#because i had a similar experience in undergrad

[ashtrayfloors]

When other people I knew in grad school read Kathy Acker’s books they were shocked. Appalled. Particularly most of the budding young feminists. I actually began weeding out women friends by their reactions to her books. The ones that smiled and lowered their eyes with sly understanding and touched themselves, I kept. The ones that freaked out, well, they were idiots. Once I read a paragraph from Empire of the Senseless in my theory of gender class and one of the women began to cry and ran out and barfed. No shit. Pussy, I thought.

—Lidia Yuknavitch, from The Chronology of Water

[crippleprophet]

Is it okay for people with agoraphobia to look and take some of the advice you have for housebound people on here? I'm not really great at picking up nuance so I'm worried that it'd be crossing some boundary or that it's not the intention of the tag

that’s completely okay, i appreciate your desire to be respectful even though i’m sorry you were concerned! i absolutely consider folks with agoraphobia my comrades + community members and i’d be super honored if anything i’ve shared is helpful (+ am always interested in hearing what that was if you’re comfortable!) the rest of this is not anything you need to answer your question, just thoughts i’ve been having on the subject

i haven’t had the opportunity to talk to enough homebound [due to chronic illness / “physical” reasons] people to know if this is a common experience but for me i’ve noticed that similar to chronic illness often carrying depression with it, since becoming homebound i’ve become terrified of leaving the house.

this is definitely influenced by the fact that it’s untenably painful, my photosensitivity (in the UV sense not the epilepsy sense), the ongoing pandemic, the fact that i only left the house to go to the doctor for over a year & i’m afraid of the doctors appointment itself due to medical trauma, etc etc but like. there’s also the very strong pull of habit – i’m an incredibly obsessive & ritualistic person – and what Goffman refers to as “the relief of self-isolation” for marginalized people sheltering from a hostile society, a phrase i read in undergrad 5 1/2 years ago that’s stuck with me ever since for how profoundly it resonates.

i’m not trying to say these are necessarily your or any other person with agoraphobia’s feelings & experiences, more to illustrate how the liberation of all homebound people & shut-ins & hermits is bound up together; any sanist strategy for oppressing agoraphobes can easily be leveraged against me, not least because as a severely underdiagnosed person, the medical establishment does not think there is any “legitimate” “physical” reason for me to be homebound. to respond to this oppression by arguing it’s inapplicable because i’m not crazy would be untrue + a cruel act of lateral violence.

i’ve been reading a lot of butch/femme history recently (i post about that on my main @campgender; followers age 18+ only please) & have found myself entirely reconfiguring my understanding of the queer art of isolation, the incredible ability of our ancestors to hunker down & survive under circumstances unimaginable to the average person. i absolutely don’t want to deny the deep pain – not only the aspects i experience but also the heightened isolation of people without or before internet access + the ways these circumstances / forms of oppression can foster abuse –

but my god, so many 50s butches didn’t leave their homes during daylight hours for years in order to not be hate crimed for their gender presentation, & that’s the folks who were making it to the bars. so many others – “discreet” couples who didn’t want to risk being outed by engaging in queer community; people assigned female who “passed” as men & their partners; butch sex workers & other people with identities perceived as contradictory or unacceptable – existed marginalized by both queer & normative communities.

every time i think substantially about homeboundedness i always get tracy chapman’s “subcity” stuck in my head. obviously my access to housing period is a huge position of privilege, & i’m in the most economically secure position of my adult life so far; the abjection i experience is nowhere near the scale of people in the position of the speaker of the song, who’s implied to be street homeless. but the line “people say it doesn’t exist ‘cause no one would like to admit that there is a city underground” is such a succinct & accurate depiction of living the kind of life society tries to convince itself is impossible. but there truly is a rich genealogy of homeboundedness especially in queer history.

again i hope some of my posts & such are helpful / resonant! wishing you all the best 💓💓

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Desert Hearts rewatch notes

Desert Hearts (1985) is one of my favorite movies, but as with most of my favorites, I've gone quite a while without seeing it at times. I put it on the other day for the first time in years and took some screenshots in the hope that I might get some folks on here to give it a try that haven't, or at least bring back some memories for those who’ve seen it before. Then, when I sat down to post the images, I found I had more to say than I realized.

This was my first time watching this movie since I got into the whole BL/QL genre and I was curious to see if it would seem any different to me after a period of being more immersed in queer stories than usual. Mostly it swept me up into its own world, something this film is really good at. But I did find myself thinking at times about how aspects of it mapped onto QL tropes and more general romance tropes. I also couldn't help but see some parallels to the actual lived experiences of myself and people I know.

Queer romance tropes in Desert Hearts

Three tropes stood out at me that I've run into in the QL world, some of which I've seen in hetero romance settings as well.

Fish out of water - Vivian goes from her life as an academic in New York City to staying at a ranch outside Reno in pursuit of a "quick" divorce. (Having to spend six weeks in a strange place in order to get a divorce was "quick" by 1959 standards.) Helen Shaver, who played Vivian, points out in a featurette included with the Criterion version of the movie that Vivian has been living a very cerebral life, living inside her own head while cutting herself off from her body from the neck down. This radical change of scenery is exactly what she needs to be able to open up to something different.

There’s a similar dynamic at play in hetero fish-out-of-water romances. But I find this trope a lot more interesting in a queer context. Queer identities have a more complex relationship to difference. Among other things, characters who seem to be at home in the environment of the story often turn out to be alienated from it due to others’ perceptions of their sexuality.

Age gap (with the younger person pursuing) - Cay, who is ten years Vivian's junior, is definitely the pursuer here. This isn't a specifically queer trope per se, but it can manifest in some specific ways in queer love stories.

LGBTQ+ identity can put people on unusual timelines in their lives. (This is an idea I first ran into in a book by Jack Halberstam in undergrad.) Sometimes this means being in a more "youthful" mode later in life than cishet people. Other times it means being a particular kind of late bloomer. And so on. So with life stages not conforming to typical expectations, what does it mean to love someone you have a significant age difference with?

In the case of Vivian and Cay, Vivian may be older, but Cay is poised to initiate her into practices and feelings that are pretty familiar for Cay and totally, mind-blowingly new to Vivian. This creates a kind of role reversal. At the same time, Cay has never felt this way about a partner before, so in many ways, their relationship is causing her to have some new and intense experiences as well.

The thing where a character figures out their sexuality for the first time because their feelings toward a love interest act as a catalyst - This is certainly a trope that comes up in stories about queer romance, but it's more debatable whether it's a queer trope in the sense of a trope that is used by and resonates with queer people. I guess I'd say the theme comes up in different ways when a story is very geared toward the "straight gaze" and when it's more authentically queer. With the "straight gaze" version you get things like "gay for you." With more authentic versions, well, I don't think I've noticed many commonalities there. But I will always defend the use of this trope when it's done well in a way that centers queer experience, if only because falling for a specific person is exactly what forced me to come to terms with my own sexuality.

Side note: Speaking of coming to terms with my sexuality, it really is an indication of how deeply in denial I was about my bisexuality in college that seeing this movie for a class didn't help me figure it out. I was deeply affected by it and fixated on it for weeks after seeing it, but it didn't get through the thick shell of obliviousness I had built up around myself.

A connection to personal experience

There are quite a few ways that Desert Hearts resonates with my own experience but one really stood out to me this time around. [Spoilers ahead.] When Cay goes to see Vivian at the hotel where she’s staying after she leaves the ranch, she goes for a last-ditch, Hail Mary move—she takes off her clothes and climbs into Vivian’s bed. At first Vivian tells her to leave, but then she softens a bit, clearly interested but conflicted. Then this moment happens.

