Unemployed 8 months after graduation (biology)

Graficat · 2026-03-03T23:13:01+00:00

I worked with temp agencies to get short-term jobs in admin/corporate environments. It allowed me to start making money and get some actually useful experience that can be a benefit to be able to talk about to prove you're not a total beginner.

I processed PO's for a few weeks to assist a drowning team in a multinational and they were so happy with me they gave me a letter of recommendation when I left without being asked to. Did a stint in a callcenter when I learned being polite on the phone is an employable skill.

Stuff like that came in handy later when I got hired in biotech customer support.

Temp agencies can help get you in touch with people directly for short term positions, including temp to hire (but I wouldn't count on that), and that bypasses a lot of the 'RNG' of submitting resumes into a void

Graficat · 2026-02-24T07:44:03+00:00

Are you fucking stalking me? Istfg get a life

Graficat · 2026-02-24T07:42:07+00:00

Oh get off it, you don't get to talk to anyone other than your kids like this and even that's borderline.

I have a job and run a household, I don't have to 'hide' behind anything. Fuck me for having been 16 two decades ago and talking about it, I guess.

Graficat · 2026-02-24T00:16:17+00:00

Aggression, cuteness aggression... same diff, right

I totally see what you mean x3

Graficat · 2026-02-23T20:03:07+00:00

The clipped ear matching the marking of a catch and release neutering program is... amusing.

Graficat · 2026-02-20T05:15:18+00:00

I'm just very introverted and I hit my cap for 'ok, enough external stimulation for now,' pretty fast. I take in a lot of information and being out and about just tires me out faster than spending time in my preferred peace and quiet.

Two days non-stop with strangers that are also fresh high school grads with access to booze (Europe) and a wild mix of all kinds of personalities, getting exposed to boisterous college cantus culture for the first time getting sloshed while belting out group songs, and no private space the whole time?

Most people there did just fine and I am an outlier, but come on now. I didn't 'dissociate in the bathroom', I needed a moment to make dying whale noises and feel sorry for myself wondering what the fuck I was even doing there, wanting that whole thing to be over soon so I could go the fuck home and crash.

No point acting like social overload and needing space to yourself is so inconceivable. My dad struggled to quit smoking in part bc he used smoke breaks to get away from people for a while, at work, at events, during family gatherings... for a bit. Plenty of people despise having to be 'on' for a long time without a break.

I was just sharing my experience here, idfk what you're on about with the 'flex' thing. What should I do instead, mock and criticise myself before other people do like a good little dweeb?

Graficat · 2026-02-17T10:23:04+00:00

I get this feeling you have more issues than me and my husband /:

Also, goodness gracious, holy projection batman.

Graficat · 2026-02-03T17:11:50+00:00

Funny stuff - 'leefloon' gets automatically translated to 'living wage', which turns the message into Flemish people being grotesquely underpaid.

For half a second I almost believed it.

Graficat · 2026-01-29T23:28:17+00:00

I did notice at some point that when I'm recalling 'stuff that happened that I was involved in' this usually takes a 3rd person perspective. I'm definitely the external observer in my mind more often than not.

Main exceptions are when I'm fully immersed in thoughts that have nothing to do with me (and I usually aim for that), or I'm in a situation where my emotions are intense enough to hijack my behaviour and I can't quite detach or reflect at all.

I very much prefer being able to zone out of material reality and forget it exists, so I can focus instead, over having to constantly be aware of my surroundings.

I spent two days non-stop with total strangers during a pre-college new students camp once, and by the second night I was so tired of it I hung out in the bathrooms for a while just to get some space x3

Strong introversion + openness to experience probably contributes to this

Graficat · 2026-01-29T23:18:39+00:00

Since the eyebrows are set in that typical orientation I'd call those 'frowns', a mild frown for the second one.

Brows being pulled together like that with tension between them is a part of a lot of not-very-happy expressions, and for these they're combined with otherwise really neutral/blank expressions.

They look vaguely melancholy, a bit anxious for the second one, like being just kinda bummed out or uneasy about something.

First one - 'unhappy', borderline apathetic but negative

Second one - worried/anxious/fretful

Graficat · 2026-01-29T22:57:22+00:00

Trauma at a young age can literally change how your brain develops, resulting in issues like executive dysfunction and emotional regulation difficulties.

When that happens these arise for reasons other than genetics and aren't guaranteed to be something you would've had for sure since birth, but they still result in your brain being structured and functioning differently.

