#rip to the entire higher education system actually

[heerthat]

Gain Higher Details About Top Testo Boosters

Testosterone is a vital sexual activity hormone the fact that retains men’s bodies and minds from summit performance. Sad to say, variety of the vital intercourse hormones start to decline in many men as early as grow older Twenty five. Thank goodness, with the appropriate testosterone boosters, you could get back to the force tiers, lean muscle, while focusing with the childhood.

Whether or not you’re taking walks along the supplementation church aisle at your community nutrition store or scrolling with social bookmarking, it’s clear to see there presently exists countless tablets out there that claim being healthy testosterone boosters. When it’s appealing to invest in inside the marketing statements and additionally glitzy providing, it’s necessary to figure out what a true testosterone booster is prior to making just about any buys.

Testosterone boosters really are vitamins and minerals that will help the system the natural way lift alteration in hormones. They typically consist of a comprehensive forensics education vitamins, minerals, and herbs such as fenugreek, panax ginseng, aspartic acid, and zinc who are thought to be maximize sexual libido and even excite producing top testo boosters chemistry. Different from steroids, that happen to be designed to get ripped and even boost sports functionality, least developed testosterone boosters don’t incorporate virtually any man-made testosterone and are regarded dependable to be played with just by nourishing grown ups anytime applied seeing that directed. People that really need to grasp best testosterone booster, they will likely visit here.

Wish wholesome testosterone point is vital for the both mental and physical well-being, it’s extremely important to realize indicators of low growth hormones like fatigue, problems sleeping, as well as smaller staying power. In the event you expertise a lot of these signs and symptoms, medical doctor . health practitioner to find out if a new testosterone booster fits your needs. If you decide to try to your testosterone booster, be equipped for your handmade jewelry to consider time for them to do its stuff. According to the health supplement with your man or women must have, begin to see a rise in sexual libido inside of three weeks. However, an entire rescue involving change might need several months. Individuals who really need to realize best testosterone booster, they are willing to click here.

It’s important too to view any name and decide on the testosterone booster with a high rate of success. You'll want to merely obtain supplements that have been tested for the purpose of wellbeing and even effectiveness with a third-party enterprise. Also, the business enterprise will need to provide a money-back confirm together with consumer support may be to fill out inquiries you could have.

Testosterone boosters really should be taken on consistently to achieve the ideal results. A good number of products found in various levels, to help you to choose one who suits your specific needs. Many natural supplements are more pricey as opposed to others, nonetheless it’s usually a good idea to compare and contrast costs and focus critiques previously getting. In the event that you’re inexpensively, search for a testosterone booster that promises weight special discounts to lower your bills. This is the easy way get the most deal and make certain that you really stick to any dietary supplement long enough to qualify to find actual end results. In the event the web surfers that website online, they could secure the specifics of testosterone benefits.

#Youtube

[moodboardsbysarah]

gonna tell yall a secret... I actually want to go to college and study biophysics / frequency / psychedelics, something along those lines, and later use my degree to become a teacher and enlarge people's lives. but I have lost all faith in the system. a long time ago. I was losing faith in the system since 2016 when I saw what a ripoff and brainwashing-people-into-debtslavery pipeline everything higher education is.

I was upset that college was being forced upon young kids who have no idea what they want to do, considering they've been in state-mandated day prisons (school) for the first 13 years of their life. I saw how this was only leading to a generation of confused, decadent adults who were basically groomed into their own slavery. they were groomed into racking up college debt under the guise of "figuring out who you wanna be uwu" and "exploring possibilities".

I had an idea that I will work and experience life and then return to college education later when I'm in my 30s or late 20s (I'm 23 this could still happen lol). now its 2023 almost and I'm like. I have a remote career and I'm ready to go to college and pay for it but

I am not paying that much fucking money when I don't even know if its worth it. getting a qualification that the state can take away when I refuse to take the vaccine or run my mouth.

I wonder if college will even exist by the time I'm graduated. with the direction the world is going in.

I get it yknow. there's always those paranoid people who think the world's gonna end but it doesn't. and a lot of us want the world to end so that the old corrupt structures fall down. I definitely do.

I guess if I go back to college... it would be entirely about the education and any extra work I obtain would be a bonus. I loathe college culture, I loathe the degenerates who aren't there to learn but to be idiot kids because its become a playground instead of a legitimate institution. I loathe how people are there to get a piece of paper that allows them to work in a system that rips them off and forces them to get vaccinated with poison, instead of to innovate society. I would study something to do with frequencies.

[impossibletruths]

I visited my parents last week and discovered my mom is a new bts fan and it was delightfully endearing

#me 🤝 my mom: getting into bts over the pandemic #we are Literally that one muster skit but anyway #she teaches and it's always so cute to see the stuff her students share with her #ok well it's like #40% so nice to see the stuff her students share with her the other 60% is weird entitled bullshit unfortunately #rip to the entire higher education system actually #herdy blerg #tbd #do Not reblog this I will kneecap you

[c-is-for-circinate]

Thinking today about viruses, allergies, oppression, and anti culture.

