allmyshoeshateme

[allmyshoeshateme]

- there's no other option, you know this, I've never wanted to do it - he said as he took out the chains. Oddly delicate, it was more about the meaning of them than the actual restricting power. Once he had his subjects captive, fighting back was pointless.

-I know- I said while he reluctantly slipped the chains first around my neck and then wrists. His hands were larger, rougher than mine yet it was my hands that tried to send over the resolve to continue by leaning into his grasp. Miraculously, his fingers lingered, as if he really was taking some strength from me.

The last bit of chain was secured around my stomach and I changed my shirt to hide most of the length, you could see just the wrist chains and the lines leading into sleeves. The way the chains were made was unlike anything I've ever seen. It seemed as if two bracelets were attached to a necklace by two other chains and then joined by another chain leading to the one around my stomach. Another chain could be added between the wrists to restrict the movement more, but in the first phase we had to remain inconspicuous.

I shook out my hands and the chains slipped.

- You really have to make it more authentic, and you know I can take it rougher. - I tried to tease him as I went to him to have my unassuming shackles redone.

He looked anything but amused, troubled much more than you'd think considering this was exactly why he was sent after me.

[allmyshoeshateme]

this was intense and honestly horrible. Can’t imagine this kind of testing. 

but a great & captivating story!

remembering that one test where i got the question right because i am too dense

it was a practical test. OSCE practical tests in med school are torture. they lock your whole class up in a room to wait, then take you out in groups of five. watching your classmates form a line and be marched out of the room feels like waiting for your moment to be sacrificed to the old gods.

the room was on the highest floor of the building and there were some guardsman-type people who stayed inside to make sure we weren’t looking at our phones, even though we had to leave them behind and even though we go through metal detectors to enter confinement and every time we went to and back from the bathroom. 

the guard people let us talk among ourselves and study, but they always went “get away from the windows” if we approached, and i could never quite figure out if they were worried about someone morse-coding us the answers with a flashlight one building away, or if they were scared we were going to jump.

OSCE is basically an oral test: you stop by the door and there’s a little clinical story on the door, followed by a few questions. you have two minutes to read the case. the case is very long. the questions are very vague. a high pitched bell rings and signals you should enter the room. inside the room there’s a professor and you have to verbally relay the answers and sometimes execute the proceedures the question asked of you. 

the professor has a little checklist, a list of the things you’re supposed to say, and if you say them all you get all the marks, and if you don’t, you get a zero for that checklist point, and this corresponds to around 40% of our final grade. because the questions are very vague - eg ‘how would you handle the case and what would you prescribe’ - it’s very easy to miss things and forget them. 

you have to say the exact things on the list. i mean the EXACT things. it is a nightmare. sometimes the professors are really generous and they look at their checklist, then look at you with this exhausted dead-inside expression and go “You forgot to say where you’re treating the patient.”

and I’m very grateful for the hint, but also very frustrated, because I SAID I’M DOING A SURGERY, OF COURSE IT’S IN A HOSPITAL, WHERE ELSE WOULD I DO A GODDAMN SURGERY

so i give them an equally dead-inside look and go “I would like to hospitalize the patient” and they tick the fucking thing on the fucking list this is the worst fucking way to evaluate literally anything i hate it so much 

sometimes, though, the professors are dicks and they infer that although you said “perform a surgery”, you didn’t say where, so you obviously meant it in the middle of a shopping mall or on top of a moving truck, where surgeries are usually performed. therefore you deserve a zero.

each OSCE question is timed and lasts five minutes. when time runs out, the bell rings again to signal you should move to the next question. we can hear the bell from the confinement. i need you guys to understand that this is torture. i always volunteered for the first groups because staying in confinement hearing the bell ring for over an hour made me want to cry. students sneaking each other anxiety pills were common. 

me and my friend had a ritual that we always walked out the door humming summertime sadness by lana del rey. our very own cthulhu sacrifice hymn. for good luck.

anyway so I’m doing this OSCE examination and for some questions they bring actors to pretend to be patients, while the professor stares at you talking, in silence, like some sorta edward cullen in a whitecoat peeping you in your sleep, ticking things on the little list. it is about as miserable as it sounds. 

this question had an actor, and the actors are just kids from theater school who need some cash so i sympathize with them. the question was about an elderly lady who needed a liver transplantation. 

the actor was supposed to be the lady’s son, which gave me anxiety, but not as much anxiety as if the actor was pretending to be the elderly patient, because that happens sometimes and the cognitive dissonance of those benjamin button situations throws me off.

so i walk into the room and the guy immediately starts crying which means they have instructed him to cry in order to further emotionally destabilize me. “try to destabilize the student” is a legitimate bit of instruction they receive. 

i will not be destabilized. i am as stable as an optic fiber internet connection in the silicon valley. my self esteem is as high as that of a businessman who decides to run for president. i can absolutely do this.

i am having a terrible time

i introduce myself and try to calm the guy down.  

“My mother is sick, doctor, she’s going to die.”

that is a lie. his mother is probably fine. he is an actor. this awareness makes me upset. “I promise you we will give her the best care.” 

i comfort him with the lines i memorized from what my upperclassmen told me of their previous tests. then he asks about the liver transplantations and how they are done. 

“We will evaluate your mother through certain criteria and then place her in a queue for available livers. We’ll notify you when a donor shows up and we can do the next steps.” 

the professor makes a tick. i can see him making a tick. this does very little to calm me. 

“I can pay, though.”

“All transplantations are done through the public system, sir. There’s a single national queue, and the entire process is covered by universal healthcare.” 

he asks me details about how the queue works. I explain to him about the CHILD and MELD scores. he asks more questions than a regular patient would, because he is an actor, and those questions are pre-determined. the professor makes ticks. i am trying to keep track of the five minutes of terrible time.

