You need a PhD to teach at a university right? So it’s unlikely she’s more than a couple of years away from 30 in either direction right?
Schpoonman
Nope. I’ve had instructors who only had Bachelor’s degrees.
HeySo
A Master’s is the formal minimum for a teaching position, though there shouldn’t be any legal limitation that would prevent a university from making exceptions based on their own preferences.
Since DoA dedicatedly bases its university off of Indiana University, we can skip over broader considerations of US universities and simply look at what
that university lists.
Looking at IU’s faculty hiring, they have a Master’s minimum for many positions and even allow tenure-track for such hires. However, looking at the current faculty of the Gender Studies department, I can’t find a single non-PHD in the lot.
Ergo, until Word of Willis says otherwise, the best assumption is that Leslie does in fact have a PHD.
Dark
Leslie got really lucky snagging that position. Teaching a gender studies course is pretty much the only application there is for a gender studies degree.
Lin
Entirely inaccurate. There are people that I know with phds in Gender Studies that are: working in communications and research for legal advocacy organizations, editors of special projects for Slate, running their own businesses, working for the department of justice, running graduate student support for full universities, etc. When I was at a master’s level (I have a PhD now and am a professor), I was hired to coordainte an LGBTQ rights poliitical advocacy group, ran communications for a transnational nonprofit, worked in a non-profit to support homeless kids who were homeless on their own, and worked as a career advisor to college students. There’s a lot of applications for gender studies degrees.
Dark
And… Not a single one of those actually needs, or even really uses, a Gender Studies degree.
But to be honest, most jobs don’t actually care what degree you have from college. My step-mother was an Oceanography Major working in the IT department of Dominion Power. Places will hire anyone with a degree.
Ntrovert60
My daughter is at IU and has been a TA since her second year. At that point, she had not earned enough credits for her MA. She has been teaching first year classes in her subject. I think that is pretty common at R1s across the country. Most people who earn a PhD probably have at least 3 years of teaching experience in this manner before they finish their program.
Lucy Gillam
Most community colleges require a Master’s, but universities often have TAs with only Bachelor’s degrees teaching classes, especially introductory classes like ENG101. That said, a gender studies class? There aren’t usually enough sections to hand out to TAs, so I’m betting Leslie’s an assistant prof, which these days would almost certainly mean a Ph.D.
HeySo
That was the path my own thoughts went down, as I wrote my previous post. Leslie didn’t seem at all like a TA (given her familiarized, confident, relaxed control over the class, as well as her lack of any references towards second parties involved with the course), and even outside of the gender studies department, most of IU’s hiring listings for assistant professors that I came across were PHD minimum. Add in the fact that IU lists quite a few faculty for the department, and narrow niche that the field covers, and any non-graduate degree seemed unlikely. Likewise, her familarity with the campus and control over the class suggests she’s not a [lower degree] substitute for the semester, either.
Matthew Davis
I’ve assumed Leslie is a doctoral student, which means (if it’s anything like my program in English was) she is at least 22. It’s an intro course, which often are what gets pushed off on grad students and adjuncts.
Delavan
PhD student here. I taught as an adjunct for 3 years (at 24-27 yo) with an MA at an upper SUNY lib arts school before entering my PhD program. It wasn’t the norm, but I have another colleague in my current department who did similar @ UMass. Many R1s require advancement to candidacy (completion of master’s coursework + dissertation prospectus) before solo-instructing classes, but not all.
Do we have proof that Leslie is more than an adjunct? If she is on tenure-track, and entered PhD program @ 22, minimum age would be 27-28. If she’s an adjunct, she could just have an MA and be mid-20s as well. However, most likely is 27+.
BBCC
IIRC, word of Willis is she’s 27-28ish with a Ph.D
Lin
Real talk, though, if she was an adjunct, she could also be a 40-something PhD holder. With the shrinking tenure lines and increasing reliance on casualized labor across the academy, adjuncting is no long about age, experience, or degree.
I always figured around thirty, but I guess a few years younger is possible. She’s got to have at least a Masters and doesn’t seem inexperienced at her job, so definitely over 25 at least.
I remember back when I was in middle school, I was talking to this girl on AIM (we went to the same school but pretty much only talked on AIM), and I asked her if she had ever heard the phrase, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Her reply was, “no, and that does not make any sense.”
I slept early yesterday and didn’t get in on the comments, but that big shiny eyed look Leslie had broke my heart :c Les honey please love yourself enough to start choosing people who treat you like you actually deserve, okay?
Whoa it’s been a really long time since we saw Robin. Hope she’s better.
thejeff
She’s still in that parking lot without pants waiting for her gal pal lesbian to come back.
