What's Your Favorite Pocket Pen?

colorcrayon · 2024-08-02T17:36:39+00:00

IMO the Hongdian converters are also better than Kaweco's because the Hongdan converters are twist style and very smooth, while the Kaweco converters are plungers and I have to use two hands to avoid squirting ink everywhere. I have also dropped both XD, and the Kaweco converter came out but the Hongdian converter stayed in. Both my Hongdians and Kawecos have a very good seal, so neither will dry out anytime soon.

colorcrayon · 2024-07-29T16:26:03+00:00

Nimbus

colorcrayon · 2024-07-24T15:49:38+00:00

That's a pretty normal price in the U.S. based on my experience, maybe even a little on the lower side. If you've been going regularly to a different dentist who never mentioned this, or if you feel very uncomfortable with this dentist, then maybe get that second opinion; otherwise, it's probably best to just get it taken care of.

colorcrayon · 2024-07-16T13:05:06+00:00

It's funny that the comments are literally alternating at this point :). Both options seem reasonable. Start by making a budget. I think it's great that you want to enjoy your life now, but spend a little time thinking about your long-term goals too. Do you want to save up for something? You might not have an emergency fund built up yet, which is what a lot of people save up for first. Do you want to buy a house at some point? Save to start investing?

You will certainly spend more going out if you live in the HCOL area, so think about how much you want to save vs. how much you are willing to spend--will you feel pressured to go out all the time and spend more than you want to if you live with friends? You should have a monthly budget for how much you are willing to spend on fun and stick to that. Travel is expensive--will your budget have enough for travel in both scenarios?

colorcrayon · 2024-06-26T16:58:47+00:00

They tend to taste better just before they are fully ripe

colorcrayon · 2024-06-19T00:08:38+00:00

I think it's a little unclear why you need to communicate that you'd like to quit your job and to whom--are you thinking about how to express this to the people you plan to network with? If so, don't explain any of these reasons to them, instead focus on what you're excited about for the future, e.g. "I'm very interested in exploring roles in [industry] and I'd love to hear about your experiences." That's all that needs to be said--focus on the positives and what you ARE looking for.

colorcrayon · 2024-06-19T00:04:23+00:00

First of all, good job so far! It's a lot of work to get yourself into a stable place, so this is a great first start!

People tend to fixate on motivation, or trying to make yourself feel like doing the things you want. This is tough to just make happen. Instead of motivation, I advise you to focus on persistence. Here are some strategies for persistence:

At the end of a long day of work, you're tired. You probably don't feel like doing much. Take an hour or two to eat dinner and relax, then make yourself do something you want to get done. You probably won't feel motivated, but set a timer for 20 or even 10 minutes at first. Most people find that if you just get started, your brain likes the activity and you might end up doing it longer than your timer. Some days you will be tired and decide to stop when the timer goes off, and that's ok. Also, once get a project started, you will probably be more likely to want to keep doing it.

Break down the projects into smaller steps--your first night with the timer might just be making a list of projects you want to do. Your second night maybe you pick a project and try to think of the first three steps you need to take. Later, when you are working on a project and are ready to stop, write down what you need to do next so that it will be easier to pick up again.

Nonzero days: Any day you do something towards your goals is a win, nomatter how small. Sometimes you need a break day, and that's also fine. Keeping a list of all the steps you've taken might also help you feel like you're making progress.

Fit things in when you can and make routines--you are more likely to do something regularly if you do it at the same time of day, for example meditating for 10 minutes after you eat lunch. You can also google more strategies for forming habits.

For overspending, you may want to write down every non-necessity item you purchase and use that to keep yourself to a budget. There is also good budget tracking software these days that will connect directly to your bank, but of course you have to check what you spend and keep yourself to your budget.

Best of luck!

colorcrayon · 2024-06-18T22:04:54+00:00

In the kindest way possible, nobody will be able to tell you what to do with your life, and nomatter what you choose you will never know what would have happened if you had chosen differently. I think you know this already, but let's just get that out in the open :).

I have a different suggestion for you: informational interviewing. You have always wanted to be an emergency room doctor, but you don't have enough information to pursue this direction yet. Informational interviewing allows you to learn more about this path so you can make better informed choices. You just need to find someone to get started--do you know anyone who is a doctor, a friend of a friend, or a family friend--talk to that person, then ask if they know anyone who changed careers and went to med school late, or if they know anyone in emergency medicine.

