#i love learning but i hate attending classes and putting together actual research papers and seminars
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Happy back-to-school y’all
I’ve attended and worked at a couple of super liberal universities. I avoid the gender studies departments for obvious reasons and I still had a lecture in which the female prof gave a brief overview of TERFs and proclaimed her hatred of JKR. Being openly critical of gender ideology, the porn industry, kinks, and ‘sex work’ are the kind of things that can ruin your future in academia. Not to mention the fact that any speech or actions that could be labelled transphobic (ie. defining woman as adult human female) can get you a suspension according to many universities anti-hate-speech policies.
So, here’s a list of small and smallish (small in terms of overt TERFery, some may require more effort than others) radical feminist actions you can take as a university student:
(this is a liberal arts perspective so if you’re a stem gal this may not apply. but also if you’re in stem maybe you can actually acknowledge that women are oppressed as a sex class without getting kicked out of school. idk)
(Note for TRAs hate reading this: One of the core actions of radical feminism is creating female networks. This is not so that we can brainwash people into being anti-trans. This is because female solidarity is necessary for creating class consciousness and overturning patriarchy. It is harder to subjugate the female sex when we stand together.)
Take classes with female profs. Multiple sections of a class? Pick the one taught by a woman. Have to chose an elective? Only look at electives offered by women. When classes have low numbers they get cancelled. When classes are super popular, universities are forced to consider promoting the faculty that teach them
Make relationships with these female profs. Go to office hours. Chat after class. Ask them about their research. Building female networks is sooooo important!
Actually fill in your end of year course feedback forms. Profs often need these when applying for tenure or applying for a job at another university so it is very important (especially with young and/or new profs) that you fill out these forms and give specific examples of how great these women are. Go off about what you love about them! Give her a brilliant review because you know the idiot boy in that class who won’t shut up even though he knows nothing is going to give her only negative feedback because he thinks any woman who leaves the house is a feminazi b*tch.
(note: obviously don’t go praising any prof - female or male - who is blatantly racist, homophobic, etc.)
(Also if you have shitty male profs write down all the horrible things they have done and said and put it in these forms because once a shitty man gets tenure they are virtually untouchable)
(also also, leave a good review on rate my profs or whatever other thing students use to figure out if they want to take classes. idc if you copy paste your feedback from the formal review. rave about the class to your friends. do what you can to get good enrolment for that prof for reasons above.)
Participate in class. Talk over the male students. Say what you mean and mean it. Call out the boys when they say dumb shit
Write about women. If you have the option to make a text written by a woman your primary text in an essay, do it. Pick the female-centred option if you’re writing an exam-essay with multiple prompts. (Profs often look at what works on their syllabus are being written about/engaged with as a marker of whether to keep those texts the next time they teach the class. If there are badass women on your syllabus, write about them to keep them on the syllabus) Use female-written secondary sources whenever possible.
(pro tip: many women in academia are more than happy to talk to you about their papers. expand your female networks by reaching out to article authors through email and asking them about their cool shit)
Get your essays published! Many departments have undergrad journals you can publish in. This will ensure more people read about the women you write about and will demonstrate to the department that people like learning about women
Consider trying to publish your undergrad essay with a legit peer-reviewed journal. If you can do it, your use of female-written secondary sources boosts the reputations of the women who wrote those secondary sources. Also this helps generally to increase scholarship about women’s writing!
Present your papers at conferences! Many schools have their own undergraduate/departmental conferences that you can present at. Push yourself by submitting to outside conferences. Bring attention to women’s works by presenting your papers. Take a space at a conference that would otherwise be reserved for mediocre men
Talk to your profs and/or your department and/or your university about mandating the inclusion of female works in classes if this isn’t something they do already
Sit next to other women in your classes. Talk to them. Make friends. Form study groups. Proofread each other’s essays. Give each other knowing looks when the boys are being dumb. Just interact with other women! Build those female networks!
Be generous with your compliments. A female classmate and I were talking to a prof after class and the classmate told me (out of the blue) that I always have such interesting things to say. I think about that whenever I’m lacking confidence about my academic skills. Compliment the women in your classes for speaking up, for sharing their opinions, for challenging your classmates/profs, for doing cool presentations, etc.
Talk to other women about sexist things going on on campus. Make everyone aware of the sexist profs. Complain about how there are many more tenured men than tenured women. Go on rate my professor and be explicit about how the sexist profs are sexist
Be active on campus and in societies. If a society has an all male executive or is male-dominated, any women who join that society make it less intimidating for more women to join. Run for executive positions! Bring in more women!
(Pro tip: Many societies’ elections are super gameable. You can be eligible to vote in a society election sometimes just by being a student at that university — even without having done anything with the society before. Other societies might just require that you’ve taken a class in a particular department or attended a society event. (Check the society’s governing documents.) Use those female networks you’ve been building. If you can bring three or four random people to vote for you, that might be enough for you to win. Societies have trouble meeting quorum (the minimum number of people in attendance to do votes) so it is really super achievable to rig an election with a few friends. And don’t feel bad about this. The system is rigged against women so you have every right to exploit loopholes!)
(Also feel free to go vote “non-confidence”/“re-open election” if only shitty men are running. Too often people see that only candidates they don’t like are running and so they give up. But you can actually stop them getting elected)
Your campus may have a LGBTQIA+alphabetsoup society. That society definitely needs more L and B women representation. It may be tedious to argue with the nb straight dudes who insist that it’s fine to use “q***r” in the society’s posters and that attraction has nothing to do with genitals, but just imagine what could happen if we could make these sorts of societies actually safe spaces for same-sex attracted women and advocated for our concerns
Attend random societies’ election meetings. Get women elected and peace out. (or actually get involved but I’m trying to emphasize the lowest commitment option with this one)
Write for the campus newspaper. Write about what women are doing - women’s sports, cool society activities, whatever. Review female movies, books, tv shows, local theatre productions. Write about sexism on campus. We need more female by-lines and more stories about women
Get involved with your campus’s sexual assault & r*pe hotline/sexual assault survivor’s centre/whatever similar organization your campus has if you can. This is hard work and definitely not for everyone (pls take care of yourself first, especially if you are a survivor)
(If your campus doesn’t have an organization for supporting survivor’s of sexualized violence, start one! This is probably going to be a lot of hard work though, so don’t do it alone)
Talk to your student council about providing free menstrual hygiene products on campus if your campus doesn’t already do this. If your campus provides free condoms (which they probs do), use that as leverage (ie. ‘sex is optional, menstruation is not. so why do we have free condoms and no free pads?’)
If you’re an older student, get involved with younger students (orientation week and such activities are good for this). Show the freshman that you can be a successful and well-liked woman without shaving your legs, wearing heels, wearing make-up, etc. Mentor these young women. Offer to go for coffee or proofread essays.
Come to class looking like a human being. Be visibly make-up less, unshaven, unfeminine, etc. to show off the many different ways of being a woman
Talk to the custodial staff and learn their names. (I know there are men who work in this profession, but it is dominated by low-income women) Say hi in the hallways, ask them about their lives, show them they’re appreciated
Be explicit with your language. When you are talking about sex-based oppression, say it. Don’t say ‘sex worker’ when you mean survivor of human trafficking. This tip is obviously a bit tricky in terms of overt TERFyness, so use your best judgement
That’s all from me for now! Feel free to add your suggestions and remember that feminism is about action
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Angel of Mine
College Boyfriend Mark X Reader
Genre: FLUFFIEST OF FLUFF, Doting boyfriend Mark that we all deserve
Word Count: 4.5K
Summary: You and your boyfriend Mark are cuddled up in your bed watching a movie when you are reminded that you have an essay due in a couple of hours that you haven’t even started on. Before you can completely break down, your boyfriend comes to your rescue and offers to write your paper for you. It’s in the moments of watching him so focused, typing away at your laptop do you realize how lucky you are to have Mark as a boyfriend.
A/N: Hey guys! So it’s the beginning of midterms here in Hawaii and i’ve already cried seven times I am not kidding you I have two semesters left of college and this is the hardest it’s ever been. I wrote this imagine for shits and giggles; i’ve never had a boyfriend before (HAHAHAHA CRIES IN FILIPINO AND KOREAN) so I wouldn’t know if there are guys out there who are actually like this (If you are, God bless you) (and if your boyfriend is like this, MARRY HIM) I actually watched a tiktok post on instagram right after I finished this where this girl said she was doing her boyfriend’s homework because he was stressed or whatever and if that isn’t couple goals than I don’t know what is (btw I do not condone having someone else do your homework) (especially if you force them to do it because you don’t want to it’s your responsibility and your education, but if they offer...it’s a different story) (LOL) anyways, enough of me blabbering, please enjoy reading while I cry in a corner.
“Remind me how I got myself in this situation again?” Your boyfriend gave you a knowing look and you couldn’t stop yourself from letting out a faint giggle at the sight of his furrowed brows.
“Because you love me.” He playfully rolled his eyes and continued typing away at your computer.
“Yeah, sometimes a little too much. But if I remember correctly, you promised to suck me off once I’m finished writing this damn thing, so don’t think I’m going to forget our agreement babe.”
To say you were a procrastinator would be the understatement of the year. Just a few hours ago, you and Mark were comfortably cuddled up together in bed while you both watched the live action version of Mulan. When your boyfriend excused himself to go use the bathroom, you decided to scroll through your Instagram while waiting.
After looking at a couple of posts from some of your friends and family, you were curious as to what everyone was doing and you found yourself going through some of their stories. Finals were less than two weeks away, so you were used to seeing your friends post pictures of them working their many assignments or studying for exams.
What you weren’t expecting to see was one of your classmate’s working on an essay for your English class that was apparently due in less than four hours. Only then did it hit you; you had yet to write the paper and it was worth 20% of your grade. For weeks, you told yourself you were going to start on it and when it was first assigned over two months ago, you thought you had all the time in the world.
Two months went by quicker than you could even fathom and you were frustrated with yourself for not writing it down on your calendar or completing it earlier. You practically ran over to your laptop and began looking up the rubric to see how your professor wanted you to write your essay and you could feel your heart sink to your stomach as soon as you read the requirements.
Mark was confused when he saw you no longer lying in the bed; the two of you decided to have a lazy day indoors and you’ve only left the bed twice to use the bathroom and to get something to snack on. This past week has been extremely rough on your mind and your body; so when you told Mark you had no intention on doing anything other than laying in bed and watching movies, he knew to trust your words.
“Baby, what are you doing?”
Your flustered expression only made him even more curious as to what could have happened in the few minutes he was in the bathroom for. You bit your bottom lip in frustration; knowing how Mark could be whenever it came to your education, you were afraid he was going to be upset once he found out you had only a few hours to write your essay. Since you were too much in shock to respond to him, he took matters in to his own hands and looked at your computer screen.
“Wait—I remember you mentioning this essay a couple of weeks ago—eight pages?! Six educational sources—and it’s due by 11:59 P.M. tonight—y/n what the hell?!”
This wasn’t the first time you waited till right before your assignment was due to start working on it. Matter a fact, most of your important assignments; research papers, group projects, essays and online tests were completed on the day they were due. Sometimes it was on purpose; you felt as if some of your best work were the ones you’d work on right before you were supposed to turn it in. You knew it had a lot to do with the fact that you felt pressured to do better knowing you had a time limit; but most of the time you were just lazy and didn’t want to do any work at all.
You and Mark knew about each and every single thing there is to know about one another. He knew of each and every beauty mark on your body and where it was located, he memorized all your aunt’s, uncle’s and cousin’s names, he knew the exact shade of blue that you claimed was your favorite color and he knew how you liked your tea in the morning.
The only thing he had no control over, was the way you handled your education. Mark thought the entire world of you; he believed you were the most hardworking, courageous, determined, generous and golden-hearted person he had the amazing pleasure of knowing. And he wasn’t being biased because you were his girlfriend, but you were the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen before. In his eyes, you were flawless; you could do no wrong—well; the only problem Mark really had whenever it came to you was the fact that you didn’t know how to prioritize your responsibilities.
After what happened to you right around the time you were introduced to one another, Mark would’ve thought that your mindset and outlook on how you managed everything going on in your life would change. He knew you were capable of great things; when you put your mind to it, you could finish any task that you were given and you were great with multitasking. Mark saw how much time, persistence and effort you would put in to your job or whenever you’d lend a hand to anyone who needed assistance; he admired your work ethic and how passionate you could get when it came to the people and things that you loved.
It was just harder for you to put time in to your essays, journals, blogs or reading the books your professors would assign. School was never something you ever really cared for; it wasn’t like you were really learning anything anyway. For years, you tried your best in being good at all subjects. You’d stay up studying for hours on end only to not retain any information that you learned and it wasn’t entirely your fault. The educational system was just fucked. In this generation, it isn’t even about learning anything; the main focus is turning in assignments on time.
The professors could give less of a shit whether or not you understand any of the material being taught. During your relationship, Mark tried his best to motivate you and even bribed you with food and kisses. He even offered to make flashcards for you if that meant you’d have an easier time studying, but nothing ever worked.
As much as he wanted you to be successful with your education, especially because he genuinely loved attending school, he knew not to force anything on you and making matters worse. This time was different though; this class was one you were already having a hard time with and this essay in particular would determine whether or not you pass or fail by the end of the semester. Your boyfriend tried his best to hide his disappointment, but it was only natural for him to be upset. Attending college was not cheap at all.
He was completely aware of the thousands of dollars you had to fund on your own because your parents weren’t able to help you financially as much as they wish they could. Since he was extremely supportive of you and each and every single one of your endeavors, he even helped pay for quite a bit of your tuition which you haven’t completely forgave him for, but you both showed him and told him on a daily basis how grateful you were that he did such a thing; and that he never fails to take care of you in ways you didn’t think you deserved.
