Claire Messud is totally right about the semi-colon.
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Oh, and then her genius husband wrote this thing which made me homesick and sad and despairing of ever writing anything worth reading:
I have now lived 18 years in the United States. It’s a bit feeble to say I didn’t expect to stay that long; and ungrateful, or even meaningless or dishonest, to say I didn’t want to. I must have wanted to; there has been plenty of gain. But I had so little concept of what might be lost.
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Wanna hear a now-famous Toast author explain doge to the BBC? I am picturing her interviewer as Mycroft.
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Amazingly, even if you are all super-religious, campus sexual assault = STILL A PROBLEM, SOMETIMES WORSE
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This petting guide is tight.
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And still I worry that my husband and I may not be doing enough. We want our boys to make names for themselves. But not as causes celebres, some footnote in the annals of black boys wrongly killed. We want them to live.
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Rebecca Traister on what we have to look forward to:
Yet somehow, the male politicians in these conversations seem sure that America is going to be shocked by the notion that women make complicated choices in their pursuit of both professional and personal goals.
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Some Mavis Gallant. I can’t even talk about her yet.
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
The semi-colon is the best punctuation mark, bar none. Claire Messud is good people.
The semi-colon is amazing. I am guilty of abusing it when dealing with complex, academic sorts of thoughts; in undergrad, I had to enforce on myself the rule of no more than one per paragraph.
But this article misses the most important use of them: the prevention of the Oxford Comma. Seriously, people, if your list of noun phrases or gerund phrases or whatever is too confusing without an egregious, incorrect and hideously superfluous comma, allow me to intoduce my beautiful friend the semi-colon.
My advisor HATES my semicolon use. I’m sending her a link to that piece.
I’m with you on the semi-colon but I cannot abide the egregious Oxford Comma hate.
*waves Oxford Comma Forever flag*
Agreed on both counts. I work in publishing and my company’s house style specifies no Oxford comma, which TEARS ME UP INSIDE, so I always make sure to use it in emails and other non-official correspondence. (I’m sure literally no one notices my passive-aggressive punctuation rebellion, but WHATEVS.)
I will stop writing lists of more than two items. Just stop. I am so devoted to my Oxford comma, and it strikes viciously into my soul to see them excised.
*salutes the One True Flag of punctuation*
The semicolon is too much with just singular words in a list, and the Oxford comma prevents confusion.
OK, here is the argument I use in favor of the Oxford (aka serial) comma:
An author wanted to put a dedication at the front of her book. The publishing house was anti-Oxford comma. So in the end the dedication read:
“To my parents, the Pope and Mother Teresa.”
Yes, in some cases it appears superfluous, but we copyeditors/proofreaders are all about consistency, so we apply it everywhere to save confusion in a few cases.
Also, that Oatmeal semicolons poster is amazing and perfect and I am sending the link to everyone. SEMICOLONS!!!!
What kind of semicolon use eliminates the Oxford comma? Say you have a sentence like “Breakfast options are pancakes and strawberries, waffles and syrup, and ham and eggs” –would you put a semicolon in place of those commas? Then you’re using a something like an Oxford semicolon, and I’m baffled why you think that’s intrinsically preferable. You could, I suppose, use semicolons all the way through and delete the conjunctions, but that’s just asyndeton; you could do the same with commas (as in “I came, I saw, I conquered”).
The kind of confusion alluded to below with a sentence like “my parents, Ayn Rand and God,” is really best addressed by rearranging the items in the list.
All hail the semi-colon! I had a poster of Aldus Manutius (inventor of the semi colon, italics, and paperback books) on wall in college.
Agreed. Semicolons are wonderfully expressive and important. (I mean, I have a tattoo of one so it’s in my best interest to defend it as a punctuation mark, but still.)
No way! That’s what mine is going to be. It’s going behind my ear.
Hopping on late just to say YES SEMICOLONS FOREVER.
I get so tired of the flippant dismissal of the semicolon by writers who CLEARLY NEED THE SEMICOLON IN THEIR WORK. Because otherwise you get awkward commas or awkward periods, and the semicolon is never awkward; it is the pleasant pause of friendly comrades.
