#(I live in a high cost of living area with a lot of students to boot)

[marzipanandminutiae]

okay has anyone else dealt with extreme neat freak housemates? because I feel like I'm losing my mind

I'm not a dirty person, I'm pretty sure. a bit prone to clutter, but not actual dirt. I don't like for the house to be dirty. but there's just been a House Meeting called and when I went to ask the housemate who requested it what was going on- because I hate house meetings that I don't already know the purpose of; it feels like a Wait Until Your Father Gets Home situation and I don't even know what I'm potentially "in trouble" for

and basically they all feel that I'm leaving the kitchen "filthy"

"nobody wants to cook there because it's gross" was the exact quote

I feel like I'm losing my mind, because...I don't think I leave the kitchen gross? I wipe crumbs off the counter; I wipe up spills if and when they happen. the most I've ever noticed when I go in there is a couple of crumbs here and there, genuinely. or when I look over the kitchen after I finish up with a meal

(also this housemate once sent a picture to the group chat with like. five single, spread-out crumbs on the counter individually circled in red. but the thing is, everyone else seems to agree with her)

but I'm also very good at hating myself, so now I'm wondering if I AM somehow disgusting

and of course, my House Meeting tribunal has to convene at some point. the last one made me feel like everything I said was pointless because everyone else put up a united front and shot it all down, so I guess I'm headed for more of the same

[brucespringsteensborntorun]

Please Read

I am speaking on behalf of @eslamfa1, who has her own campaign for her and her family so they may survive under the harsh conditions in Gaza. She is very thankful for all the support she's had, but she needs more help.

She has asked me to host a fundraiser for more of her family, namely for her parents and siblings who desperately need funds for food, water, and medical treatment. They have been displaced multiple times and have only been able to contact Eslam through an unreliable internet connection.

Here is their story as written by her sister, Aya:

"Hello friends, we will tell you our sad story

I am Aya, an outstanding high school student. I was very happy to be on the verge of achieving my dream of finishing my school studies and achieving what I aspired to, which is to become a doctor.

My family of 8 and a beautiful cat named Katie were living a beautiful and peaceful life, each of us striving to achieve our dreams.

We had our beautiful house in Khan Yunis. Recently, we were celebrating my sister Heba’s fourth place in the Gaza Strip in the Arabic language recruitment exam. Our life was like material and emotional perfection. We did not feel deprived or lacking anything.

My sister Lina is a university student. Her dream was to become a psychologist to help mentally ill people in the Strip.

My brother Ahmed was the most beautiful gift from God. He came after 20 years of being deprived of male siblings. After completing his studies, he became a water carrier and took on a great responsibility beyond his capacity.

We also had two little butterflies, the apple of the house, and Jana, the favorites of their teachers and friends at school.

Then the war broke out and everything was turned upside down. We were forced to leave the house after quadcopters surrounded us, tanks surrounded us, and we saw death right in front of our eyes, but we miraculously escaped.

We were displaced several times on foot. Feet, then our end was in a tent that did not protect us from the cold of winter or the heat of summer, and there were poisonous insects and scorpions around us, there was no clean water or healthy food, so my family and I got hepatitis and a lot of intestinal infections.

We were shocked that our house was bombed and destroyed and the features of the house disappeared from the face of the earth, so we felt very sad and despair took over us.

Life here in Gaza is expensive, we cannot buy the minimum necessities of life, imagine that the price of a kilo of tomatoes is $50, and the price of a bag of flour is $200, life here is like a famine! My father is a nervous patient and my mother suffers from chronic pressure and they need continuous treatment and medications. We suffer from bringing water from long distances, and from the high prices of food and cleaning materials and water pollution. What we have suffered most in this war is the loss of members of our family, and this is the hardest thing we have been through. We have lost 20 members of our family. Please help us bear the very high cost of living until we evacuate from Gaza and save our lives. The cost per person is $5,000. Help us, you are the only hope left."

These are some of the photos she's managed to receive of some of her family (Aya, Ahmed, Hala, Jana, and their cat) and of the conditions of the areas they've been displaced from and to:

Note: Due to mentioned lack of internet connection, Eslam has not been able to receive more photos yet. There will be more updates to come when, hopefully, more communications are made.

PLEASE DONATE !!!!! Aya, Lina, Ahmed, Hala, jana, and their parents' well beings are at stake! Starting goal is $10,000

@90-ghost @gaza-evacuation-funds @gazavetters

[neodymiumcuilz]

HELP A FAMILY IN GAZA!!

"I am a mother of 4 children, Jamil, Ahmed, Karim and Rital, all of whom are school students. We have been living in tragic circumstances for more than 10 months. I lost my job as a teacher because of the war. I owned two houses, which were partially destroyed and then burned. I lost a lot of my furniture. Because of the destruction, we were displaced to the Mawasi area of ​​Khan Yunis. Now, I, my four children and my husband live in a tent and suffer from severe shelling, lack of food, water, health care and all the necessities of life. During this war, my children fell ill with hepatitis. We find treatment only with difficulty.

Insects have multiplied in the tents, epidemics and diseases have spread, and we suffer from difficulty in obtaining the necessities of life, extreme heat in the summer and cold in the winter. In addition, the tents have become worn out and water has entered the tents, damaging everything in them, and the water has reached our clothes, in addition to the shortage of cleaning materials and their high prices. This war has cost us a lot of what we own: housing, money, friends, and health. Now all I want from you is to help me and my children rebuild our future and start a new life."

Hello everyone, please listen to the message from @haninfamily9 who has reached out to me asking for help, in rebuilding their lives and securing a stable future for children in need, along with surviving the harsh conditions and providing basic needs, basic needs like food, water, good shelter and health care, clothes. They are human and deserving of being warm, comfortable, dry, and not displaced or in constant fear. Please have a heart and donate if you can. What you may spend on a coffee or something unnecessary can really get this campaign off the ground. Thank you.

51% OF GOAL REACHED!! PLEASE DO WHAT YOU CAN!!

Please also share, vist @haninfamily9 and interact with the posts, share the account, share the message, and campaign so it can reach more donors. Thank you!

[bitchesgetriches]

Hey Bitches! Long-time reader, first time asker :)

I have a budgeting question!

