#being able to just take an exit exam and otherwise being left alone to study how and when and for how long i wanted

[aetherograph]

Idk if this is a controversial take but I think you should be able to take a test to prove you have the relevant knowledge for a degree and if you pass the test, you get the degree. They do that for high school, why is college any different?

Like let's not kid ourselves, school is for credentials and literally everything that needs credentials that are entirely just 'do you have this core knowledge' can be dealt with this way. Anything that has practical elements can just have the practical elements as classes you can take piecemeal, like CPR training already is, and then you also have to pass a written test.

There's very little reason we need to stick people in a company town (university campus) and pay them in scrip (grades) and make them buy from the company store (tuition) other than to erect unnecessary and inhumane and unjust barriers to knowledge.

If four years of high school can be expressed in test form, then four years of university can too.

[thebestofallworlds]

Please Don’t Go

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: George x Reader

Summary: It’s the day that George and Fred are leaving Hogwarts to start up their Joke Store and get away from Umbridge. The reader doesn’t want him to go, tears follow.

You knew this day was coming. You thought you would have come to terms with it by now but you hadn’t. You didn’t know how you were going to survive. Your boyfriend of two years George Weasley was leaving school with his twin brother to go and begin their own joke store. Their products that they had invented were amazing, much better than Zonkos in Hogsmeade. You were so proud of the work that they had done and were so disappointed that Umbridge had put a stop to it.

She was making everyone’s life a living hell. She had forbidden any of the boys' products, you could join any school groups (although you did join Dumbledore’s Army), and you couldn’t be within 8 inches of George before you were being torn apart. It was so hard to continue at a school that felt like a prison without being able to be with your boyfriend.

Detentions were the worst. After you had all been found to be apart of Dumbledore’s Army the punishment you had received was awful. You still had the scars on your hand I must not break rules. They were an ugly red currently as you were sure that it was infected but were too scared to go and see Madam Pomfrey in the Hospital Wing. All the teachers knew that this was the punishment the Ministry was providing to “troublemakers” but unfortunately couldn’t do anything about it without risking losing their jobs.

You sighed as you sat looking out one of the windows of the Gryffindor common room watching as people made their way across whilst others were studying in the sun. You had almost finished your NEWT exams, but you were currently too distracted to focus on studying. You were waiting for a certain someone to come down from their dorm room. You knew they were going to try and leave without saying good-bye, because they didn’t like good-byes, but you weren’t going to let that happen.

Footsteps coming from the dorm steps pulled you out of your trance as you turn your body to see to red-headed figures appearing at the end of the stairs. They were lugging their trunks, trying to be quiet, down the stairs and were about to creep across the common room to the exit when they caught sight of you. This was happening. They were actually leaving. You couldn’t believe it. In the back of your head, you knew that they weren’t joking about this, but you had hoped that this was just one of their stupid pranks. Now everything was crashing around you. You watched Fred sigh, look between you and George and just shake his head.

“I can give you guys 5 minutes, 10 minutes at most. But then we have to leave otherwise we’ll miss our chance. I’ll keep watch,” and with that Fred left the two of you alone, climbing out of the portrait’s hole with all of his belongings with him.

For a moment you both just stood still, staring at each other, neither of you moving. You couldn’t stand being so far away from him any more. You broke. Leaving the spot you were originally frozen to you began to sprint to him, at the last second jumping into his arms. As soon as he had caught you, the tears were pouring out of his eyes. He held you tightly, nuzzling his head into your neck where you can feel it becoming damp. You pull away momentarily to look at him, too really look at him.

His eyes showed a lot of emotions, though his face just showed sadness. Sadness that he had to leave you here in this prison whilst he got to go and live out his dream. You could feel the tears leaking out of your eyes, and George just reached up to wipe them away, giving you a sad smile.

“Don’t cry my love, everything is going to be fine. I promise,” the sincerity in his voice and face made you feel a little better, but not a lot. You just didn’t want him to go.

“Please, don’t leave. Don’t leave me here all alone,” you pleaded with him, trying to reason even though you knew it was no use. He had made his mind up, and he would never back out, especially on this.