I related to this so much. When I fell in love with a someone who was (at that time) presenting as a woman and it started to look like I might actually have a chance, I had so much anxiety about whether and how I could be intimate with my crush and whether I’d be able to “perform” decently. It turns out, as we learned when we compared notes sometime later, we had each had the same worry and we’d both bought an instructional book about lesbian sex (I think it may even have been the exact same book!).

I think part of my anxiety back then stemmed from the prospect of starting from scratch with a new set of practices and skills after being acclimated to sex with men. It made me feel like I was off balance. But when I actually did get close to my crush, another, much more pleasant side to my inexperience came up. It turned out that not having a familiar script for what to do made me much more present and gave me a sense of freedom. I remember thinking that it was like going from traveling down the same old route to exploring a new place that we had to write our own maps for. And that was pretty exhilarating.

Soon after that relationship happened, I read Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde. There was a passage where Lorde described something very similar from her own life. In this passage, she’s reflecting after her first sexual encounter with a woman after having a similar set of anxieties.

So this was what I had been so afraid of not doing properly. How ridiculous and far away those fears seemed now, as if loving were some task outside of myself, rather than simply reaching out and letting my own desire guide me. It was all so simple.

She’s so amazing at evoking these feelings, isn’t she?

I can’t think of any other places I’ve seen this type of experience discussed besides these two. (I’m pretty sure others exist, but the fact that I haven’t come across them suggests there aren’t very many.) There are plenty of stories out there about hetero sex performance anxiety and its eventual resolution, but I think the queer version of this kind of learning has some big inherent differences that go way beyond the genders of partners being different. So it’s really nice to see it come up here, and be handled in such a sweet way.

In case you’re wondering, once Vivian is able to “let her own desire guide her,” in Lorde’s words, she also finds that her fears were misplaced. The resulting love scene is beautifully executed even by current standards. It’s even more remarkable to see it in a film that was released in 1985. It’s equally remarkable that this sex scene was shown in rather explicit detail.

about, by, and/or for?

I'm also thinking about this movie in terms of the for/by/about queers typology that @wen-kexing-apologist came up with a while back. In my estimation, Desert Hearts belongs right in the center of WKA's Venn diagram. It's about queers, of course. I'd also place it in the "by queers" category. The director, Donna Deitch, who also co-wrote the screenplay, is an out lesbian. It's not clear whether the other co-screenwriter was queer. Her personal life was mysterious enough that it seems like a definite possibility. And the movie is based (somewhat loosely) on a novel by Jane Rule, who was also an out lesbian and whose work as a writer was very focused on lesbian characters.

I'd also consider this movie to be "for queers." It was marketed to a wider audience, of course. But as I watched some of the bonus material and looked at writing about the movie, I saw a lot of evidence that Deitch made the film for her community and they embraced it.

Shaver had a really lovely story in the featurette I watched about this. I forget the exact nature of it, but she described how she attended some kind of event with Deitch and Charbonneau where the audience was full of queer women who gave them an incredibly long standing ovation that she found very moving and helped her see how impactful the film had been.

I’m also sure Deitch had queer viewers in mind (at least in part) when she set out to fill a glaring gap in Sapphic representation. In an interview with AfterEllen, Deitch said, “My goal was to make a lesbian love story that did not end in a bisexual love triangle or a suicide. Because that’s all that had been made at the time I set out to make Desert Hearts.” (Note: I’m not linking due to transphobia concerns regarding that site but folks should be able to find it easily if they look.)

In summary…

If you haven’t seen Desert Hearts yet I really can’t recommend it highly enough.

(And yes, that’s Denise Crosby from Star Trek: The Next Generation sitting beside Jeffrey Tambor.)

[irisbleufic]

This will probably feel like it’s coming out of the blue, as The Simpsons isn’t something I’m known for posting on main, but like…I’ve had a long-term fascination with this show. I saw the first few seasons when I was a kid. I had to watch it at a friend’s place and my grandparents’ place, because, like many parents raising kids/teens in the 1980s-1990s, mine were convinced Bart was a bad influence. Lisa’s ambition and cleverness have always meant a lot to me, but this strange rumination has more to do with my eternal puzzlement over the bad rap Bart has gotten from parents.

I can say more than ever, especially with regard to the past decade or more of seasons, that Bart is actually a really sweet kid. Mischievous and bored, but genuinely sweet. Meanwhile, Lisa’s got a devious streak a mile wide and is probably the fictional kid my parents should have been most worried about teaching me dubious behavior and scheming (because she knows how not to get caught).

I’m sure this conversation has been had many times over on the internet, but this moment of navel gazing in the wake of watching the first handful of episodes from the latest run (Season 35, how the fuck has this show been around for all but the first 7 years of my life?) just feels…necessary somehow. Every once in a while, when a piece of media has been with me for a long time, I’ll have this weird realization that the character who means the most to me isn’t the one in whom I saw the obvious parts of myself at first.

Sure, I’ve always been a dutiful, ambitious student—even now that I’m an adult who teaches college undergrads, I don’t think I’ve ever shed that. But I was also that weird, imaginative, often-bullied kid who didn’t know they were neurodivergent, who got yelled at for not paying attention during class and sneaking off to the woods adjacent to my elementary school during recess. Sometimes, I took the fall for the occasional prank my few close friends and I would play because I wasn’t good at getting out of the way in time. I had a real disdain for authority, although I knew how to hide it from the few teachers and admins I genuinely liked/respected.

I don’t really have an earth-shattering point to make here except that, huh, it’s neat to realize Bart is the one I related to the most all along. It never even occurred to me that we’re both oldest children; Lisa is eldest-coded sometimes even though she’s the middle kid, but…damn, if Bart’s experience as the oldest isn’t similar to mine. You get cracked down on, get in trouble for, things that your parents can’t be arsed to go after by the time your younger siblings come along. You love those little shits with all your heart even though they aren’t above rubbing their immunity in your face. You shatter beneath the pressure of things that finally, finally hurt too much to keep up the tough-guy façade.

Anyway, Bart: my parents were wrong about you. Everyone’s parents were. I feel that even more strongly as an adult than I did when I was a kid. And the kids like you, like us—more sensitive than meets the eye, mind always racing a mile a minute, mischievously curious, all too often misunderstood—are the reason I became a teacher. Thank you for that.

I’ve been saying to friends for a long time, when The Simpsons comes up in conversation, that the cast of this show are our Players: “Let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”

[1863-project]

One of the reasons I really don’t engage much with fandom spaces at all these days is just how much casual ableism there is in fandom spaces, a lot of which is internalized ableism. And unfortunately, when you try to explain this to people, they often don’t want to hear it or accept that the ideas they’ve latched onto are actually often pretty harmful to people in the real world.

An example, one of many: people have had theories on N being a Zoroark since Black and White first came out in 2010. That was ableist then, and it’s ableist now - the changeling myth is thought to be rooted in children turning out to be neurodivergent (especially autistic), and if you’re looking at a human character that feels neurodivergent-coded and going “What if they’re not human?” it’s...well, neurodivergent people are already dehumanized in the real world. We’re so often treated as less than human that having a character who comes across as neurodivergent suddenly being not human can feel like a slap in the face to our own humanity.

(Ironically, neurodivergent people often found representation in non-human characters before human characters with neurodivergent traits started popping up in media - this goes back at least to the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock in Star Trek, and possibly far, far further. But that’s a topic for another time.)