I'm a 21 year old student living with my (employed) partner independent from both our families. I'm unemployed at the moment, but will be starting a (min wage, limited hours, career-benefiting, year-long-contracted) job starting next month. I'll also be looking into selling plasma and/or picking up a gig app to supplement the pay

I find that a lot of what makes budgets useful doesn't really work for me because most of my spending areas that can be minimized have already been minimized, and I limit and track myself so much already because I know I don't have a lot of wiggle room to spend frivolously. So most of the time, I use a spending tracker spreadsheet

However, my credit union has a built-in budget feature I like to poke around on sometimes, too. It can be nice to have a goal in mind and to feel like I did a good job at the end of the month when (most) everything is green (I was over-budget for my cat by 11 cents last month)

BUT! I can only set a budget for one month's length. This seems to be the norm and is pretty common when I look at budgeting examples

This is great for things that happen on a monthly basis (like gas, for example), where, after years of tracking my spending data, I have a solid idea of how much I can realistically expect to spend in that time. But it really sucks for things that aren't as frequent, but do happen on a regular basis (like car registration or tuition, which come once a year and every few months, respectively)

I'm kind of at a loss for how to represent or calculate these kinds of items on a budget/spending tracker (like when I'm pulling for an average over a length of time, or categorizing my spending when one value is superbly high in a sea of much smaller numbers)

Gas is about $50/month, car registration is about $100/year. I think it's a poor representation to say I need $150/month for auto expenses. I'm not spending that $100 most of the time, but I'm not expecting to pay it most of the time, so it feels wrong to say I'm saving a ton of money every month. But it also isn't great to have only $50 budgeted when registration month rolls around and I'm in the red by $100 (not to mention inconsistent maintenance of wildly varying cost)

Likewise, I wouldn't say I'm under-budget by $2,000 on the months I don't have tuition due, but it can't be correct to have a $0 budget that gets super red every three months. Dividing it up to $666 a month gets the same problem where I'm either super green, not spending anything, "saving" a ton, or very in the red, very over-budget when my tuition actually comes due. There is an option to split up payments, but it adds a $50 payment plan fee, which (in addition to generally being shitty by punishing anyone who doesn't make the lump sum) doesn't feel worth it just to make my books look nice

I've seen some recommendations to use a sinking fund for these expenses, putting money aside each month in preparation for the big expense, but

A. where exactly do you put that portion "aside" into? I have a checking, savings, (secured) credit card, and a CD account (the latter two of which I can't easily move money around in). Besides putting money into my savings account from my checking (which, when employed and receiving income, I already do), I don't understand how this works. Do people just open and have several accounts going for each expense that isn't on a monthly pattern?

And B. I'm in a fortunate enough position that I'm (just barely! Job is coming with amazing timing!) able to make single payments on these expected bigger expenses without having to meticulously save up for them. It doesn't fix my budget being wonky on months with/out these non-monthly expenses, and I would like to actually have a working budget, but do I even need to make a sinking fund if I can afford it with the habits/systems I already have?

I've also seen people using different budgets for different times. Most often, this is seasonal: a winter budget with higher heating expenses planned, a summer budget with lower heating expenses planned kind of deal. This feels closer to what I'm looking for than a sinking fund, but making a different monthly budget around each varying expense and overlapping occurrences (or lack thereof) feels cumbersome and tedious (to make, keep track of, alter, and change every month)

I could have a yearly budget, but it feels risky to go such a long time without knowing how on-track I am and my life is so in flux right now that I don't know what to expect that far into the future. Plus, like I said, I only have the option for monthly budgets in my credit union.

I expect having a more stable and higher income will help a lot (assuming I can get there). As will not having to pay for huge-stressful-chunks-of-savings-every-three-months-except-for-summertime tuition (I'll be done next year almost to the day!). I know there will still be yearly and bi-yearly expenses (and surprises) that I'll have to be ready to pay for, but I'm hoping I'll have more staggering control.

So, I've come to you, Bitches, if there is a better way to address these big, non-monthly expenses, or if I'm just missing something in one of the suggestions above, I'd be jazzed to hear about it and not have to wait to better grasp this part of my finances.

Thank you, Bitches!!

THIS IS EXACTLY WHY WE DON'T THINK BUDGETS ARE RIGHT FOR EVERYONE.

My first instinct is to tell you to ignore your bank's budgeting software. It doesn't matter. You're doing great with your personal spending tracker and you seem to have a very good hold of your expenses. So that's an option.

The other option is combining the budget with a sinking fund. Some banks will include "buckets" within your account that you can access through their online portal. For example, my Ally HYSA allows me to set up buckets within the account so I can budget for what I'm saving for our kitchen renovation, for example. It makes using a sinking fund real easy.

But not every bank has that functionality! So again, I can't stress enough how much a budget just might not be right for your situation right now.

Budgets Don’t Work for Everyone—Try the Spending Tracker System Instead 

Ask Not How Much You Should Save, Ask How Much You Should Spend 

Did we just help you out? Join our Patreon!

[my-pjo-stuff]

So from the little I know about Connecticut it's a pretty rich state, with high costs of living aswell as an expensive property tax. And all around just being a very rich area. May Castellan's home was described to sit on a HUGE plot of property and being a two-story white colonial house. May Castellan (or at least her family) was LOADED as fuck, and Luke by extension would have been a rich kid had he grown up normal. As soon as he got a hint of freedom and real luxury on the Princess Andromeda Luke immediately started splurging on fast food and sweets of all kinds. This all leads me to the conclusion that Luke, would he have gotten to live a normal life, would have been a weirdly wholesome rich kid stereotype??? Like yeah he's showing off his newest expensive gadget- but more in the "look at this cool thing I wanna show you way" and not the "I'm so much better than you" way. Sure he's hanging out at the mall a lot- he's also happy paying for his friends if they want a milkshake or something! He's captain of the football team but he's also taking care of the younger students. The guy likes to have to occasional flirt but he's also very respectful of girls and their boundaries. Luke's a rich kid stereotype turned wholesome if he'd been mortal or grew up normally!

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not spotting someone $20?

Hiya! This is a low-stakes scenario but I thought it could provide some interesting philosophical conversation if anything else:

Situation: I was waiting at the bus stop when a homeless man walked up to me and asked if I could spare some change. I said yes, as I had cash on me from tips earlier that week. He then asked me for $20 specifically. While I did physically have enough cash on me to fulfill his request, I gave him $10 instead. As he walked away he muttered "Two fives? Really?" leaving me feeling kind of icky.