“You know I have to, this is my dream. I can’t stay any longer. It’s a nightmare, and I don’t want to remember Hogwarts like this.” There are a few tears falling down his cheeks, but he makes no move to wipe them away. Instead, he keeps his hands on your shoulders, occasionally moving a hand to your cheek to wipe away the tears.

“Just wait until we graduate, and then I can come with you. Just please, I don’t want you to go,” You sniffled in one last attempted to make him stay. You didn’t, couldn’t, look at him any more. You looked down towards where your feet were. If you didn’t have to look at him and watch him leave you thought it would make things easier.

“Y/N, babe. Y/N please look at me.” He put his hand underneath your chin and forced you to look at him. Looking into his eyes you could see just how much this was paining him, seeing you cry because of him. This was so hard, you didn’t think this good-bye would be so hard.

He crushed his lips against yours in a desperate kiss. There was so much passion and love in the kiss that it made you breathless. You felt his arms wrap around your waist pulling you in close. You moved your arms to be around his neck and you gripped his hair. This would be the last time you would feel his lips for a while and you wanted to savour the moment. Pulling away you were both out of breath. He rested his forehead against yours as you closed your eyes, enjoying the closeness between the two of you.

“Sorry to break this up, but uhhh George, we’ve got to get moving,” Fred smiled sadly at you two and then went back to his place outside of the portrait whole. George just sighed. He pulled you close one last time to give you a tight fleeting hug. He then reached down to grab his trunk, then leaned over and gave you a kiss on the forehead. He then dragged his trunk and his feet across the room appearing at the portrait hole in no time. 

“I love you,” he whispered softly but you still heard him. You went to say it back but he was gone before you could even form the words.

As you would have thought, Umbridge targeted you for the Weasley’s departure You were just happy that they had made it out and begun to live out their dream. You had gone with Harry and a handful of Dumbledore’s Army to “save Sirius” and was thankfully saved by members of the Order.

Now here you stood, in front of a grand store in Diagon Alley. You could see from just standing outside that the store was packed. You just smiled. You were so proud of the Weasley duo and what they had accomplished. You excitedly bounced through the door and was hit by the noise that was being contained inside. 

You squirmed past teenagers, huddled together planning pranks on family members and friends. You almost got knocked over by a mother trying to run after her son who was bouncing off the walls from either excitement or sugar, you weren’t quite sure.

You managed to turn down a quieter corridor and were stopped at the sight in front of you. Your boyfriend, George Weasley, slipping over some vomit that was in the middle of the aisle and the boxes he was carrying go flying, contents scattering everywhere. You could hear him swearing to himself and you couldn’t stop the laughter that escaped you.

Upon hearing that sound George looked up from his position on the floor and broke out into a smile. Shaking your head, still giggling, you grabbed your wand out of your pocket. With a quick flick, all the box’ contents were back in it, the vomit on the floor had disappeared and George’s back was also clean of said vomit. He stood up, looked at you and then in the blink of an eye he was right in front of you, picking you up and twirling you around. Your face was hurting from how much you were smiling and laughing but you didn’t care. You were just so happy to finally be back in his arms. 

Putting you down, you barely had time to take a breath before his lips were on yours. The kiss was glorious. Your hands were everywhere you could get them, and his were cheekily on your ass. The kiss would’ve gone on longer if it weren’t from a certain interruption.

“Merlin! I thought I left Hogwarts and moved out to get away from this. Come on guys, we’re working,” Fred whined rather loudly. You just tucked yourself into his side, as he lovingly rubbed your back. Fred laughed, shaking his head and went back to work. You knew that you and George would have a lot of catching up to do but now was not the time.

‘I love you” he whispered in your ear so only you could hear.

“I love you too,” you whisper lovingly back, resting your head on his shoulder.

“Come up above the shop at 6, we have a lot of catching up to do,” he said with a wink as he was moving to grab the box and begin to fill the shelves around him.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” you smiled. Although you would never admit it to anyone, you were glad that he and Fred had left Hogwarts when they did and started this. You just knew that they would be that ray of sunshine everyone would need in the next few months and you were happy to not have held him back.

[educationofanidealist]

Notes

I think that it's time that I explain to you the way in which my mind works because I am an anxious person. It is something I have and on bad days and weeks, it's tough to separate me from anxiety. I hope we can have a meaningful conversation from this.

