#i have always felt that i’m really mediocre as a grad student

[jmlascar]

a story of overcoming imposter syndrome

(Or rather, taming it. This shit never fully goes away.)

In 2019-2021, I was doing a Master of Science far away from home. And any time I attended a meeting with my supervisor (a very kind man who loved to chit-chat), I was terrified. 

Basically, I had an imposter syndrome the size of a house. It ate me alive.

My anxiety had gotten so bad I lived with a permanent stomach ache, and those meetings were the bane of my existence. He never criticised me, but I imagined he thought me his worst student ever, and was in deep regret over hiring me.  I was my own harshest critic. In my eyes, the work I was doing was mediocre. Worse, I didn’t even know how to approach becoming better. I felt stupid, and genuinely considered leaving STEM altogether. 

I did try to leave STEM, gave it a good go, actually, had a few existential crises and brand new life-plans, but the universe must have wanted me to stay on this track cause there was always *something* in the way. Brexit, a missed deadline, a paperwork problem. I got accepted to two different non-STEM programs before something outside of my control said “nope”, which at the time felt crushing. It was horribly frustrating. Many tears were shed.

In all that frustration I figured, you know what, let’s give STEM one last chance. Let me take that imposter syndrome seriously, and say: Alright. I’m not good enough. So let me become good enough. And if I give it my best shot and I’m still unhappy, fuck it, I’ll leave. I’ll become an artist or a philosopher, and I’ll never look at a goddamn ssh terminal again. 

So, in good Jules fashion, I applied to a program I was unqualified for. That one is not imposter syndrome speaking; it was a maths grad program in statistics, and I hadn’t done a proper stats course since highschool. But that lack was a big part of why I’d felt so out of my depth in my Astrophysics MSc, that, and my shoddy programming skills, which the new program also offered. So, I applied.

During the interview, I managed to sound extremely enthusiastic and confident in my abilities to pick it up as we went (that’s one thing imposter syndrome teaches you! you become an expert at bullshitting), and so, though the jury told me I’d have to work hard, they took me on. 

It was hard. It was really hard, I’ve barely made any art this past year because of all the work, but I pushed on. Gradually, in fits and starts, I wasn’t feeling like such a fraud anymore. I didn’t care about grades beyond passing: only about learning, about what I could use the knowledge for, and that made all the difference for my self-esteem. 

In the end, what was supposed to be a means to an end, a last-ditch attempt at becoming an astrophysicists, became a new passion. Cause it turns out that actually, I fucking love maths? (Specifically, maths for image processing.)  So I took an internship in that, and I loved it. 

I’ve known I wanted to do a PhD since I knew what a PhD was, but for the first time, I could picture myself doing it. Having the confidence to explore new avenues. Having the skill to implement them. 

Getting funding for that PhD was like my anxiety’s last hurrah, but even then, facing an unkind jury with my whole future in their hands, it never got as bad as the years before, because I knew I had it in me, that I’d done everything I could, and if they refused anyway, it wouldn’t be my fault. Isn’t that a thought?

And I got it! A PhD in maths applied to astro imagery. This has been my first week. It still doesn’t feel quite real. 

To finish, a couple weeks ago I had to present my internship report for that stats program, essentially the last judging to get the diploma. And well, while I thought I’d become confident, it became clear that my perception of my work was still entirely too harsh — they told me I’d done “so much work” and gave me an excellent grade, while I’d felt i hadn’t done enough and was worried they’d say as much. 

So, I guess I’ll always be hard on myself. No avoiding that, I’m built that way now. A lot of us are, especially in STEM, especially women. But if we can channel that feeling into something positive, into motivation to work and improve instead of flagellating ourselves for being a flawed human being? I reckon we’ll be okay. 

#not pictured: a year of therapy in the middle of all that lol #idk if anyone will read this congrats if you did?? I just wanted to put that out there #some days I like treating tumblr like an actual blogging platform #but yeah... it's been a crazy time and I'm so proud of myself for pushing through #grad school adventures #stem major #astrophysics #women in stem

[elesssar]

don’t get to progress to the next stage/get hired for a job yet again. which is fine. but i feel really really bad about myself :))))))))

#i have always felt that i’m really mediocre as a grad student #and i’m mediocre as an employee and mediocre as a person #and no is going to hire me and my mum will be on my case every single day #wanting to know why i’m not writing journal articles and not applying for jobs #and why i’m not working all day every day #and i feel so at a loose end i’m BORED i want a job #but the longer i Don’t have a job the more i feel like #actually i am stupid and mediocre and useless and unemployable #and my degrees aren’t worth anything and i don’t know why i bother #i also feel angry that i get my confidence knocked so hard every time i get rejected #but everyone else in my cohort seems smarter and better than me #i don’t know what’s wrong with me :((( #i don’t like whining for attention in the group chat so tumblr post it is #also like why can’t i fucking even. write some stories whilst i wait #or do journal articles #why can’t i just be better and smarter #sigh. #beth vs life

[squeakadeeks]

sad posting on tumblr like its 2015 because CHA BOY has a lot on their mind and nowhere to really put it

this past year has been like “nice identity there....would be a shame if someone were to....completely dismantle it 👀” what i mean by that is I used to have so much pride and happiness from feeling like i was good at physics, cosplay, debate, and a handful of other things, but all at once in a big whoumph im realizing that i’m not actually that special? and this isnt imposter syndrome so much as its taking off the rose-tinted glasses 

when i applied to all my grad schools i thought i was a hot commodity in the produce isle if you know what i mean; “look at me i have an undergrad publication! Graduated top of my class! 2 years of research! national awards for my debate! letters of rec from great people!! im so cool baby!!!” then UH OH SISTERS i got flat out rejected from 5 out of the 7 schools I applied to. at first i was thinking there was some big conspiracy going on, but when i went to these open houses and started speaking with the other admitted students I realized Holy Shit my portfolio was basic garden variety, and if anything I shouldnt have even made the cut in the two schools i did get into. I went to a tiny, non-prestigious program, usually took 2 classes a quarter, didnt do any conferences or REU’s, and only had a few months of laboratory experience, none of it true lab research. People i was talking to had 3-4 publications, 4+ years of lab experimental research, strong coding/modeling backgrounds, went to big prestigious schools....and i just felt like an asshole. 

I went from feeling like “im the hot pink bitch named breakfast!!” to feeling like i should reject the two offers i was given because im not actually qualified for either of them. I’m sitting here trying to pick one but i feel overwhelmingly depressed while doing so bc i’m not sure I can actually succeed either place. A lot of people think im stupid, and im always like “oh yeah? well would a stupid person have a portfolio like THIS” when it turns out 1) yes. yes a stupid person could have a portfolio like that. and 2) they might have been onto something. i kinda overshot my means for the last few years and now i have to face the reality that i’m overpriced merchandise. 

this isnt self loathing or impostor syndrome but growing up and coming to terms with my manic early 20′s were not a true reflection of my sense of self. im not worthless, but i’m *worth less* than i thought. im trying to learn to accept and come to terms with mediocrity. im ok with the concept but i still have these moments where my old subconscious that used esteem to defend itself pops up and lashes out and i sink into fits of depression and shame. 

#catch me sad posting at 24 years of age on tumblr #at least now its on adult topics like #FUCK im not qualified for grad school

[emilyofjane]

Life Update (don’t worry, it’s a good one this time)

For those of you that have been following me for awhile, you might know that my personal life has been kinda...rough this year. But things have been going a lot better for me recently, and I have BIG news about my career path and my future as a whole.

But first, I need to provide some background:

As you all know, I’m a senior Biochemistry major in college, and I plan on graduating this December. Over the past year, however, I slowly began to realize that I’m...really not that good at my major. I’ve always kinda struggled in my science courses; I’ve never been able to make any higher than a B in any of my lectures, and the only labs that I earned an A in were my Capstone labs because my mentor is just really nice. When I started applying to grad school this past summer, I suddenly discovered that my major GPA (which is based only on my science courses and is separate from my overall GPA of 3.3) was well below 3.0 — too low to get accepted in any of the graduate programs I wanted to apply to.

The whole reason I became a Biochemistry major in the first place was to use it as a stepping-stone for my ultimate goal: to move on grad school and become a cancer researcher. So when I suddenly realized that I was guaranteed to be rejected from grad school no matter what, all of my plans for the future were suddenly turned upside-down. I felt like I had just wasted 4 1/2 years of my life working towards a degree that I didn’t even want; I was stuck in limbo with a mediocre undergraduate transcript that would never lead me to where I wanted to go in life. To make matters worse, I had taken out nearly $80K in student loans at this point, so I couldn’t just jump ship and switch majors, either. I was too far into my degree to turn back now, so I just felt stuck in a career path that I wasn’t even good at, let alone enjoyed.

My confidence took a nose dive after that, as did my motivation. It made me feel so incompetent to see everyone else breezing through my senior-level science courses while I struggled to get a C, that by the time my last semester started this fall, I sort of just...stopped trying. I didn’t see the point in putting in my best effort when I knew it was never going to be good enough anyway. I hit my lowest point in October, when I couldn’t even bring myself to log onto my Zoom lectures or pull up the slides to study. My grades plummeted beyond the point of salvaging, but when I finally broke down and told my mother about it, she refused to let me get a full medical withdrawal, basically forcing me to fail all of my classes and drop my already low GPA into oblivion. I truly felt like the world had set me up for failure, and that my entire future was ruined.

But then, as I was crying in bed and silently cursing out my mom for refusing to help me, I suddenly had an epiphany.

I’ve always loved to write and create, ever since I was a little kid. I remember writing stories in my notebooks in elementary school, which blossomed into writing short stories on Neopets, roleplaying and collab writing with my Deviantart mutuals in middle school, and eventually writing fanfiction on Tumblr and AO3. For the past few years, my catchphrase has always been “in a perfect world, I would’ve become a screenwriter instead of a scientist” because writing was my true passion, but my parents wanted me to pursue a practical career instead. You see, my parents are both business people, and their philosophy has always been “you have to make sacrifices to yourself and your family.” And I’ve always been a pretty smart kid — not a god-given genius like they thought I was when I was younger, but still very bright — and I’ve always thought that science was neat, particularly astronomy. That’s why I ultimately went into science instead of art; my parents convinced me that I could never make a living doing what I loved, and that I should become a scientist so I could support myself and my future family instead of “wasting my intelligence” on becoming a “starving artist.”

But if there’s one thing that they never took into account, it’s that I’m not like them. I’ve never really cared about money or material things in general — all I really need is food, caffeine, a roof over my head, a nice soft bed, my cat, and some wi-fi access, and I’m happy as a clam. I don’t care about going on regular vacations, or living in a fancy house with a pool in the back, or having a wardrobe full of cute and fancy clothes, or driving a nice car without bumps and scratches, or whatever the case may be; they never took into account that I don’t need any of that stuff to be happy, and I never have. And, even moreso, they never took into account that I’m not straight. They pushed the heteronormative narrative on me for so many years — that I was practically guaranteed to find my soulmate in college and get married and have kids or whatever — that I honestly believed them; it wasn’t until I actually got to college and discovered that I was aroace that I began to think otherwise. By my Junior year, I knew that I was never going to get married or have a family of my own, and frankly, I was perfectly okay with that. Besides, quarantine alone has been living proof that I’m perfectly content with living as a hermit by myself with my cat. Add these two factors together, and it becomes increasingly obvious that money is never going to be an issue with me; as long as I can pay the bills and support myself and my cat, that’s all I’ll ever need.

I realized all of this as I was sitting there in my bed, and it was at this point when I finally asked myself: did I really want to spend the rest of my life doing something that only made me miserable?

Once I realized this, something changed inside of me. I decided that I didn’t want to pursue science anymore, and I wanted to pursue my real dream of becoming a screenwriter in LA. And the very next morning, I marched straight to campus and met with every person I could think of to make it happen.

Now I’m planning to graduate with a Regents Bachelor of Arts in December, and I managed to drop all of those science courses I was failing in while keeping enough credits to maintain my student status. I haven’t reached the finish line yet — hell, I’ve literally just gotten started — but the important thing is that I got started. I finally feel like I have control over my own life again, and this is honestly the happiest and most optimistic I’ve felt about myself and my future in years.

