Posts made by Aria

@faceless Yay!! Book buddies. Now which one of us is bringing the food and which one is bringing the booze?

@Faceless -- I just started "The Blade Itself" a few days ago, though it's currently on pause. Since the boyfriend owns that one, I tend to put down books I own when my limited-availability ebooks pop up from my waitlist at the local library. (And my copy of "White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America" just popped up.)

I should be back to it in a few weeks, if you want to go through it together!

@Sparks and @Auspice -- I used to work in pharmaceutical distribution. Little known secret about the industry: a lot of manufacturers have programs to help you afford their medication at very little cost if your insurance doesn't cover it and you make below a certain income bracket. If you know what said medication is, try looking up who makes it and giving them a call.

I just spent entirely too much money on a sweater that is almost the same color as a sweater I already have....

But in my defense, this sweater has a fox wearing a monocle and a bowler hat.

Is there any way at all you would be comfortable having this man as a part of your life in any way?

Think on that question. Because if the answer is 'no', then the only person who could possibly derive any benefit from contact is him. And if the only person who would derive any benefit is him, then.... you don't owe him forgiveness, or closure, or the assuaging of any potential guilt he may feel. That's his fucking problem.

I know that sounds harsh, but we as a culture -- and especially women -- are often encouraged to 'be the bigger person' and 'find healing through forgiveness'. And hey, if that would actually help you? Great. If all it would do is minimize other people's discomfort caused by conflict or drama, absolve responsibility, and stress you out by forcing you into interactions with someone who's treated you poorly? Don't do it. Just don't. And rest secure in the knowledge that no one can make you.

@tnp -- Sadly, it doesn't work quite like that. Mostly because -- with the haircut I was aiming for, most of what determines the length is the back of my hair. And with my head tilted down, it's really hard for me to see in the mirror. With my head tilted down and her cutting the back of my hair, it's impossible, mostly because of that whole not having eyes in the back of my head.

And in this case, in an attempt to get the back of my hair to lay the way I wanted it to? She was apparently having problems getting it to do that. She didn't tell me that, though. She just kept cutting. And cutting. And cutting until it was short enough to lay that way. By the time she was coming around to the front and I could see where the scissors were and going "Uhhhh, Katie, why is there a giant lock of cut hair on my shoulder? What are you doing?" my options at that point were let her finish the cut or stop and have what would've basically been a reverse mullet -- party in the front, business in the back.

So not me, but basically my hair now:

Pinterest board I brought with me, to commiserate with @Cupcake and @Auspice having shitty experiences.

On the upside, I've realized over the last two days that is an objectively cute haircut and does look nice on me. In fact, it's exactly what I wanted for shape and style.... just much, much, much shorter. Like, I can't even pull it back short. And as @mietze said, I was trying to grow it out, so losing that much hair all at once means it's going to take about a year to grow back. If this -- and the other fuck up that happened while my regular stylist was on maternity leave -- had not happened? My hair would not be chin length right now. It would be several inches past my shoulders, which is what I was hoping to have eventually, and had just gotten it to the 'slightly past my shoulders' point.

Super frustrating.

@apos - Yeah, just saw the conversation on Info and started contributing there.

@apos -- I did not get my usual summary of bulletin board posts when logging in.

Today, my friend Dio informed me that she discovered pumpkin spice chai latte facemasks at Walmart. And now I have four of them it my skincare drawer. Because.

I only need to buy a pair of Uggs and start selling some MLM weight loss bullshit on Facebook. Then I can evolve into my final form of 'basic white girl' and my life will be complete. ^_^

Apparently, my conversation with my stylist last night went something like this:

What I said: "I'm willing to lose some length off the back of my hair to get this shape that I used to have and loved and that you cut for me for quite some time back into it, here is several pictures, and a Pinterest page of women with hair just above their shoulders, and me pointing to where I want it just above my shoulders. I know it has to clear my shoulders to not do the weird flippy-out thing it does."

What she heard: "If it's still doing the weird flippy out thing in the back, please just keep cutting it and cutting it! It's totally fine for you to reinterpret 'just above my shoulders' to 'chin-length' despite the fact that I've been coming here for seven years so you know I've been growing it out from a pixie cut the last three. I won't miss 3"-4" of hair that it'll take me a year to grow back at all!"

....Please excuse me while I cry in the shower to choruses of my boyfriend saying "No, really, it's cute!"

@auspice I have some of her stuff!!

@tempest My favorite Thor is probably Thor and his roommate Darryl.

We're gonna go see it next weekend instead of this weekend for Real Life Scheduling Reasons, but I'll be honest....

Between both the Marvel universe and the Norse mythology, the fact that Thor is just cheerfully stupid and innocently enthusiastic about pretty much everything is fantastic. I don't want a Thor movie to be SUPER SRS BIZNIZ; I want it to be Chris Hemsworth hamming it up with all the unabashed joy of a puppy who is surprisingly good at violence.

