well, and if being the best dungeon he could be would ensure their happiness lasted as long as possible, then he would be just that.
Ten floors became twenty. Twenty became forty. He hit one-hundred floors after constant effort, happily using signs to ‘talk’ through short phrases with the nicer groups of ‘invaders’, while he mostly ignored the rest. It was too hard to keep track of everyone after a while, but he was supposed to be a training ground, so he kept up doing what he was supposed to, mentally smiling when someone he was keeping tabs on managed to overcome a challenge they were struggling with. Some got stuck on certain floors, unable to adapt to new creatures, while others had a hard time traversing the increasingly long voyage to his core. He made small recovery rooms for a party that thanked him for the challenge, filling basins with food and water, then instructed his creatures not to bother anyone inside.
Surprisingly, the group accepted his offer of rest with gratitude that seemed excessive. They spoke to the walls, regaling him of their various journeys and the humorous events spread throughout. He enjoyed the time spent focusing on that area, as well as the gifts people sometimes left behind. Each new item was transferred to a room near his core, where he kept a collection of keepsakes ranging from books to tarnished jewellery that had more sentimental value than monetary. Still, it was all priceless to him, displayed proudly next to the letters he received regularly from his family.
His one-hundred floors became two-hundred, and he struggled to find recurring visitors after some time. The soldiers grouped up into parties of five or six, venturing into the dungeon with the goal of increasing the strength of small units. Altier adjusted the difficulty to accommodate, dialing back the force he once used to combat near endless waves of knights. Magic was something that came from the change in tactic, much to his surprise. It was weak, but pretty much everyone who tried the dungeon could light a torch or chill their water. He wasn’t well-learned about what any particular element could do, but he was glad to see that his new participants were indeed getting stronger.
The two-hundred floors became three-hundred, which then became four-hundred. Altier’s creatures would have been terrifying if it wasn’t for the fact that he had yet to kill anyone, the skeletal monstrosities looming through corridors like horrific nightmares made manifest. He was pleased to find that they listened rather dutifully when he said to escort those who surrendered to the entrance, which was most people. In fact, hardly anyone ever made it to his core anymore, despite the jump in power of various magics he often saw. Flamethrowers, earthen spikes, empowered bodies, and many more effects were in play within each party that tried to conquer his trial. A particularly adept group eventually placed their hand on the obsidian sphere, taking suffocating amounts of mana, while also leaving a thick haze of their own. His creatures became far stronger for it, and so he adjusted the difficulty once more, wondering when they would try to best him again. Unfortunately, they never did, but he saw some people who shared a striking resemblance, and the newcomers were easily more magically inclined. It was fun to challenge them.
The cycle repeated, though he wasn’t sure when the Technician stopped visiting. Altier was too busy keeping his end of the deal, improving the crown’s army in exchange for giving his family a life they deserved. He did notice something wrong after the letters started taking a while to come, and although the contents filled him in on the newest events, things started seeming…out of character. The feeling tickled at his mind, but it was fine. They were happy and well.
How foolish he was.
A party entered shortly after he completed his six-hundredth floor, instantly setting off an incomparable feeling of dread. His senses warped when he tried to focus on them, blocking everything in their vicinity from his view. It took a bit for him to figure out why, but they were carrying something that sucked the mana out of the very dungeon itself, and his unbidden instincts screamed that whatever it was needed to be destroyed. He reacted without thought, releasing everything he determined too dangerous for simple training in a bid to drive them out.
It wasn’t enough. He watched the void travel floor after floor, leaving nothing but dismembered skeletal creatures in their wake. Veritable monsters were slain, chimeras he had worked on as a side project became incinerated dust, and the signs he left for the weary were torn off the walls. A voice bellowed through his halls from the darkness he couldn’t see, declaring what was happening.
They were not there to train. In order to defend against a force threatening the kingdom, they needed power, and in order to gain that, they needed his mana. His experience. All of it.
They were there to break the core under the king’s decree.
Altier’s nonexistent heart stopped, memories of how impoverished his family used to be flashing through his mind, and with a near silent refusal, he let the instincts to get rid of the invaders swallow him whole.
By the time he calmed down, it was to a pit of blackness and a dull pull in his ephemeral chest stopping him from being able to do anything. He could still ‘hear’ though, and he heard the choking breaths of a single man in his core’s room. He heard the bitter laughter that followed accusations of dooming the very world…as well as sympathies for what the pale, sickly, Decay-afflicted man had gone through.
Altier could only listen as the man told him how his dungeon was hundreds upon hundreds of years old, and how the party had been briefed on its history. He listened as the man spoke of the letters that were to be presented to the dungeon every scant decade, yet always claimed to be given every few months. The groups he befriended had left to start families of their own, and their children returned to befriend him as well, continuing the cycle and passing it on in a generations-long tradition. He listened as he ignored the warnings popping up, the transient text telling him that his mana production was insufficient to support the dungeon. That he was dying.
When the man perished, and the dungeon collapsed piece by piece, Altier listened to silence, because there was nothing else he could do.
Nothing besides reading the text that lingered in his vision amidst the warnings.
[Priority assignment: Prevent the End — Failure]
- - - - -
Altier ‘looked’ at the dim orb that seemed so much like his own, its small form sat next to dust that might have once been the man who unveiled all those truths so long ago. He didn’t know how long it had been since then, only that he was still alone. He wasn’t even angry anymore; the energy needed to feel rage or sorrow was gone. He was just lonely.
[Attempting to reestablish Mana Well…Failure.]
The core dismissed the message absently, more than aware of what it read. Thousands of the notifications had passed by, interspersed by various abilities and whatever else becoming ‘corrupted.’ He didn’t care anymore. His dungeon was his pride at some point, but now he just wanted to feel the sunlight that slowly dimmed as night claimed the evening sky. It would be nice to see the stars again. Or just outside, assuming there was anything left to see. Maybe it was all a desolate wasteland.
[Restructuring Affinity: Decay…Failure.
Reorganizing libraries…Failure.
Re—]
[Error. Ability ‘Avatar of Decay’ has been corrupted. Please provid—]
[Error. System corruption exceeding threshold. Please provide a valid framework.]
[Error. Affi—]
It might as well be. He sold himself to ensure his family’s well-being, but how many of those letters were real? Did they have a good life, receiving word that their ‘brave boy’ was healthy and happy? He hoped so. All there was left to do was watch the thin glow of the outside shift. Eventually, that draining orb the floor would run out of things to take from him. And to think that he just wanted those he cared about to be well…
[Error. Stability compromised. System integ—]
Altier roused from his trance, lethargically shifting his focus to a flicker of shadow near the deteriorated entrance. How strange it was to have his core room be right next to outside, yet he didn’t recall how that came to be. Magic, possibly, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. He was tired of numbers and percentages. Of values and skeletons. He was tired of being a dungeon, and of being alone.
A rock—a pebble, really—tumbled into the shallow curved hallway that acted as the path to his core, a strange sound getting louder. He ‘felt’ his brow furrow in perplexion before he actually considered what was happening. That was a voice. Speech. Someone was talking.
He was stunned silent before enthusiasm could build. A gaunt bipedal creature entered the cave, though it was decidedly not human. Taloned feet supported two legs, though they walked on their toes, he supposed. Its skin was reptilian, the pale black colour still managing to look plush, if dry. A thick, long tail swayed slowly to correct its weight, shifting its tattered garment that looked more like worn burlap than clothing. Nervous hands fiddled with chipped claws and felt along the wall, a lack of care rendering them dull and dirty. Fearful, exhausted eyes wandered the cave, the grey irises showing a pained soul underneath an etched smile on otherwise soft features.
Altier ransacked his memory as the creature nervously looked for something in his desolate ‘dungeon,’ recalling a crude painting in one of his old books. It was a kobold, though they shouldn’t have been anywhere near the kingdom, not that it mattered now. The scaly occupant muttered to itself, their voice soothing and feminine in a language he didn’t know. He wouldn’t have minded the conversation, but it was a moot point; he lost the ability to write on signs long ago. A part of him was surprised he would talk with a monster from his stories. He was never overly involved with his fellow humans—excluding his family and the odd party in his rest areas—but he figured there would be more resistance. There was no point in thinking about it. It would leave when it realized there was nothing here, and he would be alone again.
The last thing he would have expected was the kobold noticing a dusty obsidian orb sat atop crumbled stone, then excitedly picking said orb up to hold against its chest, its chirps of excitement filling the quiet room. Or, it would have been the last, if not for the messages that appeared.
[Compatible library found! Synchronizing…Error. Framework is incompatible.
Restructuring framework…Error.
Redefining framework…Error.
Replacing framework…Success.
Restructuring framework…Success.
Defining Affinity…Error.
Redefin—
Error.
Error.
Err0r.
Er44#%$@.
Rein#$^!@zing…Er$&*or.
Domaaaaaa#@%in…Er^r.
@%$%#$R.
Aff%$^: Null…Su^@!#ss.
D#@%^a@#n Es^!@l%#@ed!—]
[Null]
[Pr#%y #@$nment: ERRRR#*#$RRR—]
[Null]
[Priooooooority Assignmentmentmnet: B#&#$^—]
[Null]
Next

I've been unemployed ever since I got done with uni, and I keep getting rejections. I have been actively trying for the past 4 months to land a job but to absolutely no avail. I have two degrees and no work experience (which in hindsight was very stupid of me). I keep getting rejection after rejection and there are no jobs left to apply to, a friend of mine told me to start messaging hiring managers and talent acquisition specialists from the companies that I want to work for. A cousin of mine told me to message the employees (eg. if i want to work in audit, then I have to message the audit manager). I'm kinda apprehensive about doing this because I don't want to come across as annoying and ruin any chances that I have but at the same time I'm also extremely desperate to land a job.
Any other advise on how to land a job is welcome. I really don't know what I'm doing wrong, I have a well-formatted CV and draft a personalized cover letter for every job, ironically I was getting more opportunities when I had a shitty CV and a sub-par cover letter (however those companies basically just gave my one interview, strung me along for a couple of months and then gave me a rejection letter).

