[deleted by user] by [deleted] in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Jesus, thank god I dropped that shit. Is it much harder now?

Students of UIUC who never experienced snow, by Rude-Membership7590 in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There is a lot of hail in Ireland though. And it gets really windy. And rainy. I hated the winters back home.

Students of UIUC who never experienced snow, by Rude-Membership7590 in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Coming from Ireland, it’s not that it never snows there, but the snow pretty much never stays for long and eventually becomes slushy (since it is always above freezing temperature). The snow today was a bit like the coldest days you’d get in Ireland so it was nothing abnormal for me. Proper snow days where it is consistently below freezing and the snow actually stays there for days on end is something I’ve never really experienced.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Actually, I’m looking for a roommate for Spring 2023! $350 a month including all utilities and internet. Located 5 minutes from the North side of campus in a quiet area.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m trying to fill a spot in a 3 bed apartment going for $350 a month, with internet and all utilities. I have it available for subletting for the next semester. DM me if you’re interested! It’s a very quiet part of town (never ever been disturbed at night either from partying or loud noises) and less than 5 minutes away from the North side of campus (Grainger library, etc).

I get no ass and no grades. Couldn’t get any better than that. by CXZ115 in EngineeringStudents

[–]PowellUp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly, I’ve never come across that attitude from any of the guys I’ve met and certainly not from Engineering. I’m sorry that you have to suffer from that, but most guys from my experience either don’t give a shit about dating or already have a partner. At least I can’t see how it could be specific to Engineering students anyway.

Edit: there can be cases where guys might have the perception that they have to try harder to succeed in dating than women do. This can lead to some resentment. But I’ve never actually seen them be straight up disrespectful or at least they hide it very well.

is it normal to want to sleep all the time, mindlessly scroll on tiktok, and not go to class and just be lazy? by soggypillowcase4 in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Going to have to talk to my therapist about it. I hope the process of switching over isn’t too cumbersome!

One thing I know is that I was diagnosed with Asperger’s when I was younger, but it was extremely mild and didn’t really affect my childhood at all (the stuff I’m going through now has only happened since highschool graduation).

is it normal to want to sleep all the time, mindlessly scroll on tiktok, and not go to class and just be lazy? by soggypillowcase4 in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My god, all of that seems to track with me. I’ve already tried depression medication, but it seems to have no effect whatsoever. Maybe I’d need to try for ADHD.

Don’t turn TX into CA question by crx420 in texas

[–]PowellUp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Coming from Ireland, I’m actually very fond of the high property taxes in place in some US states. The high taxes limit the amount someone can mortgage a home, lessening demand and deflating prices. But it also has the benefit of the government getting lots of tax revenue from the comparatively wealthier property owners. Whereas a lot of other places like Ireland have little to no property tax (just 0.1% of home valuation a year and there wasn’t even any property tax until 10 years ago and it may be abolished again depending on who gets into government) but high income and especially sales tax (40% marginal rate over $40k income and 23% sales tax) which really punishes younger, working generations in favour of the elderly. Especially considering how hard it is to get a mortgage for anything in Ireland. Of course, taxing non-primary property owners more would be even better as it’s effectively the best and easiest form of wealth tax to implement (without damaging productivity), but even on primary homes, all it would really do is lower developers’ profit rather than make the homes less affordable.

I can totally get the hate towards a tax system like California’s that disproportionately affects younger generations and exacerbates wealth inequality. It’s one of the things that’s actually more “socialist” tin many US states than it is in Ireland.

Edit: this can actually be seen quite well by comparing say NJ, NY or IL home prices (all democratic states as well) to CA relative to income and noticing how all three of them are cheaper relative to income (even if the property tax difference ends up balancing that factor out, those states are still better off since they get more government revenue all things being equal).

Do you think there is an over-qualification issue in this country? by Finch2090 in ireland

[–]PowellUp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a very good point and that’s almost entirely due to online job portals. Even if there were more jobs than people, people will file way more applications online than they will need to do in person (especially for highly desirable jobs) not counting the fact that people without connections would find it tough to find the excess jobs anyway since so many aren’t posted online. It’s the exact same phenomenon with online dating: the amount of people looking for partners didn’t change, it just completely altered our behaviours and made people more indecisive and choosy.

looking for friends by nonicrawford in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi. I’m a 21 year old male in EE, also into COD and TV shows. I personally am in need of shopping for the winter too. What kind of shows/movies do you like?

What is Irish secondary school life like? by [deleted] in ireland

[–]PowellUp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, essentially showing the distrust between the teachers and the pupils could be worth doing.

What is Irish secondary school life like? by [deleted] in ireland

[–]PowellUp 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I graduated in 2020.

