Venting Thread- Vent about anything.

[shadowclaw]

1 hour ago, Need Coffee in an IV said:

My dad just called me 6 times within a min. He is emotionally exhausting.

My dad was like this when I was in undergrad. He'd call me to ask me something as simple as what kind of cereal did I want, and he'd call 5 or 6 times without leaving a message. Then he'd call my job even if I wasn't working to see if I happened to be there.

My husband can be this way, too. Once he called me something like 25 times while I was in class and when I finally snuck out to call him back, he just called to tell me he had pink eye.

[shadowclaw]

The manager of our apartment community sent a letter out to everyone telling us that garbage cans are no longer allowed outside of the buildings in view of the street - they need to be in the garage or in our tiny yards. It's to enhance the curb appeal. This is the ugliest apartment community I've ever seen. The houses are painted a hideous shade of brown, the landscaping consists of mulch, mulch, and more mulch, and the yards are surrounded by crumbling cinder block walls. You can't polish this turd.

[Unimpressed3D]

I am so glad I found this thread. I have been fuming today after sitting through yet another session of a class in which the professor uses the podium as her damn pulpit. (I know I shouldn't have hung on to it that long, but I couldn't reach a resolution about what to do, and she touched on a lot of things that are highly sensitive because of my background.)

She's extremely backward, to the point where calling her a conservative is an almost indisputable insult to bona fide conservatives. (I'm a moderate, for the record.)

Among her other gems:

- child abuse should be legal because it's dangerous to let the government intervene in "the sanctity of the family"

- marriage should never be dissolved under any circumstances (!)

- "normative morality" is absolutely indispensable for the security, strength, and vitality of a culture (I actually agree with her on the concept of normative morality as such, but I fiercely disagree with her as to what constitutes said morality vs. immorality.)

- Islam is taking over Europe, and America's next unless we preserve traditional mores regarding divorce, child-rearing, women...Heh??? Even entertaining her premise, how the hell are these things pertinent while things such as, I don't know, foreign policy and immigration (slaps forehead) not even worthy of mention in her self-indulgent little tirades?

- endless, blind, and groundless assertions regarding human nature, women, men, and what is (politically, socially, psychologically) "possible"

This is a literature class, and she spent the entire first hour of an hour and fifteen minute class pontificating, "teaching" us (ha ha) about how foolish it is for the West, especially America, to abandon "tradition" in almost every sphere of human activity. She criticizes the Catholic Church for reforms, emphatically says she is not a fan of Pope Francis, and claims, rather absurdly, to be an expert on Catholicism, though not being one herself.

I'm Catholic, and this is part of what I find offensive, especially since she appropriates and misrepresents some aspects of the Church's history and teachings (to whitewash what she considers traditionalism, which would really be more palatable to a Neanderthal than a conservative, as I said).

She reserves special antipathy for feminism in all its forms. She never teaches what we signed up to learn, the subject of the class, but she uses NON-assigned texts to twist them (like the assigned ones, on the rare occasions she talks about them) in a delusional effort to prove her own points. She said that a character in a completely unrelated book is a real "lady" because she blamed herself for being duped by a gold-digging pair of lovers, and decided to stay with the guy even after she found out that not only did he literally con her into marrying him, but that their whole marriage was a fraud. She (the professor) spoke approvingly of this poor idiot of a woman refusing to leave for a man who really did love her, under the "reasoning" of "I can't do it - I'm a married woman now." (!) Then the prof adds, dropping all pretense that she's not preaching, "Marriage is a commitment. It's hard work. You can't just run away every time there's a problem." (!!!???)

I want to slap this creature. She also spoke approvingly of Anna Karenina, but that was nothing compared to this. Being defrauded and ending up in a straight-up farce of a marriage is having just another "problem" that should be "worked out"??? In the Church's defense, such a sham "marriage" is very clearly and automatically considered perfectly null and void, for the record. These things are explicitly laid out in canon law: under all kinds of conditions, annulments are given and you can marry again with the Church's blessings. Being a victim of fraud is not a sin, and no matter how foolish you were to trust the wrong person (who is the guilty one, as they were intending to trick you), you are not authentically married under such circumstances, and certainly are not left to rot as some warped punishment. She's constantly misrepresenting authentic Church teaching (which, I'm the first to admit, is far from perfect, especially regarding women...but nowhere near as looney as she approvingly claims) to bulwark her own bizarre, Neanderthal assertions...all of which have nothing to do with what we're paying to learn!