I’m a Law Student who was able to get a job at Services Australia December 2024 as a APS 4 Service Officer. I have reached the end of probation and will pass. Before I started working at Services Australia I had also applied to ATO’s University Paid Internship Program. I’ve passed all rounds including police check and have received the letter of offer. My probation at SA ends in June. ATO’s position is as a casual APS2 Administration Officer in the legal team which is more relevant to my degree and field. The causal rate will be higher then my base pay atm. Right now as a APS4 I get $37 an hour after checking my payslip. ATO’s casual rate is $40. The money isn’t the issue. I’m just unsure whether to stay or go. Services Australia has been pretty flexible with me. I was able to go on part-time arrangements 2 months into probation because they were really happy with my performance and I’m currently working 3 days a week alongside attending uni. They have hinted here and there that I need more training and if the call for “national training” comes they can’t support my current part-time arrangement. Other times my manager has said she’s ready to work with my uni schedule moving forward and not to stress. So it’s kind of like mixed signals. My original plan was to stay at Services Australia while I finish my uni degree (2 years) and then apply to be a Legal graduate as it would be very advantageous having previous experience in the agency. I’m passing probation and will have a permanent position - some type of job security. ATO is casual and with that comes the chance of being let go whenever. But it’s in the legal team! Which would be really great experience. I just don’t know what to do. I have to either accept or reject the letter of offer within 5 working days. Tomorrow is the last day lol. I’ve tried emailing ATO onboarding services to delay the start date since ATO has 3 intakes per year: Feb, July & Nov but no response. It would be perfect if the start date could be delayed since I would get a little more experience and exposure at SA before moving to the ATO and learning things there. If I had to choose, which one would be better? Please help me out!

Owning a bike is not just about the thrill of the ride; it also comes with the responsibility of ensuring that your two-wheeler is adequately protected. This is where bike insurance comes into play, providing financial coverage in case of accidents, theft, or damages. However, understanding the claim process in bike insurance is crucial to making the most out of your insurance policy. In this blog, we will walk you through the step-by-step claim process for bike insurance, incorporating keywords such as two wheeler insurance, two wheeler insurance online, 2 wheeler insurance, insurance policy for bike, bike insurance third party, and bike insurance price.

Understanding Bike Insurance Claims

Before diving into the claim process, it’s important to understand the types of bike insurance available:

1. Comprehensive Two Wheeler Insurance: This type of insurance covers both third-party liabilities and damages to your own vehicle due to accidents, theft, natural disasters, and more.
2. Third-Party Bike Insurance: This covers damages or injuries caused to a third party in an accident involving your bike. It is mandatory by law.
3. Standalone Own-Damage Bike Insurance: This covers damages to your own bike but does not include third-party liability.

Steps to File a Bike Insurance Claim

1. Inform the Insurance Company

• In the event of an accident, theft, or any other damage to your bike, the first step is to inform your insurance company. This should be done as soon as possible, ideally within 24 hours of the incident. If you have two wheeler insurance online, you can notify the insurer through their website or mobile app.

2. File an FIR (First Information Report)

• In cases of theft, major accidents, or if there are injuries involved, you must file an FIR at the nearest police station. An FIR is a crucial document required for processing your insurance claim.

3. Document the Incident

• Take photographs of the damage to your bike and the accident scene, if possible. These will serve as evidence when filing your claim. Keep all relevant documents such as the FIR, insurance policy for bike, and repair bills ready.

4. Submit a Claim Form

• Obtain a claim form from your insurance company’s website or office. Fill in all necessary details accurately. If you have 2 wheeler insurance online, you can download and submit the claim form digitally.

5. Inspection of Damages

• The insurance company will arrange for a surveyor to inspect the damages to your bike. The surveyor will assess the extent of the damage and estimate the repair costs. Ensure that your bike remains in its damaged state until the inspection is complete.

6. Approval and Repair

• Based on the surveyor’s report, the insurance company will approve the claim and provide an authorization letter to the garage for repairs. You can opt for cashless repairs at a network garage where the insurer will directly settle the repair bills, or you can choose reimbursement where you pay the repair bills upfront and get reimbursed later.

7. Claim Settlement

• For cashless claims, the insurer will directly pay the network garage after the repairs are completed. For reimbursement claims, submit the original repair bills, payment receipts, and other required documents to the insurance company. The insurer will process your claim and transfer the approved amount to your bank account.

Important Tips for a Smooth Claim Process

• Keep Documents Handy: Always keep a copy of your insurance policy for bike, registration certificate, driving license, and other relevant documents.
• Follow Deadlines: Notify the insurer and file claims within the specified timelines to avoid rejection.
• Understand Coverage: Be aware of what is covered under your bike insurance third party and comprehensive policies to set realistic expectations.
• Compare Bike Insurance Price: When buying or renewing your policy, compare bike insurance prices and coverage options from different insurers to get the best deal.

Conclusion

Filing a claim under your two wheeler insurance policy doesn’t have to be a complicated process if you understand the steps involved. Whether you have comprehensive insurance or bike insurance third party, being well-prepared and informed can help you navigate the claim process efficiently. Always ensure you have all necessary documents, follow the procedures promptly, and stay in touch with your insurance provider to make the process as smooth as possible. With the right coverage and a clear understanding of the claim process, you can ride with confidence, knowing that your two-wheeler is well protected.

Demographics

• Gender: Female
• Race/Ethnicity: Asian(Chinese)
• Residence: China but studies in Singapore(International)
• Income Bracket: ~$110k/yr
• Type of School: Private boarding
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): First-Gen

Intended Major(s): Business/Finance/Econ
Academics

• GPA (UW/W): My school doesn't calculate GPA. All based on IB, 7 is full. 6 courses in total and 3 extra for Theory of Knowledge, Extended Essay and Creativity Activity and Service.
• Rank (or percentile): N/A
• of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: IB triple language course selection
• Senior Year Course Load: IB Chinese A Language&Literature Standard Level, IB English B Higher Level, IB French B SL, IB Economics HL, IB Computer Science SL, IB Maths Application and Interpretation HL

Standardized Testing
List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.

• SAT: 1480(700RW+780M) for ED1 and EA; 1520(730RW+790M) superscore for ED2
• AP/IB: IB predicted 35/42 or 37/45
• Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.): TOEFL 103 ED1 and EA submitted only. ED2 Waived

Extracurriculars/Activities
List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.
Copy pasted from Common App

• Leader, Economics & Finance Society——Organized weekly meetings to discuss economic and financial news; invited guest speakers, developed agendas and crafted presentations.
• Member, Southeast Asia Exchange(Six-week program)——School Worked with peers from other Asian countries on regional issues like education and health care; Found appropriate solutions with help from experts.
• Head of Student Admissions Facilitator——Supported school admissions team recruiting new students; Organized alumni interviews with prospective students and made detailed notes.
• Leader, Child at Street 11——Taught kids from low-income families; Planned and executed activities for a small class, including reading, art, maths, and games.
• Member, Girls In Tech——Brainstormed and solved coding challenges in a team setting; invited women in the STEM industry to give talks about their careers.
• Member, Swimming Club——Learned different types of swimming: breaststroke, freestyle.
• Traditional Chinese dance——Hobby, performed in the local community.
• Member, Author, School magazine——Wrote 4 articles per week during the summer for school magazine on international news and school memories.
• Member, Alumni Association——Helped organize events such as alumni reunion and alumni talks; Networking with alumni to discuss their strength and shared it with current students.
• Member—— Read English books to kindergarten children in our school; Practiced monologue speech; Ensured class participation.

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

1. International Certificate of Education with Distinction
2. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages(CEFR) Diploma of Studies in French Language B1
3. National Economics Challenge China 2022 National Top Scoring Individual Bronze Award

Letters of Recommendation
(Briefly describe relationships with your recommenders and estimated rating.)
Maths Teacher- 7/10 Counselor - 8/10 English Teacher - 8/10
Interviews Not even a single one.
Essays
(Briefly reflect on the quality of your writing, time spent, and topic of main personal statement.)
Common App Essay: family background with no English speaking people, childhood of first-gen student, experienced gender prejudice in the community(with examples), process of overcoming above challenges
Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)
Acceptances:

• Brandeis University (ED2)——5-year MBA program in international business, undergrad and master offer (direct into master if high GPA guaranteed until junior year) ——> COMMITED
• Northeastern University (EA)——NUin program, first semester at partner schools in Europe, remaining at Boston campus ——> DECLINED DUE TO ED2 COMMITMENT

Waitlists: None
Rejections: Tufts (ED1)
Withdrawals: Boston University, Babson College, George Washington University, Rutgers University
Additional Information:
You don't need to be perfect to get into your dream school. Think of what you want to get out of university and what the school wants. Does it match? If no, don't try to fit in. Be yourself, show yourself. Be confident. Yall gonna have a satisfying career even without university. I was astonished when I received the 5-year undergrad and master offer when not even a single person in my family speaks English or has attended a proper high school fully.

