[Forgive the rant, please, but I have fury that demands an outlet. This will likely be long, convoluted, and spanning a small myriad of events before my final point is made.]

Humans are dillweeds. For the most part, I love them in a roundabout, "gawsh, you're just so stupid it's almost cute!" way... but sometimes they do things that push me past the point of charitable, forgiving, friendly feelings, and it makes me willing to gut the next person who makes my day one iota less convenient and operational. Considering I'm also relatively able to gut people, and considering it's notably difficult to change my mind about something once I've decided to consciously take drastic actions, it really isn't a good idea to p1ss me off.

I was raised by a severely type-A control freak single mother; I'm her only offspring. She's one of the most zealous (and rather hypocritical) fundamentalist Christians I've ever met, and through her overbearing influences, I didn't have internet access until four years ago.
20 years of living with her, dealing with her manipulations, and learning how to dodge her anger without ripping her face off... that makes for a very patient, tolerant, emotionally self-controlled kid. I am so intensely, incredibly hard to p1ss off, that up until you cross a fundamentally intolerable line with your actions, you can repeat the same annoying actions as many times as you like, and it won't get a rise from me. Stupid little things are just that: stupid and little; they aren't worth getting upset or having an interpersonal conflict.
That being said... you only have to cross that hard-to-reach line one time, and once you do, you completely lose my respect, you forbid the possibility of me ever trusting or even liking you, and you dramatically increase the possibility of me doing you severe emotional and/or physical harm.
I believe in a policy of "preemptive retaliation:" if you cross the line, I respond with severely excessive force, sufficient to motivate you never to cross the line again. In this process, I probably convince you that I'm an absolute b*tch, and of course that's fine with me, since at that point I have no respect for you or your thoughts and feelings.
Example: You're a 6-year-old I'm babysitting. You've been pestering me all day, poking me in the shoulder while I'm trying to do some homework, just generally being a dumb kid. Okay, that's fine, not worth bothering.
Then you cross a line: you decide to be a f*cktard and bite me.
Ouch.

Okay, kiddo, that wasn't cool.
I bite you back, and I draw blood. You start squealing; I drag you to the kitchen and clean the wound, give you a band-aid.
You wanna' bite me again, you little cuss? You wanna' whine to your mommy about how mean I am? Just try it, see what you get.

[That event is a real occurrence; she tattled to her parents. They gave me a raise, and she got into trouble for being rude to me. Apparently the biting wasn't a new thing, but it stopped after she'd seen blood.]


Okay, so let it be established that over time I have developed a general tendency to be nice, patient, and tolerant with even the most ridiculously idiotic people and actions. I only really retaliate to things that are dangerous, harmful in a direct way to myself or others, or a fundamental violation of personal property, privacy, and security. It's not that I'm a pushover... I just don't consider every little annoyance to be worth getting worked up enough to have a conflict over it.


Now to the main event:

I've been working on a project for woods/structures class; it's a really big printed sheet of some highly detailed, complex drawings. I've been on this project for about two weeks, with no significant break during that time.
I know what I'm doing, and I'm good at it, but there are literally hundreds of tiny, highly important factors that I can't afford to miss or neglect.
Summary: Big project, lots of time commitment, kicking my a$$.

Tuesday 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM = one hour window to submit it in person to the professor.

Monday evening, 6 - 10 = the only opportunity to get it plotted and printed... along with the other 59 students in my class, in a lab with 30 computers and ONE plotter.

Importance = determines if I do or do not pass this frakking course; this is the only time in my life that a grade has depended exclusively on my success in a single project.

Me = terrified and stressed, ranging anywhere from "moderately nervy" to "scared sh*tless" over the course of two weeks.


Monday night, I arrive at print lab before it opens. I open my file, already 89% done...

...to discover that at some point, it decided not to shut down correctly, so the file ate itself. The latest possible backup of the file is in a state of roughly 10% completion.
I have four hours. It took me six hours collectively to get the drawing to where it had been, the first time, not counting time spent on research and calculations.
Commence small-panic.
Okey-dokey, kiddo, focus...

