#the high of getting a 2:1 in the exam I spent 40 minutes studying for also helped

[6ebe]

when the high of halfway through term wears off and you remember you still have 4 weeks, 5 essays, and one dissertation proposition submission left to go 😐

[queenofallwitches]

an update and primer:

so the last winter was weird. I had a complete breakdown, went into psychiatric hospital for 40 days in total. two seperate times.

learnt a heap of new things, met a tonne of cool people and had amazing conversations and few fights but overcome my own demons by that.

brain speaking-I have a scarred brain stem and neurological disorder is not a mental diagnosis, but a neurological disorder, proven by MRI scan, ADHD.

also damage to my basal ganglia, and prefrontal cortex.

neurological diagnosis means ADHD is not a "mental" health issue, as some believe, rather a neurodevelopment disorder caused by structural differences in the ADHD brain.

other neurodevelopment disorders include: Tourettes, Autism, Cerebal Palsy, Dyslexia and other Motor and Intellectual Disabilities. (Which recieve, in my view, a lot of insight, media information and stigma reduction by the advocacy networks surrounding these types of disability).

Over the last few years Autism has been over everything, I've seen mainstream media cover Tourettes and yet ADHD is still HUGELY misunderstood, misconceived and misrepresented in media, be in from the angle of documentaries, personal insight of a "typical" case, films, tv, and other media.

one of the first things my dr told me was "in females it rarely presents as hyperactive red-cordial OD child"

which is what my mother BELIEVES, that is because I have an adopted cousin with the ADHD dx who was that growing up, but the representation I'm told is also divergent for women with a higher IQ score than the average IQ. I come in around 142 and tested 123 at age 3 when I was unable to focus, pay attention and had severe trauma. I tested 142 in grade 8.

I'll share my experience as a female who is intellectually gifted, with higher IQ than average, and an adhd brain:

I've been told gifted and talented "genius" children are harder to diagnose because the symptoms present differently, we hide it better (camouflage) and our focusing can be "faked" by mediocre efforts of academic success.. this is true, I would do the assignment the Sunday night hours deadline, last minute, or have my parents half do it for me, plagiarise it (fuck I've killed my whole academic career now) copied but changed my words

from old 1970s encyclopaedias I KNEW they couldn't cross reference (I went through 15 years of school never studying doing homework or assignments and still had top grades).

I literally did not listen, and spent my classes planning the end of the world survival strategies with my GT friend who, basically helped me with my calculus and hard fucking maths, which was the ONLY 50 minutes of the day I put attention into my work.

now I'm going to be heading back to full-time study in the coming months, I get anxious as the pressure of a Bachelor level degree, and the pressure it takes me to perform, is enough to break me down. I've been advised it might be wise to start light (like a basic vet style diploma) and then build up, which is logical, but I keep thinking I'm meant to be doing my thesis by now. which is the kind of pressure one gets as a kid who is told repeatedly, "your intelligence is exceedingly the average and you can do ANYTHING you want"

I wanted to be an astronaut, a storm chaser, and an architect, a town planner and then a journalist. I always held to being a "FBI agent" or spy (I wonder why). so when I found psychology is really a blend of all these things, I kinda found a niche in a psych and social science double degree. but I'm thinking my academic career is LIFELONG, and due to the fact I also want to work in my field alongside my many written thesis coming, I'll be in academics for a long time. I may fail a few things, which I have to come to terms with. I do not fail easily, or readily, but I'm a perfectionist type-a academic who will put my whole life on the line to achieve "merit". I get exams, I get assessments, I read journals super-easy, I talk the talk and walk the walk so well psychologists who are at masters level compliment me on my "knowledge".

when it comes to mental health and trauma, I will always have the personal attachment, called lived experience, which will make failure and burnout, 100 percent realistic. I have to boundary up, bootstraps on, and prepare that yes, my personal "bias" will probably be entwined in this.

which is why I'm looking at the social science for the statistics and thesis writing side of things, and the counselling for the trained therapist side. either way, the degree of counselling requires so much self-insight, and then the social-science will back me away from personifying it. the other choice is criminology, which leads to forensic psychology, which is eternally fascinating. my main concern is the pro-pedophile content Ill be up against, which will look at the anatomy of a shoplifter akin to the devil, and leave the pedophile in the DSM-5 dx "paraphilia" box.

I'm not joining or jumping to anything.

either way I've got 2 year of credit, a heap of pathways and a lot of "academic momentum" from all my life being aimed to be "academic powerhouse". I went through my files and found a lot of awards I'd won in my high school, and top place in the competitions we would be entering in. I remember feeling so sad if I had a "credit" vs a distinction or high distinction, only to see now, a credit in university maths in year 9 is a skillset I don't have anymore so, good on me. or a credit in English, or Science at that age was pretty impressive, considering these tests were random and not studied for.

just a general skills assessment only the top 30 kids in the year were to take on a year by year basis and put out to vet from the top universities and taken by other kids in the same grade around the state.

it puts so much focus on my intelligence, because it's primed to be that way, I know that is true. I know I feel good being academically successful and it gives me a feeling of "achievement" but is it really for me?

I also found 2 letters from my local politicians offering me job placement, work experience and I was 1/4 kids in my 10th grade graduation tom get the letter, and due to my behaviour I pissed ALL the idiots who bullied me off. I was "too pretty to be a nerd" "too smart to be pOpUlAr".

so I made a group of misfits, who are all highly intelligent, creative and my group had the ONLY gay male in the school AND THIS IS BEFORE YOU FUCKING RETARDS MADE IT "COOL". he was bullied badly, so fuck you, you fucks claim "liberalism" but I bet you were the type of idiot who bullied guys like him in high school while you pretended to like my chemical romance and fake cut yourselves. I hate you all, forever.

my grade was full of idiots who were fake emo, who left the scene the moment the scene changed to dub-step and club music. I was there, watching you all, like sonny Moore, went from FFTL to that dubstep skrillex shit he started in 2009.

I dated you, hooked up with you and I went to your gigs. I know who was real and who was fake. I met some of you years later and realised the more emotive ones were the less "alternative appearing".

I can say 1/10000 emo guys from the 00s were genuinely Into the music and scene for the right reasons based on my dating history and this can and will be analysed statistically using SPSS one day to prove a lot. I've had too many relationships from each sub-culture and I have had 4-11 males at a time per public "output" of my energy pursue me over life.

I'm not being cocky when I say I have a long line of "suitors" and its banked back about 50 men. it's been a thing I've avoided as it seems to grow based on my body shape, attitude, appearance, so I am currently out of touch with dating scenes, no interest to try that ANYWAY, given the fact that I have had so many LONG TERM relationships ANYWAY. I can't see another one going well, and at this case, I'm living with an ex but we never went on conventional and now our families label this 3 things: "asexual", "polyamorous" and "open relationship". I'm also "bisexual" but this all to humans outside, looks ridiculous on paper. (wild orgies and lots of swinging or some stupid sex magick probably is what J brother literally thinks we do).

bc humans are intrinsically designed to need to label things they don't understand. we share a lease, not a relationship, and fucking polyamorous, I WISH. there are no girl-girl-guy 3 some, or orgies, or sex magic parties.

this has changed the attitude and perception of this "relation' which Is non-romantic, non-sexual. he can date and likely, will, as can I , and I likely won't date.

I would say 14/15 have had ADHD, or other mental illness and or trauma. which means to me, nothing at all.

I think this "open book" non romantic relationship style of "friends and roommates" not sexual.

attachment is misunderstood by others but works well fro my adhd, meaning I'm not expected to marry, or be a wife in any capacity. he is free to do what he wants, as I am, and open communication is a novel frontier I brought into this in the start, and stayed with for the duration. we fight, but I fight with a lot of people in my life over many petty things. also down to my adhd, I believe, I have rejection sensitive dysphoria, which makes me hypersensitive to rejection, perceived or real.

im not sure if this is trauma or adhd or both. but

I have used sexuality as a weapon in many relationships but it cannot or will not be used here, so I have had to resort to uncovering parts of myself which I never knew, which will stay with me even if he decided to marry and wife up in 5 years, which I'm okay and expecting him to do, and I would much rather that then be trapped in a situation where I cannot be that "wife/mother archetype" as I'm too "femme fatal/other-woman/sex-laced seductress and siren" a "FWB, unicorn, drug buddy, hook-up where im a therapist" or "intellectual and cognitive mind-bender work-study obsessed woman".

both at once and many types of human, including one who is a full-time ceremonial magician of 7 years. I will drink, drug, fuck, fight like males and still be more feminine and high maintenance than 89% of women. I grew up a tomboy and don't mind getting into fun, adventure based situations, like hiking, or anything adrenaline, I would only be reluctant to eat weird shit.

I also have many "neurological" issues including ADHD, and trauma which causes a rupture in the average human and I dating.

I'll tell you how many men have said "you are the unicorn" and then realised what that means, I went as far as canvasing the PUA world back in 2014 after reading the game, a book on PUA, which is essentially, pick up artistry, based on NLP and hypnosis. I did this after reading the copy my ex in 2008 handed me before we dated saying "I gave this up for you". it took me years to open the book, buy when I did I truly believed the only way I would fall in love again, was through PUA. that failed in so many ways but gave me a training foundation for men who were candidates for that, I have trained up J, and the way that sounds is BAD. I know, but I got a lot of value myself, I just don't see it how I wanted to see it.

but that was my original intent, and I achieved this he knows that, knew it was happening and evolved for the best self.

I am thinking we can modulate this into a business model for how I was operating in the BDSM world was mainly psychological, not physical.

I get told all of is incredibly intimidating (I am told) to women and men.

I don't really care anymore, because people have always seen this part of me in the wrong way ANYWAY, but I own who I am NOW. which is what I needed ANYWAY. so it cannot be stolen again, and sexual healing has come from abstinence ironically.

I also don't care what or who is trying to tear up my relations, toxic or not toxic, all people around me will be on a healing journey by default, or cut out of my life, for I am radiating that energy so brightly its impossible NOT to feel that pull.

I will drag your shadows into the light, and make your secrets spin from your lips into my consciousness. its not what I do but its what is design.

I make your weaknesses mountains to climb over. you cannot hide from these in my presence, I won't be this controlling or obsessive female who wants 24-7 attention as I have a life full of meaning without love or sex. I don't want to be wined, dined or expensively gifted, unless specially requested.

I don't want love letters or romantic declarations, this isn't some femnazi bullshit, but it triggers me. I appreciate the efforts and won't make you feel bad about your insecurities, for mine are probably 30 x more pronounced.

I appreciate small things, that most males won't or don't know how to do. like remembering things I've said and being thoughtful. or knowing my silence isn't personal, or a game, but a protective wall. I've had songs sung too me, guitars played, songs written, or things made in ways that are heartfelt. but I've always had them used against me too. so it is the context. I value time, energy, conversations of depth and reciprocal exchange. I also value trauma understanding, my alters and fragments being accepted and valued as me as a whole and a person who is not afraid, or scared of stupid stuff like sensitivity, emotions, feelings as raw as my own. men feel intensely too, lol.

but will only give oral sex 100 times before I don't recieve it, I can communicate now so that wouldn't happen.

but I won't be a bitch about this stuff. I am extremely feminine and care in ways other people, do not, I forget nothing people tell me, so it can be a reward or reverse uno card pull in a fight, but I am not evil or deviant in my relations. I react, depending on how you treat me. I don't need your money, or providing source of income to be okay as I am my own queen, however sharing resources is okay to build something. I don't need to be seduced, but will need to be shown a person is trustworthy.

few cross that.

that will always be time-endurance and testing. there are ground rules I don't play with, or play games. or like being forced or forged into something I'm not. I know abusive and I know safe, and I am a psychology expert, trained psychotherapist and study humans for fun, so I'll always be analysing things.

and I know red flags and I know ego, I know how to placate and please and pleasure, but will only do so, for a bigger and better reason than the mere act of seduction. which is without value and transactional to someone like me, I won't lie.

and I know every tactic in the book, for the book was written by someone like me, many lives ago, and my karma is being burnt for that book.

in terms of walls, I have many, may it be called a maze. or labrnyth.

I will teach you things you never thought you'd know, and change your life in ways you won't ever be able to go back to before. I will blow your mind, sexually, emotionally, intellectually, on all levels, and I'll make your friends and family love me.

I'll bring your walls down and you won't be able to understand this, because you don't understand me, and thats ok.

but I'll always understanding you and make your life better because thats what I do anyway, and people talk to me about things I will never share, as I keep secrets. I am jealous, of everything but, only because I am attached in a disorganised way, and working on that.(I won't even mention how man women or men don't know basic psychology of themselves). I also am a therapist , for my friends and family too.i should not be , but I am. I care, I listen, If you think I'm not listening, I'm still listening. sometimes I interrupt, because I have ADHD and I am horrible at resolute planning, or being "normal". but I don't want to be normal anyway. I need you to recognise and understand my shit, for that is what I do for everyone in my life, and I have helped more than I receive.

I'll probably accidentally give you therapy, but thats fine, because you will uncover your depths and find meaning in this. it's not something that goes bad unless you are fundamentally, evil, even the most abusive relationship I was in, was benefited from this process. yes he's still narcissistic, but he is self-aware. and did I benefit, never, just know the anatomy of self-proclaimed narc and I still can't hate him. will get my civil claim one day.

I will fuck your mind without meaning too. but thats because I fuck my own mind. but the meaning is made in the man- some find this highly offensive or personal (its not). I fuck minds by my own overthinking, or over perception on many levels of reality. so join the ride, or don't come along at all. because once the rollercoaster is in motion, I have no control of what may or may not happen. it's purely experimental.

I am experimental.

and the women who are judging me, are not any better.

look within, and shut the fuck up. self-improve and quit this jealous divide and conquer bitchiness. I HATE gossip, bitches, snitches and fakers.

I look to other women who are intellectually, physically and spiritually "individual". and find value in superior status to my own, which is something my narcissistic ex taught me.

I look for mentors, and teachers and people who will teach me how to improve myself, which I am fearful to reconnect after something is amazing and I can't give anything back of positive value. I am sorry I am working on that.

I won't devalue those below me, but I also need to be mutually benefiting from a relationship.

I dont drag people down, I may disappear if I feel I am doing this by mistake. I am flakey as fuck, and sorry for that. its anxiety and lack of perfectionism, so I am wrong and bad for this. I can change. will change.

if you can find value with my relation, personal professional or romantic, we can move into a symbiotic beneficial agreement based on mutual "terms". but many won't or cannot see this, nor do I impose my bullshit into the lives of randoms at this age.

I don't care if this is cruel, it's real.

I value loyalty, compassion, self-insight/awareness, someone who understands all parts-spirituality, metaphysics while still having intellectual & logical & analytical brain-sight.

I enjoy music, magick and learning new things.

I do not care about appearances I dont think ive dated based on one time. I do value connections and chemistry which is far-few between, I hate fakers. I smell insincerity miles away. but I do respect women who are well-presented, or beautiful, with hair beauty and makeup, I can't do this shit well, so I look up to those who are in professions who do it like art. I find them to be genius level queens who scare me.

I call out bad behaviour and make people uncomfortable if they are repressed. I will change you without even meaning too, I don't even need to date you. its just my presence, over time, amplified by the intensity of the dynamics.

I don't want simplicity, but I also don't need over complexity.

I value passion, independence, creativity, curiosity, problem-solving, deep-disscussions, shared adventures and some occasional risk-taking (lol), sensuality and sexuality for a common cause beyond physical pleasure. I like being taught but not micromanaged. I need my own independence, and need to be trusted with that. I hate being scolded for that like a child, or being pushed to change my ways to conform to societal values. which I will push back and refuse to do. which is not healthy. I don't adult like many others do, but I try to proceed in other ways. and learn to adult like normal people, accept me.

I also value myself, and how I can be celebrated, enhanced and improved vs. the opposite.

I give space, and have boundaries, and understand human psychology, sexuality and relationships in ways few others unless they are trained, can do.

I value MY time. so you can have space to value YOURS. I dont need to be in anyones pocket for a long time. I love being alone, and being around people who are stimulating, but draining people will be drained out of my life quicker than I intend. I am sorry for the people who felt I disappeared, when I was only trying to be 'fair', if I feel I'm a bad influence, I will work on myself until I'm not. I'm still working on it.

I also use this psychology awareness, to enhance communication, connection. you may or may not become an accidental guinea pig. I will be upfront that I am experimental, but that is part of the buy ticket and take the ride. lets work together. not apart.

I am coming from a place of love, and love is what I feel for my animals, which you will be adopting as children.which I want to stop experiments being done on. I love love, in all ways, but hate cruelty of animals and children, violence and suffering. I dont advocate justice, because I find life is fucking cruel, unfair and unjust. by default, so I focus on myself. what can be changed, and what I am able to do in my own locus on control. I will always find myself drawn to the outsiders, the misfits, the vagabonds, the misunderstood. I want to help people who are society, or socially, disadvantaged by trauma and mental illness, but only when I have ability to help myself.

it's a journey.

I will not date anyone who is cruel to animals, outside of specify magical sacrifice, there is not any place for that. nor will I date or fraternise with anything or anyone linked or associated with pedophilia. I won't judge anyone on anything that are outside animal cruelty and pedophilia. I don't and haven't. I keep on good terms with every ex, bar 1 whom I only apologised too this year. it felt good to do that. I change my behaviour.

I am open, but also highly attuned to both logical, factual, empirical , scientific worlds, and spiritual, intuitive, psychic and the "collective unconscious". I walk in both these realms, and I am "conventionally attractive". which puts a lot of pressure on me, to be "stupid". I am always dumbing myself down to fit into normality, but I look ridiculous if I do that so I peacock my intellect.

only to be misconceived.

I give up because I no longer care how anyone but MYSELF can see ME. I won't dumb myself down , but I can enhance you UP. prepare yourself for graded education, evolution and self-growth on mass scales.sorry not sorry.

that sucks for the people who want to be living vicariously through me, for making up to lost trauma years, for family who sold me out for the success I'd bring home, or fake trauma enmeshed friends, or whatever they want or need from me. I value my time and energy, and have given that in abundance, and if you want to be with nut only "one part of me that is alters". I can't provide that now. not sorry.

I have to work on something or not be in a dynamic at all.

