#thinking about how i've been having a hard time on site with my internship because i struggle to make small talk with my superiors

[miodiodavinci]

head in hands like "maybe i should have realized this about myself sooner" as i am surrounded by neon flashing signs that Very Clearly Indicate the thing i should have realized about myself sooner

[qqueenofhades]

Academia AU (I will never have enough, apparently), Fivan being cute old marrieds, with Aleksander being an idiot and Alina being very, very perplexed?

Aleksander Morozov, associate teaching professor in the Department of History, Art History, and Classics, Os Alta Imperial State University, has done something mind-boggingly stupid again. This fact comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who knows either Aleksander Morozov or Os Alta Imperial State University, though it might be new to the department only insofar as they had to crunch together all three disciplines together last year due to budget cuts. It has not escaped anyone's attention that the Department of Energy has gotten a gleaming new building, the Department of Economics is flaunting its exchange program at Ketterdam University that's unofficially guaranteed to land you internships at top Kerch banks, and the Department of Mechanical Engineering has been nauseating everybody with its nonstop glowing press coverage of Prince Nikolai's attendance at the announcement of their next chair. The prince has also just been named as honorary chancellor of the university, which means they're going to see his insufferably gleaming golden mug around here a lot more. As if this day could get any worse.

Ivan Kaminsky, Assistant Dean of Faculty Affairs, stares vainly at his computer screen, wondering if he should hope for one more fucking email asking questions about logistics for the Ketterdam International Economic Forum that have already been answered three times in the FAQ and twice more in the call for papers. These are the people with the most advanced degrees in all of Ravka, and they still can't figure out how to navigate a simple travel booking site. He has debated the merits of just composing a passive-aggressive Out of Office Auto-Reply and fucking off for the weekend, but before he does that, he needs to deal with Aleksander Morozov. Again. Saints help him.

"You realize," Ivan says, "why I've been asked to speak with you today. Professor Morozov, you must be aware that your relationship with Miss Starkova -- alleged relationship," he adds, for the sake of form -- "presents a serious conflict of interest, is in breach of the usual code of academic ethics, and -- "

"She's not my student," Aleksander interrupts. "I have nothing to do with her direct study or supervision. And she's a first-year PhD, not an undergrad. Besides, she's working with my mother, not me."

Ivan pinches the bridge of his nose. "You know that doesn't make it better, yes?" he enquires, in his iciest disciplinarian tone. "You're still faculty, she is a student, she is enrolled in your department, and as for Baghra, I will also be asking her whether she finds it appropriate for her son to be having an intimate relationship with one of her supervisees, especially when that son is also a faculty member in her same department. If I have to escalate this to the dean -- "

"Come on." Aleksander leans forward, face darkening. "This is ridiculous. We're not doing anything wrong. We're both adults, we're close to the same age, and we met off-campus, at a dinner party. I've already recused myself from anything to do with her committee, thesis topic, or comp exams. I can email you the paperwork, if you want."

The absolute last thing Ivan wants, ever, is more paperwork, and he briefly wavers at the potency of this threat. He has this job because he's a good enforcer, yes, but mostly as a sinecure, since his husband is a universally adored junior professor of Ravkan language and literature and they don't want Fedyor to start thinking too hard about job offers elsewhere. (And yet, the tenure committee still won't provide a firm date for the hearing. Logical!) If Ivan had known that it would involve almost-daily yelling at Aleksander Morozov, OAISU's too-cool-for-school resident bad boy and goth rock star academic wunderkind, let's just say that he might have brought a squirt gun. Or a baseball bat. Both might be good at getting this asshole's attention.

"Anyway," Ivan says, when the silence has stretched out to an agonizing level. "I'm putting a note in your file, and I will be speaking to your mother and Human Resources. This matter is not closed."

"Fine. You do that." Aleksander shrugs elegantly and gets to his feet. "Always a pleasure to see you, Mr. Kaminsky."

