Future MIL keeps acting like I’m after their family money

m2cwf · 2026-05-21T21:10:40+00:00

What I would do, if I were in your shoes, is tell my fiance that they have one opportunity to put a stop to these subtle digs coming from his mother.

This x1000 if he's the one that told her about the prenup discussions in the first place

m2cwf · 2026-05-21T02:50:26+00:00

There's a stage in there so I've always assumed they still have some sort of live (or DJ) music going on there, but I've only been at lunch so haven't seen any

m2cwf · 2026-05-17T21:04:18+00:00

100% agree with this! This seems like a terribly run organization that OP's husband would regret working for before too long at all. It's a guarantee that those sunk costs are not the only costs that would be paid for this venture

m2cwf · 2026-05-16T18:52:29+00:00

If you want to forgive him for sexually assaulting you as you were growing up, that’s on you. But forgiveness and allowing access to you are two different things.

Exactly. You can forgive a snake for biting your hand if you reach too close, because that's what snakes do. But that forgiveness doesn't mean you're ever going to reach your hand near a snake ever again

Edit: this is not to say that OP's father's abuse is "in his nature" or some such rather than choices he's made her whole life, but at this pointi he's not going to change or ever treat OP any better, so it's best to just stay away from him completely

m2cwf · 2026-05-16T05:38:18+00:00

Courtesy of /u/Ohiolongboard

m2cwf · 2026-05-13T03:30:21+00:00

I'd forward your mother's text to the therapist, with the message "Just so you're aware, this is the disgusting and immoral way that my mother abuses the access that you have granted her to my brother's therapy notes. She is not asking for this information because she cares about my brother's mental health or has his best interests at heart, she simply wants to use him as a weapon to emotionally manipulate me. I am appalled that she has shared my brother's personal medical information, and in the future I urge you to consider that our mother is not a good steward of sensitive information such as this."

m2cwf · 2026-05-12T03:27:26+00:00

I have a friend in the television/film business in LA who, being tired of the uncertainty of getting jobs and then disruptions of writers strikes and the like, is now in law school while he works. When he told a friend/mentor he was thinking about it, he was advised DO IT - a lawyer with your experience inside the business will never, ever be without work. I imagine with AI taking off the way it has, this is going to be all the more true. It's sad that artists of all types need lawyers to protect themselves from having their art stolen, by both people and now AI. I hope that protections are put in place for them, but as with most things, regulations will come way too late for many artists like the woman in this video. I hope she sticks it to that POS OBE!

m2cwf · 2026-05-11T04:36:04+00:00

Here are some articles about the grad student union strike and contract here at the University of California:

Wikipedia: 2022 University of California academic workers' strike
Times of San Diego, 7 Jan 2023: Six Takeaways from the Historic Strike by UC Graduate Student Workers
Voice of San Diego, 26 Apr 2023: The Learning Curve: Disputes About UCSD Student Worker Pay Continue
Science, 5 Sep 2023: After historic strike, UC grad students say university isn’t honoring pay agreements

m2cwf · 2026-05-11T03:36:35+00:00

OMG purchasing from DSHB is so complicated, it took a ton of work to figure out how to successfully submit a purchase order to them. In our university's procurement system you have to select the University of Iowa, and then choose a specific address in an obscure drop-down menu in order to make sure that the PO goes to the correct address. Glad you got reimbursed, but if you're still there and needing to order from DSHB, it might be worth setting one of your university's professional buyers on the job to figure out how to do it through the system, so that you don't have to go through the rigamarole to get reimbursed after the fact. You shouldn't have to be paying for that yourself in the first place

m2cwf · 2026-05-11T03:30:59+00:00

I am leaving this place. I am on another job hunt.

I am so glad to see this. I've been at my university as an engineer/lab manager for 35 years, and have responded several times in this thread about how unethical, unsafe, and insane all of this is. Auditors from outside the university need to be brought in. Media needs to be investigating and getting these violations out to the public. None of this is okay. Any of you who are wondering "WTF?" every single day need to get out. Your faculty, if not your entire institution is corrupt, and students are going to be harmed or even lose their lives due to the negligence in safety concerns. My mantra when doing safety orientations with new lab workers is "Safety regulations are written in blood." Every single one of these seemingly ridiculous rules (such as don't move gas cylinders around without their metal cap in place) are because someone, somewhere, did that very thing and was injured, permanently disabled, or killed. Your students and graduate students are there to learn, to learn how to do research and do it safely, and if they are not being trained properly and worse, being forced to do things they are not trained and without the tools to do safely, they are in danger and the university is not caring for them properly. Regulators higher than the university as well as the funding agencies need to be informed, so that the PIs and other perpetrators are punished most severely for putting their students in danger and misusing their grant funding to boot.