I’m sad that every storyline since then hasn’t ended with a panel of her standing there.
Okay, there are lots of reasons why you wouldn’t, I live in Michigan, I know. But if you live in an area where the water supply is safe– *shrug.* I usually drink tap water. I do live in the same area I grew up in, which helps; I couldn’t drink the tap water at my college because it tasted weird and I was allergic. But most city water I find fine.
I’ve read in another article that chloramine (a relatively new city-water disinfectant) can leach enough lead out of your faucets to form visible pits.
BarerMender
Faucets don’t have lead in them. Lead is poisonous.
Needfuldoer
Old water supply pipes can contain lead. Some old solder used to join copper pipes together also contains lead. (Modern pipe solder is lead-free.)
CJ
if you still have lead in faucets, you should replace them. The leads comes out because it’s more water solvable then other metals are (yes, metals which are kept in water give off tiny amounts of ions. Always. More so, if the ph is lower or if you have several metal in the same water: the one with the lower redox potential is going to give up more ions and the one with the higher less. That’s why having a lead line between copper lines is a bad idea.)
Deathjavu
Not that you’re wrong about the need to replace them, but…
“The American Water Works Association conducted a national survey to estimate the cost of replacing lead service lines. The average cost per replacement was $3200, with a range of $750 to $16000.” (circa 2004)
Short version: the lead industry lobbied to keep using lead products, primarily paint and pipe, right up until it was outlawed in 1986. So there’s still quite a bit of it around 🙁 The US really got bamboozled on this one, afaik this stopped being a thing in other countries.
I believe a common location is the run from the street to the house, which tends to be in place for a long time and is largely invisible.
Lensipensi
You Americans and you’re weird sense of tap water hygiene ^^. To be fair, GB and the South of Europe ain’t a lot better. But we Northern Europe countrys sure have great tasting tap water which is also safe. And we have bubbly water. Why don’t you guys have bubbly water?
Spocky McSpockface
You mean bubbly water from the tap? That would be awesome.
Most towns out in the sticks in Texas have at least one store with a water fill-up station, and they get a LOT of use. We finally got running water just to the bath about a year and a half ago. However, we continue using the refillable 5 gallons for anything that isn’t cooking because it doesn’t taste like garbage. Likewise, I lived in a nearby city for around 7 years and never adapted to the water. I’d get stomach aches from drinking tap or getting soda at restaurants (not that that stopped me). For bottled water, I check the source first because there’s a few common ones (Keller, TX, for one) that really mess me up.
As a kid, we’d bring empty milk gallons to my grandmother’s and fill up on her well water because it tasted so much better. Running the tap until it stopped smelling like rotten eggs always sucked when you couldn’t smell half the time.
I always use my filter. Honestly, I suspect a big part of the benefit is it’s in my fridge, so the water’s just colder than I get from the tap, anyhow, but it does seem to influence the flavor a bit.
This is VERY true. The town I live in has TERRIBLE water, always tastes metallic and chemical-y, but a town 10 minutes away is fine, I drink their tap water all the time.
Inahc
Yeah, it’s really variable around here too. Seems like every building has a different flavour… Which actually might be the case, since our water changed a lot when they replaced the pipes – it tasted like plastic for years :/ although they did say it was still safe to drink. It’s back to being fairly neutral now – much better than the gross taste at one friend’s house.
I always drink tap water.
Of course, it depends on where you are, whether the tap water is safe, chlorine free, and how it tastes.
I’ve been to places in Scandinavia where the tap water is delicious.
The FDA regulates bottled water, and the EPA regulates tap water. Depending on state-to-state regulations, tap water can actually be more heavily regulated than bottled, though Flint in my home state of MI puts paid to the notion of that always being a useful metric. On average though, tap is just as regulated as bottled, so really the only advantage to bottled water is… you get to make another empty plastic bottle, I guess..?
Tap water is more heavily regulated than bottled water, and doesn’t fill the oceans and landfills with plastic bottles.
Enforcement by regulators is the key, and regulatory agencies are under attack by…. someone.
It depends very much where you live and the source for that tap water. Tap water in my house is fine, so I don’t mind drinking it if the filter is out, but I can’t drink tap water when I visit my cousin up north because his tap water is well water and I have a heart condition, so it’s bottled all the way.
Over here in NYC, we apparently have amazing tap water thanks to Niagara or something, but if you’re in an area where the pipes haven’t been replaced in over 50 years, it’ll come out literally brown. I’m guessing the brown has to do with rusty old pipes or something, but I’m no pipe expert and I’m not gonna attempt to taste it to find out. Either way, we filter our tap water now (I mean, when it doesn’t come out brown anyway), and boy there’s a noticeable taste difference.