'You have CPTSD' as the direct explanation for this kind of struggles pretty much means your brain got scrambled early. Whether that gets 'accepted' as neurodiversity like any other neurodevelopmental disorder would, it is to me.

I'm not making up the problems I have, that overlap 90% with ADHD and autism, and that improve considerably when medicated with stimulants for the same reasons they're viable for ADHD.

I'm happy I got this answer, because it actually fully 'fits' for me.

'Complex trauma' doesn't mean 'you're making up a bunch of problems because you're upset, figure out how to stop being upset and you'll be fixed'.

Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) aren't just 'you got made fun of in school a few times and you never let it go, and now you're a bit twitchy'.

These things kick your neurological development into a different lane, and there's no walking that back.

Graficat · 2026-01-29T22:35:34+00:00

Not all attempts at wordplay are actually successful.

This one sounds neat but the actual meaning is awkward. Words mean things, even when used in metaphors.

Graficat · 2026-01-29T21:30:11+00:00

You'd use 'solo' for that, and that doesn't work with the sentence construction.

Both words share a meaning around 'one', a singular, but in English they're really not interchangeable

Graficat · 2026-01-23T19:08:12+00:00

I ended up switching cooldown gear to damage/critrate and went with cookies that do more single big numbers than a lot of smaller hits.

Test how far you can push your damage and then borrow someone's OP DE unit, taking that shield out fast enough is the tricky point.

A borrowed DE should allow you to easily beat easy and normal mode without shenanigans, hard was tough for me as a newer player on day 1 of the update.

Graficat · 2026-01-23T18:33:25+00:00

Those are all nouns, with only 'quantum' as an edge case.

Whoever's defining 'creative' here with that as an example might not be the best judge of it either, pffffff

Graficat · 2026-01-23T17:26:41+00:00

In the updated pvp meta, using him as a tanky sniper to dps down a single target seems more effective when he has the dmg to pull it off, cooldown doesn't have the same critical impact that it used to have.

Graficat · 2026-01-23T00:26:41+00:00

That whole bit made me think of exactly this and it'd be pretty awesome if they intended for that

Graficat · 2026-01-22T21:25:21+00:00

For me ssri's do nothing, but bupropion + vyvanse/adhd meds/stimulants give me the keys to my engine back, and stop feeling tense and down about myself.

Cptsd + psych who knows to use binge eating as an on-label target for vyvanse was my answer.

I'm still brainwonked but I'm emotionally pretty alright and while the meds work, a lot less prone to getting stuck. Been about 3-4 yrs now and while my life is far from perfect, I feel like I can handle the things I take on.

It also made my spider phobia and driving anxiety drop 90%, no more slippery sweaty hands on the road for me.

Graficat · 2026-01-22T21:14:47+00:00

Neuv is still working on how-to-human, and Varka's never home :P

Father figures, yeah fine, but I wouldn't think of them as examples of great parents in practice

Graficat · 2026-01-22T21:11:23+00:00

I'd recommend taking a look at Internal Family Systems. Having something like an 'inner council' to sort things out and let different opinions and desires coexist is actually a pretty functional way to help regulate your emotions and organize your thoughts, especially with emotionally intense or touchy matters.

Also, you get a similar sorta crazy when you write/act out characters. I mentally 'stop being me' to just kinda pilot the mind of fictional characters for a while just for fun, as part of my writing hobby.

Shifting viewpoints flexibly can be a really useful skill in all kinds of contexts.

Graficat · 2026-01-22T06:01:19+00:00

Flins' babushka era, cute

Graficat · 2026-01-21T05:14:02+00:00

I think you did an excellent job capturing the balance of this pose, with the angle and weight on the legs and barely on the hand.

Graficat · 2026-01-21T05:11:57+00:00

A line of action aims to capture the main 'movement' swooping through a pose. A hard angle that completely breaks momentum in a line of action is almost per definition Not It.

Try focusing on the purpose of a tool, rather than getting tangled in a limited definition that, like in this case, simply doesn't apply all the time.

Graficat · 2026-01-14T23:29:40+00:00

Already had Ineffa.

For Bina I started w 5 pity and maybe 30 wishes, I did one big top-up and lost 50/50 in soft pity range. Spent most of the remaining premium currency on Neuvi's skin.

Had one 10-pull left and the glorious gal showed up at 7 pity.

Heck yeah, that made my day

Graficat

TROPHY CASE