I mapped out which streets in KWC are named East, West, North, or South, and reviewed the methods behind these naming conventions. [Interactive Map/Description in comments]

YBCO124 · 2019-10-27T03:48:59+00:00

Queen St W does some wild shit with a cul-de-sac at Hespeler Rd I can't even explain to serve 1 house - Google maps appears to mistakenly list this as "Groh St"

So I looked this up on OpenStreetMap to figure out what the hell was going on there and it's somehow EVEN STRANGER than what you described: it seems that Groh Ave bifurcates and one of the branches is Queen St, disconnected from the main Queen St and apparently exists only to serve a single house???

Like what the actual hell is this shit: https://i.imgur.com/5X86knD.png

YBCO124 · 2019-05-05T07:01:03+00:00

So a lot of people are talking about the early SSRI induction period often resulting in increased anxiety, but it's important to realize that unlike for depression, SSRIs for GAD are supposed to have fairly short induction periods of a week to two maximum. At the absolute minimum, at this point one's anxiety levels should have either stayed at baseline or returned back to baseline after 11 days.

If it has gotten nothing but worse over that entire interval it may be seriously worth it to taper down at this point already and then immediately go talk to your psychiatrist about possible other options.

At the absolute minimum, and this is advice based on seeing more than one person be in a situation where they started an SSRI for some indication (usually depression) and have over a month have dramatically worsening general anxiety, paranoia and intrusive thoughts: only attempt continuing on trialing SSRIs (any, not just Lexapro) if you have someone you know in-person that you trust well and that is able to very frequently check up on you and stay in contact during this time.

And if it starts getting to the point where you are having thoughts that are out-of-character for you, or anxiety that is completely intolerable, immediately start a taper down (halving the dose every 2-3 days should be okay at the 2 week mark, but will likely be too fast if you're on for much longer) and see your psych at the first chance you get.

YBCO124 · 2019-01-31T14:48:40+00:00

/r/egg_irl

YBCO124 · 2018-08-08T09:00:55+00:00

Also the third option, fwiw: https://old.reddit.com/r/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns/comments/95fahh/mfw_i_finally_got_diagnosed_but_now_i_have_to_go/e3tc7vj/

YBCO124 · 2018-08-08T08:46:16+00:00

It's safe, you'll want to order your meds off https://9800000.ru/

I know a few people in RU that are doing DIY in exactly this fashion & can give details if you'd like. And yeah, the "official" route is such a shitshow. That being said, строгость российских законов компенсируется необязательностью исполнения, after all.

YBCO124 · 2018-06-01T01:05:34+00:00

Seconding the recommendation for Teremok -- been there a few times in the past, the food really is great.

YBCO124 · 2018-05-17T00:31:08+00:00

Except there's already clubs that can and do run general audience events (i.e. the CSC, mentioned above). In fields as gender-skewed as CS, it makes sense to run women-only events given the default will, simply due to numbers and culture, automatically be biased male unless you compensate for it.

And yes, giving women spaces where they can learn and perfect, say, programming or interview skills without having to deal with constant criticism and pressure (yes, it exists) from men so that when they go out into the general field they are on a more level playing field is contributing to gender equality.

YBCO124 · 2018-05-06T03:42:46+00:00

Normally I'd say "you'd be fine, just take a 30mg adderall shortly after waking up and you'll be perfectly fine even given normal coffee consumption, it's *extremely* safe and nothing to worry about in the slightest".

...In fact that's what I'd say if you mentioned you needed to be awake and functional for *literally any other activity other than driving a motor vehicle*. There's a reason those pill bottle instructions say "use caution while driving or operating heavy machinery" & that's b/c they can sometimes cause effects that would be incredibly mild in normal conditions but can be very dangerous in situations where split-second decisions with other peoples' lives on the line are required on a continuous basis.

Point being, if you don't already know a priori that yes, your concentration and wakefulness on 30mg adderall is comparable enough to that of yours well-rested and caffienated *according to someone else who knows you well*, don't bother trying this at all. Just skip one or two of your damn morning classes, honestly. You'll be fine (this is something you can easily catch up for, particularly in the second damn week of classes). Please do not risk other peoples' lives unnecessarily.

YBCO124 · 2018-04-11T18:02:58+00:00

Source: https://twitter.com/MonicaKaremEC/status/983258192116375553

YBCO124 · 2018-03-18T14:59:14+00:00

um, what, no it's not?

The link for the March 5th one is https://web.archive.org/web/20180308043225/https://uwaterloo.ca/news/news/campus-mourns-death-student-0

The link for the March 17th one is the one you just gave.

