u/Smart_Row9326

Well, we are probably used to reading this, but this course I'm taking really sucks for the following reasons:

1. We don't get a lecture (of course) and instead get the slides for every module. The slides are SO VAGUE.
2. We only get three reading materials for each module - usually a few pages from a book, a website page we are supposed to browse through, and a video. NONE OF THOSE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ASSIGNMENTS, though.
3. For the exams, the professor said that everything (slides, links to websites, readings) are going to be included. However, the exam asked very specific questions that WERE NOT in the readings.

So anyways, I did horribly in the exam, because I'm sorry if I didn't know that I was supposed to learn. The course is very history-heavy, and in addition to the useless readings, we get a list of learning objectives that we are supposed to research on our own.

For one of the exams, I tried to do as much research as I could since it seems that about 50% of this course is about that, learning on your own. Still, I did pretty badly because I did not memorize the names of certain Nazis or people who signed this or that treaty.

What I don't understand is, if you expect me to learn VERY specific questions (names, years, etc), why aren't the learning objectives more specific? So that I can at least focus my research a little more. Telling me that I need to learn about how the extermination camps in WWII worked just to then test me on whether or not I remember the name of the three Nazi douche bags who were part of the The Wannsee Conference is wild.

I'll just fail this class because I'm literally not good at memorizing every single piece of information and I'm not a mind reader. I'm usually a good student, and I really engaged in classes. I love to learn new things. But this course? This feels like manufactured learning. Super unrealistic.

I'm hoping to get some advice from people with lived experience, whether you've experienced psychosis yourself or supported someone who has. I know none of you can diagnose this woman, and I don't know her full story, but I'm at a loss for what else I can do.

A few weeks ago I started noticing the same woman outside my local grocery store almost every day. She was always wearing the same clothes and was always with her dog. Sometimes she'd be walking, other times just sitting on a bench.

A few days ago I decided to talk to her. She seemed completely disconnected from reality. She referred to herself in the third person, said none of this was real, and seemed convinced I wasn't a real person. She told me that "the human" had been SAd and that the one speaking to me was "the alien." She also kept saying my "audio" wasn't working, among other things that did not make sense. I spent about half an hour listening to her without contradicting what she said, and trying to gently ask if she wanted food, water, or if I could contact a social worker, but her ideas were very disorganized.

Since then, I've been trying to find someone in her life who might know she's out there. I know this probably sounds like an invasion of privacy, but I was desperate to find anybody who cared about her. I eventually found her online with only her first name.

What I found was heartbreaking. She used to live just a few blocks from me. She was a college professor working on her PhD. She had a husband, two children, and one of her children had died years ago. Her students absolutely loved her. Then I found public court records showing that after she and her husband separated, she sued him because he allegedly contacted her employer and she lost the job she'd had for almost a decade.

When I looked at her old student reviews, there was a clear shift. For years they described her as an amazing professor. Then there was one review from a student who said they'd taken her class before and she had suddenly become completely different. After that, almost every review was negative.

I also asked in a neighborhood group if anyone knew her. One neighbor said her husband had cut ties with her and that she no longer had a relationship with her remaining child.

I realize there could be a lot I'm missing, and I don't want to make assumptions about what happened. I don't know whether she has psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or something else entirely. I also don't know what happened within her family. I'm only sharing this because it seems like her life changed dramatically over a relatively short period of time.

Several neighbors and I have already contacted homeless outreach and our local mental health crisis line, but we've basically been told that because she isn't actively threatening herself or anyone else, there isn't much they can do. I've also reached out to a few people who seemed close to her on social media, but no one has responded.

I can't stop thinking about her. She seems to have lost almost everything, and all she has left from her previous life is her dog.

For those of you who have experienced psychosis or have cared for someone who has, is there anything else I can realistically do? Is there a way to approach someone in this situation that feels less threatening or more helpful? Or is this one of those situations where there really isn't much a stranger can do?

I just don't want to walk away feeling like I gave up on someone who needed help.