I no longer can switch on demand to adapt for you, it will not be effective and that upsets a lot of people. especially now I'm sober. harder to handle this, as I see the world for its ways and why it is, more vividly. I haven't had alcohol for almost 2 months, although, I could drink, I haven't.

I can't do it, anymore. it, being, faking, my selves fronting to impress. I can't. I have no more left to give, and I'm expected by everyone to be a way I can't do it in the way they want.

I will go to another year long outpatient DBT, followed by 10 weeks of A-C-T therapy, and however many ECT OR TMS may or may not help. I'm told it won't (ect) work. but TMS, is something I am open too. but I am telling you, none of this psychotherapy, that will be based on dbt skills, day therapy, intensive skills training, recommencing my studying, and resuming "life worth living" will or can wipe the traumas I've "recovered" memories for.

I will also shut the fuck up, and tell nobody about this if you leave me alone, I told that to my family, and this is open letter to the watchers, stalkers and perps who read this openly as I track the hits on here and have 200+ visits a day every day for the last month. globally. no idea how or who you are but I think its the same people who called the police for the "ayreon song lyrics" seen to be a suicide not last October.

thanks for that wake up call, I have shut the fuck up, since December, more so now. I will burn the journals, or lock them up.

my recovery is not linear, not yet fully integrated and I trust nobody so I don't think my psychotherapy will be deep, I focus on things like ADHD AND my EDNOS. and dbt skills. I won't be talking about sexual traumas.

enjoy the update, and thanks for the "attention".

I have my goals, my work, my meaning and what my life should and could and will look like, but I will not share that with anyone. that means everyone right now.

I've been tested, traumatised and terrorised to the point of not-tolerant of anyone who may bring that back, and banish the fuck out of my sphere every moment I need.

take me as I am, or watch me as I go, which I will go, where I am not wanted I will remove myself, but I will find where I am celebrated because I create that.

I will rise up against all adversity every time but that is survival and that created a resilient and brave woman, in me. who will not be destroyed or decomposed by humans who are fundamentally fucking evil.

I gift you my truth, in progression, and give up the pain of the past.

[lonelymakne]

AU “What are you doing inside my head?” “You can hear me too?”

Part 1

Part 2

(Dialogue “.....” Thoughts ‘...’)

It’s 14th September, fall quarter in Kyoto High School. The Senior year is stressful with making decisions about your future and preparing for exams which will decide your future. Surprise, surprise I do not use my “super powers” to cheat during tests. Okay, maybe sometimes, but not intentionally. I still can not control my mind that well to not hear other people’s thoughts, so now and then I hear some answers during tests. However, I try my best to not, therefore I study hard in order to finish test as quickly as I can that I do not hear other people.

Summer before a senior year was a wonderful time. I spent time with my family and friends. My friend Yerim (our friend group gave her a nickname Choerry, but she doesn’t like it, we still call her that to annoy her) and I went to Osaka for a week and to Tokyo for four days. We had so much fun and looked at some universities. But, summer ended and it is school-time.

I’m a morning person; I enjoy waking up before sunrise, make myself cup of coffee and watch it rises. Kyoto may be not a big city full of life, but it has it charms, and beautiful sunrises, and sunsets. The alarm rings at 5:40 a.m. I wake up really early because school starts at 8, and I take a train to get there.

I’m going straight to the bathroom to wash my face, brush my teeth and do my “skin care” (wash my face with the cleanser, put some toner on, and apply a moisturizer). My hair do not want to cooperate with me most of the time, so I just to try to make them look decent by brushing them. Done with the bathroom.

Uniform is ready and hanging in the closet. I do not really like wearing uniform but at least I don’t need to think what to wear everyday.

“Luna, breakfast is ready,” Mina says while banging on my door.

“Okay, okay stop banging. I’m coming.”

Just need to grab my backpack and my phone. While coming down the stairs I can hear mom thinking, ‘I need to make list of groceries to get for the dinner, and Minhuyng will pick up Mina from school today.’

“Good morning, mom. Good morning, dad.”

“Good morning, Luna. Please don’t forget to feed Starlight.”

“Okay, mom.”

Starlight is our cat. She is very very white, so we named her starlight.

“Dad, can we go to the comics store after school?” Mina asked.

“Sure, only if you help your mom to wash dishes.”

“Okay.”

Wow, this girl is obsessed with comics. She got passion.

“I will be home late, me and Yerim are going to the library after school to work on our science project.”

“Okay, just be careful and don’t be late for a dinner.”

“No problem, Ma.”

All of us were finishing our breakfast. And randomly dad’s thoughts popped out in my head, ‘ I need to ask Luna what to buy for Yoona’s birthday.’

I wish I could just send a message to my dad through telepathy, however, it doesn’t work like that. Every time I hear something, but people don’t hear me back. I will just tell dad later what mom wants.

It’s 7:20 I need to head out. Grab my coffee with me and go to the train station.

“Bye everyone, I already need to go!”

“Bye!”

“Good luck at school!”

I hope Yerim won’t be late again, we all the time meet each other at the train station.

I get there and of course this girl is not there yet. If we are late because of her I will murder her. Oh, I see that purple head.

“Choerry you are late again!”

“I’m sorry my brother is a dickhead and was in the bathroom for an hour, so I couldn’t even wash my face.”

Yerim thought to herself, ‘She knows I hate when she calls me Choerry. This girl will kill me one day.’

Yeah, she gets annoyed because of Choerry, but she knows I call her like that only when I’m “mad” at her.

“No worries, Yerim. We will just kill your brother and bury him in you backyard.”

“Please do so. He is just too much sometimes.”

“Our train should come in 5 minutes.”

“Good, I was so scared that you will leave without me and I will be late.”

“I would.”

“Wow. Luna, you are so mean!”

“You know I’m joking.”

“Of course, I do. After 5 years of friendship I know everything about you.”

The train came and we got inside. I don’t like to sit on the train, so me and Yerim stand next to the doors.

“Your purple hair is fading.”

“I know, they’re more pinkish right now. Are you going dye yours?”

“Mmmm I don’t know yet, I’m okay with brown for now.”

“You should go blonde.”

“I will think about it.”

I try to not hear Yerim’s thoughts, but I feel more comfortable to hear hers than some strangers on the train. ‘There are some boys from our school.’ I turned around and saw Hyunjin and Jisung from our school at the back of the train.

I said, “I didn’t know Hyunjin and Jisung take the same train as us.”

“Me either. We have been taking this train for four years and I have never seen them.”

“Maybe we just never recognized.”

“Probably. By the way did you read Nietzsche for supplement resource for philosophy.”

“Yeah, I tried to read in Japanese, but end up reading in English because translation was bad.”

“I wish my English was as good as yours. I didn’t understand shit.”

“I will help you during lunch.”

“What would I do without you, Luna?”

“I don’t know either.”

“Bruh.”

We ended up laughing.

It is our train station. We got out from the train and started waking to school.

“How’s student government?” Yerim asked.

“It’s okay, Seungmin is on mine and Ryujin’ asses.” I’m in the student government as the club in my school. It is pretty fun, but most importantly it looks good in college applications. Seungmin is the president, me and Ryujin are Vice Presidents, Sumin is the secretary, and Jaemin is the treasurer and marketing “manager”.

“Knowing Seungmin, he is.”

“Yeah, he takes his job seriously, him and Ryujin argue all the time about whose idea is better, and I’m their buffer. It’s funny to witness those fights.”

“We almost at school. I’m not ready for the morning Calculus.”

“I have AP-Calculus and still don’t know how I ended up there. I hate math.”

“It’s a mystery.”

I can see the gates of the school already. We come inside of the school and go right to the lockers.

My head gets flooded with people’s voices.

‘I forgot to do my homework. Shit.’

‘I can’t believe my parents grounded me.’

‘Where is Jisung? I need this hamster.’

Oh, that was probably Seungmin. He all the time calls Jisung hamster. I turn around and see at the end of the hallway, Seungmin. His eyes searching around for Jisung.

“Okay, you better help me with philosophy homework because Lia got sick, so you are the only English genius I know, and that dude Nietzsche doesn’t make sense in Japanese.” Ryujin says when she walks up to mine and her locker.

“Wow, so I will have a whole lecture during lunch I guess.”

“Please do.”

“Yeah, I didn’t understand it either,” Yerim says.

We part with Yerim. I and Ryujin have AP together while Yerim has calculus.

We walk into the classroom. There is not a lot of people who take AP. It’s me, Ryujin, Seungmin, Jisung, Hyunjin, Lia, and Yeji.

I sit with Ryujin on the 3rd desk.

“I have some cheeseme (tea) to spill.”

“Oh wow I’m intrigued.”

“I will tell you during lunch.”

“Okay. You spill some cheeseme and I will lecture you and Yerim.”

“Deal.”

Mr. Chen comes into the classroom and bell rings.

“Good morning, guys. Today we will start new lesson, but first we will look at the problem on page 35.” I open my textbook on page 35 and Mr. Chen starts solving the problem on the desk in order to give is an example. Everyone is quiet. I write down the example on mine notebook.

‘Fuck, I will kill Felix and Jisung. Why the hell they posted this video.’

Who was that. I look around and think on who might thought of it. It might be Seungmin or Hyunjin.

‘Seungmin will probably help me to kill them.’

Okay, that was easy to figure out. What did they do to make him so mad.

‘What?’

Mr. Chen was done with the example, so I started to copy notes from the board.

‘That’s stuff is confusing.’

Agree with that indeed.

‘What are you doing inside my head? Who are you?’

‘You can hear me too...’

[whiskynottea]

An Interruption in the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 21, Chapter 22, Chapter 23, Chapter 24, Chapter 25, Chapter 26, Chapter 27,  Chapter 28, Chapter 29, Chapter 30, Chapter 31, Chapter 32, Chapter 33, Chapter 34, Chapter 35,  Chapter 36, Chapter 37, Chapter 38, Chapter 39, Chapter 40, Chapter 41, Chapter 42, Chapter 43, Chapter 44,  Chapter 45, Chapter 46, Chapter 47, Chapter 48, Chapter 49, Chapter 50, Chapter 51 Chapter 52

AO3

Huge thank you to my beta, @theministerskat for correcting the same mistakes 53 chapters in without any complaint!

picture by: Kamryn Hinojos

Chapter 53. Dust and Smiles

When I lived in Scotland I missed the sun dearly. Sunny days were treasured, and I found myself smiling without any particular reason when the sunlight snuck between the curtains of my room in the morning.

But sometimes a person can have too much sun. And too much dust stuck to their body. And there is a point when you think of rain and realise a wistful smile has appeared on your face at the thought. It’s the same moment you realise there isn’t an inch of your body not coated in grime.

I reached that exact point on a quiet afternoon in June, two weeks before I left Zambia. Some would say it had taken me long enough.

I was left alone after treating the skin wounds of a couple of five-year-old boys that had gone out ‘to explore’. Their little feet had raised tons of dust as they ran away from the clinic and the first thing that came to my mind was that I was extremely tired of washing my hair every night only to feel it dirty again by noon the following day.

Then, just before the boys disappeared out of sight, one of them turned back to look at me, white teeth stark against his dark skin as he smiled, and waved goodbye.

And suddenly, I didn’t mind the dust that much. I didn’t mind the heat, or how heavy my body felt at the end of each shift. All that mattered was their smiles when they left the clinic.

My three months in Zambia were so full of experiences, I could hardly believe it hadn’t lasted longer. I learned how to talk to people who were in pain, how to heal them or -- when this was impossible -- how to make them feel better. I learned to listen to them, to search their eyes, to read their discomfort or pain in the way they moved. And I learned how a single smile can make your day, how two skinny arms wrapped around your body or two warm hands holding yours can fill your heart to the brim.

Spending my childhood with Lamb, I was used to living amongst people who were different from me. He’d taught me to look at people and see them for all they were. Humans. Different, beautiful, every one a worthy individual.

“All people are the same,” Lamb used to say. “All genuine smiles make the eyes crinkle, all hearts beat in the same way inside our chests, not aware of colour or tribe.”

In Africa, I saw life, and I saw death. I saw the universality of pain. I felt hands squeezing mine in terror and in gratitude. And I felt full. I felt alive.

When I first decided to volunteer I had thought I would find a piece of my mother in Africa. I believed I would discover who she had been, what she had pursued in life. I didn’t. And I wasn’t disappointed, because I had found a piece of myself in the faces I met in Livingstone, and I cherished that. And maybe -- just maybe -- that piece of myself was hers. Passed down to me, together with her amber eyes, an unbreakable part of myself.

Being a volunteer had been a full time job -- and a demanding one at that. But I didn’t want to leave, not yet. I had more to give, there were people here who needed me. But I knew that my time was up. In two weeks, I would feel Scottish air against my skin once more. I would feel Lamb’s arms hugging me for a few extended moments before he would push away to look into my eyes and pet my hair the way he always did. And a week later, I would be at Lallybroch. Jenny had asked -- demanded, actually -- to spend a week or two there. She had enough of the men, she had said when we’d texted. And true to her word to her brother, she had sent me pictures of the estate, in full bloom and beauty.

Jamie would come home after the summer term. We would spend two weeks together before his next term began and I would go to Oxford. To Oxford, where -- unexpectedly -- I would find a familiar face.

Robert.

He had been different since his personal confession. His arrogance and cheeky comments hadn’t abated, but there wasn’t an edge to his voice anymore. It felt as though he needed someone to know his story, even if that someone wasn’t a friend, even if it was just me. He clammed up after that and never talked about his mother again, apart from the time he’d told me it was her wish that had brought him to Zambia as a volunteer.

We started, however, talking about literature. One evening I found him reading that fantasy book I had finished a few months ago. And when the conversation turned to our future plans after Zambia, he had looked down at me with a smirk and proudly announced that he had been admitted to Oxford University. I’d almost spit my pineapple juice out and onto his face. After that, our expectations and dreams of studying at Oxford became the most common topic of our discussions. Robert would be studying economics, expected to inherit and work in his father’s wine business in Provence. That was a relief. The last thing I wanted was to have the self-centered, competitive French on my heels through medical school. From what I had learned about him in the few months we lived together, he didn’t like being bested by anyone. And neither did I.

Jamie was the first to know I had found a fellow Oxford student in the middle of Africa. He and I had been texting and sending photos all the time, and I kept changing my screen background, choosing the funniest of the pictures he sent me. My favorite picture of him though, was the one he had sent me right after I arrived in Zambia. He was wearing a wide, silly grin as he sat in the bleachers of Michigan Stadium, my Wolverine amongst the blue and yellow sea of other students. He had sent it together with a text, shouting, “MY FIRST SPRING GAME!”

Boys.

Despite the selfies Jamie sent me every day -- in class, on his way there, before training holding the towel I had bought him, or tucked in with his blanket at night in bed, my favorite part of the week was when I saw him during our calls every weekend. I was always trying to take in every detail of him during our video chats -- his beautiful eyes, the way his curls moved as he excitedly gesticulated, his voice.

I missed him and I knew he missed me too. Even when John was present in their dorm and Jamie wouldn’t say it, his longing was obvious in the way he looked at me.

Two weeks and I would be at Lallybroch, in Jamie’s room. It made no sense for me to fly straight to Michigan with Jamie having his final classes and preparing to sit for his spring term exams. I had looked for tickets to visit him right after the exams, but the fares were too high to even consider it.  

We had agreed that it was not the ideal situation but okay nonetheless. We would survive it. At least, once I was back in Scotland, we would be able to call each other every day. As John had said, laughing, the force of the internet would be with us.

Jamie would come home at the end of August, after his summer term, and we would be at Lallybroch together, spending every single minute with each other.

“We have to make up for so much lost time,” Jamie had said to me during our last call, and the glint in his eye was as terrifying as it was exhilarating.  

A text on my phone brought me out of my reverie and I realised that I was still standing under the sun, alone, looking towards the far end of the road.

I found myself doing that a lot lately.

Scot: John’s cousin is a pain in the ass.

Sassenach: Hello to you, too.

Scot: Hi babe. John’s cousin is a pain in the ass. She called him, woke us up, and she demands that we pick her up from her hotel and show her around.

Sassenach: Well, she came to visit. Makes sense, no?

Scot: It. Is. Too. Early.

Sassenach: It’s 1 pm here!

Scot: You’re not helping. It’s 7 in the morning. Maybe I can send her there, then?

Sassenach: Is that the cocky cousin or the nice one? I doubt they’ll like the dust we have here, in any case.

Scot: The cocky one. Can I come there myself? Please?

Sassenach: Why aren't you on your way, already? :P

Scot: Don’t tempt me.

Sassenach: I don’t have anything to do right now.

Scot: We didn’t send you there to relax under the sun, Sassenach. Get that gorgeous round arse to work.

Sassenach: It seems I’ve healed all of Zambia.

Scot: So humble.

Sassenach: Always. I took lessons from the best.

Scot: Fuck you.

Sassenach: What? Since when are you talking like that? I need a selfie to make sure it’s really you.

I spent a whole minute wishing his selfie to load faster, but I ended up with a sleepy Jamie on my screen, which was worth the wait.

Sassenach: So it is you. These Americans are rubbing off on you, no? AND I DON’T MEAN IT LITERALLY. Also, fucking seems a bit difficult right now, seeing as you’re half a planet away.

Scot: But I’m ready, you know, right now.

I could almost see his pout and the challenge in his eyes when I closed my own, and I felt my cheeks turn red.

Sassenach: Okay. Shut up!

Scot: DAMN WAIT TILL I SEE YOU AGAIN. JUST WAIT.

Sassenach: Oh I’m looking forward to that.

Scot: Aaaaargh

Sassenach: Eloquent. Now get dressed, go get John and Hector, and show the girl around. She came all the way from Penrith to see Ann Arbor.

Scot: I just don’t get why I have to go, too.

Sassenach: John is your friend. This is what friends do. I spent all Saturday afternoon shopping with Louise.

Scot: I hate you.

Sassenach: Me too. Send me pictures?

Scot: Always. You too. Actually, I need one right now.

I took a picture of my dirty dusted face and sent it to him, grimacing when I saw how sloppy I looked.

Scot: You’re so tanned, I want to lick you.

Sassenach: Believe me you don’t. I’m dirty.

Scot: DIRTY? OMG STOP TALKING. I’m hard already and I have to get dressed.