But maybe we should set some ground rules because I want to make sure this doesn't escalate in the way it has in the past.

1. I think we should both begin with having an open mind. So whatever the other person thinks and feels, let's just be open to that. I think we both have to remember that the way we currently feel comes from a place of not having information on what's really going on. If I were to compare it to the allegory of the cave, we're still in the cave. So let's not defend ourselves yet.

2. Let's dedicate a time for talking and then a time for clarification. So let's make sure the other person gets to finish saying what they want to say before we jump in. Jumping in might sidetrack us.

3. We could try avoiding the "you phrases". Because I see how that gets destructive. Identify the complaint and not the criticism. It's not "you're like this, you do that and that, and that upsets me." I think it's better if we rephrase it as "I feel upset about how this happened".

Okay let's start.

The thing that I've been learning in therapy is that disorders in general are the root cause of disordered behavior. Makes sense right? But I want to clarify it again by placing it in my perspective. There are times when I get anxious and nothing really can trigger it. Sometimes I'm just trying to read and I get nervous. Other times it's something as small as "oh I feel like the energy has changed with you." You used to talk to me in the morning or greet me consistently every day and then now you kind of just stopped. And that makes me anxious, it makes me nervous.

What I want you to understand is that I'm used to people doing that to me especially if I'm not useful to them anymore. So for instance this week, and since I have friends who are at the same pace with me aka it's their thesis time too, 2 of my friends who would not otherwise talk to me consistently asked for my help to revise their research papers. Which I'm okay to do except that it makes me think that I'm only good for things like that; if I stopped extending help, people will just leave.

And that's really all I'm used to. So I've started developing a mechanism where I just harden myself. It's something like "okay this is what happened, just embrace it and then steel yourself. Then move on with your life." And for so much of my life, especially at very critical moments, this mechanism has helped me.

So I want to explain that when I begin to feel like what's happening is the person is stepping back or there is a radical shift in energy, I really back down. I step away and try to stay out of their way. I won't chase after a conversation, I won't go out of my way to put in that effort because it ends up hurting me. So I just wait and mimic the other person. If they message, then I'll reply. If they want to talk, then I will if I can. But I definitely don't initiate it because it physically hurts to do it; my stomach really drops, I get a headache, my heart really palpitates. Basically, the symptoms of anxiety really hinder me from reaching out. Because I know that if I reach out and I'm not minded or replied to or I'm shot down, it will really cause me to spiral deeper into anxiety.

So going back to what happened, let me talk about it chronologically. So we had that difficult argument on Thursday (September 9). And then we were able to talk the following days but I don't think I had fully processed everything. We talked most days until Monday (September 13). And then in the following days you did stop talking to me in the morning and you stopped wanting to call. You didn't greet me, we didn't do any of our usual routines. And I really must point this out, it's alright that these things happen. If you didn't want to greet me anymore in the morning, I guess that's okay. It's just that I had grown so accustomed to it that the abrupt stop made me pause and wonder what happened. And then because of that, because we stopped talking, I started processing things on my own, our argument, the way we communicate or don't communicate properly. And I started to recognize that we both really do have faults when things get out of hand or escalate. It's not a one-sided thing.

However, when I was prepared to talk to you, I felt like we were off already. We wouldn't talk at all. You really did stop greeting me in the mornings and then would only talk to me very late in the day or at night when I was already doing something. So those times that you messaged me, I was either working on my thesis or I was at my friend's house or just in a situation where I wasn't minding my phone right away. But when I did see your messages, I would reply instantly in the hopes that we could continue talking but then I noticed that when I would reply, you wouldn't reply to that. So I was just left on read. And then thing is I was replying the way I always reply. And you check our chat histories, whenever you ask what's up, I always say "nothing much" and I use that as an indication that I'm doing anything so if you wanted to talk, I'm free, I'm not doing much. It's like when I ask you "are you okay?" meaning to ask if you're sleepy. It's the same thing. But there, you would ask what's up or what am I up to and then you wouldn't reply thereafter. So I was surprised on Friday when you asked if we were good, because I really didn't know. On my end it seemed to me that I wasn't really being talked to anymore so I just tried to be okay with it. And then you asked if we were good so I was really confused.

