Hadn't thought about it, but if I had to I would guess I was pushing 60, and I'm 27.
Not a matter of creakiness for me though. It's just I feel a lot less energetic/enthusiastic/happy, and a lot crankier/disenchanted/dissatisfied than I figure people ought to be at 27.
Or maybe I'm just depressed.
In my head, I'm still in my mid-20s. In my knees, I'm in my mid-50s. I recently realized that I still tend to see my kids' teachers as older than me, despite the fact that I could, in some cases, be their parent.
I feel the age I am, which has been depressing me this year. I'm annoyed with myself over that -- I didn't think I was overly attached to being young, and feel all shallow and silly for being sad about aging. This year has been a bit "Nothing fun or interesting will ever happen again. Well, aging and death may be interesting when they hit, but probably not fun."
Not that my life isn't pleasant and enjoyable: Buck's great, the kids are spectacular, work is tolerable. But the odds that thirteen dwarves and a wizard are going to hire me to burgle a dragon's lair anytime soon seem really low.
I recently realized that I still tend to see my kids' teachers as older than me
Hah. Parent-teacher-conferences this year included two adorable little boys who I'm shocked are allowed to teach. They were probably both pushing thirty, but just all fresh-faced and perky, and I felt four thousand years old. It was a huge relief talking to the next teacher, who was a middleaged woman.
But the odds that thirteen dwarves and a wizard are going to hire me to burgle a dragon's lair anytime soon seem really low.
Bilbo was <checks wikipedia> fifty years old at the time of The Hobbit
This fact does not cause me to reevaluate the odds.
But the odds that thirteen dwarves and a wizard are going to hire me to burgle a dragon's lair anytime soon seem really low.
Lower or higher than the odds of being chosen to carry the One Ring into Mordor?
Hobbits can sometimes live for up to 130 years, although their average life expectancy is 100 years.
4 is how I felt for quite a while. I've recently realized that there really isn't any good reason for my life to be other than awesome, so I need to get my ass in gear and make it so. That's easier said than done, but I'm working on it with modest success.
Sweet. What are some aspects of the awesomeness-increasing project?
I feel 35 in areas I should feel 60, and 60 in areas where I wish I felt 35.
All in all, when I'm not doing my taxes, or getting out of bed, or looking in a mirror I do generally feel younger than I am.
I generally feel the same age as my body, and I put an embarassing amount of time and money into making sure my body feels springy. Besides the working out, I get massages early and often, which I don't think most people allow themselves or can afford. But it prevents injury and aches! Get massages (as many as you can afford)!
I feel about sixty, but that's probably the after effects of whatever germ has me. I still can't eat a full meal. On the plus side, I'm flying today so I have the chance to be a carrier instead of just a victim. I ran ten miles on Saturday and that might also make me feel older until I recover more.
11: More exercise, better diet, taking concrete steps to widen my social circle (especially in the direction of romantic entanglements and the like). I'm slowly working towards trying to set up a business on the side, and possibly will pick up stakes and move somewhere more suited to my temperament. I'm planning a trip to Europe, likely to include a side adventure to the FSR of Georgia and Turkey. All this is contingent on renewal of a grant I'll be hearing about in the next week or so. If DOE decides to take us out back and put a bullet in our heads send us to live on a farm then things will get all sorts of exciting as I scramble for new employment, but I'll do so in an awesome way for sure.
Rest assured that if there are any romantic disasters I'll disclose here. I owe the Mineshaft that much. Triumphs will be evaluated for disclosure on a case-by-case basis as they are duller to read about.
10 is well-said.
In my head I'm in my mid-30s, which is to say adult and no longer running around like an idiot, staying up until dawn, but my body often says I'm 10 years older than I am (bad back, mostly), which is of course depressing as hell. Togolosh really has the right idea.
Seems like 60 is a popular age to feel.
Perhaps it's the oldest you can feel without being it or older?
12. I definitely seem to be aging from the bottom up. My ankles are completely shot; my knees are unreliable; my genitals and digestion need longer and longer to recover; but my brain still thinks it's about 40 and I have ALL my hair.
I ran ten miles on Saturday and that might also make me feel older until I recover more.
I'm feeling this. I love my bike commute in many ways, but a night's sleep is apparently not a full recovery from it, and I'm kind of tired all the time. I'll get more acclimated again by later in the year.
18: If I recall correctly, that's more in your case than for most people -- haven't you claimed to be covered by a thick, glossy pelt from neck to ankles?
20. Not quite glossy, but thick. And grey, these days. Call me silverback.
I never know how to answer this question. I suppose I feel 40ish, maybe, or maybe just my real age. I am really liking my barefoot shoes.
I AM AS OLD AS THE EAST WIND, YET AS YOUNG AS THE SUN. I AM THE AGE OF WONDER!
Pretty much full hair here as well.
On recovery times, if I do my (not very long) interval-heavy plus lifting workout in the evening I'm rubbish well into the next day (but in a semi-good way).
Also, I think I've mentioned that I've always felt 40 (even in my college years, I loved going to bed early, was impatient with music show formats, didn't drink much), so I am delighted to be 40 and feel age-appropriate.
My back and feet are hurting, which contributes to making me feel 40-ish at least. Also, just read about some website selling for one billion dollars and what is this world coming to damn kids get off my lawn.
26: When I was an undergrad my girlfriend's nickname for me was "Old Man" because of a general crotchety conservatism in personal matters. It's eased as I've aged, so I'm entering a phase where my age matches my temperament. If the trend continues I imagine I will be quite the libertine in my dotage.
||
NOTE re TAXES: per Peep's comment at the bottom of the Derbyshire thread, I was wrong about the Making Work Pay tax credit: it's expired, not applicable for 2011. Sorry for my error.
|>
Besides the working out, I get massages early and often, which I don't think most people allow themselves or can afford. But it prevents injury and aches! Get massages (as many as you can afford)!
I have the same skepticism towards massages as I do towards soaking in the bath: how exactly is this relaxing? Stop touching me and go away, and then I'll relax. Do you really think they do anything? for more than an hour or two?
30: I think this belongs in the Con Planning thread, heebs.
When I use my CPAP, and it stays on the whole night, and I get a god night's rest, I feel better than I did in my 20's.
I was recently in the supermarket in Maine, and another woman with a cart said, "excuse me kids.". If only.
19, visually, assuming I would have the same reaction as the various professors who assume that I am an undergraduate despite obvious contextual clues that should tell them otherwise.
19, when I am confronted with many bureaucratic, automotive, or household issues that seem like the sort of thing adults should understand but about which I haven't a clue.
43, because I think of my downstairs roommate as a teenage son.
I didn't think I was overly attached to being young, and feel all shallow and silly for being sad about aging.
I hear you, sister. While I've been complaining about getting old for years, it really only started to sink in on a visceral level recently. Contributing factors:
-- the realization that, with my grandfather's death in January, I am now the oldest male left on my father's side of the family without going very deep into the branches of extended family that I've never really known.
--having a teenaged son that looks more and more adult with each passing month.
--previously mentioned stupid knees, and an associated inability to play with the little ones the same way I did with the oldest.
--an unsettling string of acquaintance deaths (and a few potentially fatal health scares) in my age cohort over the past few years.
Stop the bus! I was supposed to get off at 35 and just stay there.
My 30s have gone very quickly so it's hard to grasp that 40 is coming up fast, but then my body seeming to fall apart in various ways does catch me up on the question.
the supermarket in Maine,
Maine is smaller than I thought.
My nipples hurt from running also. It is a very strange pain that crops up only when my shirt rubs them wrong. Then I have a momentary panic while I remember why they hurt.
Bilbo was childless, else I don't think they would have ever lured him away from Bag End.
I'm a little sad that I'm too domestic for dragon-slaying, but I do retain a few trophies from old adventures, and I've settled into a satisfactory middle-aged-guy routine - without really feeling old at all.
My nipples hurt from running
If your nipples are running, you may have an infection.
To the OP (and 1): mobilityWOD. MobilityWOD!
I'm increasingly of the view, particularly having watched my Dad recently, that perceived age is based on two things: your job and your physical mobility, but primarily the latter. If you are able to move around easily, you feel younger, if not not.
Personally I have pretty bad mobility issues.
Does mobilityWOD mean a stretching class?
same skepticism towards massages ... Do you really think they do anything?
Yes, very much. Mind you, I'm talking about a skilled massage by someone that also works out, so I can tell him 'I noticed this effect when I was doing this specific lift' and he diagnoses postural or muscular shortcomings. But yes. Massage has reversed a lifetime of rolling my ankles. It isn't all tinkly music and nice back-touches. He digs in to tight ligaments and follows knots in muscles and, on occasion, hurts substantially.
It complements my workouts in very specific ways. There's also the benefits of direct touch, for people who don't get enough touch. The stuff about overall relaxation and releasing trapped 'toxins' and emotions in muscles? I give that some credence because I'm Californian. But I can point to way more direct benefits than those.
My calendar age is 55. My body is now in as good a shape as it was when I was 30. My body fat is now the same, and my weight and sugars and lipids and blood pressure are the same as they were then, and very good.
Due to emotional trauma, I'm told my emotional age is 75 or so. I've been a pall bearer more than 15 times with family, three of them being Mother and two sisters, the rest being grandparents, Aunts and Uncles and cousins. I'm trying really hard to live in the moment because the past and future are bad places to be.
On the positive side, while one dysfunctional group in .O.Y.A.M (reverse it) fired me as a contractor, I'm now working for a different functional group. I really should be happier than I feel. It is not depression, it is closer to PTSD.
and follows knots in muscles
I'm sure this will piss everyone off but I'm not sure I believe that there's such a thing as a knot in a muscle, short of a full-blown charleyhorse.