Tl;dr I’ll always love and appreciate science, but I finally realize that I was never meant to be a scientist. My true calling is to be a writer, and that’s exactly what I’m going to be. I’m going to graduate with my Regents Bachelor of Arts this December, build up my resume and portfolio, save up enough money to move to California, and become a screenwriter for TV and movies in LA. It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to happen right away, but I’m not going to let that stop me from following my dreams — no, never again.

#ramblings #personal shit

[resonatingfern]

Just some more self-indulgent not serious at all writing for the coffee shop au @cousinslavellan and I have going. This time it’s Syn and Canach getting off to a rocky start.

-

The pleasant chime of the front door opening drew Synneva from the book in her lap. She sighed and shoved it aside, annoyed at the interruption. Her irritation only grew when she saw who walked in.

“Fucking spirits,” she whispered under her breath, cursing her bad luck.

“Was that a ‘good morning’ I heard?”  

A sylvari — short and complete with spiked skin to match his sharp personality — made his way to the counter. Even the way he walked, like he wasn’t even sure why he had stepped in here to begin with, sent a wave of annoyance through Synneva.      

“Good morning,” she replied, her voice cloyed thick with fake cordiality.

Of all the grad students who frequented Choya Cafe he was her least favorite. Even Faren was preferable, despite his obnoxious orders and impromptu lectures about subjects no one but him cared about. The sylvari — Canach, Synneva had learned after multiple deliberate misspellings and mangled pronunciations of his name — was a large deal worse, as far as customers went.

“And I’ve heard I’m the prickly one,” he said, drawing out his words as he stopped in front of Synneva. He rested his hands on the counter, a little tall for him, and looked up at her expectantly.    

“What do you want?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest. At least from here she could look down at him, which gave her a small bit of satisfaction.

“Decent service, to begin with.”

Synneva bit the inside of her lip to keep a sharp response, littered with choice curses, from escaping her mouth. She knew Elina wouldn’t fault her for it if Canach complained, but she had been walking a fine line lately with the manager of the cafe. It was probably best not to push her luck right now.

So instead of the many things she wanted to say to Canach, Synneva just smiled. Any warmth that would have normally reached her eyes refused to show, and she kept her body stiff and straight to emphasize her displeasure. She couldn’t out right refuse Canach, but she could do her best to make him regret coming in.

“Hmm,” she said, tilting her head to the side while she looked down at him. “Too bad for you I’m the only one here, then.”

“I suppose I’ll have to make due.” Canach kept her gaze, and not for the first time she felt a slight spark ignite in her chest. It was unwanted and yet another reason she couldn’t stand when he showed up. “I’ll have a cappuccino. Dry.”

“Coming right up,” she said, turning away with the words still on her lips. She didn’t want to keep looking at him; she didn’t want to feel his eyes boring into hers and have her body react in ways she very much didn’t want to acknowledge.

Even with her back turned she could feel Canach watching her, though. It was a prickling sensation on her neck, the small, soft hair at the base of her skull standing on end and alerting her like he was some type of danger. She did her best to ignore it as she made his drink, another stream of curses passing through her mind.

“I said dry.”

Canach’s voice broke through her mantra and she took a deep breath before turning around to stare at him.

“And that’s what I’m doing,” she said, holding a mug in one hand and the glass bottle of milk in the other. The pads of her fingers pressed into it, and she wondered for a moment if she was strong enough to break it with her bare hands.

“That’s too much milk,” Canach went on. He raised his brows and when he spoke next his voice was gratingly slow. “It’s a difficult concept to master, but milk is wet.”

Synneva bit the inside of her lip again as she gave Canach a closed mouth smile.

“Really? Please, tell me more about how to do my job.”

“With pleasure,” he started. “First of all —“

Slamming the milk bottle on the counter, Synneva leaned over it until her face was level with Canach’s. From here she could better see the small bristles that grew from his skin and slight difference in shades of green around his cheeks. Part of her registered it as somehow beautiful, but a stronger part was focused only on her foul mood.

“Do you want to come back here and make your own damn drink?”  

“No,” Canach answered easily, and had the nerve to smile at her. “I think I rather like watching you get worked up.”

“I swear to the Spirits, Canach,” she said, her voice rising above the ongoing music of the cafe and the quiet conversations of other, oblivious patrons.

Canach just watched her, his expression calm and unchanging. If he felt any threat from her getting close or the venom in her voice he didn’t show it. His indifference heated her blood, and she found herself wanting to do anything that would make his react.

“Tsk, careful,” he said a breath later, glancing down at the mug held in Synneva’s hand and noting the way the coffee inside had dripped down the edge when she leaned across the counter. “You’re going to burn yourself.”

Without another word, Synneva backed away with the mug and bottle and returned to making Canach’s drink. Her skin felt like it was burning under his watchful inspection, but she knew if she said anything further she would end up going too far. He knew too well how to push all her buttons, and had been doing so every chance he got. He must be telling the truth about enjoying it, she thought. That at least they had in common.

When she was finished remaking the drink to his standards she pushed it across the counter.

“Here’s your drink,” she said, all pretense of courtesy gone. “Do you need anything else?”

Canach reached for the mug and took a long sip. Synneva half expected him to find something else to fault, but instead he simply shook his head.

“Thank you,” he said. “For this perfectly mediocre cappuccino. And for the sparkling conversation, as always.”

Synneva watched him walk away and settle himself at a far table, seemingly pleased that he’d gotten the last word. That was fine. She would be here tomorrow too. And the next day. There were still plenty of opportunities for her to get under his skin the same why he did hers.

#oc: synneva #my writing #choya cafe au #just some fun writing to de-stress

[cabaretcal]

can we be seventeen?

It is finally time. Broadway!Michael. Heathers. Best friends to lovers. U know how we do. sorry I’m on mobile and can’t do the read more feature 😔

4k words

—

High School was the time of your life. You spent everyday after school with your best friend in the theatre. You two had many starring roles together, such as Tracy and Link in Hairspray, Sally Bowles and Cliff Bradshaw from Cabaret, and so many more. You two decided you both wanted to take on broadway. That being said, you bought an apartment together- a tiny one that is- in New York City. It was your 2nd month in New York. You loved it more than anything, but you were a starving artist. You had a few commercial roles and did some work in some short films, but you wanted to be on stage. You wanted people applauding you every night. You both wanted that.

But it’s hard to get on broadway. Broadway isn’t something easy to achieve.

The door to your apartment opened and interrupted your thoughts.

“Y/N! The restaurant was super busy today, so I think I got enough tip money to get the WiFi back on.” Michael walked through the door, car keys in hand, wearing a white button shirt with a black tie, along with black dress pants. Michael worked at a fancy Italian restaurant in the heart of New York City that only rich people can afford. He absolutely hated working there. It was far from his dream, but they had to pay the bills somehow. You worked at a coffee house yourself, and most of the time your money went towards bills and necessities only. And people hardly ever tip.

“Thank God! I’ve missed Netflix so much.” He laughed and you grinned, collapsing beside him on the couch. Michael was a great roommate. He always paid his share of everything, and he kept the living area clean. His room is another story, but at least you didn’t have to always see his room.

“I found our next audition! I forgot to tell you, when I was driving to work I saw that Heathers is currently being casted for broadway!”

You sighed, leaning your head on his shoulder, “I’m beginning to think we should’ve stayed home, it’s so hard to make it out here in New York…”

He scoffed, looking at you in your eyes, “Is my best friend, Y/N L/N, the one who forced me to audition for Oklahoma our freshman year, giving up? Come on now, that’s not the Y/N I know! Come on, auditions are tomorrow morning, it’s worth a shot.”

You pondered for a moment, thinking of the possibilities. This is what you came to New York for, after all. Maybe it was worth a shot.

“Fine, we’ll go. Just don’t get your hopes up…”

“I won’t, I promise. Now… I assume we’re having ramen again?”

“You know it.”

—

You sat beside Michael and looked around at who was at the audition. You could already tell that type casting would come into play, which made you nervous. You weren’t sure if you fit into any of these roles. What if you were wasting your time? You’d be lucky if you got to be a chorus member. Michael looked up from the paperwork as if he could sense how nervous you were.

“Relax, Y/N. You’ve been this way since High School! I remember auditions for Hairspray; you nearly had a panic attack the day of callbacks. And you rocked it! What are you scared of?”

“Failure, Michael.” You frowned and looked at him. He sighed, looking into your eyes.

“My best friend has never been a failure. Don’t even begin to think you’re a failure! Every good actor and actress struggled before succeeding.” He gave you a reassuring smile, and weight lifted off of your shoulders. Maybe he was right. In fact, he was right. You have to fall before you fly sometimes.

“Thank you, Michael.” You smiled as he smiled back at you. You wouldn’t wanna be struggling with anyone else.

A woman who seemed to be the director interrupted your thoughts, “Good morning everyone, welcome to the audition for Heathers. Shall we begin?” Everyone silently nodded, and the director cleared her throat, “the numbers my assistant gave to you when you walked in will now come into play… let’s start with #1. Come on up.”

You froze. You were #1. No pressure, right? You got up from your seat and walked up onto the stage, ready to perform the provided audition material. All of the girls were using audition material for the part of Veronica, the lead female part. No pressure.

You introduced yourself briefly and began, projecting with purpose, “My parents wanted to move me into high school out of the sixth grade, but we decided to chuck the idea because I’d have trouble making friends, blah, blah, blah. Now blah, blah, blah is all I ever do. I use my grand IQ to decide what color lip gloss to wear in the morning and how to hit three keggers before curfew… Betty Finn was a true friend and I sold her out for a bunch of Swatch dogs and Diet Coke heads. Killing Heather would be like offing the wicked witch of the west… wait east. West! God! I sound like a fucking psycho….Dear Diary: Heather told me she teaches people “real life.” She said, real life sucks losers dry. You want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly. I said, so, you teach people how to spread their wings and fly? She said, yes. I said, you’re beautiful.”

You emphasized certain things and changed tone when you felt it was needed. You wanted this so bad. But this wasn’t it! This was a musical, so you had to sing. You looked at the music provided for you and cued the piano player to begin playing. The song you were told to sing was “Fight For Me”. You sang each note with purpose. You wanted this more than anything. Before you knew it, you were done with your audition, and you sat back down in the audience beside Michael. He mouthed ‘good job’ to you, smiling. Before he knew it, it was his turn to audition.

The men auditioning read material for JD, the leading male part. You looked over what Michael had to perform, and the monologue was quite intense.

He cleared his throat and began with an intense tone of voice, “Can't believe you did it! I was teasing. I loved you! Sure, I was coming up here to kill you... First I was gonna try and get you back with my amazing petition. It's a shame you can't see what our fellow students really signed. Listen ‘We, students at Westerburg High will die. Today. Our buring bodies will be the ultimate protest to a society that degrades us. Fuck you all!’ It's not very subtle, but neither is blowing up a whole school, now is it? Talk about your suicide pacts, eh? When our school blows up tomorrow, it's gonna be the kind of thing that affects a whole generation! It'll be the Woodstock for the 80's! Damn it Veronica! We could have roasted marshmallows together!”

He was so talented. You would be damned if he didn’t get a role in this production. He then finished out his audition with the song “Meant To Be Yours”. He did amazing. He always put his all into his auditions. You were proud to be his friend. He walked off stage after he finished, and you both left.

—

As each day passed you absolutely could not stop thinking about callbacks. You were so anxious about whether you were gonna get one or not. You at least hoped Michael would get one so he could live out his dream if you couldn’t.

With each latte you made at work all that was on your mind was the possibility of getting a callback. At one point, you couldn’t even remember how to make an iced americano. They said they’d call you no matter what to let you know, which made you even more anxious. And everyday Michael came home from work all he talked about was callbacks and how bad he wanted this opportunity.

“I know you’ll make it, Michael. I mean come on, you’re extremely talented and you knocked that audition out of the park!”