Why I might be the asshole: I had enough cash on me at the time, and I have enough savings where $20, while I would wince at losing, would not put me out of food and shelter. We also live in an area in North America that has a high cost of living - you can barely buy a sandwich or a coffee for $5, which is why only giving a dollar feels kind of useless. He also had a specific request, which suggests maybe he needed that money for something important.

Why I might not be an asshole: I am a college student who works part-time as a barista and comes from a low-income background, so I'm not really in the best position to be as generous financially. I also did give (what feels like) a lot of money in offering $10. Theoretically one could also say I do not owe anything to a stranger, and that homelessness needs systemic change rather than relying on the generosity (and wealth) of individuals.

Thank you for your time! Take care!

What are these acronyms?

[sarcasticscribbles]

Artschool Dropout

I made a thread about how and why I became an artschool dropout, and want to share it here too. Storytime! It's mainly a highlight of parts I despite in the art worlds; capitalism and superiority. My experience was affected by the environment, and hell was a bad environment

Back in the distance year of 2019 I went to an(community) art college in like the *fancy* part of my area. I lived across the lake on the countryside, so I was not prepared for this environment. Rich people cosplaying poor is the best description. Fancy clothing made to look dirty and no-one wore shoes. It was very networking-vibe, with "omg we HAVE to talk more later" but never doing so. Like nurses energy. To be fair I became more and more non-approachable as time went on.

A good note is that Swedish education is normally free, even uni degrees, but this one cost money. It was that was never addressed or mentioned when I applied; that's on me maybe, but the few friends I had didn't know either. A lot was beaten around the bush when it came to expenses. A big draw for the school was a trip they made to Berlin during a film festival. Once the time came around they mentioned the cost for the trip (which was not mentioned before, I thought it was included) and kinda of shamed people if they wouldn't pay and go. Saying how its a highlight of the education and the few staying behind just watch movies for a week. In addition, the film festival wasn't included in the price, and we would have to pay extra to go. It was supposed to be a week, but two days was for travelling by train.

The price was something I would rather use for a private Berlin trip. It wasn't a lot, but I refused to do it, mainly for how indirect they were with everything. A friend and I said we wouldn't go and a staff complained how they would have to keep the school open just for us.

My classmates weren't an issue, it was the teachers and system, which all just felt like a money laundering scheme. One day we travelled to Stockholm, and we were tasked to go four hours alone, sit and stare at an object and think what it made is feel. Those were the instructions.

Four hours. Alone. Then home.

I and one other instead went to grab a coffee and trash talk. Once the time was up, I just made up on the spot "what it made me feel" and he gave me a job well done. I understand the assignment, but the execution from the teacher was all wrong.

It wasn't my crowd tho, I came from a gaming development High school while these people were like, social studies. I'm used to a nerdy crowd, is what I'm trying to say.

I have two funny examples:

I was talking to some guy during a break the ice get together with the whole school (very small school) and I explained I studied video game development before, and he said "omg that's so cool!!" And I answered, "yeah! Do you play?" And he said "yes, the piano :)"

And other time we were talking about painters, and when they asked me who my favourite was, I thought I would joke and said "oh, donatello :) because I love purple" and NO ONE got my tmnt ref and instead thought some Italian Renaissance was my favourite artist.

But back to the main issue, it was the school: First day our teacher handed us supplies from a closet and I was like "wow! Thank you! When these run out (BECAUSE WE'RE FKN ARTISTS) can we grab new ones in the closet?" And she said "no :) this is for the two years you are here" Like eight different hardness pens and a block of paper.

My worse experience was that every Tuesday was lecture day (although we didn't have grades nor exams) and all students gathered in a dark room to look at a PowerPoint about culture and people.

Fun in theory, but again executed so badly. My last lecture one teacher said "oh, and we gotten complaint not everyone can take notes during the presentation, so we thought one from each class could take notes and share with everyone else later :)! Any volunteer?"

Like ??? What? I raised my hand and said "you have a PowerPoint there? Why can't just share the presentation with everyone if they want to go back later?" AND SHE ANSWERED "that is a great idea, but unfortunately that would take weeks. So this is a better alternative:)"

TO THIS DAY, I DON'T KNOW WHAT SHE MEANT BY THAT

Smaller details ; expensive lunch, creepy teacher keeping images of women's privates on screen (and I'm an artist I don't mind nudity) pointless activities and little progression. I can't give it a fair judgement, I only lasted three weeks but jumped in the opportunity to leave.

Cherry on top was I had communicated in private with my mentor about quitting and the day it was decided I had to go back to get my stuff and have one last day and the teacher (not my mentor) exclaimed in the shadiest way "Sophie? I thought you quit" I hadn't told my friends yet.

Last day I replaced all my supplies with new from the fancy closet, and me and my friends stole coffee from the cafeteria during lunch (it was only included if you bought food) to celebrate my time. We all hated the system of the school, but all of us loved art.

My experience is mainly the environment the school was located in; upper-class pretending not to be. The people were alright and i got a few friends before quitting. It was also traditional, general art when I prefer digital art. The school, system, and teacher were hell, which is a shame because it took something I loved and turned it into all the things I hate. i don't regret going and I don't regret quitting when I did. Best thing to come out of it was my literal label Artschool Dropout

[catboybiologist]

Random actual vent that is probably more venty than my usual random little things, but occasionally I have to step back and think how asinine the salary system for PhD students can sound to people outside of academia. I really just want to like... lay it on the table, because it really is fucking dumb and I occasionally want validation that its fucking dumb.

Note that this is all coming from a traditional lab sciences, in the US perspective. Also, I'm really fucking ADHD and have a really, really shitty brain for bureacracy, so this is a rant and isn't really intended to be informative and might be wrong in places, its just me word vomiting.

Let's start with something straight off the bat- grad school isn't really school. It's work that creates value for the university, and you happen to take one or two courses on the side that the university has determined will make you better at that work (your mileage may vary). It's an entry level job, essentially. You create value for the university in one of two ways- you either contribute to research that gets them grant money, or you teach undergrads that pay tuition. We'll get back to how that affects you later, but first lets talk about something else: what the university claims they pay you vs what you actually get paid.