I'm talking about a skilled massage by someone that also works out . . . He digs in to tight ligaments and follows knots in muscles and, on occasion, hurts substantially.
Seconded.
when I am confronted with many bureaucratic, automotive, or household issues that seem like the sort of thing adults should understand but about which I haven't a clue.
The secret to passing as an adult is to bullshit convincingly about this stuff. Nobody really understands it.
47: I'm not pissed off at all, but I definitely get muscle spasms (and sometimes nerve ones, like super-fun sciatica) because of the whole twisty spine thing that definitely leave me with tight, sore areas that can be felt by someone who's not me. Maybe this qualifies as charley horse-level, but I think "muscle knot" is as good a term for those sore lumps as anything else.
47: Would you accept "area of increased tension" instead?
From the site in 44: Today's mission is a full frontal assault on your groin.
No. Fuck off.
47 doesn't piss me off, but it does confuse me. When you push on a muscle and there's a spot that's harder and/or more tender than other spots and that feels better after being massaged, what do you call that?
I'm sure this will piss everyone off but I'm not sure I believe that there's such a thing as a knot in a muscle, short of a full-blown charleyhorse.
Sometimes it's very difficult to tell a knot from the unknot.
It isn't all tinkly music and nice back-touches.
I like this kind, though the music needn't be the very tinkliest. I'm sure it doesn't extend my life or anything but neither do a lot of the other things I like.
Once I went to a masseuse several times in a row and she said I could bring my own music and I brought these period performance Boccherini cello concertos and I think we both felt funny about it.
53: Maybe it's just a tiny muscle that's in a spasm, like Thorn describes? I don't see how a big muscle could have a small portion of itself that acts up, independently.
To the OP (and 1): mobilityWOD. MobilityWOD yoga!
Actually, I haven't looked at the MobilityWOD site to see what sort of stuff it is. But I still recomment yoga for everyone (with the realization that, like Crossfit, it's not going to suit everyone).
Well, here's the accusation more bluntly - I think we're all bullshitting each other when we claim we can feel the knot in each other's backs. I believe that people have a sore spot in their back. I believe the masseuse can detect it, because you flinch when they get there. I believe the masseuse believes they can feel a golf ball in that muscle. I just don't think there's an actual detectable golf ball, 95% of the time.
The times I've had a sore spot and someone has worked on it, it seems to feel better afterwards, and then sometimes still sore the next day, and then it's anyone's guess - did it feel worse because they worked on it? would it have felt worse if they hadn't? do these things always heal on their own? Who knows!
I think we're all bullshitting each other when we claim we can feel the knot in each other's backs
I don't think anyone is claiming it is an actual 3D knot. Finding the place that makes a person flinch is finding the "knot".
how a big muscle could have a small portion of itself that acts up
Protein deposits.
Maybe you just have really insensitive fingers, heebie. It's probably because of all the knots in your back, messing up your nerve endings.
(I think it's crazy that you have never felt a knot in someone's back. Remind me next time I see you to demonstrate. I have several permanent ones).
I don't think anyone is claiming it is an actual 3D knot. Finding the place that makes a person flinch is finding the "knot".
Ok, then I'm on board with the word. Sure, people have sore spots, and we can call those knots.
58: A side benefit of yoga is that the breath control you learn can allow you to beat polygraph machines.
I'm using some yoga tricks to strengthen my damaged back and may hire an instructor for some private lessons at some point.
I feel rather (and, have been kindly told, look a bit) younger than I am, except in my aching knees, but I think that may be due to my decades of assiduously avoiding the responsibilities and obligations of maturity.
56: I love beyond respectability the little Boccherini piece that Crowe and Bettany "play" at the end of Master and Commander. It occurs to me that I could probably ask Her to play it for me.
Based on how all of you say feel, I'd say I feel about twenty years younger than I am. But my hair, although still there, has gone all weird.
(I think it's crazy that you have never felt a knot in someone's back. Remind me next time I see you to demonstrate. I have several permanent ones).
Are you thinking of vertebrae?
Suppose all muscles can be approximated by perfect spheres...
MobilityWOD.com
I have to say, many of your stories about crossfit do sound like a lot of fun, but the tone of that website is a bit much:
And for crying out loud. Don't go into the pain cave. I can't stress this enough. Your Totem Animal won't be in there to help you. You'll be on your own. The Pain Cave is for cowards. Pain is your companion, don't go hide from it.
Yes [the MobilityWod program be painful]. The MobilityWod program has often been described as self-inflicted torture. But, don't be foolish - if you think you are injuring yourself, STOP. Don't over do it. More is not necessarily better.
71: Those two paragraphs seem slightly at odds, in the way that things uttered by stupid people trying to sell me rubbish tend to be at odds with one another.
I do think there can be something physical there, though. Your fingers can get hung up on it, and you can work back and forth over and around it. Maybe you just don't get these, h-g. I've never had one as big as a golf ball, but I don't necessarily believe the people who say they have are lying.
No pain, no gain! Don't hurt yourself! If it hurts, you know it's having an effect! Don't seek out the pain, you moron! Pain is weakness leaving the body! Be careful and stop if you feel pain!
I'm not sure that I know what it would be like to feel older than I am, except rhetorically. I think I feel 28 most days, which is to say that's the age at which I lost the ability to pull all-nighters easily, have more than two drinks without having a hangover, and recover from injuries and intense workouts quickly.
Mobility drills are good even if you have very mobile joints. And foam rollers are the poor man's sports massage.
I'd feel thirty two, except that, due to some ailment apparently unknown to medicine, I can't eat a full meal and breathe afterwards. Even if I fast my breathing isn't perfect. It's been three months since I've been able to breathe comfortably, and it's getting real old. Other than that, though, I'm as punk rock as I ever was, only a little more sXe these days.
I suddenly felt older when I got sciatica. Now that I've stopped using the stupid elliptical machine I am heavier but feel younger again. Conclusion: I don't know what it means to feel a certain age.
Eh, the rhetoric is a little bro-ish but get over it and and do it. It works. Life is more important than snarking over people's choice of words on the internet.
42: Agreed. Mobility (& self-sufficiency) is the key for me. It's apparently also an important cue for others. I've often heard "You don't move like you're seventy", which is true unless I've been sitting for a time, then I move like a ninety-year-old for a bit after I get up.
Life is more important than snarking over people's choice of words on the internet.
Whoa, whoa, WHOA, brah. Let's not say things we can't take back.
Life is more important than snarking over people's choice of words on the internet.
1,441,224 comments say you're wrong.
77: Yeah, sciatica made me feel decrepit.
I can't eat a full meal and breathe afterwards. Even if I fast my breathing isn't perfect.
Get the old ticker checked out. If that comes up clear, start working through allergies that can produce asthma like symptoms. Really, don't fuck about with your breathing.
I'm starting to think that crossfit makes Halford grouchy.
I didn't do CF today and got 1.5 hours of sleep. But I am grouchy! I apologize to you all -- I am deeply committed to snarking about language choices on the internet. Sorry.
--having a teenaged son that looks more and more adult with each passing month.
Yeah, this. It doesn't help that my teenager is eerily doppelgangerish.
42, 79: This too. My 73-year-old father is jogging again on his new hip, and man, do I want to be 73 like he is when I get there.
I am sometimes told I look younger than I am. The height helps. The grey at the temples and the harried look, less so.
(I have no idea why I have started commenting in the voice of Settlement "Trip" Underwriter III, pride of Dartmouth's varsity laxmen, but it may have something to do with staring at Microsoft PowerPoint for hours on end.)
I've been told I look younger than I am or that I look good "for my age." I feel like I'm being patted on the head. When did I become an age at which it's not good to look like you're at? (I'm 44.)
Since college, people have almost always thought I look younger than I am. There isn't really any benefit from this, and as I've gotten older it's probably been a negative in some situations where people assume perceived age is an accurate proxy for knowledge.
That is, I haven't benefited as far as I can tell. I'm sure there are people who benefit from looking younger than they are.
95: Sir Kraab mostly just complains about it.
66: That is charming music, but it bugged me that they were apparently improvising a duet out of something else entirely. (As it turns out, a quintet.)
I'm sure there are people who benefit from looking younger than they are.
Life is too short to worry about people who want to seduce John Derbyshire.
98: I feel certain no such person exists, and please don't let me know if I'm wrong.
Definitely seconded to 4's 'so I guess this is all?' sentiment. But there's a spectrum of possible responses to the feeling, resignation is not the only choice. First, the impression could be wrong-- family can improve, people can be surprising in both directions, they don't always get worse. Also, it's possible to surprise yourself. Work possibilities as well; things can get better for exogenous reasons (like the whole economy picking up steam). Second, tranquility and compassion are both worth cultivating, and they won't grow by themselves. A quiet year is a good time to do that.
Looking at people of my parents' generation, I see a number of people much happier older than they were younger, and who manage real change. It is hard to simultaneously manage stability and spontaneity, though, and childrearing puts a real premium on stability.
got 1.5 hours of sleep
Humblebragging, huh?
Definitely seconded to 4's 'so I guess this is all?' sentiment.
You could choose to do a big arbitrary shake-up. Haul the kids around the world on a small sailboat, playing violins to dolphins. It'd be hard and there'd be lots of annoyances, but there'd be lots of remarkable parts too, where you didn't feel like life was an inevitable rut.