I manage to get it to about 70% completion by the time the deadline arrives for the last possible plot of the night. Of that 70%, there are about thirty things that are severely messed up because of file errors, which I can't fix in time to plot.
I plot it anyway. Better a sh*tty submission than no submission, neh?
It plots; I take it up to studio and trim the edges. I go home, stay up until 4AM working on a project for another class, and then set my alarm for a ridiculously early wake up, just to make sure I get it submitted on time.

For the first time in my life, I set the alarm clock for PM instead of AM. I have no idea how I missed it, since I triple-checked it.

I wake up at 11 the next day. Time for another small-panic.
I zip up to the prof's office, tell her what has happened. Saintly person that she is, she tells me not to have a nervous breakdown... just fix the drawing as much as I can, and turn it in Thursday morning at the latest.

That night, I work my arse off. I get the sheet revised, back to where it was pre-crash, completed. It's even pretty.
Wednesday, I re-print for $5, trim it, and store it in my studio workstation among my tools and supplies. My name is all over it, and it is tagged "do not disturb". The weather has involved lotsa' rain lately, so I figure, keep it in studio, I don't risk it getting wet, blown away, or crumpled. The custodial crew does its rounds through studio, leaves and locks the doors behind them. I turn off lights and make double-sure the place is locked, and then I leave, too.

Fast-forward to this morning:

I get up ridiculously early again, walk up to studio. 8 AM Thursday.
The lights inside are on.
The doors are unlocked.
There is no studio class on Thursday. I am the only person who uses my workstation. To my knowledge, I have no enemies.
The sheet is for a project that everybody but me has already submitted; my drawing is useless to everybody but me.
Third small-panic in as many days: my drawing is gone.
Not my drafting equipment (which isn't cheap), not my supplies and raw materials, not any of the much more monetarily valuable items in the room...

...no, just my drawing sheet.


I tell my saint-professor; she says to notify the studio profs by e-mail. She will personally keep an eye open for anybody attempting to use my drawing as theirs, with names whited-out and re-written.

I gotta' say... I think my capacity for charity has just diminished by a few significant figures.

I yearn to know who decided to be a dillweed; I look forward to flaying them and using their parched hide as vellum for my next print-out.

*sigh*
I really hope by the end of the day that that statement diminishes to an exaggeration and not a genuine desire. >_<
I don't like feeling this hateful toward another human being, but at the moment, I don't think I'm entirely capable of viewing the perpetrator as human. Seriously, who does that ****?!


[/endrant]

Wow. Your anger and panic? Totally justified. I would want to rip whoever did that a new one.

Thank you for your sympathy.
:-/
Sometimes, it's almost as important in a situation like this to feel vindicated and supported as it is to get results in solving the problem.
My studio professor has already forwarded my carefully-worded, hyper-polite complaint registration email to everybody who has a key to the studio.
The odds of actually seeing an end to this, in terms of identifying a thief, are virtually nonexistent if the thief doesn't attempt to use my drawing... but I can still fantasize about bloody vengeance, y'know? ^_^

Harsh.

Who else knew that you left the drawing in the studio? If no one, they probably didn't know it was yours, and took it just because. Who'd do that? Somebody who has nothing to do w/ ur faculty, someone who wouldn't know what it actually is...

Who would *have* to go to the studio between late evening and 8 AM in the morning? Seems like a pretty tight time frame. Are there any security cameras around?

Did you ask the custodians who locked the door about who could have possibly done this (or rather, how you can recover your drawing). Just make sure you sound stricken w/ grief, not angry. It'll work if you're pretty enough.

Also, WHO ARE THE SUSPECTS?

It's especially bad because you went through so much **** with this thing already. I'm really sorry. Thankfully you have a reasonable professor.

You bit a kid

It worked.

And the kid stopped biting people..

I want to read this post, but I can't because I have a studio project due tomorrow morning and it will a) waste time and b) stress me out.

yeah, that was stressful just reading this. cant imagine having to deal with that.

Just imagine if on top of all that, your teacher was a douche

If my teacher was a douche about it, the only course of action would have been to drop the course, since my grade depends on this assignment.