"And write to the angel of the Philadelphia church: Thus saith the Holy and True One, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens.
Rev. 3:7
"And to the angel of the church of Philadelphia write: Thus saith the Holy and True," In Philadelphia at that time there were also false and untrue gods, so Jesus begins the letter to the church of Philadelphia by mentioning two attributes of God that only the true, true God possesses and no one else because the true God cannot be compared to anyone, and that is why God addressed and introduced himself to the Israelites with the words:
"So who are you going to equate me with so that I can be like him?" says the Saint."
Isa. 40:25
"For I am the Lord your God; therefore take revenge and be holy, for I am holy;"
Levit. 11:44
"For thus speaks the High and Exalted One, who lives in eternity, whose name is Holy:"
Isa. 57:15
In addition to the fact that Jesus says that He is holy, He also says that He is True. God is Holy in character and in practice He is True and these qualities go together because if God is Holy then He must also be True because if some of that is not true then God would not was God. God is holy and true, and about this Jesus said:
"I was born for that, and that's why I came into the world to bear witness to the truth..."
John 18:37
"I am the way and the truth and the life; no one will come to the Father through me."
John 14:6
"And this is eternal life for them to know You, the only true God, and whom You sent Jesus Christ."
John 17:3
We see here that Jesus is True, so we can freely say that this is the same Yahweh of the Old Testament who appeared to the Israelites as Holy. Here in these verses Jesus says that He is Holy and True and He appears not only to the church in Philadelphia but also to us that we get to know him well and believe the words that God Jesus himself gave us.
"And we know that the Son of God is coming, and he gave us understanding to know the True God, and to be in His true Son, Jesus Christ. This is the True God and Eternal Life."
1 John 5:20
,, who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens." Here we have verses that also appear in the prophet Isaiah which read:
"And I will put the key of the house of David on his shoulder: when he opens, no one will shut, and when he shuts, no one will open."
Isa.22:22
At the beginning of this chapter it is written that God will give his prophets visions for the future:
"Burden to the Valley of Vision"
Isaiah 22:1
"Because this is the day of torment and persecution and hindrance from the Lord, the Lord of hosts, in the valley of vision; they will knock down the wall, and the shout will be loud"
Isaiah 22:5
and they refer to Jerusalem and the state Jerusalem was in because the Assyrian army had already marched on Israel, we can read further:
,, And the Lord of hosts calls you on that day to weep and weep and to pluck your hair and to wear sackcloth; And behold, joy and rejoicing, they kill cattle, slaughter sheep, eat meat and drink wine, saying: Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will to die."
Isaiah 22:12-13
At that time, the leader of Israel was Somna, who was the treasurer of the royal treasure and who was very carefree, but the Lord told him that he would take his position and hand it over to Eliakim son of Hilkiah. was the one who had the right to manage the house of David, he was the one who could open and close whenever he wanted and this was actually a prophecy for Christ.
"Thus says the Lord, the Lord of hosts: Go to that treasurer, to Somna, the steward of the palace,
And tell him: What are you doing here? And who is there for you, and you dug your own grave there? You have carved out a grave for yourself on a high place and you have prepared for yourself a dwelling in the stone. Behold, man, the Lord will throw you far away and bury you. He will whirl you around and rush you like a ball into the vast earth; there you will die and there will be the chariot of your glory, a disgrace to the house of your master; And I will overthrow you from your place, and I will drive you out of your service. And at that time I will call my servant Eliakim son of Hilkiah; And I will put your robe on him, and I will gird him with your belt, and I will give your authority into his hand, and he will be a father to the people of Jerusalem and the house of Judah. ​​And I will put the key of the house of David on his shoulder: when he opens, no one will shut, and when he closes, no one will open. And like a wedge I will drive him in a hard place, and he will be the throne of glory to my father's house;"
Isaiah 22:15-23
From this we can see that Jesus is the One who has the authority and the right to rule over Israel and also over the entire universe and over us who live in this time. Jesus is the "Door" and it is open to anyone who willingly wants to accept Him "Behold, I have given you an open door" and the key is salvation through Christ, and to whom it is "unlocked" with this key no one can "lock" anymore, nor to whom it is "locked" no one can "unlock". The only one who can unlock and lock is the Lord Jesus, and whether someone will be unlocked or locked depends on the people, because Jesus will not forcibly "unlock" anyone, nor will he "lock" anyone. People accept Jesus willingly and also if they reject Him. they choose their own way to hell. Only through Jesus can a person come to God and there are no other ways.
Jesus said to him: I am the way and the truth and the life; no one will come to the Father through me."
John 14:6
and also there is no other name by which men can be saved:
"For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we can be saved."
Acts 4:12
"Behold, I have given you an open door, and no one can close it," said the Lord Jesus to the church in Philadelphia, so He opened the door of preaching to them, opened the way for them to spread the gospel, in other words, He gave them "Himself". because they were supposed to preach the good news and it was talking about Jesus Christ.
The apostle Paul prayed for this:
"Praying for us at the same time that God will open the door of the word for us, so that we may preach the mystery of Christ, for which I am bound."
Col. 4:3
and also wrote the following on this subject:
"Because a great and rich door has opened for me, and there are many opponents"
1 Cor.16:9
"And when I came to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ, a door was opened for me in the Lord."
2 Cor.2:12

Found this article after doing a quick deep-dive after this post from u/evilez:
https://www.reddit.com/UFOs/comments/1d33m4l/does_anybody_remember_what_podcast_this_was/
"Hello fine ladies and gentlemen! I remember listening to a podcast less than a year ago. The main subject of the podcast was UFOs (I think)... anyways the guest told a story that a congressman or senator wrote a bill that was against the CIA or going to defund the CIA, in the 80's... and shortly thereafter, someone broke into his home, dragged his wife out into the street and stuck a gun in her mouth and told her to kill the bill."
Some light Googling brought up this article about the history of the CIA, the OSS, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's attempts at defunding the agency in the 90s.
Here's an article about that attempt brought by Moynihan published on the Carnegie Endowment Website on December 20, 2005.
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2005/12/the-case-for-abolishing-the-cia?lang=en
Here's the New Yorker piece about all of this from October 3rd, 2022.

Spooked -- What’s wrong with the C.I.A.? -- By Amy Davidson Sorkin -- October 3, 2022

