u/Dustborn81

So I finally decided to compile all my messy notes into a clean, easy to read guide because mixing up APA 7th and MLA 9th on essays is an absolute grade killer. It literal ly feels like professors just wait for us to make one tiny citation mistake so they can dock points. I lost a whole letter grade last semester on a history paper because of this, which was incredibly frustatring after spending hours researching. To stop this from happening agains, I broke down the biggest formatting differences that you need to watch out for.

• Bibliography Page Title: In APA, your source page must be titled References, while in MLA it has to be titled Works Cited.
• Author Names: APA 7th only wants the last name and initials, like Smith, J. A., but MLA 9th requires writing out the full first name, like Smith, John A.
• Publication Date Location: In APA, the year goes in parentheses right after the author name, like Smith, J. (2020), while in MLA the date actually goes near the very end of the citation without any parentheses.
• Title Capitalization: APA uses sentence case for titles, meaning you only capitalize the first word, like "The great Gatsby". On the otehr hand, MLA requires title case, where you capitalize almost every word, like "The Great Gatsby".
• In-Text Citations: For APA, you must separate the author last name and the year with a comma, like Smith, 2020, but MLA requires no comma at all between the author and the page number, like Smith 15.
• Multiple Authors: In APA, you use an ampersand, like Smith & Jones, 2020, but in MLA you must write out the word "and", like Smith and Jones 15.
• Three or More Authors: Both styles use "et al.", but in APA you write Smith et al., 2020, while in MLA you write Smith et al. 15, keeping the same comma rule.

Hopefully seeing all of this laid out in a simple checklist format helps some of you avoid getting penalized on your next big paper. Keeping all these tiny, annoying rules straight is definitely a headache, but checking this list before you submit your final draft can easily save you a few percentage points on your grade. Let me know if you want me to add any other citation styles or specific source types like websites and journal articles to this sheet.

I've been out for about seven months now and something keeps bothering me. I used to be pretty decisive, like I could look at a situation and know if something felt off or if someone was being genuine. Now I second-guess everything. I'll meet someone new and they'll say something totally normal, and I'll spend the next hour analyzing whether they meant something else or if I'm just being paranoid.

Last week a coworker asked if I wanted to grab coffee and I immediately thought there was some hidden agenda. There wasn't. It was just coffee. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing some underlying motive, and that made me feel ridiculous.

I know the whole relationship was built on me constantly trying to figure out what was real and what wasn't, and I guess that's still stuck in my head. It's like my brain is still in that mode where everything needs to be decoded. I don't know if this fades over time or if I need to actively work on it somehow. I'm not even sure what working on it would look like.

Anyone else deal with this? I feel like I'm functioning fine on the outside but internally I'm still operating like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop in every interaction.

Had my quarterly review today and apparently I'm not showing enough enthusiasm during team meetings. My manager said I should be more grateful because they get hundreds of applications every time a position opens up. Like that's supposed to make me feel special or something.

I've been here three years, I do my work, I meet deadlines, I don't cause problems. But now I'm being told that's not enough because I don't perform excitement when someone announces a new company initiative or whatever. The kicker is that I haven't had a real raise in two years, just cost of living adjustments that don't even match inflation.

She actually said the phrase hundreds of people would love to have your position with a straight face. As if the fact that capitalism has created a desperate labor pool means I should be doing backflips over a job that barely pays my rent. The whole conversation felt like a threat disguised as career advice.

I'm just tired of this idea that we're supposed to be performing gratitude on top of actually doing the work. When did showing up and doing what you're paid for stop being enough? Why do I also need to pretend I'm living my dream when I'm really just trying to survive another week.