One of my cats is so obsessed with belly rubs that she will jump onto the couch next to you and flop over very ostentatiously and present her belly. And if you don’t hop to it with the pets, she will stand up and flop down again, like you missed it the first time, and wriggle around to attract maximum attention. Then if still no results she’ll squiggle into your lap and turn over and around and generally be a nuisance until you go FINE, FINE, and rub her belly. I don’t understand her.
She is a simple creature.
Anne is the same. She will grab your hand with her paws if you try to stop.
Cats are the best.
If you put your hand above my one cat’s head she will do one of three things: a) jump up and rub her head against your hand, b) put her paws out and drag your hand down to her head, or c) ignore you completely because she is a a fickle cat. She is also a fan of belly rubs. All my previous cats viewed belly rubs as vicious attacks, so I am ok with this development.
Anne thinks any hand above her head has the potential of containing treats and she can get vicious about checking. She will stand up, dig her claws intot your ahnd and shake it until she is sure whether there are treats or not.
If there are not treats, she will squeak,
CATS.
Saffron will fall over somewhere out of my reach and then lie there on her back waving her legs around and singing until I go over and rub her belly.
My cat has no middle setting between “I am enjoying this” and “fuck off and die” so you have to magically know when to stop petting the purring cat before she turns on you with claws.
When I come home from work my cat flops onto her back and shimmies around until I put everything down and pet her belly. It’s a nice thing to come home to.
I have a Hateful Kitten living in my house (she was born under the deck of my office and I brought her home December before last because I was so sad about seeing her out in the cold) who refuses all pets even a year after her purported domestication. However, she will roll onto her back in the middle of the floor, showing off her black & white belly and goddamn taunting me. Hateful Kitten is hateful.
We call that the “cat trap”. Our cat rolls over on her back and looks like she wants a belly rub but the second your hand goes down she clamps on with all her claws and most of her teeth.
We call it the Gom Jabbar.
Ours too, and then if you extricate yourself she waves her belly around again and looks horribly hurt that you don’t want to be bitten for her amusement.
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar has of late decided that he likes belly rubs, after about a year of my being his boss (this is how the Dutch refer to pet owners, and it rules). It is really great and he is adorable about them.
I’m very broken up about Mavis Gallant. I must have read “The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street,” and the Linnet Muir stories millions of times and they’re perfect and wry and then at those last moments they just arrow right to the heart.
On a side note, I think that I mentioned in an open thread a few weeks ago that Mavis Gallant is the reason I got together with my husband.
I DIDN’T KNOW GRETCHEN GOT INTERVIEWED BY THE BBC THAT IS SO WONDERFUL 😀 😀 😀
This seems like a good place to remind everyone of The Oatmeal’s inimitable How To Use A Semicolon (the most feared punctuation on earth), the poster version of which I have framed in my bathroom.
That’s pretty much how I know the semi-colon to be useful for … which is why I was confused by Messud’s use. She uses it in sentences with “but” and “and”, which eliminates the need for a semi-colon. Perhaps I’m missing the point of her article. She’s right in how it’s useful, but seems to use it where it isn’t. I suppose you could say that many sentences begin with “but” and “and”, but it doesn’t feel quite right to me.
She does use it with a “but” twice, which I also understand to be against correct usage (and makes my eye twitch almost as much as that imposter oxford comma). In the sentence with “and”, she’s using it to make a list, which is the Oatmeal’s final example.
THAT JAMES WOOD THING IS JUST OH MY GOD. I am about to move home for a while and I have been having ALL KINDS OF “which did I choose?” feelings.
Yes it gave me a lot of feelings, too. I have lived far away from where I grew up, and I have thought hard about ‘making my home’ in England. But right now I’m living just an hour from my childhood home, and it’s lovely and terrifying, too. The time/space continuum, why does it break our hearts?
Also that article on Patrick Henry College is GOD-DAMNED HORRIFYING.
HORRIFYING.
possibly the most offensive thing anyone has said ever: “If you were telling the truth about this,” Sarah remembers Corbitt saying, “God would have kept you conscious to bear witness to the abuse against you.”
I don’t get how some people who believe in an immortal, all powerful God that existed before time began can pretend to understand how He thinks and presume to speak for Him. Like, get out of here, you don’t realize how tiny your own brain is.
GrrrrgleeeeFRACK. I’ve heard most of the other terribleness – about tempting the insatiable menfolk and “legitimate rape” and such – enough times to not be freshly appalled everytime. But this. THIS.
