WIBTD if I publicly tell my cousin he does not have a master’s degree?
So, I [25] have a master’s degree, I’m the only one in my family, and this is not a flex, it’s just a unfortunate reality. My mother wanted to pursue a master’s degree, but couldn’t since we needed food at the table (she is retired now, but she was a teacher and has 2 specialties and a post grad (they are different things in my country)), same thing my dad. I am an only child, and I was a planned child, so my parents saved a lot of money for my education and professional training.
The same cannot be said of my cousins; specifically: one of my aunts had five children, two from her first marriage and the other three from different relationships she had after her divorce (they are between 34 and 27 years old). The cousin in this story is the one who is 27 years old. These cousins received neither emotional nor financial support from my aunt; my grandparents, their fathers and my mom and dad took care of them as they grow up.
I'm not a competitive person, but I've noticed there's a lot of competition between me and my cousins, regardless of age. For example: I'm the only grandkid (in the whole family) with all my education from the public system – high school along with technical degree, a degree in health and a teaching degree, two postgraduate degrees in human health and now a master's degree, all from federal schools. And every time my cousins found out I got into school/college (it's necessary to pass a federal exam to get in), they ended up doing something: I've had cousins who lied to get into a public university and were later discovered and banned from entering, cousins who forged diplomas to show the family that they got into a public university or that they had obtained some public position, etc.
In this case, my cousin [27] is telling everyone that he is doing a master's degree at the same university as I.
The thing is, the master's degree at the university lasts two years, 1 and a half years is focused on classes, which are from Monday to Saturday and last from 7:00 to 18:00, a minimum of 25 books/research papers to read per week, and all the classes requires a written paper in three languages as a final exam, each research paper should be between 5 and 15 pages long, except for one annual article whose research should be 30 pages long.
He works from Monday to Friday – 8:00 to 17:00.
I know my cousin didn't get into the master's program because he didn't pass the exam nor the interview, but he signed up for a single class as a "test". These classes do exist, they are there so people can see if this master's program is what they really want to do, if the subject appeals to them. So, every week my cousin goes to the university for two hours a week for six months, and those classes ended four months ago. And since my cousin, in his own words, 'Pass the test to have this class.' (BTW There's no test, you just need to register and they call you in), he started posting memes online and posting photos of the classroom and the university, talking about how difficult it was to be a master's student, how he couldn't wait to be called a ‘master’, and how he was going to start his doctorate ‘before me’.
All of our relatives think he's doing a master's degree; he's even lying to his girlfriend, whom I met last month, and that's also how I found out he was posting this on social media since I'm not very active online. And she was super excited because he said that this year he was going to finish his master's degree and would already be able to get a job at the university because a professor had opened a position for him (Which isn't true, and even if it were, it would be illegal).
I wanted to post a comment on one of his posts, something like, "Wow, we're in the same class? But I never see you." Or maybe when he posted about finishing his master's degree this year I would reply, "Don't you mean next year? Or the year after that? I didn't know your classes started. When did you pass the exam?"
I'm not jealous that he gets attention from our relatives (nothing I do gives me attention, that's why I'm not competitive, since I know I won't get any celebration or similar things (My cousin that lied about getting into university received two cars from my grandmother, and she doesn't even remember when my birthday is, so…)). What irritates me is that he's lying to everyone and he posts about it on social media as if it were the easiest thing in the world, when I had to put my life on hold to get this master's degree.
I'll accept any advice on how to deal with this; Christmas is coming and I can see things are going to go bad at the family gathering.
Edit to add:
Many people talk about me not going where my cousin is, and that's complicated, mainly because of a cultural issue. My family is very close, and we end up spending all the holidays, especially the religious and cultural ones, together. My grandparents are also quite ill and elderly, and I enjoy talking to them and I only see them during those times too.
Another point: I'm not envious of the attention; it's something I'm already used to. I'm bothered by the fact that he treats the master's degree as if it were easy when it's extremely difficult. I had friends who had to stop working and others who got divorced during this period. Again, my life had to stop so I could do my master's degree.
And my parents already know about his lies (and lies invented by other relatives of mine). It's one of the reasons we currently maintain a certain distance from part of the family. Many of our relatives have already invented lies about me and my parents. And even so, we still have contact with these relatives.
My idea was to respond to one of his posts, I didn't want to randomly start an argument; I just wanted to feign ignorance in one of his posts about being a "Jedi master, that's why he's doing a master's degree.", something like that, but I guess its a bad idea. Everyone's commenting on it and it hasn't even been an hour since the post. So I'll Just wait, someone will find out he's lying eventually. I don't think he'll learn from his mistakes, but I think this is beyond what I have to put up with.