Every time I see a character who feels pretty damn neurodivergent, I also see a wide chunk of the fandom interpret their neurodivergent traits really negatively, and it hurts. I don’t engage with the Submas fandom anymore outside of answering people’s train questions that they bring to me because enough people in said fandom looked at Emmet, a character who is more like me than any other fictional character I’ve ever seen in my life, and decided he was scary and unhinged, creepy because of the way he talks when he isn’t close to someone, potentially violent because of his intensity. He’s none of these things, he’s just one of the most autistic characters to ever be written. But the damage was done, because when I saw people treating a character just like me like that...well, it basically told me how they saw me, too.

I graduated high school way, way back in 2007. Some of the people on this website now weren’t alive back then. I wouldn’t get my autism diagnosis for two more years, and all I knew was that I was somehow different from the kids around me, and so many of them had bullied me for this. I was treated horribly because I was intense about my interests, talked differently, walked differently, and acted differently from them. It more or less went on for my entire time in school before I got to undergrad. That shit stays with you. I had this notion that this was how everyone saw me, and that still sits in the back of my mind in my 30s. It’s actually one of the things that prevents me from trying dating, because my bullies were primarily my male peers growing up. It was so important for me to see Ingo and Emmet being themselves and being accepted as themselves, because it meant that maybe people could accept me, too. Except then PLA dropped, and a bunch of new people came rushing in...and enough of them reacted in ways similar to how my bullies did when I was younger, so I had to disengage because it hurt too much.

And the cycle continues with every new character that takes the stage. Nemona debuted in Scarlet and Violet, and once you get more of her backstory in the later game and eventually the postgame you realize she sounds like a neurodivergent person surrounded by neurotypicals. I’ve seen headcanons of autism, ADHD, and a few other neurodivergencies, all of which were definitely people relating to her experiences with their own - Geeta even introduces the “weird girl” to the “new kid” at the beginning of the game in the hopes that she’ll make a friend, a common experience for neurodivergent kids growing up. But then I started seeing people calling her a yandere, and they weren’t joking, and I knew that people who related to Nemona who saw that were going to feel hurt the way I did with people taking Emmet’s autistic traits so negatively.

Fandom spaces tend to be online bubbles, so to speak, and people don’t often realize the impact that these attitudes have in the real world. It’s important for people to have representation and see themselves in the media they interact with, because that’s extremely affirming and validating. Seeing a fictional character just like you being accepted for who they are goes a long, long way when you’re being bullied for who you are in your real life. When you see a bunch of people looking at those harmless traits of yours that people bully you for and interpret them in ways that portray you as scary, creepy, or even unhinged and dangerous...it does damage.

I think about people with psychosis. I think about how media has portrayed them throughout the ages, and how stigmatized they are as a result. I think about people with personality disorders, about people with OCD (of which I’m one myself), about autistic people and ADHD people and people with Tourette’s and other tic disorders, about plural people/systems...the list can go on, and on, and on, and this post doesn’t even touch upon physical disabilities and how ableist fandom spaces can be to them, too (cons being physically difficult to navigate are just one challenge of many they face). I think about how desperate we’ve all been to see ourselves as characters - nuanced characters that feel like real people, not caricatures. The days of the “evil, unhinged schizophrenic” need to be over. We know people with disabilities and mental illnesses are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators; we have so many studies affirming this. And yet the rest of the world is taking a long time to catch up on this.

Sometimes, you’re 12 years old and you make an edgy OC who wears a straitjacket because they like to stab people, and then you get a little older and you realize that was pretty ableist and you grow and change as a person. That’s normal - you’re learning about the world around you and learning how to be more kind. But if someone who’s out there in the real world explains why something is ableist towards their disability or mental illness, and they provide examples, that’s not the moment you double down and act like you can do no wrong and that everything you’ve written is fine. It’s supposed to be a learning moment for you, a chance to step back and try to do better. And this especially applies to internalized ableism - like I said, so many fandom spaces are heavily neurodivergent, and the internalized ableism I’ve encountered in fandom spaces has grown substantially with the rise of social media. Sometimes the call is coming from inside the house, and we need to be mindful of how we’re portraying people like ourselves, too.

I think it’s a good idea to really try to be aware as we engage with others in fandom spaces and try not to perpetrate harmful stereotypes or portrayals, and becoming more thoughtful and nuanced about how we depict characters is a big part of that. If you’re writing something edgy just for yourself, that’s for you, and you don’t really have to think too hard about it. But if you’re sharing it in a public space, remember that anyone can encounter it, and it might do damage you’re not really thinking about. It’s important to remember that the internet is a public space, too, just like the places we go in real life, and that we should carry ourselves the way we would if we were interacting in person - we need to try to be respectful, and accept feedback and improve things when we accidentally aren’t.

As an extra reminder, here’s a great graphic from Sonny Jane Wise on Instagram that shows just how many things fit under the neurodivergent umbrella:

Please do your best to do no harm, but if you accidentally do, please listen to the people who are being harmed and want to help you do better.

[lauramkaye]

ADHD is a learning disability. You might've been gifted but not all of us are or were. As a person with ADHD who isn't a genius or whatever exceptional stereotype you're happy to be I'm sorry if tou don't want to have solidarity with me but we do have the same diagnostic label as me and you don't get to make a new bullshit terms to escape the taint of being given the same diagnostic label for their problems as me.

....Wow, okay.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to answer this publicly, privately, address the point in a different post, or just ignore it. I'm choosing to engage in good faith with this because when I share ADHD information I do so out of a desire to help others who may be in the same boat I was in and I want to clarify if that information is misunderstood.

The post I suspect you are referring to was specifically about people who are both "gifted" (which as a label has plenty of issues but that is what's used in the field and how you will see it referred to in most literature/resources, so that's what I will use) and ADHD at the same time. ADHD and giftedness are two independent things, and a person can be one or the other, both, or neither. (A term you will often see used to refer to a person with giftedness and a disability that impacts learning is "twice exceptional," so using that as a search term may be useful if you want to read more on the topic.)

ADHD is a disability that can seriously impact learning, but it is not technically considered a learning disability. (source: Learning Disablities Association of America). It is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder, similar to the autism spectrum. ASD, ADHD, and learning disabilities such as dyslexia can coexist in the same people in different combinations and any or all can also coexist with giftedness.

This article is older but has a good rundown of some of the issues around gifted + ADHD. A particularly relevant quote: "While a misdiagnosis of ADHD is undesirable, diagnostic errors of omission are just as serious and may be even more prevalent among gifted students. This difficulty occurs when a student’s over-reliance on strengths inadvertently obscures the disability. While emphasizing strengths may highlight a student’s gifts and talents, it does not eliminate the reality of the condition and can, in fact, lead to a worse predicament in which the student distrusts his or her abilities because of the struggle to maintain them. On the other hand, if a student is allowed to acknowledge and experience the disability, he or she may learn appropriate compensatory or coping skills."

The reason I share information specifically about gifted + ADHD is that this is what I personally am, and therefore I have the most experience to share about it. The reason I want to share it is not because I think I'm a super special genius or because I don't want to be in solidarity with others who are ADHD but not gifted. The reason I want to share my experiences is that my ADHD was not diagnosed until I was in my late thirties and that late diagnosis caused me a LOT of avoidable suffering in my life. If I can spare someone else that kind of suffering by sharing the things I learned, I want to do that.

I was not diagnosed early specifically BECAUSE I was also gifted, so most of the indicators that usually lead to children getting tested/diagnosed for ADHD were either attributed to me being gifted (boredom, hyperfocusing on reading a book, one million hobbies I jumped between constantly) or masked by the giftedness (if I could do the assignment quickly in study hall right before class or retain enough from class discussion to pass the test, nobody realized/cared that I wasn't doing homework or studying.)

