Notices by Benjamin Hollon (benjaminhollon@fosstodon.org), page 3

@living8bit @RL_Dane
Not my experience, luckily. These dorms are nice and very well-maintained.

Also expensive, but everything is in the US and I've got two nice scholarships and in-state tuition so I can afford to swallow it. :P

@RL_Dane @living8bit
I mean, I have a National Merit scholarship and Baylor apparently does *nothing* for that. Back in my parents' day, they gave full ride for that.

And getting National Merit as an international student is nigh impossible; I was the only student in Malaysia to reach semifinalist status, and I know I'm the first at my school to get to Finalist (one other has reached semifinalist).

@RL_Dane @living8bit

You pretty much *need* a scholarship these days.

Baylor's scholarship offer was higher in monetary value than A&M but I still would have been paying something like $30k per year. They sent out a survey asking why I didn't choose to go there, and I boilied it down to: "Given the comparitave offers from Baylor and A&M, it would have been an incredibly stupid financial decision to attend Baylor."

@RL_Dane @living8bit
To become a National Merit semifinalist, you need to score in the top 0.5% of your state on the PSAT. To reach it as a semifinalist, you need to score in the top 0.5% of the *highest scoring state*. Plus, because of COVID, a bunch of people that year were allowed to submit SAT scores that year instead of PSAT ones, but SAT has a *higher maximum score* so the highest-scoring state had the highest qualifying score in history.

Thank God I somehow hit the mark.

@RL_Dane @living8bit
(can I just say that even though I'm *good* at standardized tests I hate them and think they're a very poor system that needs drastic reform—I know someone, for example, who is a very smart person [smarter than me in some ways] but had a below-average score on the SAT)

@RL_Dane @living8bit
...
If you're interested in education reform I'd very much recommend the blog of a former English teacher of mine: https://jmhieber.wordpress.com/

He's pretty much singlehandedly propelling my High School toward going gradeless and focusing on feedback-based learning.

- I went into my first class with him "hating" writing and came out wanting it as a career
- He introduced me to Linux
- He has a Framework Laptop (previously an old thinkpad)
- He's a TCK!

@RL_Dane @living8bit
Honestly if I couldn't make it through uni without going into debt, I'd probably skip uni altogether and strike out on my own. I've already got a professional-level skillset in some areas of coding, I'd gladly spend the money I would be spending on uni on sponsoring a couple gap years to build that out as well as some other skills, pprobably getting a lot more out of the experience.
...

@living8bit @RL_Dane
Canvas is my arch nemesis. XD

@RL_Dane
Ahh, I see. Thermal issues, then? Where's the laptop located?

@RL_Dane
So if I'm putting it all together right you're saying that your computer is overworked right now?

@RL_Dane
Okay, got it…

@RL_Dane @gordoooo_z

Well, not just that. Potentially due to being brought up with the implicit expectation that we'd be moving countries every few years, I feel extremely uncomfortable if at any point I can't pack the things I need in two suitcases and get on a plane to move.

So yeah… laptops are *much* more in line with that than a desktop.

@gordoooo_z @RL_Dane
Yeah, it can be frustrating, but for me I *need* something portable for… let's say, "psychological reasons." Is that sufficiently vague? ;)

@RL_Dane @gordoooo_z
Yeah… I've had a couple unexpected inter-country moves, so… I don't know that the feeling'll ever go away. And I'm planning to move away from the US after uni, so that'll be another move (though not unexpected).

> *No, I didn't do anything illegal
Now I feel the inexplicable urge to write a story about you on the run from the law. Would that qualify as fanfiction, I wonder?

@RL_Dane @gordoooo_z
Wait who are AAA? Apple, Alphabet, Amazon? Who's G, then? I am now thoroughly confused.

GAFAM is what I usually see, I think.

@RL_Dane @gordoooo_z

> Man, the older you get, the more weird memories you pick up.

I look forward to it!

@RL_Dane @gordoooo_z
> Name any year

*tries to decide between snark and a legitimate response and fails to make the right decision*

How 'bout 1756?

@gordoooo_z @sotolf @RL_Dane
The other way to get that result is to live in a *highly* multicultural environment like Penang, Malaysia, where they end up standardizing on a language like English just so that people can communicate with each other.

@RL_Dane @gordoooo_z @sotolf
You keep making me want to learn Esperanto.

The more and more I study French, the more I realize how much of English is just mispronounced French.

@RL_Dane @gordoooo_z @sotolf
So you're saying that English is mispronounced mispronounced Latin.