My sister and her husband have two rabbits, they take them to boarding whenever they have to go out of town for more than a day or two. Of course, the little one won't stop licking and cuddling people, so if you can handle that...

Yeah it's getting a bit costume-y towards the end there, but honestly if I had her money, looks and access to resources, I'd probably go all-out sometimes too, because why the hell not?

Oh goodness, thank you so much for this! I've been in counseling twice, as has my husband, and neither of us found it to be terribly useful- obviously I wasn't privy to my husband's sessions, but from what he described later on it seems he had the same sort of experience as me. It really did feel like I was speaking…

Thank goodness someone mentioned the syllabus. It's amazing how many students don't take the time to read them, given that they're a contractual agreement between the instructor and the student. I ran a course where group discussion was a central part of the required coursework (it counted for 25% of the final grade),…

Well, depilation in the Western world has existed sporadically and in certain parts of society for far longer than since the 1960s. Someone mentioned the hair-removal practices in Renaissance Italy above. But I'm guessing that because of the time/effort/access to resources involved it probably wasn't very commonplace…

"The whole point of academia is that you can study things without literally having to experience them firsthand."

Hi, educated first in the U.K. and then in the U.S. here! I never encountered this grading procedure while studying humanities in the UK- I went to a fairly good institution for undergrad and a more competitive one for postgrad. In both cases, grades were determined by the percentage you achieved through coursework.

The swamping was in reference to SportzBantz earlier remarks.

It depends on what you mean by competitive, and it also depends on your field. Many disciplines can be absolutely cut-throat when it comes to competing on a professional level (publish or perish, etc.), but that often doesn't kick in until postgrad level.

This may be how it works in STEM fields (and I'd still argue it's bullshit), but that's not a marking system that's often suitable to humanities or social studies fields, where distinguishing the marginally top five students isn't especially worthwhile. In a field like WGSS, extra credit doesn't (and shouldn't)…

If extra credit assignments are regularly swamping your top five spaces (and if those top five spaces are the only ones allowed A grades- which is ultra-competitive bullshit in and of itself and not something I've ever heard of outside of a STEM field) then there a couple of possibilities:

If the class is graded on a curve (and I personally agree that curving is bullshit) it should be done before the extra credit is given. Otherwise it's just "credit."

That's not how extra credit works! If this was a regular assignment I would agree, but the whole point of extra credit is that it's tacked on after the required content. No-one's grade should get pushed down for this as long as the instructor is calculating extra credit in the usual way.

Except that's not typically how extra credit works. In every instance of extra credit I've seen, the grade is calculated (and curved if the instructor is doing that, I never curved a grade in my time as an instructor and I didn't know many who did) and the student awarded their initial grade, then the extra credit is…

I would be the exact opposite! I'd initially be all "Excellent! No more thinking about what I have to wear!" and by day six I'd be all "BORED NOW." I know because I essentially did this when I first moved from the UK to the US. I still occasionally find myself being drawn towards capsule wardrobe concepts but I know…

10 weeks in summer I would find a bit of a slog (mostly because of the armpit hair), but I can see ten weeks in winter being pretty easy. Plus, you probably need that length of time to see if you'll recover from any initial culture shock (I imagine a lot of these diaries read something like "Week Two: Oh good lord…

I'm guessing they first thought it was someone's pet. Apparently they later called the RSPCA and were told they don't help with feral cats. Then they called a local cat charity who gave them a cat cage and suggested they tempt the cat in with food, but the cat wouldn't take it. All things considered they were probably…

Oh FFS. "Easing it out" and then trying to pick it up does not equal "hitting it with a broom." The couple obviously weren't familiar with how you deal with a strange cat that's decided to squat under your bed- their approach in retrospect wasn't the best but it's a long way from the flagrant animal abuse you're…

Yeah, my dad and I get on much better now we're all adults, but growing up he was pretty much a complete stranger to me and my sister. He had a career break a decade or so ago and basically realized that he'd missed our entire childhoods. I kind of feel for him- he did the best he new how to do, having been brought up…

Yep, my dad never made it to a school play, and it was pretty rare for my mum to be able to make it either. I never for a moment thought it meant they didn't care- they were busy doing other stuff that was a much better demonstration of that.