u/No_Prior8728

Hi all. My first tarot deck was a classic Rider Waite one from Barnes & Noble, but I have a few issues with it—the back of the cards is a dark blue plaid that I dislike the look of, the cards themselves are not holding up to riffle shuffling well, and the colors on the designs are less vibrant than others I have seen. I'd like to replace them soon, so—

I'm wondering, what is everyone's favorite version of the Rider Waite cards? There seem to be so many for sale! I would love durable cards with vivid illustrations and a 'pretty' or more classic design on the back as opposed to the plaid. Thank you.

I’m at a loss. My studio used to be so high quality, I fell in love with it & learned so much. However they lost a lot of instructors this year due to drama in the community. It all started with one girl who wasn’t advanced enough for level two, took it anyway & got hurt. She blamed the instructor (which I partially understand) & it started off a domino effect of instructors getting disgruntled or getting bullied & leaving.

Flash forward to now, I’m a pretty advanced aerialist & take the highest level, & I know for a fact that at least two of the newly hired instructors at the studio are below my level. I also know they are not certified because I’ve asked them. They’re kind people but they’re not good aerialists. They’re both certified in other fitness practices but not on the apparatuses they’re teaching now.

I’m on friendly terms with one of them & went to her class a couple of times to try to be supportive. The students were struggling so hard because they simply were not getting good guidance. I felt bad. But I think it’s a safety issue & I’m genuinely at a loss for what to do.

It’s so frustrating & unprofessional. They’re also rigging lyras with daisy chains & people have fallen before. I cannot stress enough how this is a respected studio that used to have really high level instructors. It’s baffling to me.

So yeah this is basically just me gossiping but idk what’s happening. Insanity.

Okay so... I graduated Stony Brook a little while ago & long story short am considering filing a complaint about a professor I TAed for at the time. I don't totally know how I would go about doing this, but I really feel like she took advantage of me & I don't think she should be doing that to other students. While I was at SBU, two other professors encouraged me to file complaints against her but I refused at the time cuz I was lowkey brainwashed. She made me feel special / important, but in hindsight it wasn't okay what she did.

Things she did include but are not limited to:

- Signed me up as an undergrad TA during my second semester of freshman year & first semester of sophomore year (way too early, I was 19, you are supposed to have year three standing).

- Made me grade hundreds of undergrad papers by myself with no oversight. One time I was literally crying in a hotel room on family vacation because I was so overwhelmed with grading HER papers for students by the deadline she set me. This one I actually feel really guilty about. I received no training as a grader & obviously was not qualified to be giving people grades that impacted their entire education, especially since most of the students were older than me.

- Over-enrolled me for internship credits beyond the department limit (I did fifteen credits total) so that I could do "independent studies" for her which was basically me doing more of her work for her without much support or help. Then, when the department refused to award me the credits because they were over the limit, she turned on me & would not support me in asking for the credits I had earned/been promised. This impacted my graduation plan. She called me 'annoying' and 'irritating' for asking her to help me get the credits she said I would receive. Eventually I got twelve of them but I had to advocate all for myself & still missed out on the total number.

- Was rude as hell to me throughout all of this. One time another professor literally stopped in the hallway to ask if I was okay & what was going on because she was insulting me. & she said she was just kidding.

- Made racist comments about Korean students to me.

- Made sexual comments about a male student to me. (These two were kind of the last straws in me eventually ghosting her ^).

- Texted me constantly on my cell phone including sending me long paragraphs about things I had done wrong / things wrong with my personality a few days before Christmas while I was trying to celebrate with family.

Those are basically the main things ^. I don't really have proof of a lot of it because my SBU email was deleted and I didn't save most of my correspondence with her except for the texts. Also obviously my transcript reflects the internships & I assume she still has all the emails on her end.

I know in hindsight all of the above sounds really bad & I sound like an idiot for going along with it, but I was younger & she also made me a lot of false promises about helping with my career / letters of recommendation / accolades in the department / etc. I thought if I stuck it out she would eventually get me a job in the field I wanted, which she didn't do. I also thought if I told anyone what she was doing, especially with the grading, I would get in trouble too for going along with it & I felt guilty. Now I just feel so bad for students who had my stupid 19 year old self grading their important assignments. I should've said something at the time or not gone along with it.