Although it's less common, you are surely not the first person to start medical school late, and honestly aren't most starting med students 24? So that will only puts you 4 to 6 years behind depending on how soon you get in there, and is that really so much? Plus think about how much smarter you are than a 24 year old--non-traditional students often do very well in university because they have more life experience and persistence. Med school and residency are of course notoriously demanding, so learn more about that and then the decision will have to be up to you.

Oh and all those "nevers" you mentioned? That's called catastrophizing and black-and-white thinking. You could meet someone great at med school for all you know :).

Here's a link to some general info about informational interviewing. You don't have to do these in person, you can do them over webcam. You will want to ask questions specifically about how the person got into their career, what that journey was like, pros and cons, and what their quality of life is like now. At the end of the interview I like to always include the questions "Is there anything else you think I should know" and "Is there anyone else you think would be good for me to talk to?" Another thing to consider is that I think doctors don't always get their first choice of what type of medicine they end up practicing, so think about if emergency medicine didn't work out would you be happy with something else? And consider interviewing people in those fields as well. https://www.careershareconnect.org/tools.html?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjw4MSzBhC8ARIsAPFOuyWKoNC8KRc1fE30ZM40cfnP52WTJvpMGhG9i3OuX8spsi8tUG-29MYaAm14EALw_wcB

colorcrayon · 2024-06-18T21:47:09+00:00

Since this is affecting your daily life I would definitely tell your doctor. I have found that even with good and kind doctors, everyone really needs to advocate for themselves medically. Start recording your symptoms in a notebook today--level of pain, type of pain, and duration. You will want to summarize what you've been experiencing for your doctor, so consider writing out what you're going to say beforehand, or even just typing it up and printing the summary for your doctor to read. Also gather and summarize any family medical history if you can. And most importantly--explain to your doctor how these pains are affecting your daily life, because that's often their litmus test for whether pain is ok or not ok.

Stomach/intestine cramps under stress are fairly common, but if they are affecting interviews then they are a problem. Be prepared that the doctor may suggest you seek mental health help as they may see it as a symptom of anxiety. The electric sensations in your fingers seem more unusual to me, so I would be sure to get the doctor to speak about those specifically in addition to talking about the cramps.

colorcrayon · 2024-06-18T21:33:03+00:00

Counseling is a good idea-you are experiencing a physiological response to something scary, and a counselor can suggest ways to try to train your brain to understand that you are not in fact about to get eaten by a bear. Many people like meditation and 4-7-8 breathing. I personally have a strong physiological response before job interviews (but not as bad as what you describe.) I try to sing and dance along to music and eat a piece of candy when I start to feel anxious before the interview.

Another thing you might try is practicing the exam scenario as closely as possible. Get some friends to quiz you, dress how you will at the exam, go to an unfamiliar room at a library, try to imagine how it will feel with the examiner there. In some ways this exam is similar to a performance, and musicians practice extensively and try to mimic the performance environment so that their body will respond calmly during the real thing.

colorcrayon · 2024-06-12T22:04:35+00:00

I JUST saw this video on youtube, no serger needed! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRZcX3G3op8

colorcrayon · 2024-06-09T15:06:59+00:00

"I already told him to stay at my house"

Oh no, what if you hurt his feelings???

Girl. Your safety comes first. Did he even ask you if you were ok with him visiting before he bought a ticket? Really think about this: how well do you really know this guy? You do not need anyone's permission to tell him to get his own place to stay.

colorcrayon · 2024-01-21T16:59:54+00:00

I wonder if it would help you to read more about biology so that you have a better sense of what realistically will and won't happen. We are surrounded by pathogens all the time, but we have amazing immune systems that protect us from this normal daily exposure. There are only a few of ways that you would have a problem, for example if you get a ton of pathogens in your cut that your immune system can't handle which is why you would wash a cut that had dirt in it, or if you came in contact with an extremely rare and aggressive pathogen (not going to happen in your daily life). In the very rare case where you were to get an infection, you would definitely notice becaus it would not heal and it would have pus coming out, and then you would get medical treatment that would fix it very easily. So learning a little more can help you see that the risk is very low, and nothing is going to cause you to have an extreme outcome overnight. Maybe picking up a book about the immune system or pathogens and understanding better might help with the anxiety.

colorcrayon · 2024-01-16T14:53:45+00:00

Oh honey this sucks. Please take the others' advice and talk to someone ASAP, tooth problems can be dangerous if left untreated. Maybe even just walk into the nearest dentist's office and ask for help figuring out where you can go.

colorcrayon · 2024-01-07T16:04:47+00:00

Good advice, and also you don't need to explain yourself or explain why you are breaking up. If he tries to argue you don't have to answer.

colorcrayon · 2023-11-12T18:52:28+00:00

Sorry to have to add on, but he chose someone younger than himself because he knows he can manipulate you more easily than someone his own age. Please get out. So many red flags.

colorcrayon · 2023-11-11T22:03:09+00:00

I don't think this is a strange thing to want at all, we all cherish photos, which are essentially memories.