Which was fine, when I was a kid. But the older I got, the harder it was to keep up with things. By the time I got to undergrad I alternated between high and low GPA terms as I desperately tried to keep my scholarships and managed to keep EXACTLY the minimum GPA I had to. The level of stress and pressure got higher and higher.

I went to grad school. I made a 4.0 my first term.

The second term, I failed all my classes, was put on academic probation, had a meltdown on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere so that my mom had to drive out to get me.

I didn't go back, and I officially failed out of grad school. I had finally reached the point that I could no longer brute force past my lack of executive function with giftedness. And it was fucking devastating. That happened more than twenty years ago and it still hurts to remember even though I've had a lot of therapy since then. I had spent my life being praised for being smart and had built a lot of my identity around that; failing out of grad school felt like a blow to not just my career plans but my SELF.

The years after that got better, but I was still perpetually struggling. Everything just seemed so much HARDER than it should - I bounced in and out of debt, I constantly struggled with work deadlines, I couldn't be on time to ANYTHING, I was stressed out ALL THE TIME. I periodically just broke down and couldn't function for days. I kept making "careless errors" and "stupid mistakes" like forgetting to pay a $20 bill until it got sent to collections even though I had the money to pay it sitting in my checking account. I knew I knew HOW to do the things I didn't do and I knew I was smart enough to do them, so why couldn't I seem to manage it?

I must just... be a horrible person, I concluded. I didn't feel lazy or disrespectful or uncaring, but if I wasn't, surely I would remember birthdays and be on time for things and be able to keep my house clean and my checkbook balanced like normal people could, right?

I probably would have kept on this way indefinitely if a dear friend who was gifted + ADHD had not said "you know, the way you talk about your life sounds a lot like the way I was before I got diagnosed. Maybe you should see someone and check it out."

And I did. And I got diagnosed. And I started treatment. And it fucking CHANGED MY LIFE.

It didn't take away my struggles--far from it--but it helped me understand them, and gave me strategies to help address them, and gave me support to work around/through them. I still have to swim, but before I had weights tied to my feet and now I have a floatie to help keep my head above the water.

I want EVERYONE with ADHD to receive the supports and treatment they need to live their best lives. The information I share about the way ADHD intersects with my own personal brain configuration is meant to help anyone else out there who has a similar one. If it isn't helpful to you personally, I hope you find other sources that do and I wish you the best.

[qqueenofhades]

I'm about halfway through my History BA and I have a question (I pinky promise I'm doing more research than just asking tumblr academics their opinions), but this is also me assuming you did college in both the US and the UK so forgive me if I guessed wrong and am confusing you with someone else. How does graduate school in either country compare? I'm still stuck between whether I want to go for my master's or straight to PhD so obviously I'm quite a ways away from making any important decision, but considering that I'm studying British history (primarily), it felt natural to consider getting my degree(s) abroad. Are there like, any major differences you're aware of that made university vastly different, or are they more similar than I'm thinking?? Was one situation flat out preferable to the other?? If you even have strong opinions about it at all

That is me, yes. BA in the US with one year in the UK; MA in the US; PhD in the UK; now the co-director of a US MA/PhD program, so I have an appreciable amount of experience with graduate and postgraduate education in both countries. Here are the main ways in which they compare/what the experience is like in both:

In the UK overall, the experience is much more self-directed. I only had taught coursework for the first year of the PhD; the rest of it was spent in research and writing. So compared to the American system, where you take 3 years of coursework first (such as the PhD program that I currently manage) and then write the dissertation in the last year or two (hence the designation ABD, or All But Dissertation), you're thrown into the deep end from the start. I didn't have comprehensive exams, which might be a plus if that's something you have anxiety about, but the tradeoff was that I had to complete the dissertation proposal and first full-length sample chapter in the very first year, rather than waiting for year 3, and to have that be the basis on which I was evaluated/approved to continue to the full PhD degree. If you know what you want to work on and have solid supervision, this can work out and it certainly allows you to develop your topic in depth from the start, but if this is the kind of thing that gives you heart palpitations, there is that. The bright side is that you will come out with a thesis that will need less revision to be suitable as a monograph, because you've done a higher and longer amount of work upfront. I.e. I published my PhD thesis as a monograph with a major academic press within a year of graduating, which is generally rare in the US system.

As such, the US PhD experience is overall more directed/structured and leans toward more coursework than research. The research is obviously a big part of it in a way that American undergrads rarely train in (unless they go to a fancy liberal arts writing-intensive school for undergraduate, like I did), but as noted, the dissertation is central in the UK PhD system in a way it isn't (or at least not as much) in the American system. You have pros and cons for both systems, and sometimes I wished that my intensively research-centric PhD, where it was all on me to do the research, write the research, and have something to present to my supervisors on schedule for each meeting, had more taught coursework or formal/structured contact time. You have a committee in the American system, i.e. three or four academics who will oversee your defense, whereas in the UK, at least in a history program, you only have two aside from your degree supervisor: an internal reader (within the institution) and external reader (from outside the institution). While this means fewer people whose approval you need to wrangle, my viva (final defense) ended up being a Goddamn Ordeal because my external reader, despite being a friend of my supervisor, was really not suited to read a dissertation on the subject and I don't think should have been picked for it, then was extremely unprofessional about her notes/reviews/suggestions. (My supervisor likewise apologized to me for that, so yeah, It Was Bad. Academic Trauma Ahoy.)

Master's programs in the UK are also incredibly intense; they are generally one year compared to the usual two years for most US programs, and you have to complete the coursework AND write a thesis in that time, which is not something that I really recommend for maximum sanity. (Then again, if you're getting an advanced degree in history, that might be out the window.) However, if you are working on British history, then yeah, it makes the most sense to be based in a UK university, since the archives that you will need to consult will be, obviously, far easier to access than if you need to try to cram it all into one overseas academic research trip on a postgraduate student's budget. In that case, it might make sense to just apply to a master's/PhD program in the UK upfront, to smooth the transition/amount of moving around/financial misery you will have to endure. However, word to the wise that there WILL be financial misery, especially as an international student at a UK university. The Tories have yet again jacked the visa and NHS application fees (which you will have to pay upfront for every year you intend to be there) through the roof; your tuition will be much higher (though as noted in previous asks, don't go anywhere unless they pay YOU to do it) and it is difficult to get any part-time work outside of teaching or other opportunities directly related to your degree, which are subject to the uh, totally great pay rate for junior academics. (Sarcasm. That was sarcasm.)

Basically, yeah: it depends on what kind of student you are, how much initiative you like to take, how much structure you need or don't need, what sources you anticipate needing to consult and how you're going to do that, if you're comfortable starting the dissertation right away and being ready to present a finished chapter at the end of year 1, and whether you want your graduate/postgraduate experience to focus primarily on independent research or taught courses. There are no exactly right answers to these questions and you will obviously have to think about what suits you best (along, of course, the money aspect). Good luck!

[futurebird]

The Overdue Man

Have you ever had an uncanny or possibly paranormal experience?

I have.

It happened when I was in undergrad, I had a work-study in the Archivists Office in the rare books section of the library. The library is a classic modern building from the 50s, once ahead of its time, now well behind. The computer system was similar, my college being one of the first to adopt a digital library catalog in the late 60s

So, as you can see, this is, in part, a story of a haunted computer terminal.

