I think we’re a bit overdue for another open thread for personal stuff. As per usual, no trolls, no flames, no being a butthead.
I’ll paste in some recent personal comments from other threads.
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Open Thread for Personal Stuff: November Rain Edition
@katz
Yeah, my dad and his siblings have absurd expectations like that as well. They expect me to get only ‘A’s. In fact, an uncle of mine has told one of my cousins that, if my cousin gets any more B grades, the family will force him to go back to Pakistan. Fortunately, he doesn’t have failing grades like me and is likely to be academically successful. He even got a 2200/2400 on the SAT.
I really dislike the idea of grades. They are also so over appreciated. I know so many people with bad grades that are brilliant and more “average” (I don’t know how to say this without sounding ridiculous) people with awesome grades (of course, there are brilliant people with great grades as well).
If I ever become a professor, I will try to avoid this like the plague. We had this one professor who gave everybody who went to every class the equivalent of A+. The ones who attend all of them got As and min B-. He was called at the dean’s office who confronted him and asked why all these high grades. The professor answered: “They were all really good”.
(sorry to always flood with stories… it is the way I can formulate what I am thinking…)
Oh gods, grades. I have never gotten less than a B in an art course, despite being utterly unable to work out the scoring criteria. But whatever, mostly As aren’t worth the headache of sorting? On the flip side, my grades from my last semester are on financial hold (yeah I didn’t drop out, I was forced out due to lack of money) — most of them I can guess, but one? He gave NO feedback and basically expected us to teach ourselves. Like, we were supposed to read journal articles and present on them, rotating whose turn it was. Well, one evening I’m wrapping up my presentation for a 7? page article when I get an email — he changed it, I now have like 12 hours to read and do a presentation on 20 pages of neuropsych.
He ties for worst prof. The other one every psych student hated cuz he treated us like his editors. New edition of his $100 textbook every year, so you couldn’t buy it used, and then weekly papers pointing out good and bad parts of the current chapter. Asshole.
My asshole prof story: we each had to do a presentation on our impression of our subject, with almost no parameters (yes, it was a hippy-ish kind of class). I could have done an interpretive dance, seriously. We begged for guidelines and marking criteria, to no avail. (In contrast to our other project at the time, which was a fairly major essay in APA format.)
So we had a selection of dioramas, slideshows, and one person actually did a puppet show, which was AWESOME. Prof Asshole was disgusted with us, and thought that as adults, we would at least have heard of Roberts Rules of Order, and Toastmasters, and had professional graphics made. We very nearly mutinied.
So, apropos of nothing, it’s a beautiful, sunny Winter Solstice. The snow on the mountain ash berries outside my front window is sparkling against the cloudless blue sky, and it’s avery picturesque winter day. It’s 38 fucking degrees below zero, and the cord broke off the block heater of my car, so I’m stranded until it warms up. Fuck winter.
@Unimaginative: Sorry to hear about your car. Hopefully you can get it fixed sometime, though. =)
Yeah, the roomie has a plan, but it has to warm up first. Which it’s supposed to do, by about 40 degrees, in a couple of days.
It was 73 at midnight, now it’s 47. The cold front showed up a day early.
Well, I’m off into town to see Dhoom3. As long as I can find parking …
Blessed Yule/Solstice/Hogswatch to all! I’m a Pagan with SAD on top of year-round depression, so this holiday has a great deal of import to me. And I’m only half-joking when I tell people I celebrate Hogswatch: fictional or not, it’s the perfect combination of the Xmas traditions I was raised with an awareness of the holiday’s Pagan roots.
I told you that story to tell you this story: the most emotionally impactful sabbat “ritual” I’ve ever done was last winter solstice: I got out of my volunteer gig right at sunset, blasted this song as I walked home, and it was perfect.
http://youtu.be/iWOyfLBYtuU
In other news, I’m sick, but I can’t call out of work today because I had previously asked for today off and been denied. I’ll have to try petitioning my manager in person. We’ve had a ridiculous plague going around our department (one day 20% of our staff called out), so hopefully he’ll be sympathetic.
@Titianblue, um, I have to see those movies now.