Sassenach: You are ridiculous. Have I ever told you that?

Scot: Only a million times.

Sassenach: Good!

Scot: I’m going to take a cold shower AND CERTAINLY NOT THINK OF YOU.

Sassenach: I wish I was there with you.

Sending that, I actually snickered. His reply came in milliseconds.

Scot: You are a heartless, dangerous woman.

Sassenach: And yet you love me. Now go shower.

Scot: I do love you. And I’ll prove to you how much once I get my hands on you, you tease. Ttyl!

Raising my eyes from the screen, I saw Louise looking at me.

“You know I can tell when you’re texting Jamie, from that silly smile on your face?” she asked, keeping her arms crossed in front of her chest as if judging me.

“What can I do?” I didn’t try to hide my smile. “I found myself a good one.”

Louise nodded and came to stand next to me. A moment later a heavy sigh left her lips, and I noticed the shadows in her eyes. “Margaret was crying again. I tried to talk to her, but she won’t listen. She’s leaving next week and she doesn’t want to go back.”

“Makes sense.” Louise’s mood had been bad the last few days. “The moment she’ll be back, she’ll have to deal with reality. He won’t be there, and there will be no way to escape.”  

“She keeps talking in her sleep. She’s having weird dreams, you know.” Louise twisted her rings absentmindedly, not looking at me.

“I know. I woke her last night because she was murmuring and thrashing about. Jeremy was awake too, and we kept her company until she was settled again.”

“I’m sorry to see her go, especially knowing she’s still so unstable. I think her family isn’t supportive and that terrifies her even more.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Two of the volunteers I got to know had come to Zambia carrying a great emotional load and needing a chance to escape. They were trying to heal themselves through healing the others. The universality of pain, all over again.

“Charlie called me.” Louise changed the subject, this time with a smile. “He said he misses me.” She rubbed her hands against her thighs, awkwardly, but met my eyes when I turned to look at her.

“Rather convenient, wouldn’t you say? Seeing as you’re going back home next week.”

“Not all of us are strong, Claire.” Her voice was harsh and I bit my lip, regretting being so straightforward.

“You know better, I guess.”

Louise sighed again. “I wish I did, actually. I don’t know what to do when I get back to Paris.”

I placed my hand on top of her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “You don’t need to decide right now. You can meet him, see what he has to say, how he’ll explain himself.”

Louise nodded, sleek brown locks of hair escaping her loose ponytail. “I wish we were as strong as you and Jamie are. Everything would be simpler.”

“Well, it’s not like everything comes easy and we don’t try at all. We’ve just decided that being together matters the most, and we’re not sacrificing what we have just because we’re not close. We’re both stubborn and it helps -- thus far, at least.”

My phone vibrated against my leg, and I unlocked it to see a picture of Jamie and John rolling their eyes, and a girl in the background.

Sassenach: Out, already?

Scot: Yeap. She’s fourteen but she’s so bossy I think John is afraid of her.

Sassenach: And you?

Scot: I’m being a good friend, as I was advised to be. I already regret it.

Sassenach: Where are you?

Scot: Out for breakfast. She had the longest order I’ve heard in my whole life. She actually ordered something from the menu and then changed every little bit of it. It was embarrassing.

Sassenach: Leave a good tip.

Scot: We will! Hector turned red as she kept going on and gave the waitress a shy smile.

Sassenach: I wish I was there, sitting at another table just to make fun of the three of you.

Scot: Believe me, babe, if you were here I’d sit right next to you at a table in another cafe.

Sassenach: Drama queen.

Scot: You haven’t met wee Geneva yet.

Sassenach: How come she visited without her parents?

Scot: They had promised her this trip if her grades were good. They were. She’s really smart, actually. It makes her more of a pain in the ass.

Sassenach: Maybe the three of you can teach her something, you know? Humility, for example.

Scot: Not a chance.

I stuck my tongue out, took a selfie and sent it.

Scot: Don’t you show me that tongue because I have dreams about it. And I hope you’re there alone.

Sassenach: I’m with Louise! She says hi!

Scot: Hello Louise! Take care of Claire for me, okay?

Sassenach: You realise I’m still the one reading the texts, right?

Scot: Just read that one aloud.

Sassenach: I’m capable of taking care of myself, thank you.

Scot: I know. My strong and stubborn lass. John looks desperate and Hector is huffing. I’m going to save them from their misery because I’m a good friend.

Sassenach: The best! Go save them, my gallant lad!

I huffed a laugh and turned my focus back to Louise. “It was quiet today.”

“Mmmm.” Her eyes were closed, her face relaxed under the sun.

“Whatever happens with Charlie, you’re going to be fine,” I said, using my most reassuring tone.

“Mmmm.”

I decided to join her and close my eyes for a bit, but an elderly woman and her daughter came into view. “Well, don’t blame me for that,” I murmured and nudged Louise, who opened her eyes, saw the patients, and shot me an accusing glance.

“Hello,” she said as she turned back to the women, and we both rose from the bench.

Who knew what waited for us once we got back to normalcy. For now, we had work to do.

Chapter 54

[firedingo]

A Not So Little Update Post On Life

So it’s been a while since I’ve done one of the blog posts. Not by choice though. Life has been hectic!

Dad

So one of the biggest changes for me has been walking into a full-time caring role for my father who is challenging at the best of times because he likes the world to operate on his terms and that’s not how life works. At times I struggle to get him to see the seriousness of his situation.

He has long term health issues which include chronic alcohol abuse leading to memory issues and seizures when he undergoes withdrawal. He’s also only partially compliant with taking his medication which leads to further issues.

On top of that he had a valve replaced a few years ago with a metal one which means his blood clotting level needs to be monitored regularly and at the moment he’s like a rollercoaster going between so thick it’s like cheese to so thin it’s like water.

It’s also not helped by the fact my father is also essentially homeless and couch surfing with friends and refusing to even entertain any option that would cost more than $100/week. He’s dreaming if he thinks he’ll find anything at that rate because he won’t but because a mate of his will charge him that much to sleep on his couch he now compares everything else to that -_-

Uni

The other big thing which I think I’ve mentioned before has been uni. I went back to study to finish off my bachelor of Information Technology off. I have about a year’s worth of work left but doing it at part-time rate since I’ve been caring for my father.

Passed 1 of 2 subjects last semester which was my first semester. Got an additional exam for the other subject. Missed passing the final exam by 8 marks which means no subject pass even though I have the marks to pass :(

Only doing one subject this semester but will sit two exams in exam period. The additional exam from last semester and the exam for this subject. I’m hoping I can do this. A touch anxious because despite dropping back to one subject I’m still struggling to find time thanks to my father.

So 2 weeks ago my father was admitted to hospital confused thinking it was 1999 again. I spent a week concerned about him. Then 2 days ago I was admitted briefly for a few hours.

Viral Illness

For the last 6 days I’ve been suffering what I think is just a common cold but it has beat the living crap out of me. On triage at the hospital I had a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius or 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

I was also highly dehydrated despite drinking perhaps 4 litres or more of water every day for the previous 4 days. Alas none of the water was being absorbed and was just passing through me.

I also had a heart rate of 130 beats per minute which is only like 40 more beats than I’d normally have.

So they started me on a bag of fluids and got me some pain relief for my throat which by this stage was making it all but impossible to swallow food or liquids. About 30 minutes into the bag of fluids they checked me again and my temperature had gone up to 39.1 degrees Celsius or 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Yikes! Another 30 minutes later and my temp was back at 38 degrees Celsius or 100.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Then the lovely nurse I knew gave me some steroids to reduce the swelling in my throat and started some antibiotics to cover their butts in case bacterial(I don’t think it’s bacterial but anyway).

Quite a few people commented that the colour has returned to my face after the bag of fluids. I began to realise little things like the return of saliva generation, the reduction in my thirst desire which I’d just not really registered in the 4 days prior. I was drinking automatically when I needed it but not really registering I was thirsty.

After everything I felt a lot more alert and more like myself. I wasn’t shivering every 5 seconds too. Just before discharge they checked my obs again and temp was down to 37.2  I think degrees Celsius or 98.96 degrees Fahrenheit. I remember 37 point something at least. Almost normal as I think it’s 36.7 for normal. My heart rate came back from 130 beats per minute to 100 beats per minute which was much better too.

So as you can see I’ve had a hell of a week with a raging fever and cough and sore throat. On Tuesday evening I reckon I might have been a good 39 or even 40 degrees Celsius / 102.2 or even 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

So consequently I’m now so far behind on an assignment due this week. Hoping I’m granted special consideration for it. Between my dad last week and me this week I’ve been unable to work on it. It’s not hard but it will require a clear head and time neither of which I’ve been able to find.

Church & Christianity

Now the other big news. So I’m not sure if I’ve said it here or much here but I think it’s worth sharing.

So 7 and 3/4 months ago I started going to church with my neighbours. At first it was an exercise in curiosity and intellect. I learned heaps and found sooooooo many assumptions I’d made were sooooooooo wrong too.

Remember kids, Never Judge a Book By Its Cover! And that goes for the Holy Bible too!

Seriously though I’d never read it and made assumptions from what little I did know. I was made a fool of to myself for that. I was glad to know the truth first hand for myself.

What I never expected was to believe. In all this time I’ve been skeptical and questioned everything and you know what? It stacks up more than you might expect.

What has struck me the most is when you read through what Jesus went through in that final week leading up to his crucifixion. It becomes pretty clear that the horror of what is about to happen begins to really set in for Jesus.

Through Year 11 at high school I took Ancient History for a subject. I looked at Emperor Nero and the burning of Rome. Consequently I got to know Tacitus’s work very well and I quite respect him as a historian. He speaks about Jesus.

Tacitus was a Roman senator. He was born within a few years after Jesus’s death and he was no fan of Christians or Jesus and was VERY loyal to the Roman empire, yet he speaks with such confidence of the death of Jesus you have to ask why would he lie? To me this along with the likely medical evidence of what he went through says Jesus died on the cross.

It was a pretty gruesome death. He essentially suffocated to death in agonizing pain and according to the Bible he was fully conscious of what was happening until the last moment when he finally grew too weak to be able to inhale again.

So the striking bit, the striking bit is that despite all that, Jesus WILLINGLY went through it all. How many people can you say that would do that? That would suffer an unbelievably painful death to save another?

That’s such a profound love that it’s almost incomprehensible. We see mirrors of that behaviour in tragedies we experience. I think about the one of the cars that drove down one of the streets in Melbourne and people pushed others out of the way of the car to save them only to be collected themselves. That’s love, incredible love!

That’s why I so really.....well love this passage from Romans 5, because I think it captures the whole idea and act of love so well.

6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

- Romans 5 : 6 - 11

The other thing I never expected was to be poked back when I started poking Christianity. I can’t explain it.....or well I can’t scientifically explain it but when I pray God hears me and my prayers are answered.

Mental health

Getting to know Jesus and through Jesus God has been one of the best things for me. So the word Gospel means good news and truthfully this has been good news, this has been the best news of my life.

Quite literally it has saved my life. And I don’t mean like saved from being thrown into hell. I mean saved from taking my own life by suicide saved.

Before as readers should know, I had a pretty hopeless outlook on life. I would describe it as a nihilistic hoplessness because it really was that bad.

So I went to my church’s Good Friday and Easter Sunday services. The minister preaching then on Easter Sunday said “death removes the meaning from life”. It profoundly changed the way I looked at everything!

It all struck me and made sense to me on that Good Friday but it was Easter Sunday that transformed my life and filled me with hope.

Suddenly everything mattered in the light of the idea of eternal life. For you see even our greatest buildings will be consumed in more or less 1000 years. At that point what can we do that will last? Nothing!

But if we live after death then the most valuable thing we have is our relationships and how we treat other people.And that means what I do now will have a lasting impact because I will remember what I’ve done and so will they.

That means every action now has meaning, from something as simple as helping an elderly person reach something at the supermarket to how I speak about my life to other people.

I have begun to change in response to this too. Fear no longer rules my life.

I find that lots of the Bible is true, for example when Jesus says:

29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

- Matthew 11 : 29 - 30

I find that this is very true. The burden is far less than I put upon myself and I bear the world on my shoulders as the Titan Atlas did/does.

I have been so profoundly changed for the good by my belief I got baptized last Sunday. I froze my arse off too :P

Despite that it was a wonderful day and I want to share with all of you the profoundly good news and great gift I have found in Christianity and my church.

While I know not everyone is interested, can I encourage anyone who is to take a chance, to really go all in. Look at me, I tried to take my own life in the past twice no less and yet I have been given the greatest gift - a life of hope and love by daring to take a chance. If I can go from nihilistic hopelessness to a life of hope and love then why not give it a shot?

What’s the worst that can happen eh? Worst is that nothing changes but I think you’ll find more than that because there’s something about Christianity that’s beautiful and healing.

To give you some insight. I’ve been struggling with self-harm thoughts for a long time, more than a decade. The other night while I was very ill and not coping I had to deal with them again. I said no and pushed back against them. It’s the first time I said no and didn’t self-harm myself despite the thoughts.

I have changed. I have grown, I have healed and I am healing and I am loved and I love and I have hope and NONE of this would have been possible without church and Christianity. It’s truly profoundly changed my life for the better!

Game Jam & Closing Stuff

So as you can see my life has been hectic hey? I haven’t given up on video games either :D

I started having a crack at GMC Jam a few weeks ago but well dad ate my time up. I did get something started though. I should finish it though.

And yes that is a giant infinite column of spawning slimes :P

And yes I noticed my tiles needed a bit of adjusting and offsetting to make them a touch bit better but that’s cool. I was impressed I got like 4 variations with minimal work to add variety.

The player also animates just in a still image that’s hard to show.

Just been so stupidly busy I just haven’t had the time for video games! But I wanted to share some of my life and give a bit of an update on things because well it might be a while before I can get another one of these little......well not so little update posts out.

[liliannorman]

Puberty may reboot the brain and behaviors

A preschooler slips stickers under some of the colored cups on a lazy Susan tray, then gives the tray a whirl. When the spinning stops, the child must find the hidden stickers. Most kids remember where they are. But a few have to check every single cup.

A spin-the-pots task uses colored cups and hidden stickers to test working memory. This type of memory can be impaired in children who experience early hardship.N.H. Brito et al/Frontiers in Psychology 2014

This game tests working memory — the brain’s system for storing and retrieving recent information. It’s among a set of mental skills known as executive function. These skills develop poorly in young kids who face trauma, such as physical abuse or neglect. From then on, throughout life, the body’s systems tend to respond differently, observes Megan Gunnar. She’s a child psychologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

A childhood filled with hardship, negligence or abuse can skew the system that regulates how the body responds to stress. Problems in this stress response set kids on a path toward behavior struggles. As they grow up, these kids also face an elevated risk for depression, diabetes and a host of other health problems.

Explainer: What is puberty?

But that difficult future may not be set in stone. Stress responses can return to normal during puberty, Gunnar and others have shown. This raises the prospect that some impacts of early trauma can be erased.

The new research is prompting a rethink of puberty. It’s not just a time of acne, armpit hair and other uncomfortable body changes. Puberty also may be a window of opportunity. It could be when kids who got a difficult start get a chance to reset how their bodies respond to stress.

Surprised by stress

When the brain perceives a threat — an angry family member, a stressful exam, a high-stakes competition — levels of a hormone shoot up. Called adrenaline (Ah-DREN-uh-lin), this chemical sets off what is known as the “fight-or-flight” reaction. Breathing and heart rate soar. Palms get sweaty. Sight and other senses sharpen. Soon the brain releases chemical messengers. They go to the kidneys. This stimulates the nearby adrenal glands to release another hormone. It’s called cortisol.

Explainer: What is a hormone?

Cortisol moves sugars into the blood for quick energy. It slows digestion and immune responses. It also slows growth and other processes considered nonessential in a fight-or-flight situation.

When the threat passes, adrenaline and cortisol levels fall. The heart’s rate slows. Other systems resume business as usual. The stress response turns off.

By the time Gunnar started work on her PhD in the 1970s, researchers had mapped out the key actors in this process. These signals form the HPA axis. Those letters stand for the three hormone systems that work together here: hypothalamic (Hy-poh-thah-LAM-ik), pituitary (Pih-TOO-ih-tair-ee) and adrenal (Ah-DREE-nul). Gunnar set out to study how the HPA axis influences the brain and behavior in people.

A bit of stress may help young people build resilience

Studies in rodents and monkeys had shown that adversity early in life throws the HPA axis off-kilter. These types of studies weren’t easy. To measure cortisol, scientists had to collect blood or urine. Then methods were developed for measuring cortisol from samples of saliva. That was a lot simpler to get.

In the mid-1980s, Gunnar studied this neuroendocrine system in newborns. She showed that having a secure parent relationship regulates the system. It helps babies deal with stressful situations, such as getting vaccines. “You can go to the doctor as a baby and get a big shot in one leg and the other leg and you’re crying your head off … but [the HPA axis] doesn’t kick off,” notes Gunnar. But if babies get separated from their parents for even a few minutes, “their HPA axis shoots up like a rocket.”

Setting off this system once in a while isn’t harmful. It’s what helps us learn to cope with stress. But what if that sense of safety is disrupted for far longer?

To find out, Gunnar and a research team ventured to eastern Romania in Europe during the mid-1990s. For decades, thousands of Romanian children had grown up in orphanages. Conditions there often were crowded and grim. “You walk into these wards, and all of a sudden you’re mobbed by kids saying ‘mama, mama, mama’ — and reaching their arms up to get held,” recalls Gunnar. She had two school-aged sons at the time. “It was awful. I just wanted to bring them all home.”

Teen-time shift

Before puberty, adopted children, who grew up with early-life trauma (gray curve), had blunted stress responses relative to kids living with biological parents (blue curve). By the time puberty ended, the adopted children showed normal cortisol patterns before, during and after a stressful task. Saliva was collected 20 minutes and 5 minutes before the task. It was then collected 5, 20, 40, 60 and 80 minutes after the task. The researchers converted the data to a logarithmic scale, which shows negative numbers. The actual cortisol levels are between 0 and 1 micro-grams per deciliter.

