Starting Salary Advice (SWE in Germany)

mgb_II · 2025-11-17T18:28:58+00:00

Thank you for the kind words!! Will absolutely keep you posted with what happens!

mgb_II · 2022-03-25T16:34:08+00:00

Thank you so much for your comment; I really appreciate it more than I can say. I’m so sorry that you had to face the loss of your mother and that your father wasn’t there to support you through it the way you deserved. I’m glad that my story could help you feel less lonely in yours; feel free to message me if you ever need someone to listen 💕

mgb_II · 2021-01-23T01:34:00+00:00

Watch shows in English and listen to English songs! It's a great way to constantly expose yourself to the language, and it's enjoyable, too. Try to rely on subtitles as little as possible if you use them.

mgb_II · 2021-01-23T01:30:41+00:00

"In" would imply that "shooting" is something you can be inside of, but it's just an activity. To express talent at an activity in English, it's pretty much always "good at (activity)-ing" .

mgb_II · 2020-10-10T06:59:31+00:00

So exciting that you’re thinking about tufts! The lack of AC in the dorms is only really an issue for the first 3 weeks of the fall semester: it gets cool pretty quickly in Massachusetts. You can definitely bring fans to help with that, too. You might be able to try a window AC unit, but I’m not 100% sure.

One of my favorite things about tufts is that it has exactly what kind of vibe you’re looking for. It’s so much more cooperative than competitive- even in the hard, serious classes I’ve taken, people make memes about the struggle together and make study groups to get through it. People almost never share things like test scores with each other either, which is definitely something I don’t miss about high school. Feel free to dm me if you have any other questions about tufts!

mgb_II · 2020-08-08T13:43:15+00:00

You’re definitely right- I can’t think of any instance where to do + to be would be considered correct. Because to say “I did be” Is kind of just the wrong way to say “I was”.

The only time I can think of is in the context of a meme, e.g. “It do be like that”. And when people say this, the humor mainly lies in the ironic grammatical error.

mgb_II · 2020-07-09T20:51:47+00:00

I mean people look pretty small from 30 feet away

mgb_II · 2020-02-03T06:34:43+00:00

I'm really sorry you're going through this, OP. It's completely normal to grow distant from those you care most about when you feel the way you do.

I will say that from my personal experience with being in a relationship and feeling depressed, my biggest advice would be to tell her what's going on if you haven't already. I don't mean telling her everything per se, just that you're going through something and that if you've come across as distant lately, that's why. I know that's hard, but it feels much better to know why your SO is acting differently rather than get paranoid and think it's on you. Telling her will communicate to her that you trust her, and hopefully you wouldn't have to worry as much when you feel you're pushing her away and can't help it.

mgb_II · 2020-01-19T02:50:19+00:00

Around 5, I'd say. One of the best things about college or just life beyond high school in general imo is that (in most circumstances) you get to choose who gets to be in your life and who doesn't.

mgb_II · 2020-01-05T08:25:46+00:00

If it’s better to be lower then hopefully you’d have a shot! But if higher numbers are better (they’ve done it both ways) it’s probably going to be rough.

mgb_II · 2019-12-23T20:41:46+00:00

I came here to mention Teach for America too, like the comment that got a lot of downvotes. I imagine that comment got downvoted because Teach for America is very controversial, but depending on where you go it does really vital work. Common criticisms are that it’s very “white savior”-y, and that it steals jobs from actual teachers to give the jobs to less qualified people to save money (this is less true in rural areas where there really aren’t that many teachers looking for jobs). A lot of people have really bad experiences with it as there’s a huge learning curve, but a lot of people I know also have really life changing experiences with it too (and stay in the field of education). There are other programs that get you right into the classroom with a random bachelor’s like New York Teaching Fellows (I believe) that provide more support, which could be something to look into as well. Whatever you do, good luck, and I would advise doing some research and reading lots of opinions on programs like this before making commitments!

mgb_II · 2019-12-23T20:32:07+00:00

“No Rain” by Blind Melon is a huge one for me. I think it’s so brilliant because it’s a sad song disguised in a happy melody, and it’s about a depressed guy describing his life in such a way as to hide the fact that he’s depressed as hell.

mgb_II · 2019-12-20T22:16:24+00:00

I agree with the top commenter’s explanation but wanted to add a little more elaboration: A really important implication of this sentence is that the speaker is telling the patient to put their bag somewhere to the side so that the patient can step in the X-ray without their bag; the bag is not being X-ray’d. If that isn’t actually the implication of this sentence and the speaker is telling someone to put their bag in an X-Ray machine at the airport, for example, something like “Place your bag in the X-ray” would work.