It really gets to me that this anti-feminist "lady"-lauding freak of a dinosaur dresses like a whore herself. She's ~60, yet makes herself up to look like a 25-year-old prostitute. (She even admitted to marrying her husband for money - yeah, just that openly - and brags about what he bought her...and then brags about how she stayed with him 40 years until his death... She also spoke rather favorably about an adulterous couple who dutifully stayed with their spouses, while carrying on an affair for decades. Hmmm...) She has very clear ideas about what a woman should be, but they're not truly traditional; they're perverted. And she looks like such an outrageous yet especially scary spokesperson for her twisted ideals. An official senior citizen parading about like a hot, cool "traditional woman" using beauty as her power... Excuse me, but how can you be both a "dutiful" lady and a whore? And how is the latter a good or appropriate champion of the former??? What the hell is wrong with this picture? This "traditional" 60-something who's so enamored with "the good old days" runs around in four-inch heels, really short skirts, heavy makeup and lipstick, her really long dyed blond hair always looking teased...freaky. :/

[jaimeleigh12]

I haven't heard anything from anybody and I am freaking out at all of the communications that people seem to be having on the results page. I applied for the PhD programs in Business Administration / Management at The University of North Carolina, The University of Florida, The University of Georgia, and the University of Alabama. AARRRGGGG!!!! Now, I am torturing myself by refreshing the results page over and over and over and over. I have also checked the status of my applications about three times a day for the last two weeks. Anyone have any calming words of advice?

[MelRel]

On 2/3/2016 at 10:47 AM, jaimeleigh12 said:

I haven't heard anything from anybody and I am freaking out at all of the communications that people seem to be having on the results page. I applied for the PhD programs in Business Administration / Management at The University of North Carolina, The University of Florida, The University of Georgia, and the University of Alabama. AARRRGGGG!!!! Now, I am torturing myself by refreshing the results page over and over and over and over. I have also checked the status of my applications about three times a day for the last two weeks. Anyone have any calming words of advice?

You know whats worse? Hearing back from one place with rejection

[j.rona]

I'm on the same boat as y'all with the phd apps. got rejected from one of my top choice, after applying there the 2nd time around (3 years later). ughhhhhhhhhhh. and haven't heard back from the other ones at all. are there supposed to be interviews w/ the phd process (even if they dont state it on the website)?

having real bad anxiety atm. i'm too scared to check on my app status and would rather wait for the call (PLEASE!) or email..........

[dr. t]

It's so goddamn convenient how scholars of Modernity all manage to find the origins of or the motive force behind the phenomenon they're discussing in the birth of Protestant Christianity. AAAAAAAAHHHHHH *hurls book across room*

[The Wayfarer]

Calling it an 'issue' would be overselling it but it appears that the first...hiccup...has come up in my committee. Two members seem to have very different views of the schools/departments I should end up in. 

Gonna be fun.

[peachtart]

Is age 30 too old for grad school? 

[AmandaN]

I'm having completely ridiculous frustrations over not having applied early decision. There are 40 spots available in the program/option I applied to and I keep playing a scenario over in my head in which all 40 spots are filled with early decision applicants and I'm left out in the cold. I am beyond excited for everyone getting their acceptance notifications and hate that I can't help thinking "whelp, there goes another spot"

[shadowclaw]

On 2/11/2016 at 11:14 AM, peachtart said:

Is age 30 too old for grad school? 

Nope. There's a guy who looks to be in his late 40's/early 50's in my program (never asked his age), as well as a woman in her late 30's. I'd say a lot of the students in my program who are graduating with their PhD are around 30 (so they came into the program close to 25), but there are quite a few midway through who are past 30. 

[kjc]

It's Friday. You know, the day where everyone is happy because it is basically the weekend. Alternatively, I like to think about it as the day that I realize all the shit I managed to NOT get done this week. Sigh. 

[shadowclaw]

1 hour ago, kjc said:

It's Friday. You know, the day where everyone is happy because it is basically the weekend. Alternatively, I like to think about it as the day that I realize all the shit I managed to NOT get done this week. Sigh. 

Yup, it's Friday and I have 40 papers to grade this weekend on top of working on other things, like a literature review and a project for my core course (but at least they aren't due for a while).

[justanotherlostgrrl]

Trying to figure out how to find work over the summer when the default is unpaid internships.  I was so anxious about getting into school that I didn't consider how difficult it would be in the periods like summer - and how difficult it is to get a company to hire someone for 2-3 months.  Really panicking here on what to do financially.