Cortisol stress in adopted and nonadopted children

T. Tibbitts

T. Tibbitts

What she did bring back to Minnesota, along with that searing memory, was a set of small vials. Each held a sample of saliva from one of the 2- and 3-year-old orphans. Cortisol is the end product of the neuroendocrine cascade. So measuring the children’s cortisol offered a window into the stress effects of their parental deprivation.

Analyses like these are tricky. Whether a kid faces poverty or neglect, “the way you start out in life tends to continue,” Gunnar says. A report published last November by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points to those long-term consequences. People who experienced childhood trauma are more likely to smoke or drink heavily, it found. These people are more likely to drop out of high school. They also develop heart disease and a host of other chronic conditions at higher rates.

This doesn’t mean that having a completely smooth life is good. Growing research suggests that some adversity — such as dealing with a bad grade or a challenging friendship — can help a child build resilience. And there may be a sweet spot for how much hardship brings this benefit without becoming overwhelming (see sidebar).

School, homework and tests can all be stressful for kids. But some children endure far more traumatic experiences. New research is showing how puberty can help reset the body.eclipse_images/E+/Getty Images

Adoptee struggles

Early-life hardship clearly takes a toll. To study these effects, Gunnar needed children who had felt deprivation in infancy, then moved into healthy, supportive homes. Such children, she reasoned, would be the ideal human analog for all of the animal studies on early adversity. It dawned on her that such a group exists. They are adopted children who spent part of their early life at an orphanage.

Gunnar shared her idea with members of the adoption unit at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This group provides services to improve the health and well-being of Americans. With their support and funding, she surveyed parents who between 1990 and 1995 had adopted children from other countries. She also invited Minnesota families with adopted children to join a university registry and to take part in her research.

Parents noticed early on that often their adopted kids had behavioral problems. They brought the children to the university lab for problem-solving and sorting tests. These included that lazy Susan task and the famous marshmallow test of delayed gratification. (In the marshmallow test, experimenters offer young children either one small reward right away, such as a marshmallow, or two small rewards if the kids wait 15 minutes. Follow-up research suggested that preschoolers who held out for the larger reward had healthier behaviors and years later showed better success in school.) In such tests, adopted kids struggled with attention and self-regulation. 

Much to the researchers’ surprise, the kids also had unusually low cortisol levels. In the face of sustained hardship, cortisol levels usually skyrocket. But high cortisol is bad for the body. It can raise a person’s risk for various conditions, including heart disease and diabetes. So a weak stress response could be “nature’s way of preserving the brain and body,” Gunnar now speculates.

She continued studying the Minnesota adoptees as they grew older. Preschoolers with low cortisol often entered kindergarten with attention problems. They might also show problem behaviors, such as physical aggression and cheating. Their blunted stress responses persisted, too. They lasted even after the kids had spent an average of seven to eight years in a caring adopted family.

That was disheartening, says Russell Romeo. He works at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York City as a psychobiologist. “We’d always thought that maybe if these individuals get out of the adverse situations, they could start recalibrating their stress reactivity.”

But earlier work that Romeo had done in the mid-2000s gave Gunnar reason to think she just needed to study the children longer.

High time for change

Romeo had been studying rats. He wanted to see if stress affects the brains of adolescents and adults differently. In one set of experiments, he stressed the animals by trapping them inside a wire-mesh container for 30 minutes. Some rats were adults. Others were young and had not yet undergone the rat version of puberty. Romeo measured levels of the rat’s version of cortisol. He recorded levels before, during and after their confinement. The stress spiked hormone levels in both age groups similarly. But levels in the young rats took far longer to get back to normal.

Then Romeo observed how the animals reacted to repeated periods of stress. The rats endured the 30-minute restraint each day for seven days. Now the stress pattern changed. On the first day, stress hormones surged higher in young rats than in adults. But at the end of the seven days, rats near puberty returned to their initial levels more quickly. The responses were being shaped more powerfully when those stressors occurred around puberty rather than later in life. This suggests that puberty may offer a greater potential for change.

Explainer: What is anxiety?

Other researchers studied what happens when adolescent rats move into “enriched” environments. These were larger cages with more toys and cage-mates. It was the rodent equivalent of a human’s nice home and family. A nicer environment could reset to normal the stress responses that had been thrown out of whack by early-life trauma, these studies showed.

Those findings heartened Gunnar. “Maybe I should be looking at puberty,” she thought. It could be a time to recalibrate.

So her team invited 280 children into the lab to complete two stressful tasks. All were 7- to 14-year-olds. They included 122 children adopted from institutions. Another 158 kids had not been adopted but came from families of similar backgrounds.

Giving a speech in front of the class can be a stressful experience. Scientists even use this type of activity to study how children respond to stress.Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images

For the first test, each of the children prepared a 5-minute speech introducing themselves to a new class of students. They gave the speech facing a video camera and a mirror. Their speech would be rated by judges, they were told. Some kids spoke with confidence. Others looked nervous. “We did have one who burst into tears,” Gunnar says. But “we don’t torture them. If we think they’re too nervous, we help them quit.”

After the speech, participants spent five minutes on a verbal subtraction task. The difficulty was adjusted by age. Seven- and 8-year-olds began with the number 397 and counted down by 3s. Kids 11 and older started with 758 and subtracted by 7s.

Before and after these tasks, researchers collected saliva from each child to measure cortisol levels. The researchers also noted at what stage of puberty each child was in —from 1 to 5. Stage 1 meant no noticeable body changes. At stage 5, a child had completely matured physically.

Among kids in early puberty (stage 1 and 2), adopted kids had lower cortisol levels than did children living with their biological parents. This confirmed Gunnar’s previous research on Romanian orphans and international adoptees living in the United States. Trauma showed an effect on those kids.

In the late-puberty group (stages 3 to 5), however, cortisol patterns looked similar for adopted and non-adopted kids. The adopted kids appeared to have gotten over the impacts of their earlier trauma.

Rather than just comparing across groups, Gunnar and her colleagues wanted to confirm that a normalizing of the HPA axis had occurred in each of the kids. So they brought these children back for the same tests one and two years later (for a total of three yearly sessions).

Closer to normal

During a stressful activity (giving a speech, for example), saliva cortisol levels rose temporarily and returned to normal in those children who lived with their biological parents. Children who were adopted after starting life in an orphanage (an early-life trauma), had blunted cortisol responses during stages 1 to 2 of puberty. But at the tail end of puberty, stages 4 and 5, adopted children’s stress responses normalized.

Stages of puberty and cortisol stress reaction

T. Tibbitts  

T. Tibbitts; Source: M.R. Gunnar et al/PNAS 2019

The body recalibrates its response to stressors during puberty, they found.

Says Romeo, this may mean the teen brain responds better to interventions that didn’t work during childhood.

Gunnar’s team detailed its findings November 26, 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Matthew Duggan is a therapist in Long Beach, Calif. He finds the new results encouraging. They could apply, he thinks, to a range of children who have trouble managing their emotions and connecting with others because caretakers abused or ignored them at a young age.

There may be “a window, you know, a decade from now, where things might be able to change,” Duggan says. “And we have some data here to suggest that at a biological level, that is a possibility. For me, that’s really hopeful to see.”

How might puberty combine with better caregiving and support to reshape the body’s response to stress? One speculation stems from the fact that brain regions controlling how we react to stress are among ones that continue to mature during adolescence. So there might be some brain flexibility that “lends itself to changes uniquely during this time,” Romeo says.

Mental health and resilience emerge from an ever-changing mix of genes and life experiences. Some of these set the body awry early on. But research by Gunnar and others shows that adolescence could potentially erase some of the damage. And future work could reveal more of the underlying biology behind such a reboot.

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Puberty may reboot the brain and behaviors published first on https://triviaqaweb.tumblr.com/

[cosmosogler]

hi guys. i am starting at 10:08 today because i had some things to finish.

i woke up this morning kinda miserable just because i’d. wait. did i go to bed late last night? i think i did? i set my alarm for 8... when i was brushing my teeth i realized that the right side of my neck and shoulder hurt very badly and i couldn’t seem to lift anything that weighed more than two pounds. and i couldn’t lift my arm above shoulder level without hissing through my teeth.

i biked to school anyway!!!!!!

but before that there were thousands of police sirens constantly. i figured it might be difficult to get to campus but i left late anyway because i guess i’m just dumb or something, i dunno. i thought i was getting ready on time but then preparing lunch just went on forever...

so i turbo pedaled to campus, sort of, between whining to myself about my shoulder and running out of steam in my legs. i didn’t get stopped at the light for too long so that cut about 3 minutes off my trip so i actually did make it to class on time.

none of my students finished their labs today. even though there was only 2/3rds attendance and i had lots of time for everyone. i felt like a bum. it’s like... it’s weird. it seems like everyone in the section has similar problems, but then there’s different common problems between sections. by the third hour i was getting really turned around calibration wise. as always i just could not get my students to leave until 10 minutes after the class ended. i was really sad about that because i really, really had to go to the bathroom but i didn’t want to yell at them. but they had to leave!!! the next class was coming in!!! i hate that they put me in this position of forcing them to not finish their work. 

i’m not angry that they didn’t finish, i’m just upset that they wouldn’t leave. and they never leave and i never have any time for a lunch break before my coaching sessions with the drc. so i packed all that lunch and didn’t get to eat any of it anyway. 

i didn’t have a meeting with the drc today but i did want to go to a thing. so i forced down some guac before i biked uphill all the way to the counseling center where i went to a wellness coaching event. i invited suzanne and she told me to text her the details but she never responded to say she was or wasn’t going and when i got back to the department she had left for the day.

the wellness thing was good. we sat at a small table on the floor and colored. there were three other students there, all undergrad freshmen. it was weird to be 25 in a room with only 17/18 year olds. the coach was older than me at least. she was turkish. 

i drew a sunset with crayons and then i drew a thing with pastels. i had so much trouble moving my right arm around that i usually ended up flopping my left arm over the table to get a crayon and knocking the box over. i joked that i just wanted it knocked over but the clumsy reaches with my non-dominant hand and the pauses to breathe out the pain every few minutes probably gave away that i was hurting.

i tried to get up to use the bathroom and my legs were asleep and i fell over and then had so much trouble getting up with just one arm and no legs. i made a show of it because what else was i gonna do.

i colored for a little over an hour. it was nice. i just did whatever i felt like and didn’t make any sketch lines. i might post the pictures later... i don’t want to spend time on that right now.

afterward i biked back to the department but there was NO ONE THERE. well, except taylor, and adamya came into the office and then five minutes later passed out in a chair for like an hour while i scrolled through a web site waiting to see if anyone else would come in... i don’t remember which one. it wasn’t important really.

harrison was also there but he was teaching his four-hour shift and i didn’t want to wait around until dinnertime to start studying. i biked home and when i tried to get off my bike that last time i had to struggle to lift myself high enough to get off the seat. my shoulder and neck were really not feelin it.

after that i was home! and i didn’t get anything done, naturally!!! 

well, i spent some time relaxing. i made myself some tea and played pokemon by the fan and open window for a while until my shoulder didn’t feel like death. then i stretched and that helped too. i could almost turn my head for a little while. it’s hurting real bad again now though. my neck feels like it’s gonna snap if i turn or tilt my head more than a few degrees or lift my arm too high.

i couldn’t pick up any energy for working though. i played pokemon and brushed snoopy and listened to music. i did everything i could to avoid thinking about quantum mechanics. naturally. eventually my marshadow got to level 100 and i had to put the game away since there was nothing left to do. i talked to asher and wished him a happy birthday. i found a podcast to help you fall asleep and i had zoned out before the 2-minute mark. so i’m gonna try putting that on when i go to bed tonight.

at like 9 i said “ok fine” and picked up my quantum notes and looked at them for a little while. i admired the decent grades i’ve gotten on the homework and tried to remember the method i’d used for each question. didn’t have the energy to do any practice problems. but as long as i remember what exactly the question is asking for it’s not hard to get it. 

so much of our homework has been proofs, though, that i worry about what kinds of questions are actually going to be on the exam. everyone is worried. i sent a message in the groupme about how i was concerned that no one was around in the office to study with and suzanne replied that morale is not high this week. that’s fair i guess. i still wish i’d had someone around to help me keep focused though.

while i was drawing with those freshmen and the coach... i remembered some happy things. i told stories about my high school art class i think. i don’t remember what i said. we talked about our majors a little bit. i said i really respected chemistry and material science. like even though chemistry is a “solved” science thanks to qm, there’s still so much detail packed into it and so many useful things that we haven’t discovered yet because there are basically infinite combinations of all these elements and endless details to fill in. i think that made them happy. i know there’s a lot of competition between branches of science and it isn’t always friendly. some professions are respected a lot less than others. i think they are all important. it wouldn’t be any good if there were five hundred million theoretical physicists running around and no engineers.

it was... strange, i guess? i don’t hardly ever draw around other people. and i wasn’t paying that much attention to them and didn’t say much total over the course of the hour. but i had a lot more happy thoughts in my head while i was drawing. at the end the coach gave me a tiny booklet of mandalas i can color for a few minutes here and there.

hmm. there’s a book convention this weekend. i am going to have to limit myself to 4 or 5 books because i just don’t have any space left for any more books until i start actually reading some. suzanne and jennica are going. i think rebika wants to go too. one of them might pick us up so we can go together. or it’s in biking distance, i’ll check it out tomorrow night. i don’t want to try to hold too much more information in my head right now. it’s gonna get dumped during the quantum test.

one thing i’d like to do moving forward is, i guess, figure out how to force myself to work for just 5 minutes. just to get started. just to do SOMETHING. five minutes is better than no minutes. even if it’s not good enough... it’s better than no minutes.

a funny thing about depression is that doing things does help you feel better for a little bit. but it takes energy to start doing things. this week i’ve just felt too bad to even do things that would make me feel better.

except... i did do things to help me feel better. i still bike to school to get some exercise even though i have no energy for it and coast as much as i can. i went to the wellness thing today. i taught my classes even if i didn’t grade anything. i am taking care of my cat better than i was in september after the hurricane when i was so busy. 

i guess the fear here is that i don’t want to start patting myself on the back before i’m actually over the hurdle. i don’t want to say “ok this is a good first step, but the first step is good enough” and then stop there. it’s like... in my brain saying “this is good” is like saying “this is done and you have to stop now.”

i dunno i’m doing all this stuff and i still feel bad, of course. it doesn’t make the depression go away or even ease up half the time. but it still feels... worth it? like, i didn’t think about how depressed i was for 40 minutes at the wellness thing today, even though i was depressed before and after. but that’s 40 less minutes of feeling totally miserable in my day (outside of the physical pain). thumbs up, i guess?

i’m gonna say that’s my good thing. i have 1 minute left. i’m gonna get the podcast loaded up.

[kay-law]

Ever since announcing on here I had decided on a law school that has given me a near-full ride, my inbox has swelled with questions, primarily those asking How did you do it? Being 20, and not a pre-law major/minor, I didn't really have anyone to guide me through the application process and it was a little overwhelming studying for the LSAT at 19, paying for the application process, and so on. So, I decided to put together this (very long) post of how I did it, and how you can too!

Click below for the full post!

I. Taking the LSAT

If you’re planning on going to law school, taking the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) is a necessary evil. The LSAT is administered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC), a few times a year.

So what exactly is the LSAT? And how is it scored? In short, the LSAT is a five (really six, including the test section) section exam, 35 minutes a section. All together the exam sits for about 5 hours. There is included in those, a test section which is unscored, a writing section that is unscored (though it is sent to the schools you apply to), the infamous logic games section, a reading comprehension section, and two logical reasoning sections. The LSAT is out of a high of 180 points, and a low of 120. The average score is in the 150 range. Here in the USA, Ivy League schools typically only take high 170′s-perfect 180s. And for most schools, this component of your application is more important than your undergraduate Grade Point Average (GPA).

Important things to note:

You can take the LSAT an unlimited number of times, but it costs over $100 to sit the exam each time, so it can become a little pricey

Speaking of, WAIVERS EXIST! you can apply for a waiver on the LSAC website when registering for the LSAT. if approved, they will waive some of the fees associated with sitting the exam

If you live in and plan to practice in the US, there are several countries that also use/accept the LSAT, so don't feel limited in your options!

Studying for the LSAT is typically a three month process (or 100 days), and many people opt to hire a tutor. be real with yourself... if you don't have the best self-discipline, then self-study probably isn't practical.

What I used to study for the LSAT: I did self-study for the LSAT, and received a score in the range I was hoping for, so it is definitely possible! Here are some of the books/online resources I used.

Barron’s 

Kaplan 

Manhattan Prep 

Powerscore (The Bible) 

As for how I studied... I began a little later than I had hoped, giving myself only 10 weeks to prepare for the LSAT. I had decided kind of last minute that I was going to push to graduate early and that is what sparked this. Day one I took an exam start to finish in one sitting, and scored it, but did not go over the correct answers (this would do me no good, as I did not know the “right” ways to answer the questions yet). For the first 3 weeks I read a prep book cover-to-cover on each of the sections, logical analysis (logic games), logical reasoning, and reading comprehension. For this I chose the Kaplan series. They were easy to read, kind of lighthearted (there were some puns), and the authors of each book knew each other and referred to each other’s books. For weeks 4, 5, and 6, I took a practice test every Sunday and Wednesday, and spent the subsequent days of the week scoring, and going over every answer. For those questions (types of questions) I still struggled with, I read a section explaining how to answer them in another prep book, either Manhattan Prep, or Barron’s. Manhattan Prep felt very posh and professional, but Barron’s, like Kaplan, were a little more casual to read. I spent a minimum of 3 hours a day studying, and as many as 7-8. For weeks 7 and 8, I took a practice test every Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (I chose days that worked with my class/work schedule). In the off days, I would review, score, and go over every answer. For this part of the routine, I was studying 5-9+ hours a day. Week 9 I took a prep test a day, and parts of other exams if I scored lower than my average on the others. I.E. if I had scored higher on logic games all week and then all of sudden did poorly on Wednesday, Thursday I would take a full LSAT prep exam, AND 1 or 2 logic game sections of other exams. On week 10 (my exam was that Saturday) I took a prep test every day, Sunday-Wednesday. Thursday I took a break, ate junk food, slept in, etc. Friday I read over some material in the morning, and by lunch time, was lounging in bed, hanging out. I was asleep by 10:30 pm. Saturday I ate a full breakfast and then went to the exam. In all honesty, the adrenaline took over pretty early in the exam and the 5 hours whizzed by. (& I do design study schedules for a small fee)

II. Writing your personal statement

Probably the most challenging part of my application was writing my personal statement. It’s kind of hard to write about yourself without bragging, but that is not what your personal statement is for – save the bragging for your resume!