(under a cut because WHOOOPS this got long)

Racism is a virus. Homophobia, transphobia, sexism, antisemitism, ableism, etc etc etc, they are all viruses--a topic that many of us have learned a great deal about in the past year. They are ideas, yes, not literal physical diseases, but the analogy holds up. They are infectious, and often spread from person to person without anyone involved realizing they have it. They can sit latent for years, never showing up because the carrier never finds themselves in a situation where the issue comes up, only to flare up and take over when you least expect it. And they mutate, just like the flu, just like the common cold; they put on a new jacket every year and slide in undetected yet again, slip past our internal sensors and bury themselves in our brains until we go in and deal with them as best as we can.

One more thing we've learned about viruses this year is how we can fight them. The viruses of oppression are a little different because they tend to hurt the people around their carriers even more than the people they've infected (although let's talk about internalized anything-ism sometime), but in a lot of ways the attack is the same. You treat the symptoms even when you don't know how to cure the disease: we invest in respirators, antiviral treatments, hospitals; we create and sponsor programs to help those who've been hurt by various oppressions, we uplift our neighbors, we try to keep people safe from violences both big and small. You work to stop the spread: we wear our goddamn masks, we stay home when we can; we train ourselves not to say racist shit that might foster a culture of hate, we stop that guy in our office from making rape jokes, we make slurs unacceptable. You pay attention to your immune system: we seek medical attention when we experience symptoms, we get COVID tests, we talk to our doctors before the symptoms get deadly; we protest and we pay attention to the people who do, we take them seriously when they tell us that something is wrong.

You vaccinate. We train ourselves and our immune systems to recognize the thing that infects us, the thing that we fear. We try to teach our children about history, bit by little bit, on fragments of dead violence the same way we train our bodies on dead virus shells, so that someday they'll recognize the live disease when they see it. We learn about slavery and Jim Crow and the Holocaust. We tell kids bedtime stories about why hitting and bullying is bad, before we ever start teaching them the specific shapes that violence so often takes. As we get older, as we get stronger, we learn about the living stuff, all the new forms that same old virus has mutated into; we educate ourselves, we listen, we read. Just like vaccines, of course, there are anti-vaxxers and denialists shouting about how racism and sexism are already dead and they don't need any propoganda besides Fox News. Hell, just like anti-maskers, there are plenty of people screaming about how political correctness is ruining the world and they demand their right to spread their virus to anyone they can. Often these are the same people.

But we try. And make no mistake, we all of us are already infected, and just like a real virus, once you've caught it once it probably won't ever go away again--but we can prepare, and we can try to lessen the severity of our cases, and we can support our immune systems of activists and protesters and our own internal sense of this is wrong, and we can work, bit by bit, if not towards eradication (not yet, not in this world, but maybe someday in another), then at least towards control.

And then there's allergies.

An allergy is what happens when a human body's own immune system freaks out over an enemy that wasn't particularly harmful in the first place. All our immune defenses--those precious immune defenses, which work so hard to protect us against all those viral, deadly ideas--go screaming into high gear. All of that fear and fury and attack power gets brought to bear all at once, against a bit of pollen or bee venom or cat dander or peanuts, and your body is left itchy and runny-nosed and gasping--sometimes literally--as it tries to keep up. Allergies are miserable. Sometimes they're life-threatening. And the biggest danger isn't the foreign agent that triggers the allergic reaction; it's the immune system trying to fight it in the first place.

Which, yes, brings us to anti culture--but not JUST anti culture. It's a good example, a little internet-centric microcosm of the same force that drives progressives to tear bloody shreds out of moderate liberal politicians. Hell, it's the same force that enables both TERFs and the Capitol rioters. It's a combination of an immune system that points in the wrong direction, flagging the wrong thing as bad, terrifying, danger, NO, and a freaked-out response that can manifest as anything from mildly irritating to absolutely deadly.

To be clear, I am not by any means equating the scale or even the source of these things, any more than hayfever is the same as anaphylactic shock. Likewise, the sources are different. Sometimes, a disease can infect an immune system and point it in the wrong direction. (Terror of the other is the absolute cornerstone of white nationalism, and when that terror gets triggered by a harmless environmental condition like, god forbid, other people asking for rights, the allergy response can be deadly.) Other times, it's the other way around. Our internal immune systems, so well trained to protect ourselves and those around us from the insidious viral ravages of prejudice and oppression, start seeing traces of it everywhere.

And they freak out. And we suffer for it.

We talk a lot of well-deserved shit about TERFs, but it's useful to remember how much their nastiness feels to them like activism. Their immune system, trained and primed and sensitized over years of exposure to misogyny and sexism, catches the tiniest whiff of something that might seem at some point to have possibly been taken for male, and freaks out, because why is that trying to get into our system. Never mind that they're wrong. An immune system that flips out over penicillin is wrong, too. It's still trying to help, and it's still doing more harm than good trying it.

So bringing this back around to anti culture, which was absolutely where I started thinking about all of this this morning: anti culture, the terror of porn and the attempt by antis to protect themselves an other people from sexual content, is an immune response. It is a trained immune response, in people who have been taught and re-taught again and again that rape culture is a dangerous insidious virus that should be fought at all costs. And, right, there's more than a bit of 'the sexism virus infected this immune system and reprogrammed it to fight itself' involved here, but look, we are all of us infected with all of the viruses at least a little bit everywhere. If we tried to direct our immune systems to rip every last shred of -ism out of every last bit of us, we'd rip ourselves apart. Which is exactly the problem.