A part of him wanted to continue his poor attempt at scolding you, but as soon as he saw tears building up at the brim of your eyelids, all his anger and frustration dissipated. If there was anything Mark hated, it was seeing you cry. The reason behind your tears didn’t matter; it just broke his heart knowing you were sad and right now, he pushed the idea of your procrastination to the back of his mind. He motioned for you to stand up and kissed both your cheeks to get rid of any trace of tears. Then, he pulled you in to his embrace and placed his chin on the top of your head before he comfortingly ran his hands up and down your back.
“I’m so sorry Mark—I’m sure you’re upset with me and you have every right to be—I’m so stupid—“ if this were under different circumstances, the cheeky pinch on your butt would’ve earned your boyfriend a punch to the shoulder, but you knew this was his way to stop you from degrading yourself. Before you could ever say anything negative about yourself, Mark would try and divert your attention away from bad mouthing yourself.
Although you and Mark were together for three years now and you knew he was the man you planned on spending the rest of your life with, there was an annoying voice in your head that would remind you almost every single day that you didn’t deserve him. He’s sacrificed so much for you and you knew it was because he loved you; but you never understood why. You weren’t anything special; sure, you loved him with every fiber of your being and you knew he was well aware of that. Yet, you knew he deserved so much more but there was no way you’d ever be able to let him go. Not when he was the one who saved your life all those years ago. The only person who meant anything to you.
As much as you loved your family and your friends, nobody could ever compare or mean as much to you. Nobody could ever be as important as Mark was. He was the only person you were sure you would die from heartbreak if you were to lose him. It was selfish of you to continue dragging him down with you and your toxic ways, but you needed Mark; you’d be nothing without him. He was your own personal guardian angel sent to change your life entirely for the better. He was the only good thing going for you and with the way he treated you as if you were the most fragile and rarest jewel in the world, you knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
“You’re not stupid baby—a little irresponsible and careless, but not at all stupid. Hmph, I’ll tell you what, seeing as how I’m better when it comes to writing essays, let me handle it this time.”
“No, there’s no way in hell I’m going to let you do this assignment for me Mark, I’d rather take the F—“ the soft kiss he placed on the corner of your lips made it aware that Mark meant business. Whenever he’d say something, he meant it. However, you refused to allow him to work on something you kept pushing back for months. Your essay was your full responsibility and it wouldn’t be fair for your boyfriend to have to write something he didn’t benefit from in such a small amount of time. God, he really did love you.
“The more time you spend trying to talk me out of helping you when I already made my mind up, the less time I’ll have to work on this paper. I don’t want you stressing over this; you’re already so worn-out as it is. This’ll be a piece of cake babe—you just sit on the bed and look pretty while I get started.”
Mark had to be a figment of your imagination. There was no way someone as thoughtful, kind-hearted, selfless and caring as him could exist. Most people would groan at the idea of having to do more work and if it were anyone else, you were sure you would’ve gotten a completely different reaction. You were quick to pull him in to a tight hug and left multiple chaste kisses all across of his face.
“I love you—more than I can ever fathom in to words Mark Tuan. You don’t understand how much this means to me—I’ll do anything you ask of me. Ugh, I will never get over how amazing you are and I could never thank you enough for all that you do for me.” He cupped your cheek and placed a wet kiss on your jaw.
“Anything huh? Maybe you could do some loads of my laundry, but that’s pretty much it—oh. I um—maybe you could—ah never mind.” You looked at him in curiosity and giggled when you saw the apples of his cheeks grow pink with embarrassment. Whatever he was probably referring to had to be something he was shy about. Your boyfriend was the definition of an introvert and he had a hard time asking people questions or even favors; this sometimes also included you. If you wanted to know what was on his mind, you’d have to pry it out of him.
“What is it babe?” He gave you the most adorable shrug and nibbled on his bottom lip as he began to look everywhere around the room but at you.
“Don’t feel as if you have to do this for me, I really don’t expect anything from you, but I wouldn’t mind a blow job if you’re up for it later.” One thing you loved the most about Mark, was how gentle and awkward he would get whenever it came to initiating sex or insinuating that he wanted a sexual favor from you. It was cute, yet it also turned you on for some reason. Maybe it was because he’d act totally innocent and submissive since he never wanted you to feel uncomfortable and he preferred to take things at your pace; but once the two of you actually made love, his attitude would take a 360 degree turn.
Sex with Mark was your favorite past time; he could get very naughty and rough in bed, but he could also take things slow and sensually. It really depended on the mood, but your boyfriend was an extremely generous and passionate lover. He knew what you liked, what positions you enjoyed the most, how to lick, bite and suck on all your sensitive body parts in order to elicit any kind of needy reaction out of you. It really boggled your mind that someone like Mark—someone so perfect without a flaw at all actually existed and what was harder to believe was that you were the lucky girl who was extremely blessed to call him yours.
That was something you would never take for granted; nor did you think you would ever get used to having him in your life. You seductively made your way on to his lap and began leaving sloppy kisses against his nape. This beautiful man sitting in front of you was willing to do your homework in order to prevent you from having a mental breakdown. He was willing to sacrifice his time to work on an assignment that wasn’t his responsibility to take care of just so that you didn’t have to suffer. Honestly, what world war did you fight and win in your past life to be the one that receives Mark’s love every single day? Whatever it is that you did to be able to call Mark your boyfriend, you would do it again and again if it meant having him in each and every single lifetime.
“Fuck—babe—as good as that feels, I only have three hours—y/n—you know, I’m actually thinking about taking you on your offer—just settle for the F and I’ll get settled in between your pretty thighs—“ you couldn’t help but stifle back a giggle once you heard the soft whine fall from his lips after you got up from off his lap, but he was right. He was already doing your homework for you, the least you could do was sit on the side and prevent yourself from bothering him.
“Oh yeah—you’re definitely taking me down your throat as soon as I turn in this paper. Now do as I said and sit down on the bed. Your presence alone is such a distraction and fuck—I’ve been hard since this morning when you walked out in my shirt. Damnit y/n—I really want to have my way with you right now. Please use this experience for future reference. I can’t believe I’m being cockblocked by a research paper of all things.”
You watched as Mark quickly skimmed through the rubric; you knew your boyfriend wanted to make sure he understood the material before typing out a bunch of nonsense. The last thing he needed was to spend all this time and effort looking for resources, citing them and looking for both spelling and grammatical errors only to earn you a bad grade. If Mark wasn’t there and you just so happened to find out about the essay, you wouldn’t have even attempted to write anything.
Your mindset in college was that if it seemed impossible, you would just give up on it entirely. Mark’s mindset however, was more realistic and you wished you had the motivation and enthusiasm that seemed to live in his bloodstream. Watching him so focused as he typed away like nothing was such an inspiring sight. English was one of your boyfriend’s favorite subjects; he loved reading all kinds of books—from murder mystery to comics and romance novels, Mark always preferred reading over watching a movie or television shows.
But, if there was anything he enjoyed more than reading, it was writing. Normally, the day his professor would assign him an essay, proposal, research paper or journal entry was the same day he would complete it and turn it it. There had to be something wrong with him. What person in their right mind genuinely enjoyed writing thousands of words, making sure there weren’t any errors and that the paper in its entirety actually made sense? You knew not to bother him, but you couldn’t help staring at him in all his handsome glory. His brows were furrowed and he began biting his lip in concentration; you didn’t think it was possible for someone to look like a model straight from an ad or a magazine while typing out an English paper.
“Can I get you something to eat or drink babe?” He quickly shook his head in disagreement without even looking up—he was too focused in whatever it was he could be typing.
“I think I need a couple of kisses though, you know—to help me reenergize.” You playfully rolled your eyes at his cheeky request before getting up and placing a few soft kisses against his mouth.
“So how’s it coming out?” He scrunched his nose before giving you a slight shrug.
“If I’m being honest, this probably isn’t my best work, but I’m sure it’s fine. I’m almost done by the way—so I’ll have you look it over to make sure it’s to your liking and then you can turn it in. Maybe you should start preparing your gratuity and tie your hair up. Might as well take your pants off while you’re at it—ow! I’d be careful if I were you baby. I might just replace your name with mine and confuse the shit out of your professor—yeah, that’s what I thought. Now, be a good girl and return back to bed.”
As much as you wanted to continue messing around with him; only because you were enjoying how demanding he would get when he was under stress, you knew better than to distract him. You decided to find something else to occupy yourself with as Mark returned to typing profusely at your laptop. It was extremely fascinating how he didn’t even take a second to think about what to write. The words seemed to just flow out of his brain like it was the easiest thing in the world and you were growing envious of his ability to come out with such quality and detailed work in such a small amount of time.
Around twenty minutes later, Mark let out a sigh of relief and brought his hands behind his back—a sign that he was finally finished. He motioned for you to walk over to your desk and had you sit on his lap. Out of habit, he snaked his arms around your waist and placed his chin on your shoulder; wanting to be as close to you as possible.
“Ten pages, twelve sources and it’s only 9:15. Tell me what you think baby.”
Right as you finished reading just the first paragraph alone, you were at a loss for words. Even if you were to start writing this paper when you first received the assignment from your professor, you were sure nothing you could write would be at least half as amazing as this paper was. It wasn’t repetitive—nor did he use nonsense words or anything you were sure you probably would have added in. He put all his sources in alphabetical order and inserted page numbers at the bottom of each page.
You could see why Mark’s previous English professor had asked him on multiple occasions to be her TA. The word brilliant wasn’t even enough to describe the kind of student Mark was. For someone who never really cared about reading English papers; whether it was an assignment for class, or when you had to give constructive criticism on one of your fellow classmate’s work, you would always skim through their essays—but you found yourself reading each and every single word Mark had typed out. His essay had you hooked; it was one of those writings that you were sure anyone would actually enjoy having to read. How was he able to finish all of that so quickly? By the end of it, you were in tears and you didn’t even realize you were crying until you felt Mark giggle in to your neck.
“Why are you crying Bub? I don’t think what I’ve written is at all that depressing. I literally wrote about biodegradation and how to save the earth—“
You didn’t give him any chance to continue his explanation as you roughly smashed your lips against his. Mark did so many things for you on a daily basis. He didn’t have to say he loved you for you to know that he did—his actions spoke for him. Knowing how most guys could be, you were sure no boyfriend would waste his time completing an assignment, especially one so time consuming needed all your knowledge and effort—for his girlfriend.
College was rough on everyone; so to take on something you thought was extremely difficult in order to prevent you from stressing out more than you already were—it made tears fall from the brim of your eyelids. You continued your ministrations, licking his lips and bringing both the bottom and the top in between your teeth before sucking on his tongue. Feeling him hum in to your mouth sent warmth to your core. In your relationship, you were the more extroverted and talkative one. You could go on and on about any subject you were passionate about.
However, just like Mark; you were more about actions than words—mainly because you felt like there weren’t enough words in the English dictionary to actually form sentences that would describe just how much you loved Mark wholeheartedly and exactly what he meant to you. When you felt his excitement press up against your ass, you knew what was right about to happen; but you wanted him to know verbally how grateful you were for him before showing him physically.
“Fuck—how did you—what kind of drug are you on Mark? That was one of the best essays I’ve ever read. There’s no way my professor is going to believe I wrote that. This is honors worthy—you’re—I can’t even find a word good enough to describe you. Otherworldly? Wonderful? Perfect? I love you so much Mark. Fuck, do I love you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I don’t know what I did to have you in my life, but I would do it again and again to have you forever. I know you hate when I say this, but it’s the truth baby—I really don’t deserve you. Thank you, not just for typing this essay—fuck I still can’t even process this entire situation you need to sign up for scholarships or some shit you are so fucking intelligent and such a hardworking student. But—thank you for loving me. You really are the best thing that has ever happened to me and I am forever grateful for whoever it was that decided to bless me with you as my soulmate. I love you Mark Tuan.” His wide grin and the way he looked at you so adoringly made your heart melt.
“I’d do anything for you—you know that baby. It’s just—seeing you so distressed—so frustrated and unhappy with school, watching you overwork yourself to the bone—it fucking sucks. Especially when I see you beating yourself up over grades you have no control over. I know you try your best in every single thing that you do and I know that it’s easy to forget some important things and fall behind, but I will always be there to catch you—and to assure you that everything is going to be okay. You’re my person y/n—it’s my life duty to take care of you. However—don’t get used to this baby, as much as I love you—trust me—I love you with every breath I take and with every beat of my heart—but shit, that was rough. Oh—and I never want to hear you say you don’t deserve me ever again. You take care of me just as much as I take care of you. It’s a team effort babe. Now, with that being said, you caused a big problem in my pants over half an hour ago and I think it’s time that you solved it.”
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Frights, Camera, Action! – Hauntlywood Clawdia Wolf Diary
August 25th
Today I was walking through the streets of Londoom I just wanted to howl and do a little dance because I’m so excited to be here. I didn’t, of course, do the dancing part, since I’m the one with the “clumsy gene” in our family and I didn’t want to fall through an open monster hole cover. It has never bothered me that I’m not as athletic as the rest of the pack, because I think it was pretty apparent even when I was a cub that I was better at writing stories about my brothers’ and sisters’ athletic exploits than participating in them. It’s not that I didn’t try, but my mind and body may have been in concert but they were not playing the same tune. I remember the last organized soccer game I played: the coach put me in the goal partly because I was tall for my age and partly because he thought that perhaps the prospect of a ball being rocketed toward me might keep my attention. It worked for a bit, until the ball stayed at the other end of the pitch for a while, and a butterfly landed on the net. All of a sudden I became a ferocious were-spider who decided to give the butterfly a reprieve. So I climbed up in the net to shoo it away when I heard my dad yell, “Clawdia, turn around!” A ghoul was on a breakaway, and the only thing between her and me was open pitch and the ball. I tried to turn, and my spikes caught in the net, so I just closed my eyes and leaped toward the front of the goal. Somehow the ball ended up in my claws, and I kept the ghoul from scoring. It was my one and only athletic achievement, so I retired with my legacy in check and got a good story out of it, which, I’m sure, will end up in one of my screamplays some day.
