Sidious, Snoke and Salacious B Crumb’s Sarcastic and Sassy Situation Saloon (Fanfic Social Thread)

I'm glad it all worked out. I was always fairly lucky in that I pretty much knew right away if a prof wasn't going to work for me and I would drop it in like the first week. There were a few profs I didn't like but could always make it work if nothing else fit my schedule. Plus I only had 2 "required" classes and I lucked out with one - I had an inkling the prof of that one wasn't going to be very accommodating of my disability... but I managed to take it while he was on sabbatical so problem avoided! A year(ish) afterward I had a different prof ask me if I had taken that class yet, otherwise she was going to offer it to me independently so I guess my gut was right!

Then of course I did much of my MA online so I have little sympathy for those complaining about zoom learning, but I do acknowledge that it was set up with online learning in mind and, yeah, 18 months in it was getting so tiring teaching myself. If it had been any longer than 2 years I probably wouldn't have finished.


I spent most of my day baking cookies for work. The non-profit I work for has a lot of clients who have been unable to leave their homes since March (severe disabilities, care homes etc). So my boss decided it would be nice to bake them all cookies and deliver them for valentines day. I volunteered as a baker (much more fun than delivering them and what better things do I have to do on a Saturday during a pandemic) and oh goodness I have forgotten how hard it is to bake double batches of cookies. One recipe I did, the dough had to be cold and hard and that was not fun to scoop. I'm exhausted. Everything is cleaned up, I just have to wait till ALL THE COOKIES are cooled before packaging them. Not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I actually dont like the cookies I made. They are way too sweet for my taste! They are edible but I normally only put like 2/3 of the sugar recipes call for but I just followed the recipe for these. At least I won't eat them.

Health orders here were extended by another month yesterday. I really wasn't surprised but it just put me in an even more annoyed mood.

 

I feel you there. Most of my profs have redesigned their courses to work better in an online environment, particularly with making quizzes and exams open-book/open-note. The computer science and engineering department set up an official Discord server last March immediately after everything went online. It now has 1,400+ members, text and voice channels for every course in the department (some professors have used the voice channel and the screen-sharing feature to actually hold lectures in Discord), channels for advising, career services, and relevant clubs, a set of channels for the help room (provides free tutoring for certain freshman-level classes), and general discussion channels for students to chat about computers and personal projects, get help with computer problems, share STEM memes, and (the latest addition) post pictures of their cute pets.

But at the same time, I'm tired of learning from a computer screen. I'm a lot more easily distracted when I'm sitting alone looking at a computer, and it's getting boring and hard to stay motivated and productive, especially with essentially nothing else to do on campus. I want the normal college experience back.

 

Oh, I can 100% relate. I swear doing my MA online reduced my ability to concentrate to the point where I think it permanently affected my brain. Sitting alone - at home - on a computer just reading things all day with NO consequences for just checking social media, here, youtube, etc, when things got really boring screwed with my head. These days working from home it's not as bad because there are "consequences" for me not doing my work and a bit more motivation for me to keep on task, but some days my productivity is REAL LOW.

However it might not just be an online thing. A friend and I were talking (actually it was my former roommate) and she was doing her MA in person at the same time I was doing mine online and we both experienced the exact same nose-dive in our ability to concentrate to the point where we both now struggle to sit down and read a physical book. I feel like I've slowly been getting better but working from home likely isn't helping the process.

 

Sad to hear.

Also, I know it's not comparable but this remind me of an old Foxtrot strip:

 

Sunday activity: Baking bread. That's not unusual, but today I'm trying baking with sourdough instead of yeast. This will be interesting indeed...

 

I totally sympathize. I can't really function well without being in a class with other people and I can't imagine how it must be like studying by staring at a screen all day. I remember taking an online course once and immediately dropping it in favour of an in-person. This time must be great for anti-social people who hate being around people in general (I know a few of those) but most people crave some kind of human interaction.

