Growing Up

mocotazo · 2012-05-25T18:06:35.555073+00:00

Ive been watching Animal Planet's "Fatal Attractions" on Netflix recently... I can just see this ending in unrecognizable body parts strewn all over a trailer floor. :(

bidloo · 2 days

hahha ohhhh Reddit. Gets me every time. For real though, don't worry about them protestors. I tried to get into the one in my city, and it was legitimately a homeless camp. Not that there's anything wrong with homeless people, but... there was zero conversation about anything except Zionist extremists, and everyone here got arrested on purpose. It was a madhouse.

bidloo · 2 days

Seriously? Now you're just being ridiculous.That had nothing to do with you being female. Also, now I feel as though you're perpetuating your own ill feelings about the world. Stop that. It doesn't do anything to better your life.

bidloo · 3 days

Awww quit being so sensitive! I didn't mean that in a negative way. I really wish you understood that I myself am a cocktail and active listener politician, and didn't mean it as an offense. I was seriously just trying to help. What kind of response would you like, then, if you aren't satisfied with mine? If you know what you're looking for and will let yourself be offended so easily, I don't know if anonymous advice is the way to go. I mean that with all the respect in the world, by the way.

bidloo · 3 days

Revolutions don't usually involve cocktails and active-listening exercises while debating Marxist principles. That's all I meant by passivity, it just doesn't seem as though you're into yelling and screaming. And hey, thats cool. Remember though, that a lot of the protestors don't necessarily have to have PHDs in political theory- they're angry because they feel as though they've been displaced by society. You don't always have to completely understand debate and history and all that to feel angry and take part in a protest. Don't let it get to you. And certain spaces, like this one, will in fact dismiss your wish to discuss these things in a calm, rational manner, because a protest simply isn't the place for it. Reddit is, however.

bidloo · 4 days

I think you have already given yourself the best answer:

I don't want to yell and scream into a megaphone. I don't want to be looked at weird because I'm not a male philosophy student or wearing torn clothes. It is awesome to be a male philosophy student in torn clothes, don't get me wrong, but the distinct feeling I got was that I wasn't a "real" part of the club. And moreover, it just didn't seem like the political<->personal space I was looking for; in fact it made me feel that the more anonymous you could be as a protestor, the better.

It sounds to me that this has very little to do with your friends, and quite a bit to do with you. You don't feel as though you fit in because this is not how you would choose to protest. You are projecting your insecurities and your lack of willingness to participate onto your friends, and it sounds as though it makes you angry that you don't fit in. After all, you went, didn't you? You wanted to believe that the protests would be a good place for you to find yourself and become part of them. Sadly, when you got there, you realized that the physical environment wasn't your cup of tea, and instead of realizing that the effort was still genuine among others, you chose to harbor feelings of isolation and anger and justified your lack of cohesiveness with the group by developing the idea that they weren't "welcoming spaces" for.... feminists? For women? Do you realize the mistake you've made in making a generalization of this situation?

I don't blame you entirely, though. You just seem like a passive person, and that's okay. Not everyone wants to scream into a microphone and yell angry things. Hey, thats okay. Do your part elsewhere, if you still believe in the cause. But don't jump on the "jump to conclusions mat" and decide that the space is unwelcoming for everyone who is not a male philosophy student in torn clothes.

Also, as the girlfriend of one of those philosophy students ( and also someone who as the exact opposite problem as you- I tend to want to participate while my man does not) I would recommend reading Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer: On the Nature of Mass Movements" if you wish to understand the human desire to become part of mass movements. Great, great read.

batterytoholybronx · 8 days

Do you actually read anything before you reply to it? I said that sweetloris' comment was irrelevant, and that no one should have downvoted OP's REPLY because she did not in fact LIE.

And you're not understanding that the whole purpose of creating this thread was to get the bullshit off of her chest, so in a sense, though its through cyberspace, she DID apologize. I don't believe that she should go back in time and correct mistakes she made ten years ago in person, that would probably bring up far more hard feelings than the in-person-apology is worth. Redditt is supposed to be an anonymous space to post things like this, and its totally relevant to her thread ( What have you done in your past that you need to apologize 'even anonymously' for?). Its not up to anyone to tell OP how to run her life years later when she simply created an interesting space for ALL of us to get these feelings out. Sweet jesus.

stickvictim · 9 days

bangs tend to give people a sharper look, I'd suggest growing out that fringe, girl.

batterytoholybronx · 9 days

She did, though, by creating this thread. And sweetloris's comment "someone lost their job because of your lies" is an inaccurate interpretation of her story.

batterytoholybronx · 9 days

I really don't know why you have so many downvotes. Have one back. Your statement is truthful and relevant.

