I think it’s kinda just us for now but as founder and moderator of the community I say go wild. No need to gate the place.

Graduate school. Well, my first round of it.

During the course of my first graduate degree, I was surrounded by support, great professors, a cohort of other students who were driven, passionate, and colorful, even though we disagreed on several things (and one of them was an actual shitheel), and most importantly of all, a sense that I was learning, growing, and progressing along some kind of meaningful continuum of personal development… As well as being equipped to make some kind of difference in the world, as much of one as I made for myself (went from an uneducated, bigoted farm kid, someone who was already neck deep in neo Nazi stuff and bought into it into, well, pretty much the opposite).

I took that master’s degree and went professional for a few years, but found myself missing graduate school and so I went back for a second Masters. That just wrapped up last September, but the experience wasn’t the same at all.

I felt like I was just being pushed through machinery, going down a checklist, ticking boxes and moving on to the next. I kept thinking that eventually as I went through the motions I would find that an experience similar to the first round of graduate school would develop organically, but it never did. Once I finished the degree, that was kind of it. Have to put up my hands and say that this could well be just because I was really going through a hard time in my life concurrent to that second master’s degree, and that very likely colored my experience quite a bit, but it did just wrap up last year, so I will need some time and distance to be able to reflect on it more objectively and untangle the raw emotional impression from the objective fact.

I’m still wanting to go and get a PhD as an ultimate feather in my cap, but that will not be for a few years. For now, I need some time to work professionally to both save up money and meet some other personal life goals of mine, which I won’t get into too much detail about here.

Remember that mobile game that was popular a while ago, Neko Atsume? It’s that, but with Etna from Disgaea, because at the time I first made this username (years ago) Neko Atsume was taken and I was playing through Disgaea D2.

Monster orange Khaos (the 30% juice type), and the yellow Ripper flavor also. Miss me with that Papillon and Pipeline Punch.

As a kid I beat the vampires in Illusion of Gaia as Will. Didn’t realize you could change.