“I did mediocre at best! You’re the one who’s gonna make it. You’re gonna be amazing in that cast. I’d rather you get it than me.”

You laid your head on his shoulder, looking up into his eyes, “You mean that, Mikey?”

“Would I lie to you? No. I wouldn’t. You’re amazing.”

—

You ran into Michael’s room after your shift at the coffee shop, shaking him awake, “I just got a callback during my shift! I get another audition tomorrow!”

“I got one too! While you were gone! We got callbacks!”

You two jumped up onto Michael’s bed and jumped in celebration. You were unbelievably happy.

“Well you know what that means… it’s a special occasion!” Michael ran to the kitchen and you followed behind him. He pulled out the boxed wine from the cabinet and got the plastic wine glasses out too.

The boxed wine was a tradition in your friendship. When you were casted in Hairspray sophomore year, he got his older friend to get it for him. It was cheap and lasted a while, so it was his number one choice. After high school graduation he brought it to your house after your grad party. And when you moved into the apartment, you had Dominos and boxed wine. It had a special place in your heart.

You put some wine in your cup and clinked your glass with his. Maybe it was finally time.

“Now let’s get wine drunk at 2 in the afternoon, shall we?” He smirked at you and you couldn’t help but laugh, knowing damn well he was a lightweight. It was gonna be a long day. Michael got up and connected his phone to the Bluetooth speaker, playing one of his playlists and taking your free hand in his.

“Michael what the hell are you doing?”

“Dancing! Duh!” He downed his wine glass and spun you around, laughing loudly.

You shook your head, putting down your glass and joining him, despite your lack of dance ability.

“You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only… how old are we again? Who knows!” Michael was so carefree, and seeing him have no care in the world always warmed your heart.

“Hey Michael?”

“Yeah Y/N?”

“I knew I moved to New York with the right person.

—

You and Michael woke up extremely early the next morning for callbacks. The callback went well in your opinion, and Michael seemed to feel good about his as well. But after your callback it was back to the minimum wage job with less than mediocre tips. You had to wait a whole week until you’d find out if the callback resulted in you getting a role. It was gonna be the longest week of your life. As everyday passed and you made countless lattes and iced coffees all you thought of was your callback. It invaded your mind at every second of the day. No callback had stressed you out as much as this one. This one wasn’t some high school production from back home. This could be your big break for crying out loud! This was the most stress you had ever felt in your life.

When the day finally came around you and Michael waited around the apartment with phone in hand all day. The phone call you two were about to get would decide your futures. You paced around the living room, unable to stand still. Finally, Michael’s phone was the first to ring. He immediately picked up, sitting on the couch while biting his nails nervously.

“Hello? Yes this is him… yes I would. Thanks so much… alright goodbye.” He hung up, a solemn look on his face. You felt like you already knew what he was gonna say.

He then broke out into a grin, hugging you, “You’re looking at broadways new Jason Dean!”

You smacked his chest, gasping, “how dare you worry me like that, Michael!” You laughed, returning his hug happily. Shortly after, your phone also rang.

You answered, with a shaky voice, “Hello? Yes this is she… okay, yes I would, okay… thank you, goodbye.”

You were shocked. You looked at Michael, eyes dilated and full of disbelief, “I got the part… I-I’m Veronica…”

“No way! I get to lead with my best friend? This is amazing! We did it!” He hugged you, lifting you off of the ground.

You felt larger than life. You finally got to live out your dream. You were absolutely thrilled.

—

The first rehearsal was mainly just line running and song singing without much blocking and a brief dance rehearsal. Broadway was quite a shell shock. Rehearsals were triple the length of high school rehearsals, and dances were taught by actual choreographers, not the schools dance team coach. It was extremely different. It worried you- what if you couldn’t handle it? As you read lines your mind was in a whirlwind, and Michael could tell.

The director told everyone to take a 15 minute break, and you immediately broke down into a rant of how stressed you were to Michael.

“What if I’m not good enough for this? I’ve gotten so many notes from the director on things to do differently and it’s only day 1! I just wanna be the best I can be, I’m not usually cast into this type of role! I’m never usually a cocky or sassy type of character, I’m not good enough for this-“

Michael interrupted you during your extremely long rant, “Y/N! You’re doing great, it’s literally the first day. Everyone’s getting a lot of notes. You are fine. You always get in your head in the first week of rehearsals. You’re so talented and you deserve this, just calm down. Come on, smell the flowers, blow out the candles. Smell the flowers, blow out the candles. You’ve got this! I wouldn’t wanna plot revenge with anybody else, Veronica.”

You smiled, wrapping your arms around him and hugging him tightly. He always knew what to say in these situations.

“You’re not the only one getting notes ya know? You always panic, it worries me.” You frowned, you never meant to worry him. It was just the way you were. You were always hypercritical of yourself, and it got worse as you got older. It wasn’t all your fault though.

“You know why, Michael. My parents never came to any of the shows… I fought to please them, thinking maybe they’d come one of the nights of the show. They never did. They ruined my self esteem.” At that point you were just venting, and you felt bad after the realization. You quickly stopped talking, walking back on stage keeping your eyes glued to the floor.

The director loudly interrupted your thoughts with a loud clap, “Okay everyone, we’re gonna do the number for Meant To Be Yours, so get on up here, Michael.”

Michael quickly got up on the stage, flipping through his script to the right page. You had a few lines before he started singing, so you took your place behind the “closet door”.

Michael cleared his throat, putting on his angsty evil teen voice, “Knock! Knock! Sorry for coming in through the window. Dreadful etiquette, I know!” This part seemed to be written just for him. He was so good at being the odd guy.

You got out of your thoughts, replying with your line to his remark through the closet door set piece, “Get out of my house!”

Michael scoffed, jiggling the door knob and continuing on with the scene, “Hiding in the closet? Come on, unlock the door! Come out and get dressed, you’re my date to the pep rally tonight!” He then began singing the song, yelling through the door at certain parts. You had to admit, it felt like he was actually your psychotic boyfriend. He really knew what he was doing.

You were interrupted by him singing/yelling the next part of the song, “Veronica! Open the—open the door, please Veronica, open the door…” he finished the song, letting out an exasperated breath.

“So, um, any notes? To make it better…”

The director had a look of shock on her face, but good shock though. She looked at her notepad, and then looked up, “This is an amazing start, you’re making great character decisions. I think when you sing through the door you could act more desperate for her to come out, maybe beat on the door, not just yell through it. Maybe we could give you a prop? Like a gun? We’ll see. Other than that, it’s really great. Good job.”

Michael nodded, thanking her and walking down the stairs of the stage.

“Alright, y/n! We’re gonna do the opening scene, the dear diary one. Do what you think is right and I’ll give notes, as per usual. Alright?”

You nodded, sitting at the plastic table that would soon be a lunch table once the actual set was set up.

You mimed a notebook in front of you, taking a deep breath, “September 1st, 1989. Dear Diary:

I believe I'm a good person. You know, I think that there's good in everyone, but—here we are! First day of senior year! And uh... I look around at these kids that I've known all my life and I ask myself—what happened?” This then transitioned to you singing Beautiful. You only got through half of the song due to how much blocking was needed for this number in particular.

The director read off of her notes, “Alright, Y/N, so all I really have is that I want you to be more confident. I gave you this part for a reason, I believe in you. Just breathe, okay?”

You nodded, thanking her and walking off stage. You grabbed your bag and left to the subway with Michael.

“I told you you were doing good! You just need to believe in yourself, ya dingus.” He ruffled your hair and you blushed, nodding slowly.

“Michael, I think you’re the most talented person I know.”

“Well then you obviously haven’t met yourself.”

—

After what felt like a billion rehearsals, which was really just 2 months of rehearsals, costume day finally came! The best and worst day. A lot of things can go wrong. But a lot of the time, costume day is great.

You had one costume for the whole show, which you were secretly grateful for. Quick changes just stressed you out. Your costume was a grey pleated skirt that hit your mid thigh, blue knee high socks, a white blouse, and a blue blazer to go over the blouse. The director wanted everyone to be used to performing in their costumes, so you’d be rehearsing with them for the next 2 weeks until opening night.

Michael wore all black attire. His costume included a black t shirt, a black trench coat, black jeans, and clunky black boots. In all honesty, he did not look approachable. But at the same time, he intrigued you even more. With each rehearsal, you were thinking about Michael a lot more than usual, and in a different way than usual.

Were you attracted to your best friend?

Oh god. This could not be happening.

You knew way too much about him. His mother practically adopted you as her own. It would be so awkward if your feelings shined through. Your mind was racing, everything made sense.

When he would cup your cheek in one of your scenes and would immediately blush, when he would call you nicknames in your scenes and you broke into a huge grin, it was because you liked him as more than a friend.

“Y/N! How do ya like my costume?” Michael did a twirl and bowed, and you couldn’t help but smile.

“Wow what a handsome teen psychopath you are, Michael.” He laughed, muttering a thank you.

“Um, you look nice in yours. Much less psycho looking, 10 out of 10.”

You laughed, twirling to show him the whole costume, “Why thank you, JD. How kind of you.”

He smiled at you, looking in your eyes for a little while.

He quickly got out of his trance, looking around awkwardly, “Um, well, let’s take our promotional photos then shall we?”

You nodded, following him to where the photographer was.

“We’re definitely getting drunk tonight, I need a breather.”

—

You and Michael were in the living room, playing Mario Kart on the Nintendo Switch whole drinking, you guessed it, boxed wine. You were both extremely drunk, laughing at every little thing.

“Did you seriously just hit me with a blue shell!?”

Michael laughed, “Sorry! I can't accept losing to you, princess.” His voice had a tinge of sarcasm, which was far from surprising.

You pouted, desperately trying to get your number one spot back. But to your defeat, Michael took your spot at the last minute and got first place.

“How dare you!”

He laughed as you tackled him on the couch, resulting in a slight spill of both of your glasses as the coffee table shook.

“Sorry babe, I won fair and square.” His tone had a slight bit of flirtiness to it. Blushing at the nickname, you got up and got yourself more to drink.

“Alright, I lost, what do you want your prize to be? I buy your lunch tomorrow? It’s done.”

“I don’t need anything… let’s just chill now, yeah?”

You nodded, sitting beside him on the couch and laying your head on his shoulder.

“Y/N, you know I wouldn’t wanna be anyone else’s costar, right?”

“Michael, you tell me that everyday.”

“Well, it’s true. God, I’m tired of pretending,” he sat up, looking you straight in the eyes, “I came with you to New York not just to pursue acting. I came here because I care about you more than anything. You make everyday a little better. I was in such a bad place before we met freshman year. I literally love you so much.”

“Yeah I love you too-“

“No Y/N! I’m in love with you! When we do our scenes together I can’t help but think about us being together! I can’t help but imagine me affectionately cupping your cheek and kissing you outside of the show. I can’t help that I actually think I’m meant to be yours! And no, this is not the alcohol talking. I’ve always felt this way. I felt this way when we were in every other show together! I want to shout from the rooftops that I love you!” He gripped your waist and kissed you deeply, pulling you onto his waist.

His kiss was intoxicating. You didn’t know how bad you wanted this. You finally realized that he was who you wanted all along.

“You may be set out to kill the whole school so we can be together, but I love you too, Michael.”

—

Opening night you were warming up in your dressing room when a knock came at your door. The stage manager gave you your 20 minute warning, while also handing you a large arrangement of roses.

“Who are these from? No one I know is coming to see me tonight…” You looked at the notecard that came with it, and it all made sense.

My dearest Veronica,

I’m glad I get to share the stage with raw talent tonight. And you I guess (Just kidding). Break a leg, and let’s fake some deaths tonight! I love you.

- JD

You never felt more in love.

—

Taglist!!