Some law schools do have questions they hope applicants will answer in their personal statement and I found this to be a HUGE help while writing my statement. The ones I found were typically inside the application on LSAC, where you would submit the PS.

Most schools are just looking to see who you are. It’s hard to see if a person will be a good fit for a school based on test scores alone, and the PS is often a tie breaker when comparing two or more applicants. At several of the law schools I applied to, the admissions committees looked to the PS to determine scholarship awards.

Here are some posts on writing your personal statement:

write a bomb ass personal statement

a how-to

phrases to avoid

some tips

another how-to

the do’s and don’t’s

tips and tricks

more do’s and don’t’s

another guide

a law school’s advice

Here are some law school personal statements that worked:

University of Chicago Law School “In Their Own Words”

US News “PS that succeeded”

some sample essays

more samples

a Harvard example

III. Choosing where to apply (not in any particular order)

When I was applying I consulted a checklist of factors I found important to me. This is just a list of the things I looked for, but your list could be identical, partial, or completely different!

Clinics/Externships

the American Bar Association (ABA) recently required law schools to have some form of clinic. Clinics are pretty much onsite functioning firms. Students work on real cases with a professional, in a variety of areas of law. This is just pro-bono (free) work the college provides to the community and allows students to get some hands on training.

I looked for clinics in areas of law I might be interested in entering, so that I could get that first-hand experience and see if it was right for me.

I also looked for whether or not schools guaranteed their students clinic access, and if not, how many students (or what %) take part in clinical programs.

Concentrations

concentrations are not a requirement, but it might be something to look into if you know what kind of legal career you’d like to enter

this allows students to specialize their second and/or third year of law school in a specific kind of research/study or practice.

Bar passage rate (and compared to state/country)

ABA requires law schools to release the numbers so you can look at them.

When looking at schools I compared the state average bar passage rate to the schools to see if they were similar

Percentage employed post-grad (*in the legal field)

Another ABA requirement... schools may report that 80% of the graduating class was hired within 6 months, but only 15% of that may have been in a legal field. That’s a red flag, and something to look out for.

Location

this was not very important to me, but it may be for some people. I ended up choosing a law school across the country (a near-20 hour drive) from home.

Cost

Law school is expensive! Price is definitely worth considering. For example, I did not even consider schools with an annual tuition higher than $55,000. Most law schools will fall into the $40-50k+ range.

Size

This one was important to me. I went to a small undergraduate college, and really prefer a more intimate learning community. Law schools typically are not very large, but you may want to look at the class profile and see how many the school admits a year/how many students there are overall.

Median GPA and LSAT scores

You have to be realistic. One of the first things I did was look at all of the law school in the nation within a 5-7 point range of my LSAT score, and cross off all of the schools below or above that range. This is not to say not to apply to your dream school out of your range, but maybe broaden your search to other schools within your median range.

GPA I’d argue is not as important as LSAT score, but really it differs school to school. I did the same; I crossed off any schools too far above or below my GPA.

Gender and ethnicity ratios

This was important to me as a mixed (half-black, half-white) woman. More women than ever are attending law school, but the number of women employed in the legal field has not shifted much. I wanted a law school that had a fairly mixed ration. I did notice a lot of schools had a 40:60 ratio female:male, and that was acceptable enough for me. Anything smaller was concerning. I also looked for ethnic diversity as it is something important to me, especially in a less diverse, upperclass field such as this one. I wanted a decent ratio, and I found that at many many schools.

Scholarships (and scholarship retention)

I looked at the % of the study body receiving scholarships, what the average award was, terms of the scholarships, and the student retention of the award. It is not enough to say “84% of students receive scholarships and aid from the school”, I wanted to know how many lose or have reduced scholarships, and why. Law school is fairly balanced in the classroom, and scholarships are more competitive than ever. Contingencies like a 3.7 GPA may be unrealistic for many recipients whether they know it or not. THIS post talks about contingencies in greater depth

Clubs and activities

This was not _as_ important to me as some of the other factors, but you can always tell a community by the student involvement. I ended up deciding on a school with fewer than 300 students overall, but over 45 student organizations. Moot Court, Mock Trial, Law Review, misc. law journals, etc. are some organizations you might want to get involved in and their availability may vary by campus.

I also looked for clubs unique to a particular school/community, and the success of various clubs I want to take part in.

IV. Miscellaneous Tips

How to ask for a Letter of Recommendation

how-to

another how-to

some tips

asking in an email?

How to write a Resume

purdue owl

how-to write cover letters and resumes

talents to include

how to write one

a guide

How to ace an Interview

Columbia’s interview FAQ

interview tips

Harvard’s how-to

US News 3 simple tips

Other guides to applying

LSAC applying to law school

LSAC application process

different timelines

US News things you might want to know

a comprehensive guide

Princeton Review’s timeline to success

* This post is definitely a rough draft, but I’ve been working on it/leaving it in my drafts box for months now, and just needed it published!! I may go back and expand/edit later!

[grlyntng]

Why I Fucking Hate Going To A Private School

Before you think I’m being ungrateful and all that, hear me out first. I’m not saying all private schools are bad but I spent my secondary education in one and although it does have some perks, I fucking hate it. 

1. The Longer Days 

My first bell goes off at 7.25 in the morning, meaning I have to get up extra early in the morning just to make it to school on time. In my 5th year, I started not giving a fuck and I sometimes got to class at 8 or I only got in later in the day for the sake of attendance. Anyway, my school had(has) 11 periods of classes each day, 40 minutes per period. I spend 9 hours in school every. fucking. day. 

So let’s compare this to that of a public school. Public schools here have only 5 to 6 hours of school in a day, giving them the afternoon and night off for self-enriching activities or time to study by themselves. Not only do they have such short schooling hours, but each period only lasts for 30 minutes. That 10 minute difference might not seem like a lot but trust me, when it accumulates, it is so much time.

2. You literally don’t have time for anything else

So I’m a pianist and a singer who sits for music exams as well as I have classes to go to. Imagine this: I only get home at around 5pm, eat dinner at 6pm and only have around 2 hours after to do a shit ton of homework, do house chores, practise playing the piano, and/or go to a class. 

Let me tell you this. It is very, very, easy to fall behind. And oh god you do not know how scary it is to fall behind because the work load keeps piling up. At this point, you might think that I’m just exaggerating at the amount of work I have. I kid you not, I am not even close to exaggerating. Our school makes sure we have the bare minimum of 3 revision books per subject and honey, that’s not all. The teachers love adding more books to the syllabus because they think it’s good for us. Milk is good for you but I’m not gonna drown myself in it. 

3. The amount of tests

I’m already so sleep deprived. What do you mean I have another test tomorrow? Tests. Every. Week. And if it’s not a test, it’s the term exam. Now the frequent testing was my school’s idea and it doesn’t occur as frequently in other private schools but good god I wish I were dead. Okay let’s try to add this up.

 2 hours of free time - one pile of homework - extra curricular activities - tests to study for = sleep deprivation at its best

We are always stressed out. Exam season is every day.

4. How suffocating it is

I have severe anxiety and depression, which have only gotten worse throughout the years I spent in that school. Admittedly, it was probably due to the fact that I am in the most elite class in the whole school. 

Oh you’re from the best class? Doesn’t that mean you have your shit together and that you’re good in your academics?

HeLLL NO

The people in that class are so competitive and for some reason, also a very rowdy bunch. You end up working in groups with some people who you will have to try very hard not to punch in the mouth. Yes, there are some people in public schools who are exactly the same kind of nuisances but some kids are just so privileged it’s like they pay someone to do the thinking for them. It really doesn’t help that I’m an introvert and I require a lot of peace and quiet.

If my hours in school were shorter and I was allowed to spend a lot less time with these assholes, I’d be able to keep my problems at bay.

5. Some things you just need to do on your own

When I was in my primary education and I went to a public school, I had time outside of school to go for my extra curriculars and tuition if I was weak at certain subjects in school. The advantage of this was that I had the option to choose who my tuition teacher was so that I could make the best choice for myself in order to succeed. 

When you go to a private school, you’re stuck with whatever teacher the school assigns to you. And just because it’s a private school doesn’t mean all the teachers are good. Sure, not all of them are bad and I have some teachers there I really like but keep this in mind: every teacher has a different way of teaching. Some ways just didn’t suit my way of learning even though it suited that of my peers.

What I ended up doing was I took certain days off school, called in sick (which I often am because my anxiety is very severe so I get a lot of physical ailments from it and I have a major gastric problem) and tried to catch up on the syllabus since I didn’t have time at night after school. 

MORE WORK MEANS LESS TIME TO UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU’RE WORKING ON

6. The difference between me and my peers

It’s no surprise that a lot of my peers and my friends are from very well-to-do families and quite a few of them had mansions, ferraris, and were overall just living the dream. I, myself, am not from a rich family. At best, we’re middle class citizens who do their best to make it through. My family works hard to support me in my education but it doesn’t make it any less stressful for me. While I am mostly immune to peer pressure, it is evidently harder for me to cope with everything when I don’t have someone waiting on me hand and foot. My schoolmates mostly very privileged people (and not all of them are assholes really. some are absolutely wonderful) and they have a lot less to worry about.

7. Public school students don’t understand

It’s not that they never understand what private school students have to go through, it’s that most of the time, they just assume we’re spoiled based on face value. Sure we have air conditioners when we study but so what? Sure most of the students here are from rich families. That doesn’t mean we have it easier. 

People set standards and expectations to high for us, we have no choice but to work our hardest to come close to them. Because our parents chose to put us in a private school, we have to work twice as hard to make sure everything is worthwhile. I acknowledge that public school students work hard too but in some cases, it really is easier for a public school student. (most of the time it’s easier to get away with things)

Take for example, we’re not trusted to grade our own students so external invigilators are sent in to do the grading for us instead. On the other hand, my public school friends don’t have to worry about any of this. (Mind you, I’m from Malaysia)

With certain privileges comes restrictions. 

And that, my friends, is why I fucking hate going to a private school

[blog-jim-blog2]

Translated into English for everyone to see   Chapter 1 my new friend

The ancient city of the East, unpredictable, called the ancient spirit of the city, the twenty-five generation legend. The first generation in this seventy-five years, Zhao, his wife Hu, because in a deserted, Hu knife punctured chest to regret. With the second generation Zhao Ziqing have superior, married six wives, killed in the fire. One of the six wives to walk with difficulty together, the rest in the slums. The third generation, fourth generation of rumors, for you, living in seclusion, aloof. Five generations of ancient Hades succession, two years later, but I do not know. Six generation and the seven generation, Yu Qiang and Jian to find, there is no clue. So far, none of the generation has escaped doom. Until the twenty-fifth generation and the twenty-fourth generation of mother right, Yin Wang Lujun, born twenty-five generation's, accidentally crossed 2003 BC, and named for the passover. Alias Zheng Ziyang.

August 31, 2016 8 Today, is the opening ceremony of the 26 junior high school. Huo Xiaoyu today is the first time to enter junior high school. The odd woman, primary school, cute cute, there is a high quality school tyrants, from the beginning to the end, the papers are not a bit wrong. English listening with ears, almost no one can touch her. But because too lazy, did not elect a squad leader. The teacher was bad, let her be a semester of health leader. She's fed up with it. Today, she must choose a good cadre. Let the new students sit up and take notice. Before going to school, she went to buy an ice cream, who ate ice cream early in the morning? She is. "A vanilla flavor, thank you." Then, a pick up in the past, ten dollars a shot on the table, and rode away. "Girl, change, change!"

With ice cream in the left hand, a bicycle on the right hand, and a languid ride. "Ah ah ah ah ah ah" has been guilty of. Nonsense, one night, after watching a full set of sixteen of the sun's descendants, or not cut version, you do not sleep ah?! (the key is, his mother is in the city did not ignore her brush), his father, in the night to catch the construction. "Boom!" Huo rain surprised. Omg! Hey, like, what the foot like, bent down to look at ---- A junior high school male freshmen at her feet, his face still keep her shoe. Like a birthmark. "It's really sorry!" The left handed english. The man's face was black.

With ice cream in the left hand, a bicycle on the right hand, and a languid ride. "Ah ah ah ah ah ah" has been guilty of. Nonsense, one night, after watching a full set of sixteen of the sun's descendants, or not cut version, you do not sleep ah?! (the key is, his mother is in the city did not ignore her brush), his father, in the night to catch the construction. "Boom!" Huo rain surprised. Omg! Hey, like, what the foot like, bent down to look at ---- A junior high school male freshmen at her feet, his face still keep her shoe. Like a birthmark. "It's really sorry!" The left handed english. The man's face was black.

"Shall I tell you a secret?!" Huo Xiaoyu eating ice cream said: "what?" "Our class has a classmate, he almost did not talk to the primary school, but the study is frightening by leaps and bounds. And I, it's his classmate." "You're not lying to me?" Huo rain always don't believe his words. Can't he answer the question?" "Really, I'm not lying to you." Meng Yu stick in her ear. "He called the passover." "Was it strange at that time?" Meng Yu, he said, "yes."! 1, did not say a word with the students, and the 2, I do not know what to think, do not listen to class. It results in good, really scary, 3, dinner time, point the things that don't get aunt, said the name may be dumb, I don't know. 4, he didn't see him go home!!"

Huo rain still feel impossible, must be the first person to let him speak. The school scenery is really beautiful. A few tree stands in the downstairs, a full 4 meters. Nearby is also a kind of sunflower, but did not come to the school report that a few days, they are leaves, a lot of people have come to pick up the seeds. Did not walk a few meters, they saw a few handsome guy, deeply felt that the color value is not worse than the stars. Maybe, when they grow up, they are the stars of tomorrow. One, keep the head of a young boy, the corner of the mouth in a smile, especially good-looking, there is a basketball, the play of the action, if a 2 meter height, certainly the next Yao Ming.

Unfortunately, he was only one meter 53... What is this ghost? There are two buildings in the school. Teaching building and laboratory building. The teaching building has five floors, the experimental building also has a layer of six. And each area, there are balconies, each balcony. All kinds of plants. Lilies there is a piece of the fallen swing, chrysanthemum, lilac is only a flower bud, flowering distance, and a few days, sunflower, and reed are not flowering. Also a few days later. A small willow, now is a good time is just full of vigour. A willow in the swing, if coupled with some ancient music, will be more suitable. Unfortunately, it is spring, a part of the plants, all summer and autumn before. So now, only half of the plants. However, it is also very pleasant scenery. If there is no homework, then come to this school, that is, to vacation Bar Koti or homework. Therefore, throughout the year, spring, summer, autumn and winter, there will be accompanied by scenery. However, Huo rain thought of Meng Yu, still a little sad, feeling, and Meng Yu will not become good friends,.

There are 12 classes in each grade, all according to the score. Class 11 and class 12 are the worst. Even the squad leader, may have failed the final exam. Moreover, the 11,12 class, can not participate in any school activities, spring, autumn, winter summer camp, the purchase of daily life. Only, more than other classes of mathematics, English, Chinese and other seven subjects of learning daily, there are half of the questions are written. Do not write, once deducted credits 5 points, ah, ah, there are more summer homework and winter homework. And, on Friday, each of the third classes, others can go to school, they can only go to the library, to participate in remedial classes, each teacher is particularly cheap. Not just some homework, tomorrow is drag class. They can be said to be tears..

Huo Xiaoyu fortunately his final exam. Otherwise, go to class 11 or class 12. Tomorrow will be no hope of 

Think of here, to the 11 and the class of the suffering of the students who are 12. Hands, have been acid Bar Tto, have been sitting in the whole body, it can not stand up, Bar Light rain, so slow. Meng Yu, we're all in the new classroom for more than and 10 minutes. Huo Xiaoyu looked at the watch, it's 8:40. She actually spent half an hour at school! See the time, Huo Xiaoyu immediately rushed to the new classroom, fortunately, only on the 3 floor, not late. There is no heaven class in the third floor of the 1, the first class in the classroom in Lou, 3 Huo Xiaoyu will enter the classroom, suddenly found that Meng Yu actually in the classroom door, waiting for her more than half an hour! "Are you waiting for me?" Huo guang. "Yeah, didn't you see my eyes? But I'm waiting for you.." "Nothing to offer, not to be a thief! You must have something to ask me." Huo Xiaoyu has seen him through everything. "I don't know what that means, but I really do."" What? What? Nothing gallant, non rape that pirates, the meaning of this sentence, he did not know, do not know if he has learned Chinese, do not know that he is not on the relationship in the class 2

[learnenglishwithjulia]

Spain TEFL Crash Course FAQ: how to become certified in Spain?