On paper, my income is approximately 3 times as much as my actual, take home income. There's two reasons for this. The first is that I am technically charged tuition by the central university, which is then immediately paid off by the source of my income. In official job titles, that's technically included in what you're getting paid, although most universities don't even bother advertising that. The other confounding factor is that you're literally always considered part time. The exact % time varies depending on your exact schedule, and of course your university, but its actually weirdly consistent even between universities. Technically, the work you do on your thesis isn't "work", and the university doesn't technically pay you to do it. Even though the work you do on your thesis literally generates revenue for the university in the form of grant overhead. But we'll get to that. If you're a researcher for a given appointment term, you're expected to also do research activities that are unconnected to your thesis- which is ridiculous, because there's no lab in existence where the work isn't all interconnected in some way.

Half time appointments are common, but lots of different percentages exist.

So, if you ever see a figure that says that a grad student position is paid at about $80k a year, that's whats going on. The highest take-home income I have EVER heard of in the US for PhD students is $54k, at Stanford neuroscience. I think its a bit higher now, but that at least gets you a ballpark. Most STEM PhD students on the high cost of living coasts are paid 30-40k ish, and in cheaper areas you can expect to take 5k off of that. These are for degrees that usually make six figures on the job market.

And then there's the other convoluted problem- the source of the funding. This is where the academia salary model really has a unique brand.

Basically, when you're a PhD student, you're not working one job for the full 5-7 years. You're constantly flipping between job titles within the university, and who exactly is paying you changes as a result.

The most basic distinction is researcher vs teaching assistant. TA is easy- you work "part time" (but oh my god those workloads are not part time sometimes [although the class I'm TAing now is very chill so its w/e][fuck you molecular genetics at my master's uni tho]), and the department you're teaching for pays for your tuition and your salary as a result.

Researcher is a bit weirder. Basically, each lab is conducted as its own independent financial unit, managed by a Principle Investigator (PI, or to any grad student, the professor/boss/research advisor/liege/monarch/authority of the lab). The PI is constantly writing lab wide grants to supply the core funding of the lab, including the salary of the grad students. Grants can be pretty general, but there are also very specific ones that check in how the money is being spent. These include training grants/fellowships/tbh the name is arbitrary for a lot of these. Those are grants that are written to supply the salary of a specific grad student.

Couple things to note- the university charges the PI in a lot of ways on this. Notably:

They charge tuition on every grad student, as mentioned previously, which under a researcher appointment is paid from the PI to the university.

They charge overhead on grants- basically, they take money out of every grant the PI gets.

If the previous two sources aren't enough, oftentimes universities will pay rent on the amount of building space a lab takes up (although this is very inconsistent between universities)

Researcher appointments are considered favorable to teaching appointments, because they mean you can spend more of your time on your thesis. But, its dependent on whether your PI has the funding to pay you all that, which is a big if. So, every quarter or semester or year or however much your university decides to renegotiate it, you essentially switch jobs, in a way. Obviously its a lot more simple and streamlined than actually switching jobs, but your title, responsibility, source of income, and sometimes your actual pay changes constantly.

And to anyone who has been through a PhD, you're nodding along like this is all the basic stuff, because all this is so NORMAL. Like this is all the normal system, and this is the bare basics of it as well. And it's weird that it's normal, right? Like, most of my career has been tied to academia, so I don't have a fantastic benchmark for this, but this isn't how it works outside of academia like... at all.

Over the course of late last year and bleeding into this year, multiple graduate student unions have had strikes or negotiations regarding pay scale, but its been a very difficult situation for the average grad student to untangle because of how weird the source of pay is. Because technically, even though you functionally work a single, salaried job with slightly changing obligations, what's happening behind the scenes is that you're essentially hopping between jobs every couple of months. In an ideal system, those jobs always have the same pay, but that's increasingly becoming not the case. Sometimes that means getting paid more overall, sometimes slightly less. Union negotiations have made this pay slightly higher overall, but its still a mess of a system.

And obviously, there's paperwork associated with so many of these steps.

So in my last post, when I said "getting a grant", that was what I was referring to- applying for training grants that will guarantee that I don't have to teach extra or get extra money from my PI for the time I'm here. I'd love to get more teaching experience, but ofc I want to do it when I want to, not when I have to. I'm applying for multiple training grants over the next couple of months that will hopefully fund my salary specifically, and hopefully I'll get at least one of them. And tbh, I don't even care that much about teaching, I more want them because it'll dramatically simplify all this for me.

I love what I do to death, but untangling this shit is what gives me imposter syndrome more than anything. I think my arrogant streak shows when I can genuinely say that I've never felt imposter syndrome based on my scientific knowledge. I have felt it over two things- my motivation/productivity (which is a different rant entirely), and the fact that I am really, really bad at untangling the level of bureaucracy required to just... exist here. Just give me my fucking paycheck and let me do my science, and tell me when you want me to teach.

[uptoolateart]

Education Systems

I'm updating this because a French fan has now added to the conversation, for accuracy.

I think a lot of people have misunderstood the French education system, after watching Confrontation. I did a bunch of research into this for one of my fics - I have lived in the UK since I was 16 and have children in the British education system - and I originally grew up in the US. With all that in mind...

When you finish the first major stage of education:

France - Age 15

UK - Age 16

US - Age 18

Picking your focus / specialism(s):

France - Age 15, you can pick a stream, focusing on subjects relevant to what you want to do in life.

UK - Age 16, you can pick a stream, focusing on subjects relevant to what you want to do in life - there are also vocational courses, if you’re not remotely academic, and I bet there is something like this in France.

US - You are required to take all general mandatory subjects, even if you suck at them, until age 18, at which point you can finally specialise.

Speaking personally, when I lived in the US I was only given one elective in high school, and for my junior year (age 16) I realised I would have no time to fit that elective into my schedule because of all the science and maths requirements...subjects I was all but failing, because I knew I was artistic / literary-minded from a very young age. I was forced to suffer falling self-esteem, feeling like I was stupid and not good enough, simply because I didn’t have the ‘right’ brain type to fit with what the school wanted. There were other schools in the area that had slightly different requirements, but they all did some form of the same thing.

If you don’t know what you want to focus on yet:

France - There are generalist academic options where you do the usual variety of subjects, with the proviso that you get to choose if it’s more heavily weighted towards maths / science or towards liberal arts (see my personal anecdote above).

UK - Does something similar to France.