And then fast forward it kept happening that you would message, I would reply and then you wouldn't reply after. So the conversation always seemed to just die and it was frustrating because I did want to talk.

On Sunday (September 19) I was very anxious about it. I had already agreed with myself that I wasn't going to initiate anything, I was just gonna leave it alone because as far as I knew, you did not want to really talk. And I was set on just leaving it and maybe just bowing out and exiting from your life quietly. I thought it would be better for both of us if I just took myself out of the equation and just tried to make a slow exit. It was particularly difficult because I was getting different vibes from you; I thought you would want to talk because you messaged. And then you wouldn't reply or acknowledge/react to any of the replies I sent. So it felt ambiguous and so that's why I really was set on just leaving it; I just wanted to bow out. But I decided that it was important that I should try to work on it instead. So I wanted to give us a chance to have an opportunity to really work on it and fix things.

And what I know you really don't know and probably didn't understand at the time is that it took everything I had to place myself in a situation to initiate that conversation at all. First and foremost, it makes me really uncomfortable to do it. And the one time I did that before, I ended up begging the other person to talk to me. I was crying to that person to just give me the time of day to listen to me and I was shot down. I was told just "no". It was really one of the most painful experiences; to be dismissed because the other person will not give the time of day for it. It made me feel so incredibly small and disposable, and all of that. Honestly I hope you never get to that point where you're begging someone so important to you to just give you a few minutes of their day to talk to you only for you to be rejected. I hope no one makes you feel the way I felt because it made me feel irrelevant.

When I asked you on Sunday (19th) to talk or how you wanted to start, it really was a big leap for me. It took all of me to do it; and it sounds like a small deal but to me it didn't feel that way. So when you said "idk I have to do groceries", it just cut deeper than you will ever really know. And then it took even more effort to be vulnerable and verbalize "hey I'm bothered" and "hey I'm trying my absolute best here, I don't do this". For that to have been met with the response of "Okay thanks for trying your best" and "I just have to do the groceries" just felt hard. And I felt dismissed. And while I recognize your intentions may have been different, I can't help but feel that. I mean if you reread it, doesn't it appear like I'm being dismissed? It's not as if I knew that your dad was going to stay with you so needing to do groceries was an absolute must.

Maybe it's just because I'm different and that I respond differently. In fact, I remember when you were really bothered by something and I was studying for my comprehensive exams in the morning, I still gave you 30 minutes because I didn't want to leave you feeling that way. Again, I'm not saying this to make you change, we're really different. I just brought this up to clarify to you why it hurts me more than you would think. And it genuinely is because I would have responded differently.

Right now what I'm pondering is what steps should we take because something is off. And I think it's really because we aren't communicating well if at all. I will admit that I have been hesitant to communicate much with you because of how it turned out last time. For instance, the usual me would have been able to discuss freely with you why it bothered me that you stopped talking to me. But I feel so hindered from doing that anymore these days. I know that there's something off with us and I'll admit that even if I could identify that there was off, I was very hesitant to bring it up. And that's why it dragged on for as long as it did. I think not talking for over a week is the longest that we've not talked and it really did bother me.

But I guess I have to learn how to respect that. If that's what you want, I'll follow. If you feel it's best that we don't talk so much anymore, then I'll learn with it too. If what you want is for me to start approaching the exit, I'll do that. I'll just follow what you want because if it were up to me, I would resort to my usual mechanism of just hardening myself and preparing to cut contact with you. And I don't know if that's what either of us wants in the long run.

I do want to be very honest with you and say that I have been hurting really deeply over this. And there is a part of me that has been beginning to wonder if I should continue on. Because it feels simpler to just cut communication to make sure that it just stops hurting. Especially since I did feel a lack of effort or maybe to phrase it differently "inconsistent effort." And I'm not sure if you know much about anxiety but one of the things that intensifies it is really inconsistency. And that's because the anxious person can either learn to expect or not to expect when the other person is being consistent about it. But with inconsistency, what happens is, the anxious person doesn't know what to expect so it really makes anxiety much worse.

So I don't know about you, but that's where I'm at now.