Porn, in and of itself, is natural. As natural as environmental pollen, and living near dogs and cats, and eating wheat or nuts or citrus fruit. It's even healthy, for a whole host of reasons that belong in another essay. And citric acid and nut-based proteins and whole grains are nutritious, and pets are physically and psychologically helpful, and being exposed to lots of different environmental substances as a child can actually help train your immune system in the first place. Porn can help us figure out what we like. It can help us figure out what we don't like. And while the processes that create it are sometimes unethical and awful, we don't condemn all dogs because puppy mills and dogfighting rings exist, even if we do have dog allergies.

What we see in anti culture is often a good-faith attempt on the part of antis to attack and subdue an environmental trigger that they read as dangerous. It's a panic attack over something that is by nature harmless or mildly harmful, blown out of proportion by the very instincts that are supposed to keep us safe. It's the response of an immune system that's been taught over years and years, by everyone from parents to school systems to the activists they look up to, that negative stimulus is to be feared, avoided, and fought. Of COURSE they're going to freak out.

And of course, early exposure to controlled amounts of allergens can help prevent later allergies from developing. Of course when kids are raised with abstinence-only education, sheltered from the very concept of sex, they're going to grow up allergic to it. (Of course they're going to try to protect other kids from the same, like worried mothers who refuse to let peanuts or wheat products or dirt near their precious babies, whose kids grow up with a whole suite of allergic triggers because their bodies never learned what was okay in the first place.) And no, that doesn't mean we hand pornography to ten-year-olds any more than we should give raw honey to an infant--but of course if our culture refuses to introduce kids to the fact that sex and desire and the inside of their own brain can be messy and silly and kinky and downright weird, we're going to have a higher rate of allergic reaction to the entire concept in adults.

I wish I had a better answer for what to do with understanding that this is what's going through so many people's brains. The best I have is a prescription for allergy-sufferers, who probably haven't read this far through this wordspew of an essay in the first place--but we all get a little hayfever once in a while, and we all sometimes run into content that makes us angry. So some thoughts on how to deal with metaphorical allergic reactions, inspired by the ways we deal with literal ones?

First: we recognize that what is happening is an allergy. The thing we're reacting to might be gross, or irritating, or even unpleasant, but the danger is not and never has been the thing itself. Whether it's triggering a response because of its similarity to an actively dangerous pathogen, or our immune system just doesn't like it, our aversion to one kind of story or another universally says more about us than about it. Luckily, we have a lot more control over our social responses than our biological ones!!! If vocal activism is our sociocultural immune system firing itself up to fight an infection that may or may not exist, then we get to tell our metaphorical white blood cells to stand down. We get to decide.

Second: we get some space. The funny thing about allergies is, while early exposure to allergens can help prevent them, re-exposing yourself to dangerous allergens after you've already developed a reaction to them can make them worse. Anaphylaxis is always more likely after someone's experienced it the first time. Repeated exposure to triggers, whether biological or psychological, can make the effects worse. So stop exposing yourself.

If something makes your throat itch every time you eat it, stop eating it. If something makes you mad every time you read it, stop reading it. Obviously this can be easier said than done in a world that's a lot worse about warning labels on stories than ingredients labels on foods, but that's why fic tags exist. And: sometimes, the croissant is delicious enough that we decide we're willing to suffer through the way the almonds make us feel, just this once. Sometimes the ship or the characterization or, hell, those other kinks that we really like are tasty enough that we'll put up with the trope we hate. We're allowed to do that. But we do it knowing there will be consequences, and we don't blame the baker when they hit.

We also don't have to blame ourselves. It sucks to be allergic to shellfish when all your friends are raving about the new seafood place. But that's not our fault any more than it's theirs.

Third: sometimes, if we need one, we go to the doctor. Or a therapist. Yes, really.

Not because there's anything really wrong with an aversion or even mild breakouts of hives, annoyance, and bitching in your friends' DMs--but it sure isn't pleasant, and sometimes your doctor might have a better solution than 'avoid it and take a Benadryl' that makes you feel a little better in the long run. And sometimes, it's not a mild breakout. Sometimes it's the kind of story that lingers with you for days, makes your skin crawl; sometimes your throat swells up and it gets hard to breathe. Sometimes we get angry enough about something we've read that we can't stand down our immune system, don't want to stop ourselves from writing that angry comment, that tumblr post, that abuse report to the mods for something that didn't actually break any rules. And that's dangerous, because when our immune response can flare out of control like that, we don't always know where and when it will happen next, and the risk of what we'll do if it happens gets way, way higher.

Sometimes it really is worth getting a second opinion. Sometimes you need somebody to tell you, "actually, it is not normal to get tingly and sweaty every time you eat potatoes." There are ways to train your brain and leash your white blood cells that I sure as heck am not expert enough to address. There are, it turns out, ways to feel better. There are ways to mitigate the damage your own well-meaning defense mechanisms might do to yourself or other people along the way.