US - I was seriously considering dropping out of high school as soon as legally able (age 16) because I couldn’t cope with the pressures of the school system and my shattered confidence, despite previously being a straight-A student. However, if you drop out, you bear that stigma for life, no matter how much else you do - even though there are countries like France and the UK that legally release you from that education system at the same age or even younger. I’ve seen this happen to a lot of extremely intelligent American friends.

At university:

UK - You ONLY do classes directly related to your degree.

France - I'm told it's the same but that you don't get to choose unrelated electives for fun (you can do that in the UK - not lots, but a few over the years).

US - You are forced to take a lot of mandated subjects that have nothing to do with your course, e.g. local government or trigonometry even though you’re doing a writing degree, and you pay an absolute fortune for these / the required textbooks. (The most I ever spent on a book for my UK English degree course was £15, whereas textbooks in the US cost in the hundreds.)

What if you change your mind?

UK - Most jobs don’t care what degree you did, just that you did a degree. If you decide to do something that does need special qualifications, you can always go back and undertake them, at any age...with the proviso that you need to find the time and money.

France - I have been told it can be difficult, although in ways similar to the UK (and probably the US), where it depends on the job. Some jobs will always require retraining. It's always easier to do that training when you're younger and have fewer obligations

US - I can’t specifically comment, as I emigrated, but see above. Also, I have American friends who have gone through a LOT of hoops to try to change career paths in later life. This is probably an area where all countries could improve.

In conclusion:

The French (and UK) system is not necessarily forcing teenagers to lock into a fixed career path with no looking back, at the age of 15. Nothing is perfect, but in many ways, I think the French system actually offers options for greater flexibility by allowing greater choice at a younger age, instead of being forced to take all these other classes they may never use again in life, possibly at the detriment of their mental health.

Don’t get me wrong - there are a lot of things I prefer about the US vs the UK system in the lead up to high school (I can’t comment on the French system during those years, as I have no experience). But I’m a big believer that we need to allow kids greater choice at a younger age, with the option to stay in generalist education if that’s really what they want.

[fudgetunblr]

Guide to Studenten

Idk if anyone has done this because I haven't checked the tag, but anyways, here we go:

Swedish High School is three years of education, where you have a specific area of studies. I feel like perhaps someone has talked about this before, so let's not dwell on it.

There's usually countdowns, 250 days, 200 days, 100 days, 50 days, blah blah before where there are theme parties. You don't have to go to these, not everyone does, but the closer you get, there's more parties. The legal drinking age in Sweden is 18. However, you can't go out and buy your own at Systembolaget (the only alcohol company in Sweden) until you're 20. This doesn't really stop people, unsurprisingly.

The hats are the white ones they wore on the show, and back in the day it was very simple, something like this:

however, nowadays there's a lot more design options. You can pic your own tinsel in the middle, many go for stones. There are specific colours for different programs, but most people don't care. You usually put your name on it, other things that are common: your class name, the year you graduated, some put their school, and at the back of the hat many put a little quote on the back. You can also customise the inside. Often you pick a few of these things and not all, because the hat costs a lot of money :3 I made my own really cheap tbh.

Mösspåtagning is a typical event where the students get to wear their hats. Because of covid, ours was combined with like a prom, but usually this happens before that, according to google, often outside or whatever.

There's a prom. But that's pretty normal.

Champagnefrukost or champagne-breakfast happens the day of studenten, where you go to one of your classmates houses, usually one who lives closest to the school, and have breakfast with your class. There you hand out the plates around the neck, aka the "class... [insert whatever, take clown as an example]. You drink, you eat, sometimes teachers will stop by. You get hyped with your class for the day.

Then you head to the school.

There's a photographer that takes a picture of the whole class and then individual portraits that you can later chose to purchase.

You meet with your mentors and say goodbye. They usually hand out a little scholarship thingy for the person with the best grade in the class. You write your name inside your classmates hats. My mentors held speeches based on Carola songs, it was pretty great.

Utspring - you're running out of the school. You've chosen the song/songs that you're running to, you dance around, sometimes there's choreography, to be greeted by family and friends. Because of covid this activity was limited, but traditionally it is fucking packed with people from all different programs, because the times are more stacked on top of each other.

Your parents greet you with a plaque of a baby picture of yourself, with your name and class-name. You take pictures, you get a bunch of stuff hanging around your neck like tiny champagne bottles, teddybears with their own graduation caps, whistles, other loud shit you can use at:

Flak - or flatbed according to translate is when you ride at the back of one with your class and blast loud music and dance around while it drives you around town. They're all in tow. There's a huge linen sheet on both sides that has been decorated with your class, consisting of the class name, the names of the people in the class and usually some funny quote or something. (I never got to do this because of covid)

After this you go home to greet family and stuff and celebrate however you want at home.

Then it's time to go out and partyyy. Usually you've booked a table at a specific event.

How do you fund this??? Well, over the three years of school you've built up a lot of money with your class through different fundraising methods. There's a service where you can sell cookies and another where you can sell clothes and shit.

There you go, it's not everything ofc, there are other traditions, and it's also important to note that not everyone does this. Not everyone goes out to drink, not everyone gets a flak, etc etc. But if we're talking very stereotypically here, that's the gist.

It's really fun (even if I had mine with a lot of covid-restrictions), and I hope this has given a bit of context to the new season of Young Royals (and probs the last episode where the graduation will be), and why they were so pissed to be missing out. (even if there are clearly specific school traditions that aren't custom for everyone).

