Writing Prompt #11
You’re trying to plan a surprise birthday party. It’s not going as well as you hoped.
This is meeee. I can’t wait to do this professionally
I had a really weird experience with my teacher the other day.
Now for context, he's not my teacher. I had him for calculus last year after I switched from AB to on-level and got a near 100 in the class. I signed up for a teacher assistant position with him, thinking I'd be helping teach calculus. Nope. I ended up being a TA for Algebra 1 instead.
He's a very... interesting person, to say the least, and I've heard really mixed things about him over the year. I don't know where he stands on any issue I care about very much. I haven't had the courage to ask him about AI. I don't think he particularly cares for politics that much—not that I particularly care what he thinks—and has given very mixed responses on things. He seems to like Elon Musk, as he said that we're "Very fortunate to be in a time with him in it" or something of the sort because of what he did with electric cars.
But one thing I am absolutely certain of is that he doesn't like psychology and said at one point in front of the class of freshmen that I want to pursue a career in "stupid science." Now, mind you, there are at least two other kids in that class who want to go into psychology for a career. Which is awesome. I love that people have a passion for studying the mind.
He said that therapists (in a different instance) are hurting people more than helping people, and if I want to be a therapist, then I should just open a workout therapy place and call it a day. Because, according to him, workout is just as affective against Depression as antidepressants it's for mild depression, mild depression you ignorant fuck not major depressive disorder-- -_-
Anyway, I noticed that the kids in my class are making some rather inappropriate jokes about schizophrenia and being gay (which isn't a mental disorder, but I heard some distasteful comments that I couldn't let go unnoticed) before the break, and I had a long time to think on it, so when I came back, I asked Mr. Algebra teacher if I could talk to the class about how what they were saying wasn't okay.
He said that I have two minutes at the end of class, which isn't nearly enough time for me to talk about everything, but whatever. What struck me as odd and probably a Red Flag was how he kept trying to refute it and say that I shouldn't talk about it too seriously because they're just being immature. I made the argument that, yes, it's immature but it's also perpetuating stigmas that we don't want going around that can seriously hurt people and that what they were saying wasn't okay regardless. He said that people back in middle school said worse things like the r-word (which was also said here, but I didn't mention it), and I said sure but this is still bad as well. He said that I WAS RIGHT TO DO THIS AND SHOULD DO THIS 99 percent of the time, and internally I was just like why are you arguing with me and trying to backtrack this accomplishes nothing. He told me that I shouldn't expect for the issue to be resolved completely. I said I didn't expect it to.
I go up there and deliver my very awesome speech that he interrupted to make me get to my point faster, I guess. After I finished, he pulled me to the side and asked me what went well and what didn't. Which just felt... weird? I said that I think it went really well overall and that I didn't think anything was wrong. He said that he wished I didn't group the conversation about the gay stuff with the conversation about the schizophrenia and ocd stuff. To me, it felt like a very clear connection but oh well. He reiterated that I shouldn't expect to see much change. I said okay.
It's been almost a month.
GUESS WHO HASN'T HEARD A SINGLE COMMENT ABOUT SCHIZOPHRENIA, GAY INSULTS, OR ANYTHING REGARDING CALLING ANOTHER CLASSMATE OCD?
ME.
Take that, Mr. Algebra teacher.
It's the little wins that help me make it through the day, but honestly, this one is just completely boosting my self-esteem and confidence about being in the psychology field in the future.
@chaiandpages you can never get rid of me <3
lovely character. i need him to finally break down sobbing clutching his chest like it'll stop the pain crumpling to the floor begging God to either help him or let him die
"So... you free on Friday?"
"There is a new restaurant down the street. Maybe you would like to try it out together?"
"I wanted to ask for a while, so... can I take you out on a date?"
"Tell me a time and a place and I'll be there."
"Let's skip the small talk and just go on a date."
"I have a book full of date ideas. Can you help me trying them out?"
"Hey, I've got this wild idea: you, me, and a cup of coffee. What do you say?"
"I'm going to pick you up, you don't need to worry about anything. You just need to be pretty. Which shouldn't be a problem, since you always are."
"Should we make it official with a real date?"
"I dreamed about us going on a date. Should we make it a reality?"
"There's this fancy restaurant I'd like to try, but I'm sure the food will taste better if you are there with me."