"So, I [25] have a master’s degree, I’m the only one in my family, and this is not a flex, it’s just a unfortunate reality. "
So being the only person in the family with a Master's degree is unfortunate? There are a lot of people in the world who don't have one and a lot of jobs in the world where one isn't needed! And they know people who got divorced over a Master's program? WTH? There is no way this crap is real.
Many people talk about me not going where my cousin is, and that's complicated, mainly because of a cultural issue. My family is very close, and we end up spending all the holidays, especially the religious and cultural ones, together. My grandparents are also quite ill and elderly, and I enjoy talking to them and I only see them during those times too.
OMG, such a unique culture, with a tradition of... spending holidays with family members! Wonder where's OOP from, I've never heard of this cultural issue of one's family being very close before!
What kind of gruesomely punishing grad school requires papers in three languages?? Unless it's a medical translation degree, and those do exist - although they're rare - I don't believe this for a minute. I'm happy to be corrected.
Incongruous is the word. I do not congru this. I have a friend who has taught vocal performance at postgrad level in at least three countries and, despite his being very very well-traveled indeed, he is not trilingual.
The most writing you have to do is translations into your native language, but, again, that doesn’t require fluency. My last voice teacher just told me to use Google Translate for each word.
Right! If you're translating "Pourquoi me réveiller?" from Werther as "Pump up the jam! Pump it up! Get the music pumpin'!" that's an issue. But as long as you understand "Werther is extremely sad and doesn't want to wake up", that's all you need.
Some humanities/social science PhD programs studying non-US regions/societies expect reading proficiency in at least 2 or even 3 foreign languages.
For instance, the minimum requirements for admission and successful completion of Chinese History in elite PhD programs are Modern and Classical Chinese(Akin to requiring Latin along with modern European romance languages as not being proficient in reading classical Chinese(Not just merely traditional characters) means government/literati archives before 1920 would be inaccessible), Japanese(A lot of Chinese history/historiography especially in the early modern period have been written/analyzed by Japanese scholars, and French or another European language other than English.
However, even here, demonstration of mastery of those required languages would most often be demonstrated by taking the required language courses at/above the third or fourth year university level and passing a translation exam. Not writing papers in those languages though knowing how to publish in modern foreign languages in academic journals tends to be regarded as a plus.
In some subfields, there's a fair amount of contested gatekeeping against those who aren't fully proficient enough to publish journal articles in the required foreign languages in some humanities/social science subfield(Some areas of Vietnamese/SE Asian studies according to a SLAC alum friend who is a faculty member/Prof and editor for one of their academic journals).
OOP sounds like someone who attended university in East/SE Asia considering the line:
I'm the only grandkid (in the whole family) with all my education from the public system – high school along with technical degree, a degree in health and a teaching degree, two postgraduate degrees in human health and now a master's degree, all from federal schools.
The emphasis on all of OOP's education coming from public/Federal schools and admission being contingent on passing academic entrance exams and how public/Federal schools/universities are considered much more prestigious than their private counterparts* sounds remarkably like the East Asian education systems my older relatives in my parents' generation experienced firsthand from the late 40's - 60's,,,,,
Only things which sound off are the multitude of degrees in disparate fields and staying in the home country for one's graduate education. IME, up until recently(Since the late '00s, attending elite undergrad has become more accepted), the ideal prestige path is to attend the most elite university in the home country for undergrad and then pursue an elite graduate/professional degree abroad....preferably in the US/UK or Western Europe(Especially Germany).
* One of the remaining sore points my octogenarian mom has in relation to her older siblings is how 3 of her older sisters all gained admission to the #1 university in one of the most competitive majors with full-ride scholarships in their East Asian origin society on their first attempt at the national college entrance exam whereas mom required two attempts before being admitted to what was then(early '60s) regarded as a bottom-tiered private university for academic mediocrities.
Ironically, most international students/visitors from that very same society who are late GenX like myself or younger regard mom's private university now as academically respectable with their law department sometimes rivaling those of the #1 university.
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WIBTD if I publicly tell my cousin he does not have a master’s degree?
So, I [25] have a master’s degree, I’m the only one in my family, and this is not a flex, it’s just a unfortunate reality. My mother wanted to pursue a master’s degree, but couldn’t since we needed food at the table (she is retired now, but she was a teacher and has 2 specialties and a post grad (they are different things in my country)), same thing my dad. I am an only child, and I was a planned child, so my parents saved a lot of money for my education and professional training.