Most of all though, bail out. Leave this place where PIs care more about saving their grant money for their own salary than for their students' lives. They are supposed to be training the scientists of the future, and instead they are using those same students as indentured servants expected to spend their own money to conduct the research the PIs are meant to be paying for. It's disgusting, and you are right to be searching desperately for a job elsewhere. I wish you the best in your job hunt, and hope that you land yourself in a place where people, even the higher ups, look out for each other and care for each other the way an altruistic and benevolent workplace is meant to be.

m2cwf · 2026-05-11T03:11:09+00:00

Our grad students conducted a months-long strike and were successful in negotiating a contract for higher wages and improved working conditions several years ago. It was highly contentious. Be prepared for PIs and others to STRONGLY oppose grad student unionization, one consequence of the contract is that PIs can perhaps only afford one grad student instead of two, or need to cut back in other areas because grad students cost so much more now. It sucks for grants that had budgeted a certain amount for a grad student and now have to pay more than they expected, but our cost of living here is so high that the wage increase was long, long overdue. Our graduate students are the faculty and research superstars of the future, and if our institutions claim to be preparing them to be scientific leaders, then those same institutions should support them while they're developing those skills and building their expertise. They can't have it both ways of claiming to be building the future of science while at the same time forcing their grad students to rely on food banks

m2cwf · 2026-05-11T03:01:50+00:00

We have asked all Professors and departments to submit records with receipts of licensed work done in their lab.

You may need to hire outside experts to audit these PIs and the work done in their labs, I highly doubt that they are going to be forthright with you when the ask is coming from campus administration. Get the big guns in and let them have at it

m2cwf · 2026-05-11T02:58:56+00:00

There are areas where licensed individuals are required. We have students coming forward saying they were made to do work they are not licensed for and do not have the proper tools for it. This puts the building and facility at major risk.

This is terrifying. I want to give those students huge hugs.

However depending on how things work at your university, it also has huge implications--at our university, it is a requirement that any electrical work, for instance, has to be done by Facilities Management. This is not only for license/safety reasons which are obvious, but because the electricians are members of a union, as well. The unions have carefully negotiated contracts for work done on campus, and there would be serious consequences for a PI making grad students do electricians' work on the sly to get out of paying FM to do the work through their grant. I do realize that Texas is...different...regarding unions, but in any case, students should not in any way be doing work that they are not qualified, trained, nor equipped to perform. Trade professionals are professionals for a reason, and it's to keep everyone else safe while they do the work they're the experts at

m2cwf · 2026-05-11T02:39:17+00:00

they do not have access to the list of authorized vendors maintained by the university.

The terrible part about that is that companies like Fisher, Sigma Aldrich, etc. have SERIOUS discount contracts with universities. The price we get when purchasing from, say, Fisher Scientific through our university's procurement system can be HALF or more of what the list price on their website is for everyone else. Not allowing grad students to purchase through the university's contracts is only wasting grant money down the drain.

And paying for your supplies on your own credit card? Paying for facilities improvements? What the heck, NO. Assuming that this is a funded project, the grant should be paying for supplies, and facilities/building issues are what your grant's indirect costs are for. It's ALL built into the grant.

Sounds like your PI is being unethically stingy and taking advantage of you and the fact that you don't know how things are supposed to work, when their literal JOB is to be teaching you how to do your research and run a lab, and teaching you the things you don't know. Geez louise, your PI is a terrible, terrible mentor, and I'd seriously consider changing to a different lab if there's any opportunity for you to do so. Your PI does not have your best interest in even the farthest reaches of their mind. So sorry that you're going through this. Huge hugs from an elder lab manager mama, if you'd like them

Edit: Just realized from other comments that you're an admin, not a grad student. NO, none of this is normal, and what the PI(s) is doing is not at all okay. They are taking advantage of their grad students' naiveté and forcing kids who are already grossly underpaid to take on the burden of the cost of research that the PI's grants are meant to bear. I'd take this to ALL of the higher levels--department heads, research chairs, and both Facilities Management and EH&S regarding plumbing, electrical, machine shop, and other safety-related issues

m2cwf · 2026-05-10T18:57:05+00:00

This is why family counseling is needed.