[ratpalaceusa]

Van Down By the River

It’s not down by the river, it’s in South LA. And technically it isn’t a van, it’s actually an SUV. An old one. One my partner was able to procure from Facebook Marketplace for $1,300 even though it could probably retail for a lot more except that it’s bad on gas (like all behemoths of its generation) and it has some electrical issues (also like all behemoths of its generation). But it’s the kind of vehicle that lets you stretch your legs out completely in the back. It’s almost bigger than some spaces I’ve lived in in the past: dens and back porches on punk houses, little storage areas, black boxes in the arts district of downtown Los Angeles. There’s no real “how did I get here” kind of moment because I’ve been here before. In a lot of ways I feel like I was built for things like this. It’s a default setting. Though usually it’s not an old luxury SUV built in my sophomore year of high school twenty-plus years ago, it’s a bicycle with a trailer attached, a hiking backpack with a camera and a computer tucked neatly in the middle far away from watchful eyes, it’s a Greyhound but or a youth hostel. I don’t come from money, or much of anything really, like many of the comfortable vagabonds you’ll meet out in the wild, “cosplaying poverty” as an old fiend once put it, I am actually poor. And I have been on and off the majority of my life. I grew up on Chicago in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, my parents were old radicals, beatniks, the pre-or-proto hippies of their generation, my late mother was the same age I am now when she had me and my father was a year and a half younger. My mother was 4th generation South Side Irish, and my dad was the child of immigrants from Yugoslavia and Germany. They were star-crossed adversaries who locked lustful eyes from across the room at an AA meeting; stale coffee and cigarettes in hand, she was 8 years sober, and he was 2 years sober, she never drank again, and he drank until he was around 70. She decided to go back to school when I was 3, and didn’t graduate until I was 19. She opted to live the life of a professional student and never had a solid job, dying having accomplished a good bit in the world of academia, burned bridges and owed money to everyone in her personal life. She died penniless on government assistance, convinced her smoke-caked, dingy apartment was a secret goldmine of hoarded antique furniture that cost her now-late sister even more money to get hauled out. My father lives in public housing, back in Chicago was out of my life on-and-off from 7 on, and fully from the time I was 16-25. We have a distant friendship these days, I’ll hear from him a couple times a year, we will send each other art we working on, but there is little-to-no emotional depth to our relationship. He didn’t want to be there in the first place, my mother, his tormentor and reluctant partner, was a woman he met in an AA meeting in 1985 and got pregnant and together they hobbled together a little life as best they could for as long as they could stand. We moves 14 times before I was 9, and I am trying not to repeat the same pattern. That said, I’m currently living in a proverbial van, down by the proverbial river.

Rat Palace, the name of this blog here, I chose to begin on tumblr as a nod to my elder millennial self who never started one back in college, back when they were in their heyday.

Rat Palace is my fashion line, it’s currently sold at one store and about to be sold in a second. It is the name of my pop-up when I vend my art places, it is the name of the Burning Man camp my partner and I are perpetually starting. It started as my own pop-up, immersive art installation that I used to travel with several years ago, a project that explored intimacy and vulnerability between strangers and in an anonymous way, guided by my paintings of these psychedelic rats that represented different human concepts and psychoemotional spaces withing the human experience. My style is somewhere between pop-art surrealism and graphic novel style illustration. I take that style with me wherever I go, whatever my medium, and whatever my subject. It is a style I have refined my entire life, and the concepts I keep in my art and in my fashion line are also lifelong common-threads about resilience and the strength of the underdog and resistance against the establishment.

And that is why I use rats as representatives throughout and in most of my artwork, they represent the perpetual underdog, constantly facing extermination, seen as vermin and undesirable, and yet they are persistent, smarter and kinder and more clever than any of us. They represent the people, places and things that we overlook because society has decided that they are other, unworthy, and yet if you ever met a rat, you’d fall in love. We currently have two rats. Alaska and Rocky Balboa, and they are going to embark on this journey along with us in a few weeks; their doofy little faces watching our travels from the back of the van.

This is not a travel blog. And it’s not just a journal. It is both of those things and it is also a social critique, a take on the world and all of the passengers living in it, written currently, at this moment, on stolen WiFi in the McDonald’s parking lot at the strip mall on Slauson. Aka, my home office.

So goodbye for now, rats, love and revolution.

[lieslab]

Okay um where tf do you live? you make it sound like you live in a fairy tale land and I wanna live there to

I wish America was a fairytale land. I live in a Midwestern city with less than ten-thousand people. Please don't be fooled by what I write. I think my town is great, but it has a fair share of assholes. Unfortunately, not everything here is perfect.

For so long, I lived in a smaller town with around three-thousand people. Everyone knew everyone, but where I live now, it's so much bigger. There are more opportunities to grow and learn. My town is very community-oriented and I'm super grateful for it. There's a variety of parks for kids to visit.

Last year, the town put in a park for handicapped/disabled kids. It's the only one in our area, which is great. Now students at surrounding schools don't have to travel so far to access inclusive equipment. There's a lot of pride in the town.

In the future, I really want to get more involved in the community. We have a homeless shelter, a women's shelter for women/kids escaping domestic violence, and an animal shelter. There's a lot of different churches speckled around the area too.

A large brick courthouse sits in the middle of the town square with intersecting sidewalks all the way around it. At the highest point into the sky, birds like to sit on it. There are four roads that wrap around those sidewalks. On the opposite side of the road, small businesses wrap around everything. It's quite literally a square that sits in the center of town.

During the spring/summer months, the town square hosts a farmer's market every Saturday. Every spring, they have a Spring Fling. Vendors come in and live music is played from a gazebo that sits next to the court house. Sometimes the high school band plays for a few hours. There's a lot of parades, especially, if the students go to a state event or something.

For Halloween, the businesses open their doors for a town themed trunk-or-treat. They line up outside with tables or open their doors, for people to trail inside, and they give out free candy. Once a year, we have a German Fest. There are winter/Christmas activities, too. Santa visits in parade. There's an ice skating rink. The entire courthouse lights up with Christmas lights and large decor pieces.

It really does feel magical, but there are people that ruin the magic every so often. It's the same as every town. Some people are rude. Some people are assholes and that's just everywhere. Besides that, there are homeless people here, despite us having a homeless shelter. Plus, there's a drug problem and that's unfortunate.

There are places here that help with those issues, but you can't force help onto everyone. Plus, when it comes to getting help with a drug addiction, it's not free. Therapy and resources cost money and some people don't have money to spare. I wish we all had universal healthcare like nearly every other country. The homeless shelter has certain qualifications you have to meet and they can only take so many people at one time.

I understand what you mean by being fairytaleish though. Coming from a smaller town to this one a few years ago, it blew my mind. It was life-changing in the best way possible. I'm so much happier here and I can do a ton more things because the town is bigger.

I cannot drive, so my main mode of transportation is walking. I'm in walking distance to a library, a Walmart, a plethora of other places, and I love it. In the summer, every week, they line the main town square with music and old cars for a car show.

It's so fun to go up and observe. People are always chatting and laughing. It feels like everyone is happy in the warmer weather. It's why I like it so much. Walking in the snow and ice sucks ass.