 

I’m powerfully grateful to my parents for getting me a tutor for math my senior year. Not for my trigonometry class, but to get me in shape to do standardized testing. Because of my scores in math, I tested out of freshman math classes and my university counted language, math, and music as the same disciplines. As a result, I did choir and orchestra and two semesters of Hebrew and fulfilled my math requirement. So that comic amuses the daylights out of me.

 

That is funny. I hope it works out for him. He is a good kid. I joined the Army during my senior year of High School. I was 17 years old. My Guidance Counselor told me, "You destroyed your life." LOL! The military paid for me to get two college degrees, I have travelled all over the world, and I never once regretted my decision.

 

The military instills such discipline and hard work and intelligence in those committed to it. That counselor’s perspective is nonsense. Until Vietnam, every war in American history had one of my ancestors involved, from Captain Thomas Seaman to my grandfather Wayne the medic and my grandmother Dorothy, who was a WAC, and that is an honorable legacy.

 

My experience with highschool 'guidance counselors' is that they rarely, if ever, give any good advice or direction in life for teens and young adults. "Oh, you're good at X, Y, Z? You should follow your passion and go into that!!" (whatever that is...maybe a liberal arts degree you have no idea what to do with at the end but you do it anyways because your counselor said so). I mean, who cares about market trends, job security, and actual career advice, right?

So if someone wants to go into the military, I see no problem if you know what you're doing and the challenges of the career. Honestly think kids should get a proper career course led by professionals in the working force.

 

I once had a HS guidance counsellor tell me (in reference to my disability) "You'd better think about going to university or else you will never do anything with your life." I mean, number one, kriff her. Number two, I had already been accepted to 3 universities at that point. Number three, NOT EVERYONE CAN AFFORD POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION. Number 4, what about trade schools and other certifications. Could have went to community college and become an X-Ray tec. Just saying, wouldn't have made me a lesser human.

I mean, I appreciated the honesty I guess but come on! I was well freaking aware that unemployment numbers for people with disabilities are depressingly high.

Sorry, that still gets in my crawl.

I completely agree. I had a friend who was (also) pressured into doing the whole Post-Secondary/university thing. Like JLs son, 2 years in he decided it really wasn't for him so he dropped out and joined the Army.

I think post-secondary should be available to all... but we need to stop pressuring kids to go that route if it's not for them.

 

Sorry that happened to you. HS counselors can be full of **** honestly, especially that one. There are so many people with disabilities who have meaningful jobs and when I see programs around here supporting this and helping people get employed, I get really happy because I believe everyone should be able to find a career that suits them, regardless of the disability they face.

And yeah, this "you need to go to university or else!" crap is just that....crap. I actually wish I went to a technical school and got one of those certifications (X-Ray tech is a good one for sure). I'm gonna guess this stuff was fed to you in the 2000s sometime---at least that was my experience where HS counselors were the worst (no doubt they probably still are, poor kids...)

 

I graduated high school in 2005. My guidance counselor didn't push college at all on me, but then again I think she could see from my classroom struggles and frequent IEP meetings that I didn't have what it took to succeed in college at that time.

It took me 12 years after high school before I enrolled in college, but I needed that 12 years to improve myself to where I could do it. There's no way I could have gone to college straight out of high school. I would have been academically dismissed by the university within two semesters, if I even got my application accepted in the first place.

 

In the words of the philosopher Springsteen, "We learned more from a three-minute record baby, than we ever learned in school."

Yeah, it was similar for me. I never even finished high school, and at 18 I not only thought higher education was completely out of reach for someone like me, I also literally had no idea what I wanted out of life (I mean, I still don't really but now I know what I don't want at least). College or university at that time would have been pointless.

Education and learning looks different for everyone, and the narrative of "graduate high school->go to university->fancy career=Success" is just as outdated as "sex/a romantic relationship/kids=Happiness & True Fulfillment". And yeah, it sucks that that's still the narrative society pushes.

 

Thanks for that reminder---I've been going through a hard time with these thoughts and it's always refreshing to be reminded that life isn't always a linear path we have to be on and get certain things done by certain time, etc. I mean, yeah, sometimes I envy people who seem to have their life all figured out...but do they really?