September 8th
I was sitting in the lecture hall today not really paying attention like I should have been, partly because I was working on a not-for-that-class writing assignment and partly, okay, mostly, because symbolism in ghost-modern, neo-realist goblin cinema is only slightly less painful than rolling in flea-infested wolf’s bane. Honestly, I have no idea what a goblin miner wearing a red hat and pushing an empty ore cart says about the state of modern goblin-kobold relations. I’m sure it is profound and important, but well... it doesn’t matter. What did matter, howere, was that the professor asked a question that he wanted all of us to answer, and I didn’t hear the question. I could have asked him to repeat the question, of course, but then I would have had to acknowledge that I had not been paying attention, and since this particular professor hates that, I knew I was going to have to wing it on the answer. Which made me nervous, which made me look for something to chew on, which meant I wasn’t listening to the other answers, which meant I didn’t have a clue when he got to me. So when he said, “Ms. Wolf?” I said I didn’t think I could add anything to the discussion that had not been more profoundly stated in the answers my classmates had already given. This caused the rest of the class to burst out laughing, to which the professor said, “While I appreciate your humility, your answer leaves us no closer to knowing how many siblings you have.” I was mortalfied, but even more so when he said, “Please do try and pay better attention going forward.” Unlive and learn, Clawdia, unlive and learn.
September 15th
I’ve been using my iCoffin tablet to do some of my writing lately, and I really like it. I mean, I like the tablet. It’s great for doing video chats, and there are some really cool Londoom based apps that have helped me find my way around the city better. As for the writing part, I still prefer my chewed pen and leghoul pad. It may be old-fashioned, but there’s something about a blank sheet of paper that’s less intimidating than a blank scream with a blinking cursor.
October 1st
The only thing that’s coming down faster than the temperature in Londoom right now is the rain. I’m not sure what the real temp is, but you know it’s cold when a werewolf has to put on her fuzzy wool socks... brrr... fortunately, dad did a good job preparing me for this climate by never allowing to turn the thermostat up past the “I can see my breath” mark during the winter. We would say, “Dad, the house is freezing!” to which he would always reply, “You can either have heat or you can eat.” Followed quickly by, “We’re werewolves, for ghoul’s sake, put on a sweater if you’re cold.” Then we’d all look at mom, who would just shrug her soldiers. It was one of the only things she couldn’t change his mind about. So we’d all just sit snuggled together on the couch watching bad TV, complaining about Howleen’s sharp, unclipped paw nails and making promises about what we’d do when we all moved out and got our own places. I distinctly remember saying that I would turn up the heat so high that it would make Gloom Beach seem like a Yeti cave. So the first time it got cold here, I did just that, and it was every bit as amazing as I imagined it would be, until I got my first heating bill. Let’s just say that grocery shopping for the next few weeks gave me a completely different perspective on dad’s old saying. I’m pretty confident that saltines and marmite will never darken the shelves of my cupboard again after having that formerly tasty combination as my only breakfast and lunch option for a fortnight. I’m really missing being able to snuggle up on the couch with my pack of siblings, and I wouldn’t even complain about Howleen’s uncut paw nails... well, maybe not a lot.
October 6th
I had a great video chat with the fam tonight, and they could not stop talking about Draculaura being chosen as queen of the vampires. They were in complete shock, and I have to admit it was quite a surprise to me as well. The vampires haven’t had a queen since the last chosen one, a young vampire ghoul named Elissabat, disappeared some 400 years ago. What is really curious about this, as if Draculaura being chosen as the new queen right out of the boo wasn’t curious enough, is that Clawdeen told me Draculaura’s choice was confirmed by the Vampire’s Heart. I have actually been doing quite a bit of research on the heart, which is really just a massive jewel with magical properties, for a screamplay I wanted to write about the mystery of the missing queen. There are many scholars that believe the jewel disappeared at the same time the ghoul who would be queen did; so either the scholars are incorrect, or there is more here than meets the eye. I didn’t want to be the one to rain on the funeral though, until I had a little more proof, especially with Clawdeen being so excited about attending the coronation. I did notice that Clawd wasn’t in the room with everyone else, and I’m wondering how he is dealing with this news.
October 7th
Clawdeen has sent me at least 30 texts and emails since last night detailing the fashions she’s thinking about taking to the coronation. I can see her now running around the room with absolutely every piece of clothing she owns spread out so she can mix and match fashions. She’s probably also been through Draculaura’s closet several times as well. I love her so much and I wish I could be there to make her laugh when she starts getting too serious. She’s so beautiful, though, that whatever she chooses will probably steal the show. I finally got an IM from Clawd asking if we could talk. This wasn’t unusual, since Clawd prefers one-on-one conversation to fighting for face time in a group. When he popped up on the screen he looked terrible, almost like he’d been crying, although it might have just been bad lighting. As usual, Clawd didn’t want to talk about himself and instead wanted to know every little thing I was doing. I finally had to say, “Stop howling around the moon and talk to me, little brother.” So he did. He told me that he didn’t trust the Lord Stoker character that showed up with the Vampire’s Heart claiming it led him to Draculaura. What’s more, neither did Draculaura. They both thought Draculaura would be miserable being queen, but that she would feel honor and duty bound to take the throne. Even so he was trying to be as supportive as possible and went on for a few more minutes about things that were worrying him. When he stopped I said, “You really love her, don’t you?” He looked down for a moment and swallowed hard, “She’s my best friend, sis, and I’m about to lose her forever.” Now it was my turn to swallow hard, and then he made an excuse about having to leave for practice and said a hasty goodbye. I’m going to do some more digging into this, because something doesn’t pass the smell test here, and a Wolf’s nose is always right.
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Against the Odds - Chapter I
We could drink to first impressions!
MASTERLIST (mobile) AO3
"You know, I left my home country when I was 18. To be honest, I didn't get to spend much time with my family before that, because I attended boarding schools..." I explained and took a sip from the water cup next to me.
"So, boarding schools are still a thing in the UK?" the interviewer asked. Oh, so she’s that kind of a person.
"Well, yes. I mean, it was quite a few years ago, but I think they provide you with a friendly environment which allows you to both make friendships and study very hard. My parents didn't force me to go there, I really enjoyed that experience."
She nodded at me and moved on to the nest question, as if my answer was boring. I have no idea what kind of exciting answer she was expecting. "So how do you feel about joining a huge franchise like Marvel?"
"Well, I do love comic books and superhero movies, so it was like a dream come true. Not many actors get to experience something like that at such a young age and I'm grateful for the opportunity." I answered, hoping we were nearing the end of our little interview. She continued asking about Marvel, my future, living in the U.S., which brought us to the end.
"So, today is also February 13th. Do you have any plans for tomorrow? A special someone to spend Valentine's Day with." She inquired.
I sighed. "Not really, I'll probably just spend it with my cat or something." I don’t have a cat, by the way.
Half an hour later I was at JFK, waiting at the end of the line to get on a plane to LA. Hannah has just phoned me about a party that’s organized right after my meeting at the studios. She said it was being thrown by one of the actors, but she couldn’t remember which one. “I’ll send you the email. Text me the answer before you board.”
“Sure, so should I take some other clothes for the party? What should I wear for the meeting anyway? Should I do formal or more cas...”
Before I could end my sentence, some guy bumped into me. I almost fell onto the next person in line, but the stranger grabbed me in a nearly theatrical gesture. “I am so sorry, ma'am... I should stop rushing like that.”
“Hannah, let me call you back in a second.” I said and hung up immediately. The guy was wearing a cap and sunglasses. Indoors. “Well, I’m sure these accessories are not helping with your awareness of your surroundings, are they.” I snapped. “There’s still plenty of time before the take off, no need to rush like that.” I already was in a bad mood because of the early interview and the interviewer, so this guy just kind of made it worse. Maybe I shouldn’t have snapped like that, but he was the one who pushed me. Instead of calling Hannah, I just texted her.
Sorry, some guy in line bumped into me. I’ll go to the party. Could you just prepare something for me to wear, so I can go to the studios straight from the airport?
I knew she’d text me right back, so I just put my phone in my handbag.
After I settled in my seat, I heard the now familiar voice talking on the phone, in the seat behind me. “Can you get red cups? And cold snacks? I want it to be like a real frat house... Dodger will be fine, he’s used to it...”
“Sir, I’ve got to ask you to switch your phone off.” A stewardess asked. “Our Wi-fi connection will be available after take off.”
“I’m so sorry.” He apologized. “Already switched off.”
“Thank you.”
What a twat, I thought. I’d rather spend the whole flight with crying twins flying couch than hear him again in first class. I found my earphones and sunk into my chair. My heaven...
We landed in no time and I quickly found Hannah, waiting for me by the car. I hugged her. “Hi.” I whispered. “I had the worst day and it’s only 3 o'clock.”
“I got you hot chocolate and a chocolate fudge cupcake.” She smiled.
“I love youuu.” I whined. I looked over to my left and noticed the line guy entering a SUV car similar to mine. “That idiot made my day worse.”
I changed my clothes in the backseat while on the way to Burbank. “How long do you think the meeting will be?
“You'll have enough time to eat something before you go to that party.”
“Yesss, I'm already starving,” I said. “Who's gonna be there?”
Hannah pulled out her phone and found the message. “Its organized by Chris Evans...”
“The radio host?” I asked.
“No, the actor who portrays Captain America, Anthony Mackie with his wife, Sebastian Stan...”
“Oh, he’s cute.” I noted, midway through my cupcake.
“Emily VanCamp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Scarlett Johansson, Cobie Smulders, Hayley Atwell. And some other people.”
The meeting at Marvel Studios was about discussing Wanda's costumes, movements and overall some aspects of the character. I also scheduled some appointments with trainers, voice coaches and such. I had some fittings of prototypes, make up tests and hair styles. After 2 hours of talking, signing and scheduling, we finally got out and went to get something to eat. “I’d really love a hamburger now, but I'm afraid of an acne break out. Hannah, why is acne such a bitch?”
Hannah's is my agent. She’s nearly 40 years old, but also my best friend. We’ve been working together since I moved here and she’s been like a mum to me, when my actual mum couldn't be. And it also helps, that my mum actually likes her. So I have a Mom and a Mum. “You should eat something before the party, though. You can’t drink on an empty stomach.” She suggested.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Who said I'm even going to drink?”
She gave me that really? look. “No, I’m serious. Do I really drink so often that you have to point that out? I can have fun without alcohol, you know. I’m not going to drink tonight.”She just laughed at me and pulled towards a small Italian place, where I ordered a lasagne and lemonade. “Do you think I'm reckless?”
Hannah sighed. “Emily, I really didn’t mean it. I mean that you might not like the food at the party or that they might even not have anything sustaining. You are one of the most responsible people I know. And you’re 22.”
“Still 21.” I corrected her. I hate the thought of becoming older and older, so since my 18th birthday every birthday has become just more and more depressing.
I didn’t get too dressed up for the party. I thought that a black off shoulder top and jeans would do. I did wear high heels and some make up, but that’s just to make sure I look my best around my new cast mates.
The only other invited guest I knew was Aaron, with whom I’ve already had the pleasure to film a post-credits scene for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I was hoping he was there already, so I would have someone to talk to.
I texted him, when my car went through the gate, and told him to meet me outside.
“Got a little shy, all of a sudden?” he grinned as I escaped the car.
“Look, I’m not about to enter a house full of movie stars in their mid-thirties by myself, ok?” I laughed and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Do you think it was a good idea to bring a gift for the host?”
“Depends on what it is.”
“A pretty expensive scotch. Straight from actual Scotland.” I held up the bottle, wrapped in a Captain America gift wrapping paper.
“Perfect. Hope he'll open it tonight.” Aaron smiled. “Let's go, love.” He opened the door for me and I immediately heard music, chatter and laughter. “Guys, look who I found!” he yelled through the noise.
All of the people turned around to look at us. I was grateful for the little research I did, because I didn’t have to awkwardly ask who everyone was. “Finally, our newest addition!” Evans cheered and I immediately recognized his voice. I also noticed the backwards cap on his head and red cups around me.
“Oh my God, are you the guy who almost tackled me down in New York today?” I asked, completely stunned.
To be honest, now that I’ve taken a better look at him, I wouldn’t have minded him tackling me down. Even in public.
“He was just telling me that he was hoping you wouldn’t recognize him.” Sebastian laughed.
“I did say sorry.” He held his hands in defeat. “And I was in rush. Anyway, I’m Chris.”
“Well, you can’t rush a plane to a earlier take off. I’m Emily.” I shook his hand and smiled. God, he’s handsome. I held out the whisky bottle. “I brought it as a gift for the host, but I’m not sure you deserve it now that I know who you are.”
He smirked. “That’s a shame, I thought we could drink to first impressions.”
It took me about an hour to get to know most of the people here. I spent most of the time with Hayley and Aaron, which was pointed out to us. “You three here are forming some sort of British alliance, aren’t ya?” Anthony yelled. He was quite tipsy at the very least. I didn’t mind that. It was probably the first “Hollywood” house party I’ve been to and it was much better than stuck up events I’ve been to.
I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket, so I checked the caller. Mum. “I’m sorry, I have to take this.”
I decided to go outside and sat on the furniture on the terrace. “Hi, Mum. What’s up?”
“Honey, I’m sorry. I know you’re out, but... I have to talk to you.” She sighed. “You know your dad and I haven’t been in the best place lately and...”
I did and I knew where this was going. “Mum, I know what you’re about to say. And I you really want to say it right now, please don’t. Please, I can’t talk about this right now. It’s not the place nor the time. Can I call you tomorrow?”
She agreed. They always do that. I love my parents, but their timing is terrible.
“Mind if I join you?” I heard Chris' voice behind me. “Is everything alright?”