I'm sure there's so much more to explore here. I've been here for over two years and I'm still discovering things. If you take away anything from this, discover more. Venture into wherever you live. Play at the parks and visit the local library if you have one. Try out the cafe or family diner you've never been to.

This town's magic only comes from the people creating it within. There is nothing stopping you from creating magic wherever you live. Plan parades. Talk to places in charge. Host fun events. There's nothing better than a community day in the park. Ask vendors if they'll show up. You will never truly live until you go out and try.

Quite literally, be out and be the change you want to see in the world. Always. Do it scared and watch the magic unveil itself <3

[inflexiblle]

é𝐝𝐨𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝 "𝐭𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐲" 𝐝𝐚𝐮𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭

❝ Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. ❞

B A S I C S –

Name: Édouard Lyam Daucourt. Nicknames: Teddy (most commonly known as), Ed-weird (throughout middle school). Birthday: July 4, 1988. Pronouns: He/him. Gender/Sex: Cisgender/male. Sexuality: Bisexual. Occupation: Oceania Bookstore Owner ("temporary"), adjunct Art History professor at a nearby university.

P E R S O N A L I T Y —

+ Disciplined, analytical, sensitive. - Inflexible, insecure, tense. Quite withdrawn. So much of his world happens internally, and he likes it that way. He's very particular about the people he surrounds himself with, though his closest of close friends tend to be a lot wilder and more outspoken than he. He has a weird sense of humor and if you're close enough to hear him tell a joke, there's a chance you won't understand it anyway. He is, though, quite severely a lover, even if he's bland as a board at showing it. This man? Autistic.

A R R I V A L �� ( 2007/2015 )

Officially moved here with his parents when he was fifteen but only stayed until he graduated high school, when he jetted off to the East Coast again to get his studies in. He'd come home for breaks but is a big homebody; his re-arrival in 2015 is when he would've made more of an impact.

E X T R A B I T S —

– Huge bird watcher. He's very good at keeping perfectly still, so it's an ideal hobby. He inherited the love of it from his parents, and is insanely jealous that they're spending the next few years visiting all the peak bird-watching spots because um, hello? He wants to see an African blue flycatcher too, mom. – Huge into bread baking. Nothing fancy and artful - no canvas of sourdough to paint with olives and peppers - just plain old sandwich bread. Rosemary, thyme, a cracked pepper loaf that made amazing grilled cheeses, you name it. During midterms and finals, he brings in enough fresh bread for every student to have a slice. – Loves to go antiquing. It's one of his favorite hobbies, and he often drives 2-3 hours out of town to go and visit shops around there. His entire house is filled with vintage furniture and gold accents. – Can play viola, piano, and clarinet, as well as speak fluent French, German, and Hebrew due to many many lessons imposed by his parents as a child/teenager.

C O N N E C T I O N S —

Finn Brooks: history nerd buds. Met in the bookstore and connected over their love of history (even though Teddy skews more heavily into the art spectrum). Samuel Kane: burgeoning garden friends. Met when Teddy low-key trespassed and they watched the birds together. Emerson Cassidy: co-workers & siblings by choice. Teddy's mother has taken special care of Emerson ever since they were both kids, and while Teddy's been gone for much of Emerson's time at the shop, they still found solidarity together.

B A C K G R O U N D —

written bio coming soon... tw: death of a child, bullying

- teddy's parents had a son two years old who died in his sleep due to unknown heart issues, which means when teddy was born, his parents considered him a miracle and poured a lot of love and time into him. they disciplined him how they needed to, but they've always been very supportive and sought the best education/path for him no matter how much it cost - moved around a lot as a young child: he was born in france but lived there only two years before spending another three in germany, then two in switzerland. eventually, when he was seven, his parents moved to new york so his mother could continue with her bird research at the center for avian population studies at cornell. when he was fifteen, the family moved again: this time to aurora bay california, where his mother could write her academic papers from home, and his father could preach at temples all around the socal area - eventually bored with her easy, stay-at-home life, claire daucourt decided to buy oceania bookstore from its previous owner as a way to connect with the community as well as do something she loved: surround herself with books. - for two years, teddy helped around the shop, but the moment he graduated he was off like a rocket to college, flying all the way back to connecticut to study art history at harvard. another few years went to getting his masters at nyu, another few back at harvard for a phd, and then, filled up on education, he made his way back to aurora bay where he's lived (separately from his parents but still close enough) for 10 years. - being so quiet as a kid led to a lot of bullying in middle school especially. he often had the shit kicked out of him and would sport huge shiners in his music lessons. this, of course, only made him quieter - weirder. some dedicated oceania patrons may remember a scrawny teenager with fading bruises reading in the back corner of the shop and avoiding any attempt at socialization. - despite being deeply interested in art his whole life, he's always been bad at executing it. lucky for him he loves history and the why/how more than making art anyway, so he fell into art history studies quite easily. - he loves to share his knowledge with the world, and teaching in some capacity feels natural in a way he's never quite felt with anything else in his life. he's been teaching a single course at a nearby college for almost 7 years now, and he loves it. even with the shitheads who only take his class for a credit and fall asleep in the back row. - teddy's been running the bookstore for about eight months now because his parents have gone on their retirement journey. he's not actually a huge reader unless the book is non-fiction and has something to do with what he's interested in, so he feels a little lost running the store currently. - he's been in two long term relationships. one was with a woman in college who he met freshman year and then dated until halfway through his phd program at harvard (6 years). she wanted to get married, and he still considered them to be casual. ouch. the other was a brief, heated, six month romance with another professor when he first started at aurora bay college that fizzled out because said professor was married. yikes!

PENNED BY MIGZ. ( @aurorabayaesthetic )

[carrion--comfort]

Hi!

I read your medical/life stuff and while I suppose this is not especially gonna make you happy, but I figured I'd say it still because I've been thinking about it.

You being a medical doctor trans man inspired me (also trans man) to get back in univ (I'm not from America so it doesn't cost a bazillon dollars to do so), to become a doctor at 28. Well you weren't the only one, and I've thought a lot about it for a whole year, did some internship to observe the difficulties, issues, volunteered in hospitals etc... I am well aware this isn't a sinecure, and as medical students where I live we are exploited, sometimes denigrated by hospitals.

However, knowing that there was someone "like me" who did manage to become a doctor and who is part of the wide variety of different doctors that exist really inspired me.