I'm much happier now than I was when I was in my early- and mid-twenties, but I too regret how much more unlikely it seems that I will get a mysterious magical adventure. On the other hand, I just read The Magicians, which reminded me that callow self-centered young me would probably have made herself just as miserable with a magical adventure as she did with what she got.
100: Yeah. I have to keep reminding myself that Doc Smith's Lensman series was fiction, and all the other people I tend to measure myself against were too. Too much heroic SF at an early age can be injurious to one's mental health.
Too much heroic SF at an early age can be injurious to one's mental health.
I (re-)realized this recently too. That fucking Heinlein quote about all the things a competent human should be able to do got inside my head and has been making me unhappy ever since.
This thread is doing a terrible job of selling the thread below it.
Don't worry, we'll all bring a supply of nubile lurkers to be sacrificed at the Decadecon.
102. Or you could take Jesus into your heart, quit your job, and spread the good word in your own home town. That would be equally jarring but would not have your kids sleeping under under a couch from fear or wandering off from home because there's no security or pleasure in staying there.
I vaguely remember the lifetime happiness study (empirically, people in OECD countries are most likely to complain about their own unhappiness around age 45) coming up here; I just looked and the author looks like a child.
terrible job of selling
Salesperson and comedian are the professions of choice for people who are depressed and extroverted. If Carrot Top, five timeshare agents, and Larry David would like to have a party somewhere else, I figure that's a net gain for everybody else.
Sir Kraab mostly just complains about it.
Not read the whole thread, but:
I'm quite flexible, and I do mobility or stretching exercises pretty much every day. I also work on balance exercises as well as just general fitness. So I can do things with my body a lot of people can't -- I can kick higher than my head, or do spinning moves that look superficially fancy. On the other hand, I ache a lot, and I'm prone to sports injuries and general aches and pains. The aches and pains and injury-susceptibility aren't new. I used to pick up problems even as a teenager, but it gets worse as I get older, and it doesn't help that I'm fat and don't do enough strength training. I'm 40 [a few weeks back], and most of the time I feel about that. Except first thing in the morning, or after a training sessions, when I feel about 60.
ttaM, spend whatever money you can afford on massages. From your description, I'd bet they make you feel 10-15% better all the time.
Netnanny report: The Unfogdodecahedron thread just got too dirty to read. What are you people up to in there?
Oops. No staying at the o/rgy house for LB.
I didn't feel old until five years ago today at about this time, when I had that stroke. That's the instant "age" went from being just a count to being a condition, and I knew for sure I wasn't going to live forever. All the other changes, such as hair greying and vision changes, had been so gradual I could manage to ignore them.
I don't have any aches or pains, so like mcmc I now feel pretty young compared with you lot. I do make noises when I pick things up off the floor, or have to move too much. And I keep wondering about parting my hair on the other side, because then way less grey shows and I'm sure I look younger. But it just seems too weird.
Knots: so, so real. I named the two-permaknots in my shoulders "Statler" and "Waldorf." Not all sore spots needing kneading are knots, no, but the marble-sized ones in my shoulders sure are.
I feel younger than I am because apparently the back aches start at around thirty-five.
I personally think they come from sitting. I am agitating for a stand-up desk, but property management is being obstructive, because if they give one person a stand-up desk they might have to give them to everyone. I asked how much that would cost compared to 7 or so years of worker's comp for me. That got them stirred up for a while, and they started sending me brochures for $2000 motorized stand-up desks that my department doesn't want to pay for, but apart from bringing in an ergonomist to look at me and my desk (at a cost of $300), nothing concrete has happened.
Do you want me to die, employers? I am still useful!
And then, why didn't I just buy my own damn desk, I ask myself.
I was thinking "I'm kind of old" whilst buying Feelies tickets this evening, but I felt oh so much older when the person I had bought the other ticket for turned out never to have heard of them.
Every time I wave my cane and yell at a cloud, I feel young again.
Since my back went out for the first time when I was 18, and since then I have had so, so much more fun than in the 18 preceding years, I have been much tolerant about the chronic back ache than I ever would have thought. Doesn't mean I don't need to get into serious shape, though.
117: No backaches and now no leg aches after blowing the $ on the Aeron you recommended and I'm 2x that 35. Definitely money well spent.
I used to get backaches and back muscle spasms quite frequently, the walking up-hill on the treadmill seems to have gotten rid of that. Why that should be I have no idea but I'm not willing to do a withdrawal experiment to see what happens.
I think I mentioned this before, but the youngest I ever felt relative to my true age was when we were in Florida at a brunch at a retirement golf community on my 50th birthday. I was truly 50 years young!
In the last year, I had a small break in my hand that took a long time to heal and plantar fascitis, which I still have. Last summer, after the hand break but before the heel injury, I was doing a lot of walking to and from libraries/archives and putting in a lot of hours doing research and even despite the hand injury I felt the best I had in a long time. But the same age.
122: Oh, yes, Florida is good for nightmares re aging. I think I've mentioned seeing my mother's stud muffin using his hands to move his leg from the accelerator to the brake and back again and the guy who died and fell into my father's side mirror as the car passed by.
I feel younger than my real age (mid/late 20s vs. early/mid 30s) because a) I am still a student while normal people my age have careers and babirs and houses and such like; and b) because I've never been the slightest bit athletic and so I never got injured and so now I have no old injuries to bother me. My back did go out for the first time last week so it's only a matter of time.
I feel an odd combination of younger than my real age (31), due to feeling like I've been stuck in something of a holding pattern since my mid-20s, and older, due to feeling so crotchety and "get off my lawn!" all the time, combined with the usual "oh, so I can't stay up till 4 dancing anymore?"
I didn't think I could stay up late to do assignments as easily as before and I was right. However, I started drinking coffee and that helped.
I also have had the holding pattern thing going on and while it hasn't made me feel younger, I remember all sorts of things that have me wondering, "that was x years ago? Really? Shouldn't more have happened since then?"
It doesn't help that while I love all sorts of things about the kinds of work I've just spent time getting educated for, I apparently am really interested in technical stuff that I've only become aware of during the last couple of years and which I am not trained for (mostly data/metadata intensive stuff).
126: Wait, we're around the same age? This place is hard to keep track of even one one (thinks one) has sorted out genders and continents.
The thing making me feel older, though, is that for the first time in ten or eleven years my students are clearly fom a diffeerent generation. I was born on the cusp, which means there's some overlap, but forth efforts time ever I have more in common, culturally speaking,with my students' parents than with the kids themselves. Sadly, no one wants me on his or her lawn.
Um, please ignore the iPhone-caused typos.
When I was a TA in my early/mid-20s in the early/mid 2000s I made a few references to Simpsons episodes from the early/mid 90s that few students got. Now, there are college students who have never lived in a world in which the Simpsons were not on tv, and who may not even have been alive at the time the episodes I referred to first aired.
[now posted in the correct thread]
Trying to jump-start a new career, now well into age 37, makes me feel young, but it's a high-stakes kind of young, as if the longer I keep pretending I'm young enough to do something new, the flatter I'll be when the reality of my situation breaks free of its disbelief-suspension and crushes me completely.
Physically I feel 34-ish, but 65 when I run. Fuckin' k-sky knees.
I also have had the holding pattern thing going on and while it hasn't made me feel younger, I remember all sorts of things that have me wondering, "that was x years ago? Really? Shouldn't more have happened since then?"
Yeah, maybe "younger" isn't quite the right word. It feels bad, is how it feels. I'm not going to ask, and I don't think I want to know, how old J Robot thought I was.
133: The very last new thing you're going to do is die. You know, like being Dead. With that last at the bottom of the list you might as well add some other items ahead of it.
You're right. Zip-lines of Southern California, here I come!
(The particular career that I've chosen feels like there's a soft ceiling for brand-new entrants around 40. I could be wrong, but I'd prefer not to find out.)
Man, some of you are real bummers.
I'm 35 and physically haven't noticed much in the way of degradation except for maybe a bit slower on healing after hard workouts and not as tolerant of sleep deprivation.
This year has been a bit "Nothing fun or interesting will ever happen again.
Job's helped in a big way with not feeling this. My sector had like four drive by's in March alone. It's not dragons and magic rings but going with your buddies on foot down a dark shell strewn street with a gun in your hand isn't "fun" in the usual sense like bowling but there's definitely a kind of enjoyment in it.
I generally feel quite young if I get enough sleep and don't drink too much. I can run without hurting myself and all aches and pains turn out to be just stress. I miss not facing any consequences for thoughtless mistreatment of my body and mind. I find it shocking sometimes to see how old my face looks, though, because I mostly feel fine. I'm not complaining, but I definitely look every day of 32.6 years old.
On the "Nothing fun or interesting front," though, holy fuck yes oh my God. I am in a miserable condition for want of fun. I'm hoping I get a second wind for life at some point, because I've been spending this whole year realizing that I'm now at the age when something has to be pretty fucking depraved to sound interesting, but also it has to sound safe and pleasant enough not to be irritating. It's the moment when decadence crosses purposes with caution, so one does nothing.
You could try fly fishing. It's surely kind of depraved to just hook some fish in the fucking mouth with a pointy steel hook and then just let it go back into the water after you're done enjoying feeling it flipping around on the end of your line. But, very safe.
It does seem quite possible that I suffer from failure of the imagination, yes.
Speaking of fishing, I'm going down to the Kenai Peninsula tomorrow for some public meetings. This is my first trip for work outside of Anchorage since I started here, and I'm pretty excited about it. In the context of this thread, this could be interpreted as evidence that I'm getting older and more boring, but I think a more accurate interpretation is that I've always been old and boring and I'm just now reaching a point where my temperament is starting to match my actual age.