What. WHAT. WWWHHHATT.
what the FUCK
EXACTLY THIS.
In the Christian world Claire had been brought up in, men only do bad things to impure women who have tempted them.
There are NO WORDS for my reaction to this.
I WAS SO MAD I COULDN’T SEE
I had to stop reading it, because I can’t be snarling with rage at work. I fundamentally do not understand how you can conceive of yourself as a good Christian and a good human being and also believe and teach women that their bodies are poisonous, devious “honeytraps” and that they are to blame for their own abuse. It breaks my heart that these women (and so many others) are indoctrinated to see their own bodies as something fundamentally alien and completely passive, so dangerous that they have to control and cover them up, yet somehow also so easily violated and rendered valueless. I wish government was a goddamned “matriarchal leviathan” because then just maybe we would actually take this shit seriously.
I truly do not understand the conflict between “God has made you a steward of your body, created in His image” and “Your body is awful and evil and will cause you to sin.”
I don’t. I don’t get it.
One of many reasons I am no longer religious – “I was created in the image of God, and yet I am treated as a second class citizen, I don’t think I am wanted here so, bye!”
I also had to stop reading and immediately come back here and scan the comments for this thread so that I could share in MONSTROUS RAGE with everyone. I try so, so hard not to be bitter or angry about the fact that religion exists, but this is making it very difficult for me. VERY. DIFFICULT.
Remember that not all religious people are total misogynist buttwipes who (sinfully, IMO) presume to know what God wants and who make up shit about women being weaker and/or temptresses to rationalize their own sins and to sustain the patriarchy.
Yes, please. There are plenty of normal religious people, some of whom are right here on the Toast, who do not subscribe to these beliefs, or even to Christianity.
It has succeeded in making me SO ANGRY that I can’t leave the house out of fear I will just start keying cars
and one of my older relatives just posted on facebook some stupid tea party picture about how it’s SO IMPORTANT WE SAY GOD BLESS AMERICA AND NOW I’M RAGECAPSLOCKING AHHH SO ANGRYALDFJKASLKSJDFL;KSJ
“As a private campus, it’s outside of federal influence. They can do whatever they want,” says Brett Sokolow, an attorney and president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. “If you’re a female student, and you elect to enroll at a campus that does not provide any of the federal protections that attach to other colleges and universities, you need to know that going in.”
If you’re an asshole and you elect to say terrible things, you need to know that you will not be protected from the rage of women and other sensible humans, Brett.
(I don’t entirely understand this – sexual assault is still illegal aside from the federal regulations for higher ed institutions. So you can’t prosecute under Title IX but can’t you prosecute because it’s still A CRIME?)
You can if they would report it, which it sounds like they are heartily encouraged not to. 🙁
I may be mistaken but as I read the article, I understood this quote as a critique of these schools – basically, don’t attend one because they have elected to avoid accountability.
“Ryan married a young woman from a Quiverfull family. They saved their first kiss for their wedding day, Ryan’s mother-in-law announced on social media.”
*screams*
I nearly fell off my chair in horror when I read that.
WHAT IS GOING ON
I read it earlier this week, and the whole time I was thinking Title IX! They are in gross violation of Title IX! Where is title IX!? And then I got to the end where they said that because they don’t take federal funding Title IX does not apply and I’m pretty sure I went Super Saiyan from the rage.
I’m a journalism major at Patrick Henry College. You can imagine an article in the discipline I am studying here, and also as a woman, caught my attention. We are a *very* small school (about 300 students) so you can bet this has been a *huge* deal for us. On the whole, this campus is a friendly place where you can leave your laptop in the coffeeshop and come back later to pick it up, it’s that safe. You eventually learn everyone’s name and major. For a Christian school, the internal attitude is “oh gosh, the last thing we want is to appear ‘homeschooled'” even if many of us were. I’m a Toastie, for Pete’s sake. 🙂
If rampant woman-hating oppressiveness were the attitude of the school, I would be RIGHT THERE with you guys. The beliefs and patriarchy and such as described in the article are HORRIFYING and degrading to women.
