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Post by hermoine on Nov 2, 2004 16:11:35 GMT -5
Sorry to be swerving a bit off topic but you guys have to pay to get in Uni?
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Post by Nie on Nov 3, 2004 4:06:43 GMT -5
Don't rub it in... We don't actually have to have the money up front, but it's far easier than paying off the debt for the rest of your working life. One of the mina reasons I haven't bothered with Uni yet is because I just can't afford it. here
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Post by En on Dec 24, 2004 15:07:35 GMT -5
Here too, Zeph. US students can sometimes get money from the government or the universities if they really need help paying for school, but never all the amount they have to pay. They are expected to contribute a percentage of their income, relative to the cost of the school. It's also cheaper to go to university in the state you already live in than to go to another state - sometimes like 50% cheaper, or even more.
Tell us what you find out about your family tree, Nierme!
Mum told me last night that she was almost adopted by a family of Travellers (basically, gypsies) back in the 60's. How weird is that? (It's even weirder when you think that just 40 years ago in the States, loads of people were still extremely closed-minded about skin colours and races, and we're talking about Gypsies wanting to adopt a little girl whose hair was so white it looked silver and whose skin was so white it looked blue.)
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Post by hermoine on Jan 1, 2005 11:11:28 GMT -5
Really? Here the government might give out funding for education abroad, but the whole education is paid, except stuff like accomodation etc. But the thing is that if it pays for you education, when it is over you have to come back to Malta and work here. The best and most difficult means is private funding. Some students manage to get sponsorships from some private businesses.
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Calantha
Gryffindor Alumni
My name is Luck, this is my song, I happened by when you were gone
Posts: 4,493
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Post by Calantha on Jan 1, 2005 15:46:32 GMT -5
Herm, there is something similar to that in some counties in Virginia, although I'm not sure if it is a nationwide type deal. Some cities and counties here will pay for your tuition if you're going into education, but you have to sign a contract that binds to you teach only in that area for a certain number of years. Because so many people go elsewhere for more pay, it is used as an incentive to get people to stay in areas that can't offer as much...or won't....really. A lot of people don't know about it because they never inquire on it, but if you pull the right strings in the community, you can get almost anything.
Anyways, over my break while visiting my great uncle and aunt, I was going through some boxes that the guy who lived in the house before them had left there. They had just moved in and wanted some help moving things, so I went down with a few people I pulled together and helped them move in and the guy was going to throw away these boxes and in them were all these old pictures and so, being the nosey person I am, I looked through them all and found two old grammar books from the 1860's and in them was signed a name. It sounded familar, but I couldn't place where I had heard it. I took it back to my Grandmother's and it ended up being the name of an ancestor or my Nan's side. Anyways, it could be that the name was a duplicate, but the years matched up.
Small world, isn't it?
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Post by Fluffy on Feb 5, 2006 10:37:56 GMT -5
If I had a quarter for every time I buy a book from a walk-in customer and find some familiar name in it - including my own, once. Someone tried to sell me a poetry book I'd sold in a nearby town about eight years ago, with an inscription inside from an ex-significant-other of mine I've also bought books from customers that turned out to have belonged to cousins, great-aunts and family friends.
Speaking of, what are everyone's families' attitudes toward old books belonging to ancestors? We tend to keep a handful of the classic titles that belonged to each family member, but to sell the lesser-known works (like novels by Curwood), unless they have a really interesting inscription inside. Oddly, however, nobody in the family gives me old family books anymore now that I own a store, unless I'm supposed to sell them on consignment
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Post by Pkia on Feb 11, 2006 16:36:55 GMT -5
I had the very odd experience of being hit on by a 35 year old French man on the bus the other day. Without going into too much detail, it was a very odd conversation that took quite a while because I was travelling from one end of town to the other
But anyway, somehow he got onto the topic of how lately he's taken a big interest into his family's history, where his family was from, etc, because he's been trying to understand what influences his behaviour. I told him I disagreed, because I don't think that culture is genetic. I mean, I can see how if your grandparents were from Country X, that they'd pass on some of that culture to your parents, and a dilluted amount would pass onto you as you were raised. However, while I said that your great-great grandparents were too far in the past to have a cultural print on you from their native countries, he seemed to say that it was almost genetic.