You better do some fishing while you live up there or I will hunt you down and give you noogies.
I'm 37, but I wake up feeling like I'm in my mid-70s. That's what multiple chronic illnesses will do for you.
I feel younger than I am because apparently the back aches start at around thirty-five. I personally think they come from sitting.
41 but haven't had a desk job for 16 years, so that fits with your theory.
Re 125, I feel quite young sometimes because my youngest is now 9 and so not physically demanding and lots of friends around my age have small babies or toddlers and that just looks fucking knackering. And when I go to school things for my eldest (15), then lots of the parents are older than me, so that's good too.
Plantar Fasciatis makes people feel really old. My BF has it. (There's this weird guy at church who's a succesful insurance salesman who always ask him about it. So weird.) Luckily, orthotics work really well and make many of them feel less old.
I feel old, because my parents are sick and need me to take care of them, and I feel like a kid who can't really do it. So, young too.
142: Don't be silly Teo. Give yourself ten more years.
It's the moment when decadence crosses purposes with caution, so one does nothing.
This resonates.
Horribly off-topic: do you think, when turning down a job offer, a phone call is obligatory? Or is a polite email message enough? I don't want to seem like an ass but I also really don't want to have a whole conversation about why I made the choice.
Is this to tell the people at the small pet store about the puppy? Because if so, you should probably give them a call. One, you have a really good explanation and two, might as well not burn bridges since you may well be in the market for a guinea pig again in a few years.
If it's the puppy store, uh, I guess email? That might be harder to explain.
The problem is the puppy isn't completely official yet, so I don't want to tell them about it, and so at the moment from their point of view I'm just sitting on a different offer of a guinea pig.
It can presumably be a very short conversation, in any case. "I decided to go another direction, as I think it's what'll be best for me at least in the short term. I wanted to tell you in person, and thank you for your offer. See you at the next kennel club meeting!"
Ohhhhh. But you have to tell them before the puppy is official?
I'm confused, but now I want to get a puppy.
Probably not an official one. But 155 makes a great deal of sense.
I can't wait for the puppy to be official, since I'm told that meeting probably won't happen until next week, and these guinea pig people are getting antsy. I could just tell them I prefer the other guinea pig, but that's only going to confuse things if the other guinea pig place hears about it. Plus, these people are so damn nice I hate to turn them down. So I kind of want to be a coward and send an email.
You should be a coward around mean people, not nice people.
Well, I think you could probably still put them off, but if you really feel like you can't, you could send them an email saying that you won't be taking the guinea pig, and that you will call and give some more context in a couple of weeks. Then, when the puppy is firmed up, call them and explain. I imagine, given the puppy, they'll understand?
Maybe I could put them off a bit longer, but I do have another guinea pig to hold onto for the moment, and I know a couple of people still waiting on guinea pigs who might get this one if I let them move on. So I guess I should make a phone call.
You've got quite the menagerie there, Unserious.
Dictionary.com tells me that the word menagerie is for a collection of "wild or unusual" animals. I think guinea pigs are rare enough these days to count, though, not to speak of puppies.
There's still a chance the department could overrule the committee and take away my puppy, I guess. But yeah, it does seem like more pets than I know what to do with.
I guess aside from the aches & pains axis there's the other axis of dealing with age, where I'm failing by not being able to do simple adult tasks like making a phone call. But this weekend I cleaned all the things! And I went to the bank like a motherfucking adult! Now I have to make phone calls, too?
Puppy ownership is a big responsibility.
My rule was to use whatever means of communication we'd been using. So if we didn't otherwise talk on the phone much then it was ok to say no by email. But there's not really any getting around a phone conversation if the chair wants one.
I am dead tired all the time so yes that makes me feel old. Fortunately, what youth has not fled me manifests in my rebelling-against-whom-exactly? absolute inability to go to sleep before 1 ever.
Actually, the thing that really makes me feel old in a way that hurts is not being able to think of the right word. My only defense against this is the Saturday Times puzzle.
And I went to the bank like a motherfucking adult!
My inability to get errands done makes me feel old, more than any bodily thing, I think. I used to keep on top of things. Mend my clothes! Clean my bathroom! Reply to emails! Those things all take a lot more effort now and don't get done nearly as promptly, if at all. Of course, a lot of that is what I think of in my head as the grad school effect: every year I was in grad school was much harder and busier than the year before, partly because I had ever more things to do, but also partly because I was holding myself to a higher standard every year. So now I have more complex finances to wrangle and a second set of relatives to deal with and that sort of extra thing I didn't have before, but I'm also, for example, cooking much healthier and more varied meals than I was ten years ago. Still, I get annoyed at myself when it takes me a month and a half to sew the button back on my coat, yet I somehow can't find the time to do it.
Actually, the thing that really makes me feel old in a way that hurts is not being able to think of the right word.
Tell me about it. You're about half my age, right? Imagine how it'll feel in a few decades.
Actually, I think my initial "no" responses were by email, though some of those emails said when I was free to talk on the phone if I thought it was someone who would want to talk on the phone. There's no point in holding the person in suspense while they wait for your phone call.
Also, do it soon. Every day that goes by makes it harder for them to find someone to take that pet, and you wouldn't want such a nice little guinea pig to end up euthanized would you?
Since this is the "puppy" thread, I'm going to go ahead with a sensitive ATM. It's going to be pretty obvious who I am and I have no problem talking about this in email, but would prefer not to yet on fb or elsewhere online.
I'm a faculty spouse. My partner is the only openly gay teacher in division at a two-year school. She was recently complimented by the dean as consistently being one of the top three non-tenured teachers (this coming school year would be her year to file) in the division in evaluations (by students and peers) of her teaching. Then last week she was brought back to his office to be told that her her contract won't be renewed because she hasn't made sufficient progress toward tenure. She's being held up as an example to all other non-tenured folks, who are told that this is a sign that anyone can be fired if they don't fit the departmental culture.
Obviously this sucks for us as a family with a mortgage and blah blah blah, though I think things will somehow work out on that front. One twist, though, is that the last person who faced a shocking dismissal was also the only gay member of the division at the time (and also a POC) and when she talked to him last night, there were a lot of common points to their stories, including being assigned tenure mentors who refused to work with them and then complained about them getting help from other quarters. Neither ever had any formal complaints made, but they know that their chair was uncomfortable with them in various ways.
The previous guy's response was that he's not going to stay where he's not wanted, though part of his under-the-table exit plan gave him access to whatever adjuncting he wants, which is what he does now. I believe he has other significant sources of money. Her take is a little more complex, and obviously we're still in the early stages of this. She'd created a course for another division that is now the capstone for their major and they'd just told her that they want to hire a full-time person to cover that. There's no precedent for someone who's lost a job moving to a new one like that, but that would be one way to have a job and stay at a school where her reviews from fellow committee members, her unofficial tenure mentor, and other faculty she's worked with have been nothing but positive.
We have good support from within her union and in fact I found a loophole by reading the contract that may give us some leverage in terms of keeping her there for another year, but she's not sure whether/when/if to start looking for a lawyer to talk to (there's more to the potential discrimination stuff, including that she'd semi-unintentionally made a complaint about her chair early on in her time at the school and poisoned her relationship there because of that) and gave me permission to ask if anyone's gone through a similar process and how they dealt with it emotionally/professionally/etc.
172: This makes me very angry. Unfortunately, I am not aware of similar experiences within my social network. The only profs I know who are pariahs also have tenure and their own money, so that doesn't map very well.
I'm so sorry to hear that. I don't really have an advice except to get everything on paper.
I'm not recommending suing, it's usually a bad idea, and all of that. But if it comes to that, be aware she's got a very short statute of limitations: 300 days from the conduct she complains of (here, the notification that she's not getting tenure) to filing an EEOC complaint. If she misses that 300 day limit, her cause of action is gone.
Just figure out your deadlines and watch them (also, any argument that the not-getting-tenure or anything else she complains of is retaliation for raising issues of discrimination is really helpful -- retaliation cases are much easier to win than direct discrimination cases.)
But this is me being a hammer and seeing nails: I really don't think suing is usually a good idea, and while in theory it seems as if having a viable cause of action should be helpful in negotiations, in practice I can't see how to work it without really screwing up the relationship.
The very good news is that as of this morning the head of the childcare program has gone to bat for us and will make every effort to let our child stay there one more year until kindergarten no matter what, which is an act of kindness that is making me cry every time I think about it. This was, honestly, the top reason to want to stay at the school, because neither one of us wants to have any disruption on the preschool front. But if we can make that work, the rest can come together. And my partner is great for the school (and I've done a lot more than the other faculty spouses I know, not that that part matters) and it's a good fit everywhere except one specific segment of the department. We'll see.
I've started referring to myself as an old man around Iris, which she (sweetly) denies. I think it started when I noticed that, in addition to the (small but undeniable) belly I've been growing for 10 years was joined by some love handles - that made me feel very old, for some reason.
Jointwise I remain blissfully young - maybe not 20 y.o. young, when you can do basically anything to your body and not even notice the strain, but still young.
I remembered recently that, 11 years ago, a friend from out of town was running in the Pgh marathon, and I jumped in to run with her for about a mile (I wasn't going to see her otherwise); I was in work boots and carpenter pants, and I hadn't been doing any running as exercise. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that anymore.
Mentally I'm very aware that I have less focus and drive than I use to , but I don't think that's aging. I'm actually not sure what that's about.
172 is major sucking. It is almost incredible how much some colleges suck at not driving away queer faculty members, either by force or by creating the most uncomfortable environment possible at all times. No, it's not a policy. They just prefer to be around folks more like "us."
