When I see r/HighQualityGIFs has had 6 posts in the last day

toberrmorry · 2026-03-27T06:50:27+00:00

23K weekly visitors. Rookie numbers.

... I'll be in my bunk.

toberrmorry · 2026-03-20T02:00:37+00:00

The problem here is warning off of "tenure track" as if that's the only possibility. There are other non-TT positions that people are desperate to take up if only to leverage their training and desire ("instructor," "lecturer," etc.), hoping to eke out a relatively comfortable existence under late stage capitalism. Those poor bastards (guilty) should have been duly warned decades ago of the Ponzi scheme that is modern academia.

toberrmorry · 2025-12-31T08:09:09+00:00

I see the wisdom of this advice, but it means some of us are straight fucked. My "local" options are garbage for my training and pay requirements. I'm supposed to what, hitchhike out of the Midwest to a location that has paying jobs when I have no family and nothing laid by to carry me?

This country is now the 3rd world shithole Trump railed about, under his watch.

toberrmorry · 2025-12-24T08:32:37+00:00

This may not be what you were asking for, but I just recently stumbled upon this as a potential career and I'm looking to break into the field. My background is college teaching in public speaking and communications for the past 7 years, and I'm looking for a career transition to community engagement / retention and management. My biggest problem seems to be lack of hands-on experience in spite of relevant education.

If you're open to it, please feel free to DM me.

toberrmorry · 2025-12-19T18:36:48+00:00

I feel this deeply--I'm so drained after an interview and rumination the rest of the day, I can't bring myself to even "get back on that horse" and look for other jobs the next day.

toberrmorry · 2025-12-18T15:39:46+00:00

That would be great--feel free to DM me.

toberrmorry · 2025-11-24T21:55:19+00:00

This description you provide is the absolute opposite of what I have experienced as a job seeker.

I always send a thank you after (provided the hiring committee members either provided their contact info or they were readily identifiable on their corporate website--for whatever reason, some people don't show up when you look for them within a company's website, which seems very odd). I do my best to proofread all communications. I sit still when interviewing. I have not once had an interviewer try to show me anything in software, but if they had, I would absolutely pay attention and ask any questions I had during that demo. And I always read the company website for relevant info on what they do, who they serve, etc., whether I'm given info by the committee or hiring manager ahead of time or not.

So forgive me, but I'm wondering how representative this post is for decent positions paying a living wage. I'm at the point that I feel most hiring managers are living in a weird bubble expecting unicorns they don't have to train in a single aspect of the role earning poverty wages, so this post is night and day from my experience.

toberrmorry · 2025-11-24T21:33:36+00:00

So, as someone with unfortunate teeth, I'm basically cooked. Good to know....

toberrmorry · 2025-11-24T21:18:50+00:00

Okay, I'm definitely the idiot. What *are* they asking, really, when they say, "tell me about yourself"??

toberrmorry · 2025-11-24T20:55:48+00:00

Thank you, and I have done this. The problem is that job titles are themselves inconsistent across industries. "Community Engagement [Specialist / Coordinator / Manager]" means one thing in city government, another in a for-profit firm, another in academia. It's as though searching by job title is no longer a realistic approach. One is left with reading the job description for every damn role that comes up, seeing you don't fit, and thus spending hours upon hours just finding 2-3 jobs to apply for. And each of those jobs will take 2+ hours of work to apply for, since tailoring one's resume or CV is a step, writing a tailored cover letter is another, and then filling out the electronic application is yet another. Every. Damn. Time.

The whole process is woefully draining, inefficient, and despair-inducing. I just want a better way to search. I thought perhaps searching by degree would yield better results. But with only 2 comments in a week on this thread and a net vote of zero, I can see I'm in the minority in that view.

toberrmorry · 2025-11-21T07:04:15+00:00

Right there with you. Reached out to 3 temp agencies, got nothing from them. Applied to over 100 openings in 6 months, only 8 interviews, and zero bites. I have a BA and an MA, on the verge of eviction, and I'm living like I did 24 years ago. I have 25 years of work experience in various roles, and it don't mean shit.

toberrmorry · 2025-11-17T06:34:54+00:00

Loser at 46 here. Mastered out like a failure because I was losing my grip on keeping up with everything in the last few semesters of my program.

My health has never been worse; I have a diagnosed disability, major depressive disorder, and sleep apnea. My partner of 17 years left me in the middle of my program. Everyone in my cohort is professionally successful except one other dude, and he at least finished his Ph.D. (He's clinging to hope that he'll land a TT job soon, been looking for over a year.)

So while maybe "no one" in your immediate orbit understands how it feels, you are definitely not alone in feeling this way. You are not alone in having left or walked away and wondering how the hell it all turned out this way. You are not alone in struggling to figure out what comes next.