The same cannot be said of my cousins; specifically: one of my aunts had five children, two from her first marriage and the other three from different relationships she had after her divorce (they are between 34 and 27 years old). The cousin in this story is the one who is 27 years old. These cousins received neither emotional nor financial support from my aunt; my grandparents, their fathers and my mom and dad took care of them as they grow up.
I'm not a competitive person, but I've noticed there's a lot of competition between me and my cousins, regardless of age. For example: I'm the only grandkid (in the whole family) with all my education from the public system – high school along with technical degree, a degree in health and a teaching degree, two postgraduate degrees in human health and now a master's degree, all from federal schools. And every time my cousins found out I got into school/college (it's necessary to pass a federal exam to get in), they ended up doing something: I've had cousins who lied to get into a public university and were later discovered and banned from entering, cousins who forged diplomas to show the family that they got into a public university or that they had obtained some public position, etc.
In this case, my cousin [27] is telling everyone that he is doing a master's degree at the same university as I.
The thing is, the master's degree at the university lasts two years, 1 and a half years is focused on classes, which are from Monday to Saturday and last from 7:00 to 18:00, a minimum of 25 books/research papers to read per week, and all the classes requires a written paper in three languages as a final exam, each research paper should be between 5 and 15 pages long, except for one annual article whose research should be 30 pages long.
He works from Monday to Friday – 8:00 to 17:00.
I know my cousin didn't get into the master's program because he didn't pass the exam nor the interview, but he signed up for a single class as a "test". These classes do exist, they are there so people can see if this master's program is what they really want to do, if the subject appeals to them. So, every week my cousin goes to the university for two hours a week for six months, and those classes ended four months ago. And since my cousin, in his own words, 'Pass the test to have this class.' (BTW There's no test, you just need to register and they call you in), he started posting memes online and posting photos of the classroom and the university, talking about how difficult it was to be a master's student, how he couldn't wait to be called a ‘master’, and how he was going to start his doctorate ‘before me’.
All of our relatives think he's doing a master's degree; he's even lying to his girlfriend, whom I met last month, and that's also how I found out he was posting this on social media since I'm not very active online. And she was super excited because he said that this year he was going to finish his master's degree and would already be able to get a job at the university because a professor had opened a position for him (Which isn't true, and even if it were, it would be illegal).
I wanted to post a comment on one of his posts, something like, "Wow, we're in the same class? But I never see you." Or maybe when he posted about finishing his master's degree this year I would reply, "Don't you mean next year? Or the year after that? I didn't know your classes started. When did you pass the exam?"
I'm not jealous that he gets attention from our relatives (nothing I do gives me attention, that's why I'm not competitive, since I know I won't get any celebration or similar things (My cousin that lied about getting into university received two cars from my grandmother, and she doesn't even remember when my birthday is, so…)). What irritates me is that he's lying to everyone and he posts about it on social media as if it were the easiest thing in the world, when I had to put my life on hold to get this master's degree.
I'll accept any advice on how to deal with this; Christmas is coming and I can see things are going to go bad at the family gathering.
Edit to add:
Many people talk about me not going where my cousin is, and that's complicated, mainly because of a cultural issue. My family is very close, and we end up spending all the holidays, especially the religious and cultural ones, together. My grandparents are also quite ill and elderly, and I enjoy talking to them and I only see them during those times too.
Another point: I'm not envious of the attention; it's something I'm already used to. I'm bothered by the fact that he treats the master's degree as if it were easy when it's extremely difficult. I had friends who had to stop working and others who got divorced during this period. Again, my life had to stop so I could do my master's degree.
And my parents already know about his lies (and lies invented by other relatives of mine). It's one of the reasons we currently maintain a certain distance from part of the family. Many of our relatives have already invented lies about me and my parents. And even so, we still have contact with these relatives.
My idea was to respond to one of his posts, I didn't want to randomly start an argument; I just wanted to feign ignorance in one of his posts about being a "Jedi master, that's why he's doing a master's degree.", something like that, but I guess its a bad idea. Everyone's commenting on it and it hasn't even been an hour since the post. So I'll Just wait, someone will find out he's lying eventually. I don't think he'll learn from his mistakes, but I think this is beyond what I have to put up with.
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I’m not envious of the attention he gets. Please don’t write I’m envious of the attention he gets.