SexGuest1 · 10 days

reach out, definitely. If I were her, and you didn't make an effort, I'd assume you also had shady intentions. Be honest with her, and tell her exactly what happened and how you feel about it, and I don't see how she could harbor any ill feelings. After all, it was her husband, not you, that broke the boundary level.

batterytoholybronx · 10 days

YES. I fucking love this subreddit. Thank you so much!

speedracer12 · 10 days

... I really don't know what to say about this.

BigBuz · 10 days

Dude, I get that shit about the water heater. Mine did precisely the same thing a few days ago and I couldn't help but hunt down a stoag. Don't beat yourself up about it, I've been on a no-quit chain for a month or so, and i'm slowly weaning myself down again. Yesterday was three, and today I have the worst sore throat in the history of sore throats. Just remember that tomorrow is another day, probably a far less stressful one. You'll get through it.

JHole04 · 10 days

Please note: It wasn't until Dante's Inferno came along that anyone thought of writing in a national language, which helped to further unite Italy.

Razor_Storm · 15 days

As a native English speaker attempting to learn your language... fuck you guys.

I'm kidding. Italian is beautiful, and your comment is a great addition to my understanding of gender associations. grazie!

drmomentum · 15 days

THIS article points out that online schools have a terrible track record, but that won't be as true if you start educating students in the merits of using interwebs really early on. I don't think a strictly online based curriculum is good for younger students anyway, and while there are problems with the public school system, its pretty much free, so that's not where my concern is. I'm talking about higher education, specifically, because it lends itself in the direction of a business, and so far the business policies of universities have been absolutely horrendous.

drmomentum · 15 days

... Education, in any form, should never, ever, EVER cost tens of thousands of dollars per semester. Especially when there hasn't really been any "reform", aside from the same sort of of job-training every other profession has had in order to adapt to the changing technological sphere. I'm sorry, but I really don't see the sense in allowing tuition in universities to rise at insane rates when the actual product itself hasn't changed and isn't really competitive or useful in a current market, because companies that used to hire individuals with bachelor's degrees have all laid people off, so now that the ball is in their court and they can rehire smaller numbers, they're looking for better quality, which usually means not just a bachelor's, but quite possibly a Master's, or a PHD, or ten years of experience AND a degree over that new college graduate.

Take the community college I work for. Tuition has risen 8% each semester for the last three years, and the kids(18-25) I work with still can't write sentences. Seriously. Education reform is a big deal because its actually necessary. The argument you're making is the argument that I see the administrative side of the university make every single day. "We aren't doing anything wrong, go blame someone else!" I call total bullshit. There are gaping holes in both the administrative side of a university, and tenure-track professorships who haven't re-vamped a syllabi in about ten years. On top of that, look at the amount of funding universities have lost, and therefore have had to scale back on full time faculty who received benefits and such. Now that the majority of those teachers are gone, they're being replaced by adjuncts, who cost the university far less, don't receive benefits at all, and are often graduate students or members of the community without the knowledge or skills required to teach in a real classroom. Students are coming back to school in droves in order to receive the degree they missed out on years ago, so they can quit being unemployed and maybe someone will hire them. Then, when they get there they realize that it costs a shitload of money that they probably won't be able to pay back anytime soon, and they're learning the same useless shit in the same useless way they did the first time around.

Look, we tend to think that higher education is the sole means to receiving a "good job" and becoming "successful." This is entirely untrue and the very lie that got us into the higher-ed financial mess. Everyone has to go to college = college becomes more expensive, which means loans become more abundant, which means that families go into debt, which means if they aren't able to secure a position directly after graduating ( have you seen those insane student loan breakdowns that require you to start paying them off right away, and are based on some fictitious salary you're supposed to be making?) then everyone begins to suffer. The quality of a college degree has declined while the price has gone up, dramatically. What sense does that make? I'm not saying that these problems are strictly the fault of the higher education system, but a combination of lending, demand, and plunging value in the face of the "everyone must have a degree" lie, while at the same time, employment rates ares stagnant and we aren't seeing any changes.