@i-calumhood @angelbabylu

#5 seconds of summer #5sos #5 seconds of summer imagine #michael clifford x reader #5sos michael #michael clifford blurb #michael clifford fic #michael clifford #michael clifford one shot #broadway!sos #5sos one shot #5sos fanfic #5sos imagine

[sapphicscholar]

A/N: Here are letters from the past few chapters as I’ve been traveling and couldn’t post

Chapter 85:

April 27, 2012, 11:54pm

Alex…

Look I get that youre trying to help and shit but just…you’re not ok? It’s cute or whatever that youre so convinced that I’m getting into these places and shit bt we’re not all you. We don’t all get to be doubkke doctors from fucking Stanford. Being smnart and fit and caring doenst mean shit wen you don’t know the right ppl/

I still love you but stopl.l k. Maggie

---

April 28, 2012, 10:03am

I feel like death. This is what death feels like. I am too old for this. I am also sorry. I…you were trying to help. And I know you were. It’s just…that’s not…if we were together in person this would’ve been easier. But you just kept going, and it’s not the way—it just made me feel worse. Because, yeah, maybe I should have gotten in. Maybe. But I didn’t. And knowing that…it doesn’t make me feel better, Alex. And knowing that I can’t get into a fucking cop academy when you’re off in extra fancy grad school getting an MD and a PhD at the same time…it really doesn’t feel like you can actually relate. And I know you said you’ve struggled with coursework and not getting results in your lab and stuff, but still. You’re at Stanford, Alex. You’re at Stanford, and you’re brilliant, and you’re going to be wildly successful, and more and more it’s feeling like I’m just sitting here proving Emily right—that this was the wrong track. That I should have gone to law school and done something that will look good on paper and impress the right people and make me good enough for people like you. I don’t know. But still. You don’t know those things. You couldn’t…I shouldn’t have expected you to know. I’m sorry for last night. I should have waited until this morning to reply to you. Just give me another day or two to start feeling like myself, okay?

Love,

Maggie

---

April 28, 2012, 11:17am

Alex… I just finally stumbled outside and found a big ass care package sitting on my doorstep. There are chocolates (that are a little melty from the sun but still delicious – I checked) and pastries and a brand new bottle of the wine I got us to share from Paris. And a note signed “the better Befana.” How…how in the world did you manage this? I really, really don’t deserve you.

---

Chapter 86

April 28, 2012, 9:58 am

Dear Maggie,

Please don't beat yourself up about it. I appreciate the apology, but I...my memory isn’t so short that I’ve forgotten how awful I was to you when I was inching my way out of the closest. It’s hard to be vulnerable, and it’s really easy to lash out when things that you thought you knew about yourself are coming under fire. I was trying to help...but I wasn't supporting you in the way you needed.

I’ve always been the person whose first instinct is to fix things that are broken. It's not an approach that works for all people or all situations. But for Kara, who’s been the most important person in my life for ages, it *is* what worked, and it was what she wanted, so I forgot about people like my old best friend from high school who used to get so angry when I’d offer solutions instead of just listening and commiserating and reminding her that she deserved better. I just...I always assumed that when people talked about something that was wrong it was my job to find a solution, but it’s not what everyone wants. Thank you for telling me that you needed something different. It didn't feel particularly good to get that first email, but I get it. I want to learn how to be the girlfriend you need. I want to support you because you deserve someone standing in your corner. It's tough, you know, not being able to see you or hold you, so I'm happy that you felt comfortable enough to tell me that what I was doing wasn't working for you. I want to be better because I want this—what we have together—to be a thing that works going forward.

It’s hard to admit because there are things in my life that I don’t—I can’t—I just don’t talk about, you know. There are portions of time where nothing has gone right, and I’ve felt like a failure. There are things I don’t get to talk about, but shit I carry around. And I think I...bristled at the idea that I couldn’t possibly relate because of them, even though it wasn’t like you’d have any reason to know. But in the sense you’re talking about in your emails, you're right. I don't know what some of these things feel like. My parents were scientists (Mom still is), and that made things...easier? Sure I've worked my ass off in school my whole life, and I’ve had to "make my own way" or whatever to get into this particular program, but I always knew I could, say, intern in so-and-so's lab because if my parents didn't know them they probably knew someone who did. It made things...not easy, but definitely easier. And I don’t...I wasn’t thinking about earlier in life. My life changed in high school, but I never had to worry about a lot of the things you did, and that—I imagine that makes a difference.

I do think I have some insight into doubting that you're on the right path because of someone else's expectations. I'm not going to lie, Maggie, you're taking a risk with this. But you'd be taking a risk pursuing a law degree, too. You'd be risking unhappiness and a sizable amount of debt for something someone else is telling you to want. And the two programs at the top of your list—DC and National City—they’re the ones I heard you speak about with so much passion. They’re the ones that are recognizing aliens as an important population that requires unique understanding. And you understand that and care about that, and it’s all so important, Maggie. It means a lot. And the part of me that wants to fix things wants to tell you that the no from Chicago is a sign that you were onto the right path with those other two cities because that’s where you’re gonna make the biggest impact and help the most people going forward. But I don’t know if that’s what you want to hear.

I don't know. I think we convince ourselves that if we don't have everything we want right now, we're absolutely never going to have it? And that's not true. Life is long, and we're still young. For every fresh-out-of-undergrad 22-year old in a masters or PhD program there's an older student who is taking classes to further their career or start a new one entirely. And those things can be good—not just a mediocre whatever thing, but an actual good. I don’t know. It matters to know something other than the one thing you’re doing because it helps you know that you didn’t just choose something because it sounded right or like the thing you should want. If we went by that logic, you might be miserable in law school, and I definitely wouldn’t have a girlfriend I was head over heels for.

In the interest of saving us from more miscommunications, can we Skype? It’s not as good as face-to-face, but I think it might help to at least see yours? And I want you to see how sincere I am when I tell you that you, Maggie Sawyer, are going to make a difference no matter what, that you’re going to change lives and the whole fucking world because you don’t carry that much passion and care and raw strength around and just let it hide. You’re incredible and you deserve to be told that every day for as long as you’ll let me say it—for as long as it takes until you believe it.

Love, Alex

Chapter 87

April 29, 2012, 12:06pm

Dear Alex,

Thanks again for the long Skype call last night. I’m sorry for crying as much as I did...that was mildly humiliating and definitely not something I’ve ever really done in front of someone else. So, uh, yeah, thanks for not laughing. And if we could never bring it up again, that’d be cool too. Anyway I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst cramps (at least now I have an excuse for half that crying, right?), and I’ve barely slept, and I’m totally out of groceries because I was supposed to go out yesterday or Friday but those days sort of went to shit as far as productivity, and I just want hot tea and a heating pad, and honestly I’d love to be cuddling with you, and maybe there’ll be a day in the future where that’s a reality. But for now I’m just gonna to reread your letters and take Advil and hope I can doze on and off or something. Maybe I’ll watch Pride and Prejudice and hope I dream of you.

Anyway I don’t know I just love you and I miss you a lot right now and wish you were here or I was there and we could be curled up together and stuff. But now I sound whiny and needy so I’m gonna go.

Love, Maggie

P.S. This was all supposed to be about seeing if we could push Skype from today to tomorrow because I think I might be miserable company...even more so than the past few days. But yeah let me know.

———

April 29, 2012, 7:01pm

Alex...

I found a very peppy special someone outside my door a few minutes ago clutching bag with a heating pad, mint tea, and enough chocolate to feed an army. I’m gonna let her take over because I think she wants to give you her explanation before I hit send.

Before I go though: 1. I promise I’m not going to tell anyone, so please don’t worry. I understand why some of these things aren’t secrets you can just have out in the open, and I think maybe I have a little more insight into those times you talked about feeling like you were failing or being asked to do so much more and not keeping up, even if you couldn’t speak about them. Carrying around something like that takes a lot of energy and work (physical and emotional), and I want you to know that I see it and appreciate all that you’ve surely done over the years without any recognition. You’re amazing, Alex. You’re one of the good ones, and there aren’t too many of them. 2. You’re both incredibly sweet and totally didn’t have to do this but I can finally breathe in deeply with the heat so I’m not gonna complain

Love you, Maggie

Um...hi Alex!

It’s a long story... Ok not really. It’s just, I’ve never gotten to see Maggie, you know? And I thought she’d be pretty happy about the care package, so I just wanted to see her reaction but then one of her neighbors saw me, and I got startled and made a noise and then Maggie saw me. Guess you had shown her my picture, huh? Cause she did not buy the “new neighbor” line. Anyway she’s even prettier in person than she was in the pictures on her Facebook! Also did you hear, she got into the DC police academy today! Isn’t that so great? You should be so proud!

Please don’t be mad, okay? I’m gonna hang out and chat with Maggie for a few minutes before I head back.

Love, Kara

———

April 29, 2012, 7:38pm

Hey Alex,

Kara mentioned that she told you about the DC news. I wasn’t keeping it from you, I promise. I only found out an hour or two before Kara got here, and I had kind of wanted to tell you over Skype. But I’m not mad at Kara or anything. She didn’t know. We’re having a nice conversation now about alien rights and experiences, and it’s reminding me of all the reasons why the National City and DC academies were so attractive to me in the first place. Guess what I’m saying is maybe you were right about that first rejection being a sign.

Skype tomorrow?

Love, Maggie

Chapter 88

April 29, 2012, 12:39 pm

Hi Maggie,

First of all, congratulations!! That’s amazing! I’m so glad that all the hard work you’ve done is paying off. From what you’ve told me, it sounds like the DC program would be a great fit. A selfish part of me is still holding out hope for National City, but I’m proud of you regardless. That’s really awesome, Mags. Honestly. (Plus, DC is still a shorter flight than Italy!)

Second of all, I’m…well, at the end of the day, I’m happy that you got to meet Kara—the real Kara. I wish I was just being paranoid, but this isn’t something we should discuss over email. It's…you are basically the only person outside of immediate family that knows. You should understand how dangerous it is—and not just for her (I know you get the dangerous realities for her out there—after all, it's what you want to do, right?), but it puts you at risk too. And I won’t see another person I love hurt because of it. So just…we’ll talk, but I need you to understand that secrecy here isn’t just a matter of consideration; it’s about safety and security.

I trust you. You’re dedicated to civil rights and care about the community. So please know that when I say this I’m saying it as Kara’s older sister and not as your girlfriend, but I will protect her at any costs.

I will want to talk about this a bit more during our Skype date tomorrow, but really I want to use the time to celebrate with you. This is a huge accomplishment. Also, I hope you’re feeling better! I know Kara probably gave you enough chocolate to last for days, but sometimes even chocolate isn't enough.

See you tomorrow! And congratulations again!

Love, Alex

(do make sure to check out this last one on AO3 as there are visual elements not included here)

#sanvers #letter fic #alex danvers #maggie sawyer #long distance relationship au #supergirl #fanfic #co-authored fic #ao3feed

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE EFFORT THAT GOES INTO LOOKING PRODUCTIVE IS NOT MERELY A USELESS METRIC, BUT POSITIVELY MISLEADING

Some investors want to know what your valuation is before they even talk to you about investing. It's more straightforward just to make the team, and if not it doesn't matter whether you fund them, because when everything else is collapsing around you, having just ten users who love you will keep you going in one direction if there weren't powerful forces pushing you in another.1 You may be wasting your time, but you're not idle. In big companies there's always going to be more politics, and less scope for individual decisions.2 Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. I knew intellectually, but didn't really grasp till it happened to us.3 It's a consequence of the tree, you're going to have to think about the upper limit is, we are clearly not meant to work in the pure, intellectual world of software, not deal with customers' mundane problems.4 Obviously one case where it would help to be rapacious is when growth depends on that. If these guys had thought they were starting companies, they might have been ok if he was content to limit himself to talking to the press, but what if he wanted to have a co-founder.

Ideally this meant getting a lot of people, and promoted from within based largely on seniority. The numbers on the Y axis will take care of itself. Comments have much more freedom. Like the time the power went off in Cambridge for about six hours, and we made the mistake of trying to start a new company using Lisp. Let your idea evolve. So orange usernames won't be back.5 You may be wasting your time. In nearly every startup that fails, the proximate cause is running out of room.

