u/Mammoth-Plankton484

I use Chat's premium version a lot for different work tasks and things have been great until about 2 weeks ago. Out of nowhere the drifting has gotten worse and worse, its quant and codex skills have fallen way off as well. I just ran a large proof for a model I am building and caught three errors, three times, and now just have decided to stay up tonight and do it myself

I think I may unsubscribe and check out a different service, has this been happening for other people too?

Hi everyone,

I am a current graduate student who studies U.S. grand strategy and foreign policy, with a regional concentration in Latin America. Before this, I worked as a Fulbright fellow, and before that, I was in the military. Graduate school and my time abroad have given me a lot of great soft skills, but I seem to be missing some of the hard skills that employers in analysis are looking for. For example, a friend of mine works in threat detection. Before his current role he spent around two years working in a digital forensics lab at his university, he picked up a lot of hard skills as it relates to analysis, coding, etc. I, unfortunately, possess none of these things. If we offered the classes at school I'd take em in a heartbeat, but it seems our department head is just obsessed with providing courses that prepare you to work as an FSO or at a think tank. I'd rather do OSINT or learn the trade of Counterintelligence. I find SIGINT very interesting but fall short on the technical side.

I would really love to focus on Latin America, but outside of DEA/ FBI, an agency, or the military, I am not sure what to even look at. If I was focused on China or Russia, this of course would be much easier.

My biggest fear is graduating and being more educated and less employable. Any advice on how to actually search for positions in these fields and market myself despite not having a list of programing languages or other tool certs would be helpful.

I just took my OPI for the ACTFL and scored Advanced low in Spanish. Not the score I wanted, but it is what it is. Ok, I understand that maybe it's because I did not jump through the right hoops and use the right kind of Spanish for a test, but someone else I know just scored Intermediate high, and this person literally cannot conjugate verbs still. They can't use por or para, they can't nail ser or estar, and they don't understand how the preterit works. I am listening to them as I type this, and they can't even conjugate the verb tratar into the first person form still. AND YET they have an intermediate high certificate. This makes no sense

I have lived in Argentina, Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras. I have worked and taught English in many different locations, and have zero stress speaking formal or colloquial Spanish. I don't think in translations, I don't falter when I have serious discussions and yet I still was rated at only Advanced low. All of my media is in Spanish, I just finished Albert Caymus' The Stranger in Spanish, and just started a more critical analysis of los cárteles no existen by Oswaldo Zavala.

Can someone please give me some insight into what I am missing? I reached out to the testing center to ask why I was given low and not standard or high but have heard no response. The test was free through my school, so they probably don't feel the need to get back to me.

Can someone please explain this to me? How could they rate this person Intermediate High, and me advanced low?

Looking for anyone here who has direct experience working in Latin America! I love it there, I speak the language and have a vested interested in going abroad and working / living! I taught for a bit before I went into my graduate program, and now I am looking at industries in defense / security, energy, and transportation.

I completed my SF-86 and turned it into my future employer. They then asked if I had any other foreign contacts (they give you a little sheet for including more if needed) and after reading back through SEAD 3 I reached out to ask about two extended family members who I did not feel met the definition. However, the FSO told me to go ahead and send in an amendment with their PII in order to ensure I am in compliance.

The other day I sat down with my investigator and we discussed my SF-86. I told her about the amendment, explained that my FSO has it (since two months ago) and she asked me to supply her with the same information. Additionally, I had several friends interviewed in different states, and when I did my follow up meeting with my DCIA investigator I had to re-supply all of my friends and employers contact information...the same people who have already been interviewed.

I am not making a fuss about it to anyone, I want this job and I am happy to supply any additional information needed, but I do not understand why it feels so disconnected?

Hi everyone,

What started out as just a general love/interest in this language and its many different cultures has transformed into a final quest, to read Don Quixote in Spanish. However, I am not sure at what point I should attempt this feat, since it considered by natives to be difficult even for them. So, which version would you recommended, and how would you begin? I am C1 (recent) and have no issues reading modern literature for the most part, but I have heard that to truly understand the text you need to read its original, unabridged form. Is there anything that would be best to prepare me before hand, some sort of readers guide to understanding the Spanish culture and some of the characters within the text?

Further, which translation would you recommend? There are quite a few.

No, I do not want to read it in English.
No, I do not want to read a shortened/easier form.

That would take away from the magic.

I had my CI poly (top 3 worst experiences of my life, due to current leaks going on in government, they spent 2+ hours grilling me) and after the contractor told me: "congratulations we have concluded this part of the process, good luck on the journey."

My FSO emailed me two days later to verify my FC list was up to date (lot of study abroad time and FN family) and now it's...radio silence.

I do not want to bug them/be annoying, do I just sit now and wait? Do I call DCSA to ask if I am cleared?

Is no news good news?

Hi everyone,

I have been busting my butt for three years to learn Spanish. I just completed my OPI and am a proud member of the C1 club. I have spent a lot of time abroad living and studying in Latin America and feel/felt very comfortable with the language...that is until yesterday when I started to down this subjunctive rabbit hole beyond what a grammar book or classroom will teach you.

The sentence that led me on this wild goose chase is the following:

"No es que Nicaragua sea pobre, sino que sus recursos naturales son desaprovechados por el régimen."

My first thought was:

"Well, it could be that Nicaragua IS poor, but it's not poor for the sake of being poor, its poor because of a secondary variable that is imposing itself on it, thus making it not a true declarative statement and thus needing the subjunctive. If Nicaragua was poor for the sake of being poor, we wouldn't need "no es que" followed by the sub."

This is...very analytic, and how my mind works (I am a business analyst by training). I understand this is not how most people think of this problem, they will just fall back on WEIRDO or some other textbook cliche, but I am hoping that in this community there are people smarter than me (of course there are) who want to help me get into the weeds here. As a non-native speaker, getting even better at understanding things like this at the most analytical, foundational levels will pay dividends in the long run for ease of access while avoiding weird mistakes when speaking.

TLDR:

Explain the underlying logic of no es que, without using WEIRDO or other textbook cliches that only touch the surface of the subjunctive.