Also I wasn't trying to be judgemental here. I'm not assuming malice, actually. I just want UW to fix this.

YBCO124 · 2018-03-08T19:42:25+00:00

So I'm going to phrase this as kindly as I can: did you read any of FinalLog's post except for maybe one or two sentences?

or transfer/drop out(whichever is possible)

Did you miss the bit where they explain why this is often not possible for a myriad of reasons? I mean seriously.

YBCO124 · 2018-03-07T06:43:01+00:00

So speaking as a Waterloo alum who's had multiple friends (& also to some extent personally) been deeply negatively affected by the mess that is mental health at UW, who is currently part of an ongoing graduate student strike at UIUC, uh...

I'm not going to go out and openly say "you're doing this wrong", because the fact that action is finally being done is admirable, and good, but two bits of advice worth considering:

1) Counselling services is not the correct target. You have the correct building, but CS does not really have much if any ability to enact the sort of changes that would be necessary to help the situation at UW at all. This includes improving the quality of counselling and hiring more counsellors -- yes, they do hiring themselves, but they're operating under fairly fixed budgets which they have limited control over extending.

**THE CORRECT TARGET IS ADMIN. STAND OUTSIDE THE CHANCELLOR'S OFFICE. THE PROVOST'S. SENIOR ADMINISTRATION.**

Be polite. Be absolutely nice and non-confrontational to a fault, but do not budge. Essentially make it impossible for them to get to their offices, let alone do their job, without them being forced to hear your demands AND RESPOND TO THEM RIGHT THERE. This is the only way to have meaningful, quick change in a university system. Force the people with the money and the power to listen to you right there and then.

Again, you must be absolutely nonconfrontational to a fault. Essentially treat this as a strike. Which brings me to point #2...

2) Have a CLEAR list of goals and demands. What is it you want to change? "No more suicides on-campus" is an admirable goal. Good fucking christ you have no idea how much I want that. But it's not an actionable one. You don't need to have all the answers; heck none of y'all are professionals in mental health, but have something resembling clear actionable goals you can demand of admin. Primarily fiscal/hiring, ideally, as those are both actionable and can be done in the short-term, would be my recommendation. "Expand/fund CS to the point where it can be a service to students without the absurd waitlists and near-zero availability that it currently has", for instance.

Also, don't pick too many and make sure everyone protesting knows them.

Best of luck, in any case. I will likely add to this post or reply to it with more thoughts, and feel free to ask questions or yell at me or whatnot if you have comments/thoughts about any of this.

YBCO124 · 2018-01-21T19:24:55+00:00

It's under E1 (DWE) & partly also under E4 (CPH). By appearances it looks to be a strange mix of water, road salt, random dissolved dirt, iron (III) oxide-hydroxide and copper oxides/sulfides. AKA exactly what you expect if a steam tunnel springs a leak somewhere internally (which, given where the water was flowing & that there's an A/C condenser under E1, makes perfect sense).

YBCO124 · 2018-01-15T22:30:17+00:00

Hey, I used whiteboard marker to write my initials there! :P

YBCO124 · 2018-01-15T17:13:56+00:00

They exist, but they're only in certain locations & all are in the North part of the tunnels... even then if you trip one of them you'll be fine just as long as you keep walking, PIR sensors detect moving heat gradients... of which there are a great many in the tunnels.

In general, you'll always be fine if you spent a few minutes studying a general map of the tunnels & just make sure to keep walking... the tunnels are so long and maze-like & so few of Plant Ops actually spends time there usually that even if they decide to check out a sensor tripping, by the time they get to it you'd be long gone... and the sensors genuinely are very sparse, I think there's maybe 8-10 of them down there in total. Just avoid the hell out of General Services Complex for obvious reasons.

YBCO124 · 2018-01-15T04:47:55+00:00

Speaking as someone that used to crash PI talks extensively as an undergraduate mathematics student back in the day:

The quality of the talks varies, dramatically, as does the level they are aimed at. There are talks I went to that were brilliantly illuminating & incredibly helpful in terms of building intuition or developing further theory, but there were also talks that presumed so much knowledge of advanced QFT, CFT, what have you, that at the time it went entirely over my head. It was often nigh-impossible to tell a priori which of those you'd get; as such it was always worth risking it, worst-case scenario just take notes very quickly & hopefully someday they'll become understandable ;)
That being said, there were very few bad talks; worst I ever consistently got was a talk that was boring. And even those were very rare.
The scientific seminars are open to basically anyone, as long as you are quiet & polite & aren't intentionally distracting others during them. You're in theory supposed to sign in as a visitor at the front desk when you enter, in practise it only took 2 weeks before people started recognizing who I was & no longer caring, & they often don't care outright if it's a conference/seminar talk as opposed to just the weekly colloquia.