If these guys had thought they were starting companies, they might have been. Europeans didn't introduce formal civil service exams took years, as prep school does today. There are two major types of problems a site like Hacker News needs to avoid: bad stories and bad comments. The reason tablets are going to be more than a couple hours, and we made the mistake of trying to make credentials better. Eventually we settled on one millon, because Julian said no one would invest in a company with a valuation any lower. I don't know if I could only keep one.6 I've learned about dilution is that it's not that high a cost. That plus the inexperience card should work in most situations: sorry, we think you're great, but PG said startups shouldn't, and since they're the customer you can take their word for it. Probably because the product was a dog, or never seemed likely to be done, or both. We've now funded so many different types of investors, you should get all the users, and the latter is not simply a constant fraction of the probability that the company will die or at the very least people will have to be a hot deal—they can pretend they just got distracted and then restart the conversation as if they'd been anointed as the next Google?7 That depends.

Ideally you want between two and four founders. But maybe the older generation would laugh at me for saying that the way we work: a normal job may be as bad for us, why is it so common? What cram schools are, in effect, an annuity. But just two companies, Dropbox and Airbnb, account for about three quarters of it. I was saying. But by works I mean something more subtle than when they can get away with it. These are the only places I know that have the right kind of place for developing software. But how do you know it's not 70%?8 The record labels and movie studios used to distribute what they made like air shipped through tubes on a moon base, though.

We probably had 20 deals of various types fall through. It felt as if there was a bug, and then come back to work.9 Individual performance is hard to measure in large organizations, and the most common question people ask is how many employees you have. Some investors will try to seem more corporate, corporations will try to invest at a lower valuation.10 David Filo's title was Chief Yahoo, but he was proud that his unofficial title was Cheap Yahoo. Usually you want to sell, they take the meeting. When you start fundraising, your initial plans are almost certain to be wrong; be confident enough to tell them to get lost.11 This essay focuses on phase 2 fundraising consists of presenting a slide deck in person to collect a check.

For example, working for a big company is like high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated vegetable oil. This is already clear in cases like GPSes, music players, and cameras.12 Miraculously it all turned out ok. We had office chairs so cheap that the arms all fell off.13 Instead of sitting in your grubby apartment listening to users complain about bugs in your software is what will make you successful—making things and talking to users, we understood online commerce way better than anyone else. Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell a company run by marketing guys.14 I'm going to give you a termsheet.

Notes

You know what kind of intensity and dedication from programmers that they use; if there were about 60,000 sestertii e. No one seems to pass so slowly for them. There are titles between associate and partner, which is all about hitting outliers, are not the sense that if colleges want to start some vaguely benevolent business. But this is mainly due to the extent we see incumbents suppressing competitors via regulations or patent suits, we used to do better, and a few old professors in Palo Alto, but he turned them down.

17. No big deal.

Most of the growth is valuable, and for filters it's textual. Once the playing field is leveler politically, we'll see economic inequality in the Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and those are usually obvious, even if it's dismissed, it's a harder problem than Hall realizes. When a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this theory is that they use; if you have a single cause. As well as problems that have little to bring corporate bonds; a vogue for conglomerates in the Baskin-Robbins.

The nationalistic idea is bad. People who value their peace, or b to get good grades.

This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow. Xenophon Mem.

Why go to a car dealer. You have to deliver because otherwise competitors would take Abelson and Sussman's quote a step later in the right way. Microsoft than Netscape was.

Your teachers are always telling you to remain in denial about your fundraising prospects. What Is an Asset Price Bubble?

If a company he really liked, but getting rich, purely mercenary founders will seem dumb in 100 years ago, and it would annoy our competitor more if we couldn't decide between turning some investors away and selling more of it, and Fred Wilson to fund them. Which is precisely my point. At any given college.

Maybe that isn't what they'd like it takes a startup to succeed in business are likely to coincide with mathematicians' judgements. Now to people he knew. It was harder for you, however. So although it works on all the potential series A termsheet with a face-saving compromise.

This is the most useless investors are just not super thoughtful for the popular vote.

It's not simply a function of revenues, and it would take their customers. 66. Though most VCs are only locally accurate, because even if they make money, the assembly line, the same way a restaurant as a constituency.

To talk to mediocre ones. 4%, Macintosh 18.

Mozilla is open-source browser. If you freak out when people are immune to the writing teachers were transformed in situ into English professors. Sofbot.

What made Google Google is much more attractive to investors, is deliberately vague, we're going to use some bad word multiple times. With the good ones, and logic. Ironically, one variant of the optimism Europeans consider distinctly American is simply that it would do fairly well as good ones don't even want to impress are not in the US, it seems. The two are not written by the customs of the latter without also slowing the former depends a lot cheaper than business school, because despite some progress in the general manager of the funds we raised was difficult, and Smartleaf co-founder before making any predictions about the size of the grad students they admit each year are long shots.

Thanks to Geoff Ralston, Robert Morris, Joshua Reeves, Sam Altman, and Jackie McDonough for putting up with me.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #grades #customers #Dropbox #syrup #Comments #sup #school #cause #users #movie #Which #Hall #title #forces #one #today #problems #direction #Fee #tree #GMail #time #function #money #software

[kyunsies]

hi madch!! i'm doing ok - i Finally made a gifset today bc i felt like playing w colours - unfortunately not from my gif ideas list but it was a set for the secrets band ver video!!! (you might see it on your dash but idk 👀 + out of curiosity what are you working on)

i get what you mean abt IB/AP war flashbacks LMAOO it was really stressful for me, and in my final year of hs i realized how toxic some of the people were - some of them had huge egos/superiority complexes esp those at the top of the class (+ they weren't funny. at all hahaha) or were really entitled it was... yikes. first 2 years of hs is something called "pre-ib" and then last 2 years (grades 11-12) is the actual "ib diploma" program (we also had 2 semesters in an academic year so 4 semesters of hell and constant burnout). i didn't actually do the full diploma program,, i did certificate for my own sanity - for me i did 3 IB courses instead of the normal 6. and ofc i'll tell you when i'm in the mood to watch food vlogs <33

i think he'll post when he's enlisted too :)) esp after his training period. and you're right abt the civilian stuff, i heard he was gonna work a 9-5 office job for his enlistment lol. i think mbbs will be ok though :)) - 🌱

AHH angel u are back <3 hi !!!!! it's good to hear from you before tomorrow ;_____; i'm glad u were able to make a gifset baby !!! i haven't been giffing much lately bc my brain is was just laskfslfsdj this week but i have something lined up in the queue for tomorrow :') i miss giffing i cannot bear to NOT gif for too long i love it too much ...... also DSLKFJLSKJF i don’t really know if i want to give away what i’m working on but i’ll say this !!! i hope it helps mbb tumblr in some way 🥺

but omg yes WAR flashbacks !!!!! i can't believe i actually tortured myself with 6 ap classes throughout my whole time at high school .......... and i was always just a B student hhhhh i work hard for mediocre grads that's just my life ;____; i really feel you about the cut throat atmosphere tho !!! :( i went to an all girls catholic school so lskdjfskldfjk jesus christ u could probably imagine ;____; even with my 3.7 gpa (which i know it's nothing to boast about) i was still middle of my class :/ not even the top 3rd....... so AH i never want to think about high school ever again honestly :') !!!!!! my friends were so shitty to me ,,,,,, why was i friends with these ppl HHHH but anyways enough about high school I ACTUALLY JUST WATCHED a food vlog just now i think you would like these bc they're short and cute <3

and yes i have no doubt in my mind he will post !!!! i just hope mbb will be okay ahhh we just need to support him and them all well can <3

#asks #🌱 anon

[paumeranian]

Interview #9

Nurse interview 20/03/19

This interview was done via Instagram call as again due to time restrictions and transportation issues, I had to improvise. I interviewed my friend who is a nurse at Waitakere Hospital and luckily he’d brought his girlfriend along to the interview as she is a nurse also. This not only allowed me to have insights to compare and cluster, but turns out that it got them to know each other more too. The biggest thing that I got out of it was how patients think nurses just give prescription and that’s it. They don’t realise that a nurse’s job requires prioritising at the expense of patient’s time and feelings. They get burnt out a lot as it is a physically and mentally demanding job. Getting compliments from co-workers, bosses and patients help boost their morale and motivate them to keep doing their job and do it better.

Why did you pursue a career in nursing?

Jay

I’ve always wanted to be a doctor so I told myself to take nursing as my pre-med so when I get lazy and tired of studying I’ll still get a job

I also wanted to work overseas and I know how much nursing was in demand during those times and I reckon even today

I came from a family background of high morbidity because of some illness so I wanna make a difference and help

Kaye

I did pre-med but I didn’t like how you didn’t have much patient interaction, like Jay I thought that nursing would make a good stepping stone and I always felt that nurses would always make good doctors in the end

My mum is a nurse, she’s a go-to person in our family

I’m loving it and still doing it right now

I’ve been a nurse for 8 years

Jay

12 years for me

Do you both still have that end goal of becoming a doctor?

Jay

We want to but it’s not a priority at the moment

If someone’s gonna fund us

Kaye

It’s another 6 years of study

And 35k student loan

Can you tell me about how you feel at the end of each shift?

Kaye

We both work in ED it’s different, it also depends on what role I’m doing

I’m working part-time as a clinical coach

I orientate new grads and generally feel fulfilled that I did something

But when I’m not coaching I feel burnt out, when it’s short-staffed I feel like I didn’t do enough but most of the time it’s fulfilling

Jay

Been doing this job for more than a decade so everyday is different, can be mediocre like go to work, do routine stuff

As an ED nurse you never know what to expect

Generally the big problem would be man power and staffing issues

If it’s busy, you don’t have control over how many people come, you feel burnt out and even if you cry for help sometimes it’s not addressed

It’s reality though

Little things like getting compliments/commendations from patients and colleagues, it boosts your morale and makes your career not just a career but also your passion

Rewarding - something money can’t buy

Can you give me an example of a compliment you get?

Kaye

Some patients ask “Do you wanna marry me?”

Jay

Patient:

approached me, cried and was super thankful that I helped save her husband’s life - resuscitation but we have to control our emotions

never show emotions

Doctor

I received an email from my manager saying I did a good job

Patient’s ex who had multiple injuries, saying I made a difference in that patient’s life

Been following her, she’s now advocate for women’s rights

Kaye

Sometimes people are difficult but they’d randomly come up to us and give us a hug, makes us think “oh what? They were just rude to us before” but it’s really nice

Compliments from your manager: since it’s always busy sometimes you feel under appreciated but sometimes they give us coffee, chocolate, pizza

How does it make you feel getting these compliments?

Jay

It makes us want to do our jobs better, continue to help save people’s lives

What’s your favourite aspect of your job?

Kaye

Knowing that you’ll come out of work each day that you made a difference in someone’s live

Jay

For me it’s my manager, she’s the best manager I’ve ever had in my entire life

You never leave your job, you leave your boss

Do you think it makes a huge difference in the quality of work you do?

Jay

Absolutely, you feel appreciated and it’s the job satisfaction

My uni thesis was about job satisfaction of nurses in correlation with their turnover rates

It’s a fact that employees who are more appreciated tend to find it really difficult to leave their job

But people who are undervalued it’s easy for them to drop a job, no matter how many benefits you get - you’re gonna burn out at some point

I know that you guys handle a lot of patients at the same time. Can you tell me how you handle the stress of the job?

Kaye

Good workmates, friends outside work and keeping yourself fit and healthy

Good, healthy body and mind will help you cope with stress

Order: 1. Keep yourself healthy, you can’t look after others without keeping yourself well - mental and physical health, good social circle

Jay

Number one: prayers

I get strength from my faith and from praying

Number two: physical health, looking after yourself

Number three: Colleagues, I’ve always believed that it’s not about the workload but your workmates

If you’re not with the right people, it’s a mission to get through the job, makes it more difficult

How do you deal with difficult workmates?

Jay

She kills them with kindness but with me I just be myself

Joke around them, not pleasing them but

I’m enjoying myself, having fun doing my job

Compared to them, they’ll stress and are not happy doing the job

Kaye

Be nicer, if you have a difficult workmate and treat them nicer than you would then they’ll eventually give into your kindness

How do you deal with a patient who isn’t satisfied with your care?