Guh. I'm past intending to inflict bodily harm, but I don't think I'd be above stealing the perpetrator's laptop battery and adaptor, given the opportunity. Mess with my grade? Good luck finishing ANY class this semester, dipsh*t.



The drawing had my name on it in two places printed, as well as a post-it with my name and a request to leave it undisturbed. It was sitting at my personal workstation, which nobody else in studio uses, among my belongings (supplies worth a collective $60-isch).

The only majors who use this building are Child Development, Architecture, Int. Design, and Fashion Design/Merchandising. Every single studio in the building has locks and is accessible only to students and profs with keys. Keys are only issued to those in the class, and failure to return the original, uncopied key results in a significant damage to your grade and/or school record, since it suggests that you've arranged for a way for supplies to be stolen.

Summary: The only way they would fail to identify what it was and that it belonged to me would be if they were completely English-illiterate and/or blind... and why on Earth would a blind or illiterate person take a drawing... and how would they even get into the studio?

No security cameras anywhere; most pre-due date nights there are people burning midnight oil in studio, to get models built and all such... but last night wasn't a night for ANYBODY to need to be in studio, period.

I left AFTER the custodians (all of them) left. They take off pretty early, since the people who need studio access are all able to get in with their own personal keys.
It would be useless to ask around. Anybody who would take a drawing they can't use has pretty obvious intent to cause trouble for the drawing's rightful owner; the individual isn't going to announce it to the world. That's worthy of expulsion, as it's a severe violation of studio culture (the rules and policies of the building).
A pretty face isn't going to get anybody to volunteer for expulsion. The janitorial staff wouldn't know anything, anyway, and I'm friends-in-passing with all of them.

I didn't announce it to anybody except possibly Free that I'd left it in studio. He doesn't have access, and he was with me literally the entire night. Also, he's not a dillweed. (You can argue that if you want, but remember that none of you have encountered him in person at any time in the past year. XD)

Suspects? That's the problem... I could qualify it as "everybody with a key to the studio", but I seriously don't know anybody who'd have a vendetta against me sufficient to fu*k me over like this.
I also don't know anybody so very willing to p*ss me off.

Guh. It just... it's a clusterf*ck. The only reason to steal it is to injure me. As far as I know, nobody hates me like that; I'm close friends with most of the kids in my studio.


Why, yes, I bit a kid. The kid bit me. I'd do the same thing if it was a dog. *shrug*
If somebody hurts you for their own pleasure, instruct them forcibly in empathy to the injury they inflicted, and they become dramatically less likely to hurt you again in such a manner. If they aren't aware that it hurts, they will learn and understand immediately why that course of action is unacceptable. It's not vengeance; it's preventing that individual developing a habit of using that unacceptable action as a technique for manipulation and derivation of personal pleasure. It's not selfish; it's service to everybody who comes in contact with that person, and it's service to the person themselves, as is any lesson. It just happens that some lessons demand a measure of suffering in order to hit home.

And yeah, that is exactly how I view it, and I consider this not only justification but motivation and compulsion for any action I take in retaliation to somebody else crossing the boundaries of damaging what I consider my (or another person's) property and/or safety.

[/I]People. It's in our nature to cheat the system, avoid having to do work when we can take other people's work and call it our own. I'm steadily disbelieving in dichotomy of good/evil ("Good is a point of view, Anakin") but I really think altruism is something taught and is not in our nature. If we can get away with lying, cheating, stealing, what have you, we will try it. We're a ****ed up species.

You were the victim of an attempted plagiarist. If s/he is caught most likely s/he will be expelled from the university. Universities do not tolerate plagiarism and cheating at all. It damages their credibility. So that's something to look forward to, hopefully.

Not really. A lot of universities talk a good talk about plagiarism but in practice they tend to be extremely lenient.

At my school it's a 0 on the assignment the first time, an F in the course a second time, IIRC.

Yes, in a philosophy class we tested this, because we knew our teacher would get a kick out of it. 3 of us turned in completely plagiarized papers and it turned out that the whole system they submit all that crap to, to be tested for plagiarism was completely fictional. Our teacher recognized what we had done because he knew the papers we copied and he laughed about it because the subject of the essay was "How right and wrong are subjective." We all got A's.