“I have money,” he insists. “I know that helps.” 

i am very stressed with this situation. if he is insisting on saying he has money, it means i have not responded correctly to this point of the question. “It does help.” I say. “You can hire nurses to help you out at home, for instance! This kind of dedicated professional aid makes recovery a lot easier.” 

the actor pauses and turns to the professor. the professor shrugs and makes a tick. the bell rings, giving me the extra corporeal experience of having my skeleton startled out of my body.

i absolutely fucking flunked this disgraceful question. this is fine. i can keep my cool for the next one. i am very good at keeping my cool under stress, and then breaking down twice as hard after, which is useful but not healthy. 

i finish the test. i meet up with my friends to have our traditional post-OSCE smoothie. we look like we’ve just been through a series of harrowing psychological aggressions, which we have. 

“Question three was about a heart attack,” my friend says, and I nod. “But I forgot to say the patient should not eat until further notice.” 

i did not forget to say this bit of information, but it infuriates me because it is pointless. no one is going to feed a patient in the middle of a heart attack because we are busy trying to stop the heart attack. 

“What about question four?” my other friend says. “The one with an actor. How did you guys respond to his attempt to bribe you into skipping the line for his mother?”

wait

WAIT

HIS ATTEMPT TO WHAT

[allmyshoeshateme]

I can’t

[allmyshoeshateme]

it's 2022. donald trump has died in disgrace days after being impeached and jailed. my chemical romance's new album is coming out the same day as the new spiderverse movie. the lizzo and janelle monaé collab song is blowing up the radio. lil nas x has a verse in it. you and your partner have time and energy for dates after work after jeff bezos' assets have been seized and distributed to the public in the wake of his arrest for keeping employees in unsafe working conditions.

[allmyshoeshateme]

Concept: a cartoon series where all the foreshadowing of the various characters’ tragic secrets is concealed as plausibly deniable animation and writing errors. The protagonist’s eye colour changes from episode to episode. The sidekick casually mentions three slightly different names for the town they grew up in over the course of the first season. There’s a recurring guest character who’s a cyborg, but in some episodes their robot arm is on the left and in others it’s on the right. All of these eventually turn out to be critical plot details.

[allmyshoeshateme]

I mean???? I thought everyone knew that? In my language it’s either “sane sense” or “pheasant sense” so... 

Perhaps “common sense” is named not because it is common, but because it is the sense of “commoners”, who are not properly educated.

[allmyshoeshateme]

most definitely, I’m an ace, advancing my plot of world domination

“but there’s no reason for this character to be gay” do u think irl gay people are gay to advance a plot dude

[allmyshoeshateme]

[allmyshoeshateme]

vegans make peace with honey

no shut up do it

[allmyshoeshateme]

I think my favorite jokes are the ones that weren’t even all that funny until I was an adult, and now they’re fucking hilarious. I’m not even talking about the dirty jokes. I’m talking about in Finding Nemo where the sharks are having fucking AA for fish eating. Remember that shit? “I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself.” Who ever thought of that? That was brilliant. Or what about that time in Shrek 2 where Shrek and Donkey infiltrate the castle pretending to be union workers? Little me didn’t give a shit about unions but big me is remembering Shrek going “It’s okay buddy, we’re from the union” and the desk worker secretively “we don’t even have dental,” and Shrek just shakes his head and looks at Donkey like he can’t believe this shit and goes, “They don’t even have dental.” What the fuck. I’m dying of laughter. Who comes up with this shit.

[allmyshoeshateme]

Even little kids have a wage gap

Boys, on average, spend two fewer hours doing household chores per week than girls do (they play two hours more).

If they live in households where children are compensated for doing chores, boys make and save more money.  

A 2009 study conducted by University of Michigan economists found a two-hour gender disparity in responsibilities per week in a study of 3,000 kids.

75 percent of girls had chores, while just 65 percent of boys do

This disparity in chores and free time continues into adulthood all over the world.   According to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), men “report spending more time in activities counted as leisure than women. Gender differences in leisure time are wide across OECD countries.”

Year after year, studies repeatedly confirm these patterns.

The problems women face with unequal pay and housework duties actually start in childhood.

The fact that boys’ chores appear to be more profitable makes the childhood chore gap even more disturbing. Turns out, parents tend to value the work that boys do more. 

Gender stereotypes dictate these patterns. 

men who grow up with sisters do less housework than their spouses and are also significantly more socially conservative.

[allmyshoeshateme]

THIS!!!!

i wanna be rich but in a socialist utopia where everyone’s needs are met already so that i can drop bonkers amounts of money on vacations without being a greedy piece of shit 

[allmyshoeshateme]

[allmyshoeshateme]

What does sexual attraction feel like?

[allmyshoeshateme]

PUNK IS WHATEVER MAKES YOU HAPPY THAT IRRITATES PEOPLE WHO ARE USED TO HAVING TOTAL CONTROL. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[allmyshoeshateme]

I love Rose Tyler because every time she encountered a new alien life form or a fellow human that seemed to be mistreated in some way she went “HELLO DO THEY TREAT YOU WELL, HOW MUCH DO THEY PAY YOU, ARE YOUR BASIC RIGHTS BEING VIOLATED, DID YOU KNOW YOU ARE ENTITLED TO AN EIGHT HOUR SHIFT AND THREE WEEKS OF VACATION ALSO YOU COULD JOIN A UNION, MY NAME IS ROSE I’M HERE TO HELP” and that was just so rad of her

[allmyshoeshateme]

someone: sex sells

me, an asexual: not to me it doesn’t