Edit: I forgot to mention that she’s homeless now. She’s been wearing the same clothes for a month now, and she usually spends time outside of the grocery store. It seems like neighbors give her money and food, and I’ve seen her inside a coffee shop on occasion, but she’s always wearing the same dirty clothes :(

Hi, I am a Zillennial who came back to college in a new country (the U.S.) and who juggles in a Gen Z world daily.

It might sound silly, but between the new language, the cultural differences and the generational differences, I’m pretty much like an outcast and I’ve been trying to dress in a way that I can blend in a little more.

However, all the non-nano mineral sunscreen and/or SPF clothing + parasol gets in the way when I’m trying to “blend in.” Though I’m older than most students here and I shouldn’t care what they say or how they stare at me, I care. I’ve already been called weird for wearing my big sun protective hat lol.

So I was wondering if anybody has any recommendations of SPF clothing or any sun protection that can still be easily styled, if that makes sense. Thanks!!

Hi everyone, I’m looking for some financial advice on a situation I’m trying to think through.

I’m 30 years old, and moved to the US to be with my spouse. I’m new to the language and my only support is my spouse. It feels like I’m starting from zero. I’m currently a part-time undergraduate student (about 3 courses per semester). I also work part-time (~12 hours/week) and earn about $14k/year.

Because of my spouse’s job, I receive a tuition benefit and only pay for about 1 credit per semester, so my education costs are very low.

However, I currently have little savings. My spouse earns around $85k/year and covers major expenses (housing, health insurance, etc.). We also live in a very expensive city, though. I contribute about half of my income toward shared expenses like groceries, gas, and transportation. But because my income is low, this leaves me with very little ability to save, and any unexpected expense tends to wipe out what I have. Like, I had to pay $400 in copays this month, and that burned all the money I earned in the month.

At my current pace, I estimate it will take about 4 more years to complete my degree.

I’m trying to decide between two paths:

Option 1: Stay in school
-Continue part-time for 4 years (that’s what I estimated it will take me to graduate)
-Graduate with no debt
-Then get a full-time work and build savings

Option 2: Leave school temporarily
-Work full-time now to build savings and financial stability
-Return to school later (mid-30s)
- Downside: i would lose the current tuition benefit and delaying degree completion

My main concern is financial vulnerability. Right now I don’t have a meaningful emergency fund, and my situation is extremely dependent on my spouse. I know that we are a team, but if anything went wrong between us, I would lose everything.

My questions:
From a financial perspective, does it make more sense to prioritize finishing a low-cost degree, even if it takes several years?

Or would it better to pause school and focus on building savings and income first?

Are there strategies I might be overlooking to improve my situation while staying in school?

I’d really appreciate any insight. I honestly don’t know what to do.

Hi all, I’m a little confused as to when and where we should be applying sunscreen.

Every day, I have to walk 20ish minutes total to get to work and I’m wondering if I should be wearing sunscreen even though I use a special UV blocking parasol.

I also read that cotton and denim fabrics are not good for blocking UV rays. And those are the fabrics that I basically use, so should I be applying sunscreen on my legs, torso and arms?

I’m afraid of not being able to sustain applying sunscreen on my entire body to have a 20 minute walk. Do you all have any tips?

I tried to see if there was any UV blocking tights/ undershirt situation I could wear when I commute to work but I couldn’t find anything, and I’m also worried of it being too warm (we are in the middle of the summer here where I am).

Any advice would be highly appreciated ❤️

Hi all, I have SPD & OCD, and my coworker, let’s call him Todd, is (presumably) autistic (more context on this in last paragraph).

I constantly feel uncomfortable around him. He’s a higher rank than me (I’m just a student worker) and I can’t avoid him because we all share the same office. He works hand in hand with our supervisor, and is kinda like our supervisor when the other one is not available.

I think this might be very ableist of me, so I put a TW just in case.