This topic reminded me of that converstation. If you're tracing your family history, do you do it to understand yourself more? Or for the interest of it? Because I suppose if you're doing it for the former, wouldn't that imply that behaviour is genetic? Is it?
I'll elaborate on my own opinion later... I need to think it out first...
And I would love old family books. I have a big attatchment to family heirlooms because I think it's fascinating to be able to tie yourself back to something or someone that was from years and years ago. (Connections. Maybe it's because the world we live in is all about connections (to people, places, things) and connections to the past make you feel more depth in the world. You're not just connected to the present, but part of the past, too?)
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Post by Fluffy on Feb 11, 2006 17:37:42 GMT -5
Hrm. I research my family history in large part because I'm computer savvy, my family knows it, and they like to guilt me into doing things for them. No, I'm mostly joking - I do enjoy my family's history, very much, and delight in retelling the family legends, too. And every now and then, some story from the past explains a bit of me to myself, though not in the way I think you mean.
Ex grat: I know my family history well enough on one side to have very clear, personal impressions of my ancestors going back about 300-400 years. So I can tell you exactly which ones suffered from a hereditary condition I share, because I can tell from how they behaved that they have the same problem (a B12 absorption deficiency). I'm not sure health is one of the most common reasons to research this stuff, but it's incredibly useful to know that sort of thing.
And, okay, I admit, there's more to it than that as well. I think I've told you the story about how people in Ireland thought I was from Co. Tyrone due to my accent, which was weird, because I mirror accents almost perfectly, and I was in Galway most of the time. Then I got home and found out that my ancestors are actually from Co. Tyrone. ?!
Then there's the ancestors-qua-tarot approach: sometimes I find myself faced with a big decision, so I spread out my history-memories and study the patterns, looking for some hint of what I should do. Useful, but dangerous if applied without sufficient reflection.
Summary: I dunno what I think either, and will also get back to you.
Anyway... funny you should mention the bit about being connected to the past. Monday is Tu B'Shevet, the Trees' New Year, and one of the themes of that day is reflecting on how the strength of our roots - our ties to our past - gives us the stability to grow into our future. I don't rely on physical objects very often, unless something about them specifically captures some person for me (like, keeping something my great-grandfather carved, since carving was a substantial part of his character, but not a novel with my grandmother's name in it, unless it seems to have been important to who she was), but that's because I have this weird dislike for heirlooms due to my family's tendency to fight over them relentlessly.
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Calantha
Gryffindor Alumni
My name is Luck, this is my song, I happened by when you were gone
Posts: 4,493
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Post by Calantha on Jun 13, 2007 23:01:36 GMT -5
Part of my family is from Dingle and when I went down I found an old house that belonged on the property on my grandmother's side. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've had so far and I ended up camping under what was left of the home for a few nights and meeting the people of the town. No one knew them, the family moved years ago and the land (which a nearby farmer is "taking care of" and has been for at least twenty years) lacks suitable nutrients to actually grow anything except brush, so the house has been untouched except by the hard sea winds.
I was brought back to timelessness.
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Post by nancy on Jul 3, 2007 23:36:30 GMT -5
To what pkia said:
I don't think culture or beliefs are genetic. If they were, I'd have some major culture-mutations going on. Couple of examples: my granma is *super* religious... and while I was raised catholic, I started having doubts when I was a child and have never looked back. My father doesn't like multicultural, I love it. Part of what I don't like about this place is people are all so similar... in ideas and behaviour and native language and the like. It bores me a bit. There *are* genetic parts of behaviour, such as temperament and the like... but culture and ideas are not...
On the searching for family thing... when I was about 12 or 13, my mum wrote a small book on our family. It went back about 150 years or so. I wish I could find and re-read it... and I do it for the interest of it, and to see whether I can find any connections to my ancestors, but it's not to know more about myself. It's to know about past events that, in a way, made me possible.
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Post by KoNeko on Jul 23, 2007 13:21:38 GMT -5
I think culture is completely environmental. I mean, obviously your parents have a lot to do with the traditions and practices you are raised with, but as you get older your perceptions change, and with part of that your parents and family's cultural outlook also change. (Case in point - dating outside one's race. )
I wish I knew more about my ancestors - all I know is that they were the warlording type centuries ago, but that's so vague I can't really do anything with it, although that might explain my temper.
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