hi

i've used some variant of budgie as my username online for the past decade or so, so i'm used to going by that. i'm some flavour of male-leaning trans, although i'm never entirely sure if gq or trans guy is more appropriate or if it even really makes a difference. mid-twenties, canadian. i have general anxiety disorder on top of social anxiety and depression, which make for a fun mix, and a seebsian diagnosis of possibly autistic.

i'm an obsessive reader - no hyperbole, i used to get in trouble with my teachers for reading too much. i also really love logic puzzles, crosswords, boggle-type games, etc. i'm a linguistics major with a particular interest in historical linguistics. my current vague plan is to go into museum/archival work, but my primary focus is just plain on graduating. i also weightlift and do some bag work, which really help with my brain issues.

i have probably spent way too long going over this and trying to make sure i've done it right (social anxiety, woo), so i'm just going to wrap this up and hit post now.

 

...is it bad that my first reaction was to look at your avatar and be like "that's an odd-looking budgie"

(I'm sorry)

 

heh, perfectly fair. i considered using a budgie avatar, but i couldn't find any budgie pictures i'd taken that i liked, so i went with this fellow instead.

 

eh, that duck's a budgie otherkin anyway. XD

 

[QUOTE="

i'm an obsessive reader - no hyperbole, i used to get in trouble with my teachers for reading too much.[/QUOTE]
That used to happen to me! The only detention I ever got I got for reading in class.

 

I never got detention for it (my one detention was for excessive yawning because I was sleep-deprived and my teacher thought I was mocking her/openly showing derision/boredom - but that's another story), but I also would get in trouble for reading during class. My eighth grade English teacher, on the first day of school, humorously threatened to shove one of my classmates into a cabinet if he didn't stop reading while he was talking - if I had been sitting in the front, he would've threatened me with the same thing. He also, on the first day of school, rather bluntly stated that books could not have sexualities, and thus could not be described as "gay" in the pejorative sense, which made me laugh. (Incidentally, one of the books we read that year, A Separate Peace, had some incredibly homoerotic undertones...)

 

Another for the "got in trouble for reading" group, but only in elementary school? Presumably because the teachers realized no amount of getting in trouble would make me stop.

(Also I never had a detention but I was suspended three times in middle school for physical fighting. Now there's a story.)

 

we're a more numerous people than i realized! all my teachers acted like it was the first time they'd encountered the "reading too much" problem.

i never actually got a detention for it, at least, but my 7th grade yearbook has a note from my teacher saying "Put that book down! Just kidding, it's summer now." she was also the first to think of going through my desk and taking all the books out, not just the one i was currently reading; up until her i could wait until the teacher wasn't paying attention anymore and then be more discrete with my next book.

my grade 10 english teacher gave a similar talk about books' sexualities. we also did othello in drag in her class, which was the first time i had an inkling that i liked looking like a guy.

 

All of my teachers freaked out, you'd think they had never met anyone who would willingly touch a book before.
I carried enough books that they all pretty much gave up.

 

That was definitely something I did in elementary school, but my middle and high schools did not have desks that have space to store things in. Of course, in high school almost none of my teachers actually cared enough to make me stop, save for my Algebra II teacher, who more than once confiscated my books :c.

 

I don't think I ever got in trouble for reading in class (although I do have distinct memories of my first grade teacher laughing because I'd spend recess holed up in the highest part of the playground structure with a book while the rest of the class ran around shrieking below) but I did get yelled at a lot for drawing in class. And then I got yelled at for bouncing my pencil on my desk, because the sketching was a stim and what did they expect to happen when they took the less disruptive stim away? Sigh.

 

I used to get in trouble for reading in class so much. If I was bored, if I already knew the subject, if I was listening, but splitting my focus, if I didn't know the subject, but was in the middle of a really good bit... Honestly, the only thing that's changed is that in University, taking notes on my laptop, I don't get in trouble for it any more. Mom has told me stories about meeting with my teachers:

"She really needs to pay attention in class, but I don't want to discourage her from reading,"

"Trust me, nothing you could do would discourage my daughter from reading."

 

Ugh, ditto. I got in trouble in fourth grade, and I got a detention in 8th grade social studies. (To be fair, in 8th grade, I did literally only one assignment in english, and a few more than that in social studies. I was so incredibly bored.)

 

Still more to the point than my "that's an odd-looking badger"

(idk either. i am very tired)