TEFL Certification Programmes in Valencia and Barcelona Spain TEFL Crash Course FAQ Other than the Course price, what other costs must you cover? You will need to pay for your return flights, medical and travel insurance, your travel card, your weekend food costs and any other spending money. As living costs in Spain are reasonably low, a recommended budget of minimum 150 Euros allowing you to live comfortably, explore the city and socialise during 1 week. You must ensure that you have organised your own EHIC or insurance policy for your medical insurance. This will cover any visits to a GP or hospital doctor; however you will have to cover any prescription and non-prescription costs. Can anybody apply? As long as you are over 18, hold a valid EU or British passport, are willing to live in Valencia or Barcelona for the duration of the course, and are a proficient user of English, you can apply. Non EU passport holders may of course also sign up for this course but no visa support will be provided. We are a UK company renting out teaching space for weekends. Don’t forget to send us your CV, whilst specifying your preferred course start date(s). Is this Certificate recognised internationally? The answer is Yes. It is an International, Accredited and Advanced TEFL Certificate. It is a different franchise to CELTA – for instance – which is part of the British Council brand/ package (who offer 6 x 45-minutes of observed classes and 140 hours of theory). Therefore if you wish to work for a British Council accredited school in the UK, they will prefer their own certificate. But that is only true in some schools in the UK and a handful of others outside the UK. So on an international level, please note that in most TEFL Job Listings, you will find 3 main requirements: a Bachelor’s Degree, Teaching Experience and an Accredited TEFL Certificate. >> With our programme we provide you with 2 of those 3 key requirements. Is this TEFL Certificate accredited? The answer is Yes. TEFL Trainer is fully accredited by ITEFLAC (The International TEFL Accreditation Council) regulated awarding body. The International TEFL Accreditation Council Quality Stamp is an international mark of high quality for the provision of programmes of study and training courses. Our accreditors have vigorous quality assurance procedures and systems in place which all course providers, such as ourselves, must successfully pass in order to be accredited under the scheme What type of TEFL Certificate will I be awarded? We issue the TEFL Trainer TEFL Certificate which is fully accredited and recognised worldwide. *Issued: upon completion of the 3 learning blocks (the 6 reflective diaries, 6 lesson plans, and the 6 final exams). Complete written guidelines will be given to you on site and through the Student Handbook. Do I sit a final exam and how am I marked? You are marked as follows: 30% Reflective Diaries (6 x 400-word assignments to email us: contact@teflinternshipspain.com, in 1 email and in PDF). You may write the reflective diaries in any of the following languages: English, Spanish, or French. 30% TEFL Trainer Online TEFL Course (up to 140 hours of content: you must complete the 6 final exams). 40% Lesson Plans (6 lesson plans to email us: contact@teflinternshipspain.com, in 1 email and in PDF). You will also receive a Feedback from the school regarding your Teaching performance (during the crash course). All three learning blocks need to be completed in order for you to become certified. Am I eligible for any grants? No. How long is the programme? We offer this 20-hour crash course in Valencia and Barcelona. The course starts on a Saturday morning and ends on the Sunday evening. Volunteering is optional as free of charge: Monday to Friday prior or following the weekend Crash course. It is a great way of gaining 30 hours of classroom experience. The online course is accessible for 6 months from upon signing up. How much TEFL theory will be covered? TEFL theory is presented to you throughout the programme, in an organic fashion. This equates to approximately 140 hours (induction, CPD, assignments, and final exams included). An extra 20 hours of theory will be presented in the online Specialist add-on course - How to Teach Young Learners. During the hours spent at the language school, you will be able to cover the theoretical part of the course. We therefore recommend you bring a tablet or laptop to access our online TEFL resources – as wi-fi is available in the language schools. The combination of face to face and distance activity makes our blended learning extremely effective. What if I can't speak Spanish? Don’t worry, the entire course is delivered in English. If you want to take some Spanish classes during your stay in Valencia or Barcelona, or if you wish to extend your stay please get in touch for an estimate. Most of our partner schools also give Spanish classes. How may I find accommodation? Airbnb.com Booking.com Ask us if you need advice on neighbourhoods! What do I need to bring? We recommend you bring your own laptop or tablet to be able to access our e-learning platform for extra support in TEFL theory and Spanish learning materials. If you are on any prescription medicine, we also recommend that you bring supplies for the entirety of the programme. Anything you think you can use for the classroom: a map, cards, and any teaching materials you may already have (i.e. flashcards). What can I expect to find challenging? Living abroad can be at times challenging. Students who approach the experience with an open mind and involve themselves with the diverse opportunities and experiences available to them, will thrive in this environment. The main challenges you are likely to be faced with are: Language barrier The 20 hours in the classroom - but do not worry that also includes lunch breaks and coffee breaks The commute – the partner schools are all in the equivalent of a Zone 1. Depending on the residential or student area you choose to live in, you can expect up to 40 minutes in Valencia by public transport. Closer options are always available if you book in advance (5 to 20-minute commute). What is your Pass Rate? TEFL Trainer strives to support you to develop your teaching skills and subject knowledge. 95% of our students complete our TEFL certification programmes. The 5% drop out rate can be explained by a change in personal circumstances prior to their arrival or by the following factors: difficulty to adapt culturally or realisation that teaching is not for them. If you must drop out of the weekend crash course, you can always complete the 3 learning blocks online and become TEFL certified. What is the profile of the people on the programme? We receive applications from candidates from numerous fields of study, backgrounds, countries, and ages. Although most of the videos on our website reflect the younger age bracket, we have to stress that it is solely because they were the only ones that were not camera shy the day we shot the testimonials! Also, on our programme, we have people that are seeking a radical change in career in their late 30s to late 50s, as well as recently graduated 20/25-year olds looking to use their language skills and learn a profession. What is the dress code in the schools? As long as you avoid sportswear and beachwear, the dress code is quite relaxed, casual yet smart. More information about the course can be found HERE. Any other questions? Please do not hesitate to email us now: contact@teflinternshipspain.com or use our contact form here and consult our Terms and Conditions. https://www.tefltrainer.com/crash-course-dates/ https://www.tefltrainer.com/tefl-crash-course/ Read the full article

[mrlongkgraves]

Enjoy the perks of nurse certification

Certifications have dogged my career like a puppy in a box, waiting to be discovered.

As a new critical care supervisor, I decided to certify as a CCRN. I studied mightily and passed this test with all staff eyes upon me because none of the nurses in the hospital had this credential, but they knew it loomed in their futures.

At my next leadership position, I was the sole certified critical care nurse in my division, where I begged, preached and persuaded nurses to sit for the certifying exam.

One by one, they started studying and passing, including the day and night charge nurses who initially had negative things to say about taking the test — and about me, by association. But ultimately, and to their delight, they too eventually became CCRNs.

Certification sets nurses apart

At the same time, I was sitting for nurse certification as a nurse manager. I studied hard for this exam as well, which I passed. Later I sat for the advanced certification in administration. I didn’t study at all, and I passed in 45 minutes flat.

This experience had me looking at this puppy askance, as I questioned the value of a certification that needed so little preparation to obtain the credential. But after conversations with other test-takers, I was reminded that the exam tested knowledge, not time spent in preparation. I had had many years’ experience that prepared me to successfully pass this test.

According to a 2017 Nurse.com survey, 40% of American nurses are certified. And it turns out certification is more than a cute puppy. In terms of careers, it’s a hunting dog.

Why certification matters from a professional point of view

1 –  Certified nurses make more money. According to Nurse.com’s 2017 Salary Survey, certified nurses’ base salaries alone are greater than those of nurses who are not certified. In addition, many organizations pay for certification preparation exams and test fees, and they reward nurses with hourly certification differential pay.

2 – Certified nurses have respect and recognition. Just having those letters signifying nurse certification credentials behind your name indicates a high level of knowledge, competence and performance to colleagues, patients, managers and administrators.

3 – Certified nurses have validated competence in their specialty areas. Because not all nurses who sit for a certification examination pass, succeeding at the qualifying exam separates your expertise from that of the pack, something not lost on managers who can hire you. When it comes to your professional specialty, you are truly special.

4 – Certified nurses are more marketable and hireable. Almost 90% of nurse managers would hire a certified nurse over a non-certified nurse, if everything else were equal.

5 – Certified nurses perceive they have more power in their organizations. My personal data consultations over the past 20 years as founder of the Forum for Shared Governance show certified nurses score higher in quantitative measures of professional governance, meaning certified nurses believe they have more control over their practice and influence over the resources that support it.

6 – Certified nurses have more professional opportunities. These professionals are more likely to be promoted within their facilities. Moreover, they are more often selected by their facilities or specialty associations to sit on policy-making boards and committees.

7 – Certified nurses have standing among their professional peers. You come to the interprofessional table with board certification like your physician colleagues who are boarded in their specialties as well. Unfortunately, nursing’s 40% does sorely lag behind medicine’s 80% board certification.

8 – Certified nurses are more confident. An American Board of Nursing Specialties study showed almost 100% of certified nurses felt personal satisfaction from the achievement and that 90% felt more confident performing their clinical duties.

What’s holding you back from getting certified?

Barriers to certification may exist in your organization. For example, not all organizations have or fund certification prep reviews, but inexpensive, effective online programs are available.

In full disclosure, OnCourse Learning has offered effective certification preparation courses for just about every specialty you can imagine for years, with 40% of our 2017 survey respondents indicating they were reimbursed for continuing education, which easily could be applied to these reviews. And nurses pass because of them.

Your organization culture itself may not support certification. But that lack of advocacy is hard to sustain in the face of past and revised guidelines for the most current 2019 Magnet and 2016 Pathways to Excellence criteria that mandate continuous professional development that includes certification. You easily could become a certification champion in your place of employment — and that only can enhance your future career.

So, ramp up your career and get those extra letters behind your name. And never look a gift horse in the mouth — questioning the value of certification if you just happen to pass the exam with very little fuss. That might mean you already knew the material as an experienced practitioner. And besides, we’ve been talking puppies here, not horses.

Happy Certified Nurses Day!

Courses related to ‘certification’

Diabetes Educator Certification Review (26.5 contact hrs) This continuing education series in a blended learning format will highlight the types of diabetes, discuss monitoring blood sugar levels, explain techniques for promoting safe medication use, integrate nutritional and activity treatment approaches, describe management issues for special populations, and review the qualifications for obtaining your certification to become a diabetes educator.

Ambulatory Care Nursing Certification Review (12 contact hrs) The demand for ambulatory care nurses will continue to increase over the next several years. In addition, the scope of ambulatory care nursing is expected to broaden. Becoming certified in ambulatory care nursing will enable RNs to meet increasing expectations by increasing confidence, developing new skills and taking on additional responsibilities. Participants will become proficient in role and responsibilities topic areas such as clinical practice, care management, patient education, telehealth, communication, and legal issues within ambulatory care nursing.This multi-week self-paced program combines online education with recorded webinars to provide you with a study choice that fits your learning needs and schedule and is aligned with the core elements of the certification exam.

Care Coordination and Transition Management Review/Certification Prep (30.5 contact hrs) Coordinating patient care and managing patient transitions are part of different job responsibilities within nursing (e.g., navigators, care managers, discharge planners, or coordinators). All nurses have some connection to coordinating care or managing transitions of care for patients.

The post Enjoy the perks of nurse certification appeared first on Nursing News, Stories & Articles.

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[whiskynottea]

An Interruption in the 1st Law of Thermodynamics.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41

AO3

Thank you @theministerskat, for keep betaing this story that goes on forever!❤️ Also, thanks to the @faeriesfanficemporium and @futurelounging for the high school graduation information!

This chapter is for @muykonos, who loves Jenny and Ian dearly, with the best wishes for her new beginning! Love you Muy!

Chapter 42. Puffins

The last time we called ourselves high school students was on a sunny summer day. We found ourselves listening to a long winded speech from our headteacher, one that would make every person in the room extremely anxious about the future - if we had actually been listening to him. I could still hear his voice buzzing in my ears when Jamie found me, took me in his arms and spun me around for so long that I wasn’t sure if he was happy because we had just graduated, or because this would be the last time we had to sit through a speech from Mr. Gowan. We loved him, but he had that bad habit of never stopping once he started speaking.

After graduation, the days felt different. They were continuous, shapeless, careless. Time didn’t matter. No alarm clocks, no hurried breakfasts, no studying schedules.

No school.

Joe and Gail left for a trip to the US, a present from their parents, to celebrate their successful exam results. Rupert and Angus had gone back to the Highlands, and Jenny and Ian would soon leave for Lallybroch. Edinburgh seemed empty already.

Jamie spent more and more time training. He had a few weeks to prepare for the Scottish National Championship, and there were whole days when I would only see him briefly before or after his time at the pool. Neither of us complained; the championship was a priority for both of us. But I missed him. And I knew that I would miss him even more when he would leave for Lallybroch.

My favorite days were Mondays. More specifically, Monday afternoons. These were the days when Jamie finished his training early and we would meet Jenny and Ian at Murtagh’s apartment for coffee and board games. Two teams, always the same players. And I was proud to say that Jenny and I were on a winning streak.

We had just finished another successful round of Pictionary, when Ian walked to the center of the room and carefully unfolded an old piece of paper. His smile was shy at the beginning, but it became more and more cheeky as he read.

My eyebrows shot up to my hairline and barely I stopped myself from barking out a laugh when I realized what he was reading.

Jenny Fraser’s, or more correctly, Janet Flora Arabella Fraser’s letter to Santa.  

Dear Santa,

My name is Janet Flora Arabella Fraser, but everyone calls me Jenny. You can call me that too. I live at Lallybroch, together with my mam, my da, and my wee brother. I canna write yet, so my mam is writing this for me, but I promise I will know all my letters when I go to school at Beauly, and I will write to you myself next year.

I have been very good this year and am nice to everyone. I even play with Jamie when he brings his silly swords into my room, and I pretend to lose and die, even though I could beat him every time. The one time I won, he got angry and as red as a tomato. Anyway, I also help my mom cook. And I feed Bran every day. And I clean my room. (Jamie doesn’t, but bring him a gift anyway, okay?)

I am writing to you, because I want a puffin and da said I can’t have one. We have birds here at Lallybroch, but I haven’t seen a puffin yet. I will love it and take care of it, I promise.

Please, it’s all I truly want for Christmas!

Love,

Jenny

PS I know the Santa we saw at Beauly with my mom wasn’t real, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want the wee bairn in his lap to cry.

PSS My mom doesn’t know what puffins eat. Can you bring me some of their food too?

Ian had to stop more than once while reading, almost choking with laughter. I brushed tears from my eyes, feeling Jamie’s silent amusement shaking my body. Jenny was hiding her face in her hands, her struggle to catch her breath audible in the room.

“How dare you,” she finally said, her own face as red as a tomato now. “How dare you, Ian Murray?” she repeated, and started laughing again.

Ian shrugged, then smiled at her. “I dinna remember seeing a puffin at Lallybroch,” he said quietly, as if he hadn’t even heard her question. “Did ye ever get your puffin, Jenny?”

Jamie spoke before his sister could. “Nah, she didna, Ian,” he said, the smile audible in his voice. “Not that year, or the years after that. She kept asking for one, though.”

“Aye, that was what I remember too,” Ian replied, nodding, his face serious.

“What is this all about?” Jenny asked with a raised eyebrow, crossing her arms across her chest.

I was wondering exactly the same thing.

“It’s about puffins, Jen,” Ian said softly. “I think it’s about time ye see one.”

“You got me a puffin?” Jenny asked, incredulous.

“Puffins live free, Jenny,” Jamie rolled his eyes. “I think mam and da told ye that a million times.”

“So what is this…” Jenny’s words faded as Ian walked to her and kneeled on the floor in front of her.

“Tis a gift,” he said, and presented her with an envelope. “For ye. To thank ye, for all that ye are to me.”

I was sure the tears that shone in Jenny’s eyes had nothing to do with the ones brought up by her boisterous laughter only moments ago. She swallowed hard and took the envelope from Ian’s hands. “What did you do?” she asked, in a accusing way that came out even funnier in her cracked voice.

I turned in Jamie’s arms and looked at him, the question obvious on my face. His satisfied, wide smile confirmed my suspicion that he knew exactly what was going on. He lowered his head and kissed me, his lips hot against mine, before urging me to look back towards his sister. I turned to look at Jenny, feeling a shiver run through my body when Jamie’s lips found the nape of my neck. I shimmied to make him stop, and watched Jenny, her attention focused on the paper she had pulled from the envelope.

“Five days?” she asked, at last. “Five days just the two of us?”

“Aye,” Ian whispered, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. “To see the puffins.”

Jenny sprang from the couch straight into his lap, squeezing him so tight that I was sure if it would last a moment longer he would suffocate. Ian’s face, however, was the definition of happiness, and his smile, the sweetest I had ever seen.

I felt Jamie wrap his arms tighter around my body, pulling me closer to him.

“Any unfulfilled requests from Santa, Sassenach?” he whispered in my ear.

I took a moment, thinking, unable to remember any. “I don’t know,” I said. “A mummy, maybe? Given the fact that I was in Egypt…”

“Christ, Claire,” he chuckled. “I’m not buying ye a mummy.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “Friends,” I said a moment later, and the truth in my words stuck thick in my throat like a piece of stale bread, grazing the tissue, blocking my breath. I swallowed with difficulty, pushing back memories of a lonely childhood, Jamie’s arms around me suddenly feeling overwhelming. “I was always asking for friends.”

“I’ll be yer friend, Sassenach,” Jamie whispered, his voice sweet and honest, and he nuzzled my neck. “Always.”

I swallowed back tears and let my body sink into his warmth, hoping that his heartbeat against my back was telling the truth.

Always.

I looked at Jenny, who was beaming, and gave her a broad smile. I was happy for her and for Ian, who was looking at her like she hung the moon. But it was more than that. I was happy that I was there to share that moment with them, for finally feeling that sense of belonging I had always longed for.

“We’re going to the Orkney!” she announced, excited. “I’m going to see the puffins!”

And like that, she was a little girl again, getting the gift she had always dreamed of.

“What are the puffins, exactly?” I asked, not knowing that I would sorely regret my question ten minutes later, when Jenny was still talking about the clumsy, comical birds who were expert divers and underwater fliers, laid one precious egg every year and left Scotland for the north Atlantic and North Sea outside the breeding season.

“Ye’re going to pay for that, Sassenach,” Jamie murmured in my ear, his fingers drawing patterns on my side.

“Am I not paying for it already?” I asked, making him laugh.

“Aye, but what about my suffering?”

I grimaced and mouthed a sorry. As Jenny went on talking about the puffins, Jamie leaned closer to me, whispering in my ear in his proud brother’s voice, “Jenny wants to see the birds to draw them, ken? She loves their colours.”

Of course. Jenny wanted to go to art school and nothing else would be more inspiring than the wild landscape of Orkney and the wildlife, full of birds, seals, and whales.

It would be beautiful.

--

That night Jamie was remarkably silent as he walked me home.

“What’s the matter?” I finally asked, and he turned to look at me surprised, as if he had forgotten I was even there. He didn’t reply. “Won’t you tell me?” I insisted, but the initial surprise has well-hidden now, his features calm, unfazed, his mask covering thoughts and problems.

“What?” He pretended that he hadn’t understood and gave me a small smile.

It wasn’t enough.

“Jamie.” I stopped and pulled him back to me. “You may not have my glass face, but I can see right through you.”

“It’s nothing,” he said with a frown and a shrug. When he saw me rolling my eyes, he pressed his lips tight, took a deep breath through his nose, and repeated. “Tis nothing, really.”

“You’re too silent. This isn’t nothing.” I cupped his face with my hand, his blue eyes melting as they met mine.