I personally am SO UPSET about this article, because it implies that *my campus* is unsafe for women. Never once have I *ever* heard the “Christian patriarchy”, or “Quiverfull”, touted as either college policy, or sensed was the overarching belief of the campus. Neither myself, nor *anyone* I know has ever heard the phrase “red leather stilletto girl.” (I read God’s Harvard before attending school, and met Hanna Rosin on a journalism field trip into DC and it was a different school when she came to visit it.)
A journalism alum friend of mine who was disgruntled with the school, shared the New Republic article on Facebook, and then took it down, after he looked into it some more and realized that several of the dates in the article (saying 2 staff members worked here during times they actually didn’t, for one) were all wrong.
PHC is a uniquely *young* school, and the incidents cited are 4 and 7 years ago. I am glad any terrible responses anyone in the administration had were exposed, but a very true fact, that *anyone* who’s gone to PHC will tell you, is that it is not the same school it was 7 years ago, or even 4 years ago.
I am angry and sick that anyone had a bad response to accusations of abuse. I have friends, current students, dealing with the pain of sexual abuse. I have had to *learn*, as a Christian kid, who came from a stable childhood without abuse, what the signs of abuse are, and how to react. It kills me inside to hear of people having any bad reaction to a survivor of abuse.
I have stayed up through the night, coaxing a knife out of the hand of a fellow student friend, while she had flashbacks to her sexual abuse as a child. This is *one* friend, among others I know, who had abuse issues in their past, as a child. Through working with counselors the school administration provided (the only thing they could do in the circumstances, the counselors did research into whether or not he could report anything to the police, and it was far past the statue of limitations,) both of these girls are realizing the awfulness of what happened to them and are finding healthy ways to heal. Never *once* in this journey, did any one of the administration, when they heard about the cutting, running-away, and/or rule-breaking behavior, blame the girls for what happened to them. Instead, they’ve strived to help both of them to best of their ability, and both the girls have told me, that PHC has helped them in ways they couldn’t have imagined.
They both took personal offense to the article, because while individuals in the administration have not always known the right way to deal with these issues, PHC is not an unsafe campus for women, as it seemed to imply.
(so sorry to rain on any social justice parade, please feel free to vent alll the deserved anger against any victim-hating, but it’s just *not* an accurate picture of the college.)
I once asked a Greek friend if he ever thought of going home. He’s been here for 20+ years now. “Of course,” he said, “almost every day.” They go to Greece on a regular basis with their kids in tow. The thing that stops him is his children. “They’re American. It would never work. They wouldn’t fit in. There wouldn’t be the opportunity.” And so they stay.
I first tried to go home in 2004 when interviewing for faculty jobs. Academe being what it is, I applied to Canadian and American schools. I had interviews in the US before I heard anything at all in Canada. I got a job offer in Kansas, of all places, and decided I couldn’t hold out. The offer expired on a Wednesday, the day after GWB was re-elected, probably a low point of my life down here. On the final day of the offer’s window, I called to say I’d be happy to accept the job. It was genuine. They were good people and it was a great career opportunity, if in Kansas. Less than two hours after verbally accepting the job, my phone rang and it was a school from Canada, offering me an interview. You’re killing me, I said. I can’t turn down a job for an interview. It’s too bad, they said, with three positions open, I’d only have to show up and have a pulse to get a job.
I would marry and move to be with my wife in Chicago in 2008. We love this city dearly. Living in the US has made me more patriotic toward both countries. Love of the US was formed in the crucible of 9/11(we moved down in 2000) and crytallized that night we stood in Grant Park to see Obama wave to the crowd. For two people with advanced degrees to have good jobs in a great city is sort of the holy grail for a lot of people. It came time to search for jobs again last year. We always said we’d move home if we got the chance, but only if it was a good opportunity (my wife won’t move back to Quebec, and neither of us are small town people anymore). In March, I interviewed for a dream job in Toronto. When I returned from the interview, and upon hearing that it had went well, my wife started crying, saying she wanted to go home. She doesn’t cry. She had never really talked seriously about going home. She wanted our (biracial) son to be able to grow up and feel normal, and the second-most segregated city in the US is certainly not a place where that is going to happen. I finished second for that job.