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/has-the-cia-done-more-harm-than-good
According to the article regarding the resuscitation of the OSS as the CIA immediately following Roswell and the Twining Memo:
"Many of its officers moved straight to the new C.I.A. Most consequentially, perhaps, four future directors of the C.I.A. were O.S.S. veterans: Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey."
Here's the New Yorker article in full:
"On January 4, 1995, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, of New York, introduced a bill called the Abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency Act. It had been a rough stretch for the C.I.A. The year before, Aldrich Ames, a longtime officer, had been convicted of being a longtime mole for Soviet (and then Russian) intelligence. Despite having a reputation among his colleagues as a problem drinker who appeared to live far beyond his means, Ames had been given high-level assignments with access to the names of American sources in the U.S.S.R. When the F.B.I. finally arrested him, he was in the Jaguar he used for commuting to work at Langley; by then, he was responsible for the death of at least ten agents. Moynihan said that the case was such a flamboyant display of incompetence that it might actually be a distraction from “the most fundamental defects of the C.I.A.” He meant that the agency—in what he considered to be its “defining failure”—had both missed the fact that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse and done little to hasten its end.
He gave a diagnosis for what had gone wrong. “Secrecy keeps mistakes secret,” he said. “Secrecy is a disease. It causes a hardening of the arteries of the mind.” He quoted John le Carré on that point, adding that the best information actually came from the likes of area specialists, diplomats, historians, and journalists. If the C.I.A. was disbanded, he said, the State Department could pick up the intelligence work, and do a better job.
Moynihan was, in some respects, being disingenuous. As he well knew, even if his bill had passed, spies and spying wouldn’t have gone away. The State Department already had its own mini agency, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The Departments of Energy and Treasury each had one, too. The Defense Intelligence Agency conducted clandestine operations; U.S. Army Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the Office of Naval Intelligence kept themselves busy as well. The National Security Agency was nearly two decades away from the revelation, by Edward Snowden, a contractor and a former C.I.A. employee, that it had collected information about the phone calls of most Americans, but it was a behemoth even in Moynihan’s time. So was the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There were about a dozen agencies then; now, after reforms that were supposed to streamline things, there are eighteen, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (O.D.N.I.), a sort of meta-C.I.A. that has a couple of thousand employees, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. The Drug Enforcement Administration (which currently has foreign offices in sixty-nine countries) has an Office of National Security Intelligence. Four million people in the United States now have security clearances.
It can be hard to sort out which agencies do what; players in the espionage business aren’t always good with boundaries. Both the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. make use of satellite resources, including commercial ones, but there is a separate agency in charge of a spy-satellite fleet, the National Reconnaissance Office—not to be confused with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which deals with both space-based and ground-level imaging, or with Space Delta 18, the nation’s newest intelligence agency, which is attached to the Space Force. Abolishing the C.I.A. might do nothing more than reconfigure the turf wars.
[NOTE: both Sean Kirkpatrick and David Grusch worked for the NRO and at least Grusch worked for the NGA]
As the senator from New York also knew, a large proportion of the C.I.A.’s resources are devoted not to intelligence gathering but to covert operations, some of which look like military operations. In “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence” (Princeton)—one of several recent books that coincide with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the agency’s founding—Amy B. Zegart, a political scientist at Stanford, writes that it’s “getting harder to know just where the CIA’s role ends and the military’s role begins.” Yet the agency’s paramilitary pursuits and related covert activities go back decades. They include the botched Bay of Pigs landing, the brutal Phoenix Program in Vietnam, and a long list of assassination attempts, coup plots, the mining of a harbor (with explosive devices the agency built itself), and drone strikes. These operations have very seldom ended well.
Moynihan’s bill had no more luck than another that he introduced the same day, aimed at ending Major League Baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws. In each case, people understood that there was a problem, but both institutions were protected by the sense that there was something essential, and perhaps authentically American, about them, including their very brokenness. A sudden turn of events can convince even the C.I.A.’s most sober critics that the agency will save us all, whether from terrorists or from Donald Trump. But, seventy-five years in, it’s far from clear whether the C.I.A. is good at its job, or what that job is or should be, or how we could get rid of the agency if we wanted to.
How did we end up with the C.I.A.? A familiar explanation is that the shock of Pearl Harbor made the United States realize it needed more spies; the Office of Strategic Services was formed and jumped into action; and, when the war ended, the O.S.S. evolved seamlessly into the C.I.A., ready to go out and win the Cold War. But that narrative isn’t quite right, particularly regarding the relationship between the O.S.S. and the C.I.A.
[NOTE: We know how ended up with the CIA. ROSWELL.]
The United States has always used spies of some sort. George Washington had a discretionary espionage budget for which he didn’t have to turn in receipts. In the early part of the twentieth century, the State Department had an intelligence-analysis unit, along with a cryptography group called the Black Chamber, which operated out of a brownstone in New York’s Murray Hill until it was shut down, in 1929. The Army and the Navy had cryptography and reconnaissance units, too. When the Second World War began, their operations ramped up dramatically, and, as Nicholas Reynolds recounts in “Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence” (Mariner), these units, not the O.S.S., handled most of the code-breaking. The problem became the volume of raw intelligence. The task of making sense of it and of turning it into something that policymakers could use went to an office within the Army’s military-intelligence division (or G-2), which, Reynolds says, produced “the country’s best strategic intelligence” during the war. That office’s work was directed by Alfred McCormack, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone and a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Many of the people he brought in were young corporate lawyers; the theory was that their training in plowing through mountains of documents made them ideal intelligence analysts.
William J. Donovan, who led and largely conceived of the O.S.S., was also a Wall Street lawyer, but one with an aversion to the “legalistic.” What Donovan envisioned was essentially an array of commando units that would operate stealthily and behind enemy lines. In practice, what he tried to build, according to a colleague, was a “private army.” His escapades often risked too much and gained too little. In late 1943, one of his own officers wrote to him that “the set-up has been incredibly wasteful in manpower and, except for a few spotty accomplishments, has been a national failure.” And it had produced “chaos in the field.” Donovan’s nickname was Wild Bill, but his staff called him Seabiscuit, after the thoroughbred, because of his tendency to race around, engaging in what was basically war tourism. In the end, though, the O.S.S. made real contributions, including through its contacts with the French Resistance. But Donovan’s complaint about D Day was that there was “too much planning.” Counterintelligence and strategic thinking bored him, and the O.S.S.’s analysis division was seen as secondary to its operations.
When Harry Truman became President, in April, 1945, he took a look at the O.S.S. and, in September, 1945, abolished it. About two years later, he signed the National Security Act, which established the C.I.A. (and the Department of Defense), but he didn’t want the new agency to be like the group Donovan had run. Instead, it was supposed to do what its name suggested: centralize the intelligence that various agencies gathered, analyze it, and turn it into something the President could use.
[NOTE: I tried doing some research after reading something yesterday about how the NSA was developed in 1952 under Project Sigma to try and decode "alien" communications. If anyone can offer anything, you'd be helping humanity.]
“It was not intended as a ‘Cloak and Dagger’ Outfit!,” Truman later wrote. He also had to deal with public apprehensions that he might create what a Chicago Tribune headline called a “Super Gestapo Agency”—which is why, in its charter, the C.I.A. was banned from domestic spying.
Reynolds’s book is the best of the recent batch, and the most readable. It does not retrofit the history of the O.S.S. around the assumption that the C.I.A. was the inevitable lead postwar intelligence agency. There were other contenders, including a version of McCormack’s office in the State Department—something like what Moynihan wanted. J. Edgar Hoover argued that “World Wide Intelligence” should be turned over to the F.B.I., with military intelligence subservient to him. In some alternative history, he might have pulled that off; by 1943, he was running undercover operations in twenty Latin American countries. And so things could have been worse.
[WHAT UNDERCOVER OPERATIONS WERE WE RUNNING IN LATIN AMERICANS COUNTRIES IN 1943.]
Donovan was an adept publicist, but what mattered most, in the end, was that he was good, or lucky, when it came to hiring people. Despite the “pale, male, and Yale” stereotype, the O.S.S. was somewhat more diverse than other units, and certainly more eclectic. Among its ranks were Ralph Bunche, Herbert Marcuse, and Julia Child. Many of its officers moved straight to the new C.I.A. Most consequentially, perhaps, four future directors of the C.I.A. were O.S.S. veterans: Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey. Each seems to have had glory-day memories of the O.S.S., which is to say that each, in various ways, was afflicted with what a general in Army intelligence called “the screwball Donovan effect.” Casey, who put a picture of Donovan on his wall, said of his old boss, “We all glowed in his presence.” Wild Bill lost the bureaucratic fight but won the personnel and mythology wars.
And, of course, the agency found customers and collaborators in the White House. There was no mention of covert action in the law that chartered the C.I.A., but Presidents—starting with Truman—began using it that way. One of the agency’s first operations involved meddling in the 1948 Italian election, to insure the victory of the Christian Democrats. The subsidies and outright bribery of Italian politicians, some of them on the far, far right, continued into the nineteen-seventies.
Almost from its creation, though, there was a sense that something about the C.I.A. was off. The split between covert action and intelligence gathering and analysis was part of it. The director of the agency was also supposed to be the leader of U.S. intelligence as a whole, but, invariably, the person in the job seemed more invested in preëminence than in coördination. That setup remained in place until the establishment of the O.D.N.I., in 2004, a move that thus far has mostly continued a tradition of trying to deal with the C.I.A.’s dysfunction by setting up ever more agencies, offices, and centers. (The N.S.A. was established, in 1952, in response to a series of cryptography-related failures.) “Legacy of Ashes,” Tim Weiner’s 2008 history of the C.I.A.—and still an invaluable overview—takes its title from a lament by Eisenhower about what he’d be leaving his successors if the “faulty” structure of American intelligence wasn’t changed. Since Weiner’s book was published, the ashes, and the agencies, have only been piling up.
Zegart’s “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms” aims to bring that history to the present. Zegart has served as an adviser to intelligence agencies, and she provides a decent guide to our current bureaucracy. Throughout, her book is clear and well organized—maybe a little too well organized, one feels, after taking in the “Seven Deadly Biases” of intelligence analysis, the “Four Main Adversaries” and the “Five Types of Attack” in the crypto area, and the “Three Words, Four Types” that define covert action. (The covert-action words, incidentally, are “influence,” “acknowledged,” and “abroad.”) Not a few paragraphs read like PowerPoint charts; contradictions are displayed without really being reckoned with. She observes that the balance between “hunting” and “gathering” seems off, but, in her telling, the fact that Presidents of both parties regularly turn to the C.I.A. for paramilitary and other covert tasks constitutes proof that doing so is part of the order of things. The impression she leaves is that if it all goes wrong, it’s because some checklist has been missed. One of the top priorities of U.S. intelligence today, she thinks, should be persuading tech companies to get with the program and help out. She moots the creation of yet another agency, to deal with OSINT—open-source intelligence.
In one chapter, Zegart provides a list of scandals involving spying within the U.S. by various intelligence agencies—notably the N.S.A., the F.B.I., and the C.I.A. “All of these activities violated American law,” she writes. “But that’s the point: domestic laws forbid this kind of surveillance of Americans.” How is that the point, exactly? She depicts the Senate’s 2014 Torture Report, which detailed profound abuses in the C.I.A.’s so-called black sites, as a they-said, the-agency-said, who-knows case. She turns it into a parable about the problems with Congress—suggesting that, although the committee structure may have needed rejiggering, the moral compass of those involved in the program of torture was just fine.
Another new volume, “A Question of Standing: A History of the CIA” (Oxford), by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Edinburgh, offers the insights of a more distant observer. He can be astute about how “false memories” of the O.S.S.’s accomplishments have led the C.I.A. astray. Part of his argument is that the agency has acted as if its influence depended on its standing with whoever is in the White House, thus motivating it to offer Presidents quick fixes that fix nothing. The net effect is to reduce its standing, and that of the U.S., with the public at home and abroad. But Jeffreys-Jones is prone to rash generalizations and pronouncements. He theorizes that, in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush’s national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, may have been susceptible to “war mongering” due to her status as “a descendant of slaves,” and that the working-class background of the C.I.A.’s director, George Tenet, made him more likely to vouch for the faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war. “Social mobility so often leads to conformity,” warns Jeffreys-Jones, himself the son of an academic historian.
During the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. had discouraging intelligence to offer, and, when successive Administrations didn’t want to hear it, focussed on being helpful by providing those supposedly quick fixes. That meant abetting a coup in 1963, spying on antiwar protesters, and launching the Phoenix Program, an anti-Vietcong campaign marked by torture and by arbitrary executions; in total, more than twenty thousand people were killed under Phoenix’s auspices.
Phoenix was run by William Colby, the O.S.S. alum, who was soon promoted to C.I.A. director. At lower levels, discontent about Vietnam fueled leaks. In December, 1974, the journalist Seymour Hersh told the agency that he was about to publish a story in the Times exposing its domestic spying. Whether in a miscalculation or (as Jeffreys-Jones somewhat breathlessly speculates) as an act of personal expiation, Colby gave Hersh partial confirmation. Amid the scandals and the Congressional hearings that followed, Colby angered some of his colleagues, and Henry Kissinger, by laying bare even more. It emerged that, in 1973, Colby’s predecessor had asked senior agency officials to produce a list of things the C.I.A. had done that might have been unlawful. The resulting document, covering just the prior fifteen years, was known in-house as “The Family Jewels,” and was almost seven hundred pages long.
The question of how much it matters who works at the C.I.A. is a perennial one. The influence of Donovan’s acolytes shows that decisions about whom you recruit can, in a formative period or at a critical juncture, make a big difference. But, once an institutional culture has become entrenched, it can be easier to see how the institution shapes the people within it than vice versa.
“Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage” (Putnam), by Nathalia Holt, comes at the question from a different angle. It’s about five women who worked for the early C.I.A.; three also worked at the O.S.S., and one, Eloise Page, began her career as Bill Donovan’s secretary. Holt is also the author of “Rise of the Rocket Girls,” about women in the early years of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and “The Queens of Animation,” about women at the Walt Disney Company. Her book contains fine material for a beautifully art-directed streaming series, with set pieces in postwar Paris, nineteen-fifties Baghdad, and nineteen-seventies Greece, where Page was the C.I.A.’s first woman station chief. It even has a framing device in the form of the “Petticoat Panel,” a working group of C.I.A. women that convened in 1953 to document their unequal pay and treatment. Holt quotes the transcript of the meeting at which the leadership of the agency summarily rejected their findings. Helms, the future director, says, “It is just nonsense for these gals to come on here and think that the government is going to fall apart because their brains aren’t going to be used to the maximum.” (In 1977, Helms was convicted of lying to Congress about the C.I.A.’s machinations in Chile.) What the book is not, unfortunately, is a coherent history of the C.I.A., of the era it depicts, or even of these women’s work.
Holt’s research does turn up evidence that Jane Burrell, one of her subjects, was the first C.I.A. officer to die in the line of duty, in a plane crash in France, in 1948, a fact that the agency itself apparently missed. Holt ends her book with a call for a star honoring Burrell to be added to the C.I.A.’s memorial wall. Of the hundred and thirty-seven officers represented there, she writes, forty-five died accidentally, the majority in plane crashes, meaning that Burrell’s case would be fairly typical. Burrell was on the return leg of a trip to Brussels, where she’d been sent to talk to war-crimes investigators about a mess the C.I.A. had created by relying on an agent who turned out to have worked with the S.S. and was now in custody. In that respect, too, Burrell, who had personally handled the agent, was typical of the C.I.A. (After Burrell vouched for him, the man was released.) The subject of the C.I.A.’s postwar relations with former Nazis—some of whom, like Reinhard Gehlen, it helped to install in West Germany’s new intelligence service—and with collaborationist émigré groups is, no doubt, a morass. Holt, alas, manages to make the story even more garbled than it has to be. In the end, she basically treats the whole sordid episode as a learning experience for the Gals.
The problem is that the agency doesn’t seem to learn much. Holt credits Mary Hutchison with helping to build a network of émigré Ukrainian nationalists. Beginning in 1949, the agency parachuted some of them (including one whom Hutchison apparently distrusted) behind the Soviet border, where they were quickly captured—and repeated the same procedure for a number of years. “Despite the catastrophe, the Ukraine operation would serve as a template moving forward,” Holt writes. “The C.I.A. had more success with back-to-back operations in Iran and Guatemala, where covert action was able to deftly oust leaders considered undesirable.” It’s odd to describe these coups as deft. One of Zegart’s handy lists is of the “unintended consequences” in Iran: “religious extremism, a revolutionary overthrow, the American hostage crisis, severed ties, regional instability, and today’s rising nuclear dangers.” Guatemala is still dealing with the violent legacy of the coup that the C.I.A. visited upon it. Then there’s the question of the intended consequences, which were, respectively, to elevate a shah and a military regime. Secret wars tend not to be so secret in the country where they take place.
It was, no doubt, frustrating for Hutchison when, a few years later, her colleagues on the Bay of Pigs task force failed to make use of her Spanish-language skills. But are we supposed to think that the whole misconceived enterprise would have gone off without a hitch were it not for the C.I.A.’s misogyny? One of Holt’s minor themes is that women in the C.I.A. were seen as more natural analysts than operatives—with analysis, in turn, seen as less manly, and less valuable, to everybody’s detriment. But she is more intent on showing that these women were also daring. The main point of “Wise Gals” is that it’s cool that women were in the early C.I.A., and therefore that the C.I.A. itself was cooler than we’d realized. Holt celebrates a big promotion Page got that afforded her access to the secret of a safe containing shellfish-derived poison. You don’t have to be pale, male, and Yale to be complicit in a bungled assassination plot, or, for that matter, a program of rendition and torture.
Why do so many books about the C.I.A. have trouble getting their story straight? It can’t just be the secrecy of the work itself, at least with regard to the earlier years, about which much has been declassified. (Much remains under wraps: Moynihan complained that classification created more than six million supposed secrets in 1993; Zegart writes that the number in 2016 was fifty-five million—not all of which can possibly have been critical.) The aura of secrecy, by contrast, probably does distort the judgment of its chroniclers. And the scope of the agency’s work is a challenge: it’s hard to write expertly on places as far-ranging as the Democratic Republic of Congo (where the agency initially planned to poison President Patrice Lumumba’s toothpaste, and instead ended up handing a quarter of a million dollars to Joseph Mobutu, the country’s future dictator, who facilitated the assassination) and Afghanistan (where the C.I.A. has had forty years of illusory gains and worse losses). But the biggest problem may be the agency’s own pattern of self-deception. Holt, for example, sometimes seems to go wrong when, rummaging through the archives, she gives too much credit to contemporaneous internal assessments of an agent’s or an operation’s worth.
In truth, the C.I.A. has had a “defining failure” for every decade of its existence—sometimes more than one. For Moynihan, in the nineteen-nineties, it was the lack of foresight about the Soviet Union; in the two-thousands, it was the phantom weapons of mass destruction, followed by torture and, in still evolving ways, by the drone-based program of targeted killings, with its high toll of civilian deaths. Barack Obama’s rapport with John Brennan, the C.I.A.’s director from 2013 to 2017, seems to have brought him to accept the view that the killing of American citizens abroad was acceptable, if managed prudently. The overuse of the agency on the battlefield is due not to a military-manpower shortage but to wishful thinking about the benefits of secrecy and of a lack of accountability.
It’s difficult to know, at this point, what the C.I.A.’s next defining failure—or, if one tries to be optimistic, its stabilizing success—will be. Donald Trump has had a complicated relationship with the intelligence community—increasingly capitalized and abbreviated to I.C.—which is presently conducting a damage assessment regarding documents with classified markings that he kept at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home. He might, of course, be reëlected, and have the C.I.A.’s tools at his disposal again. If the C.I.A. isn’t the place to turn for an expedient solution to foreign-policy problems, neither is it bound to be the place to turn for a solution to our democracy’s political problems.
“If you ask intelligence officers what misperceptions bother them most, odds are they’ll mention ethics,” Zegart writes. She quotes an official who complains that “people think we’re lawbreakers, we’re human rights violators.” She insists that “officers think about ethics a lot.” She portrays the agency as being filled with hardworking moms and dads who do a great deal of “agonizing.” No doubt she’s right. But if the C.I.A. keeps falling down all the same, something must be tragically amiss in the agency’s structure or culture, or both. All the talk of coups and assassination plots, Zegart worries, distracts people from understanding the C.I.A.’s more basic intelligence mission. In fact, the party most distracted by such activities—and by the military role it has taken on—seems to be the agency itself. ♦
An earlier version of this article misstated the numerical designation of the Space Force unit dedicated to intelligence.
Published in the print edition of the October 10, 2022, issue.