“I love ye, Claire,” he whispered, pressing his lips lightly against my forehead.

“I know, I love you too.” I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He turned around, instead, and started walking again.

Stubborn Scot.

I sighed a few times along the way, trying to show him that our conversation wasn’t over and I was far from being convinced he was okay. He kept ignoring me and I sighed a few more times – not that it made any difference. Finally, a few blocks from home I stopped walking, this time without any attempt to pull him back to me.

“Are ye alright, Sassenach?” he asked, surprised once again.

“You tell me.”

“I tell…” The realization hit him before he finished his question. “I told ye! Tis fine!” he exclaimed, his hand messing with his hair.

I looked at him for a long moment, my jaw set, my arms crossed across my chest. Waiting. He didn’t speak. I bit my lip hard, nodding, and started walking again. When I brushed by him, I wished him a goodnight and continued towards my place.

“Where are ye going?” His voice came distraught, but I neither stopped nor answered his question. “Claire!”

“Home,” I said sharply, feeling my heart clench inside my chest.

I thought we could tell each other everything.

“Sassenach!” He was next to me within two wide strides, his hand gripping my arm. “What the hell! Why are ye doing this?”

“I’m not doing anything, Jamie.” I wished the words were as painful to him as they were to me, burning my chest. “I can walk home alone. Since we’re not talking anyway.”

Jamie narrowed his eyes at me and let out a short breath through his nose. “Okay,” he said, nodding repeatedly. “Okay.”

“Okay, then. Goodnight.” I started walking again, but his hand stopped me and pulled me back to him.

“Ah Dhia… Ye’re not going to make it easy, right?”

“I? I’m the one who’s making things difficult? You’re obviously not okay and you won’t even talk to me! You won’t even admit that you’re not okay! You’re lying to my face!”

“I’m not lying to yer face!”

“Oh, really?” I asked, my voice sarcastic.

We stood there, breathing fast, our eyes locked in a game of power. I saw his mask slowly melting away, leaving behind only Jamie, my Jamie, as he had always been with me. My Scot.

“Jamie,” I started again, now letting my worry seep in my voice. “What good can I do, when you don’t even trust me with your problems? When you won’t even talk to me?”

He kept silent, and I could hear every beat of my heart crying out to his. Pleading to let me in.

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking his eyes from mine and fixing them on the street. “I’m sorry, Sassenach, I didna mean for ye to think I’m lying to ye. Or that I dinna want to talk to ye. It’s just that...” he stopped, and took a breath as if he had to fortify himself.

“What?” I asked, holding my breath, suddenly afraid of what was to come.

“See… I’m not enough.”

I stood shock-still, trying to process what I had just heard. I hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this.

“Hey,” I whispered, grabbing a fistful of his tee-shirt, and took the last step that kept as apart. “What are you talking about?”

“Did ye no see how happy Jenny was tonight? What Ian did for her… I’ve done nothing for you.”

“Oh god, Jamie…” I ran my fingers across his jawline, his cheekbones, through his hair, feeling my heart melting. “You’ve done so many things for me. I don’t need a trip or a gift to be happy.” Jamie didn’t talk, and I continued, hoping that my words would ring true in his heart. “I’m happy because I’m with you, because you’re in my life.”  

“Aye, but I’m not in yer life that much lately,” he said, and I stupidly thought that his lowered eyebrows made him even more adorable than he already was.

“But that’s just a phase,” I said, my voice strong, sure. “It’s not going to be like that forever.”

Jamie looked at me and a small smile curled his lips. “No, it’s not,” he said, but the smile disappeared again. “But d’ye remember, Sassenach, when we started texting? I had promised you we would go everywhere, and now school has finished and we canna even go on a wee trip in Scotland.”

I smiled, thinking of our very first chat, the night he walked me home. We would travel the world, we had said. Starting from Paris.

“Jamie, we have time,” I said, and meant it. “We will travel, we don’t have to do it right now.”

“Aye, but I didna plan anything for us… Ian has been organizing this trip for so long, and I… With school and training…” He kept trailing off.

I raised onto my tiptoes, pulled him down to me and kissed him, our lips meeting in a soft whisper that soon became a long dance. Unhurried.

“We have time,” I repeated, my whisper brushing against his mouth. “We’re together, and that’s what counts. I’m perfectly happy with staying in Edinburgh. It’s the same to me.” I ran my fingers through his locks, and rested my forehead against his.

“Is it, though?” he asked, and I could almost taste the worry in his words.

“It is, you bloody Scot. It’s our first summer together, but we’re going to have a lot more after that. Right?” I asked, and felt my heart racing in my chest.

This can’t be our last summer together.

“Right,” he breathed and kissed me. “More and more and more…” Each promise coming with another kiss, sealing it.

“Good,” I said, and softly kissed the tip of his long, straight nose.

“But still,” he started again and I sighed, exasperated. “If I go straight to Lallybroch after the nationals… ”

“It will still be okay.” I locked my eyes with his, and neither of us spoke for a long moment.  

“But I’ll be away,” he continued, fear taking the better of him.

Bloody distance. But I had to be the brave one this time.

“Jamie!” I raised my voice and cupped his face with both my hands. “Look at me.” He did. “No matter where you are, I love you. Here, at Lallybroch, in the end of the world. I love you. And I promise you will get bored of me when we’ll live together in Oxford.”

“That willna happen,” he disagreed, and pulled me to him for a kiss.

It was sweet and hopeful, but it quickly became thirsty and urgent. Promising that he would never have enough of me.

“We’ll see,” I said when we broke our kiss, and I laced our fingers together. “Now walk me home, you bloody fool. And never think that you’re not enough.”

Chapter 43

[t-baba]

5 Ways to Get Started with Machine Learning

Machine learning has taken off and it’s doing so with fury, bringing new insights to every single industry. If you want to be in demand, this is a skill that will put you in the front line. As intimidating as it may seem, it’s surprisingly easy if you approach it the right way.

Machine learning (ML) is a fascinating practice and field of study. It's what allowed the introduction of self-driven cars, of robots that can clean your house, the navigation system of drones of all kinds, the recommendation system behind YouTube and Netflix, face recognition systems, hand written recognition, game playing, and lots more.

And because of its incredibly high value and somewhat cryptic nature, it's an expertise in very high demand that keeps expanding to different areas --- which just five years ago would have seemed inconceivable. Through this article, we'll see different practical ways to approach it.

"Pardon Me … but What is Machine Learning?"

ML is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI). As Arthur Samuel --- one of the pioneers in the field --- put it, ML gives "computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed". That is, instead of programming a computer (or robot) to do something, you give information and set the framework to let the system program itself.

Freaking fascinating? Yes, but we won't get into the details of this seemingly impossible thing here, but instead point you to the right places where you'll be able to find that for yourself.

Before Starting, a Word of Caution

ML is something of an advanced practice, and you'll need to have not only some foundations in computer sciences, but also be able to code in at least one programming language. Some popular programming languages for ML are Python, R, Java, C, and MATLAB, among others.

1. Start Very Quickly … Like, Really, in Less than Ten Minutes

Sometimes, and for some people, it's better to just get hands on into something to have a first taste and develop an intuition of what this new art or skill is about, and then dig deeper into some specifics and details.

Google's Machine Learning Recipes with Josh Gordon is just that --- a straightforward and practical approach to ML. Using the Python scikit-learn and TensorFlow libraries, Josh will walk you through very practical examples and down-to-earth explanations behind the very principles of ML.

Here's the first 7-minute video of the series, introducing a supervised learning algorithm in Python --- in just six lines of code!:

The publishing schedule is somewhat irregular, with videos published every month or second month, covering topics such as decision trees, feature selection, pipelines, classifiers: not bad at all for 6-to-8 minute videos that anyone with a little foundation in programming can follow.

2. Take Courses from Top-Notch Universities, for Free

If you're hungry for quality knowledge, you may have heard by now about Coursera, edX, Udacity, and many, many others. We're talking MOOCs, or massive open online courses.

Let's break it down quickly:

massive: they have no vacancy limits, and can be accessed by as many people as desired.

open: anyone can access them, regardless of their age and previous knowledge on the topic, and independently if they're able to pay for a certification or not.

online: all you need is a device connected to the Internet; even a mobile phone would do.

course: these are actual courses with reading materials, practical exercises, and even deadlines.

Let's see some courses you could start with.

Stanford's Andrew Ng Machine Learning

Stanford Prof. Ng is a leading researcher on the field of artificial intelligence, and is the person who pretty much started the MOOC spark that would later turn into a fire of knowledge when he first put his Machine Learning online course. The response was overwhelming, with many thousands of people from all around the world taking the course and discussing this topic. He later turned this course into what it is today Coursera, the leading provider of MOOCs.

The course is as fabulous as it is challenging. I remember having spent an hour or so just to read a 5-page assignment scope before I was able to grasp it. So unlike Josh Gordon's series, this is a little more on the academic side, but with a lot of practical knowledge and advice that will be very useful later on in your ML practices. But it is doable, and the amount of feedback on the forums is truly overwhelming. Mind you, it was among the first MOOCs I ever took, and one of the best.

Course details:

Approx. duration: 2–5 months

Difficulty: high

Workload: mid-to-heavy

Sebastian Thrun's Intro to Artificial Intelligence

Also a professor and AI researcher at Stanford (on the field of robotics), co-founder of Google X Lab (the "semi-secret" R&D company behind of Google's self-driven cars, among other projects), Sebastian is also the founder of a mayor MOOC provider, Udacity. Along with Peter Norvig (Director of Research at Google), he put together the amazing Intro to Artificial Intelligence.

This is pretty much the foundation to all things ML. It's a lot lighter than Andrew's course, with its content spread over more units to make it easier to digest, though it's a long one.

Course details:

Approx. duration: 4 months

Difficulty: intermediate

Workload: light

Caltec's Yaser S. Abu-Mostafa Learning from Data

Prof. Yaser is another of the pioneers of putting quality learning material online, making available his Learning from Data ML course on his website, with all of its lectures, learning materials and exams, even before MOOCs were a thing. Later he would package these materials into a MOOC offered regularly by Caltech on edX.

I took this one as well, and I can tell you that you'll have to do some heavy lifting here. But if you've enjoyed Andrew's course and are hungry for more foundations, this seems like a reasonable next step.

Course details:

Approx. duration: 4 months

Difficulty: very high

Workload: very heavy (10–20 hours per week)

Other Coursera, edX and Udacity Courses

There's a very extensive offering of ML and AI courses that you can take for free, not only at Coursera, edX, and Udacity, but at other MOOC providers as well, such as Data Camp --- though data science seems to be something of a niche for the three providers we've discussed.

3. Get Certified Education, for a Fraction of the Price

So far, we've talked free MOOCs. They're awesome, and you don't need to pay a cent to enroll in them and start learning. In the beginning, these providers used to offer free certificates or statements of accomplishments, even some of them verifiable online. These programs, however, have been discontinued, so in most cases you won't get a certificate or any type of credential that you could use to demonstrate your education to a potential employer, or even to another higher education institution.

This may not be a problem if you just want to learn for the sake of it, and even use this knowledge to leverage a successful career as a freelancer, as many professionals already do around the globe. But applying for work can be a different matter, and certs and degrees do ease the way in many cases, so let's discuss them.

Verified Courses

A verified course might be somewhere between $40–$200, depending on the course and the institution. Basically, you pay a premium to get your identity and assignments verified (this is what a verified certificate looks like.) You can find more about Coursera's Course Certificates and edX's Verified Certificates. You'll find they both have a huge offering of ML and data-science–related verified courses, as you can see on this edX search.

Notice that, whether you pay or not, the contents and materials of the course are exactly the same. What you get by paying is the certification that you actually took and passed the course.

Coursera Specializations

Coursera took the concept of verified courses a step forward by grouping some related courses and adding a capstone project to give you a specialization certificate.

Some specializations of interest to us are:

specialization courses institution Big Data 6 UC San Diego Deep Learning 5 deeplearning.ai Machine Learning 4 University of Washington Recommender Systems 5 University of Minnesota Introduction to Robotics 6 University of Pennsylvania Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs) 3 Stanford University

Coursera Master's Degree

Coursera's Master of Computer Science in Data Science (MCS-DS) is an actual, official master's degree issued by an accredited university. Topics in the program are heavily ML-related, and include:

data visualization

machine learning

data mining

cloud computing

statistics

information science

Course details:

Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Price: $600 per credit-hour for a $19,200 in total tuition

Duration: 32 hours

edX XSeries and Professional Certificates

edX has an XSeries Program for courses within a single topic, in pretty much the same fashion as Coursera's Specializations. Such series of interest to us include:

series courses institution cost Microsoft Azure HDInsight Big Data Analyst 3 Microsoft $49–99 per course Genomics Data Analysis 3 Harvard University $132.30 Data Analysis for Life Sciences 4 Harvard University $221.40 Data Science and Engineering with Spark 3 UC Berkeley $49–99 per course

edX also has Professional Certificate Programs for "critical skills," including Data Science and Big Data, both offered by Microsoft.

edX MicroMasters and College Credit

You also have credit-eligible courses, which are not only verified, but may also serve you to claim for credit towards your B.S. or master's degree. There are, naturally, a lot of details in the fine print, so you'll have to do some extra research.

edX MicroMasters are precisely in this vein. Here are some interesting ones (costs are higher here, as you also pay hours of tuition towards a degree):

program courses institution cost Artificial Intelligence 4 Columbia University $1,200 Big Data 5 University of Adelaide $1,215 Data Science 4 UC San Diego $1,260 Robotics 4 University of Pennsylvania $1,256

Find out more to earn university credit on edX, and read the MOOCs for Credit report by Class Central.

Udacity's Nanodegrees

A nanodegree is something of degree, issued by Udacity. While Udacity isn't itself an accredited educational institution, they went to great lengths to partner with tech industry leaders to deliver the most market-targeted education possible --- in other words, to prepare you specifically with the skills that the labor market is demanding right now.

And we're really talking big names, here: Google, Amazon, IBM, Nvidia, Mercedes-Benz, DiDi, AT&T, among many others. And Udacity's partners not only co-design the study programs, but even have hiring agreements with Udacity!

Udacity and their partners even go as far as to publish estimated salary figures:

program time estimated salary Artificial Intelligence 6 months $59.4K to $250K Deep Learning TBD TBD Machine Learning 6 months $38.7K to $212K Robotics two 3-month terms $42k to $156k Self-Driving Car 9 months $67.8K to $265K

Get a job or your money back!

In fact, the ML nanodegree is part of the Nanodegree Plus program, which is probably one of the most reckless innovations in online learning: you study and graduate, and if you don't get a high paying job, Udacity refunds your tuition! Unbelievable.

Continue reading %5 Ways to Get Started with Machine Learning%

by Lucero del Alba via SitePoint http://ift.tt/2wlHNTh

[thefatfirefighter-blog]

EDGE Project Journal

June 1, 2016 (4 hours)

Fire Department meeting. Met with fire chief Ignacio (Nosh) Arrien before the meeting began to discuss/propose my project to him. Nosh appeared excited about having me work with the firefighters to increase their physical fitness. He gave me approval to move forward with my proposed project. At the beginning of the meeting Nosh allowed me to propose my project to the rest of the department. The majority of the members at the meeting expressed interest is participating.  There were 12 members at this meeting.  8 of them expressed interest in participating.  There are 15 members total.  Not all of them are directly involved with fighting actual fires. Some are minors, so by law they are not allowed to be on the front lines.  They are allowed to be present and assist with handing tools and water and other items to the firefighters on scene.  They can also help roll out hoses and clean up after the fire.  The minors will not be participating in my program since they information I have learned is for adults.  One of them is also on the football team at the local high school and I do not want to interfere with what his coach has him doing.  So out of the 15 members, 11 are adults.  Of those 11, 8 have expressed interest in participating.

At this meeting, we discussed the Wild Land Fire Fighter training exam and skills test that would be done on June 4, 2016. We broke off into groups and practiced most of the skills that would possibly be tested. Some of these included how to wear proper personal protective equipment, how to carry and used fire line hand tools, when and how to deploy a fire shelter, and how to use fire cans and hoses. Nosh informed me that I could take the exam and skills test if i wanted to. He gave me the textbook to study. This would only give me 2 evenings to prepare. I agreed to attempt to learn everything I could in those couple days so I could take part in the testing. Participating in the training gives me a hands-on look at what physical demands may be placed on wild land fire fighters. This will allow me to better customize training programs for the firefighters I am working with.

 June 3, 2016 (2 hours)

I went out to a small brush fire with my co-workers that are also on the fire department. It was under control quickly and will minimal exertion. I found it interesting to see a fire being put out in person. I got to experience wearing full firefighter gear while attempting to put out a fire. I got very hot just wearing the fire suit let alone moving around and being next to a fire. Having bottled water available when we took breaks was great to help us stay hydrated.

 June 4, 2016 (3 hours)

I took the Wild Land Fire Fighter (WWFF1) training exam and skills test in the morning. I passed the skills test and feel confident that I passed the written exam.  We were told right away if we passed the skills test.  The written portion was done on a Scantron and had to mailed out to be graded.  It could take up to 30 days before we know the results on that part.  The skills portion consisted of 3 different skills that we were tested on.  The first and most important was deploying the fire shelter.  We had to verbally describe the procedure and then demonstrated it.  The demonstration part we had to complete in less than 25 seconds.  This fire shelter is used when a firefighter gets trapped in by a fire.  It can be extremely intimidating and scary to actually have to use one.  The temperatures get very high and the noise level goes way up as well.  It is not uncommon for people to die even if using the shelter properly.  The other skills were how to cold trail (finding hot spots and cooling them down) and assembly of the drip can (a can that is used to purposely light fires).  We also discussed the pack test requirements for certification.  These can be done at any time and are administered by the fire chief.  There are 2 options for taking the pack test.  The most common is walking 3 miles in 45 minutes with a 45 pound pack.  The other option is to run a mile and a half without a pack in 12:25 (adjusted 45 seconds up from 11:40 because of altitude). This pack test must be completed to complete WWFF1 certification.  This will be used as a goal to work toward.  