I had returned early from spring break to pack in some extra hours in the library so I could avoid working during exams week. The campus was lovely in spring, dogwood trees shed pink petals on the quad, tulips tossed & bobbed sudden short thunderstorms. I got lost in my work on the solid library terminal with it's chunky keyboard & blue-green matrix screen.

My desk was under a little sky light in a hidden corner of the 5th floor. That's how I noticed the light changing.

The library was a modernist building, as I mentioned, and many people called it "ugly" I think simply because it was modern. Secretly it was one of my favorite buildings on the campus. Because, although built with clean minimalist lines, it was made with care. The architect clearly cared about light. During the day, the building hardly used any electric lights at all.

So, I was alarmed when the sky suddenly darkened so drastically that the runners came on. But, this was spring and I looked up expecting the thunder and another violent little thunder storm.

Gazing up through the skylight told me little. The window was frosted, and I could only see a steel gray haze. The green blue glow of the old computer lit my keyboard and I endeavored to keep working.

Before I could apply myself to my task the light shifted again. This time growing brighter... golden. The runners switched off. The air grew still. The library was empty.

The light from the skylight and from every window was a lustrous pink-gold, a sunset color although it was only early afternoon. The effect was beautiful, dust motes played near the stair well.

The bell at the front desk around the corner rang. Strange. I didn't hear anyone enter.

My main duty was cataloging, but if the head archivist was out I was tasked with lending out rare books in his place. I went around to see who it was.

The light was much more dramatic in the rare books library lobby where there were more skylights & windows, the whole space was bathed in that peach-toned light. And there, by the bell, stood a young man. Smartly dressed. Too smartly dressed.

In fact, a large part of the "paranormal" nature of this experience will require you to trust my (even then) finally tuned sense of fashion.

He had on tweed pants and a sweater, leather shoes and a button down shirt. All of his clothes were out of time. His sweater, to take one item, was a campy letterman affair in school colors. Hand knit. It was the kind of plain sweater that no one would bother to hand knit. It was hand knit self-consciously because whoever bought it couldn't afford store-bought and aimed to approximate the mass produced look as best they could. In short, it was very old.

But, it was also brand new.

The same was true of his plain, white shirt. I could see less than perfect hand stitching on the collar. Who, today would sew a white button-down shirt by hand?

Under his arm he held a notebook, and even it struck me as all wrong for the date of our existence. It was a composition book the likes of which I have never seen except in archives, the black and white dapple pattern was made by splattering ... not printing.

His outfit, though very plain, had that effect of a costume. I took all this in and decided he was from the drama department.

Not everyone could check out rare books. We had our own system, hence the computer in the basement and the beautiful, clunky terminals. I asked for his ID. That's when things got even more strange.

His ID was *laminated* and contained a *real photograph*! His name inscribed by typewriter. His student ID? In pen! I started to have my doubts about my theory that he was from drama. Maybe this was an elaborate book heist!

I tuned over the ID frowning with doubt. "This isn't-" "I'm a grad student." He explained quickly. "Have been for a long time. I know that photo is old..."

The photo didn't look old to me at all. Though, perhaps it was that strange light, concealing and repainting things, for as much as I'd noticed his clothing, I took more notice now of the man himself. He had an uncanny ageless quality. I could not have said if he were 25 or 45... or perhaps even older.

I peered at the photograph on the ID comparing it to the man. They were clearly the same. The clothing in the photo looked just as anachronistic. Even the background of the photo felt like something from a forgotten decade, a pull-down painted backdrop of the college rotunda. His photo beamed at me, and so did the man himself.

Some of the faculty had such ancient IDs. So, I decided to search him up in the system. I tried his last name, which was short an unusual. No luck. I tried his ID--

When I entered his student ID the terminal flashed. The screen inverting for a moment. I gave it wack, as I'd seen the head archivist do, and this seemed to clear it up... but the record I was now viewing was curious and incomplete.

His name had been entered in the wrong field, which is why the search failed. His first name was just an initial. I attempted to correct this but the system wouldn't accept my changes.

I scanned the book. And handed it over to him. He smiled, thanked me, and it seemed very sincere. Whatever else he was, whoever or wherever (whenever) he'd come from he seemed like a nice person, at least.

I watched him leave, and then leaned over to the window hoping to see him go out through the main exit on ground level below.

But he never came out. Instead the golden light began to rapidly fade. The library returned to normal... the charm that hovered over the place was gone.

Maybe he was just a quirky grad student with a thing for vintage clothing construction, a very old ID, uncanny ageless looks, and great timing with lighting. (and he could have left the library via the tunnels. )

I tried to look at his record in the system again, and NOBODY could edit it. Not even the head archivist. It kept changing itself back. Edits wouldn't stick. To this day, I can't shake the feeling that something more was going on.

I never saw him again.

If you are wondering, the book was "Physics and applications of secondary electron emission"

[offbeatcappuccino]

the you used to be my academic rival to lovers pipeline ~ dr slump ramblings (episodes 1-4)

I often joke that I watch k-dramas in lieu of therapy because a central theme of many k-dramas is unresolved trauma and healing. Dr. Slump is one of the many "healing" dramas to hit our screens this winter and it is perhaps one that few dramas that I have resonated deeply with and I don't think I can speak on what this show means to me without describing my background.

Before the third grade, I was a mediocre and sometimes below-average student, often to the disappointment of my Indian family. However, something "clicked" during the spring of my third grade and eight year old me decided on one fine afternoon that I was going to take school seriously for the first time and become an academic powerhouse. What ensued over the next sixteen years was my dogged persistence in an extremely hyper- competitive, academically rigorous, and slightly controversial charter school for the entirety of my secondary school education. Despite the workload, I was surprisingly sane for all of high school, enjoyed some of my classes, and played with my kindergartener sister on the weekends. It was also during this time that I continuously changed my professional career. An episode of "Cosmos" had me thinking I wanted to be an astrophysicist, but it was my junior year volunteering at a hospital and having two hypochondriac parents that firmly planted a desire to pursue medicine.

While I never was the valedictorian or salutatorian of my school, I graduated from high school with a fairly high GPA and acceptances to moderately competitive schools.For many, this would be the time that they could finally rest. "Grades don't matter in college", they would say and "Have fun in college and party because it's a breeze" . However, being a premed was the exception to these mantras. I was once again on the hamster wheel of academic excellence trying to maintain a high BCPM GPA and stellar extracurriculars, only to realize that graduating summa cum laude was never enough to get in to medical school. What subsequently ensued was two years of working long hours and below minimum- wage jobs to gain "clinical experience" and "boost my applicant profile". Now even with two medical school acceptances, I can't help but feel slightly disappointed and unsatisfied. The ever-lasting imposter syndrome creeping in during the wee hours of the night to tell me that "it's not a big deal" and "if only I took research more seriously in undergrad."

It is in this similar mentality that prioritizes academic validation above else that we find our protagonists, Nam Ha Neul and Yeo Jeong Woo, in as high schoolers. In Busan, Ha Neul has just been announced as the "top student of the nation". Similarily, in Seoul, Jeong Woo receives a similar accolade. Their lives collide when Ha Neul transfers to Jeong Woo's school in their senior year and they are pitted against each other for the top student position in their class. Though they have similar ambitions, it would be erroneous to suggest they are carbon copies of each other, because they both occupy opposite sides of the "academically gifted spectrum." Ha Neul is the diligent hard worker, studying 17 hours a day, running to school to not waste any time, and chowing down instant coffee packets to stay awake. She has deprived herself of all the joys of her adolescence to be the best student she can possibly be. In contrast, Jeong Woo is the effortless learner, while hardworking, he's never had to lose out on the fun to maintain his comfortable and uncontested position as the best student in his grade level. Things however take a turn with Ha Neul's arrival after she ends up scoring higher than him on the midterms, causing him to hilariously faint in front of the whole class. He embarks on an obsessive journey to reclaim his spot, pushing himself to outdo her unsustainable lifestyle.