Speaking of puppies and guinea pigs, I may have a similar situation on my hands soon. I will be back to beg for advice.
Oh, and I have no idea what's H-G is on about. Of course people get knots. I'll be giving AB a shoulder massage, and there's a hard bit of muscle that I can push around and squeeze; it'll scoot out from under my thumb like a bubble under a piece of tape. If I work on it a bit, it gets less hard.
175: I don't think suing is a good idea either, though I suspect I'll be calling my relative who's high up at the EEOC to talk things through soon. I actually though it was a 180-day window, but either way it's not long.
She'll be talking to the academic VP soon and I think eventually the president, to talk about what other options might be out there for any future connection to the university or whether that's over. She will probably mention the appearance of a pattern of discrimination, I expect, but we haven't really gone over strategy yet. She doesn't want to sue but she wants to know what her options are, I think.
Yes, HG is wrong about knots. Muscles feel very different when they're in a state of distress.
Also, here are a couple of blogposts (first, second) from an acquaintance who got a negative decision, appealed internally, and got tenure. I don't know if he'd have any useful insight, and he doesn't comment here much these days, but if you think he might have useful perspective I could take a shot at putting you in touch.
Speaking of puppies and guinea pigs, I may have a similar situation on my hands soon. I will be back to beg for advice.
Awesome! You've been struggling along with goldfish and hermit crabs up till now, right?
180: I would definitely mention something, even just as a part of her evidence of excellence at first, that she is contributing to a queer-friendly environment in a place where students obviously don't have a lot of LGBT people to talk to, etc. Heteronormative people, especially at colleges, have the most amazing habit of being 100% shitty to queer people and then saying they just weren't thinking about it or you in that way at all. You have to come out about every 10 minutes if you'd like for that to be in any way on their minds.
Yuck, I'm sorry, that sounds awful.
It's worth pointing out that their behavior sounds pretty unethical to me even if they had cause not to renew. In a well-functioning ethical department, people will know well in advance whether there's a danger of not getting renewed, furthermore they should give her a year of employment while she looks for other jobs. Which is to say if you decide to play rough with the department, you have no reason to feel bad about it because they're being assholes.
It really seems like having a union should mean there's some way of appealing this, or at the very least getting in writing what the reasons were.
Perfect, thanks. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for and I'm not googling it myself because it makes me queasy and shaky to delve in too deeply. This was not a negative tenure decision but a non-renewal of contract. It doesn't look like either one is particularly appealable, but if I'm right and the administration did something procedurally wrong regarding the contract, we might be able to push a reinstatement.
Honestly, I think much of this is that they knew they wouldn't be able to deny tenure next year because there you have to have grounds and after the other guy's rejection the process is a bit more transparent. I also think I know who to blame for behind-the-scenes bungled manipulation, but that doesn't really matter much.
That sucks, Eleanor. Do you have any thoughts as to why the Dean would so quickly turn about from commending her evaluations to holding her up as a negative example? I'm not suggesting there's anything significant there, but it just seems weird. It's not like he (?) found out she was gay between the two conversations.
172 really, really sucks and is angry-making. I have nothing useful to say, though.
183: I don't want to say much, as the relevant interviews haven't happened, but I have extremely uncomfortable and sad feelings about the reluctantly-discussed guinea pig, whom I'm meeting next week but has not been described to me in tempting terms, and the puppy, I'm beginning to fear, has maybe already fallen in love with another. So no congratulations yet. Depending on what happens next week, I may be trying to figure out if this guinea pig is even more desirable than a hermit crab.
184, 185: There is a strong affirmative action program at the school, which might mean something positive. Both administrators she'll be talking to share her ethnic background, while the one who dismissed her and the ones who've claimed she doesn't fit departmental culture are straight white folks.
I'm surprised the union doesn't seem to have more power in this situation. This is a grading week and everyone's too busy to talk, but we'll meet with Awesome Union Person later in the week and I should understand more then.
She has a job until the end of the summer, but that's not really useful when every other school in the universe is done with hiring decisions already.
I actually though it was a 180-day window,
Crap, I really shouldn't give legal advice online and especially out of state. It's 300 days in states where the same conduct is covered by state anti-discrimination laws (like NY) but if there's no state anti-discrimination law, it is 180 days.
"Hasn't made significant progress toward tenure" sounds promising as an avenue of attack -- it looks like a reason that can be disproven, and even if they would have been entitled not to renew her contract for any or no reason, once they're lying about their reasons you've got some leverage. Does she have peers who have recently gotten tenure or who are comfortably on track for it that she can show by any kind of metric that she's better than, or as good as?
187: Specific complaints she heard about in a different meeting were that she has let her classes out early if they finish their work for the day, that despite her chair's explicit refusal to train her in advising she is not as good an advisor as they'd like and that when the chair asked her to come to zir when she had questions, she then did this and it bothered the chair (though she is always designated to cover for said chair when the chair has a term off, and there's more on this), that she's active in committees that are relevant to the school at large but not to her department specifically (though they only ever invite tenured faculty for those), and that she has asked the school to pay for her professional memberships but has never updated the department with what she learns from those professional connections, which is also true for every single other member of the division. This was about a month ago and she gave him a plan for how she would improve all those things and specified which ones had never been conveyed as expectations, but I guess that was them making their paper trail.
Change 194 to this name, please.
She had been assured by the most recent member of the department to get tenure that her tenure file is superior to the one that member put forward. She was originally assigned the chair as a tenure mentor, but the chair refused to work with her. Then she asked for a new mentor, was assigned one who's great, but eventually was moved back to the chair because the chair was offended by the change but still refuses to give any input. She's been meeting regularly with the other mentor, who's pleased and impressed with her progress.
This is tough, of course, because while sexual orientation is protected within the school (as is parental status, which may also be a factor) it's not at the state level, etc. I just haven't read up on the relevant laws yet.
That is super shitty, Eleanor. I'm sorry you're dealing with this.
Thanks to everyone for the support. It really means a lot and is helpful to be able to talk about it, even though I don't know that I'm making much sense. I am just so sad and upset and scared, even though she's not scared about the future. I'd been doing better at getting my tendency to worry under control, and now that's fucked.
With any luck one of the relevant deans will dislike the chair and be sympathetic to the argument that the chair is trying to circumvent the normal tenure process. There ought to be some dean or committee whose prerogatives are being usurped if a chair decides to do things at the department level that should happen at the official tenure review stage. If you can find those people they might be happy to punish an errant chair to make their own example.
Heh. I checked your home state's anti-discrimination law, and while on a first glance sexual orientation isn't a protected class, being a smoker (or non-smoker) is. Anything she can do with that?
198: No luck so far with the first dean she talked to, who's a close friend of hers. I really have my fingers crossed for the academic VP, who has sat in on her classes and served on committees with her. This person is not known to like to throw weight around and is a pretty hands-off manager, so also kind of likely to just let things stand as they are because rubber stamping is easier.
She hasn't done anything except finish all her grading yesterday and get pissed that the dean who told her he wouldn't tell people has instead notified everyone in the department. When asked about this, he claimed that he only said he wouldn't tell people if she chose to tender her resignation instead, which she didn't.
She's been both a smoker and a non-smoker, but I don't think she ever smoked at work much and don't think it would get her anywhere that she did or didn't. I do think that if she had given birth to a baby, she would have been treated vastly differently than she was because of how we had our child, but that probably doesn't matter and the only way to argue that is to say that she wasn't doing as much as she could because she had a new child, which they'll use as admission she wasn't doing her job and deserved to be fired.
A grievance appeal through your union contract might be less destructive to the Spouse's relationship with School than an EEOC complaint, although that's not certain either, and anyway it sounds like it might not even be an option. I've done a couple tenure-denial and nonrenewal cases in the grievance context, and they're hard -- often the contract language gives the school a lot of leeway, and arbitrators tend to be deferential to schools on these issues. IME, in all cases but one, the only basis for the appeal that we could find was procedural -- there was some error or problem with the way that the school arrived at the decision. In the one substantive case, the professor alleged discrimination on racial and sexual orientation grounds. In addition to procedural irregularities, we reviewed the stated standards for tenure; compared the professor's professional and publication record to those of other faculty who had recently obtained tenure; and looked at the statements of faculty, students and administrators (e.g., those that were laudatory of her professional accomplishments, and those that would evidence bias against her personal attributes).
In any event, I'm very sorry -- that's awful and enraging.
201: I'm hoping for grievance (formal or not) plus procedural error leading to something better. The added piece of making this a perfect storm is that there was a str/ke earlier in the schoolyear in which she (and all but I think three members of the faculty throughout the school) participated and while there is now a contract in place, this is not a time when there's a lot of love and goodwill between the union and the administration.
183: You've been struggling along with goldfish and hermit crabs
I for one decry the implicit establishment of a pet desirability ranking.
Specific complaints she heard about in a different meeting were that she has let her classes out early if they finish their work for the day,
!? This is a firing offense? I did this just this morning.
The most I can possibily imagine someone being asked to to if they let their students out early is to rework the lesson plan so they have more material to cover in that session the next time.
Also, I can't imagine the circumstances under which a college teacher would be so micromanaged that an outsider would actually be in a position to request this. Normally this is just something an ordinary, competent professional would be expected to do by themselves.
The added piece of making this a perfect storm is that there was a str/ke earlier in the schoolyear in which she (and all but I think three members of the faculty throughout the school) participated and while there is now a contract in place, this is not a time when there's a lot of love and goodwill between the union and the administration.