CJ
When it’s comes out brown, it’s not legal in Germany. Don’t know about the US, though. Over here, it’d be the landlord’s job to find out the source and remove it.
I don’t remember enough of this story thread to recall why she would care what Mindy thinks. Aside from being the girl with an unrequited crush/slash roommate of Anna, isn’t Mindy just sort of some random person?
She lied to Mindy and feels guilty about it. It was a “white” lie — she said that she didn’t want to date Mindy “because I’m not ready” when in fact she was quite ready to move on Anna — told to avoid hurting Mindy’s feelings in the moment. But she is afraid that when it gets revealed (as, we know, it must, because she’s binking Mindy’s flatmate) Mindy will be hurt and maybe angry.
140 thoughts on “One bedroom”
Ana Chronistic
AW, DANG!
DarkoNeko
gosh dangit
AGV
Frick!
MIB4u
C-C-C-Combo breaker!
Phil
Tap’s not gonna take any of your shit, anna.
DailyBrad
It occurs to me, I have like zero idea of how old Leslie is suppose to be.
JessWitt
I wanna say 28 or 29.
Beef
You need a PhD to teach at a university right? So it’s unlikely she’s more than a couple of years away from 30 in either direction right?
Schpoonman
Nope. I’ve had instructors who only had Bachelor’s degrees.
HeySo
A Master’s is the formal minimum for a teaching position, though there shouldn’t be any legal limitation that would prevent a university from making exceptions based on their own preferences.
Since DoA dedicatedly bases its university off of Indiana University, we can skip over broader considerations of US universities and simply look at what
that university lists.
Looking at IU’s faculty hiring, they have a Master’s minimum for many positions and even allow tenure-track for such hires. However, looking at the current faculty of the Gender Studies department, I can’t find a single non-PHD in the lot.
Ergo, until Word of Willis says otherwise, the best assumption is that Leslie does in fact have a PHD.
Dark
Leslie got really lucky snagging that position. Teaching a gender studies course is pretty much the only application there is for a gender studies degree.
Lin
Entirely inaccurate. There are people that I know with phds in Gender Studies that are: working in communications and research for legal advocacy organizations, editors of special projects for Slate, running their own businesses, working for the department of justice, running graduate student support for full universities, etc. When I was at a master’s level (I have a PhD now and am a professor), I was hired to coordainte an LGBTQ rights poliitical advocacy group, ran communications for a transnational nonprofit, worked in a non-profit to support homeless kids who were homeless on their own, and worked as a career advisor to college students. There’s a lot of applications for gender studies degrees.
Dark
And… Not a single one of those actually needs, or even really uses, a Gender Studies degree.
But to be honest, most jobs don’t actually care what degree you have from college. My step-mother was an Oceanography Major working in the IT department of Dominion Power. Places will hire anyone with a degree.
Ntrovert60
My daughter is at IU and has been a TA since her second year. At that point, she had not earned enough credits for her MA. She has been teaching first year classes in her subject. I think that is pretty common at R1s across the country. Most people who earn a PhD probably have at least 3 years of teaching experience in this manner before they finish their program.
Lucy Gillam
Most community colleges require a Master’s, but universities often have TAs with only Bachelor’s degrees teaching classes, especially introductory classes like ENG101. That said, a gender studies class? There aren’t usually enough sections to hand out to TAs, so I’m betting Leslie’s an assistant prof, which these days would almost certainly mean a Ph.D.
HeySo
That was the path my own thoughts went down, as I wrote my previous post. Leslie didn’t seem at all like a TA (given her familiarized, confident, relaxed control over the class, as well as her lack of any references towards second parties involved with the course), and even outside of the gender studies department, most of IU’s hiring listings for assistant professors that I came across were PHD minimum. Add in the fact that IU lists quite a few faculty for the department, and narrow niche that the field covers, and any non-graduate degree seemed unlikely. Likewise, her familarity with the campus and control over the class suggests she’s not a [lower degree] substitute for the semester, either.
Matthew Davis
I’ve assumed Leslie is a doctoral student, which means (if it’s anything like my program in English was) she is at least 22. It’s an intro course, which often are what gets pushed off on grad students and adjuncts.
Delavan
PhD student here. I taught as an adjunct for 3 years (at 24-27 yo) with an MA at an upper SUNY lib arts school before entering my PhD program. It wasn’t the norm, but I have another colleague in my current department who did similar @ UMass. Many R1s require advancement to candidacy (completion of master’s coursework + dissertation prospectus) before solo-instructing classes, but not all.