I looked up from my phone. “It’s just family business, you know. Nothing unusual.” I shrugged and let out a nervous laugh.
I’ve gotten really good at holding up tears. During my first year here I missed my family so much I cried every time I saw something family-related around me. I had to learn how to not show everything that’s going on inside my head. “My mum's just called me and she wanted to tell me that they’re divorcing, but it’s... nothing I haven’t noticed.”
“Families can be tough, I get that.” He agreed. “Maybe you want me to get you a ride home?”
“No, thank you. Being around people will help me forget about it.” I smiled faintly.
“Then how about I fix you that drink after all?” he suggested, stood up and held out his hand for me.
I nodded.
He guided me to the kitchen, where I sat on the counter, while Chris prepared a drink for me. “I can make something with that Scotch you brought, if you want.”
“Had my dad heard that you wanted to make a drink out of his favourite alcohol he would be livid. And should I add that bit about harassing his youngest daughter...”
He laughed. “Again, I am so sorry.” He apologized. “I feel like you’re just going to torture me till the end of time. What can I do to make this right?”
“I don’t know, you have to think of something.” I shrugged and took the drink he made me.
Chris smiled and leaned on the counter next to me. I couldn’t not look at his bicep as he brought the glass to his lips. “What would you say to a date?”
I looked at his face, as Chris turned to face me. He seemed a little bit nervous. “I mean... Only if you promise to keep your balance.” I smiled.
“Great,” he grinned. “How about tomorrow?”
I did remember that tomorrow was Valentine's Day. “You know that it’s February the 14th tomorrow, right?”
Chris shrugged. “Well, isn’t it the best day for a date?”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“Whatcha doing, my little lovebirds?” I heard Scott's voice.
“Just chillin...” I said, taking a sip of my drink. “Getting to know my fellow Avenger.”
Scott stayed with me while Chris left to say goodbye to some of the guests. We chatted for some time and went to the living room, where a few of the remaining guests were sitting on the sofas. “I really don’t wanna go, because the next time we see each other is gonna be in May or June…” Scarlett said. “And it was incredibly nice meeting you, Emily.” She turned to me and we hugged. I walked her to the door and we discussed when we’d get to film together. “Emily, I can bet you a weekend in SPA that by the time we see each other again, you will be a few months into dating Evans.” She smiled. “I’ve known him for so long, I know it’s gonna happen.”
I looked over at Chris, who was now laughing at something with Sebastian and Anthony. “I mean, we are going out tomorrow...”
“You can book that weekend for me already,” she grinned. “Look, he’s mostly dated women his age and it didn’t work out. I mean, that last girl... He went through so much with her and they broke up just 2 months ago. In my opinion, he should have ended it years ago.” She sighed. “Anyway, if you’re ok with it, then...”
“ScarJoooo,” Chris’ voice. “Are you leaving me already!?”
“You know I hate it, when people call me that. And yes, I’m leaving, because my husband is waiting for me.”
“You’re no fun.” He complained and put his arm around my shoulders. I think he was a little bit tipsy now and a bit more confident since I’ve already agreed to the date. “I’ve got a new friend now.”
“I told you he would be snuggling against poor Emily before the night ends.” Anthony yelled as he was us. “Evans, keep it in your pants or she will run away!”
“God, I hate them.”
An hour later it was just me, Chris, Scott, Sebastian and Anthony. We were sitting around the coffee table. They asked me a lot of questions since I was new, British and the only girl there. Sebastian was drunk enough to ask me if child birth is really more painful than a kick in the balls. Dodger, Chris' dog joined us after a while and chose to lay down next to me, which made Chris a bit upset. “I knew he would leave me for a girl someday. Not cool, buddy, not cool.” I stroked the dog's incredibly soft, ginger fur and listened to their conversations. I really didn't want to leave – Hannah couldn't stay with me tonight, so the moment I'd step into my empty flat I'd momentarily think about my partners’ break up.
We all stood up when Sebastian, Scott and Anthony said they’d be leaving. I got kind of anxious and hoped they’d want to stay longer. “Hey, how about we take Dodger for a walk and then come back to watch a movie?” Chris said quietly as the others were chatting in the doorway. “It's still early.”
“I don’t know, Chris... I...”
He bent down right next to his pup and said. “How could you say no to those eyes?”
Well, I couldn’t say no to neither Chris' nor Dodgers eyes, so it was an easy decision to make. “Fine.”
I tried to avoid questions from the guys by saying that my agent is picking me up and she’s running late. They made some jokes, but bought it and we were walking around the neighbourhood in no time. “So do you want to talk about your parents now?” Chris inquired.
“Well, to be honest, it shouldn’t be a big deal for me. I’m a grown woman,” I started. “A year ago I noticed that my parents started to act different. They used to be very expressive in feelings towards each other and then it just stopped. So I asked them if everything was alright and they’d say that everything’s fine. Multiple times, so I dropped it.” I sighed. “When she called me today I knew why. I told her I’d be out and she never calls me when I tell her that.”
I shivered a little bit, when we turned right to the park. Chris immediately took off his sweater and handed it to me. “Look, I went through the same thing. My parents got divorced when I was 18. It didn’t get ugly and messy, but it was still hard for the family. You know, me and my sisters were already a bit more independent, they were in New York, I was about to graduate high school. But Scott had a hard time processing all of this.”
I pulled his sweater over my head and discreetly inhaled his scent. Sweet heavens. “I'm gonna be the Scott I’m my family.” I sighed and watched Dodger play around with a ball. “I’ve got two older brothers and they’ve always been overprotective of me, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I had a million text messages on my phone right now.” I pulled it out. “I switched it off after mum called.”
“You know, you got me a bit scared with those two overprotective brothers of yours.” Chris chuckled and whistled at Dodger.
“I won’t tell on you if you let me choose the movie.” I said. “I feel like watching Scary Movie.”
“I was gonna let you choose anyway, but if that gets me out of trouble.”
Back at his house, Chris let Dodger off the leash and the dog claimed his spot on the sofa immediately. “Do you want something to drink? Or eat?”
I sat on the stool by the kitchen island. “Do you have hot chocolate?”
Chris looked up at me and smiled. “And a pizza?”
He’s perfect, I thought and nodded.
We were bringing snacks and drinks to the living room when I realized, “You know, we discussed divorces and our parents, but we still know nothing about each other.” So we played 21 questions, while the movie played in the background. We started off with some safe questions.
“What is the best movie you've filmed?” Chris asked.
“Well, I filmed Cinderella last year, so...”
“You're Cinderella!?” he didn’t even let me finish.
“Yeah, the movie comes out in 2015.”
It turned out that Chris is a big fan of Disney and was incredibly excited to be going on a date with an actual Disney princess. “Oh my God, that is surreal. I’m finally gonna be a hero to my niece.”
“How many nephews do you have?” I asked.
“I have two nephews and one niece. They’re all under 5 years old, so when we’re all together with other members of the family, it gets incredibly messy.” He scrolled though his gallery to show me a photo of his laying on the floor with three children laid all over him, with Dodger standing next to them.
He had so many photos of them I got kind of scared. What if he wants to have children soon? I mean, I’ve known him or a few hours, but is it worth wasting my time if he asks me to have his child in a year? I definitely won’t want one in a year. Or in two years. Or three.
“I have two nephews. Both by my oldest brother. And they’re just too spoiled for me. I like children in general, but they are a pure nightmare.” I smiled. It was a small test. If he says they might not me as bad as I think they are, we will have a problem.
“I get it. Some kids are just real dicks.” He shrugged. “Worst breakup?”
I finished my drink and pretended to give it a thought. “I don’t think I’ve ever had one. I’ve never been in a relationship serious enough to consider the breakup ‘ugly'.” I sighed. “What about you?”
“Last year. We had some different approach to how we wanted to live our lives and had difficulties synching our schedules.” He explained.
“Live your lives?”
“She would call paps on us and stuff. She hasn’t been very successful as an actress, so this was the most publicity she could get.”
“Oh, ok.” I felt a bit bad for inquiring. “How about your first kiss?”
“Oh my God. I was 16 and I’m still shocked that the girl didn't just kick me in the balls. Too. Much. Tongue. I was awful.”
I couldn’t imagine Chris being bad at something. He’s definitely a pro now. “Mine was when I was 19. I was already in acting, but came back to my parents’ house for some time off. I threw a party for a few of my friends, but my former best friend brought her boyfriend’s friends. One of them was incredibly nice to me throughout the evening and we ended up making out the couch after everyone left. One thing he failed to mention was that the girl, who left 20 minutes before was his girlfriend.”
Chris was shocked. “What a dick.” He said. “Men are pigs.”
“Yeah, can’t believe I wasted my first kiss on him.” Well, I didn’t only waste my first kiss on him, but that’s not a conversation were going to have right now. “If you have bad experiences from dating actresses, why won’t you try dating outside of business?”
He smiled. “Well, only people from the business can understand moving to a filming location for a few weeks, kissing other people or rubbing yourselves against them.”
I nodded. “True. I get that it’s hard to understand, but that’s the job.”
I never thought I’d be able to talk so comfortably with someone 11 years older than me. I always thought it’s just different life experiences, different life phases, but it hasn’t been the case so far.
At some point we finally started to pay attention to the movie, but turned out I wasn’t interested at all and passed out on Chris' shoulder.
Imagine my shock, when I woke up, still on the couch, with my arms tangled around Chris' torso, with a blanket over us. Oh my God.
I lifted my head to see that Chris was still asleep. As slowly as I could, I sat up to see Dodger sitting by his leash, waving his tail enthusiastically with his mouth open. It must be way past his morning walk time. I looked at Chris as he just readjusted his sleeping position.
Well, I guess I have a dog now. I went to the bathroom to check if my make up wasn’t smudged. I found the cap Chris wore at the airport yesterday, put it on and let Dodger out. I had no problem hooking the leash to his collar and we went out to the street. He was at my side all the time, until I let him off the leash in the park and sat on the bench.
I was a little bit worried that someone would recognize Dodger and let the media know that a new girl I walking Chris’ dog. And she’s definitely not a dog walker, because no professional dog walker would wear high heels while on the job. I felt like I should be embarrassed, but I wasn’t. Should I be? I mean, we didn’t do anything wrong, my make up wasn't touched at all and my clothes were all in order. We just fell asleep on the sofa together.
Dodger brought me a stick he found. I took it from him and threw it as far as I could. I played with him for a little and decided to go back.
Chris was already up, showered and changed. “I thought you were mad at me and stole my dog.” He joked. “You want coffee?”
“No, thank you. I don’t drink coffee.” I smiled. “You thought I stole your dog, but left my bag?”
He's just noticed it on a chair. “Oh, right.” He handed me a glass of water. “Ok, so I can make you a breakfast or... I can drive you to yours, you’ll get ready and then I can take you out.
“You don’t want people to see you with me wearing yesterday’s outfit and barely there make up?” I lifted my eyebrow.
“You look incredible and being seen with you in any state will be an honour to me, but I know where we're going and you wouldn't want to go there in these shoes on.” He grinned.
“Chris, if this is something sport's related, I’m leaving now. With my bag and Dodger.”
“It's not sports related, there might be a bit of walking involved.” He teased.
I chose the second option and we were on the road in no time. I gave Chris directions to my flat. He lived in Studio City while I had a place in the centre.
“So you live in LA?” Chris asked, when a red light stopped him.
“No, I just come here for work and meetings. I also have a place in New York and I’m there most of the time.” I explained. “I don’t really like LA, to be honest. I haven’t been around for too long, but I get recognized a lot all the time here, especially since it’s been announced that I’m joining the MCU. It’s nice, but sometimes you just need a little more privacy in public.”
“I get that. I mean, I got used to it, but I still wear the cap and sunglasses and hope less people recognize me.” He sighed. “Do you think people recognize you less in New York?”
“Well, out of three cities I’ve lived in, the least people come up to me in New York. It’s the worst in London, because I was on both The Tudors and Downton Abbey. In LA, people are more forward and demanding. In NY, people are just too busy minding their own business to stop and ask for a photograph.”
We reached my flat and I immediately went to the shower while Chris sat on the sofa and turned the TV on.
After the shower I stood in front of the mirror for a while. It’s a date. What should I wear then? Should I wear make up? I should follow his lead and copy his outfit.
So I wore jeans, a yellow sweater and a denim jacket just in case. I dug also out my cleanest Adidas trainers. After deciding that the shadows under my eyes weren’t that visible today, I only put on some mascara and brushed my eyebrows. Done.
I went back to the living room where Chris was looking through a comic book. He noticed me and smiled. “You look great. That huge bag isn’t necessary, though.” He pointed at my handbag.
“I’m gonna leave it in your boot, if that’s ok.” I said and moved towards the door.
“In my what?” he stood up, confused.
“In your trunk, Yankee.” I smirked.
I didn’t know much of Los Angeles, so I couldn’t work out where we were going and Chris refused to tell me. “It's a surprise, you’re gonna love it.”
“You’ve known me for less than 24 hours, how do you know I’m gonna love it?” I raised my eyebrow.
“Actually, it’s more than 24 hours now. I bumped into you 26 hours ago.” He corrected me.
“Creep.” I laughed. “Oh my God, we're going to Disneyland.”
He furrowed his eyebrows and looked at me. “Ok, how did you know that?”
“You said I’m gonna love it, probably because I loved playing Cinderella. You love Disney, I do too. There’s gonna be a lot of walking. Also, there was a sign, we’re 5 minutes away.” I explained and smiled.
“Outrageous...” He sighed. “ Way to ruin a surprise.”
As Chris parked I put on my sunglasses and he followed me by doing the same thing a adding a cap. “Just in case, it’s the middle of the week, barely after 12pm, it just can’t be crowded.”
Well, it was. Who would've thought that Disneyland is an excellent destination on a Valentine’s Day? I didn’t want to say anything out loud, because I knew Chris was very excited. It turned out that he bought tickets while I was taking a shower. I'm surprised he doesn't have an annual pass.