As we all know, the economy has just sucked, and ever since my dad moved back in with my mom, sister, and I without a job for an internship and has not yet found work, it has been me being the breadwinner. Unfortunately, with that, I have had to incur some debt with credit cards. I'm paying down many of them, and I have gotten rid of a lot of debt, thankfully. However, there's still a little ways to go. I'm working multiple jobs and side gigs. However, if I could have one more that was a bit consistent, it would be much more helpful. My main job, although I love my work in research, as a research assistant at a university doesn't pay enough, which also pushes me to apply to different roles, fellowships, internships, side gigs, and all of that. I get no PTO and no sick time, and for other opportunities I have, I have to lose income, so it's a huge cost analysis. If I got insurance, I would barely have a check. The best thing I could do is to put some money toward my 403(b). If I can't have savings, I can at least put some money away when my older self needs it for retirement, I guess. Which is better than some, so I'm grateful for that.
I graduated from college last year, and a couple of weeks ago, I officially made it a year. Honestly, I know I'm doing pretty well, and honestly, compared to others, at least I have some job, even though it's not offering a lot. But I feel stressed. Like the world is on my shoulders, I'm only 22, turning 23. I want to do a Ph.D. specifically in neuropsychology. However, MPH has been catching my eye, especially with the work I have picked up. I've found a program that isn't expensive due to my state having affordable programs, and the program has great networking, too.
However, when I apply, I feel that when I find out who got it, the person ends up being in a master's program or graduate school of some kind or has graduated, even if it seems like I may have more experience. I feel like I can't really complain to anyone because people may think it's all good because I do take advantage of opportunities when I can, and I have gotten opportunities in the past.
I had an interview two weeks ago, and I knew the person through other work we've done together. It felt like the interview went well, but I was rejected. It just feels that even with connections and work, it is rough. I also got rejected from two other opportunities that I wanted and would've been a big deal. I got those rejections on the same day. There was a huge video opportunity that would've looked great, but they decided to put a pause on it, which is so frustrating :/ and was one of the things I was so excited about.
I'm trying to be optimistic, but it's rough. I even got rejected from an opportunity when I met them since they wanted to see where I could fit in other spaces. They eagerly told me to apply again next year, and I am because I don't want to give up. I will do the same with the other opportunities as I will have a stronger experience. But we met, we had a plan, and they haven't followed up with me. I also missed the deadline for something that would've been a great opportunity because I mistook the time zone for CST when it was CET :/
I'm just hoping for better luck next year. I was able to meet with someone who provided some helpful tips for my resume and cover letter. I will work on that, and hopefully, I will get better luck. This person offered to look over my applications, too. I'm looking forward to seeing what can come out of it, and hopefully, I can get something better paying, and I don't have to continue stacking on jobs.