Here are a few examples of things that make me uncomfortable and make me dislike him:

1. When he wants to tell me something or see my computer screen to explain something, he gets waaaay too close. I feel like he does not have the same notion I do about personal space. Sometimes I need to literally move away because he gets too close.
2. He eats on his desk. We all do. But he does not close his mouth while chewing. Chunks water in this ridiculously loud way. Licks his fingers after eating (if he was eating with his hands). And cleans his teeth with his nails. All in front of everybody. Because again, we all share this tiny office where they threw a bunch of desks.
3. He burps. Everyday. In front of me and everybody else.
4. When we are in a meeting, we usually just put our office chairs in a circle and talk (the office is small, as I said). He would kinda recline on his chair and spread his legs a lot. Like, why??
5. We work around government people who wear suits and have all this social rules. There was this one time he went into a room to assist a presenter while holding a slide of pizza in his hand. Because oh, God forbid he stops eating his snack to go and talk to a bunch of diplomats who need tech help.
6. Sometimes he’s not clean! I don’t know how to put it, but our job requires us to be presentable because we work with people. The other day, his face was all greasy and his hair was also greasy and glued to his forehead. Or maybe it was sweat. Which I know you can’t control but if that happened to me, I would go to the bathroom and dry my face a little?
7. He will sometimes smirk when I’m talking about any work related thing. This doesn’t bother me as much, but it confuses me. I know it’s hard to control what your face is doing sometimes. But he systematically smirks when I’m talking about, I don’t know, some email we got, or some customer’s request. It confuses me a lot because I’m not saying anything funny.
8. He misspelled my name for an entire year. Ok, so I’m not an English native and he is. For an entire year, he would mispronounce my name on certain occasions. That’s fine, I guess that happens. But he would also horribly misspell my name in email threads, even though you could clearly see my picture and my name in the thread. I’m talking like my name is, for example, Susana and he would spell it like Sesuana or Suisena. Again, we talk on Teams and email all the time, and every time he gets a notification from me, he can clearly see my name spelled correctly. But this went for a year.

All of this bothers me so much because I’m also neurodivergent, but I was socialized/raised as a girl, and was taught, punishing based, how to behave socially. So, for me, it was never an option to not be mindful of how I look, eat, talk, or act. It’s not that it’s not difficult to me, but I had to learn how to behave in social contexts and it still burns the shit out of me.

And then you have Todd, who just goes about his life doing all these things that make me uncomfortable and are very unprofessional, but nobody says anything. I’m just an underpaid student worker so it’s not my place to educate him on office/business etiquette.

I feel it’s unfair in a way, but I don’t know his story and I probably should be more patient and understanding. And that’s why I also feel really shitty. On one hand, I dislike him because of how uncomfortable I feel around him. On the other hand, I feel bad for him because he’s probably socially clueless, which is not uncommon for us NDs. I, myself, am clueless but I had to learn how to guess what the most appropriate thing is and put on a mask for work.

I don’t know if anybody would wonder this, but in case somebody wants to know how I know he’s autistic: one day, after a meeting, me and some other coworkers (whom I get along with) were casually talking about how it seems that most of us in the office are ND. Todd was also there and he mentioned how his dad and his brother are autistic. He did not say he was autistic, but it’s one of those things that sometimes, as ND myself, can be clocked?

Hi! I have a really hard to describe way of perceiving the world and I’m wondering if anyone here relates or knows if there is a name for it.

I have experienced this since childhood. I even tried explaining it to a therapist as a kid, but I could never find the words.

The closest way I can explain it is this:

If there is one chair in a room, I know there is objectively one chair. If someone asked me to count it, I would say one. I am not confused about reality, numbers, or what is physically there.

But what I perceive feels different. The chair somehow feels like infinitely many versions of itself all occupying the same space.

It’s not visual in the sense that I literally see ghost images, trails, or multiple chairs. Everything looks “normal.” It’s more like my brain experiences every object as a collection of copies layered on top of one another.