I couldn't believe how a 32 year old man turned into an 8 year old so fast. He literally took my hand the moment we got in and pulled towards the nearest ride. To be honest, I was more focused on the fact, that his hand was gripping mine even when we were in the queue. I didn’t mind it, but someone has already given us a second look when they saw Chris. His strategy was to ignore everyone until they actually approach him.
Chris started to talk about all the rides we were gonna go to. “Do you remember the names of all rides?” I laughed.
“Probably, I come here all the time with my nephews.” He explained. “I’m not just some creep who hangs around Disneyland alone.”
“No, you’re more than that.” I joked.
“When was the last time you went to Disneyland?” he asked.
“I think it was like 10 years ago, but in Paris.”
“10 years without the happiest place on the planet. Oh my God. We're here until they’re closed.”
I hope he was only joking, because I was a bit nauseous only after three rides. “Can we go on the less speedy ones now?” I asked.
“I mean, I should just say you’re weak, at this point.” He laughed. “But I don’t want you to throw up on me during our first date.”
“Oh, that would be fun.” I grinned.
“Definitely, “ Chris looked around. “How about we go eat something now?”
I nodded and followed him to a restaurant. We seemed to be a little underdressed there, but a waiter soon walked us to a secluded area, where we would have some privacy and no one else would see us.
“There you go, Ms. Dawson.” He handed me menu. “Mr. Evans. I’ll be back soon to take your orders.”
“Thank you,” I smiled. “How does he know our names?” I asked Chris.
“Well, the reservation is under my name, but I didn’t give him yours, so I guess he’s a fan.” He shrugged.
I scanned the card, hoping to find something with chicken or with no meat at all. “I fell like you had to make that reservation like a month ago.” I said. The other, less intimate, part of the restaurant was packed.
He smiled. “I do come here a lot, so they may have made an exception for me. And I always take a selfie with their manager. Anyway, if I may suggest – they make excellent fish and orecchiette pasta.”
I ordered whatever Chris recommended me. He ordered a lot of side dishes and it had me think whether he thought I could eat that much or it was only for him. “May I suggest some wine?”
“Well, I’m driving,” Chris answered. “Emily?”
“Something semi sweet, perhaps.” I smiled and gave him my card back. “I’ll trust you on this one.”
“Thank you, I’ll choose something suitable.”
Chris kept looking at me as the waiter left our table. “Is there something on my face?” I asked.
He grinned. “No, you just ordered what I recommended you and relayed on him to get you a good wine.”
“I’m not very problematic or sophisticated. Just two or three years ago I was still drinking wine drinks from the nearest grocery shop instead of actual wine, because I saw no difference. Besides, I’ve seen their prices per bottle and it just can’t be bad.” I shrugged. “Oh, and don’t you dare think that you’ll pay for all of this. You paid for the entrance, I’m paying for food.”
Chris raised his eyebrow. “We'll see about that.”
“Christopher...” I started. “Wait, are you Chris or Christopher? Do you have middle name? I wanted to say your full name, but I don’t know it.”
He just shrugged, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Guess you’re gonna have to Google me or something.”
I didn’t give up. I pulled my phone out just to discover it was still switched off. “Oh my God.” I froze.
“What's wrong?” Chris asked, a worried look on his face.
“I switched my phone off after talking to my mum yesterday and I haven’t turned it on since.” I answered, horrified. “They’re gonna kill me.”
After the screen light up I got a countless number of notifications: missed calls, texts, FaceTime calls, Skype calls, Facebook messages, WhatsApp messages. Everything. “They’re gonna strangle me. Wait... it’s 4:30 here, so it's 12:30am in London.”
“Go, call them.” Chris said. “They’re probably worried.”
I looked up at him. He’s such a good guy. “No, it’s fine. I’ll just text my brother. He’s definitely still up.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t picked up your calls, I switched my phone off and forgot to switch it on again until just now. I don’t feel like talking to neither Mum or Dad. I’ll book a flight back to the UK and come later this week. I wish they had decided to tell me about the divorce last month, when I was there and not when I’m on the other side of the globe, at a party.”
“Done, it’s been dealt with. I’m gonna get the shit beaten out of me when they see me.” I smiled. “Anyway, I’m sorry.”
“It’s no big deal.” He assured me.
We decided not to talk about anything negative right now and moved on to talking about filming Avengers: Age of Ultron. After we realized that we haven’t even swapped numbers and had no way of sharing each other’s calendars, we did so. I also friended him on Facebook. You know, just in case.
Our food arrived and we dug into our plates. The food was delicious and the wine was very well selected. I couldn’t stop eating until I’ve finished my meal. Then Chris told me to eat the sides and suggested what goes well with what. He moved to sit right next to me and we talked about comics and movies. I had no idea that a movie he directed could premiere at TIFF this year.
“Yeah, if I'm honest I'm scared shitless, but it's all sealed already.” He admitted and ate a shrimp.
“I'm sure they will choose it and it will do well.” I said and, without reconsidering, took his hand. It was that moment. We started to lean each other’s ways. As our noses brushed against each other, Chris whispered: “Emily, I’ve been waiting for this for the whole day.”
“Mhm...” I murmured.
“And while I’d like nothing more but to just move those 2 inches and kiss you... I wanted to do this at a certain point this evening.” He explained. “You’ll know when.”
“Ok.” I’m gonna die.
Somehow, he managed to pay for the meal without even leaving the table. Because we decided we should have a picnic now, I went to buy sweets and a blanket, which featured Mickey and Minnie. We found a quiet spot, behind most people in the park. “Are we waiting for something?” I asked.
“I’m waiting for you to eat all these cupcakes.” He joked, looking at my stuffed mouth.
“I hope that’s not a bet, because you will loose.” I snapped back.
It was getting completely dark. I laid down and looked at the stars that started to appear on the sky. More people gathered on the grass around us as well as on the benches. I was sure that something was supposed to happen here, but I also knew Chris wouldn’t tell me if I asked. He laid down next to me, took my hand and brought it to his lips. I felt shivers on my arm as he pressed his lips against my skin.
“I really enjoyed today,” he whispered. “And yesterday.”
I turned to face him. “Me too,” I smiled. “But it might just be this place...”
A moment later I realized why Chris wanted to wait for the kiss and why people were gathering around us. It was time for a special Valentine’s Day firework display. “Oh my God...”
I turned to Chris, who almost immediately pressed his lips against mine. After the initial shock, I open my mouth slightly. Chris' tongue slips inside my mouth gently as his hand cups my cheek. Our tongues tangled together is like nothing I've ever experienced. I move my fingers to run through his hair, as Chris gently pushes me to lay down. We’re making out, laying on a Mickey Mouse blanket in Disneyland. “Chris, they’re going to arrest us for public indecency or something...” I whispered, breaking the kiss for a second. Our lips connected again almost with hunger.
“I really don’t give a fuck right now.” he answered breathing heavily against my lips. “I don’ even know if it’s the fireworks or my heart.”
I’m sure the firework display was incredible. I didn’t get to see much of it, but I'm sure it was.
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MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: THIS IS ALL BASED ON MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND WHAT I FOUND HELPFUL !!! KTHNXS ✨
hello honey! I just finished my first year at my new uni doing my new degree and I am honestly so happy about the results I am currently getting compared to what I was getting last year. so I decided to write this little post in order to help those who are going into their first year of university/college or those who just wanna change their mindset.
just a very quick story time: last year was my first REAL year at a university and being fresh outta high school, I was extremely excited about studying the subjects I wanted to study and ready to make new friends etc. etc. However, I realised right after semester 1, that I was in way over my head and it most definitely did NOT help that my dumbass was in a horrible mindset and was not mentally mature for university and the social life of university. Due to this, as well as my quick declining interest and motivation to study, I pretty much bombed out and failed my entire first year of university. And when I said I failed my first year, I’m talking I completely failed and I knew I had failed by semester 2 and so I decided not to do my semester 2 final exams cause what’s the point?
that mindset honestly, was one of the worst I have ever been and my anxiety honestly has never been so high and I would not relive those moments ever again. so here are 10 tips and some advice on how to survive your first year of university/college and hopefully you guys will have a better 1st year experience than I did. ♡
TIP #1: GROW OUT OF YOUR HIGH SCHOOL MENTALITY (it will be an ongoing journey even past your first year of uni tbh)
not gonna lie, the second you tell someone that you are 18 years old and that you are in university, everyone suddenly expects you to be an adult and have your shit together and to have suddenly matured out of your high school mentality and that your break between your high school graduation and your first few months at university, you are expected to have mentally matured by like 20 years or some shit. yes, it is strongly advised that you get out of your high school mentality and yes it is strongly advised that you have to grow the fuck up once you get into university.
however, you should not force yourself to grow up. university will most definitely throw things your way that will completely change and shape the person you will just eventually grow to be.
TIP #2: ACTUALLY GO AND ATTEND YOUR UNIS/COLLEGES OPEN DAYS OR INFORMATION DAYS. JUST VISIT YOUR DAMN SCHOOLS.
my ACTUAL first year of uni, I was accepted into one of Australia’s top universities on a scholarship for a double degree course. So you can imagine the amount of pressure and hard work that was needed to be put in for me to even stay at this school. When I got accepted, it wasn’t like I didn’t know that it was going to be hard. But I personally never expected for it to be as hard as it was on me both academically and socially.
At first, I liked my course, but I am personally one of those people who thrive off of whatever environment that I am put into so if I am placed into a uni where the environment is highly toxic and almost everyone is a harsh competing rival, I won’t put in the effort. But if I am in an environment that is much more relaxed and opened, but is still willing to push me to work harder, I will actually try. But some people are able to work in incredibly harsh and competitive environments and are able to handle snobby people, I personally couldn’t at my first university which is why I transferred to the uni I am currently attending.
ABSOLUTELY NO HATE OR SHADE TO MY FIRST UNIVERSITY. IT IS TRULY A GREAT UNI. My sister went to my first uni and she absolutely loved it, but everyone has a different uni experience and sadly, I didn’t enjoy it. So I most definitely recommend researching about the schools you are thinking about attending and it would really benefit you if you personally went to visit the school yourself. If you can see yourself being happy there, if you can see yourself enjoying the environment, if you can genuinely say you like the school, go to that school. Because there is honestly no point on attending a university just for the name and the title and you don’t even like going the damn library that is on campus.
TIP #3: TRY AND STUDY SOMETHING YOU ACTUALLY LIKE
this tip is very hard and I honestly shouldn’t be saying it? But like hear me out. My belief is that if you are studying something you genuinely enjoy, you will actually study for it. Or at least that mentality definitely applies to me. I was studying a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts together last year. My majors were Psychology and Economics. AS MUCH AS I LOVED PSYCH, STUDYING ECONOMICS WAS A BITCH.
I personally fucken hated studying Economics and with that, I also had to study Maths as a subject under my science degree, which I also personally hated. No matter how much I tried and listened in my lectures, I could honestly never get the material and it was so disheartening to me that I couldn’t understand. Granted, I was dumb and didn’t check my classes (which I will discuss in my next tip), and I knew that university classes were going to be 100 times harder than the shit I got in high school, but that didn’t escape the fact that it was so disheartening that I wasn’t able to understand the material.
That lead me to slowly and simply not caring about what it was that I was studying and learning. I didn’t care anymore about my degree. I was so unhappy with what I was studying that I would spend more time going out and partying than actually trying to get even a Pass. Nothing wrong with having fun, but I prioritized partying over studying, which is not good.
Now I am doing an Education degree and I am so much happier! I genuinely like studying what I am studying. I even actively listen to my lectures online and take notes as if I was physically attending the lecture myself (and most students don’t even bother listening to online lectures). I even stay back after all of my classes are done to catch up with anything I have missed or get ahead of my classes. I seriously like what I am studying. Sure, I lose motivation from time to time, but I am studying way more now than I did a year ago.
BUT REMEMBER. IT IS OKAY NOT TO KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO STUDY. THERE ARE KIDS IN THEIR 4TH YEAR WHO STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT TO STUDY. Finding something that genuinely makes you happy and makes you want to work hard for it is hard to find, but it is so worth it once you do. So be smart with what you pick and choose.
TIP #4: CHECK UP AND RESEARCH ABOUT YOUR CLASSES
If you are lucky enough to pick and choose your individual classes, please for the love of god, research about them! look up your classes! read your damn unit guide! do not pick a class cause it sounds cool and fuck yourself over by not reading the prerequisites or not reading the amount of assignments related to that class.
I was dumb and did not read up on my classes nor did I research about them fully my first year. I honestly just read their mini blurb and went off my merry way which fucked me over so bad because I did not personally understand the actual contents of each one of my classes.
literally find your class unit guide or class information online, look into what assignments have been done in the past, what kind of weightings they each have and read the stuff that you are suppose to learn even if you just get a simple Pass in the class. the more you look into a class, the better understanding you will get of what that class actually provides.
also, majority of the time, you can see what textbooks are needed so you can grab them off before the semester even properly starts.
just as a little side tip
TIP #4.5: If you can literally pick and choose what your time table looks like, DO NOT FUCKEN GIVE YOURSELF 3-4 HOUR BREAKS BETWEEN YOUR CLASSES. You are lying to yourself when you say that you are going to be studying in those long ass breaks, like shut up. no. don’t do that to yourself.
TIP #5: DO NOT BUY YOUR TEXTBOOKS (if possible)
for the love of god, DO. NOT. BUY. YOUR. “MANDATORY”. TEXTBOOKS. it is a waste of money. you are blowing $200 minimum for a damn paper weight. I am not even kidding. I never have purchased a textbook and I never will unless that textbook is nowhere else to be found.