I am the sister of a 35-year-old woman who I believe may be experiencing a delusion. She thinks that a man (very handsome, looks like a specific celebrity) with whom she has interacted twice (and who has never shown any interest in her) is madly in love with her and she acts based on this belief, and is now so full of life and loving, she had been pretty depressed for a while. After seeing him by chance a second time, she says she can communicate telepathically with him and that he tells her he loves her. She is also convinced that they have been living together for many past lives. That she can feel what he is feeling all the time, which is love for her, and that they are in a "quantum entanglement." She felt when they saw each other how his heart chakra opened and that he has opened all her chakras with this pure love. She says this chakra opening is a "Kundalini awakening." When she contacted him on social media, he told her what both of them felt that day, and he told her that she seemed familiar but he couldn't place her. My sister says that he said this because he doesn't want to hurt his wife and children, but that he really loves her and that it is the purest love he has felt. It has been 6 months like this. In those six months, he has not spoken to her, but she stalks him on social networks and sees signs where there are none. For example: both shared a workplace, which she qualifies as an obvious sign that they are meant for each other; the first 3 letters of my niece's nickname sound similar to the name of this man's daughter, something totally unusual in her perception.
She has always had strong tendencies towards spirituality, constantly communicating dreams that she thinks are premonitory, but this is something much more irrational than the rest of her experiences to date. She rejects reason/logic as something inferior to her spiritual abilities, which in her opinion, are far beyond reasoning. She was on antidepressants for a while but stopped them even though they were working well for her.
I am very concerned about her well-being and how this is affecting her life and decisions. Could you guide me on the best steps to follow to manage this situation? Are there specific communication or intervention strategies you would recommend?

I got an internship just before the summer started and I accepted that offer and started my CPT Authorization process. I was given the approval and received the i20 however, on the day when I received an i20 the company who earlier rejected me gave me call and invited me for an interview again and gave me the offer on the same day. The offer is significantly better as compared to the current one. I have not worked with my previous employer in any capacity. I did have a chat with my graduate advising and they told me that you need to have a letter from previous employer that you haven't worked with them in any capacity. However, they refused to provide me that and is asking me to serve atleast 2 weeks before moving onto next. The new offer will also need some time to process as there will be a background screening and drug test which will take some time. However, 2 weeks is too much and even after that I will not get the desired letter that my university is asking.
What are my options now?

Demographics

• Gender: M
• Race/Ethnicity: White/Asian
• Residence: WA
• Income Bracket: no aid
• Type of School: Small Public
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): none

Intended Major(s): Business, Finance, Entrepreneurship
Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 3.95, school doesn't have weighted
• Rank (or percentile): School doesn't rank
• Number of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 2 honors, 6 APs including senior classes (probably about as rigorous as the top students at my school)
• Senior Year Course Load: AP Calc AB, AP Stats, AP Lit, Physics, free period, Marketing, PE

Standardized Testing
List the highest scores earned and all scores that were reported.

• SAT I: 1510 (760RW, 750M), submitted everywhere
• ACT: didn't take
• AP: Lang (4), CSA (5), didn't take HUG exam

Extracurriculars/Activities
List all extracurricular involvements, including leadership roles, time commitments, major achievements, etc.

1. cofounded local service business with 25k annual revenue
2. part time job working in a kitchen
3. varsity cross country, team captain and team podium finish at state
4. varsity track jsr year
5. casual violinist for ~10yrs
6. varsity lacrosse for sophomore year
7. distance running in off-season which included training for and running a marathon

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

1. NHS participant
2. National Rural and Small Town Recognition Program

Letters of Recommendation
Math teacher (8/10) I did well in their class and I think they liked me
Chemistry teacher (7/10) I read it, it was short & sweet
Business teacher (5/10) Also read it, talked more about my business than about me but was nice
Interviews
Penn - 3/10 was not prepared at all but I guess it was a good learning experience for the rest of mine
Harvard and Stanford - 6/10 don't really remember much about either of these but they were about average, nothing really too good or bad
Babson - 10/10 interviewer and I connected really well and talked a lot about entrepreneurship & my experiences owning a business
Essays
PS - 7/10 I didn't think it was very good but several friends and family members read it including AOs and they said it was amazing so who knows
Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)
Acceptances:

• Bentley
• Cornell School of Hotel Administration -> Committed!!

Waitlists:

• Babson -> declined
• UMich -> declined
• UWashington (the audacity!?) -> declined

Rejections:

• University of Pennsylvania M&T and Wharton (ED)
• UVA EA
• USC EA -> deferred -> rejected
• Harvard
• Stanford
• WashU

Additional Information:
I am extremely grateful to have been accepted into Cornell. I actually got accepted at the end of February (the hotel school releases some acceptances early), which made March a lot less stressful especially when I was waitlisted from my state-school which I had mistakenly considered to be a safety. Anyways, I hope this helps some of you and good luck to any future applicants!

Graduated. Going to MSc thesis in clinical work . Is my EC profile considered strong, esp for Ec-heavy schools like AB I wonder ? (assumimg IP)

• cGPA 3.90, 2&3 yr 3.95+
• MCAT : Studying, expecting 510-514
• CASPER : will take, was my absolute op last year.
• IP QC, could and would opt for AB after master's
• Came to Canada in 2020
• Target schools : Ontario schools, AB schools, Mcgill (not good enough in French for QC schools)
• ECs ( Key ones are marked with *)

TUTORING : * YMCA tutor for 3 years, great exp working w ppl w all learning styles and occasionally difficulties, diff subjects and grades - Peer mentor, course notetaker for office of students with disabilities - Paid uni Biochem tutor, 1 year - Paid tutor for a company starting fall

LEADERHSIP : * Student society's Vice prez, Univeristy senator, board member. Did projects aimed at improving student life academics equity. Voiced my fellers at committees. Network that I leveraged to make things happen. * Program's society Vice prez for 2 yrs. Additional to typical responsibilites, held or helped hold workshops, career fairs, etc. - Cancer society vice prez. Led a committee of 4, collaborated with a committee of 30. Did quite a bit, fundraised alot.

WORK (minimal): - Crew member at Timmies 1yr (learned French there basically bein oui) - Comms assistant and student guide 1 yr * Medical secretary this summer, so 4 months. Blessed to be doing incredible additional stuff that ease pt's getting appintments, also digitalizing the clinic's records, alot of impact potential that I'm enjoying. Thyey're super appreciative of me too, goes both ways.

Research (minimal): * mid-ranked author and article screener, scoping review on health services. 1.5 yrs. Did screening, extraction, brainstorming steps. helped write manuscript. - paid full time summer internship, wet lab. 2 uni conferences. -- MASTER'S THESIS AND OTHER PROJECTS OTW !

Comm service :

• Hospital cancer support volunteer 1 yr. visitsa and talks, sign up patients and families for support services, sometimes niche things like securing funding for adapted mobility. Extremely eye-opening. Crearing a respite program rn.

-- ICU reception volunteer, 2 years (effectively helped manage unit traffic, guided and comforted visitors)
-- long-term housing volunteer, 3 years (visits, outings, event facilitation, arts and movement workshops, helped residents overcome anorexia, isolation, etc etc

Awards :

• student engagement award, resssrch award fundung my summer internship, a few partial scholarships from school, made it semi-final to a huge EC-based scholarship.

Other :

*basically my family's rep in all processes involved in a Covid-striken, isolated immigration experience. This shaped me basically. I can talk about enormous challenges I, and I mostly, overcame for hours. Lost 20kg in first months doing those, wrote hundreds of letters, called 1000s of times, even worked w lawyers once, but turned dozens of refusals and rejections into approvals. fuck it we ball.
Am I acc EC strong ? - Also wondering, does the fact that I've stayed in same positon in most commitments raise any flags ? Is upward motion highly expected ? - Does having veey few hours in an activity make it unworthy of being listed? ( my long-term care exp for instance,,m I have very low hours, maybe 150 in 3 years. Should I list that anyways ?)