Anyway, I'm thinking about saying something now. Any advice is welcome. & I am very sorry for the harm my actions caused during my time working with her.

I feel like the friend who's too woke lol but if you're going to use AI to predict where Phoebe will play, at least label that. For me personally, it takes the fun out of it. I'm having a good time doing detective work from my small town knowing there's a minuscule chance she'll play here, but AI maps, websites, and data takes all the fun out of it. The main tiktok creator who has been making such accurate predictions openly admitted he's been using google gemini to figure out which venues she'll be at, the big tracking website people have been sharing is also AI, and I just think it ruins the mystery & the fun of figuring it out yourself. I also just don't want to engage with any AI content personally and I really prefer doing google investigations with friends as opposed to AI generating venue lists. It's also just going to be inherently less accurate to ask AI for venues than talking to a local who actually goes to shows and knows small places that she might play. So yeah, use AI if you want... I guess... but don't present your findings as if they're genuinely your own, it's lame.

** editing to say that of course no one should be tracking Phoebe, I meant it in the sense of predicting her path or possible venues, NOT tracking her bus or whereabouts. & I would love to live in a world where no one uses AI at all but since the biggest content creators about this tour right now are relying on AI, that seems unlikely, hence me just asking them to label it to reduce harm.

Hi. I hope this post won't come across as naive or under-researched, but to put it briefly I am looking for preliminary advice about changing my career to psychology after studying English for a while.

I have a BA in English & am about to graduate with my MA in English as well. I had intended to go on and pursue a PhD in English as well, but my final year of grad school, I basically had an epiphany that I was only studying English because I was good at it, and while I enjoy the process, I started feeling debilitating dread about what would come after school. I wasn't thinking clearly about careers when I chose that path, I was just putting off the future with more degrees. Based on this epiphany, I began to think more realistically about what career I would really choose if I wasn't intimidated by the process. I've begun to think my true calling is toward psychology.

Not to get too personal, but my motivation for saying that is because I have been in therapy for the past four years and it has completely changed my life. My OCD is basically under control now, and I feel like I see the world in terms of DBT. I believe this could translate well to a career in clinical psychology or social work. I handle stress well, and could be empathetic and nonjudgmental toward patients while still taking structured approaches to treatment plans. I'm aware that the career is far more than just teaching skills and talking, and I know it comes with many difficulties, but I feel that my personal experiences combined with my personality type would serve me well in psychology.

Now to more of the information I'm seeking here... I'm not sure how to go about starting on this path. Obviously I'm still in very early stages of thinking about it, but I would appreciate some guidance. My main career goal would be to work with patients one-on-one, teaching DBT skills to manage crisis situations or overarching mental health struggles. I'm not as interested in research or teaching, and would prefer to work in a clinical setting sooner rather than later. I know there's a range of placements such as in hospitals, in-patient facilities, or weekly outpatient sessions. I do think working in a crisis or shorter term environment would suit me more than weekly outpatient.

Based on this ^, I'm questioning whether a PhD or PsyD would be necessary if I'm not interested in in-depth research. Would it be better to get a social work degree (another MA?) I'm also interested to hear what I would need to do to make up for lost time—if anyone with a humanities BA could speak on applying for psych MAs, that would be a great perspective to hear. I graduated undergrad with a 3.96 gpa but I have literally no psychology experience, the closest I came was taking a sociology class. My MA was in specialized English literature research (sooo useless I regret it so much, but I digress) so I don't think that will do me any favors on applications. In light of this, I don't want to jump right into MA applications, so I suppose I should look at maybe going back to undergrad to take psych pre-reqs and see how they go? I'm also curious about internships and externships / post-baccs / practical placements—would it be possible to apply for any of those with my current qualifications or after taking undergrad psychology classes? I'd love to get some work experience, even just shadowing a doctor. I know I had some friends in pre-med undergrad programs who did hospital shadowing so I'm not sure what is possible.

Any advice would be welcome. I know a lot of this is google-able, but I thought asking people with first-hand knowledge might yield more practical responses. Thanks for reading all of this. Best wishes.