And: we can take a deep breath when someone with an allergy to something we've baked, something we've written, something we like, is lashing out trying to protect themselves and everyone around them from something they've registered as a threat. Of course they're wrong. Yes, we told them there were tree nuts in the brownies ahead of time; yes, they chose to eat them anyway. But it can be worth reminding them and ourselves that there's a difference between "this thing is toxic" and "this harmless thing has driven my own system into a defensive response that sure makes it feel like I've been poisoned." And it can be worth reminding ourselves as well as them that sometimes, that difference can be really hard to spot.

#driveby meta attack #I guess #whoops I essay'ed #this was not meant to get this long #welp #anti discourse day

[theshipscloset]

Regarding the question about discrimination based on physical appearance, as a foreigner, I would love to hear your insights on as to why the USA has so much fatphobia when a large percentage of its population is actually overweight. I could see it happening in places like Korea or Japan where nearly everyone is thin (unless you fight Sumo), but I never understood why it happens so much in America.

Many many factors led America to where it is now with fatphobia and beauty culture, but this article does a fantastic jobs of summarizing key points in history that pushed us towards our present day fixations/misconceptions.  

Not mentioned in the article but still important factors:

-Way back in the day, being able to afford enough food to put on some extra weight was a sign of wealth and privilege and was therefore desirable. Now that we’re surrounded with food (especially the cheap, trashy kind) now more than any other point in history, it’s the opposite--having enough money to buy healthy food is a sign of wealth and privilege and is therefore desirable.

-We were fixated on thinness before fatness was the majority, but now that thinness is even more ‘rare’ it’s considered even more desirable and sought after. The fast food boom in the 80s and 90s was great for the beauty and diet industry--even more fat and “fat” people to shame into buying their products. The dwindling population of “thin” people has only put them on an even higher pedestal.  

-Our public health education sucks. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a health class requirement, you typically come out of that class knowing “veggies good, sugar bad” and “thin good, fat bad,” instead of, say, actual nutrition and health information. As a result, most Americans believe that almost any degree of “extra” weight is literally unhealthy. (And how most Americans define extra weight, btw, is through an outdated and debunked system called BMI that is utter bullshit.)

-We’ve deeply tied thinness to morality. If you’re thin you’re automatically assumed to be healthy, responsible, and generally taking care of yourself. You ‘put the effort’ into being fuckable your health. If you’re fat or even just have an inconsequential bit of padding, you must be lazy, lacking discipline, sloppy, and physically ill. (This is how the beauty and diet industry can capitalize on our feelings of shame.)

-We’re given the message dozens (if not hundreds) of times a day that thin = beautiful. All day, every day we’re shown thin bodies as examples of top tier beauty. Men get this messaging too, but it’s particularly heinous for women. The subtext we receive as a result is that if you’re fat, or even have a perfectly harmless extra bit of weight, you’re ugly, disgusting, and will never be desired.

-Alternate voices in beauty like the Body Positivity movement are constantly being ripped apart for any reason the public can think of in order to quash more realistic thinking (because realism often discards shame, and shame sells). It’s extremely difficult to put better ideas into the mainstream’s eye and be listened to before the person saying those ideas are hyper-scrutinized and “cancelled.” (In a couple of cases the criticism of a person has been warranted, but that’s used as an excuse to throw out their entire message even if the criticism had nothing to do with it.) So far I think Lizzo is the only body positive person to not get ousted or “discredited,” though she still gets plenty of fatphobia aimed at her.

Basically, it’s complicated. Anyone who tries to handwave the issue with “oh Americans are just shallow” is too ignorant to be listened to.

#TSC Asks #Beauty Issues #Fatphobia #Body Issues #Thank you for the ask anon #America is baffling to me and I live here #I can't even imagine how it looks from the outside #Anonymous

[everydayanth]

Academic Elitism: an institutional issue

Sorry for being so rant-y lately, but the elitism of university has been a problem for me from the exact moment I accepted my scholarship with a signature and a handshake in high school. (The scholarship was later revoked due to state up-fuckery, but that’s another story, and I was already in too deep by the time they told me).

My parent’s house was only an hour north, my younger sister had already claimed my room, but I was excited. I was in the furthest dorm building, because that’s where the scholarship kids went, it was like a poor kid diversity hall, every few doors was someone from a completely different background, but we were all poor except our Swedish RA, and there was an odd pride in that. We all had various scholarships: robotics, dance team, nerds like me, etc. (not the football or hockey athletes though, they had their own dorm next to the library for... reasons, lol).

But being the last hall, it wasn’t actually full, most of us had entire rooms to ourselves, often whole suites; our hall was co-ed, but rooms were only occupied at every-other, staggered down the corridor. Only the front two halls were used, the back two closed off for construction or codes or something. We had to hike up the hill for dining halls, which was fine until snowdays that shut the whole campus down (and I mean west Michigan ones, with 4+ feet of powder and ice underneath). I had an old computer my dad got me for graduation and I didn’t know it was old until my peers started calling it a dinosaur. I had to use the library computers to write and print papers, and most places I went, I ran into the other scholarship kids. We didn’t talk much, just a head bob here and there, awareness at our similarities and an annoyed spite at being thrown together this way. It was lonely for everyone.

I had a purple flip phone I’d gotten only that calendar year (2009) and was still learning to text with (abbreviations? instant messaging? what?). My roommate had come down from Alaska to live near her dad, we’d talked in the summer, but I never saw her. I moved my things in and her stuff was on her side, I texted her about going to turn in paperwork and when I came back, there was a note on my bed and all her things were gone, she couldn’t do it, had never been away from home for even a night. She left a few mismatched socks and a bag of junk pens that I resented for years. 