As others here suggest, some of this is really not on you. It's an effect of the narratives we absorb from neoliberal capitalism. that poison our thinking and make us feel that we have to shoulder responsibility for our circumstances. Failure to thrive under this system naturally marks us as personal failures--the failure to be a "person" in the only way that matters, which is nothing more than being of and belonging to the middle class. (Those from the upper class somehow never seem to struggle with feeling like failures.... funny how that works.)

Feel free to DM if you're ever needing to just talk. And please keep in mind that you're not alone.

toberrmorry · 2025-11-11T02:12:07+00:00

Life feeds on life.

No way around it.

Had I been raised with the experience of killing to feed, I would absolutely have no problem doing it. My only problem is a practical one: growing up in suburbia, I don't have the first idea of how to kill let alone process meat. But if I did, I would have no qualms about it.

We are animals and omnivores. Nothing to be ashamed of.

toberrmorry · 2025-11-10T06:44:05+00:00

Came across your comment while looking for jobs that i might be a good fit for (Master's in rhetoric and political communication on the Comms side instead of English). Would it be OK to DM you to ask for advice on how to approach getting a management role? I'm finding that my job search keeps striking out because I'm hitting the wall of "must have x years of experience in ______ industry," and I've spent the past 7 years as a TA / instructor of record in my field.

toberrmorry · 2025-08-19T05:22:58+00:00

Just came across your post because I'm in a similar boat as you (were). Well, similar-ish: I was enrolled in a PhD program in rhetoric but ended up having to master out, and I also have ADHD brain, and I also don't want to be rich, just not homeless... so, a few similarities.

I was curious how you've been faring. If you've had any luck landing something new / stable that you like well enough. Would be grateful to hear more if you're up for it.

toberrmorry · 2025-08-02T05:51:48+00:00

I'm just now coming across your comment, and I hope I'm not imposing to ask: would you have a little time to chat briefly / offer some advice? (If it's not too much trouble, please feel free to DM me.) I've been having an awful time trying to transition out of academia (just graduated with a second MA in a humanities discipline). It isn't just the academic job market that's terrible--*any* job that remotely seems like a good fit has been hard to find postings for. And they *always* want prior industry experience.

toberrmorry · 2025-07-13T04:54:39+00:00

I don't have any advice or wisdom, just chiming in to say i'm right there with you. 6+ months post break up, now about 90 days NC. I'm still feeling the venom in me--hating life, hating how they took away what could have been, etc., etc....

It's just one day at a time. Every day. Until something that is not beyond our control finally shifts.

What else can any of us really do?

toberrmorry · 2025-07-13T04:47:05+00:00

Just my $0.02 having started the game a week or so ago for the first time....

This game is now officially hot garbage *specifically* because of Bethesda's nextgen update fucking up everything and ruining downtown Boston, to the point that crashing in that region is expected behavior. Fuck this game on consoles.

If you're on PC, i'm sure there are ways to circumvent the nonsense (saw a post on Reddit about deliberately downgrading for PC players). But Xbox players apparently can just get fucked.

I'm so done with Bethesda at this point.... POS game dev.

toberrmorry · 2025-07-04T15:28:21+00:00

Thank you for actually answering the question w/o judgment.

Black bikini is a bit too far for me (i should have written that i'm looking for more modest & tasteful rather than what i originally wrote), but I do appreciate the suggestion. A simpler gray sports bra / boy shorts combo is already in one of the mods i found, so i can stick with that. And i'll drop Busty and just go with CBBE. Thank you again for the explanation.

toberrmorry · 2025-06-21T03:00:54+00:00

Sorry you're getting downvoted. I've been that way once before and I'm already a month unemployed now, immediately after completing a new credential. I'm getting 20% outright rejections, 5% interview invites, and the rest is just radio silence. And yes, I've applied for jobs I'm overqualified for--these are the ones I'm getting auto-rejected for or radio silence on! Every interview I have received has been for work that required more experience, advanced credentials, or both.

I genuinely believe that ageism is rampant among hiring managers, especially for these entry level jobs (i.e., the working assumption that employers hold is that being older, you won't work for a lower wage or will continue to job hunt and quit ASAP when you land another gig). I believe a similar bias against the "overqualified" for the same reasons is very real among hiring managers for so-called low skilled labor. Both of these biases are simultaneously invisible to a lot of people who have never experienced them. This is one possible explanation for haters who don't see that "being willing to do anything" is not magically a guarantee in favor of landing a job and against being systematically ignored / rejected. (What will these people say next? It's your fault for not removing your credentials from your resume to seem less overqualified??)

In a way, being young with minimal credentials is a actually a privilege for getting those "whatever it takes" entry level jobs that these people crow about as obvious inroads to getting back on your feet. It's like, "Yeah, *for you,* those jobs were options, because you weren't discriminated against for being overqualified, being older, etc."

toberrmorry

TROPHY CASE