That isn't just plagiarism though, when you think about it. It is outright theft. (Referring to the OP)

I can guarantee it isn't. Even if a professor has the time and will to go through all of the red tape, the entire process will get derailed the second the precious little snowflake gets parents involved or invokes the ADA.

Heh... hate to disappoint, Jon'C, but our university... or at least the college of applied sciences and arts... takes plagiarism extremely seriously. In the class ahead of mine, I know at least three incidences of expulsion in people I know personally, all resulting from plagiarism attempts.
I've been in the hallway right outside the conference room, able to hear the profs laying it into the people responsible.
I can't begin to describe how atypically stringent the school of architecture is, in terms of the standards it sets for student behaviour and performance in class. Within the class, we're an extremely tightly-knit community, almost familial, and there is a massive amount of trust between the lot of us, born of shared torments and stresses, and reinforced by a system that guarantees any rule-breaking deviants and untrustworthy types aren't going to be tolerated longer than it takes to say "Fort Ticonderoga".
The director of the department is a former chancellor of the university. He can pretty much tell Snowflake's parents to go screw themselves and the horses in on which they rode.
It's a public university in the poorest part of the state. In general, Snowflake's parents aren't rich enough to have the authority to countermand an expulsion.


The illogical problem for the thief: the project was due two days before it was stolen. This professor never repeats the same assignment, so stealing the sheet is, on the part of the thief, an utterly useless action and an unnecessary risk of expulsion and criminal charges. Either they are some incredible flavour of idiot not to realize this, or they really just want to make me miserable that badly. *shrug*

At this point, I'm past wanting blood.
Frankly, I don't really WANT to know who did it, because right now, I have considerable fondness and respect for the majority of my classmates and professors. I forgive easily enough, but any supposed friend of mine who would risk my career (grade-determining project in a necessary course in a major that is designed to destroy your GPA if you fail even one class) has exacted on me a betrayal and disrespect too extreme to ever receive from me more courtesy than it takes to restrain myself from spitting on him/her. This is just too stupid, too malicious for me to believe that any of these people would have done it, and I just don't want to believe that any of them could have done it. I don't like thinking ill of people, and I don't like feeling anger toward them. Anger feels too... I dunno'... indulgent. Lacking in self-control. I feel it would put me on the level of the thief, as though getting and staying angry would increase the degree to which I am a victim in this situation.
It's bad enough that I'm out some cash, that I've been subjected to unreasonable stress, that my property has been stolen, and that my security in the studio environment has been violated. It's bad enough that my grade and permanent records have been threatened. I'm not going to let this git push me outside the boundaries of my emotional self-control and willingness to feel victimized. If I let myself continue to burn up over this, he/she wins and continues to win.

*talking as much to myself as to any audience present, because sometimes even I need a little convincing*


:-/
I think I have been stripped semipermanently of my capacity to be vindictive. I can't really consider that a bad thing, in the absolute sense, but it'd be damn satisfying right now to be able to comfortably envision ugly tortures on my unnamed nemesis. I have an active imagination; I could come up with some things to make Lovecraft cringe, I think... but the initial p*ssed-offness being worn out by now, I just don't have the emotional energy to maintain a spirit of wrath or vengeance. I'm just so dang tired right now. >_<
I love human beings; I think they're collectively incredibly stupid and mutually-misguiding, but I see so much redeeming value in each person on an individual basis. It just really bites hard when somebody does something so meaninglessly cruel, with no personal gain to be had beyond knowing they've given me a hard time.
I'm a frakking travel agent for guilt trips. If there is a single vindictive bone in my body, then it's holding onto the hope that I can lay a royal tearjerker trip on the thief. Making somebody feel like a complete sh*t is so much more effective than other more direct assaults. :-/
I think I'd feel worse for being a manipulative b*tch about everything, even if it is justifiable enough.

This is a weird notion for me- if the crime had been against Free or anybody else emotionally close to me, I would still be 100% on the warpath. When it's just against me, I can regain the perspective of "hey, whoever did it is an ******, but they're still a human being, and gouging their eyes out and using their skull as a drinking vessel is still a really nasty thing to do...."