Although if she can couch this as firing for union activity, that's an independent cause of action, and one that the union might be more active in helping her out with.
Awkward phone call, awkward notes to others in the department -- I kind of feel like I just broke up with someone.
When asked about this, he claimed that he only said he wouldn't tell people if she chose to tender her resignation instead, which she didn't.
That is spectacularly shitty.
And I went to the bank like a motherfucking adult!
When does one actually need to go to the bank these days? I think the last time I actually dealt with a bank in person was to get the disturbingly-large bank check for a house down payment.
What I'm terrible about is calling people. I can do it from anywhere at all! And I still don't.
An official grievance procedure might also stretch the statute of limitations for her. Don't rely on this without real advice, but there's a shot she could count her time for an EEOC complaint from a negative decision on the grievance, rather than from the initial notice.
204: Yeah, that's an ongoing complaint (as in, it's happened several times in the last 5 years that she's let a class out early) and it alarms the chair that she's not giving the students their money's worth by making them sit in their chairs. She's explained to the chair and all deans that it's a pedagogical choice to do test prep in the class before a test and then allow students who don't have specific questions for her to leave and study when that part is done. She's been told that her chair disapproves of this and thought she was within her rights as, you know, the teacher to keep doing it anyway since it was a rare event and she'd explained her rationale. Tests and anecdotes show that her students have better retention of material than do those of at least one of her tenured peers teaching the same class, but I guess that's not as important as time in the seats.
This is the biggest issue where, when it arose in year one, she explained herself to the chair and the dean who brought it to her attention and said, "Please, if there are any future complaints, just bring them to me and don't go directly to the dean." Despite this, she has never been given a specific complaint from her chair but the "lets class out early" complaint has been made again in subsequent years. I'm the kind of person who would have just never let a class out early again, but she wanted to live or die by her principles on what she saw as a very minor issue and I'm not trying to make her regret that.
Oh, and it's no problem when other faculty members cancel class for several days so they can go on ski trips, but staying until 2:45 instead of 2:50 is unforgivable? Hmm.
206: Just wait until you have to see them in person! Totally like a breakup.
205: I doubt it, since everyone participated and she's the only one losing her job. I mean, I'm assuming that's how that kind of thing gets judged.
Do they just not want to pay for more tenured folks? My former very engagé leftist school was notorious for this. Adjuncts were unionized and had a sort of adjunct-tenure after X number of classes. Right before that last, vesting as it were class, they'd find fault with the adjunct's teaching and not renew them. And this all from well known, not-only-soi-disant radicals.
213: Hmm, hadn't thought of that. But then it would probably happen more often, when in fact it's very rare. Because of the kind of school it is and because all faculty members are in the union, I don't think there's a huge cost change between tenure-track and tenured. Her replacement will almost certainly be tenure-track.
The contract/tenure-track thing is confusing me. Contract sounds like she's not tenure-track now, but 'not making enough progress toward tenure' sounds like she is. Is she an adjunct who was in the process of leaping tracks to tenure-track, and has gotten blocked, or do all tenure-track faculty have contracts that can be non-renewed before they're up for tenure.
212: You never know -- if there's any chance she annoyed people particularly, or is being made an example of on that front, it's another arrow in her quiver.
214: Yeah, if it is rare then it is something else entirely.
215: I don't know if this is everywhere, but tenure-track faculty very often have contracts that schools can choose not to renew prior to going up for tenure.
215: There are adjuncts who are just adjuncts, employed on a per-class basis by the university. They are not in the union and don't seem to be slave labor as much as adjuncts elsewhere, but they don't get offices or anything much. She is in a tenure-track faculty position, which means being unionized and having an office (= cub/cle) and getting a yearly contract renewal. Tenured faculty are also in the union but have to commit felonies and so on before losing their jobs.
There are people who leave of their own volition, but it's very rare that people not be granted tenure, which means immediate loss of job, or non-renewed like she was. It is likely that this has something to do with the administration wanting to send a message to unionized faculty, yes, and it's being presented to other tenure-track faculty in those terms. I want to get someone who can quote to us exactly what's being said in those meetings, because so far we've only heard directly from someone whose first language isn't English and someone who was having an exit interview after finding a non-academic job elsewhere.
206: Next time, be a man and text them whatever emoticon is used for "the finger".
When does one actually need to go to the bank these days?
I go most often because I'm sporting a fat wad of cash from a gig </humblebrag>, and I don't trust the robot machines to count several hundred dollars in twenties. Because I'm a luddite.
Because I'm a luddite cute teller.
210:
So *students* are complaining to the dean about being let out early?
IME this does not happen because students are upset about being let out early. It happens when there is an independent grievance against the teacher, and the student is looking for a way to punish the teacher. The only time I've heard about this happening to someone, the teacher was cancelling a lot of classes, stopping other classes about half way through *and* was giving out bad grades. The student then explicitly threatened to go to the dean about the management of class time unless his grade was raised to an A. (I didn't ever find out how this situation was resolved.)
In any case, if there is discrimination here, it might also be coming from the students.
222: No, no, it's all come from the chair. To our knowledge, there has never been any complaint from a student about anything and there have been a few students who went to the dean to say how much more they got from her class compared to others they've taken. She lets the students decide on a pre-test day whether they'd rather leave early to study alone or in groups or stay and work on another project, but I don't think people who don't get their way have ever had a problem with that.
I don't know. I mean, that's something that she has demonstrably done that her chair doesn't want her to do and she knew that and that was her choice. At the time, she assumed it wouldn't tank her chances of staying at the school, but maybe it makes her seem like she's not a team player or willing to make an effort. She is not lacking in stubbornness and not a perfect person, but I do think she's a successful teacher and has been
a significant benefit for the school and for her department.
Here's another bleg. She'd written to a few of the people who were in the process of writing letters for her tenure package to tell them that they don't need to bother. All have been outraged and want to meet with her. Would it be inappropriate to ask them (they all have tenure) to consider writing what they would have written so she can potentially use that as part of a claim about her readiness for tenure, since that's the only explicitly stated concern?
Thanks to everyone who's helped with this, and apologies to Unserious and AWB for stomping their potential pet-owning joys. Unlike them, she is not a superior scholar but has had 20 years of hands-on experience doing what she teaches prior to entering academia and the discipline-appropriate Master's degree that makes her eligible to teach at the two-year college level but not at a four-year school.
223: Yes, she should go ahead and get the letters.
And there's no stomping. At least in my case, I'm not sure if there's any joy to be had in the pet I am most likely to be offered, but I can't tell if the pet store manager is just particularly bad at advertisement. Mostly, they're just telling me that owning pets is a huge responsibility that I'm probably not ready for, especially with such a sickly, miserable little guinea pig like this one, which is going to require round-the-clock care and will provide no joy or love, and I am only allowed to feed it very specific medicinal foods and never play with it or teach it tricks if I want it to grow up to be the long-lived kind of guinea pig.
The puppy store hasn't called me and I'm going to be really really really sad if someone else adopted that puppy. It was only going to live to be one year old, but it is a very beautiful and sweet puppy, and I could feed it and play with it and name it and everything.
169: This captures my experience perfectly. Does it get better?
My sympathies to all of you with pet problems. Way back there was some stress but it wasn't a horror show. Good luck.
I will just be happy if it turns out to be a guinea pig and not the baby from Eraserhead. "We're not even sure if it is a guinea pig!"
More to the point, I am so sorry, Eleanor. This is whole situation is bullshit, and I hope that you both manage to persevere.
Eleanore, I'm furious on your behalf. I wish I had something useful to offer/say.
Yeah, Eleanor, that really is awful; my sympathies.
223: Getting the letters sounds like a really good idea to me. Or maybe asking these people to write to the chair. Or the dean? I dunno the optimal choice. But it seems like having a chorus of people expressing outrage would be useful.
What a rotten situation, Eleanor. The chair seems really egregiously bad, so spiteful that it's hard to believe the department puts up with it. Is there any chance that a moderately drawn-out appeals process would outlast the chair's term? I would be very nervous about going toe-to-toe with the chair, winning, and then having to deal with even more crap from a chair who feels ze was humiliated.
I am having a parade of people try to convince me that I would be an idiot to not take the remaining guinea pig.
Also, 231. Letters to the chair, cc:ed to the dean. You need not to be at the chair's mercy, but don't want to seem to cut the chair out of the loop.
233: People who know about the puppy?
I would be very nervous about going toe-to-toe with the chair, winning, and then having to deal with even more crap from a chair who feels ze was humiliated.
We have, on occasion, relocated people to different departments because the chair of a department is a total asshole. This is not ideal, of course, but we really wanted to keep the tenure-track person around, and the chair was a total asshole.
Fictitious example: Physics to Biology. Something within the Humanities or within the Sciences, but otherwise pretty different. And then they've continued to teach mostly courses in their old department, with a little in their new.
234: Oops. Pseudopseudonymity is hard.
238: Yeah. Lots of speeches about how extremely difficult it is to get a new guinea pig when you're older, and how I would be setting myself up to fail in five years. Which, eh... I still find it hard to care about hypothetical-even-if-likely problems five years in the future?
240.2 -- Not to stomp on your dreams or anything, but it seems possible that people actually in your field might know more than random internet commenters? I mean, I really know nothing either way.
And sorry to hear you're going through that, ER.
But often people give over-dire advice based on the fact that they found that episode really stressful, and so you should do it their way.