"So, I [25] have a master’s degree, I’m the only one in my family, and this is not a flex, it’s just a unfortunate reality. "
So being the only person in the family with a Master's degree is unfortunate? There are a lot of people in the world who don't have one and a lot of jobs in the world where one isn't needed! And they know people who got divorced over a Master's program? WTH? There is no way this crap is real.
OMG, such a unique culture, with a tradition of... spending holidays with family members! Wonder where's OOP from, I've never heard of this cultural issue of one's family being very close before!
In MyCountry, families have to celebrate holidays together.
Wow, 13 hours of classes 6 days a week, read 25 books a week, and you have to be trilingual? School is hard-core in MyCountry.
Yeah, wtf Master's degree is this??
Only grand kid in the whole family has a jealous cousin?
I have never thought this much about any of my cousins in my entire life. If this is real, it sounds exhausting.
My main takeaway from this is that all of his plans for exposing his cousin are terrible and absolutely would not work. Be better at drama, kid!
What kind of gruesomely punishing grad school requires papers in three languages?? Unless it's a medical translation degree, and those do exist - although they're rare - I don't believe this for a minute. I'm happy to be corrected.
Vocal performance - but that seems to be incongruous with the rest of it
Incongruous is the word. I do not congru this. I have a friend who has taught vocal performance at postgrad level in at least three countries and, despite his being very very well-traveled indeed, he is not trilingual.
Vocal performance requires diction in multiple languages, not writing fluently in them.
Right. You should be able to sing well in Italian and German as well as English, if it's opera at any rate. But writing in them? Hmmmmmmm.
The most writing you have to do is translations into your native language, but, again, that doesn’t require fluency. My last voice teacher just told me to use Google Translate for each word.
Right! If you're translating "Pourquoi me réveiller?" from Werther as "Pump up the jam! Pump it up! Get the music pumpin'!" that's an issue. But as long as you understand "Werther is extremely sad and doesn't want to wake up", that's all you need.
Some humanities/social science PhD programs studying non-US regions/societies expect reading proficiency in at least 2 or even 3 foreign languages.
For instance, the minimum requirements for admission and successful completion of Chinese History in elite PhD programs are Modern and Classical Chinese(Akin to requiring Latin along with modern European romance languages as not being proficient in reading classical Chinese(Not just merely traditional characters) means government/literati archives before 1920 would be inaccessible), Japanese(A lot of Chinese history/historiography especially in the early modern period have been written/analyzed by Japanese scholars, and French or another European language other than English.
However, even here, demonstration of mastery of those required languages would most often be demonstrated by taking the required language courses at/above the third or fourth year university level and passing a translation exam. Not writing papers in those languages though knowing how to publish in modern foreign languages in academic journals tends to be regarded as a plus.
In some subfields, there's a fair amount of contested gatekeeping against those who aren't fully proficient enough to publish journal articles in the required foreign languages in some humanities/social science subfield(Some areas of Vietnamese/SE Asian studies according to a SLAC alum friend who is a faculty member/Prof and editor for one of their academic journals).
The fuck is WIBTD?
Would I Be the Drama. It’s that subreddit/YouTube channel’s schtick.
Well I just learned 1 800 Drama is a podcast too! Oh boy! My boring days are over! 😒
OOP sounds like someone who attended university in East/SE Asia considering the line:
The emphasis on all of OOP's education coming from public/Federal schools and admission being contingent on passing academic entrance exams and how public/Federal schools/universities are considered much more prestigious than their private counterparts* sounds remarkably like the East Asian education systems my older relatives in my parents' generation experienced firsthand from the late 40's - 60's,,,,,
Only things which sound off are the multitude of degrees in disparate fields and staying in the home country for one's graduate education. IME, up until recently(Since the late '00s, attending elite undergrad has become more accepted), the ideal prestige path is to attend the most elite university in the home country for undergrad and then pursue an elite graduate/professional degree abroad....preferably in the US/UK or Western Europe(Especially Germany).
* One of the remaining sore points my octogenarian mom has in relation to her older siblings is how 3 of her older sisters all gained admission to the #1 university in one of the most competitive majors with full-ride scholarships in their East Asian origin society on their first attempt at the national college entrance exam whereas mom required two attempts before being admitted to what was then(early '60s) regarded as a bottom-tiered private university for academic mediocrities.
Ironically, most international students/visitors from that very same society who are late GenX like myself or younger regard mom's private university now as academically respectable with their law department sometimes rivaling those of the #1 university.
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