With that, he saunters out, as Ivan sits behind his desk and silently seethes. He hears voices at the end of the hall, however, and gets up to peer suspiciously out of his office door. Aleksander is talking to Alina Starkova, who was clearly waiting for him to get out of the principal's office, and they -- well, they do appear to like each other, and she is a PhD student and not some callow eighteen-year-old, but Ivan still doesn't like this. Doesn't trust her. She looks like trouble. (Then again, there is hardly room for more of it in this relationship.)

Whatever Aleksander says seems to placate Alina, for the time being, and he puts his arm around her shoulders as they walk away. Ivan snorts thunderously and retreats back to the safety of his office, since keeping his door open for too long might offer the impression of availability and/or an invitation for people to harass him with their existence. Why didn't he buy that squirt gun? Maybe he will. No more office hours for you, unwashed masses.

Ivan trudges through eighty more emails about KIEF, deletes three-quarters of them, changes two commas in the Revised Code of Professional Conduct that they want each assistant dean to produce sheerly for the sake of busywork, and thus is startled out of his skin by his office door opening at noon. There is only one person on the entire planet who has the right to do that without knocking, and sure enough, it's Fedyor, fresh out of his last session of The Fjerdan Wars II: Literature, Nationalism, and Resistance. "Hey, darling," he says, brandishing a sandwich bag. "Hungry?"

"You have no idea." Ivan pushes his chair back from the computer and tips his head back to accept Fedyor's quick kiss. "Hopefully your morning wasn't as bad as mine."

Fedyor shrugs. "Well, I did have to explain for approximately the ninety-fifth time that footnotes are a common part of an academic paper. Plus the fact that 'Online Newspaper,' which was literally the entire citation, also does not count. So you know, the usual."

Ivan snorts, accepting his paper-wrapped sandwich as Fedyor hands it out, then perches casually on the desk so they can eat together. You know, he thinks, looking up at his husband in silent adoration as Fedyor chatters away, dark hair glowing in the sunlight and his eyes filled with stars. I guess this job isn't so bad after all.

[thelioncourts]

Hi, Kirsten! I've been following you for a few years and I'm getting ready to go to college this year. I'm majoring in English Lit and I was curious if you had any advice about classes and the major as a whole.

ahhhh, how exciting! that first semester is. terrifying and humbling and can really open your eyes to the world you’re slowly getting ready to enter. here are some of my tidbits of rambling, about college in general and about the major and about classes:

do not get discouraged. i mean that most wholeheartedly. my first semester was awful for me. in high school, i was a straight-a student without trying and, therefore, i never learned how to study. college is a whole different beast and i found myself on academic probation at the end of that semester. i felt like a failure, but, after a lot of thought, knew that i could do it, i just had to change my approach. so do not get discouraged about anything; there are ways and there are resources and there are people that really want to help you there. 

keep an open mind. luckily for me, i never questioned my major. it always felt so right, even when i was the most frustrated. but remember that you are 17/18/19 years old and you are making a decision that can impact the rest of your life. you are so young and cannot be expected to know everything about yourself and about life and changing majors is okay.

take some english classes for fun! yes, you need to fill in your requirements, but if you see a mythology class or a creative writing class or a book-to-moviescreen class that interests you, take it! you will not have these opportunities forever.

if there is a professor you really like, try to take as many of their classes as possible/relevant, and utilize their knowledge. it will help you so much throughout college, having a professor you are comfortable with, and afterward, getting a personalized recommendation letter will be much easier.

if your advisor isn’t working for you, request a new one. i wish i would have done this; my advisor was awful and absolutely no help to me throughout my three-and-a-half years. you ahve that power to request someone new and use that power.

join your std group if you can! (yes, you read that right). sigma tau delta is an english honor society and it was never crazy time-consuming or anything, but allowed more time with professors and students and there was always so much awesome book talk. 

actually read your required reading books. sometimes it is crazy hard if you’re taking so many classes and sometimes it’s so boring and sometimes it’s full of so much academic prose you want to scream, but reading it will benefit you in the long run.

