What it do baby boo?

You did have a child 100%. Pregnancy and birth produces a life, but parenting with love makes a child and makes that child yours.

Here are some more “ambiguous” phrases which courts have found DO NOT invoke your right to a lawyer:

“Maybe I should speak to my lawyer first.”

“I might like a lawyer.”

“I think I should have a lawyer present for this.”

“Could I speak to my lawyer first?”

“How long until my lawyer gets here?”

And perhaps most egregiously – “Get me a lawyer, dawg – ‘cause this is not what’s up.”

Here are the magic phrases which you need to know if you want to invoke your Miranda rights:

1) “Am I free to leave?”

It’s worth asking this even if the answer is obvious. Even if the officer does not let you leave, by forcing them to admit that you are not free to leave, you are creating a record which your attorney can use to prove that you were in custody. Miranda rights only apply if the interrogation is custodial, meaning that police officers will frequently claim that their suspects were “not in custody” to get around their Miranda rights.

2) “I am invoking my right to remain silent.”

Simply staying silent will not invoke your right to remain silent. As absurd as this is, you must explicitly say that you are invoking your right to remain silent in order to invoke that right.

3) “I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

As stated above, you must be not only clear and unambiguous, but clear and legally unambiguous. Don’t get cute. Don’t get sassy. And on the flip side, don’t get intimidated and use verbal ticks to minimize your request. Say the line with those words exactly – say it clearly, and say it once, and then say nothing else.

Because even after you’ve done all this, the police can still try to get you to talk. They’re not supposed to interrogate you, but they’re allowed to make casual conversation, and if that conversation just happens to circle back around to the thing they wanted to question you about, well, that’s really your fault for talking after you said you wouldn’t, isn’t it? Can’t possibly fault the poor officers when you initiated – if you really wanted to have your rights respected, you wouldn’t have talked to them in the first place.

The police know this, and they will mercilessly exploit this loophole. So, once you’ve successfully invoked your Miranda rights, any and all conversation you have with police officers will put those rights back into jeopardy. 

Putting it all together:

Ask: “Am I free to leave?”

If they say no, say: “I am invoking my right to remain silent and I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

And then shut up and do not say a single thing to them for any reason whatsoever until you have actually spoken to an attorney. Yes, even if it takes hours. Yes, even if they start talking to you about something else.

Finally, a very important disclaimer:

(job materials masterpost + disclaimer)

the basics.

use letterhead from your department. 

it really is a letter. it should be formatted like a letter. if the chair of the search committee is named in the job ad, address it to her + the committee.

some committees will specify length; most will not. unless they explicitly give you the option for a longer one, your cover letter should never be more than 2 pages, single spaced.

format.

first paragraph: short, states the position for which you’re applying, introduces you as a scholar (“i am a literary scholar whose work focuses on… ”), and gives information about what stage you’re at (“i plan to defend my dissertation in may 2020″) 

middle i: overview of your research. this should include information like

the existing gap in your field 

the period + texts you work with

what incredible things your research has revealed, & how it serves to fill that gap and make important interventions

extant & planned outputs–publications, planned publications, etc.

you might also (BRIEFLY) mention a second project–don’t get too into this. if you make it to an interview or campus visit, you’ll have time to elaborate on it.

middle ii: teaching

be aware of what classes you’ll be expected to teach. if i’m applying to a liberal arts school with a 5:1 faculty ratio, i will not bother mentioning my experience teaching lectures of 200+ students

if the university doesn’t have a special collections department, i won’t get into the way i use medieval manuscripts to teach textual materiality

end: tailoring. planned contributions to this particular department, program, and/or university

this is where the extra research comes in–do some sleuthing and find a way to demonstrate that you’ve done your due diligence and understand what you could contribute to the position.

don’t forget to include contact information (an email address and maybe a phone number)

IMPORTANT: if you’re applying to a teaching school, weight your letter more heavily towards teaching. if it’s an R1 or similar institution, keep the teaching stuff to one paragraph, max, and emphasize your research output.

style.

be specific, and be concrete. that means providing details like: the press to which you anticipate sending your book proposal! authors you’d teach in a survey course! texts you examine in your dissertation! lesson plans or activities that exemplify your teaching style! etc. these are pieces of evidence that will support your argument about being the perfect fit for the job. if you say your teaching is writing-focused, for example, make sure you back that claim up.

keep your sentences short and avoid lists, where possible. they can get hypnotic. search committees are reading a gazillion letters; don’t make them work harder than they need to. 

don’t be afraid to repeat information from the rest of your materials. the cover letter is meant to sum up who you are as a candidate, and what you can offer–the more you reinforce your main selling points, the more memorable those points will be.

don’t undersell yourself or your work. this is not the place for modesty or humility. you want to be factual and honest, but take yourself seriously so they will too. that means treating yourself like a researcher, not a grad student, and keeping the letter 100% focused on you–unless you’ve coauthored something, you should probably be the only scholar whose name appears in the document. 