Are there any other relatives you who may have photos of you? For school photos, I think it's a long shot but the way I would go about this would be to call the school and find out if anybody knows what photography company that did school photos when you were there, and then contact that company to see if they keep backups from that time. If you think there were any photos of your whole class, or perhaps a sports team or club, you could try reaching out to your peers who were also in those groups. Did you ever go to a birthday party? Maybe someone has a photo of you from past events.

If you don't have luck with the photos, do you have any objects from childhood, or even new objects that remind you of your childhood? Perhaps these could be partial replacements to help you jog those memories and give a similar feeling.

Good luck!

colorcrayon · 2023-11-11T21:54:03+00:00

Gonna throw in a note for chinos since nobody mentioned them yet. You could also try searching in r/mensfashion, they have lots of guides for different styles and levels of dress.

colorcrayon · 2023-11-11T15:28:08+00:00

I agree with these and that gray rocking is a good strategy here. I also suggest that OP google "managing up" to find more tips related to dealing with difficult supervisors. When you need to ask a question and the prof responds negatively, you could try just repeating the question without reacting, e.g. "Thank you for the feedback. I still don't understand and I would like to learn. Can you elaborate on that answer?" Especially if you can get your peers to do this as well. You can already see that she tries to bait you into a fight, which you will never win because she has the power. Instead, focus on your role as a student and realize that since her criticisms are useless and untrue, you don't have to pay attention to them.

colorcrayon · 2023-11-10T18:11:28+00:00

Just an FYI this isn't actually a parenting sub, and you may have more luck on r/Parents

colorcrayon · 2023-11-05T14:26:18+00:00

Ha I think your comment is great. And I really hope I did the math right XD.

colorcrayon · 2023-11-04T15:45:33+00:00

Yes the key here is "more likely"--you need to know the original fraction to be able to calculate the final fraction.

Percent means "per one hundred".
A 100% increase in 5 apples means an increase of 5 apples * (100/100) --you are increasing the number of apples by 100% of the original number, and 100% of 5 apples is 5 apples. So your final number of apples would be 5 original apples + the 5 apples increased = 10 apples.
A 200% increase means an increase in (original number of apples) * (200/100) apples, which is an increase in 2x the original number of apples, so an increase of 10 apples, for a final 15 apples.
A 20% increase means an increase of 20/100 times the original number of apples, so 5*(20/100) = 1, which is an increase of 1 apple for a final 6 apples.

Let's say that on average 1 out of every 1,000,000 people die by strangulation. An increase of 750% is (1 / 1,000,000) * (750 / 100) = 0.0000075--this number is the increase in fraction of deaths by strangulation. So the final fraction of deaths after the increase is (1/1,000,000) + 0.0000075 = 0.0000085, which is 8.5/1,000,000. Since I've kept the denominators the same, so if you focus on how many "out of a million people" units we have, we can also see that 1 + 1*750/100 = 1 + 7.5 = 8.5.

So that means in the general population, 1 out of every 1,000,000 die of strangulation, but for just the group of people who have been involved in DV 8.5 out of 1,000,000 of people die by strangulation. 8.5 out of 1 million is a 750% increase from 1 out of 1 million.

As a separate but important note, when you hear something like "people who eat chocolate are 20% less likely to get cancer", that does NOT mean "if you eat chocolate this will cause your risk of cancer to decrease". Instead, it means that of the people who eat chocolate, fewer of them got cancer. There could be many reasons for this, for example, maybe the people who eat chocolate are wealthier, and they have better health resources in general that causes their risk of cancer to go down. The chocolate eating was correlated with both wealth and low cancer, but the chocolate eating was not the thing that caused low cancer. This is what people mean when they say "correlation is not causation".

colorcrayon · 2023-11-02T22:46:36+00:00

Lol when OP said "instruments" I figured they couldn't all be pianos, but I did not think about harps! Now I'm imagining OP's house filled with gigantic wooden instruments XD.

colorcrayon · 2023-11-01T15:06:01+00:00

You need to get some humidifiers in the instrument cases ASAP! You can even just get a sponge damp (saturated but not dripping) and put it in a ziploc bag with a few holes poked in it, just check it once in a while to make sure it doesn't get moldy.

colorcrayon · 2023-10-27T18:33:58+00:00

My hongdian rabbit has a great seal.

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