I eventually had two interviews in one week: one in Canada and one here in Chicago. The Chicago school made an almost-unheard-of move and made a verbal offer on the spot. They were slow with the written offer, though, and once again, the Canadian school called back to gauge my interest. They were in the middle of fighting for resources and would I come if they could get the resources to hire me? Once again, I said I couldn’t turn down a tenure-track job for the possibility of another one. And so we’re here. We love it; my wife just talked about it the other day how lucky we are. But there’s always that calling in the back of your head. It never really called meaningfully before our son was born. The Olympics make it louder for a time. And so does July 1st. But you stay because the calling isn’t quite loud enough.
And then one day I fear I’ll wake up and our kid(s) are of school age and the public school system will have been completely dismantled by Emanuel and Duncan and we’ll be teaching them science and sex ed at home because shit is all fucked up and shit in the schools here. And we have to un-teach/re-teach them about race and because fuck my life I don’t want our kid(s) to grow up with the racial schema that pervades the US in general and Chicago in particular. And then suddenly we can’t move home because it’s neither ours nor our kids’.
From the article to which Nicole linked (what is the deal with all of my favorite bloggers having a blue period these days? It’s like this is a craptacular winter or something.), an excerpt from an Edward Said essay:
“Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement. The achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind for ever.”
fml
I don’t know much about the schools in Chicago but I’m raising my duallie (Canadian & American) kid in Texas, so I feel your pain. Abstinence-first sex ed is the pits, and so inferior to the way they do it at home. But we were never going to have kids in our hometown (Toronto) because we couldn’t afford it, so in some ways it will always have been the right thing to do. Even if it always just feels wrong.
Re: The Wood piece. My bestie is Australian, and she and I are so conflicted about our visa paths. I have my green card now, which has made my life a lot easier, but I’m at the point where I should apply for citizenship, and I’m just not ready to. I’ve been here for so long, but I don’t consider myself American, and being Canadian is very important to me. The United States has been very good to me, but it’s not who I am? I don’t know.
Anyway, we emailed each other basically every sentence of that piece and were sad about it.
(I can keep dual citizenship now, I don’t have to renounce Canada, it’s just….it’s not an easy decision.)
Like Wood, I can’t even bring myself to do dual citizenship. Green cards forever.
I’ll move to Canada, if it’s what you want.
don’t tease me bro
My spouse has been green carding it up for 20+ years now. (That one time when his green card had expired and we were about to leave to visit his mum? Yikes.) We finally got the kids their dual citizenship paperwork, meaning basically that they have EU passports and I’m the only one in the long line at immigration, but it’s grand to know they can just up and live elsewhere if they want.
Still, Wood’s line “I watch my children grow up as Americans in the same way that I might read about, or create, fictional characters. They are not fictional, of course, but their Americanism can sometimes seem unreal to me. ‘I have an American seventh-grader,’ I say to myself with amazement, as I watch my 12-year-old daughter perform at one of those dastardly school events always held in gymnasiums.” – that was the one that killed me, on spouse’s behalf. The gulf between their experiences and their Irish cousins’ experiences is sometimes just so vast.
I’ve just moved from my home country all the way across the world and while I keep giving myself stern talks about Taking One Day At A Time, and It’s Not That Bad Really, I’m homesick and scared that we will never go home, and the rest of my life will be me explaining where I’m from, and everything being strange and difficult. We too made a choice without realising what it would mean, I think, so yes Wood’s piece really resonated with me.
(Of course I’m a middle class white person who moved from one English speaking country to another, in an age of Skype and Airbus A380s, so it’s not like I got on a boat and sailed to another country and knew I’d never get back to my home shore.)
Nicole, thank you for posting this piece. I’m planning an international move this year and read the whole thing with a lump in my throat. I’m sad for my husband, who’s living away from his home now, sad and homesick in advance for myself. Ugh.
I’m glad I was able to maintain dual citizenship (Finland changed its laws before I turned 18; previously I would have had to decide upon reaching adulthood which one I wanted, but now they allow dual citizenships so I was able to keep mine). I don’t know that I would have been able to make that choice. Practicality says I would have taken the US citizenship over the Finnish, but I’m pretty sure I’d regret giving that up every day of my life.
My parents naturalized as US citizens before Finland offered dual citizenships and had to give theirs up. Finland is now offering buybacks on that, but the price is very high, and while my mother is willing to pay for hers, my dad is putting his foot down with indignance because “I shouldn’t have to pay for it, I was born with it, they’re the ones that made me give it up in the first place.” I’m relatively certain they will eventually buy them back.