That is how we stop abuse.

“Don’t work with death, because then you invite it into your house.”

Death is already in my house. Death is everywhere. Death is what decays the plant matter that feeds my garden. Death is what feeds the herbs I use in my spells, for each grows from what died before it.

Death is what feeds my family - death of plants, the death of animals. I would not disrespect the spirits of that which feeds us by ignoring their sacrifice. 

Death is the veil between my ancestors and myself, keeping them at rest and then acting as the gate for them to step into their next life.

When I do hospice work and sit with someone who is accepting their approaching death, I don’t tell them death is something to fear or avoid. I tell them death is the friend that walked beside them, every step of their life, maintaining the balance of the world, and waiting for them with open arms, to escort them to rebirth. 

“Don’t work with death!” 

No credit is viewed as the same as bad credit. Which means you could be denied if you ever do need to rent an apartment or a car. Hospitals and clinics are also less likely to allow payment plan programs for people without good credit.

Think of it this way. You have a credit card, which is your credit tracking device. You use the card to tell someone “I will pay for this thing with borrowed money.” They agree to allow you to pay with borrowed money. You then turn around to your credit card company and say “Thank you for allowing me to borrow your money, I will now pay you back with my own money.” (which, if you repay them promptly enough, you can repay them the exact same amount you borrowed, rather than paying them more than you borrowed [which is what interest is])

The credit card company then recognizes that you successfully borrowed their money AND returned it safely, and they pass that information along to credit tracking companies. Each time you do this, you gain credibility. If you do this enough times, you are considered a credible borrower of money, so that if you ever are in a situation where you need to borrow a large sum of money (for example, a mortgage or a car or a hospital bill or whatever), companies with money will look at how well you have returned money in the past, and say Ah yes, this person repays their debts well, so we can lend them our money this time.

1. get your first baby credit card with the bank that you already bank with. If it has cashback rewards, even better (that’ll be free money later).

2. set that shit up so it pays the full amount, automatically, every month. you don’t have to remember to go home and pay it off, or worry about it at all. You won’t pay interest.

Your first card, especially if you have no credit, is going to have a small limit. Like $500. This is important: credit companies want you to use a certain percentage of the card every month. This is 1-9%. I usually just go straight 5%. If you use too much, you look like a wild card (even if you pay it off every month) and if you use nothing than you’re not proving to them you can be trusted.

So your first card has a $500 limit. 5% of 500 is $25.

Your goal is to use $25/month.

This is about a tank of gas for me. So once a month, I would fill up with this card, and then put it in the back of my wallet until next month. The payment was made automatically by my bank from one account (debit) to the other (credit). Rinse and repeat. I did this for a year.

Then after a year, my credit had skyrocketed (because I had nothing before, and added this good habit for a year). So I called up my bank and asked for them to increase my limit based on my new credit. I had shown them I was good at borrowing a good amount of money and paying it back on time every time.

The bank increased my limit to $5,500. Like holy shit, at the time I was definitely not expecting that.

So new math. 5% of 5500 is $225. So now instead of gas, I put my cell phone bill ($50), my car insurance ($130), and my dog food automatic order ($40) on it.

The best part is everything is automatic. I keep this card in the back of my wallet permanently; all these bills and the automatic payments are, well, automatic. My credit goes up, I rack up cash back rewards, there’s nothing to it.

And, if I ever get in an emergency, like a vet bill for one of my dogs, I can use that card to pay the $3,000 emergency bill without worrying about whether the place will take my dog if I have no money. I can then go home, change the settings from “pay in full every month” to “pay $X every month” (more than the minimum!) until it’s paid off, and then go back to just my bills. My credit might take a little dip during that time, but will bounce back pretty quickly.

There’s several other factors to credit (hit me up if you want more info) but this was literally the only measure I took for my first year, and my credit went from 525 to 700 in a year. Another year later, I’m now at 753, have a mortgage with a great rate, and can get a monster ass loan if I really need it in case an emergency or hard times fall.