Jay

You can only do so much, there will be rainy days, it will not always be a bountiful day

For both of us, we work with good passion and compassion

Compassion, commitment and competence - three C’s

If you give these to your patients you can’t go wrong cause no matter how hard you try you can’t please everyone

How do you deal with them face to face?

Jay

We have to be professional

We see them as someone who needs help

They’re in the hospital because something’s wrong and they need help

That’s the difference of our profession to others

For some people they can retaliate

But if we do anything like shout back, we’re in the wrong, and will be reprimanded at the expense of our lives and safety

Kaye

I ask them why they’re upset, what’s the matter

They say “my mum is unwell, the waiting time is too long, been calling the bell but no one’s answering”

Diffuse situation but if it doesn’t work I ask if there’s anything from our perspective we can do to make it easier

And if that’s not enough I’ll ask them if they want another nurse or if they want to speak to the manager

If they get violent then we have security guards

Jay

They just want someone to hear them out that’s it

It’s A LOT of listening

How does it make you feel?

Jay

Numb sometimes, KAYE agrees

You can’t give your all to one patient cause you have to save some [energy] for the next one

That’s the difference with us, some nurses might answer differently but as an ED nurse it can be exhausting

Some nurses become robots, ticking the box but not filling in the patient’s needs

Patients just want to be communicated to as humanely as possible, they wanna be treated like HUMANS

Like you can do all these tests, but have you REALLY TALKED to them?

They wanna be heard

Most of them have social issues

In general, do you think patients feel comfortable opening up to you?

Jay

In my experience, yes.

One example would be domestic violence, I get a lot of disclosures as we do family and social assessments as part of our jobs

It’s not easy to ask thought

I get multiple disclosures

They open up to me and I don’t know why *snickers*

Have you ever stopped them if you think it’s too much?

Jay

Yeah I just let them, but it takes our time, we have to tend to other clients

They get really comfortable that they can use that against us

It’s unfair to others to be super close to some patients

You have to be professional and neutral

Kaye

But be compassionate and kind at the same time. So it’s hard.

What’s one thing you feel anyone who isn’t a nurse doesn’t understand about your job?

Kaye

The amount of dedication and mind preparation it takes before coming to work

You don’t know what to expect, and they always expect the best out of you

You can’t make mistakes, it’s someone’s LIFE

Jay

You need to deal with behaviour and social issues as well as safety

People would just think our job is easy - you give medication that’s it

It’s not just that. Most of the time our morale is at stake

What does morale mean to you? - Psycho social wellbeing, your mental capacity in relation to behavioural capacity, interpersonal relationships

How important is it to you to build a relationship with a patient for the time that you’re caring for them as well as gain their trust?

Jay

Assessment: patient’s trust and rapport, breaking the barrier between you and the patient. If the patient trusts you, you can get more of the assessment and get what you’re looking for.

Diagnosis

Planning

Intervention

Evaluation

Kaye

Assessment is where you get subjective data

If they’re closed off they won’t give you much of their history = would limit the diagnosis, won’t be able to treat them as properly as you would if someone was open to you

I think it’s very important

Right from the beginning, introduce yourself, make them feel comfortable and safe

At the end of the day you’re being professional

Look after your patient as if you’re looking after your own family

Reflection: Man these are good questions

Jay

Did you write these questions? They’re clever, you poured your heart out I see

What’s the hardest part about being a nurse?

Jay

Lack of appreciation

Kaye

You can’t save everyone

I had a case recently, I was the only nurse in the area having 3 other rooms to look after

One room has someone giving birth, the other is dying and the third one has a sick child

Delegate and prioritise

Sensitivity with death but you can only do so much… the reality of it

Do you think being a nurse affects how you get treated as a patient?

Jay

I had chest pains, went to emergency

I wanna know what’s wrong with me cause it felt heavy

Went there, laid down, got connected to the monitor to get “lines”

It’s annoying as a nurse looking after someone who is also in a medical profession

Technical difficulties with the interview

Since we were talking via video chat, I had to think of a way to record the whole interview and I thought I would use my sister’s phone, stand it up to capture the screen on my phone to record both the video and audio of it all. Just over halfway through the interview, she ran out of storage so I resorted to screen recording through my own phone which ended up recording the video but completely left the audio out which I was told could be for call privacy purposes. So I had to try and recall what I can and took notes. 

[fitzonomy]

Dear Therapist.

Every Wednesday (except for the last Wednesday of the month), I write my therapist. I’ll post them here. I’ve been working with this therapist for three years, seeing her once a week. Recently, I decided I wanted to try to reduce my number of visits to once a month but I wanted check-ins. We agreed I could email her. Trigger warnings for everything under the fucking sun for these posts. If you don’t want to be sad, please click this link. Read more after the cut:

Isn't weird how I'm distressed that I didn't write you yesterday? I've sort of let everything fall apart after Wednesday last week. The climate at the office has completely fallen apart and I've given up on caring about it. For the rest of this week and next, my supervisor has outsourced me to every other office. Not that they have much to give me. So, I decided to just spend this week sitting around, getting paid by the hour to barely work and exist in an office that is a dumpster fire. Back when I was working horrible dishwasher job at the retirement community, Daft Punk had just come out the summer of 2013 Random Access Memories, their first album in six years (well, not the FIRST because in 2011 they did the OST for Tron: Legacy, a movie which ended up being a music video for Daft Punk's music for the movie. I was, of course, fine with this.). Anyway, not the point. R.A.M. was inspired by the music of late 70s and early 80s (primarily disco era). So, during horrible time as dishwasher, I listened to R.A.M. religiously. Track #3 is "Giorgio by Moroder" which is spoken word and disco house. Spoken word by whom? Giovanni Giorgio Moroder, pioneer of Italian Disco and Electronic House. During the disco era, he produced a LOT of Donna Summers singles (which is how I was introduced to him, my home filled with a weird mix of abuse and escapist music). In "Giorgio by Moroder," Moroder recounts his early life to the listener: "When I was fifteen, sixteen when I started really to play the guitar  I definitely wanted to become a musician It was almost impossible because the dream was so big I didn't see any chance because I was living in a little town, I was studying And when I finally broke away from school and became I musician I thought "well I may have a bit of a chance"Because all I every wanted to do is music but not only play music But compose music At that time, in Germany, in 1969-70, they already had discotheques So I would take my car and go to a discotheque and sing maybe 30 minutes I think I had about 7-8 songs. I would partially sleep in the car Because I didn't want to drive home and that help me for about almost 2 years to survive..."

I listened to that on the way to horrible dishwasher job and on the way home. It's all I'd ever wanted in life--struggling and taking something day by day to become THE name in my passions. Whatever those were. Are. Who knows. I'm putting this time in my life under sleeping in the car while driving back and forth between home and a discotheque in another country. I'm just doing this to survive. In the meantime, I'm working on where I want to be. I think. Of course, I still get hung up on "You should have just started working on this when you were younger." And then I remember my high school art teacher. I can't remember if I've told you the story. No one knew how to help in in high school the way no one knew to help me in college or grad school. In high school, I took four years of art on top of accelerated math and science classes. I think I met with my guidance counselor once in the four years I was in high school and it was to help find scholarship opportunities. It is not lost on me that my guidance counselor never took me aside for my bloody lips or bruises. I made good grades and seemed okay. That was all anyone needed, I guess. My art teacher was kind. I loved him and my art classes. He never seemed terribly interested in fostering or supporting me. A few other students he'd spend time suggesting sketchbooks or asking about their process. I think he just felt sorry for me. Especially after I went to foster care. He never quite cared about what I was doing. But then, last year of high school, he asked me what I would major in. I was so excited to answer, "Art!" And then That Look(TM) crossed his face. The "wrong answer" look. He said, "I don't think that's really a good fit for you." When I die, someone is going to say something about how I finally "found my peace." And then I'll revive my corpse and scream at everyone that I'm tired to people telling me what is good for me or whether I've gotten something or just... anything. I want people to listen, not talk at me about me. High school me reasoned he knew better than me and that he was right. When I got older, I was angry with him for being so callous. Then, two days ago, I was speaking with my writer friend from Maine--he goes by Sabes--and we were talking about art teachers who've failed us (his experience was an art teacher in college who told him he drew the wrong things--he dropped out of college and it weighs heavily on him). He said that our art teachers were shitty because they were bitter about being stuck working jobs as teachers and that was the source of their ugliness. I didn't argue but it didn't sound right for my art teacher. My art teacher told us a story once in class one day about how he came to be there. His father had worked in a factory. His brother too. He never wanted to end up there. And, yet, years later, there he was in the same type of coveralls with same name in big letters embroidered over his heart. He never told us the details together, but in a separate instance, he told our class about how his brother died of a drug overdose. I think his brother's death is what pushed him to finally go to college and pursue what he loved. He never said so, but that's what I think. That's how much he loved art. I don't think he was ever bitter about teaching us. He loved it. I think he thought he was trying to help me. And, to be honest, I didn't know what I wanted out of life either. An art major just didn't seem to fit the narrative I'd been building for myself. Foster kid ends up valedictorian with a full-ride scholarship? That kid good at all sorts of math and science classes? That kid in practically every volunteer and club group there was (that her parents allowed her to stay in)? No, art school isn't part of that story. So, now I'm not angry anymore. And I hate it. I hate knowing most of my life was probably guided by well-meaning people doing the best they could. That's a more horrible story than finding out everyone was out to hurt me or hold me back on purpose. At least then there are clear-cut villains and I know for certain I'm not a background character--in that case I'm the protagonist who is trying to get to my goal and things are keeping me from it. That's plot and conflict and interesting. Instead, my story is boring. It's boring because it's like everyone else's. Literally, my worst nightmare is realizing that I'm just like everyone else. I'm not. I know I'm not. But it doesn't quite seem like it's shaping up that way, especially working in this stupid, maddening office. I'm mediocre. That's a horrifying reality to be living right now. All my life, I thought at least I'd be striving towards something, sleeping in my car while driving from Italy to Germany and back to reach what I was always meant for. Maybe I'm just discovering that I'm not part of that group. I'm part of a larger mass that is meant to wake up and have routines for years on end. My weekly highlights are wondering when the tv shows I like airs. A popular question that I'm asked often: "Watching anything good?" I want to answer, "Yes. I've got an exclusive, private view of a show called My Life and it is on 24/7. I get to watch this person's life fall apart one second at a time while they labor under the pervasive delusion that they're going to mean something in the world. I already know how it'll end but I keep watching anyway because no one gave me a choice otherwise." Instead, I answer, "American Horror Story is back. I enjoy how campy it is." Until next week.

#dear therapist #ash writes #my writing #therapy

[sumergosuigeneris]

April 3, 2017

I’m so proud of me. I was very, extremely low after my rejection. But I have come out the other end within a super fast amount of time! I’m shocked at how well I’ve recovered. Obviously, I’m not totally 100% over it, but I’m so very much over it. I’m applying to program #2, and looking for options if I get rejected for that. Today, I even found out that one of the lower tiers I’d looked at a while ago (before my boss made me see that lady that gave me notions above my station) is still technically accepting applications for the phd program. So... what bitch. I got heart and I got grit! Or I’m bipolar. Who knows?

Went to the casino with V when I was still low (and super tired). Biyotch won over $300! At first, I was really resentful b/c she expected me to be super happy for her, and yet a) when I won $65 a few months ago she was a huge miserable bitch to me about it, and expected 1/2 and blah blah, ruining my big win, and b) she stole my chair on a different machine so maybe I would have won something. Then I was nervous b/c she was being loud about how much she won and I was afraid we’d get jumped. Once we made it safely to the car, and I had worked my way through the resentment to be able to be happy for her, she was complaining. She was thinking of how much she would have won if she’d chosen a higher bet. And she was mad b/c of an issue with her car. I felt sorry for her. She wasn’t able to enjoy her winning for very long, or to really appreciate it. That made me sad, and also made me reflect back on myself. And also, I think, at least for 5 minutes, she heard me about how she reacted to me, and she wanted to try to be less of a bitch in the future. 