@aria said in Book Recommendations:

I'm currently in the middle of "All Our Wrong Todays."

It's an odd book, but I've rather enjoyed it and its premise so far. Effectively, the narrator exists in a utopian society and travels back in time to the moment of history where a particular scientific discovery leads to the utopia he was born into. He isn't travelling back in time to right some great wrong or wipe out humanity or any of the usual reasons we see in sci-fi -- it's an experiment being conducted so they can market time travel tourism.

Unfortunately, he inadvertantly messes things up horribly, fundamentally affecting the timline of the future, resulting in a horrifying dystopia he has no idea how to cope with -- the 2016 (which was the year the book was published) we live in. Can't speak to the ending as I have about 200 pages left, but I've been enjoying myself.

So, I finished this book last night. (Translation: I read the whole thing in two days.)

While some of the 'plot twists' are ones I found pretty astonishingly predictable contrary to all of the reviews -- which is something I personally tend to encounter with books and movies, probably because I consume so many of them -- the last few chapters leading up to the ending were not at all what I expected. Overall, I found the whole book enjoyable and described the experience to my boyfriend as 'completely charming.'

Do recommend.

@saosmash said in Book Recommendations:

I love audiobooks but I'm very aural anyways -- I used to study in law school by reading cases out loud to myself; I am a weird outlier and should probably not be trusted.

When my anxiety was at its worst and making it impossible for me to concentrate during my first stint in college, I got permission from my professors to record their lectures and would listen to them on the bus home. It was a routine I ended up sticking with even long after I got the issue under control because I found it more helpful than reviewing written notes, which I find I barely ever re-read and often look at like, "Why did I write that down? Was I drunk or am I really just this nonsensical and dumb?"

Naturally, I love audiobooks but tend to save them for monotonous tasks like commuting or, worse, when I'm driving through bumfuck Pennsylvania on my way across the state and get no good radio stations. I also really like listening to them when taking baths because while I know long baths are supposed to be suuuuuuuuuuuper relaxing and indulgent, but I honestly get bored otherwise. I don't want to hear what goes on in my own head thanks.

If you like Neil Gaiman's writing, I recommend his audiobooks in particular. He reads many of them himself and between his parents correcting his stutter with childhood elocution lessons and years of reading bed-time stories to his kids (he does voices, you guys!), he's really very good at it. And it's somehow very personal when narrated by the author himself.

@auspice said in RL Anger:

@surreality

Well, listening to the lecture, I think I've found one person to ask to file the complaint with me.

Student: "I don't appreciate the way you keep saying you already told me three ti-"
Instructor, cutting him off: "I have!"
Student, forcing back in: "I am asking a specific question for a scenario and you're not giving me an answer."

This after the instructor tried to demand he stop asking and ask him outside of the class. The guy is trying to find out if he'd be marked off for writing something a specific way (re: formatting). And the only answer he's getting is 'Write it how you want.'

This guy takes mansplaining to the extreme, I swear. Listening to the Q&A part of the class now and he's just over-explaining and talking to everyone like they're children.

Yep. Contact the guy getting interrupted and go to the professor's department head. Specifically mention to them that even your adviser acknowledged having received multiple complaints. If it was in writing, even better.

Be forewarned: If the asshole has tenure, it's much harder to do something. Not impossible, but harder. If he's an adjunct or associate professor or trying for a tenure track job? A long history of complaints is going to be problematic for him.

@auspice said in RL Anger:

@ganymede said in RL Anger:

@auspice said in RL Anger:

This man is an ass.
This wasn't just harsh criticism.

He never said a single positive thing. He cut me off constantly. He was practically yelling at me at times.

It took Phil Lord and Chris Miller almost 15 years to get a project of their own up off the ground again, and for crowds to appreciate their humor.

That said, when you're ready you should ask your instructor to put all of his criticism down into writing. And then, you should forward that onto his supervisor, along with the accounts of everyone else in your class who probably went through the exact same thing.

Abuse comes in many forms, and always breeds in darkness.

I hate that I began crying, but being cut off and snapped at every time I tried to explain myself... Especially when he'd ask me to explain and then 'NO. Stop talking and listen!' ...it just got to me and I found myself (silently) crying for a bit. I was just so frustrated.

At one point, I did manage to explain: 'I did this this way because in part 1 of the class, we were told...'
'You just misunderstood him.'
I got a good grade in that other class. I don't think would have if I had misunderstood things.

I am definitely going to be talking to my advisor about it. I accepted the phone conference because I know it's important to transition from just written criticism (which allows you time to process/react) to live (where you have to stay composed and react on the spot)... But he wasn't professional. Asking me a question and then cutting me off isn't. Ranting on at length when I've already said I understand isn't. Not being able to say even one positive thing about my work isn't.

I mean, shit, we students can lose professionalism points in our grade if we don't say at least one positive thing to our classmates in feedback/review.