Social media was mostly a way to talk to people across campus and exchange homework and party times/locations. We posted over-edited photos of our food and still jogged with our mp3 players and ipods. But within two years, I had to trade in my computer three times and upgrade to a smartphone to keep up with the expectations of communication. Professors would cancel classes by emails an hour out, and if I was on campus, I simply didn’t get the message, running between classes with 19 credit hours and three jobs. Work would call in or cancel my appointments (tutoring) and I needed to be able to communicate at the rate of my peers, so though it wasn’t something we could easily afford, my parents let me get the smartphone and my dad helped me find computers that could keep up with writing papers and researching without having to go to the lab, which saved so much time. 

There was little understanding for my suffering. I didn’t have a car, I had to call my parents and organize a time to get home or take the train which was more expensive than waiting around on an empty campus. They were often things that even the wealthiest students had to deal with, but there were so much more of them for us, more stress, more problems, more solutions, more consequences, and in some ways, more determination.

I spent plenty of breaks holed up in my room, but when the swine flu/H1N1 outbreak happened, guess where they quarantined students?

In our hall. 

Not the back one that was closed. In the room attached to my suite. 

After half a semester alone, suddenly strangers shared my bathroom. I never saw them, I would just hear the formidable click of the bathroom lock followed by the shower. A week later I got a blue half-sheet note in my mailbox about quarantines. The other kids were as pissed off, as we watched kids escorted in with blue masks and were told to just get cleaning wipes from the front desk –they ran out in a week. 

We were the recyclable students, brought in to trade scholarships for university grade averages. Many of my friends were struggling with scholarship qualifications and gpas (which only encouraged my continual obsessive perfectionism and involvement). 

We were expendable. 

I didn’t understand the elitism then, or I did, but I’d twisted it in my head from years tossed between private and public schools. I was an invader, I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I wanted to be. I understood that I didn’t deserve it, that I had to work harder to stay. I completed Master’s coursework for my Bachelor’s degree, finishing two BA programs (anthropology and English: creative writing) and 2 minor programs in philosophy and world lit, lead several campus groups and volunteered with honor’s societies. I spent hours on campus every day, running home just to go to one job or the other. I slept about four hours a night and I still romanticize it because I loved it. And I was good at it. It was a closed system, easy to infiltrate, easy to watch and observe and follow, to feel protected from the world, but there were always ways that I came up short. 

I didn’t have leggings or Northface fleeces or Ugg boots or name brand anything (except a pair of converse I got in 8th grade from my Babcia). I had old high school sweats and soccer shirts, hand-me-down clothes from sisters and cousins that mix-matched a style I thought was unique but I now understand screamed I don’t really belong here. Example: I went to propose an independent study to a professor I really admired and I panicked about what to wear. I still cringe at the memory, gahhhhhh, but I pulled on what I thought was a decent dress because it had no rips or stains or tears and though I’d picked it up from a clearance rack, it was the newest thing and therefore the best. But in retrospect, it was definitely a “party” dress, I grabbed a sweater, hoop earrings that had always been beautiful in my neighborhood, and heels I never wore otherwise, and presented my idea. This old professor was just like “um...did you dress up for me?” Clearly spooked by red flags and I realized my mistake. Saved by quick thinking I clarified “no, I have a presentation later,” and being a familiar face in the social sciences department, I let him assume I was dressed up as something. I just went in my sweats and t-shirts after that, got a haircut that tamed the wavy frizz and learned the importance of muted tones, cardigans, and flats.

I made a lot of interesting friends in the process, people who also stuck out from the American Academic culture: exchange students, older (non-traditional) students, rebels, and other poor kids. But that also meant that we all evolved during our time there, so friendship was quick and fleeting as we adapted or dropped out or remained oblivious, lost in our studies and dreams of changing the world or our lives. 

I had no idea how to approach the dining halls because I could only afford the bronze plan that was included with my room+board scholarship. I could enter the hall ten times per week, with four included passes to the after-hours carry-out (this was an upgrade from the free high school lunch I was coming from). I met other kids on this plan and their dorm rooms had fridges and microwaves and shelves of ramen and mac’n’cheese. Mine was sparse, my fridge had jugs of water from the filtered tap in the common room, and though it had a shared kitchenette, it always smelled bad or was being used and the nearest grocery store was Meijers which was a 15-20 minute drive from campus. I used so much energy dividing up my meals and figuring out how to sneak food from the hall for later or just learn to not eat, which is another story involving malnutrition, broken bones, and the American Healthcare System.

We like to summarize the college experience with fond struggles. I went back to my old high school to watch my younger sisters’ marching band competition that first year (it’s MI, and they were good). My old art teacher (not much older than we were but she felt so much older at the time, also her maiden name was Erickson and so was her fiance’s so she didn’t “change” her name and that blows my mind to this day), anyway, she stopped me to ask how school was going, and I was not prepared to be recognized in anyway and stammered out something like “oh, yeah, stressful. Fun, cool, yeah,” like the eloquent well-educated student I was. And she said, “oh, I loved it, don’t you love it? Everything’s so charming, and being poor? Oh man, it’s hard for a while, but it’s so good to go through.” 