How long is the whole counselling process? I have to give BITSAT and comedk is my back-up option & since the counselling process has already started I want to know when do they release round 1/2/3 seat allotment results. Suppose I get a seat allotted in comedk and get a good score in BITSAT so will I not be able to drop it(seat)?
Also, the total fee under reject & upgrade is very confusing, am I supposed to pay the total fee both the college (accepted & rejected)??
https://preview.redd.it/qkvjwbz0ia3d1.png?width=1202&format=png&auto=webp&s=25bf039b42115bb9bbd2ec9c1b59d651f39f8f8f

My mom (Indonesian) will be applying for a visit visa to visit me in the UK (student). Her regular income comes from my dad (not coming with her to the uk), which is always the same amount of £500 every month, but there is hardly any disposable income because almost all the money from my dad is used for daily necessities. However, she has a quite large opening balance (around £3500) on her account because she used to be a designer but she retired around 4 years ago. The balance was her savings from when she was still selling her work. The closing balance every month generally around the same amount of £3500.
She also has another bank account with roughly the same balance of £3500. It was also her savings from past work, but she doesnt use it for daily expenses. There are only very few outgoing transactions but there are also irregular transfer from my brother (on average £100/month), so the balance is gradually increasing every month.
So we plan to include both bank statements and state her income comes from my dad and my brother, and that her large balance was her savings from when she was working as a designer. We plan to also attach the following: - my dad's payslips + letter confirming the money transfer (+his ID and marriage certificate) - a letter signed by my brother confirming the money transfer (+his ID and proof of family ties) - some of my mom's old invoices when she was still working as a designer
For ties to home country, we will include my parents marriage certificate, pictures of them together overtime, and letters from local communities where my mom is very actively involved (we can provide pictures and instagram/facebook posts for proof).
My concern is about her bank statement, because I've read about people getting rejected for simply having more than enough savings! I'm not sure if her past invoices are enough evidence. Please advice. Thank you!

My family is planning to visit relatives in Spain in October. My wife (non US citizen) and I will visit as well, but then do a honeymoon which we were never able to due to COVID with this plan:
Spain (stay 4-5 days)
Fly to Switzerland (Stay 2-3 days)
Train to France (Stay 2-3 days) then return to the US
It's a rushed trip, but we're taking what we can get due to both starting new jobs.
The Visa application wants a clear itinerary w/ plane tickets + hotel booking, but this seems like a steep financial commitment, and then if the application gets rejected?
Do we apply for a visa for Spain since that is our entry country and just a letter of invitation from my family? We will book the other accommodations after.

I have applied for super visa for the third time and got rejected due to family ties in Canada. In the refusal letter everytime the rejection is stated for a visitor visa although I have applied for a super visa and I meet alllll the requirements. We had faith in the last application because we did it through a lawyer and I am pregnant and I really need my parents help and support so I thought that the officer would have a heart! I provided a medical note and so many documents proving our income which is way above LICO and employment status for myself, my husband and father to prove that he and my mom do not intend to stay here. What else can I do? What am I doing wrong?
We were never invited to complete a medical test and we did not provide a policy clearance is that why it’s considered a visitor visa rather than super?
Please help I’m desparate, Im due in july and this is killing me.

Demographics

• Gender: Female
• Race/Ethnicity: Mixed (Asian, White, Black)
• Residence: Virginia
• Income Bracket: <$70,000 (Negative SAI)
• Type of School: Public
• Hooks (Recruited Athlete, URM, First-Gen, Geographic, Legacy, etc.): URM

Intended Major(s): Creative Technologies (Animation)
Academics

• GPA (UW/W): 4.0 / 4.1952
• Rank (or percentile): 6/378 (Not submitted)
• # of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 2 Honors (only 2 offered), 7 AP (Human Geo, Lang, Stats, US History, Chem, Gov, and Art), 1 Dual Enrollment (English 111 and 112)
• Senior Year Course Load: AP Chem, AP Gov, Dual Enrollment English, AP Art, Japanese 1, Digital Art

Standardized Testing

• SAT I: 1200 (620 RW, 580 M)
• ACT: N/A
• SAT II: 1300 (630 RW, 670 M)
• AP/IB: Human Geo (5), Stats (4), US History (3), English Lang (2)
• Other (ex. IELTS, TOEFL, etc.): N/A

Extracurriculars/Activities

1. Community Service: Volunteer, Society of St. Vincent de Paul (10th, 11th, 12th; Year-long; 2 hours/week, 24 weeks/year) I packed bags for my church's food pantry a couple times a month.
2. Work (Paid): Part-Time Health and Beauty Clerk, Harris Teeter (12th; Year-long; 21 hours/week, 40 weeks/year) I worked a couple days a week during the summer and weekends during school year.
3. Academic: Active Member, National Honor Society, Leadership: Oversaw Fundraising Event (11th, 12th; School-year; 3 hours/week, 15 weeks/year) I attended monthly meetings and joined fundraising, peer tutoring, and teachestaff appreciation committees.
4. Work (Paid): Part-Time Frozen and Dairy Clerk, Harris Teeter (11th; Break; 18 hours/week, 12 weeks/year)
5. Art: Student, Pre-College Summer Course, The Art Institutes (12th; Break; 20 hours/week, 2 weeks/year) I took an 2-week online animation class where I learned animation principles and used Adobe Photoshop and Animate to create a 2D animated short film.
6. Religious: Eucharistic Minister, Church (11th, 12th; Year-long; 1houweek, 15 weeks/year) I volunteer for my church by serving communion during mass at least once a month
7. Athletics: Club Volleyball, Member of Youth HS Competitive Team, Achievement: Won a League Championship (10th; School-year; 6 hours/week, 25 weeks/year) I attended practices twice a week and played two games every weekend.
8. Other Club/Activity: Member, Film Club (9th, 10th; School-year; 2 hours/week, 20 weeks/year) I went to weekly meetings to discuss filmmaking and made individual short films outside of meetings to present weekly.
9. Community Service: VolunteeLeader, Vacation Bible School, Church, Leadership: Managed Arts & Crafts Station (12th; Break; 12 hours/week, 1 week/year) I helped set up and clean crafts station. I managed younger children and helped them when needed.
10. N/A

Awards/Honors

1. QuestBridge National College Match Finalist (National; 12th)
2. National African American Recognition Award (National; 12th)
3. Principal's List (School; 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th)
4. AP Scholar Award (National; 12th)
5. Student of the Year (School; 9th, 10th, 11th)

Letters of Recommendation

• Guidance Counselor (?/10): I didn't meet with him a lot so he doesn't know me too well, but it seemed like I stood out to him because of how well I always do. I never saw his LOR, so idk how good it was, but I'm sure it was good.
• AP Statistics Teacher (10/10): junior year teacher; I always had an A in his class but didn't talk much. He was kinda awkward so I avoided talking to him lol, but his LOR was actually really good. He said that he wanted his daughter to grow up to be like me!
• AP US History Teacher (8/10): junior year teacher; I always had an A in his class but never talked either. His LOR wasn't bad but he basically rewrote the resume I sent him
• Art Teacher (9/10): teacher during sophomore and senior years; she chose to enter one of my pieces in a local art show and I won an award. She kinda overhyped me but it was good nonetheless.

Interviews
N/A
Essays
I think I spent about a month on my essay, but I can't remember. I felt like my essay was pretty good, but I thought it might be controversial depending on the reader so I was a little nervous. I'm not that good of a writer, but I think the content made up for it. I basically talked about my experience growing up mixed race and how I won't let race define me. I thought it might be problematic because I said a black girl was being racist to me by mentioning how a black girl once told me I only got straight A's because I was "white" and that I realized that some people use race as an excuse for their failures. I said that I thought it was sad she was raised to think that way and ended by saying I wouldn't let my race dictate what I should like or how I should behave and that I would decide for myself rather than following others.
Decisions (indicate ED/EA/REA/SCEA/RD)
Acceptances:

• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)!!! (EA) - Presidential Scholarship Initiative Recipient (approx. $17,000 per year to cover rest of tuition and room and board)
• Virginia Commonwealth University (EA) - Virginia Merit Award Recipient ($4,000 per year)
• Longwood University (EA) - Presidential Scholarship Recipient ($8,000 per year)

Waitlists:

• N/A

Rejections:

• University of Southern California (ED through QuestBridge)

Additional Information:
Let me just start by saying that I'm extremely grateful for how things have worked out for me. I feel so lucky and fortunate to be in the situation I am. I know I had my GPA and low income going for me, but I got so much more than I ever expected and I still can't believe this is actually happening!! QuestBridge didn't work out, but I still ended up getting what I was looking for: a way to go to college without taking out loans.
So to explain me being able to "go to Virginia Tech for Free," I have multiple sources that are paying for my first year; I didn't just get a full ride from VT (although it basically is when combined with everything else). I got about $15,500 in govt. grants, the scholarship from VT to cover the rest of tuition and room and board which is about $17,000 this year, and $12,000 in outside scholarships. And that's way over the COA, so I don't have to worry about paying anything!! Now I can follow my dreams of being an animator at my dream school without worrying about how to pay for it!!!