Happy whatever-holiday-you-choose-to-celebrate everyone! I’m cooking Christmas food and listening to the H P Lovecraft Society’s Christmas album…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THEFl1h2-XA
After listening to these for a while, you begin to forget the original lyrics…
Mum and I don’t do Christmas, but if last year’s anything to go by, Louis and I will have the family around for lunch and snowball fights across the veil. 🙂
Meantime, A Cat’s Guide to Removing Christmas Tree Ornaments, courtesy of Shorty and Kodi.
http://youtu.be/snTOf7jTi7Q
[Content note: sexual abuse, violence]
I thought I “got over” my sexual abuse when I was younger but I’ve found out the hard way that I was wrong. Those memories are suddenly coming back. I still feel so much shame and fear every time I think about him coming over and looking at me like I was his little toy for amusement. What a disgusting man. I don’t know if he’s still alive these days, but if he is, I really hope he doesn’t come after me out of revenge. The last time I met him, he pressured me into going to the shooting range with him, and when I refused, he threatened to hurt me and my brother and tried to emotionally manipulate us.
I know he’s nowhere near where I currently live, but I still feel unsafe – almost as if he’s planning to “visit” me soon. I’m so scared. Thankfully I’m not alone in the house otherwise I might have gotten an anxiety attack.
[content note – ableism]
So my brother told me today that people in special ed classes are better off dead and that we should either force a mass cure on them or kill them because they’re of “no benefit” to the world and are simply wasting resources.
Thanks for making me feel like shit, even if it was unintentional!
Hugs to anyone who wants/needs one.
Wow, what a thoughtless shitty thing for your brother to say, Alice. I’m sorry. I know there have been special ed students/graduates in my life that have definitely added benefit to *my* world. So life experience proves him totally wrong (of course).
Besides being shitty, his assumptions are, um, ASSumptions. Not like everyone in special ed courses is severely mentally handicapped (not that they’ deserve that shit or are useless or anything) — some have the sort of issues that require minimum intervention. I’m guessing he knows fuck all about how special ed works, as they have the stereotypical special ed classes, where all the students have individual education plans, but said education plans can also exist for students taking regular courses (particularly where physical disabilities are at play).
Actually, I’d really love for your brother to say that to my autistic cousin, that kid would manage to make him feel like a horrible person without using anything but pure hard facts. (Also, don’t play board games with him, he’s scary good at games requiring mental skill) — but boy wonder’s only been full integrated this year, his lack of understanding social stuff had him in some special ed courses. But apparently being able to beat people 20 years your senior at everything involving mental skill means you should be killed because you have issues understanding social situations >.< (he's unintentionally funny, not like, laugh at him or anything, but like…his dog is defective, it doesn't bark)
Second cousin? First cousin once removed? He’s my actual honest to goodness first cousin’s son. But Italian, making him my cousin.
And awesome.
And my genuis self just nearly downed a zoloft instead of a sleeping pill cuz I just looked at the labels quick. Luckily one’s blue, the other orange. Still, I feel dumb.
Yup, first cousin once removed. Second cousins are the other children of his generation.
Ally, do you know what’s triggered those memories coming back? Is it something someone said?
You don’t know if that creature is even alive; there’s no reason (and I know you know this but the fear ain’t listening, ‘cos it just doesn’t work that way) to think he’s going to come back into your life now, or that he even knows you still live where you do, or that he’s any interest in returning. If he enjoyed victimising you as a child, he might just keep well away now you’re an adult. Horrible as it is to say, who’s to know if he even thinks of you? Plus, if he does – he might well be wary of what you could do to him if he turned up. You’re not a helpless child.
Alice, your brother was being a first-class douchecanoe. He should go walk on a lego or twenty.
It just sucks. My FRIENDS are in some of these special ed classes. I had an IEP when I was in K-12, and I was taking AP courses and honors classes. So it just pisses me off that he just implied that my life is of no worth because of mental disabilities (and really, it’s a shitty thing to say in general).
He should try studying the leadup in Germany to WWII. Has it ever occurred to him that people really did (and for all we know, still do) get murdered this way?
I don’t know if he does. I’m worried about him, especially because he’s content to be an asshole. I know he’s at the right age to teenage assholedom, but he really needs to grow up and realize that his words and actions have consequences.
What are the odds he said all this specifically to hurt you?
Maybe he realizes words and actions have consequences, but because of a mild oversight and some myopia, forgets those consequence can be other things than “Make Someone Hurt”, and so he uses his random knowledge of insults to just insult people.
It’s the kind of “too edgy I’m so cool” statement the people in my family cook up on a bad day specifically designed to hurt someone. I mean, it’s not even wrong. It’s so hilariously inane and unconnected to reality that it’s just kind of… weird. Everyone who has problems reading deserves to die?
… If you break your back doing manual labor or if you’re born with a randomly aligned set of neurons, you’re a waste of ressources?
Say that to Esref Armagan.
http://www.armagan.com/bio.asp
Ignore it, it’ll go away.