"I could show you a good time."
"So, this was basically a date right? Wanna try a real one?"
"I think I found the perfect date spot. Care to try it out?"
"Let's take this to the next level and go on a date together."
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*points to the college i got into* is it really that surprising tho
for some reason ive had to viciously fight the overwhelming urge to add “dawg” to my every day vocabulary for like, the entire past month. No one i know says it. where did it come from? why is it here?? how do i get it to stop??? no but seriously i think ive heard it like, twice my entire life how did it get into my brain and why wont it leave.
The words they're afraid of.
(Read on our blog.)
The recently appointed Department of Defense head Pete Hegseth (formerly Fox News pundit, perpetually soused creepy uncle, and current group chat leaker of classified intel) banned images of the Enola Gay from the Pentagon’s website for the offense of “DEI” language. In keeping with the far right’s stated war on anything vaguely resembling diversity, equity and inclusion, even historical photos are up for cancellation. When a literal weapon of mass destruction is censored for being a bit fruity under the Trump administration’s war against inconvenient truths, what exactly is left untouched?
This is clown show stuff, but the stakes are far from funny. While some might be hesitant to compare the current administration to the very worst history has to offer, we can at least all agree that they are dyed-in-the-wool grammar Nazis. Policing language has been the objective of the MAGA culture war long before Project 2025’s debut—the wave of book bans orchestrated by astroturf movements like Moms for Liberty, and Florida’s 2022 Don’t Say Gay bill have already had a profound effect in the arena of free speech and freedom of expression (despite the far right’s long tradition of doublespeak performative free-speech martyrdom to the contrary). Don’t Say Gay ostensibly targeted K-3 education, but LGBT+ content at all levels of education (and beyond) was either quietly censored or entirely preempted in practice. The results were not just a war on so-called ideology, or words alone—but on reality and essential freedoms.
Now, words as innocuous and important as racism, climate change, hate speech, prejudice, mental health, and inequality are targeted as subversive. Entire concepts are being vanished from government institutions, scrubbed not only from descriptions but from metadata, search indexes, and archival frameworks.
If you don’t name a thing, does it exist?
These words are as numerous as they are generic: women, race, Black, immigrants, multicultural, gender, injustice. But what is painfully unserious is also particularly dangerous in its real-world consequences. The process of controlling words is a well-worn authoritarian tendency. Fifty-two universities are now under investigation as part of the President's effort to curb “woke” research and thought crimes. Institutions are being coerced to comply with a nebulous set of ideological demands, or face budgetary annihilation. That means cutting funding for entire departments, slashing financial aid, defunding scientific grants, and pressuring faculty to self-censor.
The possibilities for censorship extend far and wide—interfering, by extension, in everything from reproductive healthcare programs, to libraries and museums. The Trump administration’s proposed budget slashing all federal funding for libraries, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, will effectively gut an infrastructure that supports over 100,000 libraries and museums across the country—community centers, educational lifelines, internet access points, and archives of marginalized histories (starting with the Smithsonian Institution).
When you erase access, you erase participation. And when you erase participation, you erase people, and the means by which future generations might even learn they existed. A culture that cannot remember is a culture that cannot resist.
The erasure is, yet again, unsurprisingly targeted at minorities and LGBT+ people. The National Parks Service quietly revised the Stonewall Monument’s website to remove references to transgender people—a fundamental part of the original protests. Not an oversight, not a mistake, but a deliberate excision—one point in a wider plan of erasure depicted in stark detail in Project 2025, a blueprint to dismantle civil rights, defund LGBT+-related healthcare, and rewrite history from the ground up.
Dehumanization by deletion—welcome to the reactionary resurgence of doubleplusungood governance. In Trumpland, words are weapons—but not in the way they intend. Their fear of language betrays its power; that’s why they’re trying so hard to police it.
Words hurt them.
Hurt them back.
- the Ellipsus Team
feeling homesick for a version of life that doesn’t exist anymore
I want really really badly to do the whole, corkboard covered in red string and pictures but i have Nothing To Do It For. this is a problem that i could solve by Making Shit Up but also the corkboard is in my room where people go and being percieved is scary as shit.
i hate when you google a word and some fucking company comes up instead. Do you think you are more important than the english dictionary you piece of shit corporation
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