What we really need is a way to administer high quality education in the face of a changing world, and if we allow tradition to keep us in the dark ages, we'll soon realize the mistake. One of the biggest reasons GM is still afloat is due to the auto bailout a few years ago. We couldn't let ourselves take "capitalism" seriously, and instead of allowing a company that made poor financial decisions go under and lose to competition, we bailed it out and saved it from ruin. Why? tradition. The corporate elites couldn't possibly let such a prominent symbol of American freedom get left behind.

edit: more shit.

jlks · 16 days

Teach your students the importance of using the internet. Intelligence is often measured these days by one's ABILITY to learn, rather than what they know. If we can adapt to the kind of changes a mass social system bring, we can effectively deal with issues regarding how much college costs and what we expect it to do for us. Learning is something mysterious- everyone does it differently and in their own way. I don't think we're spending enough time teaching students how to understand that all of the answers are RIGHT HERE, we just need to learn how to start looking. College is becoming an increasingly broken system, and one of the best ways out is through the online sphere. Lets get with it, people!

mjwilson2713 · 16 days

I don't really understand this. Is the author pointing out that it took him a few formative years of teaching english as a foreign language to understand that cultural barriers are innate? Is he suggesting we shouldn't change them, because his personal identity crisis is somehow involved in the magic of understanding human differences?

At first I thought this article would answer a fundamental problem, something akin to the impossible grammatical constructions of the English language and the problems we encounter when trying to teach them to others, especially when we are dealing with students beyond our language-communities. But it didn't answer anything. The only thing I gathered from this article is why we choose to teach foreign English students in the first place- to introduce ourselves to cultures we otherwise would not have known about. I agree that sometimes we learn valuable things from our English language learners, but this seemed like a too-late attempt to reconcile the author's own slightly nationalist/racist views of language. Not what I was expecting.

santoremedio · 16 days

Its really too bad that the guy who wrote this article probably grew up in an age where school meant show up in person and learn from a face or else you won't get it. Our younger generations are learning online at a startling rate, and we don't quite understand it yet. Moving from a physical space to an online one would solve the monetary problems of the school, and there are certainly psychologists, sociologists, and educators working on the problem of "transgressing the classroom." As usual, Fox produces nothing but moronic, dinosaur views when they should be embracing the future and encouraging growth. Fuck em. The internet IS the answer!

sxm235 · 16 days

It may be helpful to know what kind of comments your professors made. What specifically did you do to "cross lines?" I'm not exactly a teacher in a classroom sense, but I am a tutor for a university, full time, and I can't stress enough the importance of gauging students in order to reach a certain level with them. Some students require a more relaxed, less authoritative air, and others really desire to be taught as if they were a child in a kindergarten class. It all depends on what they bring to the table for you. How do you see yourself when interacting with a student? What kind of teacher do you want to be? What's your teaching theory? How do you view other people, especially students? Are they all capable and have somehow been cheated by society, or are they all just there becuase they have to be? How do you feel about being in front of people, and what reactions do you have to public speaking? When you are speaking with a student, do you tend to want to give them the answers as fast as possible or do you want them to learn how to think through a situation in a more critical way before even approaching answers?

Asking yourself and answering all of these questions can lead you to a better understanding of who are are as an educator, and what sort of person you want to be as an instructor. In my opinion, interacting with students, especially one-on-one, can make or break your reputation as an respectable professor and does impact the students far more than you can imagine.

drmomentum · 16 days

The answer to this problem is starring us in the face, yet we continue to ignore it: the fucking internet.

Drop the exclusivity of a private campus, drop the pretense of paying giant heaps of money for an otherwise useless "certificate" that proves you're qualified for the work force, drop the drives to and from a campus to sit with people you hate and listen to bullshit that doesn't matter. People need to wake the fuck up and realize that education, in its traditional sense, is dying, and in order to keep up with all the changes and assholery coming from our political leaders, we need to use the most amazing technology we've ever been given and educate people for real.

dinglemuncher · 18 days

America also has some strange fascination with meritocracy, which definitely adds fuel to the fire of a $100,000 education in English from a prestigious, private university, so I understand the desire to attain one from a really straight-laced place. Its definitely not smart, but I get it.

The education "bubble" is something that sort of frightens me, but remember that the concept of educating our populace (even in the low quality form we currently recognize) won't disappear anytime soon. If anything, I think the "bursting" of a higher education bubble will be pretty amazing, despite losing out in social value. Maybe this is the time to reform our education policies and consider a stronger, less monetarily based avenue for handing out degrees.

batterytoholybronx

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