If it makes you feel better, the British mother of a friend of mine growing up didn’t become a citizen until after the 2008 election – she easily had been here 30+ years by that point. She loves America and was obviously going to stay here for the rest of her life, but nothing had really moved her until that point to actually get citizenship.
Long story short – you have time to make peace with a decision.
My mom is a Canadian who has been in the States for over 30 years on a visa. She moved here after marrying my American father. They met in Canada. Apparently she never intended to move to the States but he got a job here while they were engaged. It will be interesting to see where she ends up if my father passes first. Thank you very much for linking this article.
I periodically represent immigrants who have been arrested on seemingly minor charges and are thereafter subject to removal proceedings (the current euphemism for deportation). Citizenship is the only way to remove this risk if you are staying in the USA. Sure, you may not intend to get arrested, but no one intends to get arrested: your pharmacist screws up your prescription and makes you incoherent in public, or you have a random encounter with an off-duty cop who’s looking to make trouble, and boom there you are with a misdemeanor conviction that’s just enough to set off the DHS. If you intend to remain in the USA, get citizenship, because our immigration laws are pointlessly cruel.
Thank you for that Rebecca Traister piece! I read the NYT Magazine article this weekend and was bamboozled by the amount of time spent on fact-checking Davis’ vacation schedule during law school … totally nuts. The only reason to argue about that is to judge her as a “good” or “bad” mother. It felt so retro.
Not to mention, as the pull-quote implies, the totally condescending assumption that average women won’t get or accept a high-achieving woman making family sacrifices because OMG she’s not a super-human. Guess what, dude politicians and journalists of America, we get that more than you could ever know.
I discovered that when I scratch my parents’ cat at that spot at the base of his spine, he starts twitching and his eyes go weird, and he’ll just lick stuff? I stopped because my boyfriend said, “You are totally getting that cat off,” and now I can’t unthink it.
SPEAKING OF PUNCTUATION (can we always???), I would like to share a fun thing I just learned. My weirdo British co-workers are always using a colon + a hyphen to set off lists of things, which, what even is that?? So I finally googled it today, and what I found is so much better than I could have imagined (spoiler alert: it involves dog penises).
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/31060/…
BEST THING I HAVE SEEN TODAY
Man, I need to bookmark that for anybody who starts going on about how things were so much more refined in the past. There was punctuation called dog’s balls, dude, don’t front.
THAT IS AMAZING
The-Toast! I need some help please! I’m hoping someone is still reading! I have to interview someone in a few hours who wrote “keep calm and chive on” on their cover letter (I don’t choose the people to interview, obviously). What is the Chive? I looked for a second and it seemed pretty lame. Thoughts?
I don’t understand the Chive AT ALL, just hopping in here in case someone can explain it.
OKAY I KNOW THIS ONE
The Chive is at its heart, a photo website. Basically what they do is post big photo posts multiple times a day. These range from “Hot half-naked chicks who send in their photos” to “Memes you’ve seen before” to “Caturday” which is just cats. Usually there are gifs involved too. No commentary, no nothing. The comments are HUGE. The commenters are very big into supporting the Chive Community. They raise tons of money for charitable causes (including Chivers–commenters–who are down on their luck/have familial problems/etc). “Keep Calm and Chive On” is their rallying cry. They sell T-shirts, car stickers, Chive beer, etc.
Chivers tend to be fratboys and older fratboy-types. Girls on the Chive are called Chivettes, and they are a major source of photos–“Chivettes bored at work” is girls who send in revealing photos of themselves in work clothing. They have spin-off sites (The Berry is the women’s version, which is full of “fitspiration” and hot boys and cute animals, The Brigade is the military version (the Chive is HUGE on military support)).
I would look with EXTREME CAUTION on anyone who put “Keep Calm and Chive On” in their cover letter. EXTREME. It speaks to immaturity. I am 99% sure they are hoping the interviewer will be familiar with the Chive as a community.
Wait this sounds terrible
Putting that in a cover letter seems like a huge gamble to me–like, it would work in their favor if their interviewer/HR person was a Chiver, but what are the chances of that? Don’t throw that sort of inside joke out there if you don’t KNOW it will work.
Add me to the chorus of people wondering what this person is actually like, please.