I was dumbfounded at her reference to poverty as a thing to go through when you’re a student. I again had to remember that I was infiltrating places where people weren’t just marginally more well-off than I was, but far beyond, in a place where they couldn’t comprehend an alternative, couldn’t conceive of surviving poverty, of not having a reliable place to fall if you mess up, parents who couldn’t support you if things went wrong, who couldn’t save you from having to drop out if scholarships were canceled because the money just wasn’t there.

Talking with my parents never worked, and I recently found this video by The Financial Diet about Boomer shame in being poor, where many Millennials were united by it and it was #relatable. But all this is to say that there are so many layers and ways we develop in higher education that are often overlooked by the romantic nostalgia of the elite expectation. What we demand from education vs. what it offers us in return is rarely equal for students coming from poverty, and it starts with that first sacrifice of looking at money and deciding it has to be worth it to do something bigger, and that education is a necessary piece of that goal.

Now I live near Brown University, I’ve been to Harvard when we lived in Boston and recently took a trip to Yale with bold expectations. I am friends with several people who work at these places and I hear the same things: so many students are in a place where their obsessions are considered more important than the larger world, an argument that Shakespeare is a woman is more important to prove than the greater issues of sexism in society as a whole, while others are trained to look at data and the world as a pocketable fact-book, going to conferences and  week-long summits and then off to D.C. to make important decisions about places they’ve never been to, for people they’ve never met, about problems they’ve never experienced.  

It’s not new. It’s not romantic. It’s not nostalgic. It’s just sick. 

I was horrified at New Haven. I have read so many social science reports and papers and experiments and academic bullshit that has come from professors at Yale with a big badge of ivy-league validation. So much of this research was focused on homelessness and culture clash and socio-economics in America, as that was my “dissertation” that got me discounted master’s classes for my BA in Anthropology. Anyway, my point was that I thought this noble, proud university that put out so much research was going to be situated in something of a utopia, where their research is put into practice. Obviously, I was wrong, but I didn’t expect how wrong. (I had also started reading Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, so... there’s another thing).

My observations were validated by employees of ivy-league schools, who have watched over the past 2 decades as they grow more and more reclusive, hiding away from the public except through a few, probably well-intentioned, outstretched hands that do little to contribute to the world outside the university itself. These ivory towers are built by poaching: environments, observations, resources, research, and yeah, even students.

I love academia. I will sit in a library for hours just pulling down tomes (and putting them back in their proper locations like a dork) and drawing connections just for fun. But right now, I’m a bit bitter and spiteful and angry. 

When something like Coronavirus sneaks up on us, we have a tendency to throw the most expendable people under the bus as quickly as we can, and all I can think about is my shadow of a suite-mate sneezing and coughing with swine flu for two weeks, at how I refused to use my own bathroom and listened to my hall-mates’ advice about showering at the rec center a mile away as we all collectively locked our bathroom doors and were left there by the university to get sick without insurance to help with any foreseeable costs.

It’s not the same now, they’ve rebuilt the entire section of the campus, it’s odd to see it, I wonder where they put the expendable kids. Or maybe they don’t accept them anymore. I’ve worked in college admissions since then, and it is a scary industry of politics and preference and hidden quotas and image-agendas. Not all schools are industry monsters, but when you’re expendable, they sure do feel like it, whether you graduate summa cum laude with two degrees, six awards, and five tasseled ropes around your neck or not. 

I wish I had a positive message. I wish I was in a place to help people who feel expendable or like they can’t keep up with communications because of technology or language or network or environment. But I don’t have much right now. For all its posturing and linear progression, academia needs to create profit. All I can do is yell about this existing.

If you are feeling expandable in university, I can tell you you’re not alone. I can let you rant about all the small ways your peers don’t get it, whether its an accent they shit on or ceremonies you don’t have the right clothes for or textbooks you share with a friend to cut costs but then they hoard them. I can relate to you about guilt and that sneaking panic that fills you with anxiety at night as you question yourself and wonder if it’s worth it at all, if it’s necessary, if it’s okay to be expendable to follow something that feels bigger. I can validate your doubt and tell you that you’re not actually expendable, you’re a bridge. 

I’m sorry it still works like this. I wish we figured out how to change it by now, I wish I had secret shortcuts to tell you about, that there was more accountability or hope, but I’m not seeing it lately. I hope you do. <3

#academia #anthropology #sociology #university #culture #h1n1 #coronavirus #poverty #wealth gap #elitism

[canyouhearthelight]

The Miys, Ch. 102

Okay, trying to queue this again after it apparently got eaten along with chapter 101.

Y’all pray for me to whatever higher powers you believe in or can make up on the spot. Thanks.

Thanks for this chapter goes to the fabulous anon who sent me an ask about Jedis. I really, really hope you are seeing this chapter and I hope you like it. I also want to thank @baelpenrose​ as my resident Star Wars expert, who checked, double checked, and triple checked my writing to make sure everything was as entertaining/accurate as possible.

Before you all cringe at some comments Sophia makes, she is deliberately downplaying her knowledge of Star Wars in an attempt to see if she can give some of the other characters a twitchy eye.