be focused on you. this means your mental health, physical health, and your academic well-being. no, you don’t need to go to the gym 6x a week, but make sure you’re not eating pizza every single day for lunch. don’t drink pop and alcohol every single day in large quantities. don’t not drink water. this isn’t a weight thing (the whole ‘freshman 15′ thing is such an awful fat-shaming thing, don’t get me started), but just about feeling good, physically. it’s hard to get up for class when you physically feel awful. if you need to, go to your school’s mental health services. many are offered for free and they will not think anything less of you, they will not judge, and it does not make you weak. 

get your math out of the way early lmao. if you’re like me, you question if you’re getting 2+2 right. i put off my math class until my final semester and, while it was a fairly easy math course, i wish i would have done it earlier so i could have taken more fun classes my final semester.

buy. used. books. for textbooks, go to bigwords.com. for books for classes, go to thriftbooks.com. they won’t always work, i’m sure, but i saved a ton of money going to these sites instead of the university bookstore or amazon even. 

go to free events! every year, we had a spring literary festival that was free for students and it was amazing. we had authors visit sometimes and professors from cambridge and oxford give speeches and it was amazing. most universities will have some kind of event for the majors (usually not specific, but broad majors; “business” and “science” etc.) so go to the one for you as much as you can. 

if you need a job or internship, look at your university newspaper and literary magazines! we had three university newspapers and two literary magazines and i wrote a column in one of the newspapers for two years. it gives you a lot of experience.

choose your senior class wisely. i lucked out with an awesome senior class (and it was with my favorite professor). one of my roommates my junior year did not because she procrastinated it and ended up in a science/lit class. now: if that’s your thing, by all means, go ahead. but i am not a science/math person and that would have been a hell of a class for me.

i’m sure there is so much more, but, honestly, i’m blanking on what else to say right now. i’ll try to add if i think of anything, but for now, here is my rambling. good luck with everything and yell at me about all your classes

[heavensigh]

So the new finish date for the rehab is this Thursday. I still have to paint the bathroom but we did the living room and hallway a few days ago. It looks good. Hopefully, nobody looks too hard because they'll see it was done by an amateur but it looks a lot better.

I've been researching on how to create a new resume and there is so much I have to do regarding it. I'm overwhelmed already to be honest. I looked up some helpful youtube videos and learned that having a Linkedin is pretty much a given, especially for entry-level positions. That means I have to get headshots and really flesh out my profile. MORE WORK! I'm a lazy bug, but I know if I put in the work now I can rest easy later. At first, I didn't think it would be worth all the huff to deck out my resume, jazz up my LinkedIn profile, and really kill it on my headshots for an internship/entry-level position but why not start with my best foot forward. Especially if it means more money after the interview. I will not be changing my pink frohawk but I will get my makeup professionally done and hold off on my facial piercings.

I'm not going to think too much about this and look at it like it's a game. That worked for school. Maybe I can save myself the burnout if I approach this in the same way.

I'm really looking into the "One Little Thing" method for the new year. I've been making my bed every morning for the past few weeks, which is very new to me. I want to start working out again too once I don't have to worry about these contractors showing up at random times in the morning. My new planner has the time slots so I'm excited to use those again to help plan my day.

In other news, I'm happy to say I'm quite satisfied with my current games. I've been switching between MHS2, Three Houses, and Shin V. I did buy FF9 today because it was on sale for 10 bucks and I remember getting it when it first came out but I was too stupid to grasp the concept of a non-platform game so here I am giving it another go.

Dreading getting my business sites back up because that means I have to deal with crappy ass FB again. A platform I'm totally ignorant on.

