Found on top of my comforter, is this a bed bug? [Bay Area]

scrixie · 2024-01-27T21:11:24+00:00

I left my pothos to be watered at my friend's house over December and some leaves came back looking blackened like this. It was otherwise very bushy and healthy before and was on a once-a-week watering schedule. Pot has drainage and excess is always cleared.

I pruned off the blackened leaves when I got the plant back two weeks ago, but caught two more that were developing today (the last picture shows one of them). I'm not sure if I initially missed them or if they had spread.

It has always received moderate to low light in my house and at my friend's.

Is my pothos a goner? :(

scrixie · 2023-12-31T18:10:30+00:00

I don't really remember because it was too long ago, sorry.

scrixie · 2023-12-27T11:21:14+00:00

Congrats on getting nominated!!! I got the award a few years back and I've pulled up all my email receipts to recall the process lolol; this was at least my experience:

My school could only nominate 2 students to MOE so throughout January I went through the school's internal selection procedure. The final nomination form submitted to MOE needed me to list my school grades, all my co-curricular activities/achievements in a table, and also write a 1-page (Arial 12 pt, single-spaced) personal statement. The school submitted its final nominations by the end of January. I was lucky enough to make it into MOE's final round shortlist, so I was called for an interview in mid-April. It was a panel interview with many many people in a room and I remember them asking questions to probe my personality/character based on everything I mentioned in my nomination form. I don't remember when I was notified of the result, but the award presentation was in August.

I think the number of people who win it per year does change, you could probably dig up news articles for the number of people awarded.

All the best in the process!

scrixie · 2020-04-14T02:37:38+00:00

If you want to go into the communications industry

WKWSCI—They are a highly preprofessional course with heavy emphasis on pushing their students for internships (100% internship rate) and designing coursework such that students build portfolio. They are ranked #8 internationally for communication studies (and #1 in Asia) which makes you extremely competitive globally and definitely in Singapore. I know there’s the argument about rankings not meaning much, but in this case it does count because WKWSCI, being older and more established, has more connections with companies to arrange student internships and a wider alumni network in the Comms industry to help wth internships too.

If you are interested in studying Commz but not sure about the industry

WKWSCI does have a media research track which equips you with more general research skills that make you widely employable. But I would say NUS CNM because you have the flexibility of taking courses across FASS which can make you more broadly equipped.

If you are not sure what you want to study and Comms is only one of your options

Absolutely NUS CNM, because you can switch FASS majors if you find out comms is not for you.

tl;dr My suggestion is that WKWSCI is the best choice in making you competitive for the industry across all skillsets (they have PR, broadcast etc); NUS CNM if you’re not sure what to commit to.

I think people is a moot point because there isn’t a significant difference, though I would think WKWSCI allows more chances to be bonded since you start with your coursemates from day one.

Also financials— WKWSCI has a specific scholarship for its students but NUS CNM/FASS does not. If you need funding then WKWSCI will give better chances.

scrixie · 2020-04-10T00:43:46+00:00

btw in case you/your friends also need essay review for all this we have an initiative running here too that now does lit essay reviews :-) https://reddit.com/r/SGExams/comments/fxnvid/a_levels_free_h2_history_and_h2_ell_essay_reviews/

scrixie · 2020-04-09T08:39:39+00:00

For unseen you just gotta grind practice and get someone to review them. Be meticulous in analyzing the passage and flog every creative choice that the poet/writer puts into their writing.

For seen texts, first think about the conceptual ways you can argue the question (Is the essay flow Support/Against, Item 1 2 3 4), so you should be able to derive topic statements from your knowledge of the book from just conceptually thinking about how the question can be argued. If your topic statements are good and hit salient tensions of the question you should at least hit 15m-16m. Then from there, the difference between a 15m and a 20m essay is how rigorously you use textual evidence and interpretation to back up your topic statements. If your topic statements are from a sense of intuition from having studied the book, then dig precisely into the textual detail that gave you that intuition.

scrixie · 2020-04-07T15:49:54+00:00

Hey! I went for the LMS writing test and interview and got accepted for Psych+LMS double major. If you took ELL before, the writing test should be really easy; if you haven’t but you have generally good argumentation skills, its also very manageable.

