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Let me elaborate a bit:
I talked to the recruiter. Because the economy has turned to mud over the last decade, a commission has gone from being a sure thing for a BA to insanely competitive. A decade ago there was no GPA requirement; today the GPA requirement for almost all fields is 3.0 and the average GPA for an officer candidacy is 3.5-3.7, depending on branch. When I transferred to UMB, my GPA was wiped, and since I brought with me all my GE courses, all the low hanging fruit was picked and most of what remained were extremely difficult courses in Ancient Greek (which is more complex and difficult to learn than Japanese, and my foreign language ability is below-average).
I mentioned the incident where I was attacked without provocation by UMB campus police (and if you think I'm full of it go watch the John Kerry video again). After that incident, since I was barred from campus, I told my parents to call in and have me signed up for courses. My father didn't listen to my instructions or exp because he CBF, and CBF doing it, either, so he asked my airheaded, inept brother to do it for him. Aaron, who can be very charismatic in sort of an unassuming way (stark contrast to my extraordinary intensity) enrolled me for one course I didn't actually want to take (and couldn't, because it was on campus) and gave my parents a lot of other misinformation. My parents decided to use the entire occasion to blackmail me into admitting I had autism (refusing to cooperate further unless I proceeded on a disability basis).
The real reason for this obsession with a disability approach is my father had previously sued not one, but two, state governments (and lost badly, losing both jobs and over $200,000 on legal fees in the process) claiming he was discriminated against because he was a blindey (no, he's just an asshole) and ever since became obsessed with disability law. When I finally caved in and did it his way, in a desperate attempt to resolve the situation somehow, the DoE attorney (everyone loves those guys, you know), gave her usual self-righteous, "I'm a good person, you're a good person, I won't help you because there's nothing in it for me," shtick and said that disability law completely didn't apply, my father completely refused to internalize this and simply refused to cooperate further. As a result of this, I was slapped with a financial hold (delaying the graduation for nearly a year while it was sorted out), and the timeframe to take the courses (before matriculation) was precluded.
There is no GPA requirement for MS/MA holders. I still have the offer from UC sitting on my desk in a folder. Officially, I start class in mid-January; in reality, I've made no preparations to do so, because my parents (who initially suggested the idea), have said they will cut off financial support if I attempt to do so. Their reasons here are not entirely irrational: it is true the degree from UC is insanely expensive ($90k) and that I already distrust and despise the UC admin whom I have never met in the flesh, based on my dealings by email (the chair of the program is one of those man-hating feminists who refuses to consider men for doctoral programs, who get a free ride, meaning I am literally paying their tuition). The fact that the scholarship UC offered isn't really a scholarship at all but more like a CompUSA-style "mail-in rebate" ($3k off $15k/yr tuition if a certain GPA is maintained, can't be paid out as cash for living expenses) makes me more suspicious.
And I have an extremely bad history with the educational system; I have a long history of clashes with professors, administrators, and other students. You can think it is megalomanical or self-serving to say so, but the same "intelligent and independent minded" nature you observe is a terrible catalyst for conflict, especially given the realities of education these days. A lot of very destructive sorts began over literally nothing; e.g., the Package Wars, where a fat, spiteful campus landlady bitch and her man-hating lesbian subordinate began harassing me without provocation because the former was jealous I was running a moderately successful eBay business and frustrated by her sexual attraction to me, so she bunked me with someone who had Downs (literally) and started waylaying and throwing away my mail. This was one of several antagonistic relationships that contributed to my nervous breakdown during my sophomore year.
With this in mind, I had decided that, as React said, I would not live alone in Cincinnati. Rent is very, very cheap there, and I have made at least one friend interested in living with me - I have also decided to never meet with univ administration alone (because they are cowards, they are much more likely to bully one student alone than if a friendly individual is in the room, even if that individual has no power at all). Ohio also has a large population of PWT girls to the south, and it was my intention to buy one and have it live with me, something easily affordable with even a small amount of money due to the abundance of cheap rentable townhouses in Cinn and my remarkable economy; as petty as it sounds I honestly feel having a sexual outlet and someone, even a moron, being with me would help me find more motivation in daily life. For many reasons, I'm not interested in a real relationship.
A history of mental illness is a hard disqualifier for military service. In an effort to make the argument that I'm autistic, my parents created a gross proliferation of documentation about my psychosis during the nervous breakdown.
When I was finally arrested for, well, being crazy, due to my nervous breakdown, they made the decision to have me put in the psych ward and signed me up for a "mental health court". This special court, a recent novelty, was run by a handful of megalomanical female attorneys who were obsessed with building it into a self-aggrandizing base of power. They valued me in particular because I was the first and only person to get sucked into this who wasn't a poor urban black. The same attorney who led this thing busied herself harassing the SF Board of Supervisors to build a ramp up to the Supervisor's rostrum, at a cost of several million dollars in construction and millions more in legal fees, because she wanted to make it so "anyone can ascend to the Supervisor's rostrum" (har har). The Board protested not because no disabled person had ever attempted to physically ascend to the rostrum and it was possible to address the board without rebuilding the entire room. And it was this same person who eventually got fed up with being spam-called by my parents at their own initiative and arguing with her and other workers there about what they thought I would or would not do (my parents insisting I be put on an injectable medication that wasn't covered by the state and cost $2,000 a dose and the social workers saying they were being stupid). The social workers and lawyers tired of my parents' unreasonableness (complaining of their long, unreasonable phone calls) and in consequence stopped talking to me either.