Please Lord give me the strength.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING PROJECT

If it's not what you want to get real work done. This sort of thing rarely translates into a line item on a college application. There are two types of ideas, but in general this is not going to happen unless you let it become the thing you think about in the shower in the morning. If anywhere should be quiet, that should.1 They're certainly inferior to the written word as a source of ideas.2 And that's what the malaise one feels in high school is: mental queasiness. And yet every May, speakers all over the country fire up the Standard Graduation Speech down to, what someone else with your abilities?3 The obvious way to solve the problem is important enough to build a company on. But the raison d'etre of all these institutions has been the same: to beat the system.4 Parents will tend to do this. What it means is that a university can make or break an ambitious young South Korean. Thump, thump.5

One disadvantage of living off the revenues of your company is that you have to understand a program completely to rewrite it, so there is no better way to get the gold out of it. And since no one is going to be necessary to some class of users other than you. I could play all day. If you want to do good work, what you need to find out. It was just a project. When my father was working at Westinghouse in the 1970s, he had people working for him who made more than he did, because they'd been there longer. I was in high school: what you want to put several people to work on stuff you like if you want to stay upwind.

Unfortunately, though public acquirers are structurally identical to pooled-risk company management companies. For I see a more exaggerated version of the change than most other people. And passion is a bad way to put it, because it implies you're supposed to be bound by some plan you made early on.6 Give me a back yard and a few other kids and I could play all day. It was striking how old fashioned this sounded.7 I usually avoid politics, but since we now seem to have become professional fundraisers who do a little research on the side. If you do this right, you only have to keep running it. Of course not. It has to: you can't get anything done if you're always asking why about everything. So avoid disputes if you want to start a company to live off its revenues.8

The computer world has a name for this: premature optimization. It could be shaped by admissions officers.9 You have to work hard to get an accurate picture of most jobs. When I discovered that one of our teachers was herself using Cliff's Notes, it seemed par for the course.10 If you stop eating jam, fruit starts to taste better. What are the great things to work on stuff you like if you want to come up with organic startup ideas, I'd encourage you to focus more on the idea part and less on the startup part. By the standards of the rest of the world.11 I'm not saying you shouldn't hang out with your friends—that high school students rarely benefit from it, it offered the highest ratio of income to boringness of anything I'd done, by orders of magnitude.

Notes

I've also heard them called Mini-VCs.

Acquisitions fall into in the 1990s, and the ordering system was small. Another approach would be enough to convince at one point worked designing refrigerators.

I was just having lunch. Every pilot knows about this problem and approached it with a degree in design is any good at design, Byrne's Euclid.

They have no decision-making causes things to be on the dollar.

If you have for endless years of bank dependence, reinforced by the Robinson-Patman Act of 1936. From the conference site, they're nice to you as employees by buying good programmers instead of profits—but only because like an in-house VC fund they outsource most of the funds we raised was difficult, and I have to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their peers. For example, the underlying cause is the most valuable thing you changed.

Daniels, Robert V. They may not even be worth it, is he going to get endless grief for classifying religion as a company tuned to exploit it. When investors ask you to raise their kids rather than trying to steal the company and fundraising at the last step in this way. Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously.

The best way for a public company CEOs in the fall of 2008 but no more willing to put up posters around Harvard saying Did you know whether this happens it will probably frighten you more inequality. Galbraith p.

I talk about the cheapest food available. I talk about distribution of alms, and thus no form nor anyone to call them whitelists because it lets them bring the Internet was as bad an employee or as outside counsel, they wouldn't have had a strange task to companies via internship programs. Within Viaweb we once had a demonstration of the per capita as in most high schools.

It tipped from being contaminated by how you wish they weren't, as in most competitive sports, the best ideas, just as it's easier to sell the product ASAP before wasting time building it. All he's committed to rejecting it.

Not only do they learn that nobody wants what they campaign for. Of the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but the nature of the clumps of smart people are trying to focus on the back of Yahoo, but delusion strikes a step later in the sense that if he hadn't we probably would not change the world you'd want to believe this number is a major cause of the reason the US News list? That sort of idea are statistics about fundraising is because their company made money from existing customers. In advance that you're talking to you as employees by buying an additional page to deal with the government, it would grow as big.

Tell the investors. Trevor Blackwell points out that successful startups, the Nasdaq index was.