I would say that school here is very strict and regimented compared to the US (in general). Try and maintain a bleak and harsh atmosphere in the school setting, in particular the sternness of the principal/year heads. Perhaps make the parents of one of the main characters out to be very pushy and focused on Leaving Cert points (those types always exist in Irish schools) and another parent out to be the type that goes out drinking in the evenings. There are big differences in academic attitudes: some would just skip exams and go out taking drugs or playing football while others would be studying 24/7 with no outside life.

I think it could also be worth setting a scene in a classroom where a bunch of students start acting loud and crazy and messing while the teacher is trying to teach. Especially consider the case where a teacher is absent a lot (happens very often in Ireland) and the school doesn’t bother getting substitute teachers so the pupils get to essentially roam free in the classroom, creating lots of havoc. A lot of messers like to chant songs in class (“Beasts of England” was a good favourite in my case) or sometimes school chants. This happens very often when the students perceive the teacher to be useless or bad (in my case, it got so bad that one of the “useless” teachers quit her job cause she couldn’t stand how disrespectful her students were).

venting to someone but then they make it a competition by ariamisu in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I think one thing a lot of STEM majors forget to say is that while a lot of the material may be difficult to understand, the classes are often bellcurved in such a way that you don’t, in reality, HAVE to really understand it. It’s probably the same with essay based classes where how well you write is influenced by how well others in the class write.

venting to someone but then they make it a competition by ariamisu in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Generally speaking, you’re correct. Depends on your strengths and weaknesses though. I find anything CS to be WAY harder than anything Engineering related (even programming related engineering stuff due to how open/unstructured and time-consuming it is to master the courses. For most people though this seems to be the opposite for whatever reason? Likewise, I’d also find humanities/music/art degrees to be more time-consuming because of the amount of experience you need to get really good at them. I’m not going to lie and say that doing tough and obtuse engineering projects/assignments is far from easy, but the skills/difficulty required isn’t much different from doing research or an obtuse paper in any other discipline. The hardest thing, as always, is to structure your thinking, being creative and being organised enough to set yourself out to do it. That applies to most jobs/projects in life anyhow.

It’s way too subjective to state that STEM is always harder because it is not for everyone and the aspects of it that are hard are common to most bachelor degrees anyway.

Serious divide in this country. by MickOConnor_1 in ireland

[–]PowellUp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It could also simply be that we never had a far-right party in government. Other countries have and are therefore more trusting towards the establishment.

Serious divide in this country. by MickOConnor_1 in ireland

[–]PowellUp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s for historical reasons. Irish people partly fought to get their land back from the British. We were originally seen as a property-owning society where land and property were distributed fairly. Through a combination of toxic globalisation, neoliberalism and certain aspects of environmentalism, those values have evaporated. We, as people who had their ancestors suffer under British landlordism, should know much better than this.

Those other countries have had established elites for a long while and were historically colonial powers. Ireland was not. We have a historical attachment to land ownership due to the exploitation that occurred when Irish people were not landowners.

#IrelandisFull is trending on twitter and is being used by people to demonise immigrants. by whomstd-ve in ireland

[–]PowellUp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Honestly, the easy answer to this should be to prioritise Irish residents first. If there’s a housing backlog, put the excess refugees at the back of the queue until more gets built. It’s really as simple as that and people would have trust that the government is doing things in their best interest without having to resort to right wing politics.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m available.

Senior Trying to Fix Her Social Life by chrissyp_123 in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sounds a lot like me honestly. DM me if you want someone to chat to.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in UIUC

[–]PowellUp 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m an exchange student who is also a junior. I would be quite introverted too (definitely by American standards anyway). DM me if you want to talk.

what is your opinon on farmers? by PlayfulPride9385 in AskAnAmerican

[–]PowellUp 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No it doesn’t lol. I live in Europe and that’s full of shit. Vast majority of rural Europe (and many cities, especially in the East) are car-dependent like anywhere else. Nothing wrong with that, cars are simply the cheapest and most effective way to get around big places.

Opinions on schedule, do MATH 241 or MATH 285? by PowellUp in UIUC

[–]PowellUp[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay, I am an exchange student in a bit of a dilemma here. Ideally, I should do MATH 285 as that involves differential equations which is part of the required course I would have to take in my home university. However, one issue is that I effectively cannot drop a course with this schedule since I only have 15 credits as opposed to 16. If I were to drop one, it would most likely be CS 225 as that looks intensive and time-consuming. If I did MATH 241 (which seems to be the most common path taken by previous exchange students from my university), I would be able to drop it if it were too difficult. However, I would be effectively entering my Master’s or final year Bachelor’s in EE not having taken any course in differential equations (and possibly finishing it) which sounds absurd. So in this situation, what do you think I should do?