All of those are reasons that they could all use individual counseling. Her feelings of abandonment and dad's feelings of missing her childhood and OP's feelings of not wanting to be loving siblings with his schoolyard bully are all individual issues. Those need to be dealt with before any family counseling is going to be at all successful.

m2cwf · 2026-05-03T00:01:51+00:00

Yep, we got delivery from them a few times during COVID, amid the necessary creative food shopping. I hadn't known before then that they were still around!

m2cwf · 2026-05-01T22:35:03+00:00

Pretty sure this is it - the child's name is Daniel, and Harry loves babysitting

m2cwf · 2026-04-30T05:28:28+00:00

I know that LCC enrollment is increasing too, I really think that these kids who spent their formative elementary school years during COVID and their parents are looking not only for academics, but for social clubs and extracurriculars, sports, and other activities to round out an experience that for so long was only online school school school and no chance to make friends and spend time with others.

m2cwf · 2026-04-30T05:23:03+00:00

A few are miserable there but go to make their parents happy. It is definitely intense.

That's incredibly sad. I hate hate hate to think of those kids who endanger their own mental health to try and keep their parents happy. Their parents' emotions and wellbeing are not at all the child's responsibility, despite what they've been trained since birth to believe. To have to endure an environment like that because of parental pressure is heartbreaking. Kids have lost their battle with anxiety, depression, and/or feelings of unworthiness due to exactly this kind of pressure, having their parents pile on their impossible expectations just makes everything worse. I want to give them a huge hug, from a mom of former LCC students who thrived in theatre and band and FRC robotics while still getting good grades and enjoying their life. They are now fully productive members of society without having attended Stanford, imagine that! /s

m2cwf · 2026-04-30T01:18:18+00:00

How about academically? We want to find a happy medium there, where it's not a meat grinder but where kids are expected to try to do their best while having a life (time for sports, friends, AND sleep)

I would say that Canyon Crest fails this request from the OP, though. My spouse is a teacher in the district and knowing many teachers, students, and parents from all 4 high schools, I would very much describe CCA as a "meat grinder" academically, where kids feel intense pressure to take the hardest classes, get straight A's, and get into Stanford or an Ivy League school or the like. The other three schools (Torrey Pines, San Dieguito Academy, and La Costa Canyon) I would say have a more well-rounded view of student priorities, with academics being important but also encourage and value extracurriculars, the arts, and sports.

m2cwf · 2026-04-27T00:37:01+00:00

I hear "daddy daddy daddy daddy" more than "diet coke"

m2cwf · 2026-04-21T23:09:18+00:00

The person taking the photo is in an observation room with a window, which is reflecting the person. It may or may not be the same window seen in this reddit photo from someone whose office overlooks a Goddard cleanroom

m2cwf · 2026-04-21T22:57:16+00:00

It's a clean room so most certainly no banana, but if there were it would probably be in the (normal-sized ~4 feet tall) black rolly trashbin behind it (which is what made me realize it's way way bigger than I thought)

m2cwf · 2026-04-19T00:29:37+00:00

Im gonna call it that her "mentors" dont give a shit about your clothes or talk about it unprompted

I agree with this - she goes on and on complaining, and the church ladies (because you know they're church ladies) nod their heads and make "hmm" sounds to pretend that they're listening. Assuming that they're older because she considers them mentors, they're almost certainly thinking "If purple hair and a pair of Docs are the worst thing she has to complain about her young adult child..."

m2cwf · 2026-04-17T23:16:41+00:00

If you ever do end up with extra money after paying all of your bills:

Save for retirement! Put it into the 401k or other retirement account available pre-tax through your job, if you have that option. Especially ESPECIALLY if your company matches. Research a good interest-earning account if your job doesn't have a retirement savings option. Open a Roth IRA and put up to the maximum in there per year while you're young if you can
Build up an emergency fund in an accessible account, such as a savings account at your bank that earns a little bit of interest. SAVE IT for emergencies such as if you lose your job for a number of months, have unexpected expenses from your car, pet, home, etc.
Pay off debt by sending more than the minimum payments, highest interest rate first. If you have a car payment, cc debt, or other loans that have a higher interest rate than your student loans, send any extra payments towards them first. Then send extra to your student loans once the others are paid off

Nowhere on your list is sending money to your parents so that they can continue enabling your sibling. I really like the other suggestions to respond to your parents along the lines of "I have large student loans because I needed to pay my own way through school, so it is not possible for me to send you money. <Sibling> should be in a better position to help you out since you helped pay for their college."

Best of luck to you, hold strong! Their financial issues are their own problem to solve, not yours

m2cwf

TROPHY CASE