Be smart about your textbooks. If you are able to find a copy of your textbook in the library, BORROW THAT SHIT IMMEDIATELY. my university lets us borrow copies of books for like 16 weeks at a time and my semesters last for at least 13, so it is enough to class me throughout all of class. your universities should have multiple copies of whatever textbook that you need for class. even if the library copy is a few editions older, it does not matter, the content is still the same. It is not worth forking out $200-$500 for a couple of extra pages.
If you can’t borrow a copy from the library, try and find it online. There are some generous people out there who have uploaded a free full copy of the book somewhere. If you can’t find it online, borrow a friends copy and photocopy that shit like crazy. You might end up paying like $50 worth of paper but 50 is better than 200.
AND IF YOU SERIOUSLY CANT DO THAT, go onto slugbooks.com to get your textbooks. I personally haven’t used that website myself, but I hear it’s pretty fucken good to get textbooks.
TIP #6: JOIN A CLUB/SOCIETY/FRAT/SORORITY ETC.
for your first year of uni/college, just join something. there is deadset something for everyone. you do not need to join greek life if you personally do not want to. i didn’t join greek life cause australia doesn’t really have that kind of shit.
if you like debating, there is a debating club. if you like drama, 10000% there is a drama club. if you are a strong LGBTQ+ ally or are apart of that group and you wanna meet queer people, 1000000000000% there is a club for that. i’m not even kidding you, at my first university there was a damn memes society and a quidditch society. you will most definitely find something that will interest you.
if you aren’t a big fan of clubs, that is fine. i just would personally recommend joining one so you can make friends more easily and it’s sort of like a little bit away from your studies. it’s something fun for you to enjoy and you get to meet some incredible people along the way. I am apart of VSA (Vietnamese Student Association) and I have done SOOO many things all the way to modelling, charity events, partying and planning out major events etc. all whilst meeting some new people and creating friendships.
TIP #7: LEARN WHAT TO PRIORITISE
I feel like this should be a no brainer but it is important. It is okay to have fun whilst you are at uni but it is not good nor is it smart to throw away a perfectly good education that you are paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for.
if you have a party on Saturday and an essay due on Sunday, do not go to the party. I know that there is some people who pull all nighters to finish off an assignment or to study for an exam, I am extremely guilty of that. However, that does not mean I will sacrifice one extra day of studying for a party.
this is where you have to be an adult and understand how you, yourself study the best and how you retain information the best and if you need an extra couple of days, skip out on some parties and reschedule those lunch dates and dinner dates. your friends will understand and will not judge you for wanting to studying. if your friends do judge you for wanting an education, then you should drop them.
TIP #8: LEARN TO REFERENCE
I cannot stress how important referencing is in university. That shit is an absolute fucken bitch and it does not help that there are like 5 different styles or some shit. But it is important that you learn how to reference correctly because you will lose marks for not doing it correctly and some professors/tutors are just straight assholes and will deduct like 10 marks cause you aren’t using the correct referencing style for the class.
in my experience, for first year anyway, they will teach you how to reference in your tutorials so you get the general gist of what to do and how to do it. I learnt how to reference in APA format in high school, so I am fine, but I know not alot of people learn it that early and first hear about referencing once they get to uni. so learning to reference is a big thing. a lot of my tutors recommended me installing EndNote which does the referencing for you. I personally just let Word do it for me. If you go into your Word and find ‘Document Elements’ (for Mac), click on ‘Manage’ in the References section and a citations list will pop up. Click on the plus sign in the bottom left hand corner and just literally fill out the form and you are done.
OR IF YOU ARE A WINDOWS USER, just go to the ‘References’ tab and click ‘Insert Citation’ and then click ‘Add New Source’ then fill out the form. Then you are literally done. You basically have corrected did in-text citations within your essay along to whatever format is needed. *The only shitty thing about this method is that it will only automatically do in-text citations, not footnoting. Footnoting you will have to insert manually yourself*
After you finished with all of your citations, just click on ‘Bibliography’ and put in in as ‘Works Cited’ and literally your ENTIRE reference list will be organised into alphabetical order for you.
TIP #9: GET A CALENDAR OR DIARY
whether that shit is digital or physical, start using one. it is honestly so helpful to know when you have got assignments and exams coming up and you can kinda start planning out when is a good time to start researching or studying etc. etc.
it seems like such a small thing, but it works so well. I personally just use the iPhone calendars app and make sure it reminds me at least like a week or 2 ahead of the actual due date so I know that it’s coming up.
i also highly recommend that once you read your unit guide/class information sheet, that you write down ALL of your assignments, when they are due and how much do they weigh into your calendar/diary. because then you have no excuse to say that you never knew about it and yet you wrote it down. it also just helps you to be productive and work around/add in other dates like outings with friends into your schedule.
TIP #10: IT IS OKAY TO FAIL
I feel like there is such an extremely high expectation to pass every single one of your class with amazing grades and graduate with like a 4.0 GPA, like for some reason that is the standard that is expected out of every uni/college student, even those attending a really shitty uni is somehow expected to be blitzing through every single one your your classes, but the truth is, you will probably fail a class and that’s okay.
trust me when i say, it is okay to fail a class. i’m not saying that you SHOULD fail a class, but if you do, it’s not the end of the world. even though I failed so many classes last year, my first university was still willing to keep me enrolled and even offered some help. staying in university/college is sort of like baseball, very simple; 3 strikes and you’re out, but even then, they will still offer you services to help you study better or if you are struggling at home or you have your own mental issues that affect your studies, there are services at university/college that will help you and it’s for free.
i cannot stress how important it is to let your university/college know that if you suffer from any sort of mental illness, have a rough background, do not have the resources to study etc. etc., that you should let them know because they can help you.
that is all of the tips and advice that i can think off at the moment. i hope this helped at least one person. if i can think of anything else/more, i’ll be sure to update this post and add it on. or if i am brave enough, maybe just do a full blown youtube video? we will see on that. BUT UNTIL THEN. I HOPE THIS HELPS AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR FIRST YEAR AT UNI OR THE REST OF YOUR YEAR AT UNI IN GENERAL !!
#cindy talks too much#studyspo#study motivation#advice#university advice#college advice#hopefully this helps somebody out there#AGAIN THIS IS ALL JUST MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE#studyblr
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Hey everyone! I’m a current year 13 student preparing for my first year of university so I thought I’d ask my friends for any tips for new year 12s and put together a post with all our advice for anyone going into sixth form this year. Some of the tips (eg about UCAS etc) might be helpful to year 12s going into year 13 as well 😊 I’ve seen a few of these posts floating around but they were very US-centric, so I thought I’d make one specific to the UK education system in the hope that that can help some people.
NB: I went to sixth form at my previous secondary school, so it’s possible that some of these tips will be slightly different from the experience you get from an independent sixth form college, but it may still be helpful. I took AS and A2 levels in French, Spanish and Music, and a linear two-year A level in English Literature, as well as EPQ. I’m aware that specifications are always changing, but if anyone needs any specific help with those subjects feel free to message me 😊
Choosing your subjects
Yes, it’s probably too late for this if you’ve already got to the end of year 11, but during September of year 12 there’s usually some degree of finding your feet and it shouldn’t be impossible to change your subjects if you suddenly realise you’ve made a horrible mistake.
Pick subjects you like and/or have a reason for studying. A levels are tough, so if you go in with a passion for a particular subject, a will to learn something new, or a specific goal in mind (eg getting onto a particular career path), motivation will come more easily.
Having said that, it doesn’t matter how much you like a subject, around April-May of year 13 you will still find yourself, at least once, crying on the floor of your bedroom, surrounded by empty chocolate wrappers and dense piles of revision notes, wondering why you didn’t just run away to sea to be a pirate when you had the chance. It’s a normal part of sixth form life. Just let it happen, and keep going.
If you’re one of those people who always cracks under the pressure of exams, you might want to consider taking creative subjects. A couple of my friends only took subjects like art, photography and textiles which were almost entirely coursework-based. Equally, if you hate ongoing projects and would prefer an exam-assessed course, those are ones to avoid!
Choose your subjects wisely and don’t chop and change too much. When you pick these subjects you’re going to be stuck with them for the next two years. If you realise you’ve made a mistake your school may allow you to switch, but do that as early as you possibly can so you don’t miss too much curriculum. I would say October of year 12 is the absolute latest you should be trying to switch your subjects.
Similarly, if you aren’t a certified mega-genius, don’t take more than three A levels. I did and Oh Boy did I regret it. It severely restricts your time and puts you under a lot of stress, plus you generally only need three subjects to get into uni. If you’re really keen to have an extra on top of your three, consider taking EPQ if your school offers it.
Lessons
Try to have a good relationship with your teachers, they’re your most valuable resource. Depending on what subjects you’re taking and how big your sixth form is, you might end up with quite small class sizes (my biggest AS class had 15 students, which was the same size as my smallest GCSE class). So you’ll get to know your classmates and teacher better, but equally, lessons will be more painful if you don’t get on with the teacher.
Do wider reading for your classes whenever you can. This particularly applies to subjects like English, but it can help boost your understanding and enjoyment of any subject – especially if you’re thinking of going on to do it at university.
If you have to give presentations in class and you’re not a fan of public speaking (let’s be real, who is?), always prepare a handout. That will save your audience’s wrists from speedy note-taking, but it will also give them something to focus on so they won’t just be staring at you, which will probably make you feel less self-conscious.
Learning to reference books and articles properly is probably one of the most useful skills I’ve picked up in the whole two years, it’s worth spending some time on.
Coursework/EPQ/other large, ongoing projects: start working early and plan out your time. I cannot stress this enough. Break down your task into chunks, eg for EPQ that could take the form of planning, researching, drafting, refining and presenting your findings. Then give yourself a deadline for each of those and stick to it!
Start a groupchat for each of your classes! You can help each other with queries, plan revision sessions, stress together the night before an important deadline and just get to know each other better.
Organise your goddamn folders and try not to lose them? You’d be surprised how common this was in my sixth form. Keep it in your locker if it’s not in your bag or at home, don’t just leave it lying around your common room or study area – especially if you’ve got a common design of folder, like a generic black ringbinder.
Make notes as soon as you learn something. Taking notes in class is the best way – they don’t have to be beautiful (you could write them out again later as a form of revision, with lots of colour to help you remember things), you just have to get the info down on paper.
If you don’t understand something, keep emailing the teacher until they help you.
Exams
Don’t be afraid of taking a new specification. It is scary to be the first or second year group ever to take a certain exam but you’re not alone, students across the country will be in the same situation. Even if your exam board seems useless or impossible, your teachers are qualified to prepare you for it, I promise. I found the lack of past papers and example material to be the hardest part, but in that situation you just have to improvise. See if you can pinch and adapt a similar essay question from a different exam board, for example.
Revision is horrible but it has to be done. If you study as you’re going along throughout the year (eg reviewing all your class notes at the end of the week) it will seem like less of a chore.
Find fun ways to revise, that work for you! Lots of people swear by flashcards as you can put bitesize chunks of information down and just whip them out to go through whenever you have a spare 5 minutes. You could record yourself reading your notes and make your own revision podcasts to listen to just before bed, make giant revision posters… One of my friends even got some glass pens so she could write on the door of the shower!
Switch up your environment and go for walks between revision to help clear your head.
If you can find it online, print off the specification for the course you’re doing and use it as a checklist so that you know exactly what you need to know.
Exam technique is almost as important as the actual information you need to know. Get as familiar as possible with the different types of questions you’ll have to answer, how this will be marked and what weighting of the final grade it carries.
It’s a long way off for you guys, but for any current year 12s reading this: use the summer between 12 and 13 wisely. Make revision notes for the topics you covered in the past year. You don’t have to spend heaps of time on it, the trick is to keep reviewing the information in little bites so when study leave rolls around next year you won’t feel like you’re drowning in stuff you don’t know.
I probably don’t need to say this, but don’t start watching a series during exam time...
Time management
Don’t pull all-nighters, it’s never worth it. If you’re in the sort of position where you feel you need to pull an all-nighter to get your work done, there’s something wrong with your workload or your time management. Speak to someone for help with whichever of these it is.
Don’t do what one of my mates did, which is develop an unhealthy dependence on coffee and Red Bull. If you’re relying on caffeine to get you through the day, you are not getting enough sleep.
Use your free periods wisely for the love of God. When exam time rolls around you will regret every hour spent napping in the common room or dicking about on Snapchat instead of working, trust me. Time out is important, but save it for your lunch break.
Don’t make a habit of skipping school. You know when you need to take time out and when you could probably push on and keep going. 100% attendance is not necessary to pass a course, but remember that you can’t learn shit when you’re not actually there.
Know when your deadlines are. Double and triple check them and write them everywhere. When you get into your UCAS application this will be particularly important because you can’t just beg for an extension – if you miss it, you miss it. Get into the habit of doing things sooner, rather than later.
You could try setting your own deadline 3 days before the real thing so that you’ll work to get it done with time to spare. That way you’re prepared for any unexpectedly time-consuming tasks.
CV-building
You may not feel that you have a whole lot of free time with your workload, but it’s important that you put aside some time (particularly during year 12, before things get really intense the following year) to do some good old Character Building so that when it comes to personal statement time, your only hobbies aren’t watching Netflix and refreshing tumblr. This could take the form of learning a new skill – a language, musical instrument, coding, whatever – outside of school hours.
Volunteering also looks good to employers and universities, particularly to those who (like me) don’t have time for a part-time job. You can show you’ve had a position of responsibility and given back to the community as well.
Extra curriculars are worth it. Completely aside from being good for your CV and your personal statement, they’re also loads of fun and when you’re in sixth form you get loads of opportunities that the lower school just doesn’t get, running clubs and bands as well as just participating. As a sixth former I’ve done conducting, stage managing, and played in the orchestra of my school’s musical, but you could get into sports, art, drama, whatever you like.