241: I don't know about essear, but I'm certainly getting very conflicting advice and a lot of it is coming from people who haven't been on the job market in a long time. Some of the advice comes from people who had a terrible or traumatic experience on the market and are now extremely reactionary about it, either insisting that you simply have to do what they did because there's no other way to do it goddamn it, or never ever ever ever do what they did because even though they seem to have quite a nice and comfortable position, it would be better to scrape toilets than follow in their footsteps.
I just don't think I trust anyone at all for advice about jobs anymore.
I fixed the pseud-leakage (actually walked to the break-room to get signal on my cellphone for it. Don't say I never did anything for you.)
Substantively, while people in the field would know better, it just seems really unlikely that the puppy is a career damaging move. Why would anyone take the puppy if it was a clearly bad idea?
232: It's a tiny department. I've been conflating for pseudonymity though everything else has been totally accurate, but the chair job is split between two people, both petty and vindictive and lazy in their own ways. I want to say there are only two other tenured faculty in the department, one on emeritus status, and then the two tenure-track folks.
It's actually a major program within the college, but a lot of the basics get handled by adjuncts. Problems with the chairs are well-known and well-documented, but neither of the other people wants to or is capable of being a chair, so they're stuck in a holding pattern until retirement, which may not be long. My partner's plan to wait it out was based on knowing that the chair situation wouldn't be permanent.
I think the ideal outcome would be what heebie discusses in 239, though it doesn't seem like there is precedent for it at this school. My partner created a course for another division (her specialty as applied to what they do) that has now become the capstone course for that program's degree and will require a full-time person to keep up with all the classes, currently split between her and an adjunct. If things work out well, she'll be able to slide over there and be in a more comfortable personal situation (and probably have to restart the tenure clock or some shit, who knows?) and still get to do the teaching she enjoys, plus perhaps some stuff for her current/outgoing department. She hasn't gotten a firm commitment that her department would keep her on as an adjunct, but people in the know are assuming that would be the case.
247: That sounds ideal, if it can be swung. And if there's a graceful way to hint delicately that retaining her current place on the tenure track would keep the school from getting sued into a blackened heap of rubble (which there may not be, doing that sort of thing delicately is really, really hard), it might give her a little extra leverage.
250: I'd worry that she wouldn't be ready to apply for tenure this year, which would be her first year of teaching for that department. If we could maybe get them to let her do it after two or three rather than five years, that would probably be perfect. But I'm not in academia, though I follow it closely and grew up in an academic household, so I don't know how everything works. Clearly neither does anyone else at that school.
I also think I could make the delicate case for why it's in the school's best interest not to be sued without actually threatening anything, but she may have a harder time with that because she tends to be more direct. I think that just laying out that she has concerns about this pattern of behavior (and the fact that it's a pattern that's been pointed out by deans and tenured faculty, not just the two of us who happen to know the previous guy) and the impact it might have for future hiring and retention might be enough to set some balls rolling. We'll see. I'm very proud of how I helped her craft her letter to the president to send all sorts of subtle messages without directly stating any of them, so at least there's a part of this that plays to my strengths as well as my weakness of waking in the night in an absolute panic.
Honestly, the school took quite a beating in the press during the time they made a mess out of what led up to the str/ke and then how they managed during it. Just the implied threat of publicity that yet again makes them look incompetent might carry more weight now than it would at another time.
And I hope none of this sounds Stockholm Syndrome-y. I do think it's generally a good school, though I think the drama getting higher when the stakes get lower means everything is super-intense for no good reason at the community college level. She's performed well there and we're both strongly committed to the mission of the school and its ongoing success. There are just some people in power who are problematic to say the least.
246 I fixed the pseud-leakage (actually walked to the break-room to get signal on my cellphone for it. Don't say I never did anything for you.)
Aw, thanks, LB!
Substantively, while people in the field would know better, it just seems really unlikely that the puppy is a career damaging move. Why would anyone take the puppy if it was a clearly bad idea?
Well, a lot of people turn it down for precisely this reason. But, most of the people I know who were denied tenure at such places landed somewhere fairly good. I think the point is, it's a major pain to convince one's colleagues/department/university that hiring someone more senior is a good idea (young people can always be said to have promise, but once people are a few years older it's always clear they're not *the* superstar). The people I've been talking to have all been in the position of (successfully) trying to persuade their colleagues to hire such a person in the past, and I guess they really resented all the hoops they had to jump through, so I feel like their advice isn't so much aimed at making things easy on me as it is on whoever would hire me in the future.
I think the point is, it's a major pain to convince one's colleagues/department/university that hiring someone more senior is a good idea (young people can always be said to have promise, but once people are a few years older it's always clear they're not *the* superstar).
This, according to my limited experience, seems to be true.
Re: subtle threats made by ER's partner, I think this is a promising strategy if handled gracefully. The particulars of the situation are interesting to me both because my department has a significant handful of GLB faculty (I think I'm the only B, not that it's particularly relevant to my life these days), and is also under heavy pressure from the university to hire under-represented minorities (apparently quite difficult in my field, though the department has a fair number of women).
The U as a whole got dinged in our recent accreditation review for insufficient racial diversity, and rightly so, particularly given the state college system's history, which means that increasing the population of minority students has become a major plank in the president's most recent mission statement/vision plan/whatever I attended three meetings to hear about. From my position, I literally can't imagine any kind of college not bending over backwards to retain faculty who are POC.
The people I've been talking to have all been in the position of (successfully) trying to persuade their colleagues to hire such a person in the past, and I guess they really resented all the hoops they had to jump through, so I feel like their advice isn't so much aimed at making things easy on me as it is on whoever would hire me in the future.
To be fair, it sounds more like a warning that people are not always going to feel like jumping through those hoops.
For Unserious they will, though. That dude knows pet care.
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Could anyone give me an idiomatic translation of the [Arizona] Repeal Coalition's slogan?
Fight for the Freedom to Live, Love, and Work anywhere you please! Repeal ALL anti-immigrant legislation NOW!
kthxbi
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Into Spanish, preferably, but if you've got other languages, that would be awesome too.
Ightfa orfay ethay Eedomfray ootay Ivelay, Ovelay, anday Orkway anywhereay ouyay easeplay! Epealray ALLAY antiay-immigrantay egislationlay OWNAY!
For this, I followed you on Twitter?
LB, you're a gem. One of the chairs has openly made anti-smoker remarks (won't let students who smell like smoke in zir office, for one) and made dismissive comments to my partner, who did apparently take smoke breaks with friends at times, whether or not she was smoking then. So she can put that on her list of concerns when she talks to the affirmative action coordinator in HR, which should happen this week. I would never have guessed to even look into that issue.
It has been drawn to my attention that possibly your partner doesn't work in the state you live in -- the law I was looking at was your state of residence.
Catching up...
The stuff with ER's partner is pretty fucked up. I don't really have anything useful to add, though I like the idea of getting the were-to-be tenure letters anyway.
And there's still some pseud leakage in the thread, if it's any concern. It's not in the signature lines but in certain responses.
Eleanor Roosevelt, that rots.
The thing about "departmental culture" is a flag to me. This isn't a matter of failing to meet milestones on the way to tenure. This sounds like she doesn't "fit" with them. Add in that the them is a small number (the chair(s) is half or more?) and it sounds personal.
Also, I hope everyone here who is looking for a pet gets a good pet. Puppies for all!
262: Yes, she works in a different state and it makes sense that ours would have that law, not a big deal that the work state might not, though. I'll look into it before she actually talks to anyone.
I'm kind of proud of myself for not really needing support on how I'm handling my side of things, but this is hard. I don't want to say, "Well, you could have done XYZ...." because that's unhelpful and I think at this point it's my job to keep her spirits up and get her working toward realistic goals. Plus I thought up some new classes she could use in the different department, so that always feels good. I mean, I was too stressed and upset to eat most of the day, but by my standards of dealing with crises that's really not bad. I do so much better when I'm not exactly the one with the problem, but this still sucks for all of us.
263: When she meets with the VP, she's going to bring copies of her positive performance reviews and teaching evaluations from the people who told her the decision her progress was inadequate plus written comments from her tenured peer and her unofficial/prior tenure mentor who'd already seen her tenure package before all this mess on how it compares to expectations within the department and the college at large. Hoping that plus the suggetion of grounds for discrimination complaints plus the suggestion of an out with a move to a new program will turn the tables a bit and mean other people need to justify themselves or something.
And yes, there's at least one comment that needs to mention Unserious and doesn't.
Fight for the Freedom to Live, Love, and Work anywhere you please! Repeal ALL anti-immigrant legislation NOW!
I want to try my hand at this just because I miss being a language person, but wait for someone whose Spanish is less iffy to give you something more definitely idiomatic.
Lucha por el derecho de vivir, amar, y trabajar donde quieres! Que se revoquen TODAS las leyes anti-immigrantes AHORA!
I would modify 267 as follows:
Lucha por el derecho de vivir, amar y trabajar donde quieras! Que se revoquen TODAS las leyes anti-inmigrantes AHORA!
Note: I am not a native speaker of Spanish, and this is not a perfect idiomatic translation, but I do speak to a fair number of Spanish speakers in the Southwest, at whom I presume this message is targeted.
That is, I'm sorry to report: there's no Oxford comma in Spanish.
Fight for the Freedom to Live, Love, and Work anywhere you please! Repeal ALL anti-immigrant legislation NOW!
Luttez pour la liberté de vivre, aimer, et travailler partout! Abrogez toutes lois anti-immigés (sans delai, tout de suite, aujourd'hui)!
[I prefer "sans delai" because it rhymes.]
271: Yay! Thank you! I am going to have so many good signs this year for May Day! I am making them in advance, even!