Meh. I'm just a little carpenter bee kinda' person: I bluff and buzz and rush at you, but I only sting if you corner me, force my hand, or screw with my favourite people. Up until that point, I'm downright chipper, cute, and snuggly, albeit mildly annoying. Right now, the initial problem has been solved (getting project submitted to be graded), so I have time to rest and the luxury of forgiveness.

Yeah... I reeeeally don't want to know who did it. I have a feeling that would just re-upset me. Guhhh.


[Thank you, everybody, for your sympathies, support, and participation in this thread. It helps massively to have my complaints heard, even by people who are relatively strangers to me. If it helps, I don't whinge and sook this badly very often at all; it takes a situation at least as extreme as this to bring out the whiny rant-maker in me. One of the reasons Free likes being around me is the great difficulty involved in upsetting me enough to make me less-smiley. One of the reasons I like being around him is that he doesn't seem to find my perpetual cheer annoying. :psyduck:]

Maybe they did it because you were a jerk to them at a party two years ago.

There's actually relatively little red tape here... I've seen it happen a few times before. In those cases the students usually just accept the 0 and don't think there's any way to fight it.

I don't party, and (to the best of my awareness) I'm not a jerk to anybody.

Sounds like a little party would do you good, actually.

If the student just gets a 0, that's the professor avoiding red tape and dealing with the problem himself. If it goes to the dean and he decides to give a 0, that's relatively little red tape.

With everything I know and have heard, it's the former. And that's barely a punishment at all.

I'm friendly and gregarious among the handful of people I consider my best buddies, and I'm cheerful and pleasant with my classmates and colleagues... but I'm still an introvert. Parties are miserable things. I only attend them for dancing purposes, because dancing is fun... and once the alcohol comes out, the drunks start dancing, the dancers start drinking, and I leave, because it stops being fun.
I assure you, a party would increase my personal stress, not relieve it. I have plenty outlets for stress- books, games, piano, Free, any craft materials I can access... *shrug*

Social interaction with masses of inebriated IRL strangers isn't really my idea of fun.

That's because you're not drunk.

First off, what you're going through sucks, Estelore, and hope it all works out well enough and your stress dies down. But I really got to post about this:

Holy cow, you bit a kid!

I don't care if he "deserved it" or if "it worked" -- you could threaten to lob off his head too and I bet he'd stop biting people too for the same reason: fear. Yes, the kid was obviously acting bad by biting, but that only treated the symptom of his issue at best. I'm more appalled that the parents approved of you biting their kid, though!

Regardless of anything else, I think we can all agree that we shouldn't get on your bad side. o_o

Or at least not bite her.

Or steal her work

I've solved it. The culprit is a six year old kid with a bite mark on her arm.

Gebohq, for starters... the kid is my cousin. She isn't afraid of me, but she respects me (she's quite a bit older now).

My views on raising children and cultivating approvable behaviours are much the same as my views on raising and training polite and respectful dogs.

The dog... the child, in this case... inherently WOULD do what you want, if you make your requirements clear. However, if you fail to imply an incentive (or consequence), then the dog/child doesn't really grasp that this is what you want, and assumes it's just a suggestion.
When the dog/child engages in unapproved behaviours... biting, for instance... and you do something to encourage it, like getting upset or excited, or like picking them up (as so many people do with their ankle-biting chihuahuas), then you teach the biting child/dog that if it performs that action, it will be rewarded with attention and physical contact.

"No, stop that. Don't bite people."
Seriously, these are just words. They don't imply a consequence, and they don't even sufficiently convey displeasure.
Biting back makes the biter aware of the results of his/her own actions; it teaches the biter empathy to the people he/she bites. It implies a direct association between the act of biting and the sensation of your displeasure made manifest.

In my experience with both dogs and children, the dog/child will have the most respect (and in the long term, love) for the person who is willing to discipline them directly (beyond just words, which are effectively lacking in meaning and consequence) and not for the person who shows them tenderness and kisses even when they're being a little biting git.