It’s ten minutes past the hour his interview was supposed to start and he hasn’t shown!!
EVERYONE RAISE YOUR HANDS IF YOU’RE SURPRISED
Who the crap puts that on their cover letter, and who the crappity-crap selects that person for an interview?! It’s a good thing I recently got a job otherwise this would have sent me into a fit of existential despair.
The woman who read the cover letter though it meant “be fresh like herbs”. Although we work in tech, we live in a hippy hippy community, and I know for a fact she spends a lot of time growing organic vegetables and brewing kombucha, so it slid right past her.
Hahahaha awwww.
That is kind of delightful, actually. A little silly, but delightful.
I used to wonder why everyone was all about chives for a bit, but realized it was probably some internet thing I didn’t get and didn’t want to.
As for asking about it, can you turn it into a legit question?? It’s in his cover letter, it’s totally up for grabs! “I see you are a member of the internet community Chive, how has that improved your ability to effectively communicate your message over the web?”
you genuisssssssss
It took me an embarrassingly long time to phrase that just right, so who knows, maybe I could learn something haha
There was totally an article explaining the Chive on The Awl! http://www.theawl.com/2013/07/inside-the-chive Most relevant excerpt, IMO:
“Chivers, for one reason or another, think of themselves as outsiders. In Twitter posts, comment sections, and in remarks from fans at the meet-up, a feeling of otherness is pervasive. “The Chive is just a way of life for the greatest community of hooligans, misfits, and sexy creatures to ever assemble,” as one piece of Chive propaganda describes it. But misfits of what? Especially for Baltimore, there were few people of color at the meet-up; based on the site’s and user’s photos, the Chive is largely white, middle-class, heterosexual, pro-America and male. Chivers and Chivettes compose one of the most normative groups in America, and yet constantly describe feeling like outsiders, misfits, and people who “just don’t care,” as one Chiver told me. It’s an expression reminiscent of Fight Club, the desire for an all-inclusive largely male group that rejects the values of larger society—in this case, maybe, maturity and political correctness.”
So, a type of person I did not explicitly realize that I had spent most of my life avoiding, but I absolutely have. YMMV?
These people are probably libertarians, aren’t they?
ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
So they are juggalos?
Libertarian juggalos.
*shudder*
From the explanations given about ‘the Chive Community’ and who might use that expression, I’m curious about what sort of person the interviewee turns out to be. Please tell us about the interview, as much as you can without disclosing confidential information.
Yes totally! I am so interested in hearing about this.
I will report back team! But not until like 4pm PST
GUYS! He was 10 minutes late with no apology! This was for a reallllly entry level job, and all he would talk about would be how quickly “the company” would see how “valuable” he was and give him a fat promotion. It was the worst interview I have ever been in, and one time I had a lunch interview (for a position for me) with a hungover guy determined to destroy Microsoft. Chive guy was about ten years older than I would have imagined, rambling, and didn’t seem to care at all. he also mentioned how punctuality was his biggest personal strength.
haahahaha omg.
We all had to put our interview notes in the shredder immediately.
this is the best thing I have read all day
And then set the shredder ON FIRE.
SHRED THE SHREDDER
Well of course.
This is me 0% surprised.
Well this was everything I hoped it would be!
Wait, wait, but did you even ask him about Chiving?
Next time I write a cover letter I am going to sign off with “keep calm and take to the sea” in the hopes that the hiring manager is a Toastie.
Yes! Can you really go wrong if you hire only Toasties?
Though, “take to the sea” is important, but is “keep calm” a Toastie value? I suppose there is no need to panic when you can always take to the sea, but the constant use of that phrase reminds me of people who describe themselves or their desired partners as “laid back” on okcupid. Is not caring about things really a primary trait they consider to be attractive?
The sense I get of the chive is that they would all describe themselves as laid back. Though, also, good for them for building an active community, I guess.
I don’t know that keeping calm is a Toastie value, but I’m pretty sure that signing off a cover letter with “kill all men and take to the sea” is not a great idea.
“Remember that you always have the option of taking to the sea” is just straight up good hiring advice.
YES. A former coworker reminded me that if I ever have to interview someone again, if I have any doubts whatsoever, reject them. Missing out on a good hire is way better than hiring someone bad.