267, 268: Thank you too! The message is really aimed at people watching the Minneapolis (hippy/puppet) May Day Parade, but I might bring the same or similar signs to the real, May 1st parade.
there's no Oxford comma in Spanish
Savages.
anti-immigrants, non?
and po polsku
Walczcie o wolnosc zycia, kochania i pracowania gdziekolwiek sie chce! Zniesmy WSZYSTKE prawa anty-imigracyjne ODRAZU!
diacritical marks missing.
oops, WSZYSTKIE not WSZYSTKE.
If you're actually planning on putting this on a sign, I can send you a version with diacritical marks.
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Is there a discussion somewhere in the archives of inexplicable noises from neighbors' apartments? It seems like it must have come up at some point. In the unlikely event that it hasn't, let me be the first to ask the cosmos: WTF IS THAT GRINDING NOISE THAT SOUNDS LIKE SOMEONE IS SAWING THROUGH A TABLE, MULTIPLE TIMES EVERY NIGHT? I suppose it takes a long time to saw through a table, especially if your arm strength is poor, so maybe this is an ongoing nightly project. Maybe the upstairs neighbors (all petite women) moonlight as carpenters. Rents are extreme and have just been raised. But... it sounds more like a large, aggressive whetstone. I got nothing. The previous neighbor yelled something about robotics within earshot, so we attributed all the weird sounds to the robots he was building. That turned out to be correct. Two robot builders in a row, though?
120,000 google hits for "robobots." Good fucking evening.
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For once I have no academic advice for any of the academic advice-seekers, but I hope these issues get resolved with appropriate punishments and rewards for the virtuous and vicious.
I feel like my aging has been suspended, but that could have happened anywhere between age 25 and age 45. I only know that I'm older than college students, and very distinct from infants.
A body disposal service for serial killers.
I've got another academic advice question, but one that is pretty much inconsequential.
I know no one cares about grades in the real world and this really isn't about grades, but I recently was part of a group that turned in a report for a class that was full of embarrassing mistakes. For various reasons related to having to go to work the day of the final revisions, I never saw the final product before it was turned in. I can't believe some of the things that were never changed on editing. It got a deservedly low grade (or so it seems from the comments - I still haven't looked at the final product and don't care to).
Anyway, the mistakes mentioned in the grading are embarrassingly bad* enough that I feel like I should say something to the prof. However, I don't want to say anything bad about my group (and to be clear the main problem was that one person did not - for mostly understandable reasons - contribute nearly enough to get the project done properly, and I don't want to single anyone out). And I don't actually want to complain about the grade. I just want to note that I don't think that kind of carelessness is acceptable, but there wasn't anything I could do (though I suppose I could have skipped work).
Should I just keep my mouth shut? It's not anything that will leave the course so it's not like my name is on a public document, but because this is a professional program, it potentially could reflect poorly on me beyond the course.
I'm inclined to say nothing, so I'm probably just writing this comment because I want to complain about it but can't really do that among my fellow students.
*Seriously, did no one think that it would be a good idea to standardize the abbreviation for the most mentioned and most important organization mentioned in the report? I didn't think it even needed to be pointed out that what was acceptable shorthand for drafting was not acceptable for a final product. This is way worse than the time a student in a class I was a TA for kept referring to "Fodor" when the book the essay question asked about was written by "Fon/er".**
**American Freedom on $50 a Day, of course.
Is it possible to mention it to the prof casually? like, an off-hand `o god, that was a bit of a disaster, hahaha'?
Robot he was building? Oh dear lord please let it be true that you lived beneath Tweety's old apartment.
246
Substantively, while people in the field would know better, it just seems really unlikely that the puppy is a career damaging move. Why would anyone take the puppy if it was a clearly bad idea?
Because it has a higher upside and people ignore the more probable downside? It probably isn't clearly bad but may be higher risk and its wisdom may depend on how you value the possible outcomes.
282: Not anymore. Classes are over and the prof is not regular faculty so not around. I suppose I could have looked at the report after it was turned in and then mentioned this stuff before the class ended and before the grading, but of all the things I thought were going to be poorly done - and I knew some stuff was rushed and thin and was ok with that given time constraints - I didn't think there was anything to worry about with regard to the basics.
On the plus side, I'm not really looking to work locally. Also, my individual work and other group work was fine.
D'oh. Quieras. Spanish subjunctive, you big so-and-so!
As if to celebrate this thread, my body decided to toss in lower back pain in the middle of the night. New one on me, thought it was more for tall people. I have no idea how many hours I did the thing of half waking up, thinking "back hurts...gotta change positions...ok, there--back still hurts. Nighty-night, self" and then not really falling asleep but not really figuring out that I needed to get up and take something for it.
285: Is there any way you might ever need a recommendation from this person? If you're never going to ask this prof for anything, then let it drop. If you think this person might come in handy someday, in any way, I would write an email saying you want to clear it up personally, that you acknowledge that the group grade implies that each person is responsible for the whole work, which is where you dropped the ball, but that you were ashamed on a personal level to see what had been submitted in your name. Emphasize that it's not about grades and that you're not pointing fingers.
I wouldn't necessarily want to get that email, but that's why I don't assign group grades. I can't see what the purpose would be unless you wanted to spend the rest of your life getting emails like this. I certainly would feel uneasy about an otherwise good student tanking in a group project that made me think s/he was actually not as able or in control as s/he seemed. YMMV, unfortunately.
Fight for the Freedom to Live, Love, and Work anywhere you please! Repeal ALL anti-immigrant legislation NOW!
Just for the heck of it, as Gaeilge (in Irish), not that it's of any practical use.
Troid ar son an saoirse chun conaí, tabhairt grá, agus obair pé áit a dtaitníonn leat. Cealaigh ANOIS an reachtaíocht frithinimirceach AR FAD!
Overthinking it:
It's very clunky because of staying close to the word choices where possible. Even then "conaí" just means reside - "live" doesn't have that meaning. Love is really not a verb in Irish no matter what the dictionary says so I had to go with "give love". "Anois" means now and could go at the very end either but that puts the two emphases together. And the whole thing is in third *singular* imperative, third plural would be different.
288 reminds me: I haven't gotten unsolicited resumes in a year at least, but I got two yesterday. There's apparently a program for 3d year law students at Cork to come here for a year and (a) take classes at the law school here; (b) teach undergrad classes in the Irish language and (c) intern for a semester in our federal district court. Two Cork students a year get selected for this.
They are both looking for an internship in a law office for June and July, after which they go back to Cork.
Sounds like fun, but I'm not really set up to oblige.
WFP: I personally would send an email, because I'd need it to feel square with myself. The email would go something like:
1. I'm not asking you to change the grade
2. I'm embarrassed that I was part of a group that made such atrocious mistakes
3. Please don't think I consider that quality of work personally acceptable.
Thank you, me
william frederick poole -- my suggestion would be to forget about it.
Also I got a kick out of American Liberty for $50 a Day by Foner Fodor.
They are both looking for an internship in a law office for June and July, after which they go back to Cork.
Ask them what they propose to bring with them to ingratiate themselves. If they say Jameson's or Paddy, forget it. If they say Locke's or Connemara, consider making the effort.
275: Thank you! Are we FB friends? I forgot already. Anyhow, diacritical marks can go to my pseudonym (with a dot in the middle) at gmail.
288: Thanks! I wouldn't be surprised to find out that, locally at least, I know more people with at least a smattering of Gaeilge than I do people who are fluent in anything but Spanish or French or Somali. Plus maybe Vietnamese and Hmong.
281: "I don't want to point fingers, but gosh darn it, I keep having an involuntary muscle spasm that makes one digit extend in Ted's direction. If you know what I mean. No, not that digit, the other digit."
More seriously, I agree with 287 that it's probably not worth bringing it up. The grader is almost guaranteed to have seen something even more terrible than your project, just within the same semester. Let them forget it if possible. This might sound weasely, but sometimes calling attention to a problem only makes it worse.
That being said, if you actually are likely to need this person's recommendation or you just can't let it go for some other reason, then something like this should be more than adequate: "I'm sorry to inflict that project on you. Both I and someone else dropped the ball there. I'm not asking for a second chance, the project earned the grade it got, I just want you to know that's not representative of my work."
The previous neighbor yelled something about robotics within earshot, so we attributed all the weird sounds to the robots he was building. That turned out to be correct. Two robot builders in a row, though?
It's National Robot Week, or something, and there's a big robot event happening today in your neck of the woods, so I don't think this is really all that improbable. Petite women can be robot-makers, too! (Sexist.)
As for the original post, physically, how old I "feel" hasn't changed in the past eight years or more. No new aches and pains that I can think of, very little change in sleep habits... my stamina changes from month to month, but just based on how much exercise I've been getting lately rather than in any age-related way, I think. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I think I'm still in a range that was defined in college.
Emotionally or in terms of personality, I feel like I've always been middle-aged. Cynical, preferring to spend most evenings at home rather than out socializing, never too aware of what's "cool"... Now that I write it down, though, I'm having second thoughts. My hobbies, for one thing, are not all that mature. But I can think of a few fictional characters described as having a mental age that doesn't fit their real ages, and it must happen to some people in real life somewhere or other.
As for what's going on in life, I feel like I'm growing up quickly right now. Like I've gone from 25 to 35 in the past week. Among other things, my girlfriend and I are getting close to buying a house (maybe), and going over all that financial information has got me thinking a lot more frugally.
I hate that I can't offer a translation in Russian. Where has my Russian gone? I don't rightly know what word to use for "to fight" and I don't think I ever know how to say "revoke."