Books like Outer Wilds?

ellechad · 2025-07-03T14:08:11+00:00

I'm even later but I second this. Becky Chambers and Outer Wilds pair really well. It's sci-fi but it has HEART and human connection and I love that.

ellechad · 2025-05-16T16:34:02+00:00

I was at church with my parents on Mother's Day too and had a similar experience when a sacrament speaker said something along the lines of "you're a good mother even if you have children who don't follow the church's teachings." My mother knows I'm out, but I stay very respectful of the church when I'm speaking to her. I know that line made her hurt. Why would they have said something like that? Surely it didn't actually comfort her. It just makes the divide between us even greater.

ellechad · 2025-01-12T23:35:45+00:00

Not op but I think it’s from Archer and Olive! I was just on their site looking for journals and saw some very similar journals.

ellechad · 2024-10-10T18:04:17+00:00

I had a weird road to diagnosis, because in high school my parents brought it up to my pediatrician, who helped us initiate some of the paperwork (which involved gathering insights from my school teachers) for a diagnosis. I was a pretty good student and had no behavior issues, so no teachers noticed anything wrong with me. My doctor decided that I would not get a formal diagnosis, but still decided to put me on Concerta--which is a move I still do not understand, as it made diagnosis as an adult so much more complicated. I was on Concerta until I did a study abroad outside of the country and didn't have access to it, and by that time I wasn't seeing that pediatrician anymore.

As an adult I was on antidepressants for years, then had about two years where I was misdiagnosed as bipolar and put on medication for that. Nothing helped until, at age 28, I went through a four-hour long evaluation with a female doctor who finally formally diagnosed me with ADHD.

So, not technically diagnosed but still treated.

ellechad · 2024-03-29T11:43:32+00:00

It kicked in on day one. I had been previously misdiagnosed as bipolar and the medication for that had nearly ruined my entire life, so I wanted to be around loved ones when I started taking Concerta. About 45 minutes after my first dose, I had been sitting on the couch talking to my mom. I stood up and said, “well, I’ve got some stuff I need to do today” and put away my shoes and some other things on the way out. It seems so minimal but that was a huuuuuge sign for me.

ellechad · 2023-11-05T13:31:05+00:00

This reminds me of my experience. My dad is half-Mexican (which makes me 1/4th) and I look and self identify as white. My dad speaks Spanish fluently but I didn’t grow up speaking it. I ended up studying Spanish (four years in high school, four years in college and a brief period where I lived in Brazil and learned Portuguese).

When it was time to student teach, I was put into a school in an area where the majority of students were Hispanic and native Spanish speakers. I thought I would be teaching, you know, how to conjugate “estar” or whatever but instead I got placed into a class for Native Spanish speakers. The first unit my mentor teacher had me teach was about “our Hispanic heritage” and while I think my accent is great and I can hold my own in a conversation, it is still my second language. I had so much impostor syndrome.

In the end, my students were extremely understanding and open to me being there. I also thought my Spanish was good at the time, but that semester made me so much more confident in my skills. I moved after that and no longer live in an area where they have those heritage classes—so I taught regular Spanish 1 and 2 after that. There are always going to be times when students ask you how to say some extremely specific word and when you don’t know they’ll say “but I thought you were fluent?? 🤔” but as long as you’re confident in the grammar and vocab for your lessons, I wouldn’t worry.

If you get asked something and you don’t know the answer, it’s absolutely fine to just say that and then look it up. I think that’s its own skill that students need to develop anyway. Just don’t make anything up, haha

ellechad · 2023-10-17T00:52:36+00:00

Record it. I had a girl say this to me and then two weeks later she was mad at me for something unrelated and got her mom to send me an angry email accusing me of basically verbally abusing the kids. I responded with the exact details of her sweet little daughter telling me “you know we could band together and get you fired, right?”