Your school will probably grant you a week off at the end of year 12 for work experience – use it well! Try to get involved with something that’s as closely connected with your chosen area of further study or employment as possible, or if you can’t do that, try and turn whatever you end up with to your advantage. I was looking for language-related work experience but ended up in insurance, so the whole week I was there I specifically asked for tasks relating to the company’s international relations.
Any language students interested in work experience abroad, have a look at this website. They organise work experience for you in France, Spain, Germany or Italy - I went during year 12 and it was amazing.
It’s not essential to get a part-time or Saturday job, especially if it’s going to interfere with your studies, but I would advise finding a way of gaining at least some financial independence from your parents. Personally I picked up money by tutoring younger students, babysitting and feeding my neighbours’ cats on a freelance basis. It’s just something you can put on your CV and helps you gain experience of budgeting for yourself, which will all be useful when you leave home.
Applying to uni
When it comes to applying to uni, take it seriously and start early. Do your research and talk to current students wherever you can, try and get an honest opinion.
It’s not necessary to go carting off around the country to visit every university you even consider applying to – this gets expensive and time-consuming after a while! Some universities host virtual open days, and most are represented at UCAS fairs and events – there are other ways to get the *feel* of a place.
Send your personal statement to EVERYONE. I’m not kidding. I showed mine to my parents, my aunt, my subject teachers, my next door neighbours, my school’s UCAS adviser, my best friends, my cousins, my head teacher… It all helps you get the best draft together. That said, remember that everyone’s opinions on these things is going to be different and above all, it has to be a *personal* statement – don’t put in anything that you’re not happy with.
Equally, don’t write down stuff that you can’t stand behind! If you say you’ve read a particular book, make sure you’ve actually read it!
Uni interviews are scary, I won’t lie to you, but don’t let that put you off from applying to the big-name universities or competitive courses. If your grades are good enough and you have a passion to want to go there, you should go for it! If you want to know what it’s like to go through the Oxbridge interview process, go ahead and send me an ask 😊
Stress busting
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Whether you’re struggling with something academically or need help with your workload, or if it’s a personal problem like mental health, there will be someone who can empathise and help you. They want to encourage your independence, but that doesn’t mean you have to deal with everything on your own.
No matter how stressful A levels may seem, remember that all you can do is try your best, and that’s all anyone can ask of you. There is no point in working yourself to death for A*s if it’s going to make you miserable.
It’s okay to put your mental health first, take some days out here and there to decompress, and practise self-care. I’m not saying skip school whenever you feel like it, but don’t wait to burn out before you let yourself take a break, or you’ll make yourself ill.
Eat breakfast and get a good night’s sleep. Just look after yourself. Don’t sacrifice your basic wellbeing in favour of good results, no grade is worth it.
Talk to your friends about how you’re feeling and share the stress. My friend group all send pics of our pets to the groupchat whenever someone’s feeling particularly down or stressed, just as a little way of cheering that person up. Be there for each other and work through stuff together.
General stuff
If you have a locker, use it. If not, try to minimise the amount of stuff you have to carry around on a daily basis. You can’t lug four bulging lever arch files around school every day without damaging your back.
Don’t be that one person who’s always borrowing pens, paper or lunch money from other people. Just don’t. Take responsibility for having your own supplies.
If you’re on studyblr already then I’m sure I don’t need to say this, but get a planner. It may just be a coincidence, but I’ve found that my friends who have a physical planner or bullet journal where they can write down their tasks have all turned out more organised than those of my friends who chose to use the apps on their phone instead.
Keep your study area orderly and organised. Tidy room = tidy mind. If you’re someone who really struggles with this (I personally can’t keep my room clear for longer than about 3 days at a time!), consider studying out of the house, at the library or somewhere similar.
Your performance in year 12 can and will affect your uni predictions, even if you don’t do AS levels. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking your first year doesn’t count.
It’s great when you turn 18 and you’re finally able to start going to licensed premises and drinking *legally*, but don’t let all that freedom go to your head. Use your common sense – know your limits, don’t abandon friends on nights out, have a designated driver, don’t get drunk on a school night, the usual.
Identify people who distract you, and avoid them when it comes down to it. You can quickly narrow down the people who will be proactive and do something when they have a problem, and those who would rather just complain about it. The latter group are just going to waste your time.
Last tip! From personal experience, sixth form will be stressful as hell. But it can also be some of the most fun you’ve ever had in school, and your time will go crazy fast! Make the most of it and enjoy 😊
That’s all I can think of so far, I hope it’s helpful! Please feel free to message me with any questions or concerns about anything I’ve said, or equally, if you can think of any tips for new year 12s that I didn’t include on this list go ahead and add some.
Have a relaxing summer everyone and good luck for next year! xx
#sixth form#a level#study tips#uk studyblr#year 12#year 13#long post#a levels#a level studyblr#gcse studyblr#gcses#year 11#as level#a2 levels#advice#ucas#ucas application
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Improbable Press put out a call asking fan fiction authors how they went from Free to Fee. Here’s my response. Happy reading!
The Story of How I Started Selling Stories
My parents, teachers, and acting/singing coaches will all tell you that I've always been a story teller. For the first twenty four years of my life, I was determined to do so through musical theatre, though I had always secretly harbored the desire to write a hit stage play. My early writing consisted of plays for my friends and I to put on, interspersed with prose that I supposed would one day become a novel, but which wasn't my passion.
I was a big reader, but where this habit came from, I'm not certain. While my mother always had a book on the go - whatever crumbling paperback law thriller or murder mystery she'd been handed by the woman down the street when she was done it, which was then passed on to the next neighbor - my father and brothers preferred sports (either on TV or outside in the yard) over reading. I stumbled into fantasy and science fiction because Wil Wheaton was hot, and his show was on every Friday night, and from there I consumed every Star Trek tie-in novel my tiny rural library carried, then started following the authors of the novels into their other worlds and series.
So you won't be surprised to learn that this was how I found fan fiction for the first time. My "I love this, gee, I wonder what else there is?" muscle was well developed by junior high, and before the internet had come to The Middle Of Nowhere Rural Ontario, I had already gotten quite adept at search keywords and codexes to track down more books to consume. Imagine my shock and joy when, in the middle of my Phantom of the Opera phase (come on, fess up, you had one too), the internet in my school library told me about not only Fredrick Forsyth and Susan Kay's stunning re-tellings, but of something called fan fiction.
I wasted a lot of the librarian's ink and paper printing out these books and secreting them into binders and pretending to do school work at my desk or backstage between scenes. A lot. And yes, I still have most of them.
And as we all well know, the jump between reading and writing is a short when one is submerged so fully in communities of creators. Everyone else's "What If" rubs off on you, and it's just a matter of time before you find yourself playing with the idea of coaxing a few plot bunnies over to spend some time with you. Not everyone loves to write, but gosh darn it, if you want to give it a try, then you couldn't ask for a better, more supportive community. It doesn't matter how new you are to it, everyone reads, everyone comments, everyone makes suggestions. People beta read. People edit. People co-write. People cheer, and support, and recommend, and enthuse. Yeah, there are the occasional jerks, flammers, and wank-mongers, but on the whole? There's literally no better place to learn how to be a writer than in fandom, I firmly believe this.
So, of course, born storyteller that I am, I had to give it a try.
I started writing fan fiction in 1991 for a small, relatively obscure Canadian/Luxembourg co-pro children’s show called Dracula: the Series. I used to get up and watch it on Saturday mornings, in my PJs, before heading off to whichever rehearsal or read through or practice I had that year.
1995 brought the English dub of Sailor Moon to my life, (and put me on the path to voice acting), and along with a high-school friend, I wrote, printed out, illustrated, and bound my first “book” – a self-insert story that was just over eleven pages long, which introduced new Scouts based on us. From there, I didn’t really stop.
1996 led me to Forever Knight and Dragon Ball Z, and from there to my friend’s basement where they’d just installed the internet. We chatted with strangers on ICQ, joined Yahoo!Groups and Bravenet Chat Boards. (Incidentally, a friend from my DBZ chat group turned out to be a huge DtS fan, too. We wrote a big crossover together which is probably only accessible on the Wayback Machine now. We stayed friends, helped each other through this writing thing, and now she’s Ruthanne Reid, author of the popular Among the Mythos series.) In 2000 I got a fanfiction.net account and never looked back.
In 2001, while in my first year of university for Dramatic Arts, I made my first Real Live fandom friends. We wrote epic-length self-insert fics in Harry Potter and Fushigi Yuugi, cosplayed at conventions (sometimes using the on-campus wardrobe department’s terrifyingly ancient serger), and made fan art and comics in our sketchbooks around studying for our finals and writing essays on critical theory or classical Latin. I was explaining the plot of the next big fic I was going to write to one of them, an older girl who had been my T.A. but loved Interview with the Vampire just as dearly as I, when she said, “You know, this sounds really interesting. Why don’t you strip all the fandom stuff out of the story and just write it as a novel?”
You can do that? was my first thought.
No! I don’t want to! Writing is my fun hobby. What will happen if I try to be a writer and get rejected by everyone and I end up hating it? was my second.
But the seed was planted. Slowly at first, and then at increasingly obsessive pace, I began writing my first novel around an undergrad thesis, fourth-year essays, several other big fanfics that popped me into the cusp of BNF status but never quite over the tine, and then a move to Japan to teach English. From 2002-2007 I wrote about 300 000 words on the novel that I would eventually shut away in my desk drawer and ignore until I published on Wattpad under my pseudonym on a lark. It was messy. It was long. It was self-indulgent and blatantly inspired by Master of Mosquiton, Interview with the Vampire, Forever Knight, and anything written by Tanya Huff, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Charlaine Harris. This was fine for fanfic, but in terms of being comfortable with presenting it to agents and publishing houses, I felt that it wasn’t original enough.
By this time I was teaching overseas, and in my spare time (and boy, was there a lot of spare time while sitting in a Japanese teacher’s office for 40 hours per week when one only actually teaches for 11 of them) I started applying to MA programs (where I eventually wrote my thesis on Mary Sue Fan Fiction). I also spent it researching “How to Get Published”, mostly by Googling it and/or buy/reading the few books on the topic in English I could find at the local book store or order from the just-then-gaining-international traction online bookstore Amazon.
What that research mostly told me was “Write and sell a bunch of short fiction first, so you have proof that a) you can do the work and b) you can finish what you promise you’ll finish and c) you have proof that other people think you’re worth spending money on.”
Short fiction. Huh. Of course we’d studied short stories in school, and I’d even taken a short story writing class in university, though nothing I’d written for the class was indicative of the kinds of stories I preferred to tell. But I felt pretty confident about this whole writing short stories thing… after all, I’d been doing weekly challenges for years. Drabbles. Flashfic. Stories and chapters that were limited to the word count cap that LiveJournal put on its posts. I’d written novellas without knowing that’s what they were called; I’d written whole novels about other people’s characters. All I needed was an idea. Short fiction I could do.
Unfortunately, everything that came to me was fanfic inspired. It frustrated me, because I didn’t want to write a serial-numbers-filed-off story. I wanted to write something original and epic and inspiring. Something just mine. I started and stopped a lot of stories in 2006-2007. I’d been doing NaNoWriMo for years by then, having been introduced to it in undergrad, and I was determined that this would be the year that I wrote something I could shop. Something just mine. Something unique.
While I adored fanfiction, I was convinced that I couldn't make a career on it. What had once been a fun hobby soon because a source of torment. Why could I think of a hundred ways to write a meet-cute between my favorite ships, but come up utterly blank when it came to something new and original and just mine?
It took me a while to realize that my playwriting and short story teachers had been correct when they said that there are no original stories in the world, no way you can tell a tale that someone else hasn’t already tried. The "Man vs." list exists for a reason.
The unique part isn’t your story, it’s your voice. Your lived life, your experiences, your way of forming images and structuring sentences. Your choices about who the narrator character is, and what the POV will be, and how the characters handle the conflict. In that way, every piece of writing ever done is individual and unique, even the fanfic. Because nobody is going to portray that character’s quirk or speech pattern quite like you do, nobody is going to structure your plot or your imagery like you. Because there is only one of you. Only one of me. Even if we're all writing fanfiction, no one's story sounds like anyone else's, or is told like anyone else's.
That is the reality of being a storyteller.
And strangely enough, the woman who opened my eyes to this was a psychic from a psychic fair I attended, who told me that Mark Twain was standing over her shoulder admonishing me to stop fretting and just get something on the page – but to never forget character. My strength, she said that he said, was in creating memorable, well written, well rounded characters. And that my book should focus on that above concerns of plot or pacing.
Well, okay. If Mark Twain says that’s what my strength is, then that’s what my strength is, right? Who am I to argue with the ghost of Mark Freaking Twain?
An accident with a bike and a car on a rice patty left me immobile for six weeks in 2006, and I decided that if I was finally going to write this original short story to sell – especially since I would need income, as the accident made it obvious that I would never be able to dance professionally, and probably would never be able to tread the boards in musicals – now was the perfect time. I was going to stop fighting my fannish training and write.
I cherry picked and combined my favorite aspects of Doctor Who, Stargate: Atlantis, Torchwood, The Farm Show/The Drawer Boy, and my own melancholy experiences with culture shock and liminal-living in a foreign culture, and wrote a novella titled (Back). It was a character study of a woman named Evvie who, through an accident of time travel, meets the future version of her infant daughter Gwen. And realizes she doesn’t like the woman her daughter will become. It was a story about accepting people for who they are, instead of who you wish they would be, and had a strong undercurrent of the turbulence I was going through in trying to figure out my own sexuality and that I wouldn't have the future in performance that I had been working toward since I was four.
Deciding that I would worry about where I would try to publish the story after it had been written, I sat down and wrote what ended up being (at least for me) a pretty standard-length fanfic: 18,762 words. It was only after I had finished the story that I looked up what category that put it in – Novella. Using paying reputable markets, like Duotrope, the Writer’s Digest, MSFV, Absolute Write, SFWA, my local Writer’s Union, Writer Beware, I realized that I had shot myself in the foot.