The show fast forwards sixteen years later and we now see Ha Neul and Jeong Woo as an anesthesiologist and plastic surgeon respectively. While both were vying for an acceptance at Hankuk Medical School as high schoolers, Jeong Woo manages to score slightly higher than Ha Neul and ends up attending there while Ha Neul ends up attending a slightly less prestigious medical school. After being featured in a global health documentary, Jeong Woo, experiences a meteoric rise in popularity for his handsome looks and he makes millions in the process with a successful Neotube channel and brand endorsements. However, just as spectacular was his rise, his decline was equally catastrophic. During a routine cosmetic surgery, Jeong Woo loses his patient on the table due to excessive bleeding. His patient was a wealthy casino heiress from Macau and her family hits him back with a medical malpractice lawsuit. To make matters worse, not only is the CCTV footage from the surgery surprisingly missing, but a bottle of heparin, an anti-coagulant, is found with Jeong Woo's handprints even though he claims to never stock anticoagulants in his clinic. In a matter of days, Jeong Woo loses everything from his home, practice, and even friends.

Ha Neul is no better position than Jeong Woo. As an assistant professor at her teaching hospital, she is subject to daily physical and emotional abuse by her superiors and is forced to work 24+ hour shifts at the cost of ignoring her own pain. It was during one particular episode of unbearable abdominal pain that Ha Neul collapses mid-traffic on the crosswalk. She's rushed for an emergency gallbladder removal and Ha Neul is irrevocably altered by the incident because in the moments before she fell unconscious, she realizes that she would rather die than continue living. A visit to the psychiatrist confirms that Ha Neul has depression and she soon quits her job after she "karate kicks" and apprehends her superior for trying to make her take the blame for this medical error.

It is during their respective "slumps" that Ha Neul and Jeong Woo reunite in the oddest of circumstances as daughter of the landlady and tenant when Jeong Woo, after being denied housing almost everywhere due to his highly publicized court case, is finally able to move into Ha Neul's terrace room. At first, both are horrified to meet each other, but as they learn more about each other's respective circumstances, they grow closer over their shared failure.

For Ha Neul, while she chose to resign her job, being unemployed and diagnosed with depression takes a toll on her self esteem because she derives her self worth from her productivity and discipline. For her, Jeong Woo is her gentle reminder that it's okay to take a breath, eat tteobokki, drink soju, lose a million rounds of Tetris, and sing off-key kpop songs at the karaoke bar. This is in direct contrast to those who judge her for quitting her job and her family, who while well-intended, have a poor understanding of her depression. While they cook her favorite meals and cut store bought cake, behind their comical actions is the misguided belief that depression is like the common cold. They hope for her "recovery" but in reality, depression is a chronic illness that can be managed but has no cure. Jeong Woo is one of the few people around Ha Neul who has not made a spectacle out of her diagnosis. Similarily for Jeong Woo, Ha Neul is the only person who steadfastly believes in his innocence even when those around them and the physical evidence believe otherwise. After he is abandoned by his friends, parents, and fellow colleagues, Ha Neul becomes Jeong Woo's sole support system.

Park Shin Hye excels in playing a character she has been able to hone throughout her career- the tough and withdrawn gunner, much like her previous character, Yoo Hye Jung, from the 2016 medical drama Doctors. While I personally relate more to Ha Neul, I have to say that I enjoy Park Hyung Sik's Jeong Woo more. While I have never watched Strong Woman Do Bong Soon, I have watched several clips from the series and PHS brings a similar "Min Min" energy to this role. Jeong Woo is chaotic good personified. He's a little self-obsessed and a tad bit delusional, but he's also someone who deeply cares for the wellbeing of others. PHS is stunning in how he balances comedy with the vulnerability and fear of Jeong Woo. Behind his charm and goofiness, is a man struggling with abandonment and what appears to be early signs of PTSD. To both characters, there's an intense relatability that heightens the audience's captivation with the story.

Within the first few episodes of Dr. Slump, there are more questions asked than are answered. How will Jeong Woo be absolved of the false accusations imposed on him? How did the casino heiress really die? Who is the mysterious stalker who broke into Jeong Woo's home? Will Ha Neul get another job and how? Will she get justice for the mistreatment she faced at her prior hospital? However, the writers intentionally move the spotlight from the answers to these questions to instead shine light on perhaps the most pressing query this show chooses to grapple with- how do you learn to love yourself

Dr. Slump tackles head-on the "grind" that our hyper-capitalist and delusive meritocratic society feeds to us. It's a reminder that you don't always have to run in the marathon of life. You can walk. You can skip. You can sit. You can eat. You can drink. You can even sleep. What matters is not how close you are to the finish line, but whether you can breathe.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

[museum-spaces]

Hi,

I recently graduated with a BA in archaeology and am thinking of continuing my studies in either museums or archives. I believe you either are Canadian or have worked in Canadian museums (sorry if I'm wrong) and I had a question about college vs university programs when it comes to museum studies. If you can't answer, no worries.

When it comes to employment, what difference does it make between having a college diploma or a master's in museum studies? Are there some jobs you can only get with a master's? Or are opportunities the same? Would both programs teach similar skills? I know the job market in museums and archives is rough and if a master's will get me further that's probably what I'll go with. I also know there's several diploma/certificate programs offered by universities and am unsure of where those would rank in comparison to a college diploma or master's degree.

Another issue is the main masters programs I know of are in BC and Toronto, places that are incredibly expensive to live rn, so if a college program will get me just as far, some of those schools are in cities with lower cost of living.

Thanks!

first of all; you're right I am Canadian and a graduate of a Canadian undergrad program. but my MA is from the UK.

secondly, for non-Canadians; college in Canada has a few meanings. One is very similar to the US - a particular grouping of students in a university. But the more common one is a bit harder to explain. It used to be that 'working' careers were from colleges [i.e. nursing vs. doctor; lumber jack vs. forester, etc] but these days the lines are more blurred. Colleges are seen by some academic fields as 'lesser' than universities but they actually just fill a different need.

thirdly; it depends on the job. For my job [Executive Director] you do not necessarily need a museum/gallery background but imo... you do need that. If your interest is in collections care, a college diploma in specifically collections care is very good - often better than a generalized masters because it shows dedication in that one area. If you are more interested in exhibition same thing - colleges are more likely to have hands-on mounting classes which will make you an asset.

If you want to work front of house - tours, guest interaction, education - university degrees will be seen as better because you are more likely to be academically inclined and things like that. You won't be unable to get a job like that with college, but given our sector, it will be very very hard.

I believe, but you would have to check, that UofT's ISchool has an online or distance Masters for museums you might want to check out. You could also go abroad like I did. University of Leicester [my alma mater] has a very good distance course though the fees for international students might make in-person just as hard. They're entry requirements for Canadians at a 4 point school is a cGPA of 3. Nice and attainable.

Its also worth noting that you do not need to have museum-focused degrees so long as you have work experience. Lets say your UG arch was focused on Coast Salish archaeology, a side focus on public history and volunteer or intern work experience in museums will make you more attractive to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC than my CV which has no native focus at all.

There's a lot of historic workers on Tumblr, I'll tag a few and hope a few others chime in to give you advice.