[shadowclaw]

I'm a TA for an introductory science lab. The students are learning how to conduct an experiment and write a scientific paper in addition to their normal lab activities. They have been doing little pieces related to their project and writing every week. Most recently, they had to submit a draft of their introduction and methods sections of their paper. The lab manual gave some good instructions, a rubric, and a sample paper. I went over key aspects of each in my lecture and did a writing exercise with them. They've also been reading journal articles.

Yet the majority of the students received horrific grades primarily for not even trying to follow the instructions. Half the papers had no citations whatsoever, and for those who did, many cited secondary sources like web sites, even though the week before they wrote an article summary of a journal article related to their project with the goal of using it as background in their papers. There was a list of questions for them to answer before writing that was meant to help guide them... Many students just copied all of their answers and pasted them together and called it an introduction, and so many of them didn't submit the questions which were worth a quarter of the grade.

I've been pretty happy with TAing so far, but after grading these papers...

[avflinsch]

On 2/11/2016 at 2:14 PM, peachtart said:

Is age 30 too old for grad school? 

No. I started at 52, and one of our PhD students just finished at 60ish.

[peachtart]

That's good to know!!  @shadowclaw, @avflinsch. 

[rosali]

Ok, so complicated story.

My flatmates and I signed a lease for our apartment in Andorra in September. The people told us to just sign the lease, it's all normal, blah blah blah, since it was in Catalan and none of us spoke it. So we did and it was great.

Fast forward 5 months to yesterday. Our downstairs neighbor came up and told us we had a leaking pipe and it was filling her apartment with water. Okay, we got in touch with a friend who got in touch with the landlord. We were told our insurance would cover it. Ok, so what insurance? How do we go about claiming it? The answer was "the insurance you signed up for when you leased the apartment." Ok, so what insurance? Turns out we don't have insurance. At all. So we have to cover the damages ourselves. We're basically fotuts.

So now I have to ask permission from the principal of my school to miss meetings that I never do anything at so I can wait for the plumber to tell us how fotuts we are. That's what you get for asking permission instead of just doing things. UGH UGH UGH.

[hippyscientist]

1 hour ago, rosali said:

Ok, so complicated story.

My flatmates and I signed a lease for our apartment in Andorra in September. The people told us to just sign the lease, it's all normal, blah blah blah, since it was in Catalan and none of us spoke it. So we did and it was great.

Fast forward 5 months to yesterday. Our downstairs neighbor came up and told us we had a leaking pipe and it was filling her apartment with water. Okay, we got in touch with a friend who got in touch with the landlord. We were told our insurance would cover it. Ok, so what insurance? How do we go about claiming it? The answer was "the insurance you signed up for when you leased the apartment." Ok, so what insurance? Turns out we don't have insurance. At all. So we have to cover the damages ourselves. We're basically fotuts.

So now I have to ask permission from the principal of my school to miss meetings that I never do anything at so I can wait for the plumber to tell us how fotuts we are. That's what you get for asking permission instead of just doing things. UGH UGH UGH.

That sucks, but thank you for teaching me the word fotut!!! It's a great one and I will be using it around some of my peers quite frequently I think. best of luck with sorting that out.

[rosali]

@hippyscientist Any time! It's Catalan for "screwed," but I really like it haha.

[hippyscientist]

@rosali sometimes swear words in different languages just have so much more "oomph" behind them than the bog standard English ones. If someone is peeving me, I tend to whisper "putant" under my breath, or if I'm pretty stressed, "jodido" has a great ring to it. If I'm feeling incredibly passionate about something, italian is always excellent! One of the many benefits of international living  

[rosali]

@hippyscientist I'm also very partial to "joder." It just slides out so easily with an exasperated sigh. Also a fan of "putain de merde!" and "tu me fais chier!" in French, which are absolutely filthy, but sound super classy to people who don't know what you're saying haha.

[shadowclaw]

Babies are gross. Babies are ugly. Photos of babies filling up my Facebook timeline make me cranky.

I want to have kids myself and I even feel a bit jealous of my friends who are the position to have kids right now. But they're just so repulsive for the first year or so.

I also don't know why you'd want to post photos of your baby's first diaper change. I really don't.

[ihatechoosingusernames]

On February 11, 2016 at 1:14 PM, peachtart said:

Is age 30 too old for grad school? 

Hell no! If you have a 5 year program that puts you at 35...at least 30 more years until retirement age  You're fine!

[hippyscientist]

Last night my boyfriend of 5 years broke up with me, because he can't cope with the distance any more. In 6 months, I'll be moving to the same state as him. Apparently I'm not worth waiting 6 months for.

Screw having this on top of admissions stress and current masters work. I just want to curl up under a blanket and not come out for days.