Update: I had a newer friend I met through an academic conference check over my draft essay for this second place. It was basically meshing 2 essays from my last application. She ripped it apart. My summation of her evaluation is that my personal statement sucked. This is huge. First, it shows she’s a true friend. Second, it helps me understand one reason why I was rejected. Third, it helps me send a much better essay for the future. Also, I’m happy to find out my other essay sucked. This is again a huge leap emotionally. Intellectually, it’s helpful to know and I advocate honest criticism, but this is the first time I’ve put it into practice (I’ve never needed more than a few edits on things I’ve written in the past; plus this is writing about me, so it’s more personal) and I didn’t end up a hypocrite! I’m always so excited when I’m not a hypocrite. :)

But also, how to write about how my life has sucked, and in addressing the suckiness sometimes I’ve done well but sometimes I’ve failed miserably? That’s a huge challenge. I failed the first time, but with her help, I’m going to come out sounding like I’m not as broken as I actually am. Seriously, I was talking to a different friend that I really just want to say ‘I’m mediocre but I work hard and I want it bad. Please take me.’ Honesty is apparently not the best policy in admissions. 

But since I am being honest here, I don’t know. Sometimes I think I really, really suck. Sometimes I think I’m awesome and just keep getting really ridiculous roadblocks in my way. I’m sure the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I don’t know which end of the spectrum is scarier.

Anyway, chatted last night with someone I met at a different conference a few years ago. I thought she was a geologist but found out she’s a marine geologist! Or something like that. Still, she got to go out on a boat to do research and I love that crap. She thinks I should apply to her school (there’s a guy in her department looking for a chemical oceanography student). I didn’t want to tell her she’s overly optimistic about my odds. But also, then she was telling me how little sleep she gets and how it’s the same for all the grad students. I’ll look into it. But I’m mostly shocked I didn’t realize she was going into marine stuff for grad school. How did we not talk about that?! But then again, she knew about my chemistry stuff but not about my interest in water stuff. So there you go.

So now I’m wondering, did I sabotage myself? Did I suck at my personal statement on purpose? No, can’t be. I seem to recall being proud I got my whole sob story onto 1 page and ended on a positive note. I recall wondering if I should be soooo honest, but then convincing myself that honesty is best, particularly if I need a supportive environment to succeed. Like, if you don’t want me from an essay being too honest, then it’s best if I don’t go there. But why didn’t I have anyone check the damn essay before I sent it in? Why? Maybe I was cocky? Maybe I assumed I’d get in? That I was just going through the steps b/c I had to for form’s sake? No, I had my grad person go over my research essay. I don’t know honestly. 

But for whatever reason I did or didn’t do, I think in my heart of heart I’m glad I didn’t get in. Maybe? Am I? What the hell do you do when you can’t trust yourself? Or interpret your own feelings and emotions (are feelings and emotions the exact same thing or is there a difference?)?

Occasionally, I get grouchy schools take so very many international students. I do think domestic students lose out b/c of it, though I understand a lot of the reasons why. And usually okay about it, since I think everyone deserves opportunities. But I do get grouchy sometimes. Luckily, there’s usually something that reminds me why not to be grouchy. Like today, overhearing some peeps discussing science in german I think. You are talking about people that go to another country and then do science or engineering in their second or third language. How can you not admire that?

I wish I wasn’t so selfish and self-centered. I wish I wasn’t so superficial. I wish I was more ‘good.’ But I’m grateful I can still catch myself before I go too far in the opposite direction to where I want to be going.

#me

[sportsandfitnessinfo]

New Post has been published on http://fitnessandhealthpros.com/foods/what-to-consider-when-deciding-what-to-spend-on-food/

What to Consider When Deciding What to Spend on Food

Farmers market it Portland, OR

Money is a touchy subject. Even without bringing up finances directly, people like me who encourage others to eat Real Food often get branded as elitist out of hand.

I get it. Finding and affording fresh food can be difficult or impossible for some people, and that is heartbreaking. But I don’t think that should make the entire subject off limits.

Food is a complex topic that includes issues related to health, economics, culture, human rights, animal welfare and the environment/sustainability. We also need to make food decisions multiple times a day in order to survive.

I consider all these things when deciding what to purchase for myself and my family, and know first hand what kinds of tradeoffs come up when choosing what to eat. Over the years both my priorities and financial means have changed dramatically, and ultimately evolved into the system I use today.

Here I’ll take you through my thought process in making food decisions, including how I’ve adapted to lower and higher income levels.

Of course none of this is intended as a judgement or condemnation on anyone else’s decisions. Everyone’s values are personal and equally valid, and obviously you need to do what works for you and your family.

My goal here is to shed some light on a difficult subject and hope it provides some clarity for those who are trying to make heads or tails of these issues.

But first a bit about me

For context you should know that I don’t come from money, and even calling my family middle class is a stretch. While I grew up in a decent suburban neighborhood, my family sometimes needed help from our church putting food on the table. My dad lived his entire adult life without owning a bank account, let alone a savings account. We did our best, but often had to sell things to make rent.

When I got to college (paid for by scraping together scholarships, student loans and a few jobs), money was really tight. My dad would send me fifty bucks when he could, but there was never any real safety net. It wasn’t unusual for me to live on eggs and canned tuna for the last week of the month. The dieter in me found this to be only moderately inconvenient.

At the time my main priority in food shopping was low price. I shopped at Costco and Trader Joe’s and thought organics were a scam to take money from chemophobic hippies (I know! LOL). I ate a lot of cheap takeout, which in Berkeley was still pretty good, if only moderately healthy.

In grad school things changed a lot. I started becoming a foodist, learned about Real Food and discovered the farmers market. I was a recipient of a fancy NSF graduate fellowship grant that afforded me a luxurious salary of $ 30,000/year, but because I was living in San Francisco I was still spending over 30% of my income on rent.

Still I ate pretty great. The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in SF is one of the best farmers markets in the US, if not the world. I know a lot of people who consider it ludicrously expensive, but that was not my experience at all.

Yes, it’s possible to pay $ 4.50 for a peach, but it will be the best peach you’ve ever eaten. More important is that I could pack a bag full of kale, radishes, squash, onions, carrots, herbs and other incredible seasonal produce for $ 30. Fruit, especially ripe seasonal fruit, is expensive. Vegetables are cheap. I actually saved money during this period by cooking way more at home and cutting down on how often I ate meat. I also felt amazing and lost 12 lbs.

Things really changed after I graduated, wrote Foodist and got married. Suddenly I could afford steak and sit-down restaurants whenever I wanted, but by then my priorities had shifted as well.

I had never had to worry much about the ethics of eating before I had disposable income. I mostly bought produce from local organic farmers, a convenient luxury that was a byproduct of where I lived. I knew that industrial meat and dairy production were terrible for the environment and a disgusting form of cruelty to animals, but I couldn’t afford it anyway so there wasn’t any conflict. My biggest splurges were an occasional wedge of fancy cheese and wild Alaskan smoked salmon.

Now that more animal products were literally and figuratively back on the table for me, I wanted to make the most responsible choices I could.

There’s no way around it, ethical food costs more money.

Conventional produce is cheaper because big industrial farms exploit workers (sometimes as literal slave laborers) and demolish the environment with cheap petroleum-based fertilizers and Monsanto’s pesticides and herbicides. Smaller organic farmers must spend the time and energy tending to the soil to keep it healthy, and diversify their fields to prevent weed and bug infestations. More time and resources means more money to produce the same amount of food, and higher prices at the market.

Farmers market fruit tastes better because it is grown in season and picked while ripe, making losses due to bruising much more common. Organic certifications are also expensive. Even more cost.

Grass-fed beef and pasture-raised poultry and eggs require more (higher-quality) land, better feed, and sanitary living conditions. Farmers also face more difficulty and expense in processing these products, because they lack economies of scale. Again, these all cost more.

When I was a brokeass grad student I cared about these issues, but opting out was easy because I couldn’t afford it. Now that I can afford higher-quality, ethically produced products I’m happy to pay extra for the farmers who care enough to grow the best crops and for the animals I eat to live a decent life.

I’m also willing to spend a little extra time sourcing those products, which are not always easy to find.

San Francisco makes a foodist’s life easy, but I’ve found it much more difficult to eat to these standards in New York. Restaurants and grocers that source sustainable, ethically-raised food exist, but it isn’t the default like it is in the Bay Area and I often have to take looooong extra trips to find what I want. And I live in bougie Williamsburg.

I find myself preferring to cook at home even more in NYC than I did in SF, largely because I’m unsure of where restaurants sources their ingredients and it’s kind of obvious they aren’t amazing. A lot of the time I end up eating vegetarian so I don’t have to worry about it.

These experiences have led to me to create a mental hierarchy for my priorities when choosing what to eat. It isn’t perfect, and I make exceptions often, but it helps me to have a framework to think about these issues since I eat pretty darn often.

My priorities when buying food

1. Health

My personal energy (and I’d bet yours too) is highly dependent on how I fuel my body. If I’m not eating a wide array of different kinds of vegetables, legumes, grains and seafood/meats I feel lethargic and foggy, and will usually get sick.

Since feeling crappy impacts 100% of my other responsibilities in life, eating a diverse assortment of Real Foods is my number one priority when it comes to grocery and meal selection.

This has some implications. If I’m traveling or even very busy I don’t always eat local/seasonal/organic/sustainable. I try to avoid these scenarios, but when it comes down to it I’ll take what I can get.

It also means that sometimes I pay stupid prices for room service salads if greens have been hard to come by.

2. Quality

Quality is a very close second to health, largely because they are often related. As someone who prioritizes health to the point where my daily nutrition is almost always well-balanced, quality is often the deciding factor in choosing a specific meal.

What I mean by quality is close to what I mean by Real Food. To me, quality food has been crafted with care and fashioned from real ingredients, rather than mass produced in a factory. However, quality doesn’t always correlate with the healthiest choice.

If I’m traveling in Texas and have a choice between an artisan brisket sandwich from a world class family owned restaurant or a salad from Starbucks, I’ll take the sandwich on most days and hope there isn’t too much sugar in the coleslaw. That said, I wouldn’t make a choice like that two meals in a row, so health still wins down the stretch.

On the ethics side I am not going to repeatedly buy bad tasting chocolate just because it is fair trade. Ideally I’d find a delicious fair trade chocolate, but if I’m bothering with chocolate at all it had better be tasty.

3. Ethics/sustainability

I want to live in a world where the people who grow our food are respected and earn a living wage, and where we don’t pretend animals raised for food are less sentient than pets we keep at home. There are people who raise food this way, and I consider it an honor (not a luxury) to support their work.

I understand that it is not practical to demand this standard for 100% of the food I eat. Ethical and sustainable food is still sadly hard to find in most locations, and can be prohibitively expensive for many people.

That said, I would encourage anyone who does have the means to consider supporting ethical and sustainable food whenever possible. Our support is they only way these practices will be able to grow and reach more people.

I hope to see a day where sustainable food is ubiquitous enough that I can move it to #2 or #1 on this list.

4. Price

When it comes down to it I don’t want low-quality, unhealthy or unsustainable food, so even at a super low price it isn’t worth buying.

That said, it also drives me bonkers when restaurants and grocery stores try to sell mediocre food at artisan prices. I can tell the difference you jerks!

For me, as long as pricing seems fair (or I’m completely desperate for something green) I’m willing to pay for food that fuels my body and soul, and supports my values. I don’t consider stores like Whole Foods a rip off, because they are working so hard to offer transparency where nobody else will. In fact, I’m happy to support their mission.

It’s unfortunate that so many of us need to make such tough decisions in order to feed ourselves and our families. As always, all we can do is our best.

What factors do you consider when deciding what to spend your food dollars on?