@grey-and-lavender @archaeologistproblems @chaotic-archaeologist @museeeuuuum

[phantomrose96]

Hey! This question might be a little out of the left field for your blog, but I was wondering what getting into development after college was like for you? One thing I really admire is that— at least from an on looker's point of view —despite the work you do postgrad you've still got a lot of room for writing and interests. I was wondering just how that progression went? Maybe it wasn't progression at all but rather an extremely calculated 52-step misstep into becoming what might be able to be recognized as an adult? Maybe being an adult is about believing you're one first, and actually being one second? Suspension of belief but for emotional maturity? Just looking for a few pointers during my undergrad! :)

djfnkjdf, okay so! tackling things in order

For balancing job and life stuff and interests - it's not like I had any kind of complicated formula. I've landed at a company with a pretty good company culture around work-life balance. Software seems to have a pretty wide spectrum of like, "we expect all waking hours devoted to the company goal" all the way to like "hey everyone jsyk I'm gonna be off at 3pm to take my daughter to her dentist appointment see you later". I did undergrad with a very "all hours dedicated to my course work" mindset and, while the success was nice, the burn out was real. Ending up at a company with a good walk-the-walk approach to work-life balance has been very nice for healing from that, lol. It's a good thing to keep in mind (if you're in a similar field--which maybe you are, since you're math-adjacent) when job-hunting. like sure some people would maybe love to take up a grindset job for a year or two. But if you're looking into something you think you could settle in to long-term, ask around and do some research into the company culture.

As for the whole being an adult thing, I think the best way I've heard it phrased is that adulthood is just building up a ton of "oh, I've done this before" experience. There's a lot of rocky firsts. (This is a random list, which not everyone does, but just examples) things like getting an apartment for yourself for the first time, or setting up electricity in your name for the first time, or setting up internet for the first time, or doing your taxes for the first time, or paying your rent for the first time. And they're all scary things to figure out for the first time! Then over time--at whatever age or milestone you hit these points--they become "oh I've done this before."

If you have adults in your life who can help walk you through this--either parents, family, older friends, that older coworker you get along with--I recommend asking for help and advice. Because those people are "I've done this before" adults who can help you figure it out for the first time when it's new and scary to you. And then once you've done it, and gotten used to it, it won't be new and scary anymore. It'll be a thing you just know how to do now.

I have now set up internet in my name before, and it's become less scary because I now know how to do it. Electricity, gas too. I know how to do my taxes, because I've done them before (and I definitely leaned on advice from my dad the first year I had to do them). I know how to hire movers, because I've done that before. I know how to pay rent. I know how to get a credit card. I know how to order a checkbook, and renew a passport, and how to wire money. I know how to set up online payments. I know how to ride the public transit. I know all that because they were--at one point--scary first-time "adult" things which I had to research, and maybe ask for advice on from adults in my life or the internet, but now I've done them before, and now I know how to do them again, and they aren't so scary.

(Also, for a lot of these things, really, ask!!! For a lot of adult things, there are helplines or offices staffed with people who are happy to help people who are politely looking for information. [Sure okay maybe sometimes you'll encounter someone who's unhappy to help, or doesn't have the info you need] but I've had a lot of success going to places or calling numbers and just being like "hey, sorry, I have some questions about how this works. I'd really appreciate some help!" Just being respectful and courteous of people's time and attention has gotten me a lot of help from city-hall workers, internet service providers, electric companies, rental companies, mortgage brokers, and so many others--people whose job it is to answer questions and give information.)

Hell, I've had a scary couple of months recently feeling out of my depth and inexperienced because (since October) I put an offer on a condo, got a mortgage, closed on the condo, and moved into it. It was a lot of scary firsts. I leaned a lot on older coworkers/relatives/friends for advice (and made sure to show my appreciation for their support--I think that's another part of the process--the gratitude.) It really was not something I could do entirely on my own. But I know a lot more now. I've had a lot more experiences around it. It's now something I "know how to do", and could conceivably do again (just hopefully not for a long time, lol).

Anyway this is getting long but the point is adulthood is not something that happens all at once. It's a steady easing into life experiences and a culmination of "I've done this before" that makes the pieces of adult life less scary over time. Ask for help. Learn. You'll be okay. You'll get there.

Then finally as for MATH--the answer is because math fucks and goes hard as my degree was built on my own blood sweat and tears with multivariate math courses and I saw the opportunity to remember my math roots from high school and make it everyone else's problem in ABoT so I did.

[isfjmel-phleg]

September 2023 Books

The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Other Fairy Tales compiled by Alfred David and Mary Elizabeth Meek

Well, that certainly was a fairy tale collection. Some of these I hadn't read before. Some were more interesting than others.

The Dean's Watch by Elizabeth Goudge

I have nothing intelligent to say about it, but it was beautifully written and well characterized, as I have come to expect from Goudge.

13 Treasures by Michelle Harrison

An initially interesting premise that I found less interesting in execution. Rather a slog to read by the end.

The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones

I enjoyed seeing more of characters from Deep Secret. The worldbuilding was intriguing, and it's got twists like all Jones novels. One of these twists had implications for a major relationship that I didn't think were fully explored and resolved.

I Want to Go Home! by Gordon Korman (reread)

What if Mike and Psmith were set at a summer camp in 1980s Canada? Because that's what this book is, and it's as entertaining as it sounds. I would love to know if Korman is a Psmith fan because the similarities between this book and M&P, down to even some minor details that have parallels, seem too many to be coincidental.

Jane of Lantern Hill by L. M. Montgomery (reread)

It's been a while since I've read this one, and I found just as enjoyable this time.

The Sky Is Falling, Looking at the Moon, and The Lights Go On Again by Kit Pearson (partial reread)

I read The Sky Is Falling a while back and enjoyed it as a fictional portrayal of the experiences of young British evacuees in Canada during WWII. But I can't say I enjoyed the rest of the series as much. The third book isn't so bad, but Looking at the Moon is less historical fiction than it is one of those supposed-to-be-relatable tales of a teenage girl experiencing her first crush (...on a young adult) and puberty and all that Blossoming Womanhood sort of thing. Which is not a genre that I've ever been able to enjoy.

The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, and The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan (partial reread)

I read the first book ages ago as an undergrad and figured I might as well finish out the series. Can't say I have particularly strong feelings about it, but it's been entertaining. Even if Riordan has no apparent idea what downtown Denver is like :P

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

I was not the target audience for this classic. Which has nothing whatsoever to do with its quality.

The Noonday Friends by Mary Stolz

I picked this up in a local antique store and was pleasantly surprised to find it a readable tale of life in a financially struggling family in 1960s Greenwich Village. Even the adults are thoughtfully characterized, which I appreciated.

Comics

I read every appearance of Chris Kent, who has joined the ranks of Superhero Children Whom I Am Concerned About. There are getting to be a lot of those.

[guardianmonae32]

‼️Feeling limitless is a MINDSET‼️

Just about all my life, I have struggled with imposter syndrome. I worked very hard in school and all extracurriculars, but I never felt quite good enough. My grades and achievements have always said the opposite. I even went to University of Miami for undergrad, and then got into Harvard for my PhD… you would be surprised how often I played this off as ‘luck’ or ‘a happy accident’.

The truth is, as a Black Woman, I’ve frequently been told or regarded as ‘not enough’. This just fed further into my inner feelings of imposter syndrome. I had this nagging voice in my head telling me I didn’t belong, wasn’t good enough, or, and the most horrible of them all, I’m only here because I’m Black.