If they turn out to be terrible, can you back them into a corner on the “keep calm and chive on” thing and make them explain it?
I would love too! But I am new to interviewing! If you have any tips, please share with the group
I have no real tips, sorry! For this I’d just say something like, “I saw this on your cover letter and wasn’t familiar with what you meant by it, can you explain?”
Good luck, you’ll do great. 🙂
Are you already reading Ask A Manager? You should read Ask A Manager.
Wow that is insane unprofessional.
Oh boy – ten minutes late, no apology. that was the worst interview I have ever sat through.
So a friend of mine and a former intern at an old organization were both Chivers and.. well, the friend is actually a sweet guy, but as someone referenced the Baltimore Chive meet-up, he is indeed a white middle-class guy who really loves the outdoors, baking, and comic books. He is super-conventional, but also super-progressive. His wife was my work bff at my old job, and I miss her dearly so.. there’s that.
The intern is a POC and is a very chill stoner dude.. so I always thought Chivers were pretty okay? YMMV, etc.
Putting “keep calm and chive on” in a cover letter is pretty egregious and unprofessional though.
semi colons all day every day
Showing my age and/or proclivities, I saw the “Guide to Petting” and clicked over hoping for some tips on making out.
I was disappointed and delighted in equal measure when I saw what it actually was.
I posted another piece similar to the Sherri Day one on my Facebook wall, and now one of my friends is ranting about black-on-black crime and posting “statistics” in response and generally not getting the point. Whhyyyyyyyyy. I keep just nonchalantly deleting his comments.
+1 for deleting the awful comments.
Thanks. I feel like if I was a braver, better person, I’d try to have a conversation but a) I don’t have time to have Facebook arguments and b) I don’t think I’m going to change his mind, and I just don’t want to give things I find offensive space on my Facebook wall.
Ugh, yes. I had a friend tell me I was “embarassing myself” after I posted a joking thing to my wall about people with the privilege-sads. I immediately deleted it and spent hours thinking on the exact-perfect retort about not-embarrassed I was. I’m glad, though, the deletion was the way I went. His rantings about the “decline” of American values will no doubt destroy what’s left of a once-great friendship soon, I don’t need to accelerate the explosion.
Facebook fights are occasionally cathartic, but rarely productive in any other way. Deletion is a perfectly brave (and sensible) way to go.
I don’t think that would make you braver or better! Don’t let him use your space to be a shit, and that’s all you have to do. Making time for Facebook arguments in your life would be a terrible idea. You are being quite sensible.
yeah I don’t think I should read that James Woods piece, just skimming it, I know that feeling too powerfully.
I’ve only gotten through the semicolon piece so far, but had to add my love for this little punctuation mark. I use it frequently and probably improperly.
But was I the only one slightly uncomfortable with the author’s dissection of Vonnegut’s quote? It’s such a small part of a tiny article, so I feel silly getting hung up on it. On the other hand, it’s 2014: I don’t understand why someone would think that “a hermaphrodite (intersexed person) could never be a transvestite (cross dresser).” I donno though; I’m touchy.
Nope, you’re not wrong, including that whole thing was gross and unnecessary, and really made me disappointed in Kurt Vonnegut as well.
I had the same reaction. I just taught my students about the semicolon; it’s a beautiful piece of punctuation, and they should not avoid it out of fear. I did not require offensive analogies to do so.
Do NOT read the comments on the Traister article. I don’t know why I keep reading comments outside the toast/hairpin bubble.
Does anyone else work on the assumption of a good chance their kids will have to emigrate eventually? I don’t think it’s all that common in the US, but really, the reason I’m trying to get into the habit of doing Spanish flash cards with my 4-year-old is not really so she can talk to her friends (although that’s what I tell her) but because I want her to have as many language options as possible when she’s an adult.
I don't know much about the schools in Chicago but I'm raising my duallie (Canadian & American) kid in Texas, so I feel your pain. Abstinence-first sex ed is the pits, and so inferior to the way they do it at home. But we were never going to have kids in our hometown (Toronto) because we couldn't afford it, so in some ways it will always have been the right thing to do. Even if it always just feels wrong.
Late to this thread, but the mental picture of Mycroft interviewing Gretchen about doge has brought me great joy. (Sorry: very joy, so Mycroft, amaze.)