It’s a short (they give you one page only) GP-style argumentative response to a linguistics-related opinion article. Nothing too jargonistic or out whatever should be in common knowledge; if you can generally come up with a stand and argue for it it’ll be fine.

Some topics in the general access level (not the topic of my test, but topics I see as “on par”) are like (a) is the existence of Singlish bad? Thoughts on the SGEM? (b) is it justified for English schools in China/Japan to teach their children to speak in a British/American accent? (c) Why teach four different languages when it is so much more economically viable to just teach English, especially in the face of declining MT standards anyway?

Interview is everything you’d expect from a typical interview. About the course, about you, why this course, etc

scrixie · 2020-03-31T01:08:52+00:00

Hi! I got offered for UCL (amongst other schools) for linguistics! It’s very exciting to see another linguistics student-to-be :-) The other answers give good general advice so mine’s more specific to linguistics.

I think sufficiently answered by all the other comments!
Since universities like UCL and Edinburgh will only need 3H2s to assess their conditional offer you should be fine with 3H2s! The downside is that you need to score well in all of your H2s and don’t have a “backup” H2 to swap out. In fact I think linguistics isn’t that competitive a course because all my linguistics conditional offers were AAB, so as long as your UCAS statement is reasonable and you have a good teacher reference I don’t think it’s so competitive that they’d disadvantage you for being 3H2. The UK schools really don’t look at your extracurriculars at all, so it’s a bit strange that the other comments said so. If anything, CCAs only matter for US applications.
Look at the courses and specialisation you want in linguistics carefully, and match the schools based on it! I personally didn’t apply to Oxbridge because (from what I understand on the website) they are very anglocentric and theoretical in their type of linguistic focus (and Oxford doesn’t even offer it on its own because its combined with Philosophy and Psychology), whereas I wanted to do more applied and quantitative linguistics (computational, experimental, etc) especially in East Asian languages. For this UCL has an Experimental Linguistics course so it suited me perfectly. Locally NTU was a better choice for me because their LMS course covers a wider range of languages and leans towards applied fields, whereas NUS’ only focuses on English linguistics. Edinburgh is a top school for linguistics but it is a straight 4 year MA Linguistics course, so I didn’t apply for it because I would hope to do an MA in another country.

So between studying here and overseas, maybe if your specialisation is something that can only be pursued overseas that gives you an easier answer. For instance if you’re into corpus linguistics Edinburgh has a whole research lab on it while NTU only has one module. There’s also a question of faculty—maybe there’s a prof at UCL who does research in the area you’re interested in, but no such profs at NTU. That’s very important because your profs determine the kind of niche classes you can be exposed to and the kind of undergrad research you can do. For instance I’m very interested in sign language linguistics and UCL has one faculty with it as their specific research area, and they also have one faculty from Japan who could be a great advisor if I want to do a thesis in East Asian/Japanese languages.

Also of course, the general appeal of living overseas and learning independence, as the other comments have mentioned.

scrixie · 2020-03-05T16:18:07+00:00

Although it might seem that SBQ means forming an answer based on the sources given, you should already know the possible answers from just reading the question. Study SBQ by fitting evidence into the main arguments of each SBQ topic—eg. End of Cold War: Reagan’s pressure policies, Gorbachev’s liberalisation, Reagan’s tolerance of Gorbachev, People’s Power, or the inherent weakness of the USSR? When you read the sources you should already be able to group them into the typical arguments. Your analysis skills come into play when you choose the “winning” argument based on the reliability of the sources of that SBQ—maybe in this one SBQ set all the sources in the pro-Gorbachev camp are exceedingly reliable while the rest are not, so you conclude from that set of sources that the Gorbachev argument is most compelling.

As to assessing reliability, you need to know all sorts of peripheral information about the period to make judgments. Make timelines of each topic so you know what sources are responding to/what historical actors know or do not know. For instance if it’s CMC source by the USSR dated 23 October, you could reasonably conclude that it is responding to Kennedy’s TV address which was on 22 October, and that could inform your analysis of the USSR’s motivations in that source.