Mollycoddling as a way to avoid looking like the villain is a disservice to the one you are raising, and it will lose their respect for you and their trust in you, because you don't require them to meet your standards. Setting clear standards, enforcing them, and making it clear what you want them to do... that's how you maintain their trust and respect, and it's how you help them develop into people/dogs who can be trusted and respected.

Scale it up to a german shepherd puppy instead of a chihuahua... if I let that puppy bite people in his formative years, and I coo and dote on him, call it cute, and encourage that behaviour in everything I do... then instead of a yippy little ankle-nipper, when that puppy grows up I will have a large and dangerous creature who can't be trusted around anybody, and who won't obey me when I tell him to stop biting.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; make a dog yelp once, and you'll never have to go through the agony of being forced by law to euthanize it because it attacked somebody's little kid. Make a little biter-kid cry once, and you'll never have to use more severe reprimands, because the kid will have learned to recognize when it has done something unacceptable.


This is how I was raised. I'm an incredibly polite, respectful, pleasant, earnest, trustworthy person. I am a straight-A student, piano instructor, architecture major, and member of the uni honours programme. I never had a "stupid rebellious self-destructive teenager" phase, because by the time I was a teen, I already recognized what I could and could not do short of incurring my parents' displeasure... and in the case of my father, he was only ever displeased when my actions were dangerous, rude, or blatantly disrespectful or unkind to other people. He didn't get worked up over stupid things. He's one of the three people in the world I genuinely trust.

*shrug* I know this offends some sensibilities, but it really has been the prevailing mode of thought and child-rearing in this part of the world, for the past couple generations. As far as I'm concerned, it's all but ideal, so I'm fine with ruffling a few feathers, because as far as I can tell, it works and doesn't leave any unnecessary damages.

Wow. You bit a six year old child hard enough to draw blood. I wouldn't do that to my dogs let alone child. However, that or your rationalization for it aren't even the most shocking parts of this. The fact that the child's parents approved of this is even worse. Sure, I understand the whole thing about consequences but I think a different set of consequences would have been more appropriate.

I never said that disipline was a bad thing. I agree with your intentions, but not with your methods. I won't claim to know what's best for a dog, but a child will (under healthy circumstances) eventually grow up to understand more than punishment, and using violence in that manner is teaching them that violence is acceptable (you've just taught them that violence against someone with more authority will be given violence in return that will hurt). There are other methods that could have potentially resolved that issue (a time out, where they are being denied attention, for instance).

Whenever I was punished, what hit me the most was understanding that my parents didn't approve. The few times they used physical means, I immediately understood it as them simply losing their patience and resorting to using their natural authority (being bigger) instead of their adult authority (knowing what was best for me), and it was not a practice they approved of using.

We all have gone through some abuse (and it needn't be just physical I realize), and we can all come out of it still relatively healthy human beings, but it doesn't mean it should be acceptable.

EDIT: Also, what Wookie said. It's pretty amazing when I can agree with him.

I would have bit the kid back, for the record

I have to agree (with Geb et al). I understand the sentiment of teaching the kid what it feels like to keep them from doing it, but there's far less... brutal ways of doing that. Not to mention, verbal warnings CAN work in many children, especially if followed with traditional punishments like time outs, etc.

I mean, really, if that kid poked your eye out (on purpose), would you go back and poke their eye out? Where are you going to draw the line? Even if you wanted to go the physical route, is there something terribly wrong with simply spanking the kid? It sure seemed to work with millions of other kids!

NOM NOM NOM

Yeah, my dad had different ways to make me feel bad. Never had to raise a hand at me. Also, going through your teens without a rebellious phase whatsoever sounds strange.

It doesn't just have to do with accepting authority, it's far more than that. It's discovering your own identity by doing things a different way than your parents did, to question their ideals and methods just so you can decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong about them.

It's more than possible to accomplish all those things without being annoying about it.

You mean these people just plagerized verbatim? If so, that would be awfully dumb.

Are we talking about essays.papers or code?

You really sound like you could use the self-destructive rebellious teenager party years right now. You could leave out the self-destructive, if you want to.