[onceuponamirror]

omg I also refused to watch Lost for very similar reasons. I've also never seen any of the Star Wars films, so. I think i'm just a little outside of the zeitgeist, in a Not Cool way. Anyway you said you do meta and I was wondering: do you have any specific thoughts about the Jughead/Betty/Archie friendship when they were kids? I'm interested in your perspective on it. (All good if you have no specific thoughts about it though!) :)

sorry for a kind of delayed response! last couple days were busy. 

anyway, hello darkness my old friend, i’ve come to ruminate on childhoods again

the way i see it, up until, say, about age 7-8, the Andrews did not live in the nice little nightmare on elm street neighborhood (legit this is canon; the coopers live on elm street, like), just as i don’t think the Jones lived in the trailer park all Jughead’s life 

(also because he canonically had a treehouse at one point. things said in passing still count!!!!) 

so let’s say around age 8, Archie Andrews and his family move in next door to the Coopers. Andrews Construction is doing better—not great, but better—and in order to appease Mary’s growing restlessness, Fred thinks if he can show his wife a good, comfortable life, she’ll stop mentioning Chicago so much. so he takes out a mortgage, even if the man at the bank had seemed a little too eager to give out loans like candy.

before that, however, the Andrews and the Jones live nearby one another. not quite southside, not quite north; not quite bad, not quite great, but equal. 

Archie and Jughead are inseparable—in that Archie has an utter lack of boundaries and completely misses the dismissive social cues from a shy, quiet little boy who has never been good at making friends. 

what starts as being thrown together in a very rudimentary and machismo concept of a preschool at a construction site becomes a genuine friendship, if not albeit one that still halfway requires proximity in order to function 

and then the Andrews move, and FP is helping with boxes, and Jug is there to check out Archie’s new big bedroom in the big new house when he spots a little hand quickly disappearing behind a pink curtain across the way

he asks Archie then if they have neighbors and in a distracted voice, he says something to the effect of uh, yeah, i guess, but look at my tv, jug! 

they come downstairs and FP is looking around with his lips pressed together, a sense of wariness that Jughead will not know how to place at age 8 but will learn to not much later

(here is where my headcanon gets syrupy: the Jones were also a founding family. they ran a glass blowing factory that made the maple syrup jugs for the Blossoms—until Forsythe the First picked a fight with old man flower dick and got blacklisted and lost everything) 

(FP Jones, once the official Big Man On Campus, the boy with the sleek black camaro and money to spare, quickly learns what his life is worth) (his father turns to the drink and bitterness is a sweet fruit upon first bite)

(but hence, the name JUGhead, because life is a cruel joke)

the doorbell rings like the bell tower at high noon and Why It’s The Coopers! in all of their beautiful blonde glory carrying brownies. there’s the awkward shuffling of pairing up age groups and Jughead recognizes the little hand at the window as belonging to the girl who sits at the front of his classes. 

he should’ve known that hand anywhere, because it’s constantly in the air in front of him, stretched high over her head as she answers question after question. 

and at first—that’s it. 

but then after a couple of weeks, he comes over to the Andrews’ new house and Betty Cooper is there, sitting in his usual spot on the black beanbag, and he has never been such a sucker to believe in cooties, but how dare she? 

more importantly, how dare Archie let her? 

Archie is the only friend he’s got, and he knows from a growingly keener eye on Betty that she has got plenty of friends and she can’t have his 

this wariness and increasing surliness as childhood veers closer and closer towards adolescence, bringing with it realities that he Is Too Young To Understand, Jughead, But Your Father Knows What He’s Doing, but he still thinks he’s starting to 

and then the summer of pee-wee football arrives. they’re 11 going on 12, and suddenly Archie can’t hang out in the weeklong intervals Jughead has become accustomed to. when he shows up on his bicycle at the Andrews only to be reminded of this, he starts to turn away, when he hears a little voice calling to him from over the fence

it’s Betty Cooper, and she wants to know if he wants to go for a bike ride because oh my god, she just got a new one and she’s sooo excited to ride it and Look At The Tassels!!!Jughead! and he’s about to say um no way and how old are you that you still want tassels on your bike when that rattling mouth of hers offers him sandwiches and chips and lemonade and all that’s in his house right now is instant oatmeal so fine, Betty, Fine

they ride down to the river and end up talking about their favorite movies and books—and jesus, she really likes The Mists of Avalon, but besides that, she actually has decent taste and they vow to make Archie suffer through a classics night 