The justification for mental health court was that it would purge the criminal record, but a local employer in SF somehow got a copy anyway. The crazy thing is that all the crimes were minor and could have been dismissed in court (in fact, by a stroke of remarkable coincidence, none of the victims could be found; one of them was an undercover federal agent who was humiliated he was seriously injured by a hysterical nerd, one of them was a Japanese exchange student who had gone home, and the last was some lowlife who couldn't be found). My parents had created a much greater proliferation of the record than necessary because of their obdurate insistence that I admit I was autistic. After they were told that the expungement had not been effective, something I knew because I actually found the letter from the sheriff's office on the office manager's desk when she was out of town, as with the DoE attorney, they refused to internalize the fact no matter how many times they were told.
It had in fact been their crazy behavior that precipitated the nervous breakdown in the first place - being unreliable and unsupportive with matters big and small. The same parents who happily forked over $500 so I could visit Maryland on a whim refused to pay for books in my first semester, for absolutely no reason, and only did so after I started smashing things in the dorm room, forcing them to pay for breakage. They were unsupportive when I was the object of "Fatal Attraction" from that girl I've previously mentioned, refusing to recognize that something was happening at all, insisting anything that wasn't as it should was my fault, then making me even more suspicious and paranoid when they admitted they'd met with her family but refusing to talk about what exactly had been said (although I know that they had because they mentioned things only they would know that I had never told them). I still haven't gotten the whole story out of them and I stopped trying a long time ago. At one point they changed the locks on the house, then dropped me off in front of the house and had me sit there for TWO HOURS with the expectation I let myself in. This may seem like an effort to make a point, but in reality, this is typical of my 'mothers' behavior, she does things that are spiteful or destructive seemingly without realizing it; my father was furious and she claimed she simply forgot the locks had been changed to keep me out. They denied me passage home to Sacramento to my job there (I cannot drive and the job required a car ride from Amtrak to the employer), again, trying to blackmail me into admitting I was autistic, insisting I wouldn't get fired. Of course as I had warned (as my employer had warned me), since I didn't show up, I got fired, and my parents blamed my lack of social skills, not that I didn't show up because of their decision to be uncooperative. There were a long string of other anecdotes during this period of them doing things they were told not to do, doing things then changing their story repeatedly, or stubbornly refusing to help me with situations, but I've cited enough.
The grand irony is that for over a decade my parents insisted I lie to everyone and insist my father wasn't losing his vision, because he was worried about losing his medical license. Even after he ceased to practice medicine, he refused to use a white cane (causing a series of problematic, dangerous and humorous incidents, such as walking into a seeing eye dog and its owner, "I'm blind you asshole!" "So am I!"). In the convo the other day I pointed out the hypocrisy they had tried to cover up my father's disability to protect his life but decided to make a point of shouting mine from the rooftops no matter how much damage to my life this did. Response: "That's different, Ethan."
In that same convo, I finally bullied them (having learned long ago they are immune to reason) into telling me the whole story about the financial condition of the house; it has a mortgage of about $20k (with a book price about $200k, this puts it well above water) and they are "undecided" how to divide it between my brother and I. CA has no inheritance tax, but it does have capital gains tax, so if the house was sold and split, the yield would be only a tiny fraction of the balance. My parents are in good health and it may take them a good 30 years to finally die. When one dies, I plan on tormenting the other until it dies of sheer stress. Nothing in my life gives me a reason to feel guilty about this.
It is likely they will give Aaron the lion's share of the estate, because they love him and despise me.
The reason they get along with Aaron is that he is a son after their own heart; very much a born nobody; he is, like my father and uncle, an intelligent but witless and ineffectual individual driven by extremely intense insecurity, a goody-two-shoes who lets the bad guys win because of his inability to work in moral grey areas (the same reason that my father got canned and that my uncle, like my brother, washed out of politics). His prissy nature and political ambitions didn't stop him from putting down "tweaking" as one of his "Hobbies" on the same Facebook that showed several prominent CA politicians and up-and-comers as friends, nor from contributing a video of himself participating in a frat party orgy to a prominent porn site.
Aaron graduated from UCLA despite a poor history in high school, due to a lot of help from my parents and an application letter consisting of an unflattering story about me. The story, written mostly by my parents, drew from places and situations in real life but the story itself was pure fiction and enormously insulting, portraying me as a "Rain Man"-type character and pleading Aaron be admitted on the basis of domestic difficulties. After he graduated, from UCLA, because he is an ineffective and disagreeable individual, he was unable to secure long-term gainful employment.
He worked at a statistical research firm for a week, on the strength of his alma mater and the internships my parents had provided for him, before getting canned for being incompetent. On his LinkedIn, he lied and said he was still employed. My parents' response when I pointed this out (they don't like when I say honestly that I plan on lying): "Well, Ethan, that seems like the kind of job you could do well." "I live in a city with seven colleges and don't have a degree from UCLA."
I lied on the recruitment form (I am not stupid, I know this is a HUGE no-no), because I simply didn't have a choice. Getting a commission is is contingent of my doing so amazing on their exam that they waive the GPA entirely (it is certain I can take a top score, whether that will translate into a waiver is questionable). And mental health history (ty parents) would apply whether I went for a commission or enlisted. If found out I would certainly be discharged and quite possibly be docked pay or even spend time in the brig.
So, that's that. Total impasse. People give me flak about living off my parents but the ironic reality is that the more they have wreaked havoc on my life, the more dependent I have become on them. The only other option is menial jobs and that is the road to nowhere that I refuse to take and would sooner die.
Aestu of Bleeding Hollow... Nihilism is a copout.
Last edited by Aestu on Sat Dec 22, 2012 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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