Impostor Syndrome impacts my science everyday. I frequently would go into the lab, intimidated by my tasks for the day, or being so nervous of messing up that I would do just that. In classes, I would frequently compare myself to other students. I took note of their additional achievements and accolades from their gap years or upbringing from a science-affluent background, and further convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough.

Deep down, I have always felt like I had something so impactful that I could give to the world… My imposter syndrome limited my ability to see how I could help others, in addition to making me feel unsafe in an academic/lab space.

Until one day it hit me like a truck: my grades and work ethic have always been outstanding, and truthfully I didn’t have much evidence that I ‘wasn’t good enough’ to be in the positions I have achieved. I had various remarks from other students or faculty that recognized the quality of my work. I started to change my internal narrative where I focused on all the positive things I bring to the classroom and lab. I started becoming less anxious of speaking up in class, sharing my personal experience, or attempting a new protocol in the lab. I became proud of my background instead of ashamed of what I ‘didn’t have’ in comparison to others, because my background is what curated my character as a student.

Now, this is opening doors for me I couldn’t even imagine! Having a limitless mindset makes me unstoppable, and whenever I can fill my cup, I can also help others more than I could even imagine!

If you have a similar story, I would love to hear it! Want to feel limitless? Send me a DM and lets chat!

[clonerightsagenda]

Really I feel like the core comedy of this au is hard to relate to unless you had a similar experience to me because the joke is that my student government acted like everything they did was part of a life or death, good versus evil battle for the soul of a small nation. Which, I mean, their health insurance was on the line, so I get it. But I once sat through a 3 hour student government meeting where we got so buried in levels of resolutions that they had to look up Robert's rules to see how to get out of them, and it never occurred to any of the officers to just Not do that. The undergrad government had to pass a resolution to declare that the current month was actually a different month, for procedural reasons. Roy and co. are taking this campaign 100% as seriously as they take planning a military coup in canon.

[dykelawlight]

hello!! can i ask you 18 and 30 for the writer's asks?

Absolutely!!

18. Do you enjoy research?  Which fic of yours required the most research?

YES!!! Far more than is often strictly required. The most research-heavy one I've published was definitely Solid and Full because I spent literally hours scrolling sex shops online trying to pick out specific stuff AND THEN spent a bunch of time locating real sex shops near where I decided Light and L lived AND THEN spent a bunch of time looking at subway maps to calculate travel time between locations (Chiyoda→Roppongi→Hiroo) to figure out where would be most reasonable. I've done similar amounts of location research for my fanfic author AU wip and also looked into a bunch of shit about undergrad experience at the University of Tokyo to figure out where Light would be when ⁠— which was good because I was originally looking at meetup locations near the central campus and then realized that Light would be at the Komaba satellite campus because he's an underclassman and would be completing the mandatory two-year general studies program before he would be allowed to select a major and study at the main campus. Which I'm sure everyone really cared about in my fic that's about Light Yagami getting pounded or whatever but it would have driven ME nuts if I had put that in and then realized later that it was wrong!! I also would be REMISS not to include the actual hardcore JSTOR/HeinOnline trawls @god-of-this-new-blog and I have done for our as-yet-unpublished AU which will be published in the form of an APA-style behavioral science report. A research-obsessive's dream project.

30. How much do you edit your fics?  Do you edit as you write or wait until you finish the first draft?

I edit as I write and then I comb through the first draft to eliminate any repetitive words or awkward sentences! And then I scroll through the preview on ao3 because it often helps me catch stuff that didn't look awkward in a word processor but that resulted in like, the same word being stacked on top of each other within two lines. I almost never make major plot/order edits after everything has already been written ⁠— like once I get the draft complete that's pretty much how it's going to look with the exception of purely linguistic changes.

[souryogurt64]

hey sour!

I was curious if you had any advice for an english grad student whose at a crossroads in their life?

so, I’m about halfway through my master’s in english, and quite frankly, I hate it. every day I wake up questioning the purpose of what I do. a year ago, I thought that teaching literature was what I was put on this earth to do — but now, I have begun to question that. analyzing literature is morally and intellectually enriching, but as the days go on, I wonder what real-world benefit an 18 year old can really gain from that. (at the moment, I’m much more drawn to rhetoric and composition studies, but my university tricked me during the admissions process and accepted me into a program with no graduate level coursework in that subject — but that’s another story)

anyway. my studies are making me depressed, and I miss writing for fun (I used to be a journalist before I switched majors) — and I see your writing for scrunchie and it gives me a little hope. you’re writing about projects and subjects that matter to you, and I can tell you clearly enjoy the work that you put out.

is there hope for someone like me to find a job, or a hobby as enriching as that? do you have advice for someone who wants to start writing again for the joy of it all?

thanks for suffering through this late night ramble. I love your blog, and I fully intend to get through the Gray dissertation after finals <3 what I’ve read is fantastic! keep up the killer work!

Yeah definitely! I majored in English during undergrad because I felt a very strong calling and I felt like it was what I was meant to do. I doubted myself a lot but I just felt like it was how my brain worked and I had to do it. Similar to you I felt drawn to a lot of rhetoric classes as well, and I did kind of accidentally stumble into a second Communications major, but that was in undergrad.

I can’t really speak on anything involving grad school because I didn’t really do that. I definitely feel for you, I think the higher ed process and most admin are intentionally manipulative, and a lot of professors think they’re well-meaning but kind of live in a ridiculous bubble and expect everyone else to, too.

As for a career, I knew majoring in English was a big risk to take, and I was pretty OK with failing because I knew I had to. I thought I wanted to be a music journalist, but recently I realized I actually don't at all. Once I realized that, I decided to try and get a job. A couple things kind of converged sort of out of pseudo-nowhere and I ended up getting a really, really good job.

I don't want to be insufferable but people always told me if I majored in English I would be lucky to have a shot at making 30k a year teaching and would probably work at McDonald's for the rest of my life. And this job is so beyond anything I even knew was possible for a job to have. Plus, I really enjoy it, and I feel like it is a perfect fit for me. I worked really hard for this and to get into the position to have a shot, even if I didn't always understand what I was working towards. But a percentage of it was just being in the right place at the right time. In short, yes, it is possible.

My advice would just to be to always trust your instincts, use your connections first, do what you're passionate about, and fill out your resume. I made rent by working in a restaurant, but I was doing a lot of weird gigs off like, Craigslist so I had stuff to put on my resume. I studied interview questions pretty much daily for months both verbally, with people, and by rewriting them. Volunteer-related stuff was also a big plus I think. The zine and a reference were 100% the main reasons I got hired though, I barely talked about my work experience at all.

As for the hobby, I liked interviewing bands for awhile but I got super sick of it. I wrote fanfic and stories pretty much constantly as a kid, and then when I was late teens-very early twenties I mostly stopped except for occasional poetry and erotica. I am a bad prose writer and I thought the only type of writing you could do was like, novels, and I knew that was not my forte.

But I really loved writing essays in college, and I was always viewing bandom through like the English major lens. I referenced The Outsiders and the PWHC blowout on here I think and then someone sent me an ask about it. I wrote an essay in response and posted it on the band interviews website and it got a way bigger response than almost all of the band interviews ever did.

Then I realized that like… there were no rules against doing this really strange and niche and kind of genreless thing I enjoyed doing and really wanted to do that almost no one else cared about. And if I wanted to write 40 page literary analysis about Fall Out Boy even if almost no one else on planet Earth has even considered doing that, I could, and I didn't have to write flawless 100k romance fanfiction like I was jealous of other people for being able to do.

So I guess just do whatever you want even if it's incredibly weird lol