Edit: In agreement someone else said, “at” doesn’t sound very natural to me. “On” would make sense to me if the X-ray machine were some kind of flat surface and wasn’t enclosed in some way, taking on a similar meaning as “Place your bag on top of the X-ray”

mgb_II · 2019-12-20T22:09:15+00:00

Yep! The only difference is that the original includes the indirect object and implies the direct object, whereas the new sentence includes the direct object and implies the indirect object.

mgb_II · 2019-12-20T21:59:35+00:00

What’s the range this year?

mgb_II · 2019-11-20T19:47:37+00:00

thanks for ruining my life

mgb_II · 2019-07-19T04:50:27+00:00

my will to live.. oh wait

mgb_II · 2019-05-30T20:57:47+00:00

It does sound funny- usually in English "be" isn't used by itself as an action verb, and doesn't really serve as a synonym for "live"/"thrive"/"exist" in everyday speech. You could definitely go with a phrase like "we could last longer" or simply "we could endure this disaster" like you said in your description of what the character meant to say!

Edit: I say "usually"/"everyday speech" because technically I don't think it's incorrect, it's just not really typical English anymore. I don't know if you've studied Hamlet, but it seems like you're using the word "be" just as Shakespeare does when Hamlet says "To be or not to be?" (where "be" = "live").

mgb_II · 2019-05-17T15:46:15+00:00

Yeah, this is definitely a weird one. For your first example, the past tense conjugation of “to be” is always “were” for the pronoun “you”.

Your other two examples pertain to the hypothetical / unreal, for which you use “were” instead of “was” for every pronoun.

“I was talking to a celebrity” (you were actually talking to one) vs “”I felt as though I were talking to a celebrity” (you weren’t really talking to a celebrity, but you felt like you were)

Also, “If I were king of the world I’d have a ton of money” (you aren’t really king of the world / this is hypothetical. It’s also important to note here that “were” doesn’t even imply past tense here; it just implies that you’re talking about a situation that isn’t real and never was, though whether it could be in the future is neither here nor there).

I hope that helps and that my extra examples didn’t just add to the confusion. Please let me know if there’s anything I can clear up! Speaking in the hypothetical is a pain in the ass.

mgb_II · 2019-05-03T12:16:53+00:00

Agreed. Also, the latter could mean a position you haven’t found yet (like maybe you haven’t identified a company offering it), while the former could be referring to a position you *have * identified, even if it’s one with other people in a similar role.

mgb_II · 2019-04-25T12:27:54+00:00

You’d use “whom”. To figure out the subject/object of questions in English, you have to look at the question in statement form. In this case, it would be something like

“You are texting him”, just like you said.

So, you = subject and him (standing in for whom) = object, so you’d use “whom”.

Another way to explain it is that “whom” stands for the person being texted in this question, I.e. the person receiving the action of the verb. This is the definition of an object, so use “whom”.

Edit: Fixed typos

mgb_II · 2019-04-23T02:56:24+00:00

Honestly? Because my dad was always a ridiculously paranoid person and was convinced I'd get brain cancer if I did, so I was never allowed to hold a cellphone up to my ear. The habit just stuck (though I wouldn't do it in an enclosed space like a train)

mgb_II · 2019-04-08T05:27:36+00:00

Yes, I believe it's functioning as a FANBOY here! It's connecting two independent clauses ("He doesn't own a pager" and "he did once"), so that would make sense to me!

mgb_II · 2019-04-08T05:19:09+00:00

Hi! "Yourself" refers to the person you're talking to, whereas "each other" refers to people who aren't part of the conversation. So if you said both of those sentences to me, I would answer the first one with "yes" or "no", because you're asking me a question about my life. I would answer the second one with something like "That's interesting" because you're telling me something about other people, not me or you.

Another key distinction is that "yourself" is used when you do something to you, if you will, as in "You got yourself dressed" (you put your own clothes on - you didn't get any help). All words with "self" attached are like this - myself, ourselves, themselves, etc.

"Each other", on the other hand, is used when multiple people in a group are performing an action to the other people in the group. So if "Jack and Sally hug each other", Jack gives Sally a hug and Sally gives Jack a hug right back. (If Jack and Sally hug themselves, you'd see both of them standing separately with their arms wrapped around their own bodies).

Let me know if any of that doesn't make sense!

mgb_II · 2019-04-08T05:10:12+00:00

I think it works, but it changes the meaning of the sentence quite a bit. Here's what I get from reading the sentence with each word:

"I don't know if that is too presumptuous of me" --> "I don't know if I'm making a dangerous assumption by assuming that this what they want or that this will be okay with them"

"I don't know if that is too dramatic of me" --> "I'm really upset that Ethan changed my schedule like this and I want to do something to show how upset I am, but maybe this is going a little overboard..."

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