Do we have proof that Leslie is more than an adjunct? If she is on tenure-track, and entered PhD program @ 22, minimum age would be 27-28. If she’s an adjunct, she could just have an MA and be mid-20s as well. However, most likely is 27+.
BBCC
IIRC, word of Willis is she’s 27-28ish with a Ph.D
Lin
Real talk, though, if she was an adjunct, she could also be a 40-something PhD holder. With the shrinking tenure lines and increasing reliance on casualized labor across the academy, adjuncting is no long about age, experience, or degree.
Doctor_Who
I always figured around thirty, but I guess a few years younger is possible. She’s got to have at least a Masters and doesn’t seem inexperienced at her job, so definitely over 25 at least.
HeySo
I definitely pegged her for 30s, myself.
BBCC
I believe Willis said she was in her late 20s, like 27 or 28 or so.
Claire
Yeah I Def thought she was like 40 haha but maybe this is my short packed knowledge coming through
Needfuldoer
Late twenties, early thirties?
jeffepp
Yup, we’re all scared for life.
JessWitt
Scared for life, of life, and by life.
JetstreamGW
Don’t worry, Becky.
Nothing ever changes.
Zaxares
I hate to sound like a cynical old man, but the saying that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is very, very true.
JetstreamGW
I prefer, “High School Never Ends.”
Bowling For Soup, very insightful.
Yumi
I remember back when I was in middle school, I was talking to this girl on AIM (we went to the same school but pretty much only talked on AIM), and I asked her if she had ever heard the phrase, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Her reply was, “no, and that does not make any sense.”
Ethics Gradient
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
emusam
^_^
Needfuldoer
Nothing. Nothing ever changes.
[Read in my lousy Ron Perlman impression]
Shiro
I slept early yesterday and didn’t get in on the comments, but that big shiny eyed look Leslie had broke my heart :c Les honey please love yourself enough to start choosing people who treat you like you actually deserve, okay?
Stephen Bierce
Did Bloomington outsource their water from Flint these days?
Yumi
I was about to make a Flint comment.
But Flint’s water is doing better these days.
Rabid Rabbit
I’m trying very hard not to make any of the obvious and horrible Walkerton comments.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak)
ValdVin
Aww, Leslie misses her lamp (*wink*).
JessWitt
Oh right, Robin stole it! Thanks for the hint.
ValdVin
Or should I say
“aide”“you”, as Robin calls it.JessWitt
Ha! I remember that now!
Whoa it’s been a really long time since we saw Robin. Hope she’s better.
thejeff
She’s still in that parking lot without pants waiting for her gal pal lesbian to come back.
I’m sad that every storyline since then hasn’t ended with a panel of her standing there.
Tacos
Why would you drink water straight from the tap anyways? It usually tastes weird.
Yumi
Why wouldn’t you?
Okay, there are lots of reasons why you wouldn’t, I live in Michigan, I know. But if you live in an area where the water supply is safe– *shrug.* I usually drink tap water. I do live in the same area I grew up in, which helps; I couldn’t drink the tap water at my college because it tasted weird and I was allergic. But most city water I find fine.
Chris Phoenix
https://mytapscore.com/blogs/tips-for-taps/metal-leaching-in-pipes-the-science-behind-lead-in-water
I’ve read in another article that chloramine (a relatively new city-water disinfectant) can leach enough lead out of your faucets to form visible pits.
BarerMender
Faucets don’t have lead in them. Lead is poisonous.
Needfuldoer
Old water supply pipes can contain lead. Some old solder used to join copper pipes together also contains lead. (Modern pipe solder is lead-free.)
CJ
if you still have lead in faucets, you should replace them. The leads comes out because it’s more water solvable then other metals are (yes, metals which are kept in water give off tiny amounts of ions. Always. More so, if the ph is lower or if you have several metal in the same water: the one with the lower redox potential is going to give up more ions and the one with the higher less. That’s why having a lead line between copper lines is a bad idea.)
Deathjavu
Not that you’re wrong about the need to replace them, but…
“The American Water Works Association conducted a national survey to estimate the cost of replacing lead service lines. The average cost per replacement was $3200, with a range of $750 to $16000.” (circa 2004)
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509614/)
Short version: the lead industry lobbied to keep using lead products, primarily paint and pipe, right up until it was outlawed in 1986. So there’s still quite a bit of it around 🙁 The US really got bamboozled on this one, afaik this stopped being a thing in other countries.
I believe a common location is the run from the street to the house, which tends to be in place for a long time and is largely invisible.