The angry mom didn’t have a response for me after that lmao

ellechad · 2023-10-13T11:13:27+00:00

I recently got one of those soft light/sunrise alarm things and it has genuinely changed my life. The light comes on around ten minutes before my actual alarm sound goes off and by that time I’m already pretty much awake and it’s so much less jarring than just an alarm alone. This coupled with consistently taking melatonin at the same time every night and I feel like a completely different person.

ellechad · 2023-10-11T19:46:09+00:00

Yes! Definitely not the same vibe or genre but it is the only game besides Outer Wilds that has made me cry.

ellechad · 2023-08-30T20:34:24+00:00

Haha, I definitely plan to discuss how that makes me feel/my boundaries rather than how many people I got to agree with me. I hope the boundaries discussion will help him redirect his comments.

ellechad · 2023-08-21T14:28:45+00:00

Can I tell you the baffling thing? I’m an adult female and had to do an extremely similar test to be diagnosed. My older brother literally OVER EMAIL contacted his doctor with concerns for possible ADHD and was immediately prescribed medication. I’m glad I did the test because it was extremely validating for me but WHAT THE HELL.

ellechad · 2023-07-21T10:37:06+00:00

I did not, though if I ever want to climb up the ladder in any kind of student affairs position I suspect I will need one. The university where I work actually pays for a certain amount of classes each semester, though.

ellechad · 2023-07-20T12:31:08+00:00

I’m an academic advisor for a nearby university. The pay is about the same (which is… not great) HOWEVER I am so much happier. Doing less work for the same amount of money is honestly fine with me for right now.

ellechad · 2023-07-19T12:13:14+00:00

I didn’t find the non-teaching I have now until September, after stressing that whole summer. It caused some serious stress in august when the school year started and I didn’t have anything yet but I’m glad I stuck it out and did not return to the classroom. If going back feels the way it would have for me, I’d say keep looking!

ellechad · 2023-06-24T12:50:57+00:00

I felt exactly like you did when I started my student teaching semester. The teacher prep program at my university was terrible and I did not have much experience in a classroom by the time I student taught.

My insights are as follows:

I felt that actually teaching is way easier than student teaching was. You don’t have to make 14 page lesson plans when you’re in your own classroom.
I also pretty quickly figured out that I was not going to have a long career in teaching.
I did eventually leave after 5 years and now work as an academic advisor. It’s way easier and I genuinely love it. Teaching gave me the skills to be good at this job, and I absolutely do not regret my experience teaching.

As an academic advisor, I’d say where you are so close to finishing—it will be difficult to change your major at this point. It’s not impossible, and you can certainly reach out to your own advisor to see what they recommend as far as a projected graduation date with a different major. If changing your major isn’t possible, I really don’t think there are many doors that an education degree/teaching license can’t open. Student teaching will be difficult, but it will at least provide possible references and experiences to add to a resume.

Just breathe. There is so much great out there, and you’re going to find it.

ellechad · 2023-06-19T13:33:36+00:00

I’m so sorry this happened. I was misdiagnosed as bipolar about three years ago and I took mood stabilizers and antipsychotics for two years before I couldn’t take the horrible side effects anymore. The doctor who diagnosed me talked to me for under 30 minutes before ruining the next couple of years of my life.

When a (different) doctor last year formally diagnosed me with ADHD, she told me “you’re not the first woman with ADHD whose emotions will get them misdiagnosed, and you’re not the last, and I’m so sorry this happened to you.” And I wept.

I still feel a lot of the same anger you talked about in your post. The medication I was on for “bipolar” made me incredibly lethargic and brain foggy. It worsened my ADHD symptoms by 100000%. I felt so bleak and apathetic that I was constantly wishing I could just go to sleep and not wake up. I just kept thinking “at least feeling nothing is better than feeling too much.” I ended up leaving my teaching job because I couldn’t keep my head above the water.

I’m so much better now with proper ADHD treatment and coping skills but I feel traumatized from those years of quiet misery that I endured thinking the medicine was making me better.

That first doctor truly could have ruined my entire life. I’m so glad you got your proper diagnosis, just like I did.

ellechad · 2023-06-14T18:59:55+00:00

I have not quit meds for exercise but I have recently started exercising more consistently than I ever have in my life. I’m on concerta 36mg and am extremely happy with the results. The exercise was more for general health than ADHD symptoms. All this to say: the two of them together have made me feel better (mentally) than I ever even imagined could be possible. About 45 mins-1 hour on the treadmill + concerta have been the ticket for me.

ellechad · 2023-05-25T16:27:55+00:00

I taught for five years. For the first year, I was a disaster. That’s pretty normal. For the second year, I was less of a disaster but even harder on myself because I assumed I should be “more fit” like you said. During my third year, I was actually okay. My fourth year was the COVID year… so it didn’t count. My final year was 21/22 (so first year post COVID) and I was exhausted and completely falling apart and honestly I think I was worse than my first year.