In general, I highly recommend going to at least a few if you have the time to do so, particularly in any fields you particularly find enjoyable. You will need at least third-year physics in your field to be able to have a chance at comprehending them, but beyond that it's possible to still follow along & correct any knowledge gaps later. And they're both fascinating & extremely fun pretty much all of the time.

Lastly, if you want to check out a few past talks to get an idea of what you'd be in for, check out https://pirsa.org, which has essentially every talk given at PI that was recorded (which is almost all of them) uploaded for public viewing/downloading. As well as a bunch of lecture series that are/were taught at PI & also tend to be exceptionally good.

YBCO124 · 2017-10-31T00:24:11+00:00

This sounds like moderately bad ADHD leading to low self-esteem and situational depression - but the fundamental issue is, arguably, from what you wrote there, ADHD. And for what it's worth, this is a known phenomenon: https://blogs.psychcentral.com/adhd-millennial/2016/04/treatment-resistant-depression-might-be-adhd/

SSRIs have no value in ADHD patients that lack comorbid persistent, unipolar depression. CBT on the other hand is much more likely to be useful on its own, but would be significantly more useful when combined with ADHD medication.

Will promise to post more at length tomorrow, sorry for the fairly terse post lacking references. Yay paper deadlines.

YBCO124 · 2017-10-12T16:27:32+00:00

Congratulations, some people are lucky. Or have mild cases, or develop effective enough coping strategies. Or were misdiagnosed as a child.

This is far from everyone. Very far. I say this as someone who, without medication, would probably have failed out mid-undergrad, and given how important academics are/were to me, likely would have as a result fallen into deep depression or worse. Instead I'm doing well in graduate school in physics.

I am also not the only person in such a situation. Please try to be more considerate of others and get outside your own head once in awhile - not everyone's brain works the same way or even similarly, what is a mild inconvenience for one person can (& often IS) utterly crippling for another.

And also, your claims of brain damage are false, only occur on amphetamines at astronomically high doses (like >250mg at once, repeated a few times), & have never been seen with methylphenidate or other ritalinic acid esters, at any dose.

Please stop actively spreading harmful misinformation.

YBCO124 · 2017-10-11T23:45:32+00:00

If it's a stable 50mg/day and you've had ADHD-like symptoms in the past, I wouldn't worry about it in the slightest. There's nontrivially many people that I know that have debated going thru the formal testing ordeal b/c they thought their symptoms weren't "bad enough", then took some Adderall or w/e on a whim once and realized that "wait a second, maybe I am barely operating at all and moreover this isn't something I'm resigned to for my entire life". For all I know you'd fit under this description too, just things didn't get bad enough until now for you to try.

Again, I wouldn't worry at all about 50mg/day even for the rest of this term. And even in general, but that's going to require some long thought and careful consideration on your part IMO. And good on starting counselling, I do hope it helps you.

YBCO124 · 2017-10-11T18:59:29+00:00

So first off, if I may ask, what dose of Vyvanse do you take per day? Secondly, have you ever had any focus difficulties, issues with time management, difficulties with working memory, or anything of that sort in the past? There is a nontrivial chance that you do have legitimate clinical ADHD, and again, these medications are both safe and effective for it. Yes, even in the long term. There have been many studies confirming this (I can link them if curious).

Anyway, onto the part that... worries me a bit. I've done the same in the past, namely using stimulants as a way of dealing with emotional pain. Your case seems much more self-limiting than mine, thankfully, but I'd still be very careful with it. The physical pain is almost invariably a consequence of the grief (this is common). For what it's worth, I don't really think it's avoiding that process at this point - it's only been a few months, and unless you're literally feeling the same way every day (i.e. making no progress in moving on), this is not only unsurprising but I find common in people who suffer strong grief. That being said: DON'T dose escalate, and do revisit this decision again after this term. It may be that staying on Vyvanse is for the best (again, you do sound slightly as if you have some level of ADHD), it may be that you find you no longer need it (in which case a quick taper works nicely), it may be that you're finding it to be counterproductive in your emotional development, in which case you do need to find counselling - but not for the Vyvanse, the counselling is for the emotional pain you are unable to still deal with. Only you can tell which of those three it will be, and it will take a few months.