After an extraordinarily bizarre situation regarding my former foe and who I assumed was his partner, I was profoundly relieved to find myself in a very boring, very normal situation a couple of weeks later. Even the regular family dinner was pretty normal: grilled cheese on a very good sourdough, with a tomato soup so garlicky that even I had no objections to it. I made a point to puree it, so Derek was very happy with the texture and I was happy with the flavor. Arthur shot me odd looks once in a while, but it was a happy, calm dinner.

And things were going… so well… I thought as Maverick dragged everyone into his quiet argument with Sam.

“Sam,” He stated emphatically as he dunked his sandwich and ripped a tomato-soaked piece from it. “We all want it to be real but… humans don’t exist outside of Earth and the Ark.”

“Yoda is not human,” Sam insisted loudly, grinning the entire time.

I choked on my soup. “Yoda? You two have been arguing Star Wars this whole time?”

“Maverick insists they are not real,” Sam enunciated carefully. When he got excited about a topic he loved, he had a tendency to rush everything and drop syllables, making his words nearly impossible to understand.

“They meaning Jedi?” Arthur asked, eyeballing the pile of sandwiches on the table. Finally he snagged his third half-sandwich and dunked it without ceremony. “As much as I wish they were real, I have my doubts.”

So did I. “Human beings who can use telepathy, telekinesis, and distance-empathy?” I scrunched my nose. “I think that’s a bit far-fetched.”

“But extraterrestrials exist,” Sam pointed out.

Conor nodded. “They do, obviously. Otherwise, Noah would be a bloody big figment of our imagination.” Shaking his head, he smiled. “If we didn’t make Santa real as children, I doubt we could make up someone like Noah, right?”

Sam only got more serious. “I was always taught that aliens don’t exist. My teachers told me that the only life off of Earth were bacteria. But, even if Else is bacteria, Noah isn’t. So, maybe other things we thought were pretend are real.”

The table was silent for a moment, shattered only by Derek dusting bread crumbs from his hands as ceremoniously and loudly as humanly possible. “Sam has a point,” he signed. “Fabricators exist, aliens exist.. Hell, telepathy exists - “

“Not telepathy,” Miys interjected from above.

“Neuro-pheremonal communication exists,” Derek finger-spelled, making a point of how cumbersome the term was in a way none of the rest of us really could. Seven minutes later, he took a slurp of soup and continued. “Unicorns exist, even if they are chubby. Why not Jedi?”

I opened my mouth to refute, then realized I couldn’t: we had the genetic code for both narwhals and rhinoceros in the gene bank. Good effing luck convincing anyone unicorns don’t exist, I guess. Instead, I grasped on my one last leg of logic. “But humans, like Luke Starkiller and Obi-whatsit Kenoshi don’t actually exist.”

Maverick looked absolutely revolted by something, which confused me. He liked tomato soup, and actually chose the cheese for the sandwiches himself. “Sophia. Have you even seen those movies?” He was absolutely aghast as he posed his question, and I suddenly understood what he was revolted by.

“Of course I did,” I sighed, rolling my eyes. “In college, in Intro to Adolescent Literature.”

Soup abruptly coated everything on the table as both Arthur and Conor spat violently at my clarification. Arthur scrubbed his chin the fastest, so had the honor of levelling his incredulity at me. “Sophia Reid. Do you mean to tell me that you have only seen Star Wars ONE TIME?”

I shook my head, confused. “No. I’ve seen all three.”

“ELEVEN,” Sam corrected me loudly. “There are eleven movies.”

“Please, please tell me you at least saw Rogue One,” Maverick begged. “You may not have known it was a Star Wars movie?”

“Is that the one where the robot hits the guy and says he has another fresh one?” I asked carefully.

Maverick nodded. Arthur, however, looked like he was about to start breathing fire. “I am going to force you to consume every bit of Star Wars media worth consuming if I have to get Charly and Derek to program the audio versions to play in every room you enter.”

“I can do that,” Derek signed, unhelpfully.

Arthur just nodded. “See? I can make this happen. Your quarters will feel like Hoth, all digital communications will sound like C-3PO, and many Bothans will die before your datapad functions.”

Alarmingly, Miys interjected. “Wisdom, Bothans are an endangered species. Please do not encourage Educator Farro to commit atrocities.”

I was still gasping in confusion when Arthur recovered from his choking. “Oh shit. Bothans are real? They were a very back-stabby race of dog-type people who fought against fascists in Terran media. I thought, at least. I wouldn’t actually kill a real one… I am far more high functioning of a sociopath than that, thank you.”

“Noah,” I choked out. “Are you serious? Are Bothans real?”

“Affirmative,” they responded, setting off an entirely new round of choking and sputtering. I would need to have something done about my floors if this kept up. “And while they do resemble Terran canines on a very superficial level, they are genetically more closely related to a Terran fern.”

Arthur looked like his heart had been ripped out of his chest. “That is the least back-stabbing and least threatening plant I can possibly think of.”

Conor, not to be outdone, was still curious. “Boston or Fiddlehead?”

“Asparagus fern, Human Conor,” was the reply that set off a thousand coughs.

Sam recovered first. “That does not mean Jedi don’t exist,” he insisted.