I hope our His Majesty or the higher authority can investigate this matter seriously about all my submissions and the facts that I stated here, to prevent the same problem from occurring again, & also to prevent more victims like me from being treated unfairly by the judicial system in Brunei.
The purpose of writing this article is to awaken & raise awareness about the judicial system in Brunei. And I think people have the right to know the facts & inappropriate judicial system in Brunei. My case number is HCCS 136 of 2009 & Appeal no. COACV/4/2023. I hope people can read through the judgment, & I hope the court will not remove the judgment from their website following the publication of this article.
After the partial profits of $195,300.00 paid to me by the plaintiffs, the plaintiffs & I entered into a Deed of Settlement Agreement to resolve all our disputes. A few months after signing the Deed of Settlement Agreement, the plaintiffs filed the proceeding against me, they also made up 2 major evidence a fraudulent payment voucher of $195,300.00 & a confirmation letter, accusing me of owing $195,300.00. However, the Court didn’t rely on our Deed of Settlement Agreement in this suit. Then, what does the law rely on if the Deed of Settlement Agreement is rejected in Brunei?
I stated in my pleadings & substantiated it with a laboratory report issued by the Ministry of Health Brunei, that the plaintiffs forged my signature on 24 copies of Standard Chartered Bank transaction forms to transfer $352,456.68 from our joint name account to their personal account. However, the court made no mention of this key fact in the judgment. Can the court cove conceal the pleadings & the facts that were submitted by the party in the judgment in Brunei?
As stated in the judgment, the court admitted & regretted that the court is unable to provide the hearing audio recording as the court did not arrange the audio recorder & a transcriber for our hearing ( 1 week of hearing), as a result, the correction of the inaccurate hearing transcription (notes of proceeding) provided by the court is therefore impossible. Thus, I applied for a retrial, but I was forced by the court of appeal to proceed with the appeal. Isn’t the hearing audio recording & accurate hearing transcription (notes of proceedings) are significant/ important evidence when it comes to appeal in Brunei?
In the judgment, the court of appeal rejected all 2 major evidence the fraudulent payment voucher & the confirmation letter submitted by the plaintiffs as the plaintiffs failed to comply with the Court Order to surrender the original Payment Voucher of $195,300.00 to the Ministry of Health Brunei for forensic examination (the plaintiffs told the court that they had lost the original Payment Voucher of $195,300.00), the court also rejected the Deed of Settlement Agreement & evidence submitted by me. Nevertheless, the court deemed the $195,300.00 as a loan to me without specifying any reason/ ground in the judgment. Isn’t it the judge’s obligation to specify the reason/ ground of their decision when it comes to judgment? Can the judge make a decision without giving any reason/ ground for the judgment in Brunei?
One of my counterclaims that I clearly stated in my pleadings against the plaintiffs, is that the plaintiffs will surrender all business accounts that they hid from me, & pay the balance of my profits from 2006 onwards as clearly stipulated in our Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 6. However, the court made no mention of this specific counterclaim in the judgment. Does the court have the right to simply waive/ delete/ conceal the counterclaim that was submitted by the party in the judgment in Brunei?
I am the defendant in the news that was published by the Borneo Bulletin on 28^th Dec 2023. The most crucial sentence of the article stated that “Chief Justice Dato Seri Paduka Steven Chong, sitting with Justice Michael Lunn and Sir Peter Gross, rejected Tan’s appeal, addressing issues regarding inaccurate notes of proceedings, reliance on the Deed of Settlement, credibility concerns, and the absence of forensic evidence for a payment voucher”. Apparently, this news was published a few months ago, but, the higher authority did not take any action to rectify the problems.
This is a business dispute between the 2 plaintiffs (my business partners) and me. The 2 plaintiffs, Foo & Lai had hidden the business accounts from me & refused to pay my profits of around a few hundred thousand since 2006 onwards, as a result, we had frequent quarrels, & our partnership turned sour. Sometime in December 2008, I again quarrelled with the plaintiffs over the profits they owned me, the plaintiffs didn’t have a choice but to pay my partial profit amounting to $195,300.00 subsequently, we entered into a Deed of Settlement Agreement in April 2009 prepared by our lawyer to resolve all our disputes & my resignation from the company. All agreed terms had been clearly stipulated in our Deed of Settlement Agreement. Therefore, the court should rely on our Deed of Settlement Agreement in this suit.
In our Deed of Settlement Agreement, the partial payment of $195,300.00 was not mentioned it was a loan to me, on the contrary, the amount of $195,300.00 will be reinvested equally by 3 of us, which is $65,100 per person, to furnish the balance commitments/ outstanding bills of the company upon my resignation from the company, which is clearly stated in Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 4a, and the plaintiffs have to pay me the balance of the profits that they hid from me from 2006 onwards after the auditor finalizes the business account as clearly stated in Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 6. After we entered the Deed of Settlement Agreement, I complied with the term Clause 4a, I reinvested $20,000 from the part of the $65,100 & I asked the plaintiffs to surrender all business accounts to the auditor as agreed in Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 6, so that they could pay the balance of my profits. The plaintiffs then told me they had lost all business accounts, apparently, the plaintiffs do not want to surrender all the business accounts & pay me the balance of my profits. A few months later, the plaintiffs forged my signature on a fraudulent payment voucher of $195,300.00 & a confirmation letter, filed a proceeding against me & accused me of owing them $195,300.00
The plaintiffs’ case/ allegation is, they claimed that the $195,300.00 is a loan to me, and the $20,000.00 that I reinvested is a part payment of the loan, and thus I owe them $175,300.00. The plaintiffs submitted their 2 major evidence in this suit, a fraudulent payment voucher of $195,300.00 & a confirmation letter. I told the court that the plaintiffs forged my signature on the alleged payment voucher of $195,300.00 & the confirmation letter, subsequently, the Court Order was issued, ordering the plaintiffs to surrender the original Payment Voucher of $195,300.00 to the Ministry of Health Brunei for forensic examination, the plaintiffs then told the court that they had lost the original Payment Voucher of $195,300.00 & therefore failed to comply with the Court Order. Despite the court of appeal rejected the 2 major evidence the fraudulent payment voucher of $195,300.00 & the confirmation letter that the plaintiffs submitted, the court of appeal also found no evidence showed in the Deed of Settlement Agreement that the $195,300.00 was a loan to me, BUT, the court of appeal deemed the $195,300.00 to be a loan to me without giving any reason/ ground in the judgment.
My case to the court of appeal is,
1. As the trial judge, Judge Faisal didn’t arrange for an audio recording & a transcriber during our hearing (1 week of hearing), and he also provided an inaccurate hearing transcription (notes of proceeding) to us, as a result, the correction of the inaccurate hearing transcription ( notes of proceeding) is therefore impossible. This is clearly a BIG mistake made by the court. I told the court of appeal that only the hearing audio recording can prove lots of lies made by the plaintiffs & all the answers gave by both parties during the 1 week of hearing. Since the court is not able to provide the hearing audio recording, accurate hearing transcription & other grounds substantiated, I applied for a retrial. However, my application was rejected, & I was forced to proceed with the appeal by the court of appeal regardless of the absence of the important evidence the hearing audio recording & accurate hearing transcription.

1. The $195,300.00 was not a loan, & it was not stated in our Deed of Settlement Agreement. I told the court of appeal that the plaintiffs would have stated this in our Deed of Settlement Agreement if the $195,300.00 was a loan to me. In fact, the $195,300.00 was a partial payment paid to me, & the balance shall be paid to me after the plaintiffs surrenders all the business accounts to the auditor as stipulated in our Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 6. Moreover, if the fraudulent Payment Voucher of $195,300.00 that the plaintiffs submitted (their major evidence) was duly signed by me, the plaintiffs would not have told the court that they had lost the Payment Voucher of $195,300.00 when the Court Order ordered them to surrender the original Payment Voucher of $195,300.00 to forensic examination.
   
2. I substantiated with the laboratory report issued by the Ministry of Health Brunei that the plaintiffs forged my signature on the 24 copies of the Standard Chartered Bank transaction forms to transfer $352,456.68 from our joint name account to their personal accounts. I have filed this proceedings against the Standard Chartered Bank & the plaintiffs Foo & Lai, which the case HCCS 78 of 2012 is currently handling by the judge, Judge Soefri, & police case Ref. BKS/C116/2011 Is currently handling by Commercial Crime Investigation of Royal Brunei Police since 2011 ( it’s been 13 years). It is clearly submitted in my pleadings. However, the court simply waived & made no mention this specific critical point in the judgment. The court covered up/ concealed the facts in the judgment.
   

4. My counterclaim against the plaintiffs is, a payment of the dump truck, the plaintiffs failed to submit the evidence, whereas I submitted a solid evidence, the clearance letter & payment history issued by Baiduri Finance which was clearly stated that I fully paid for the said dump truck, and the said dump truck is clearly stated in our Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 4d. However, the court rejected my evidence which was issued by Baiduri Finance & ignored the term stipulated in our Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 4d.
5. My other counterclaim is also, a Toyota Land Cruiser. It is clearly stipulated in our Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 5 that, the said Toyota Land Cruiser belongs to me, & thus the plaintiffs shall pay the proceeds to me after they sold the vehicle. But the court rejected & ignored the Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 5 & evidence.
6. My other counterclaim is, the plaintiffs will surrender all business accounts that they hid from me & pay the balance of my profits from 2006 onwards as clearly stipulated in our Deed of Settlement Agreement Clause 6. But the court simply waived & made no mention this specific counterclaim in the judgment.
I have written several letters to alert the court about all the legal points as mentioned above, BUT, I was ignored by the court.
Lastly, I do not know what would happen to me after the publication of this article, one thing is for sure, at least one man must have the courage to step out & tell the facts about flaws/ deficiencies in our judicial system in Brunei, make things change & improve, in order to prevent more victims suffering from the false judicial system & injustice. I am confident that our His Majesty, as a kind & fair Sultan, would investigate this case thoroughly & make rakyat feel safe again with the judicial system in Brunei.