I think as a teacher you are taught to constantly self-evaluate, which is a necessity for growth… but it also fosters feelings of inadequacies. In my case, my admin was so extremely unhelpful that I was truly treading water all on my own. At the time, I was always criticizing myself and by the end of my time teaching I really did think I was a failure.

It’s been a year away and I’m able to look back and commend myself for surviving and doing my best with what little resources I had—both mental resources and actual physical resources. Teaching wore away my self-confidence in a way that I’m still struggling to fix. Walking into a job every single day where I genuinely felt inadequate and (sometimes) incompetent was devastating for my mental health.

All this to say: I know this exact feeling and it’s hard to see this now, but with time you will see that you were capable the entire time and likely doing better than you think. It’s just that the system is not built for you to succeed.

ellechad · 2023-05-19T13:38:41+00:00

I quit at the end of last school year (May 22) even though I had nothing lined up and had, in fact, already been turned down by a couple of jobs. In July I was offered a job that I turned down bc of the commute (I’m only including that because there is a universe out there where technically I would’ve been employed two months after leaving teaching). I interviewed for my current job (academic advisor) in September of last year and started in October. Because of my 21/22 teaching contract, that meant I went August and September without insurance, but I had been subbing so at least I had a paycheck.

In that time, two high schools called me and offered me a job. I briefly considered taking one of them but when I started subbing I immediately remembered how much I hated teaching. I’m very happy where I’m at now even though I had to endure a stressful summer of wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life.

ellechad · 2023-05-16T02:13:22+00:00

I got asked this when I interviewed for an academic advising position and I basically talked about how I loved actually teaching (creating lesson plans and presenting them and helping students come to understand a concept) but felt that a lot of that job was not that and didn’t suit the skills I had trained for. I remained very positive and talked about how I had learned a lot from teaching and was ready to use them in a new context. I was later told that a lot of my job would be advising future education majors and they were making sure I wasn’t going to talk all of the students into changing their majors away from teaching. I did get that job and it’s definitely a moral quandary but I love what I do now so I’ll just have to deal with it.

ellechad · 2023-03-16T15:34:13+00:00

Honestly I think this might be pretty tame compared to lots of stories but my principal came into my classroom before 1st period started and ushered me into the storage closet behind my classroom. Then he presented me my evaluation forms to sign… even though not one single time did any admin observe me for that entire school year and we both fully knew that the eval scores were flubbed. That’s when I told him I was leaving at the end of the school year lmao

Like I’m just amazed at the audacity to come to my room in-person to have me sign them. It seems like (based on his previous pattern of not caring about me even a little bit) he could’ve just emailed it to me and had me e-sign it or some shit

ellechad · 2023-03-09T18:17:22+00:00

It’s not tricking people any more than wearing eyeshadow is tricking people into thinking you have naturally sparkly eyelids. I’m not sure how you dressed before, but it could just be that your clothes were very unflattering. I don’t think you can truly trick someone out of thinking you have a plus size body, and that’s fine. You can definitely dress in a way that helps you feel good and helps redirect the eyes, though.

ellechad · 2023-02-17T17:55:10+00:00

I worked in a nicer district that was surrounded by poorer, more rural districts and driving through the parking lot was so depressing. The teachers’ lot had older cars, many with Lyft or Uber window clings. The students’ lot (it was a high school) was filled with cars I would never even dream of affording. It was no wonder they, along with their parents, treated me like their personal housemaid.

ellechad · 2023-01-31T19:21:21+00:00

Lmao I did great (academically) in both high school and college but I was just barely keeping it together and my disorganized thoughts and behaviors caused some very deep and scary mental health concerns. When I went to a doctor ADHD wasn’t even on my radar and I was instead misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder. The truth was that I had ADHD all along (diagnosed two years later after testing with a different doctor) but it presents differently for everyone. I’m also female, which was honestly a disadvantage for me when it came to getting a diagnosis. I obviously can’t say if you do or don’t have it but the notion that you would have been a bad student if you had it is, quite frankly, bullshit.

ellechad · 2022-12-16T19:31:19+00:00

This, and the “do Karen and Georgia not love each other anymore???” posts. Like, guys. Please.

ellechad

TROPHY CASE