I LDB'D myself making a Playlist on spotify and there was Jim Hendrix's medley of Little Drummer Boy, Silent Night, and Auld Lang Sane and I had to check it out. I could have waited a few days but I might as well enD this in style.

That's a huge accomplishment, amyth.

Loves all the love to amyth. Brave and strong and resilient.

It really is.

So far today, I have had two things to do, work wise, and I am beginning to wonder if someone hacked the federal government, because neither the 9th Circuit or Public PAIR are working.

People keep texting and emailing me work stuff and I just want to tell them all to go home.

And the Victorian era "Sherlock" that PBS has been teasing me with for weeks will air on Jan. 1.

Wow, amyth, sorry college was such a difficult experience for you.

So much this.

I got rusticated after my first year (which my overly well read self found secretly charming), took a year off and got a volunteer gig working with refugees for a year. Which changed my life, but not in ways that prevented me from going back and failing out all over again. Went back to Milwaukee and eventually took a few non-credit classes at UWM and Marquette, earned probationary status at Marquette, and eventually was able to transfer to McGill. In my case it was mostly down to immaturity and depression/anxiety.

I got my shit together eventually, but the d/a induced behaviors are still things I struggle with all the time

So much love to you, amyth. I knew some of that story but not, I think, all of it. I'm so sorry that you got dealt such a shitty hand at that point in your life. Making it through all that is a huge accomplishment in itself!

I also didn't quite take the traditional four-year path - had a rough sophomore year and ended up taking a year off to travel and work and live on my own for a while. It was exactly what I needed, and I wasn't even dealing with anything traumatic happening in my life.

I did really poorly my first couple of years in college and really should have transferred - the program I was in was not right for me, and it was the best fit for me at that school. I have determined since that I thrive in big state schools where I can be anonymous much more than in small schools with a lot of individual attention, would have been nice to have figured that out then. But I was stubbornly determined to finish and did get my degree in four years but that was not, I am pretty sure, the best thing to do. Except for how it is what I did and it went into making me who I am now and I would not actually change any of that. I have made a lot of bad decisions about my education, on the whole, many of them rooted in trying to salvage that degree. Part of me thinks that means I should try again and hope the, um, fifth time is the charm but it's a pretty tough sell to the rest of me.

amyth, you are a force. That you kept moving forward however you could and then went back and finished - that is a testament to your strength. all the love to you.

I am fighting off the sick -- i've been running so fast all fall that I failed to let it catch up to me until now. Took two days off to play games with HPF and DH and wham. But still heading over to dinner with parents and parents' Fox News Broadcast.

Hugs to this board and gratitude for you, you are an important part of my family and if I had arms long enough I'd hug you all except if you don't hug and then I'd look at you fondly.