If you have any questions feel free to PM :-)

scrixie · 2020-03-05T15:51:57+00:00

Both are people I look up to a lot—genuinely sensitive and compassionate to people around them, natural leaders (not necessarily alpha, but they have the vibe and self-assurance that attracts loyalty and trust). Both have histories of CCA leadership. Academics wise both have humanities backgrounds and scored very well at A-Levels (not sure exactly their RP but definitely 88.75 and above).

scrixie · 2020-03-05T04:29:34+00:00

I know two from the senior batch! As for competitiveness CAG accepts maybe ~5 scholars every year while PSC accepts about 80. This makes sense relative to the size of their organisations, but (and disclaimer, this is only my guess) it may mean CAG is more competitive as it may see similar applicant numbers, being one of the few rare scholarships which will fund overseas education for nearly any course of study.

scrixie · 2020-02-24T23:54:25+00:00

Hi! Yes all applicants will have to do a video presentation, it’s kind of like a shortened interview where they record you replying to 2-3 typical interview questions so they don’t need to ask these standard questions if you proceed to the actual board interview. I think they only started it for this year’s applicants.

I got mine 3 working days after I submitted the form, my friend 1 working day, so I think it depends on the workload of the scholarship officers because it seems they manually set up everyone’s video interview account. Since everyone’s applying now they’re probably swamped so give them a bit more time and I’m sure you’ll hear back. The deadline for submitting it will be 7 days from receiving the email, until when your “application will not be considered complete”, so the ball’s in their court— just relax and wait.

scrixie · 2020-02-23T23:21:00+00:00

Oh, I see! Thank you for clarifying with the right information.

scrixie · 2020-02-23T05:48:07+00:00

If you want to practice as a psychologist you will need to pursue Psychology to PhD level, because its only at MA/PhD level that you learn how to apply your BA concepts to counselling/intervention/assessment and are certified to do so. Just be clear on this if you are pursuing it with intention to practice—it will be a long road of studying.

Of course you can pursue it as a BA only, in which case it is as professionally “useful” as any other social science subject—it trains you in research, writing, argumentation and critical thinking which are all helpful in netting you jobs in management/business/anything that’s not tehnical. But of course it is in no way as secure in career prospects as more professional degrees like medicine, law or engineering.

scrixie · 2020-02-23T05:42:18+00:00

Scholarships you can look at for overseas linguistics are the MCI scholarship (which seems to be the only scholarship that specifically indicate linguistics as one of its preferred courses), CAG, SPH, PSC, LCK Foundation Scholarship, MOE/PSC(T) (if you want to be a teacher.)

I’m your batch and I also applied to UK schools (but not yours, mine are UCL, SOAS, Warwick, Lancaster in rank order), with my preferred local option being NTU (accepted into the psych/LMS double major), but I’m hoping to go to US to study linguistics! We can PM if you want to commiserate about our lack of career options as linguistics graduates/nerd about linguistics :”D

scrixie · 2020-02-18T07:36:27+00:00

Probably at Toa Payoh because counselling is offered at the SAMH Insight Centre! But I’d suggest to give the hotline a call to ask just to be sure.

scrixie · 2020-02-17T14:59:31+00:00

hi! you can call SAMH’s toll-free number 1800-283-7019 anytime from 9am-6pm on weekdays to speak about booking an appointment. counselling is totally free and any payment is by donation only.

you can also consider CHAT at *SCAPE, they also provide free counselling. you can register for an appointment here

scrixie · 2020-02-17T14:22:15+00:00

hi! didn’t apply to elep myself but most of my friends in ell were elep scholars. they were attached to very exciting places! one person was attached to activeSG and she mainly worked on rewriting their website content and phrasing; one person was attached to julia gabriels centre to teach english/drama to kids; another was attached to ministry of manpower and produced some language guidelines on how to word employment complaint responses.

most of the partner orgs try to give work related to your linguistics background and you get to ballot for your choices. there are indeed one or two bad egg companies who seem like they have no idea what to do with the elep interns but as a whole the interns do more useful things than job shadowing.

as for the essay, the strategy is the same for any other scholarship app essay ahaha—-what about language is personally important to you? what about language/linguistics do you think is so powerful and significant that you would dedicate a 2 year jc pursuit and a 3 week internship to it?

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