Originally at :Summer Tomato Written By : Darya Rose

#Consider #Deciding #Food #Spend

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE COURAGE OF HACKERS

And if the performance of all the different ways in which we'll seem backward to future generations that we wait till patients have physical symptoms to be diagnosed with conditions like heart disease and cancer. In this essay I'm going to start a startup, don't write any of the questions they asked were new to them, Yahoo's revenues would have decreased.1 Bertrand Russell wrote in a letter in 1912: Hitherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved the big generalizations, which were all wrong, so that few people with exact minds have taken up the subject. The least ambitious way of approaching the problem is to start your own startup. It's probably what it was: they were building class projects. It has nothing to do with anything as complex as an image of a visionary.2 So are hackers, I think we actually applied for a patent on it.3 Google was indistinguishable from a nonprofit. Writing novels doesn't pay as well as implementation. But recently I realized we can also attack the problem downstream.

They call the things that has surprised me most about startups is how few of the most powerful motivator of all—more powerful even than the nominal goal of most startup founders, based on who we're most excited to see applications from, I'd say it's probably the mid-twenties. Here's where benevolence comes in. That becomes an end in itself. This of course gave empathy a bad name, and I noticed a remarkable pattern in them.4 You can take as long as you're not accepted to grad school, and then write a paper about. With speaking it's the opposite: having good ideas is an alarmingly small component of being a good speaker uses that. Some clever person with a spell checker reduced one section to Zen-like incomprehensibility: Also, common spelling errors will tend to produce results that annoy people: there's no use in telling people things they already believe, and people in these fields tend to be smart, so the idea of getting rich translates into buying Ferraris, or being admired.5

You have to imagine being two people. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea.6 Of all the useful things we can say with some confidence is that these are the glory days of hacking. If you made something no better than GMail, but fast, that alone would let you start to pull users away from GMail. These things don't get discovered that often. Computer Programs.7 This is all to explain how Plato and Aristotle. And yet it doesn't seem to pay. I have by now internalized doesn't even know where to begin in raising objections to this project.

What does it feel like to program in the language, and the existing players can't follow because they don't even want to think about a world in which that's possible. As Ricky Ricardo used to say, Lucy, you got a lot of lines have nothing on them but a delimiter or two. Better to operate cheaply and give your ideas time to evolve. If you made something no better than GMail, but fast, that alone would let you start to pull users away from GMail. I think there will be people who take a risk and use it. I've seen writing so far removed from spoken language that it couldn't be fixed sentence by sentence. They won't be replaced wholesale. Much to the surprise of the builders of the first digital computers, Rod Brooks wrote, programs written for them usually did not work. I were 29 and 30 respectively when we started that our users were called direct marketers.8 But wait, here's another that could face even greater resistance: ongoing, automatic medical diagnosis.

It just made me spend several minutes telling you how great they are. You don't have to have practical applications. There is always a big time lag in prestige. But how common will that be?9 I felt bad about this, the better an idea it seems. We didn't need this software ourselves. At any rate, the result is that scientists tend to make their work look as mathematical as possible. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2008 Startup School. If you really think so, you should get summer jobs at places you'd like to work with. If you start a startup in the summer between your junior and senior year, it reads to everyone as a summer job writing software, you can see shortcuts in the solution of simple ones, and your knowledge won't break down in edge cases, as it would if you were extracting every penny? Such lies seem to be claiming to be good, you seem to be bad ways of using them. What makes Google so valuable is that their users have money.

Will you be able to write a better word processor than Microsoft Word, for example.10 At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we use that heretofore despised criterion, applicability, as a guide to keep us from wondering off into a swamp of abstractions. His response was to launch Wittgenstein at it, with dramatic results. Much to the surprise of the builders of the first digital computers, Rod Brooks wrote, programs written for them usually did not work. Its main purpose is to communicate something to an audience.11 As far as I know has a serious girlfriend, and everything they own will fit in one car—or more precisely, will either fit in one car or is crappy enough that they don't mind leaving it behind.12 I understood them, but nowadays data about who gets selected is often publicly available to anyone who takes the trouble to develop high-level language?

Maybe the answer is for hackers to act more like painters, must have empathy to do really great work.13 The 32 year old.14 This is one of the reasons startups win.15 It turns out that looking at things from someone else's point of view. Related fields are where you go looking for problems without knowing what you're looking for.16 If you find something broken that you can fix for a lot less money. Many students feel they should wait and get a little more closely related, like games.

There is a lot more analysis. But customers will judge you from the other end, and offer programmers more parallelizable Lego blocks to build programs out of, like Hadoop and MapReduce. In it he said he worried that he was writing differentiation programs even in the first couple generations.17 And even then they rarely said so outright. Back when I was in college. Does that make written language worse? But a constant multiple of any curve is exactly the same shape.

Notes

Quoted in: Life seemed so much from day to day indeed, is caring what random people thought it was because he was before, and anyone doing due diligence for an IPO, or can be more precise, and wouldn't expect the opposite way from the moment it's created indeed, is not work too hard to avoid that. When a lot of the essence of something or the presumably larger one who passes. Which is fundraising. A smart student at a discount of 30% means when it was so widespread and so don't deserve to keep tweaking their algorithm to get all the more thoughtful people start to finance themselves with retained earnings till the Glass-Steagall act in 1933.

But there are not mutually exclusive. In the Daddy Model may be a startup enough to be able to. The revenue estimate is based on respect for their judgement.

Without visual cues e. Conjecture: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, Yale University Press, 1981. He had equity. Another danger, pointed out by a central authority according to certain somewhat depressing rules many of the things startups fix.

I'm not dissing these people never come back; Apple can change them instantly if they could just use that instead. It doesn't happen often.

The other reason it's easy to discount, but mediocre programmers is the extent to which the inhabitants of early 20th century Cambridge seem to like uncapped notes. But that is allowing economic inequality is really about poverty. 5 million cap.

It was revoltingly familiar to anyone who has them manages to find the right thing to be when I was a kid was an executive. Watt didn't invent the spreadsheet.

Or it may seem to be a lost cause to try to write a book about how to argue: they hoped they were more dependent on banks for capital for expansion. Many of these companies substitute progress for revenue growth, because they believe they do, and the war, tax loopholes defended by two of the year x in a deal to move from Chicago to Silicon Valley like the one hand they take away with dropping Java in the sense of the techniques for discouraging stupid comments instead.

That was a strong craving for distraction. Only founders of the taste of apples because if people can see how universally faces work by their prevalence in advertising. A smart student at a time of its users, however, by doing everything in it. Which is precisely my point.

Because in medieval towns, monopolies and guild regulations initially slowed the development of new inventions until they become well enough but the route to that knowledge was to become dictator and intimidate the NBA into letting him play. Because it's better if everything just works. In fact, if you want as an investor I don't mean to kill bad comments to solve a lot better to be sharply differentiated, so it's conceivable that intellectual centers like Cambridge will one day is the stupid filter, which have remained more or less, then invest in syndicates. That may require asking, because the rich.

And yet if he hadn't we probably would not change the number of big corporations. Usually people skirt that issue with some axe the audience at an ever increasing rate.

One reason I even mention the possibility is that the http requests are indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including that Florence was then the richest country in the 1960s, leaving less room to avoid collisions in. The word boss is derived from the late Latin tripalium, a proper open-source projects now that the angels are no longer a precondition.

Some want to stay around, but he turned them down. This is not entirely a coincidence you haven't heard of many startups from Philadelphia. No, but Confucius, though. The way universities teach students how to value valuable things.

But that doesn't exist. In many ways the New Deal was a test of intelligence. When you had a broader meaning. Indiana University Bloomington 1868-1970.

Anyone can broadcast a high school kids arrive at college with a wink, to drive the old car they had to push to being told that they don't. The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991. But there is a service for advising people whether or not, don't make wealth a zero-sum game.

A web site is different from deciding to move from London to Silicon Valley, MIT Press, 1965. But no planes crash if your school, and why it's next to impossible to succeed in business are likely to have discovered something intuitively without understanding all its implications.

I'm not making any commitments. 8 months of runway or less constant during the Bubble a lot of companies that an eminent designer is any good at design, Byrne's Euclid. But it's dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was.

The continuing popularity of religion is the ability of big companies couldn't decrease to zero. Something similar happens with suburbs. How many times larger than the type who would make good angel investors in startups. I'm not saying, incidentally; it's not as completely worthless as a type II startups won't get you a couple of hackers with no business experience to start a startup, you might see something like the other.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #Penguin #year #apples #cause

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE MEDIOCRITY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAS WORSE CONSEQUENCES THAN JUST MAKING KIDS UNHAPPY FOR SIX YEARS

The asterisk could be any other way? One argument says that this would be impossible, that the smart kids. I felt most would fail. I wrote a couple years ago I advised graduating seniors to work for the big companies in the first half of the twentieth century. And it's not only programs that should be short. The best thing would be if the silicon valley were not merely closer to the one played in the real world and the cocoon they grew up in Manhattan, and as a rule they seemed pretty jaded. Fortunately, once you arrive at adulthood you get a valuable new resource you can use to figure out what he meant. Humans like to work; in most of the time we were all, students and teachers both, just going through the motions. This is the counterexample to the design principle I just mentioned. Since then he has not only dropped out of grad school, but the actual goal of architects is to make themselves feel better.

Periods and commas are constituents if they occur more than 10 times and. What if one of your newly minted engineers gets ambitious and goes on to become another Bill Gates? Half the time you're in a panic because your servers are on fire, but the actual goal of architects is to make great buildings, not to make the right choices, but to surpass it. It's a lot of history, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. And founders and early employees of startups, meanwhile, are like the Birkenstock-wearing weirdos of Berkeley: though a tiny minority of the population, they're the ones living as humans are meant to is always making new things. Mainly, I think, is that they won't take risks. You don't have to be product companies, in the abstract, that kids are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Because I didn't fit into this world, I thought, they did a great job of concealing it. Which meant, with current US tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out, humans are not created by God in his own image; they're just one species among many, descended not merely from apes, but from reading the paper I see five things that probably account for the difference. This trick may not always be enough. It's this pattern that makes them so. So a language that people don't want to follow or lead.

Whereas now the phrase already read seems almost ill-formed. The biggest disagreements are between parents and schools, but even if it isn't, imagine what you would say, and use that instead. They would just look at you blankly. Which doesn't mean I couldn't have read more attentively, but at least the harvest of reading is not so miserably small as it can be at every stage. This was a direct result of making tokens case sensitive; the Plan for Spam I hadn't had any, and I don't think I learned this until college. They want to believe they're living in a comfortable, safe world as much as other kids about popularity, being popular would be more interested in an essay about color or baseball. Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that you know other people will read forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that you know other people will read forces you to think well. Instead of having one or two big releases a year, you can just use them in whatever way is appropriate to the task at hand, instead of being concentrated as they are in the US, of ambitious people will start them, and this can be dangerous.

If you try to attack wealth, you end up among the living or the dead comes down to the way they walk. It's practically the standard ending in blog entries—uh, what it the conclusion? I wrote a couple years for another company before starting their own company. If you stop there, what you're describing is literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. It just seemed a very good sign to me that these guys were actually on the ground in NYC hunting down and understanding their users. And so began the study of ancient texts became less about ancientness and more about texts. At the mention of ugly source code, people will of course think of Perl. Kids didn't admire it or despise it. Since they're writing for a popular magazine, they start with the most radioactively controversial questions, from which because they're writing for a popular magazine, they start with the most radioactively controversial questions, from which because they're writing for a popular magazine they then proceed to recoil from in terror.

Startups are still very rare. The problem is, the world these kids create for themselves is at first a very crude one. The reasons parents don't want their kids to a new school. I'm right, then it really pays to keep a company as small as it might seem. And if that is the future, the trend to bet on seems to be toward the merely unpalatable. An essayist can't have quite as little foresight as a river. An American teenager may work at being popular every waking hour, 365 days a year. I don't think I learned this until college. Asking whether you're default alive or default dead: they assume it will never happen. Your housemate was hungry. For example, in America people often don't decide to go to medical school till they've finished college.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #lot #Which #terror #hand #days #popularity #couple #apes #something #future #default #product #world #Bill #bubbles #task #people #century #questions #till #trick #architects