True story. I would never go to the campus health center in college for this reason. Actually, I had a lot of friends with stories about non-health center campus staff knowing their medical details. One or two people I would write off as coincidence or a result of the rumor mill, but it was pervasive enough to make me…

I’ve lived in houses where we tried chore charts, but they usually ended up falling by the wayside. In the end it usually gets divvied up by aptitude and/or inclination. Like I had a foodie roommate who was militant about keeping the kitchen clean, so I just let him have at it and took the bathroom. Or my current…

No, they used to put out a weekly PDF with jobs. I’m not sure how they do it now.

I worked a free internship fresh out of college. It was for a very famous senator, and I definitely got attention for it later. It helped that the internship was in the press office, and not the generic tour-giving type. Even in the interview for my curent job, nine years later, they admitted it was one of the reasons…

My younger brother has worn his clothes threadbare, and has asked me for help in building a somewhat better wardrobe. I have no idea what boys his age wear, and I’m pretty sure if he dressed like the 23 year old boys in my major city he would be overdressed in his tiny town. What should we look for? Jeans seem to be a…

That’s not even getting into splitting bills like internet service, so most people are probably saving even more than that.

Not necessarily a good idea somewhere like Morocco. Lots of skilled pickpockets who will know that those headphones are probably plugged into something expensive.

I do the same thing! I’m very picky about which audiobooks I listen to going to sleep. Usually, I prefer something I’ve read before so I don’t get so caught up in what’s going to happen that I don’t fall asleep. Just enough distraction that I can think about something else. On nights when I’m really upset I’ll put on…

My mom bought me an alarm clock when I started school and it was my job to get up and ready on time. If I missed the bus I was stuck at home with her and the babies all day. Not a good time, so by and large I made sure I caught that bus.

The publishers have gotten super lazy, I think. It’s at least worth checking if the editions are the same. In my last math class I got the old edition and every problem and page number were identical. They changed the cover and that was it.

I absolutely hate these. You can save money, but there’s no way to deal with this cheaply. A couple of ideas for saving money:

True story. Most of the time professors have no idea if there have been any changes or not and will tell you to buy the new book. If you’re really worried ask to see a classmate’s book. I once had a professor insist the new edition was completely different. I checked and they had changed nothing except the color…

This is why when I was a teacher I tried to encourage the kids to speak up and deal with things in constructive ways. Too often we praise children for being passive, when it doesn’t help them in the long run. It’s better to teach them to speak up in a mature fashion, rather than holding it in or going to the opposite…

I agree with a lot of what you said, and I’m not using it as an excuse for why I didn’t get XYZ in life. I also don’t think I’m completely blameless. Like I said, I’m pretty sure that I do cross that line into obnoxious sometimes. What I struggle with is exactly how often and how far do I veer into obnoxious, and…

Thank you for this article. Lately I’ve been suspecting that I have this problem. In the past I’ve been kind of dismissive of the thought because it seems to be almost exclusively men who think I’m an obnoxious know-it-all. It may just be that I’m encountering men who aren’t crazy about opinionated, well-educated…

I guess the upside to being diagnosed as Borderline is that now you can seek treatment for that specifically. See if you can find DBT in your area. If not, a lot of the principles come from mindfulness practice, so maybe you could find a meditation group in your area. Those groups tend to attract very chill,…

It’s has to be relatively prolonged contact. If I just brush something metal nothing happens. Now that I think about it, I don’t come in contact with a lot of metal. Everything in my life that I touch a lot is wood or plastic. It’s mostly jewelry that’s a problem. And that one lifeguard stand, but putting a towel over…

My boyfriend gave me surgical steel earrings for Valentine’s Day and they swelled up like balloons. I suppose it’s possible that there was some kind of protective coating and it wasn’t actually the steel, but it’s not something I really like to experiment with.

Yay, I guess? So far the only metal I’ve encountered that can touch me is titanium. I actually got a rash from the metal arms of my chair when I was a lifeguard. Solved by throwing a towel over it before I sat down, but still really weird.

THANK YOU. I have lots of very random allergies, and explaining that I am allergic to hypoallergenic products confuses some people. It usually just means they took out a common allergen. Hypoallergenic earrings, for example, usually means they don’t have nickel. That doesn’t help if you’re allergic to the silver they…