“Of course Jedi exist,” Miys answered in a tone that was as close to being confused as I had ever heard.

Almost immediately, Arthur, Maverick, and Sam started cheering and high-fiving. Conor looked confused, while I spat my soup out again.

“WHAT?” I choked out between attempts at keeping tomatoes and garlic out of my lungs.

“They are as real as any member of any other Terran religion.”

Silence ruled the room for a split second, broken first by Arthur throwing his fork in the air behind him.  Like a signal, it led to Sam and Maverick dropping their head to their forearms with a groan.

I managed to recover enough to slide my food away, lest I risk death over an absurd conversation. “Are there anything like Jedi in the known galaxy?” I asked, receiving a thumbs up from Arthur, who was still trying not to choke on his soup.

“Only in small measures.”

That seemed like the magic phrase to snap Arthur out of whatever coughing fit he was having. “Are there any species in the galaxy that have Jedi abilities?”

“You will need to be more specific.”

Conor, laughter out of his system, joined gamely. “Is there anything that can move physical objects without touching them directly?” he started.

“Several species can,” Miys conceded. “Those who only experience what you consider ‘sight’ as changes in air currents can, in fifty-four percent of cases so far, also change the air currents in a sufficient way as to move physical objects.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “They can stare at something hard enough to move it?”

“Wisdom, if I experienced physical pain, I am certain that your oversimplification just now would have caused such a sensation.”

Without rebutting, I waved for Miys to continue and ignored the laughter caused by the comment.

“Similarly, there are species more limited than Hujylsogox, who can perceive the physical world strictly through sound,” they continued. “In such cases, it is not uncommon for these species to also alter their surroundings by vibrating physical objects at a frequency that causes them to move within physical space.” A brief pause before, “And no, Wisdom, that does not mean they scream at objects until such objects move. I would also like to point out, Educator Farro, that the same species can cause internal organs to vibrate as a sufficient frequency as to cut off air flow.”

“Force choke is real,” Arthur whisper-shouted, mildly horrified. Clearing his throat, he spoke more clearly for his next question. “What about ‘there is a disturbance in the Force, as if many voices cried out’ etc?”

Miys buzzed thoughtfully for a moment before replying more clearly. “There are number of species who are able to perceive and interpret with great accuracy any changes in interstellar radiation, no matter how small. Should, say, a star go nova or collapse into a black hole, they are very reliable in providing information to cartographers. Should such a species state with certainty that a planet ceased to exist, I would need to see the planet from orbit in order to disbelieve them.”

Maverick let loose a low whistle, but it was Sam who spoke next. “But what about living beings, on an individual level. I know you can do that, but can any other species?”

“It is, perhaps, the most common trait in the known galaxy,” Miys admitted. “Even humans can do this, to a degree, although you tend to ignore it against all logic.”

“Okay. What about force lightning, though?”

I actually started to respond to that, having an answer finally, but Miys beat me to the draw. “Species who communicate through electrical currents are more numerous in the galaxy than those who can see. In the same way, they need to be able to manipulate such currents. Their young are frequently sequestered on their home worlds in order to prevent electrocution of species whose neural organs can be disrupted by uncontrolled communication. The same species are capable of using those same currents to increase their own synaptic response and reflexes.”

I almost wanted to laugh at Maverick’s face. He looked frustrated and ashamed in a way that I could not figure out. Maybe because these abilities existed, but not in humans? Regardless, his tone was frustrated when he asked his next question. “What about force ghosts? Please tell me those are real?”

“Very much so,” Miys confirmed. “Though likely not in the way you think. What you consider ‘Force Ghosts’ are, in the galaxy as it is, the result of technological advancement combined with spiritual beliefs.” A few groans surrounded the table, but Maverick perked up slightly. “Many species believe, as a result of their evolution, that their predecessors’ life energy persists after death. In these cultures, it is so common as to be unremarkable for a person to have a synaptic recording chip installed shortly after birth, to record their entire lives. They, then, pass their chip on to their successor in  position.” Wait a minute… I thought, but Miys continued before I could put everything together. “In such circumstances, many species’s neural organs will manifest a… personality, separate from the original, in order to preserve mental stability. Such manifestations are very similar to what Terran media considers a ‘Force ghost’.”

“Hang on,” I ventured, holding my hand up emphatically to cut off any other questions from the table. “That. Stop there.” Taking a deep breath, I thought back through everything I had read in the past. “I thought the idea of deliberately having multiple, distinct identities was… a story, honestly.”

“Even in your own past, it was discovered that the human brain can host two distinct personalities with no difficulty, Wisdom,” Miys admonished. “These species, however, are uniquely adapted so that, along with the memory implant, they suffer no actual combination or confusion of experiences. What their ancestor experienced is their ancestor’s memory, and what the person experiences is the person's memory. A person cannot overwrite an ancestral core. Only speak to it.”

“Can humans do that?” Sam asked, dazed in wonder at this new revelation.

“Not yet,” Miys responded. “But I do insist on the word ‘yet’, as you were never meant to do many of the things you do now.”

<< Prev   Masterlist  Next >>

#the miys #humans are space orcs #humans are weird #found family #original writing #earth is space australia #hfy #humans are awesome #aliens #apocalypse #science fiction #sci fi #original sci fi #original science fiction #my writing