Lensipensi
You Americans and you’re weird sense of tap water hygiene ^^. To be fair, GB and the South of Europe ain’t a lot better. But we Northern Europe countrys sure have great tasting tap water which is also safe. And we have bubbly water. Why don’t you guys have bubbly water?
Spocky McSpockface
You mean bubbly water from the tap? That would be awesome.
Savail
Most towns out in the sticks in Texas have at least one store with a water fill-up station, and they get a LOT of use. We finally got running water just to the bath about a year and a half ago. However, we continue using the refillable 5 gallons for anything that isn’t cooking because it doesn’t taste like garbage. Likewise, I lived in a nearby city for around 7 years and never adapted to the water. I’d get stomach aches from drinking tap or getting soda at restaurants (not that that stopped me). For bottled water, I check the source first because there’s a few common ones (Keller, TX, for one) that really mess me up.
As a kid, we’d bring empty milk gallons to my grandmother’s and fill up on her well water because it tasted so much better. Running the tap until it stopped smelling like rotten eggs always sucked when you couldn’t smell half the time.
Agemegos
I always do. It’s simple and direct. And very cheap. And I live in a country where the tap water is safe to drink. Why would I not?
DailyBrad
I always use my filter. Honestly, I suspect a big part of the benefit is it’s in my fridge, so the water’s just colder than I get from the tap, anyhow, but it does seem to influence the flavor a bit.
Xenocide
Depends where you are. Even just in different parts of the UK I’ve found that tap water varies quite a lot in taste.
Deanatay
This is VERY true. The town I live in has TERRIBLE water, always tastes metallic and chemical-y, but a town 10 minutes away is fine, I drink their tap water all the time.
Inahc
Yeah, it’s really variable around here too. Seems like every building has a different flavour… Which actually might be the case, since our water changed a lot when they replaced the pipes – it tasted like plastic for years :/ although they did say it was still safe to drink. It’s back to being fairly neutral now – much better than the gross taste at one friend’s house.
Keulen
I almost always drink tap water, bottled water tastes a bit weird to me.
nobilis
I always drink tap water.
Of course, it depends on where you are, whether the tap water is safe, chlorine free, and how it tastes.
I’ve been to places in Scandinavia where the tap water is delicious.
Mishyana
The FDA regulates bottled water, and the EPA regulates tap water. Depending on state-to-state regulations, tap water can actually be more heavily regulated than bottled, though Flint in my home state of MI puts paid to the notion of that always being a useful metric. On average though, tap is just as regulated as bottled, so really the only advantage to bottled water is… you get to make another empty plastic bottle, I guess..?
Deathjavu
Flint specifically occurred because the government turned over the water to private businesses, then stopped enforcing regulations.
The safety controls tend to be pretty good when they’re actually enforced. A small distinction, but definitely worth making.
Bobo Bolinski
Tap water is more heavily regulated than bottled water, and doesn’t fill the oceans and landfills with plastic bottles.
Enforcement by regulators is the key, and regulatory agencies are under attack by…. someone.
noiob
depends strongly on where you live. some places have grest tap water. also here in Germany tap water is regulated stricter than bottled water so
BBCC
It depends very much where you live and the source for that tap water. Tap water in my house is fine, so I don’t mind drinking it if the filter is out, but I can’t drink tap water when I visit my cousin up north because his tap water is well water and I have a heart condition, so it’s bottled all the way.
J
Over here in NYC, we apparently have amazing tap water thanks to Niagara or something, but if you’re in an area where the pipes haven’t been replaced in over 50 years, it’ll come out literally brown. I’m guessing the brown has to do with rusty old pipes or something, but I’m no pipe expert and I’m not gonna attempt to taste it to find out. Either way, we filter our tap water now (I mean, when it doesn’t come out brown anyway), and boy there’s a noticeable taste difference.
CJ
When it’s comes out brown, it’s not legal in Germany. Don’t know about the US, though. Over here, it’d be the landlord’s job to find out the source and remove it.
Dana
Adulthood has so much “Ah dang!” in it, amirite?
Abel Undercity
I could do with a little less “Ah dang!”, to be honest.
Dave
I don’t remember enough of this story thread to recall why she would care what Mindy thinks. Aside from being the girl with an unrequited crush/slash roommate of Anna, isn’t Mindy just sort of some random person?
Agemegos
She lied to Mindy and feels guilty about it. It was a “white” lie — she said that she didn’t want to date Mindy “because I’m not ready” when in fact she was quite ready to move on Anna — told to avoid hurting Mindy’s feelings in the moment. But she is afraid that when it gets revealed (as, we know, it must, because she’s binking Mindy’s flatmate) Mindy will be hurt and maybe angry.