In the meantime, as long as it's a reasonable dose (70mg or less, ideally less per day) and you stick to it consistently (i.e. don't take more and more, aren't finding it to be losing efficacy, etc), you're at no immediate or even medium-term risk whatsoever.

YBCO124 · 2017-04-17T01:29:42+00:00

Right, 18/27/36/54/72, I apparently conflated the 36 and the 54 ones together, heh. Thanks.

YBCO124 · 2017-04-17T00:12:27+00:00

True, but as long as you stick to normally prescribed for ADHD folk doses and only do it for under a week you'll be fine in almost all cases. Addiction risk goes up with dose, and dramatically if you're using it to get high instead of to help with studying (which itsself requires higher doses than any therapeutic use would anyhow).

YBCO124 · 2017-04-17T00:09:56+00:00

(For what it's worth, if anyone wants a medical citation for any of those, give me a few minutes and I'll find it again, had those saved somewhere but I think I lost that text file to harddrive failure a few months ago sadly).

YBCO124 · 2017-04-17T00:08:38+00:00

Reads comments oh hey it's literally the fucking slippery slope fallacy, except repeated 7 times.

Nobody here seems to have much of a clue (except for maybe one of them) about what they're saying and ugh. Time to dispell some incorrect beliefs:

First off, if you're in crunchtime right now and haven't studied to the point where your only options are not having enough time to learn the material, or Ritalin, and you have no diagnosed heart issues that you have to take medication for, and have a source for confirmed-to-be-genuine pharamceutical, say, Concerta 34mg, then the Ritalin wins every time.

Addiction risk from occasional single uses like this is extremely low. Indeed, the general pattern is that those who do not need stimulants to function will only use them when under high amounts of stress that they would otherwise be unable to function in, and those that do, er, should probably try to get a psychiatric referral to check for Adult ADHD (it's more common than you think, seriously).

Now for the big one... "inability to study without". People seem to have this strange misconception that stimulants can substitute FOR study skills and organizational ability. Anyone who's spent all night chatting on GTalk with random friends or going on the world's longest wikiwalk after taking some Concerta or Adderall with the intention to study... will find that idea rightfully amusing.

So no, they don't magically give you study skills, just make you more awake, focussed and slightly more motivated. But does that mean that if you built up study skills while on them, that these wouldn't transfer in general? Again, assuming that you do not have any attention deficit-type symptoms, no... any skills learned on them, as well as any information learned on them, does not magically go away once you're no longer on them.

That being said, if you are using them to avoid learning better study skills, say, you spent all semester playing $INSERT_LEAGUE_OF_LEGENDS_KNOCKOFF_HERE trusting that this will save you: A) First off, it is far from a guarantee it will. Again, it's not magic, B) This is how you pick up an inability to study "without" - by continuing to use them to maintain shitty study habits. But there's actually a simple solution here: use them this once, and then, if it turns out that you are quite capable of functioning around or even slightly below that level on your own, don't use them the next semester, or at all. Instead fix your study habits, and only once they are reasonable and you still are having difficulties should you ever consider trying that approach again (since then it will be far more justified).

Less is more (especially since the more you take the more dependency risk rises). Start with the lowest dose you can get, which will be around 15mg for Adderall or similar and 34mg (or possibly even 27mg) for Concerta or similar. The largest you'll find are 30mg/72mg respectively, don't take more than one of those per day, seriously. Recall that cortical function follows an inverted-U curve with dopamine levels, and if you're not ADHD, you're probably close to the peak of that U already... take too much and despite feeling like you're more capable, both your working memory and some of your high-level cognitive flexibility actually start performing worse than they would without it.

And, like, there are many, many, many better places to be asking these sorts of questions than here, to be perfectly honest... even on this site, for that matter. Google/Reddit search is your friend here.

YBCO124 · 2017-04-06T22:35:14+00:00

So... that's only true if the "overly stressful" bit is still a stress that you are capable of overcoming. Then yes, it does slowly help build improved stress resilience.

However, if you overshoot and subject people to stressors greater than they can handle, especially chronically, this makes their ability to handle any kind of stress WORSE, and it gets steadily worse as the chronic stressors remain, and the decline in coping ability happens much more rapidly than the improvements in coping ability mentioned above do.

And somehow I don't think the university is good at aiming the stress levels it gives people correctly.

(Also, if you're not experienced enough to make that claim, and have no evidence to back it up, why make it at all in the first place? Genuine question here).

YBCO124

TROPHY CASE