The best analogy I have is videos. Movement in videos is really a sequence of still images creating the illusion of motion. For me, it feels like every millisecond, or every tiny shift in position, is a new “copy” of the object, and all of those past and present versions are somehow stacked on top of each other at once.

I mostly ignore it now because I’m used to it (and it’s kinda trippy if I don’t). I wonder if it could be related to my SPD.

I’d love to know if anybody here has a similar experience with perception. It would mean a lot to learn that I’m not the only one who sees things this way.

EDIT: To clarify, I do not literally see visual duplicates, ghosting, or trails. Things look visually normal. The closest way I can describe it is that reality feels made of “frames,” like a movie. Every tiny unit of time feels like a new version of an object is created, and all those versions somehow exist layered on top of each other at once. So when I look at a tree or even the sky, it feels less like one continuous thing and more like an accumulation of infinite moments or copies of itself compressed into one.

Hi, I’ve had a very unusual way of perceiving objects for as long as I can remember, and I’ve never been able to explain it well. When I was a child, I even tried explaining it to a therapist, but I couldn’t find the words.

Here’s the best way I can describe it:

Let’s say there’s one chair in a room. If someone asked me how many chairs there are, I would say one, because I know there is objectively one chair. I’m not confused about reality or counting.

But what I perceive is different: the single chair somehow feels like an infinite number of that same chair, all occupying the exact same position in space.

It’s not visual in the sense that I literally see multiple chairs or trails layered over each other. Visually, things look normal. It’s more like every object feels like it’s simultaneously one object and also infinitely many versions of itself stacked in the same place.

I’m wondering if anyone has experienced something similar or knows if there’s a neurological or perceptual term for this. I was diagnosed with sensory processing issues related to sensory sensitivity, though I’m not sure whether it’s connected.

Other things that may or may not be relevant: I have visual snow, tinnitus, and when I’m relaxed in a dark room or have my eyes closed, I often see flowing/lava-like colors and patterns. Has anyone experienced anything remotely similar?

EDIT: To clarify, I do not literally see visual duplicates, ghosting, or trails. Things look visually normal. The closest way I can describe it is that reality feels made of “frames,” like a movie. Every tiny unit of time feels like a new version of an object is created, and all those versions somehow exist layered on top of each other at once. So when I look at a tree or even the sky, it feels less like one continuous thing and more like an accumulation of infinite moments or copies of itself compressed into one

Hola! Intenté buscar a ver si alguien ya había preguntado esto pero no encontré ningún post. Estoy tratando de solicitar una partida de nacimiento digital de mi viejo en la provincia de Santa Fe pero el sistema sólo me deja pagar a través de Red Link o una cuenta bancaria argentina (la cual no tengo).

Alguien sabe si hay alguna forma de pagar online desde el exterior o alguna alternativa para quienes viven fuera del país? Quizá un gestor confiable o algún otro método de pago? La verdad que no tengo familiares allá que me puedan hacer el aguante de pagar por la partida digital, y no quiero estar molestando a nadie en lo posible.

Hiii - I recently signed up for a gym and I pretty much dislike the vibe (and can’t unregistered because the contract is for a year x_x). I’m really in need of a personal trainer because I want to do strength training and know nothing about it.

I would really appreciate it if anybody has recommendations <3

Hi everyone, I’ve been reading about Bryan Johnson’s Project Blueprint and I’m really interested in the protocol. It’s honestly pretty impressive for me :(

That said, I’m running into a couple of challenges. I’m a student in my early 30s, so I don’t have the budget for things like extensive supplements, gym memberships, or more advanced therapies (like red light, etc.). I also have Endometriosis, so I’m not sure how well the protocol translates outside of the typical demographic it seems designed around.

I’ve also seen recommendations for paid communities, but those aren’t really accessible for me right now.

Are there any low-cost ways to follow the core principles of the protocol? And are there resources or communities that are more inclusive (e.g., not focused primarily on men or high-cost approaches)?

I’d really appreciate any guidance :) thank you!