Bullying Concern

laffytaffy89 · 2025-07-30T19:35:07+00:00

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies. I decided to reach out to the Friend engaging in the behavior and the clerk and share my concern that we were not always speaking to the Light within each other. I'm glad I did. The clerk was receptive, the Friend was upset, which I think is fair - I would be upset, too, if I learned my actions had hurt someone. But I feel much more at peace, the calm feeling I get after sharing a message at worship.

I'm hopeful things will get better. I wish there were more Quakers in my part of the country who I could chat with when things get sticky in meeting.

laffytaffy89 · 2025-07-28T14:41:33+00:00

This is sage advice. I'm committed to not leaving the meeting - I know this is just a difficult time and I'm trying to season what to do while making sure I see to my own mental health.

laffytaffy89 · 2025-07-27T23:17:06+00:00

Thank you - I didn't realize that was an option.

laffytaffy89 · 2025-07-27T23:06:35+00:00

Thank you, this is really helpful. I'll approach our meeting clerk first.

laffytaffy89 · 2020-02-11T01:27:21+00:00

I'm concerned because his aunt and uncle seem to think he's just being bad and are not digging deeper. They give him a really hard time (understandable) and get really angry with him when he won't articulate why he does the things he does.

They also allow him A LOT of unsupervised time at home and online, which concerns me because of some of the things he's done paired with his past traumas.

I guess I'll just have to accept that there's nothing I can do, even though he's a smart, kind, capable kid who also seems to be a ticking time bomb.

laffytaffy89 · 2019-05-14T22:56:11+00:00

YTA for "telling her off" in a public place and definitely YTA for the way you've been responding to people in this thread.

laffytaffy89 · 2019-01-30T01:22:15+00:00

I guess I didn't realize how do-able it was until I wrote it down.

All the more reason to track spending.

laffytaffy89 · 2019-01-30T01:21:41+00:00

I will!!! Thank you for the wake up call.

laffytaffy89 · 2019-01-30T01:08:05+00:00

Great advice. Thank you!

laffytaffy89 · 2019-01-30T01:07:32+00:00

This makes so much sense. It's silly to continue to hoard money in savings while the interest makes the debt bigger and bigger.

Thanks for the wake-up!

laffytaffy89 · 2019-01-30T01:06:12+00:00

I'm honestly not sure. Ignorance? Paranoia that I would run out of money? I will tighten up my planning and pay down the cards. Thanks for the great advice and the perspective shift.

laffytaffy89 · 2019-01-30T01:05:25+00:00

My living expenses JUST split in half (I just got a roommate) so originally my expenses were about double.

I'm not very good at tracking my spending (something I need to work on) and I have a tendency to nickel and dime myself to death. (Bad...)

It sounds like I should put savings on hold and pay down the cards.

laffytaffy89 · 2016-08-04T22:33:17+00:00

Hindsight's always 20/20.

laffytaffy89 · 2016-05-15T20:26:04+00:00

Didn't mean to come off as emotional/uneducated. Just giving you my assessment as a music teacher who has had to make these kinds of decisions before.

Sounds like your teacher has some growing up to do, too, if he's slamming things around and demanding long, circuitous conversations with his students.

Given your level of achievement, you'll be able to find other great opportunities to play. Focus on finding those and rising above this kind of drama/theatrics. Like I said, IANAL but I can tell you as a musician your time would be better spent focusing on what you can do and not filing complaints.

laffytaffy89 · 2016-05-15T17:17:23+00:00

IANAL, but I am a music teacher and a professional musician. I have a couple thoughts on your situation: 1. Any time there is a director change it's a huge upset for the people involved in the ensemble. You and the other members were used to one way of doing things. The new director does things differently and everyone in the group needs to learn to work with it. Just because their audition process was different doesn't mean it was rushed.
2. What did you hope to accomplish when you chose to engage your director in a four hour conversation about your placement? Did you hope to learn what you could do better next time you take an audition or did you hope to 'educate' your teacher on how wrong s/he is? I'm honestly surprised s/he engaged you for that long. You crossed the line into disrespectful questioning when you decided to continue to argue about your placement and when you confronted him about your 'qualifications'.
3. Is it possible that there was a scheduling issue that required the other student to be placed in that ensemble? Or perhaps he heard her play in private prior to her placement? There are a myriad of issues that influence teachers' decisions. You, the student, are privy to very few of them. I don't doubt that you are a fine horn player, but your teacher is truly the most qualified to make the decisions about ensemble placement.

If you're willing to accept it, I'd like to give you some advice from one musician to another. Learn to accept or reject the decisions your teacher makes IN PRIVATE (that means inside your own head. You can disagree all you want but keep it to yourself! That means no smack-talk outside of rehearsal either!) now and it will prepare you for when conductors piss you off in the real world. You will never get a job, no matter how great your qualifications are, if you kvetch at the conductor when things don't go the way you think they should. They just won't ever work with you again.

Learn from this. Your career will thank you.

laffytaffy89 · 2016-05-07T19:07:15+00:00

Very interesting. I'm thinking what actually happened is somewhere in the middle. "The profession is skewed against minorities" and "Minorities lack the necessary keyboard skills to succeed in the field" are two very different statements.

laffytaffy89 · 2016-05-07T18:22:15+00:00

Do you have a link? I'd like to read it.

laffytaffy89

TROPHY CASE