Over the course of my time (as an adult student) at my alma mater, I complained about two professors. One was rampantly and disgustingly sexist and racist, while teaching a class that was effectively about colonialism, so that was.... fun. In his case, I ended up reporting him to the Chancellor and their legal counsel, effectively saying to the school "Between his comments to 19 year old girls and his comments to brown boys, your ass is gonna get sued. FIX THIS."

The other.... was a case much more like your own. I had a professor who -- in a half-semester class that met twice a week for three hours -- ended multiple classes early and cancelled three classes with no warning but a note taped on the door. (Bear in mind: We were almost all adult students. None of us lived on campus. Thanks for making some of us drive from an hour away for no reason!) So she'd cancelled almost half our class time. The rest of our class time, she'd frequently launch into lectures... about her personal life, totally unrelated to the material. She was rude. She was belittling. She constantly cut students off in class. She'd ask for opinions and literally just dismiss them midway through a sentence with 'No.' Halfway through the course and she hadn't given any of us, not one, a single item we'd turned in with feedback, so we had no idea what our grades were, what her expectations were, or how to calibrate to meet them. She didn't follow her own syllabus and about half the time, none of us knew what was due despite repeatedly asking her. Most of the students hated her.

In her case, I didn't go to the Chancellor because it wasn't quite to the degree of "You are leaving yourself open to some serious liabilities if he gropes a girl and then years of this professor's reputation suddenly come spilling out and the administration is all 'Whoopsies!!! Didn't knoo---oooow.' sing-song bullshit." (Legit, I was once in the bathroom during a break bitching to a classmate about this guy and a girl in the next stall, who was not in our class, came charging out when she heard his name and went off. It was glorious and we both felt way less crazy.)

In her case, I went to the head of HER department with a long and documented list of her behaviors, including classes cancelled, dates of items turned in we hadn't yet heard anything back on, verbatim comments meant to students... and got two of my fellow students to sign off on it.

She had an email from him within 48 hours demanding to know what the hell was going on in her class. She was pissed and continued being snotty, but.... she had to temper some of it, we all got our assignments back and we all passed. Not quite what I wanted re: her behavior, but after a month of dealing with her bullshit, I was willing to accept an option of 'stick this out for a few more weeks, pass, and never interact with this woman again.' (And no, the department head didn't tell her who complained. Retaliation against complaining students will usually get a professor in a lot of trouble, which is why it's important to lodge said complaint before a class ends.)

I'd recommend going to your adviser first. If that doesn't work, kick it over to his department head. And then it goes on up the chain from there, usually to a Dean, the Chancellor, the university President. That reporting chain exists for a reason and things can be escalated if necessary, but except in rare cases, it's generally best to start at the lowest level. Documentation is always helpful, especially if there may be any question at all of you simply complaining about your grade instead of an inappropriate behavior. If you have any contact with your classmates who have similar stories, this will be the biggest help to you. Corroborating your accounts and offering up similar experiences is usually the fastest way to get through to a university administration; when students or staff -- and I have been both -- start banding together and comparing notes, they get nervous.

@admiral said in RL Anger:

@Aria I hate to be 'that guy', but men are sexually harassed and assaulted as well. It might not be as prevalent as with women but all abusers should be called to account. Not just those happen to abuse women.

I agree. But here's the thing:

It's the same toxic system that enforces silence on the part of abused, harassed, and assaulted boys/men -- usually for different reasons, but silence all the same. If it was at the hands of a woman? Well, it's not a problem, because men always want it! Twelve year old and his teacher? Haha, lucky him, amirite guys?!?!? If it was at the hands of a man? Suuuuuuper gay. Masculinity in question! Must've been giving off vibes. Should've been able to stop it. A real man never would've took that.

If you're a dude, this toxic system should seriously upset you. And I don't even just mean for genuinely sympathetic, altruistic, 'human suffering is bad' reasons. I mean for entirely personal, selfish reasons. Not the least of which is "demanding you be an emotionless robot, who not only controls his feelings but pretty much doesn't even have them" on one end of the spectrum to "assuming you are so hormonal and uncontrollable that your default state is 'rapist' and every woman you meet will be threatened by you unless she follows some arcane and esoteric set of rules that may keep your dick at bay" on the other.

How male abuse victims are treated is just one manifestation of that.

I'm currently in the middle of "All Our Wrong Todays."

It's an odd book, but I've rather enjoyed it and its premise so far. Effectively, the narrator exists in a utopian society and travels back in time to the moment of history where a particular scientific discovery leads to the utopia he was born into. He isn't travelling back in time to right some great wrong or wipe out humanity or any of the usual reasons we see in sci-fi -- it's an experiment being conducted so they can market time travel tourism.

Unfortunately, he inadvertantly messes things up horribly, fundamentally affecting the timline of the future, resulting in a horrifying dystopia he has no idea how to cope with -- the 2016 (which was the year the book was published) we live in. Can't speak to the ending as I have about 200 pages left, but I've been enjoying myself.