 

Honestly, I don't think anyone really has it all figured out. Some people are just better at faking it. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

 

This. And as an asexual/aromantic person, the constant pushing of the latter (sex/relationships/kids) is not only frustrating, it's offensive.

 

That’s some crap. People should be able to live their life how they chose.

 

This is so true! And it is always easier to 'fake it' on social media, for a short visit (back when we could do that).

I'm a hot mess, but at least I'm honest about it.

 

I think that's the case for a lot of kids. I got into college, got through & enjoyed it, but came out with HUGE student debts & no idea what to do next or how to get into a career. 4 years doing crummy retail & temp jobs before I had an epiphany. Which required grad school, more huge student debts & crap jobs to pay for it.

There is something to be said for mandatory service (military or civilian) after high school. Knock around for a year or two, figure out who you really are, then go for it.
College or vocational training, whichever you want to do. And a lot of people do college when they're older. My dad and his brothers went for college degrees in their thirties. The college I went to has a program specifically for people who aren't straight out of high school -- one woman was in her 80s when she got her degree!

And in unrelated news, spent the entire afternoon watching... THE KITTEN BOWL! And then THE PUPPY BOWL! My furball always roots for the black cats team. He was crushed when they lost this year. Hid under a blanket and napped away his disappointment.

 

I get a free dinner out of the superbowl now so that’s good

 

I put the Super Bowl on in my apartment while I worked on the computer. First half was spent setting up a group project for one of my classes, and the second half was spent doing my taxes. Getting $1,700+ back from federal and state combined, but I owe $45 to the school district.

 

I was told by family that I was obviously faking feelings for the guy I was engaged to because I wasn’t acting like people normally do when in love. Translation: I was claiming to be attracted to his mind and personality and not bothered by him not being hot. Because if I were in love, I’d want a hot guy and that meant I was making up my attraction.

This is why I haven’t told them what it means for me to be demisexual because, ya know, falling in love with someone based on a psychological and spiritual connection is kind of the definition of that. And they claim it’s a nonexistent thing.

 

Wow, well if some people think the only reason anyone would love someone is based on how 'hot' or sexually attractive they are, I don't know what to say. I guess all those unfortunate disfigured or disabled people or people who suffered abuse and have scars on their face or whatever but are actually very sweet and caring people just don't deserve to be loved because, you know, love is only based on whether someone wants to jump into your pants or not.

No wonder society is so messed up.

 

Wow, that's messed up what your family said. Kind of the same reason I haven't told my parents about being asexual/aromantic. They know I'm not interested in marrying or having kids and mostly accept it, but every once in a while they still ask me when I'll give them grandkids. (I'm an only child, so I'm the only one who could give them grandkids.) It doesn't happen often though, so I can tolerate it.

But if I revealed that I was ace/aro, they'd jump all over me, especially my father who is about as homophobic as as you can get. Right now they see it and accept it as a conscious choice to not pursue that branch of life, but they would never accept being told that it was a sexual orientation.

In other news, dropping that class with the difficult professor has done amazing things for my mental health. I slept well over the weekend, woke up easily this morning for my 8am class, and am just generally in a much better and less irritable mood today.

I walked into the university library about an hour ago and started setting up my laptop to do homework, and realized I had forgotten my USB headset, which was a problem because I wanted to sit in a quiet study area and needed to watch a 90-minute YouTube video for a quiz due tomorrow night. I just muttered a curse under my breath, casually packed up the stuff I had pulled out of my backpack, and opted to make the 20-minute round trip walk back to my apartment to get the headset and back to the library so I wouldn't lose my prime parking spot. I hadn't made that walk in almost a year, and I almost got lost navigating around the dorms that sit between my apartment and the main campus, where I used to be able to navigate through them in my sleep (even though I only lived here for exactly two months to the day before classes were first disrupted by COVID). Despite the cold and the week-old snow on the ground, it was a nice, peaceful walk.

If the missing headset had happened last week, I'd probably be scrambling to throw everything back into my bag as fast as possible, running across the parking lot to the car, and driving fast back to the apartment and back to the library while cursing out loud and being on the verge of tears.