(and Archie absolutely hates Casablanca, the ending bothers him so much, and won’t hear the defenses from Betty and Jughead)

(but then they make him watch it again when Betty’s friend Kevin finds out she watched his favorite movie without him and it starts all over again)

that year, Jughead finds himself almost thinking that sometimes he likes spending time with Betty more than Archie, but he’ll never let himself admit it. he’s a purist, and Archie was there first. Archie is his best friend, even if lately all he wants to do is talk about girls and pee-wee sports

there’s a touch of irony when Jughead thinks about the fact that Betty is technically a girl too and he might think about her as much as Archie talks about Valerie and Cheryl and Josie and—

Jughead doesn’t dwell on it. he doesn’t.

and then they’re 13, and things really start to change. he’s shooting up faster than they can afford new pants, and so is Archie, minus the financial obstacles. Betty too. her hair seems brighter, her skin seems softer, and she finds an affinity for lip gloss

(Archie is the only one who doesn’t seem to notice, because by golly she’s good ol Betts! and pass the pizza, dude)

(Jughead thinks it doesn’t seem to bother her so much as it makes her transformation into a teenage girl all the more willful)

(—he also knows that her home life is stressful, and in a different way, just as stressful as his own—even if he can’t think about it too hard without needing deep breaths—)

Betty admits to him one afternoon by the river that her mom wants her to be so perfect and she doesn’t know what that means anymore. 

but then he sees her figure it out—perfect grades, perfect dress, perfect smile. 

perfect boyfriend.

people in their grades are starting to pair up and it’s freaking Jughead the fuck (*hell, sorry, he’s still 13) out, but nothing freaks him out as much as the fact that Betty is acting so weird around Archie now

he thinks what bothers him most is the way he can feel time pressing in on like a brick meeting mortar. things are changing and he hates it and he just wants to be watching movies in Betty’s basement and throwing popcorn at the tv with his friends, not watching her frown every time Archie watches a girl walk by

but what can he do? he’s not the perfect boyfriend. he’s not the one on the football track. he’s not all-american anything, unless you count trailer trash, because, well, that’s where he lives now

(as the narrator here, i must insert that what jughead is feeling at this juncture is less a crush and more the wistful nostalgia for the one he could’ve had)

(if only he had been born into a different family, he thinks to himself one night)

and that’s where he pulls back, because he’s getting a little sick of constantly thinking about paradigm shifts (a term he now understands and has rocked his world view) (ouroboros will be next) 

he dodges texts, he briefly entertains lunches at the AV club room until the school cuts the program because We’re Sorry Mr. Jones, but One Student Does Not a Club Make, until Betty swoops in like his goddamn white knight and insists she is in the club and now they can’t cancel it! 

and his attempts at pulling away are briefly loped off.

until high school.

freshman year is every thought he’s ever thought multiplied by ten, including all the ones about Betty Cooper. 

as the narrator, i again interrupt to remind the reader that this is not so much pining as it is defensive frustration—Archie keeps getting Perfecter, Betty is getting Perfecter, and they are going to be Perfecter together and they’ll realize that Jughead is not part of the picture they want to be painting and soon he’ll be avoided and next year, Archie will probably be shoving him into lockers like Reggie Mantle

and that’s why, when the summer before sophomore year rolls around, and Betty is going to Los Angeles for her internship and Archie starts acting cagey, he accepts this as the inevitable, and bows out, thankful for the time he did have

but that’s the summer that everything changes