I'm on the first year, so I'm not even sure I'll ever be able to become a doctor yet, I gotta be in the best batch of students to access it. Still, you were a part of what made it possible for me to even entertain the idea of trying it, and I wanna thank you for this.

It is stupid, but when you see the "average doctor", you believe there is a bridge that is uncrossable by your little ass. I still fight with those feelings, especially with the difficulties and high pressure of the first year. Despite it all, thanks to you, and many other experiences and support that I got, I will not give up and I haven't regretted a single day of my journey so far.

Happy new year and good luck for today.

I didn't mean for the post to be discouraging LOL the truth is it's a discipline in which everyone demands a lot of you AND you must also demand a lot of yourself...if you know that ahead of time (and it sounds like you did a lot more thinking about it than me!) then you'll be better prepared for internalizing the amount of responsibility that will come to rest on your shoulders. (This particular incident is just a perfect storm...staffing issues + me needing to cover more after the dept lost some people + some of the areas I oversee needing fires put out + me getting 0.5 bones removed and a follow-up angioplasty AND post-op n/v = a not so good day in the office!)

Being trans in medicine does come with its own unique challenges. If you train in places that don't like trans people you will end up having to bite your tongue because the nature of medical training says that the hierarchy is ironclad, despite all efforts to change that. If you come up against anti-trans sentiment during your training, go through channels you trust instead of trying to handle it by yourself. I tried to "handle" it by myself after months of various preceptors telling me trans people were whackos (they didn't know I was trans) and basically had a controlled explosion in the middle of the workday because I couldn't keep it in anymore.

I will only say it was not like on TV where the one guy stands up and speaks his truth and everybody claps. Standing up for patients is different; everyone is there to care for patients at the end of the day. In the moment, nobody is there to protect you except you. If it gets to that point go through proper channels. Does it suck having to stand there afraid to defend yourself for fear of fucking up the trajectory of the rest of your life? Yep, but someday you'll be out of the hierarchy.

Find whatever it is that keeps you going and hold on to it...for me it has always been wanting to remove the most basic barrier anyone has to living their life, which is physical health. Not always possible but I can provide the best care I can to give them the best chance. All the working and studying and memorizing sometimes feels like bashing your head against a wall but remember you're doing it for a reason and thus you must do it! Good luck on your journey!

[yooniesim]

I don't like to share financial struggles on here but, I have always made a point of being transparent as possible too. So let me tell yall frankly. I am 1-2 months away from not being able to pay any of my bills including rent. the new medication I have to switch to bc of the national shortage is $182 per month. I don't know how im going to afford it. The one i switched to already and have been paying for has had no effect at all. I have had doctor's visits every few weeks for various health issues since March and no insurance since January. My student loans have unpaused and I have been paying them for several months now. I was laid off from one of my jobs this year and the other was paused when my family member I was caregiving for passed away. I have another caregiving job now but it doesn't pay nearly enough for all my bills, medical expenses, and food. I am in the red every month and what I have saved will not last much longer.

Regardless of all this, I still do not paywall my cc, even early access, and I do not ask for donations. I took up curseforge because it seemed like a good place to host my files, and then was pleasantly surprised by the small amount of money I was able to get from it every month or so. This money doesn't even touch my expenses and will not even be enough to pay for my meds anymore. It ranges from $50-200 over the course of several months depending if I am active enough to post any cc or not. Any of you that are independent know that this is nothing in terms of the current cost of living. I haven't even received my payment from last month yet and as soon as I do it is already spent. If I had any leeway at all, I would have already deleted my cc from there, but the gravity of the situation right now is... extremely high. If I deleted it now, I probably wouldn't even get the money I already earned there, as it is still in process. And I cannot risk that. What i can do is not upload anything new to their website in the meantime. But I cannot delete my old uploads.

I have spent most of my life being vocal about social justice issues. I have donated very often to the causes i cared about, spoken to people both irl and online to raise awareness despite being in an area where it is dangerous to do so, done volunteer work, and hosted fundraising efforts. Much of my breath over the past weekend was spent talking about Palestine. It is not that I do not care about this issue- far from it. I've lost a lot of sleep trying to figure out what to do about this. It's not easy trying to weigh the impact of a boycott against your own well being. Especially getting conflicting info on whether or not Overwolf is actually supporting the IDF or just victims of the terrorist attacks as they say. It's all complicated, confusing, and heartbreaking. And even so, I am boycotting in the terms of not uploading new stuff to there and offering alternate download links for my old stuff. And when I am able, I will eliminate curseforge completely. But I hope this helps anyone understand why it's not gone immediately and what my current perspective is.

[ask-alphabetboyluvr]

“ What are ur toughts on ask??ur experience,pros&cons EVERYTHING!!!” hahah I means sk sorry, I’ve been thinking about going there for uni bc it’s cheap(at least compared to France where I live now) and also for the men bc I’m just a girl but am lowkey afraid of the racism bc I’m white hahah

ahhhh!!

of all the students i've met, a solid 80% have been french hahaha. one of my friends lives near a big university and random people on the street in her area have asked me if I'm french before because of it lol, so yeah, high chance you'll meet other french people here!!

if i could go back and opt to study here during university I 100% would--i think it'd be such a different experience in terms of finding your place than it is when you go straight into the workforce like I did. i have friends who studied here and they have a certain affection for their time as a student that is a little fonder than their time as a worker.

the cost of living is what's scaring me about going home lol, but honestly it depends on where you live here and the lifestyle you live. I'm terrible at saving money but I also never stop myself from doing what I want. some of my friends have managed to save quite a lot of money here!!

in terms of the men, guys are the same no matter where you go lol. I'm actually looking forward to going home and getting back to the dating conventions I'm used to

in terms of being treated badly because you're a foreigner, it probably wont be a daily life issue, but more of a systemic one. I always think back to covid times and how foreigners couldn't do anything because we couldn't register on the apps. once you get a Korean number + ARC life becomes a bit easier.

you'll hear people talking about you in the street thinking you wont understand (or just not caring lol), but they likely wont actually say anything directly to you. people stare a lot in various places, but again, I just ignore it lol

for me personally, i've loved my time in Korea and I am gonna be really sad to leave </3 I lurrrve daegu, but if you're gonna be here as a student for a limited time, you may as well be up in seoul!!

it's yellow dust season at the moment and I am soooo ready to go home to cleaner air!!

i really like my life here but it's definitely not my forever place