  June 15, 2016 (3 hours)

           Fire department meeting today.  I was given time at the beginning of the meeting to further discuss my project with the department members.  I handed out a couple questionnaires to the members that were interested in participating in physical fitness.  These included the PAR-Q-and-You and a medical/history questionnaire.  The PAR-Q was only a few questions long and it is commonly used as a prescreening tool for physical activity to make sure that the individual is healthy enough to being exercising.  The medial/history questionnaire was more extensive and asked questions about medical information, social information, exercise history, eating habits, etc.  This took about 15 minutes to complete.  This information will help me in designing a training program for each person.  

           The main topic at the meeting was Firework safety.  In the classroom at the fire station, we learned about many of the laws that regulate fireworks.  We also learned about lighting fireworks off safely.  The last hour of training required us to get in full personal protective equipment (PPE) and set up a mini firework display.  We then took turns practicing lighting off fireworks.

           It was interesting to see how much preparation goes into a firework display. Wearing the PPE gets a little uncomfortable because it gets hot.  Range of motion is limited a little too.  With more practice, I’m sure I’ll get better at moving around in it.  

 June 29, 2016 (4 hours)

           In the meeting, we went over some of the wildland firefighting skills again because of how many people on the fire department that are not certified wildland firefighters.  A few of the members took the course earlier in th month (I took it with them), but did not pass the class.  Since the majority of fires we respond to in this rural area are brush fires, Nosh (the fire chief) thought it necessary to review the skills.  Since I had passed my test and was certified to fight fires, I was asked to help demonstrate some of the skills.  We got in full PPE to practice.  Skills we practiced were the use of hand tools (shovel, axes, hoes, etc.), driving and parking the different vehicles, and deploying the fire tent.  

           At this meeting, I was also able to meet with the members that filled out the forms I gave them at the last meeting.  We discussed the next step in the process, physical assessment.  Since most of the members had not been very physically active, I chose to use the Queens College Step Test to assess and estimate their cardiovascular fitness.  This test is easily administered and requires nothing more than a place to step up (onto two pallets stacked on top of each other), a stopwatch (on my phone), and a metronome (on my phone).  The values from this assessment will give me information needed to determine their cardiovascular fitness level.  I can use this information to determine volume and intensity when prescribing exercise.  

 July 4, 2016 (4 hours)

           Today was Independence Day.  There were a lot of people lighting off fireworks to celebrate the day.  This means there was a greater risk of fires. To be prepared for this, the fire department had people on two fire trucks out on patrol to be ready to respond quickly to any fires that started.  While driving around town in the fire truck, we saw some impressive firework displays, but there were no fires to put out.  This is a good thing.  Yes, I wanted to see some action and put a fire out, but not having a fire to put out is a lot safer and better for everyone around.  While driving around, we had most of our PPE on.  We did not have our jackets, helmets or gloves on. These items are easy to put on when getting out of the truck.  

 July 13, 2016 (4 hours training, 2 hours working on training programs)

           Today’s meeting was focused on some of the FAST skills (FAST – Firefighter Advanced Survival Techniques).  This training is to prepare us for an upcoming skills evaluation from Utah Valley University.  They will be bringing down a way for us to train with live fire as well as driving simulators.  Today we practiced setting up the firetrucks when responding to a fire.  We also rolled out hoses, practiced putting on PPE and an air tank, and using hand tools.  The hoses can be a workout in and of themselves.  The two-inch hoses (and bigger ones) are kind heavy and there is a special way to effectively roll them out.  If they are not rolled out properly, a lot of extra work is needed to straighten them and get them where they need to go.  The use of hand tools is similar to the wildland skills as far as carrying and safety.  Putting PPE and the air tank on is straight forward and simple to me.  Other members struggled with it.  It seemed as if a few of them were not very coordinated.  For others, flexibility seems to be an issue. The ones with flexibility issues could benefit from participation in physical fitness.  Extra attention will be given on flexibility for these individuals. We did have some fun with the PPE and air tank though.  We made it a competition to see who if anybody could put it on in under two minutes. We also wanted to see if anybody could beat Nosh (the fire chief) in putting it on.  Nobody was able to beat Nosh but there were three of us that put the gear on in under two minutes.  Two other guys got it on in about 2:30.  

           Since todays training was a lot more physical than usual training days, I counted it as the first workout we did as a group.  I spent about 2 hours on my own after the meeting to start developing training programs for the guys that were going to participate.  There are six that completed the questionnaires and have made the commitment to begin.  I plan to have these programs done by the next meeting so they can begin.  

 July 17, 2016 (2 hours)

           Spent a couple hours working on training programs.  I haven’t come across any major problems so far.  I have 4 programs done so far.

 July 24, 2016 (2 hours)

           I finished making the training programs for the guys that want to participate in my project.  

 July 27, 2016 (4 hours training – 1 hour meeting with members about the program)

           Today we continued to go over some of the FAST skills.  We focused on entry into a building and techniques for putting a fire out.  We also covered methods of calling for help and what to do in case of a couple different emergencies.  We were in full PPE and went thought the motions as closely as possible to the real situations.  It got hot in the PPE quickly.  Going through these actions in that equipment in the summer makes things get rather hot. Good thing we do a lot of the training in the evening when it is a little cooler.  

           After the meeting, I sat down with the 6 guys that I had made training programs for.  Two of them had a child there that was also part of the fire department but were minors so they were not included in this program.  The guys had a chance to look over the program and ask questions.  The biggest question I had for them was, “is this a program you feel you can adhere to?”  Each of them said yes.  The minors that were there asked questions about why they weren’t allowed to participated. I informed them that they information I have been taught is based on evidence for adults over the age of 18. They asked if I could still give them some advice on training.  I gave some basic instructions about physical activity including types of exercise, how to do certain exercise, and getting adequate rest.  I also gave brief instruction about food groups and what they do for the body.  This sparked more interest in nutrition.  I told the guys that I would provide more detailed information about nutrition at the next group meeting.  

 July 29, 2016 (4 hours training)

           This evening we went to Ferron to participate in the training that Utah Valley University is providing.  Other departments were also involved in this training.  We were split into two groups.  One group went to the live fire training and the other went to the driving simulator.  I spent a lot of the day in the Emergency Apparatus Driving Simulator (EADS).  This required us to sit in a small classroom while we received instruction about how to maneuver an emergency vehicle (particularly a fire truck).  After learning certain skills, two of use in the group went into a room with the simulator and practiced driving and performing the skills we had taught.  Some of the topics covered were: overall operation of the truck (driving itself), looking for hazards on the road when on the way to an emergency, where to park the truck for fighting a fire, where to park the truck to block traffic in other emergency situations such as car accidents, etc.  The simulator was a little difficult because it was lacking the feel of the vehicle moving and the bumps in the roads.  Otherwise, it was pretty realistic and helpful.  

 July 30, 2016 (4 hours training, 1 hour bike ride)

           This morning I went back to Ferron to complete the training that UVU was here for. I was in the group that learned and practiced the live fire training today.  This training was a simulated live fire.  It was a semi-truck trailer that was metal.  Inside it had been divided into a couple rooms.  In each room, there was a small bin where a straw-like substance was that was flammable.  The instructors would go in and light one on fire.  Then teams of two would go in and put it out.  This required us to be in full PPE with air tanks. Each two-man team would take turns going through the trailer.  The team would have to roll out hoses, hook them up, get our air tanks on and check each other to make sure no skin was exposed, check the door, break it open, and go through all of the checks to make sure it was safe to enter the building. Once it was determined that it was safe to go in (it is always safe to go in this training “building”), we crawled around the rooms to check them for anyone that could be trapped (nobody was ever in there without PPE).  Once we cleared the building, we put the fire out using approved methods, then exited the building.  We then had to empty and roll up hoses and put all tools and equipment back on the truck. Each team had three times (not in a row) to practice.  This was the first time I had ever experienced putting a live fire out in this type of situation.  It was intense.  It got very hot wearing the PPE and moving around that much.  After this experience, I feel confident that I would be very helpful to a more experienced person if fighting an actual structure fire.  After the first time in going through all of this, all of my clothes were completely drenched in sweat.  Snack, water, and Gatorade were provided to us after words. Hydration is very important after this because of how much sweat is lost.  It is also important to replace energy before going back in the trailer.

           In the evening, 3 guys met with me to go on a short bike ride.  The focus of this ride was to get more familiar with the bike and to feel comfortable on it.  Just being up and doing something is beneficial to health.  We went at a slow pace and covered about 9 miles.  The guys said it was easier than they thought it would be and committed to going again the next weekend.  I encouraged them to go again before the weekend if possible. Also, to follow their program.  

 August 3, 2016 (1 hour)

           I called all 6 guys to evaluate how they were doing with their program and to encourage them.  3 of the guys (the three that went bike riding with me) were all on track and doing well.  The other three were not doing so well.  Two of them had not been any more physically active than before I gave them a program. One guy had exercised twice on his own but didn’t feel too confident about it.  I encourage more participation and asked if there was anything keeping them from being physically active.  The most common response is that they had little motivation to do anything after a day of work.  We came up with alternate plans for them to attempt.  I hope they progress.

 August 6, 2016 (2 hours)

           I called to remind everybody about our bike ride this morning.  I met with two guys for the bike ride.  The other guy that went with us last week was at a family function.  I called to encourage him to ride on his own and expressed that we were sad he was not able to attend with us.  The other guys did not seem interested in riding except one.  He did not have a bike though.  This is something I will have to work around.  I’ll ask around to see if there is anyone that is willing to let him use a bike.  The ride was fantastic.  It was more difficult than last week because of the route we took.  After the ride, the other guys seemed excited about accomplishing the ride.  I encouraged them to express that interest to other members to see if it helped motivate them to join us.  

 August 10, 2016 (1 hour)

           I made calls to evaluate and encourage physical activity.  The three guys that have been participating seem to be continuing this practice.  The other three are struggling.  One guy said he has started walking 30 minutes 4 nights a week though.  This is encouraging.  I asked what helped motivated him.  He said that one of the guys that goes riding bikes in our group called and encouraged him to do more.  He seems to be taking that encouragement more seriously.  I’m glad the other guys are helping each other. This will be important when I go back to school.  They will have to spend more time encouraging each other.  

 August 10, 2016 (1 hour)

           Today was a group workout at the track.  Five of the guys showed up for this workout.  We went to the high school to walk or run on the track.  I made phone calls right before going to the track to encourage participation.  I mentioned that we need to practice walking 3 miles in 45 minutes so we can pass the pack test for certification to go out and fight wildland fires on a larger scale. Today we worked on just walking for 45 minutes no matter how fast it was.  Everybody accomplished this task and expressed interest in pushing harder next time.  

 August 17, 2016 (3 hours training, 1 hour exercise)

           At the meeting, we covered administrative stuff.  We also spent a bit of time cleaning the fire station and equipment. We went through each truck to make sure equipment was where is was supposed to be and that it was working properly.  After the meeting, all members that were there (10 of us) participated in a competition.  I organized this competition with the approval of the fire chief.  The competition consisted of: unrolling hoses and rolling them back up; unrolling hose and then unrolling and attaching another hose, then taking them apart and rolling them back up; and putting full PPE gear and air tank on.  All of these were to see who could do it that fastest.  This was rather physically intense.  The members enjoyed it and expressed interest in competing again.  

 August 20, 2016 (2 hours)

           Today was my last day on my project.  There were four guys that joined me at the track for some physical activity.  We mainly focused on going 3 miles in about 40 minutes.  This would mimic the physical fitness test that we would have to pass to become wildland firefighter certified (to go out and fight the big fires, not just the local brush fires).  Myself and one other guy were able to go the 3 miles in under 40 minutes. Two other guys did it in about 50 minutes.  The last guy did it in about an hour.  All of them were happy with the progress they have made.  Two of them mentioned that they had to make new holes in their belts because they have lost weight.  All four of them talked about how happy they were about the small changes and big results they have seen.  I talked with them about how they could keep moving forward.  I also discussed how important it was to maintain a healthy lifestyle.  All of them seemed motivated and strong enough to continue on their own.  I made sure they knew they could call me or text me at any time if they had questions or needed advice.  I feel confident that these firefighters will continue on with the information I have given them.  They told me that they would attempt to get the rest of the department as well as their families to join them in their efforts.

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Spain TEFL Crash Course FAQ: how to become certified in Spain?

TEFL Certification Programmes in Valencia Spain TEFL Crash Course FAQ Other than the Course price, what other costs must you cover? You will need to pay for your return flights, medical and travel insurance, your travel card, your weekend food costs and any other spending money. As living costs in Spain are reasonably low, a recommended budget of minimum 150 Euros allowing you to live comfortably, explore the city and socialise during 1 week. You must ensure that you have organised your own EHIC or insurance policy for your medical insurance. This will cover any visits to a GP or hospital doctor; however you will have to cover any prescription and non-prescription costs. Can anybody apply? As long as you are over 18, hold a valid EU or British passport, are willing to live in Valencia for the duration of the course, and are a proficient user of English, you can apply. Non EU passport holders may of course also sign up for this course but no visa support will be provided. We are a UK company renting out teaching space for weekends. Don’t forget to send us your CV, whilst specifying your preferred course start date(s). Is this Certificate recognised internationally? The answer is Yes. It is an International, Accredited and Advanced TEFL Certificate. It is a different franchise to CELTA – for instance – which is part of the British Council brand/ package (who offer 6 x 45-minutes of observed classes and 140 hours of theory). Therefore if you wish to work for a British Council accredited school in the UK, they will prefer their own certificate. But that is only true in some schools in the UK and a handful of others outside the UK. So on an international level, please note that in most TEFL Job Listings, you will find 3 main requirements: a Bachelor’s Degree, Teaching Experience and an Accredited TEFL Certificate. >> With our programme we provide you with 2 of those 3 key requirements. Is this TEFL Certificate accredited? The answer is Yes. TEFL Trainer is fully accredited by ITEFLAC (The International TEFL Accreditation Council) regulated awarding body. The International TEFL Accreditation Council Quality Stamp is an international mark of high quality for the provision of programmes of study and training courses. Our accreditors have vigorous quality assurance procedures and systems in place which all course providers, such as ourselves, must successfully pass in order to be accredited under the scheme What type of TEFL Certificate will I be awarded? We issue the TEFL Trainer TEFL Certificate which is fully accredited and recognised worldwide. *Issued: upon completion of the 3 learning blocks (the 6 reflective diaries, 6 lesson plans, and the 6 final exams). Complete written guidelines will be given to you on site and through the Student Handbook. Do I sit a final exam and how am I marked? You are marked as follows: 30% Reflective Diaries (6 x 400-word assignments to email us: contact@teflinternshipspain.com, in 1 email and in PDF). You may write the reflective diaries in any of the following languages: English, Spanish, or French. 30% TEFL Trainer Online TEFL Course (up to 140 hours of content: you must complete the 6 final exams). 40% Lesson Plans (6 lesson plans to email us: contact@teflinternshipspain.com, in 1 email and in PDF). You will also receive a Feedback from the school regarding your Teaching performance (during the crash course). All three learning blocks need to be completed in order for you to become certified. Am I eligible for any grants? No. How long is the programme? We offer this 20-hour crash course in Valencia. The course starts on a Saturday morning and ends on the Sunday evening. Volunteering is optional as free of charge: Monday to Friday prior or following the weekend Crash course. It is a great way of gaining 30 hours of classroom experience. The online course is accessible for 6 months from upon signing up. How much TEFL theory will be covered? TEFL theory is presented to you throughout the programme, in an organic fashion. This equates to approximately 140 hours (induction, CPD, assignments, and final exams included). An extra 20 hours of theory will be presented in the online Specialist add-on course - How to Teach Young Learners. During the hours spent at the language school, you will be able to cover the theoretical part of the course. We therefore recommend you bring a tablet or laptop to access our online TEFL resources – as wi-fi is available in the language schools. The combination of face to face and distance activity makes our blended learning extremely effective. What if I can't speak Spanish? Don’t worry, the entire course is delivered in English. If you want to take some Spanish classes during your stay in Valencia, or if you wish to extend your stay please get in touch for an estimate. Most of our partner schools also give Spanish classes. How may I find accommodation? For the Crash Course in Valencia we offer free accommodation in a host family Monday to Sunday (with food Monday to Friday). If you would prefer to find and pay for your own accommodation, please simply inform us of this. No discounts are available. What do I need to bring? We recommend you bring your own laptop or tablet to be able to access our e-learning platform for extra support in TEFL theory and Spanish learning materials. If you are on any prescription medicine, we also recommend that you bring supplies for the entirety of the programme. Anything you think you can use for the classroom: a map, cards, and any teaching materials you may already have (i.e. flashcards). What can I expect to find challenging? Living abroad can be at times challenging. Students who approach the experience with an open mind and involve themselves with the diverse opportunities and experiences available to them, will thrive in this environment. The main challenges you are likely to be faced with are: Language barrier The 20 hours in the classroom - but do not worry that also includes lunch breaks and coffee breaks The commute – the partner schools are all in the equivalent of a Zone 1. Depending on the residential or student area you choose to live in, you can expect up to 40 minutes in Valencia by public transport. Closer options are always available if you book in advance (5 to 20-minute commute). What is your Pass Rate? TEFL Trainer strives to support you to develop your teaching skills and subject knowledge. 95% of our students complete our TEFL certification programmes. The 5% drop out rate can be explained by a change in personal circumstances prior to their arrival or by the following factors: difficulty to adapt culturally or realisation that teaching is not for them. If you must drop out of the weekend crash course, you can always complete the 3 learning blocks online and become TEFL certified. What is the profile of the people on the programme? We receive applications from candidates from numerous fields of study, backgrounds, countries, and ages. Although most of the videos on our website reflect the younger age bracket, we have to stress that it is solely because they were the only ones that were not camera shy the day we shot the testimonials! Also, on our programme, we have people that are seeking a radical change in career in their late 30s to late 50s, as well as recently graduated 20/25-year olds looking to use their language skills and learn a profession. What is the dress code in the schools? As long as you avoid sportswear and beachwear, the dress code is quite relaxed, casual yet smart. More information about the course can be found HERE. Any other questions? Please do not hesitate to email us now: contact@teflinternshipspain.com or use our contact form here and consult our Terms and Conditions. https://www.tefltrainer.com/crash-course-dates/ https://www.tefltrainer.com/tefl-crash-course/ Read the full article