I’m 4/5 typically but I will get flashes of level 1 gore. Not randomly or frequently (thankfully), but like if I am reminded of a particular kind of injury I find very distressing I will see it very vividly for just a moment. Not fun.

My dreams are also really vivid.

If you have a good understanding of what grad school actually is, you know it’s not going to be college+, and you’re still excited? Go for it! Just go in with the attitude that this is the start of a career path (not school) with many branches along the way. Most people you’ll work with will act like your options are 1) aim for TT at an R1 or 2) cut your losses and go into industry. Those are both legit paths, but pay attention to what you’re loving and hating about the experience.

Maybe you absolutely love teaching or mentorship or grant-writing or data analysis or giving conference talks or science communication or managing a lab or any of the other billion things you have to be responsible for at some point. There are career paths between the extremes that can let do so the stuff you actually like doing, and they exist both in and outside of academia. If you go in letting yourself get excited about whatever the hell you actually get excited about, you can figure out what the path you actually want could look like and prioritize those things that don’t make you miserable.

• a PhD who voluntarily pursued an instructional faculty track at an R1 where I never again have to backseat the needs of my students and my love of pedagogy behind desperately looking for research funding because publish-or-perish even though o have at bare minimum 3 months a year to devote entirely to whatever research I am excited about in the moment…or play video games if I prefer

Don’t fight, guys. This is academia. You’re both wrong.

I mean, GPT 3.5 consistently quotes my dissertation and conference papers back to me when I ask it anything related to my (extremely niche, but still) research interests. It’s definitely had access to plenty of publications for a while without managing to make any sense of them.

Alternatively, and probably more likely, my papers are incoherent and it’s not GPT’s fault. If 8.0 gets tenure track maybe it will learn to ignore desperate ramblings of PhD students. Once 9.0 gets tenured though I assume it will only reference itself.

Please introduce me to the woman who is doing IVF without first learning about cycle tracking and timed intercourse.

The idea that someone undergoing IVF has not yet tried everything else first is extremely bizarre. It’s wildly expensive and extremely hard on your physical and mental health.

This makes me want to go back on Reddit just to see what r/infertility and r/IVF have to say.

(I say this as I am currently prepping for my 5th freeze-all IVF cycle to make embryos I can’t even put in my own uterus because a doctor did a thing that left me infertile following a miscarriage years ago. Nobody wants to go through this shit. We do it because it’s the next least-worst thing on the list of things to try.)

Trix and Cookie Crisp I think.

The ascend power from Tears of the Kingdom. Not so much in my literal real life, but any time someone in a show/movie is being chased or is trapped somewhere or even just stuck in an awkward situation I expect them to just fly through the ceiling and leave all their pursuers with question marks over their heads.

One problem my mom did not anticipate was that she would be stuck effectively wearing sunglasses for my brother’s outdoor wedding, where was sitting up with the bride and groom for the whole thing (Indian wedding). She just looked like an asshole, and continues to look like an asshole in the just about every photo of the ceremony. Oops.

Seconding this plea to ignore anyone telling you to force or withhold food. The whole “they’ll eat it when they’re hungry enough” may apply to many picky eaters, but if someone (kid or adult) eats an extremely limited or unusual diet like you’re describing in the comments, there is a good chance it may be ARFID. It’s an eating/feeding disorder that often goes along with autism or sensory processing disorders, but can be separate. Critically, the “tried and true” parenting strategies for breaking picky eaters will exacerbate the problem. Of course the answer also isn’t “let them eat McDonald’s all day and stop worrying,” but there are a lot of strategies for supporting someone (especially kids) to expand their list of safe foods in a low-risk high-reward way.

Like the commenter above me said, everyone who has/had ”issues with food” is going to have an entirely different list of what they can and can’t eat and a different set of strategies that worked or backfired for them. The only general advice I have that I think applies across the board is: lower the pressure. If someone only eats 2 or 5 or 10 things, every interaction with food is already very high stakes and takes up a lot of brain space. You’re probably not going to be able to make specific foods less scary, but you can make the environment safer. Never make an unsafe food the only option, don’t let them see how worried you are, don’t (like my mom did) tell them “scientists found that if you eat more than one hot dog a month you get cancer” or “if you don’t eat vegetables you’ll die before you turn 20.” And maybe counterintuitively, don’t act overly surprised or excited when they are curious about a new food, aren’t afraid of something, like a food now that they insisted they didn’t like, etc. Just go with it as a win for you both. Let them see that what happens when they can eat more food is just…they can eat more food. No drama. (Exception if they are already excited and you are following their lead.)

Resources like NEDA (in the like above) can point you toward some places to start and connect you with other parents and professionals who can offer more contextualized and specific advice. You might also look at the r/ARFID subreddit. It’s mostly adults supporting each other but there’s a lot of wisdom for concerned caregivers and loved ones as well.

I actually totally agree. All people should begin worthy of our respect simply because we are humans, and our language should reflect that. Where the break is for me is that (again, for me) honorifics and similar terms imply hierarchical respect or deference, and that’s where the “earned respect” comes in. My respect for you as an equal is yours to lose; my respect for you as superior is yours to earn. In my language community, regular old please and thank you communicate the first kind, while honorifics convey the second.

I am also midwestern, and I have a problem with both miss and ma’am. The entire fact that there are two of them (and just the one for men) implies that age determines some portion of a woman’s societal value.

So as a fellow midwesterner, I’m not sure I agree with the idea that this is fully regionalized rather than a vaguer community-based (your church, your town, your parents’ profession, your school system…). I do hear that you want to be authentic to your own values and upbringing and completely appreciate that. But I’d consider whether the point of politeness terms and honorifics is to make you, the speaker, feel like you’re doing the right thing or about making your addressee feel seen and valued. If it’s the second, then you might consider whether it’s worth developing a new way of showing respect that can feel equally authentic in contexts where you may be unintentionally be making others uncomfortable.

Most decent people don’t want the second kind of respect. I know for me it makes me feel icky thinking that someone has muted themselves because they’re afraid of making me angry. Mind you I don’t think poorly of anyone who says it, ever, because they’re just doing what they were taught and trying to be polite.

Strong agree. I do not want to be shown deference if I’m not in an explicit position of authority and I do now want to shown respect if I haven’t earned it. (I also resent being asked to show deference or respect when it isn’t merited.) General politeness, like please and thank you, goes a long way toward demonstrating that you respect the person as an equal, which feels much more respectful to me than imposing some kind of arbitrary implied hierarchy of unearned respect between strangers.