It seems like nearly nobody publishes novellas anymore. SF/F and Literary Fiction seem to be the last two bastions of the novella, and the competition to get one published is fierce. The markets that accepted SF/F novellas was vanishingly thin I had to do a lot of Googling and digging to figure out who I could submit to with an unagented/unsolicited SF/F novella. If I recall correctly, it was only about ten publications. I built an excel database and filled it with all the info I found.
I put together a query letter and sent it off using my database to guide me. Most of the rejections were kind, and said that the story was good, just too long/too short/ too sci-fi-y/not sci-fi-y enough. Only one market offered on it – for $10 USD. Beggers couldn’t be choosers, even if I had hoped to make a little more than ten bucks, and I accepted.
It was a paid professional publication, and that’s what mattered to me. I had the first entry on my bibliography, and something to point to in my query letters to prove that I was a worthy investment for a publisher/agent.
And energized by this, and now aware that length really does matter, even in online-only publications, I started writing other shorts to pad out my bibliography more.
I tried to tailor these ones to what my research told me the "mainstream industry" and "mainstream audiences" wanted, and those stories? Those were shot down one after the other. I was still writing fanfiction at the time, too, and those stories were doing well, getting lots of positive feedback, so why weren’t my stories?
In 2007 I returned to Canada and Academia, frustrated by my lack of sales, desperate to kick off my publishing career, and feeling a creative void left by having to depart theatre because of my new difficulties walking. I wrote my MA, and decided that if (Back) was the only original story that people liked, then I’d try to expand it into a novel.
Over the course of two years I did my coursework, and read everything there was to read about how to get a book deal, started hanging out in writer’s/author’s groups in Toronto and met some great people who were willing to guide me, and expanded (Back) into the novel Triptych. I kept reminding myself what Mark Twain said – character was my strength, the ability to make the kind of people that other writers wanted to write stories about, a skill I’d honed while writing fanfic. Because that's what we do, isn't it? Sure, we write fix-its and AUs and fusions and finish cancelled shows, and fill in missing scenes, but what we're all really doing is playing with characters, isn't it? Characters draw us to fanfic, and characters keep us there. Characters is what we specialize in.
Fanfic had taught me to work with a beta reader, so I started asking my fic betas if they'd like a go at my original novel. Fellow fanfic writers, can I just say how valuable editors and beta readers in the community are? These are people who do something that I've paid a professional editor thousands of dollars to do for free out of sheer love. Treasure your beta readers, folks. Really.
“It reminds me a lot of fan fiction,” one reader said. “The intense attention to character and their inner life, and the way that the worldbuilding isn’t dumped but sprinkled in an instance at a time, like, you know, a really good AU. I love it.”
Dear Lord. I couldn’t have written a better recommendation or a more flattering description if I’d tried. Mark Twain was right, it seems. And fanfic was the training ground, for me – my apprenticeship in storytelling.
Of course... what Mr. Twain hadn't explained is that character-study novels just don't sell in SF/F. They say Harry Potter was rejected twelve times? HA. I shopped Triptych to both agents and small presses who didn't require you to have an agent to publish with them, and I got 64 rejections. Take that, J.K.
At first the rejection letters were forms and photocopied "no thanks" slips. But every time I got feedback from a publisher or agent, I took it to heart, adjusted the manuscript, edited, tweaked, tweaked, tweaked. Eventually, the rejections started to get more personal. "I loved this character, but I don't know how to sell this book." And "I really enjoyed the read, but it doesn't really fit the rest of our catalogue." And "What if you rewrote the novel to be about the action event that happens before the book even starts, instead of focusing solely on the emotional aftermath?"
In other words - "Stop writing fanfiction." There seemed to be a huge disconnect between what the readership wanted and what the publishing world thought they wanted.
Disheartened, frustrated, and wondering if I was going to have to give up on my dreams of being a professional creative, I attended Ad Astra, a convention in Toronto, in 2009. At a room party, complaining to my author friends that "nobody wanted my gay alien threesome book!" a woman I didn't know asked me about the novel. We chatted, and it turned out she was the acquisitions editor for Dragon Moon Press, and incidentally, also a fan of fan fiction.
I sent her Triptych. She rejected it. I asked why. She gave me a laundry list of reasons. I said, "If I can address these issues and rewrite it, would you be willing to look at it again?" She said yes. She was certain, however, that I wouldn't be able to fix it. I spent the summer rewriting - while making sure to stay true to my original tone of the novel, and writing a character-study fanfiction. I sent it in the fall. I do believe it was Christmas eve when I received the offer of publication.
From there, my little fic-inspired novel was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards and a CBC Bookie, was named one of the best books of 2011 by the Advocate, and garnered a starred review and a place on the Best Books Of The Year at Publishers Weekly.
The award nominations led me to an agent, and further contracts, and even conversations with studio execs. It also made me the target of Requires Only That You Hate, and other cranky, horrible reviewers. But you know what? I've had worse on a forum, and on ff.n, and LJ. It sucked, and it hurt, but if there's one thing fandom has taught me, it's that not everyone is going to love what you do, and not everyone interprets things the same way you do. The only thing we can do is learn from the critique if it's valid and thoughtful, and ignore the screaming hate and bullying. Then you pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and go write something else.
Because a screaming hater? Is not going to ruin my love of storytelling.
But for all that... the day someone made me fan art based on Triptych is one etched in my memory. It means far more to me than any of the emails I ever received inquiring about representation or film rights, or wanting meetings to discuss series.
The lesson I learned from publishing Triptych - now sadly out of print, but we're looking for a new home for it - is that if I chase what the "mainstream" and the "industry" want, I'll never write anything that sells because my heart won't be in it. I have to keep writing like a fanficcer, even if I'm not writing fanfic, if I want to create something that resonates with people. And if it takes time for the publishers and acquiring editors to figure out what I'm doing, and how to sell it, then fine - I have an agent on my side now, and a small growing number of supporters, readers, and editors who love what I do.
Do I still write fanfic? Very, very rarely. I’ve had some pretty demanding contracts and deadlines in the last two years, so I’ve had to pare down my writing to only what’s needed to fulfill my obligations. Doesn’t mean I don’t have ideas for fics constantly.
Sometimes the urge is powerful enough that I do give into it – I wrote To A Stranger, based on Mad Lori’s Performance in a Leading Role Sherlock AU recently, when I should have been writing the second and third novels of The Accidental Turn Series. And even more recently, I cleaned up To A Stranger into something resembling a real screenplay and started shopping it around to film festivals and producers because I love this story, I love what I did with it, and I’m proud of the work. If To A Stranger is only ever a fanfic, that’s fine with me. I poured my heart into it and am so proud of it. But I figure that if there’s one more project I could possibly get into the real world, then why not go for it?
The worst thing the festival heads and producers can say about the work is: “No, thank you.” And being an online writer has taught me not to take the “no, thank you”s personally. Applying the values of Don’t Like Don’t Read or Not My Kink to your publication/agent search makes it much easier to handle the rejections – not every story is for every person.
Maybe once every producer in North America has rejected it, I might think about working with someone to adapt the screenplay into an illustrated comic fanbook? Who knows?
That’s the joy of starting out as a writer in fandom – felixibility, adaptability, creative problem-solving and cross-platform storytelling comes as naturally as breathing to us fan writers. It’s what we do.
You may not think that this is a strength, but trust me, it is. I was never so shocked at an author’s meetup as when I suggested to someone that their “writer’s block” sounded to me like they were telling the story in the wrong format. “I think this is a comic, not a novel,” I’d said. “It sounds so visual. That's why the story is resisting you.” And they stared at me like I suddenly had an extra head and said, “But I’m a novelist.” I said, “No, you’re a writer. Try it.” They never did, as far as I know, and they never finished that book, either.
As fans, our strength isn't just in what we write, or how we come to our stories. It’s also about the physical practice of writing, too. We’re a group of people who have learned to carry notebooks, squeeze in a few hundred words between classes, or when the baby is napping, or during our lunch breaks, or on commute home. This is our hobby, we fit it in around our lives and jobs, and that has taught us the importance of just making time.
We are, on average, more dedicated and constant writers than some of the “novelists” that I’ve met: the folks who wait for inspiration to strike, who quit their day jobs in pursuit of some lofty ideal of having an office and drinking whiskey and walking the quay and waiting for madam muse to grace them, who throw themselves at MFAs and writing retreats, as if it's the attendance that makes them writers and not the work of it.
We fans are career writers. We don’t wait for inspiration to come to us, we chase it down with a butterfly net. We write when and where we can. More than that, we finish things. (Or we have the good sense to know when to abandon something that isn’t working.) We write to deadlines. Self-imposed ones, even.
We write 5k on a weekend for fun, and think NaNoWriMo’s 50k goal and 1667 words per day are a walk in the park. (When I know it terrifies some of the best-selling published authors I hang out with.) Or if we fans don’t write fast, then we know that slow and steady works too, and we’re willing to stick it out until our story is finished, even if it takes years of weekly updates to do so. We have patience, and perseverance, and passion.
This is what being a fanfiction writer has given me. Not only a career as a writer, but tools and a skill-set to write work that other people think is work awarding, adapting, and promoting. And the courage to stick to my guns when it comes to telling the kinds of stories that I want to tell.
This is what being a fanfiction writer gives us.
Aren’t we lucky, fellow fans? Hasn’t our training been spectacular?
*
J.M. (@scifrey) is a SF/F author, and professional smartypants on AMI Audio’s Live From Studio 5. She’s appeared in podcasts, documentaries, and on television to discuss all things geeky through the lens of academia. Her debut novel TRIPTYCH was nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards, nominated for a 2011 CBC Bookie, was named one of The Advocate’s Best Overlooked Books of 2011, and garnered both a starred review and a place among the Best Books of 2011 from Publishers Weekly. Her sophomore novel, an epic-length feminist meta-fantasy THE UNTOLD TALE (Accidental Turn Series #1), debuted to acclaim in 2015 and was followed by THE FORGOTTEN TALE (Accidental Turn Series #2) this past December. FF.N | LJ |AO3| Books | Tumblr
#Improbable Press#Fan Fiction#fanfiction#triptych#j.m. frey#the accidental turn series#free to fee#words for writers
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Final Colloquium Paper
Emily Deuchar
Professor Arnold
Colloquium
Research Paper
LGSM: From Movement to Myth to Movie
In 1984, amid the worst strike in Britain’s history, a group of lesbian and gay men came together to raise money for and support the miner’s strike. This group, which became known as Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners or LGSM would have a profound affect on the mining communities they supported as well as on the gay rights movement in the Labour Party. But how did a group of lesbians and gays, in a time where they were persecuted and AIDs was just beginning, manage to come together with small mining communities in Wales, where most people had never met a gay person in their lives and there was a very machismo culture? In this paper, I will explore how LGSM and the South Wales mining communities came together to support one another, including the community’s reaction to LGSM, how AIDs may have affected the group, and the breaking off of lesbians from the group to create their own support group.
LGSM first started when Mark Ashton, along with his friend Mike Jackson, took buckets to the 1984 Pride march to collect money for the miners strike. After earning a few hundred pounds, they decided to put an ad out in a local LGBT newspaper, Capital Gay, and on Sunday, July 15th 1984 the first meeting of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners was held. Eleven people attended the first meeting, most of whom had already been donating or collecting money for the miners through their jobs or their unions, and the group inly continued to grow from there. While the group contained people from all sorts of political backgrounds, including members of the Young Socialist Party, the Labour Party, and the Communist Party, the group decided to leave politics out of it (minus their collective hate for Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative government) and focus on one thing, and one thing only, supporting the miners in any way they could. LGSM’s constitution, written on September 2nd 1984 reads, “The aim of the groups is to organize amongst Lesbians and Gay men in support of the National Union of Mineworkers in its campaign against pit closures and in defense of the mining communities [and] to provide financial assistance for miners and the families during the national miners’ strike,” (Tate 127).
The group would raise money by standing outside of gay bars and clubs in London (where the group was based out of), such as The Bell and Heaven, or popular gay spaces like Gays the Word bookstore where the group would sometimes hold meetings, with collection buckets. They had to collect in pairs of at least two in case of attacks or harassment, and often were not allowed inside of these spaces because club or bar owners did not want the group bringing up politics or serious matters in places where their customers came to relax and indulge in what was then seen as a very hedonistic gay lifestyle. At this time, being gay, especially out in public was a very dangerous thing, as gay bashings and police harassment were common occurrences. In one instance, a few members were outside of Gays the Word collecting, standing right underneath the stores awning that they were told by the storeowners was their property so they should be allowed to collect there legally with their permission. However, the police came by and told them they could not be out on the public street collecting, and when the group fought back they were told that they would all be arrested if they did not leave and they would think of something to charge them with on the way to the station. So, the group had to go back inside the bookstore and came back out when the police had left. The police came back almost every hour and told them to go and they would sit in the store a few minutes and come right back out, (Tate 144). It was not only like this for gay organizations, but for all LGBT people at the time. Even though being gay was technically decriminalized in 1967, it was still illegal to have gay sex under the age of 21 and many ran the risk of arrest simply for touching or dancing with a person of the same sex in public. This homophobia was heightened in the public by the media who viewed gay people as “metropolitan” “perverts” who wanted to infect children and working class men their gayness. Even through their own persecution, LGSM and its members fought back in order to help the miners, a group historically known for its homophobia, because as founder Mark Ashton said, “One community should give solidarity to another. It is quite illogical to say, 'I'm gay and I'm into defending the gay community but I don't care about anything else’. It’s important that, if you’re defending communities, you also defend all communities," (Dancing in Dulais, lgsm.org), and at that time the miners were being persecuted just as the gay community was.
Even though they were able to collect money for the miners, LGSM needed to find a way to get it to them. Sending money to the National Union of Miners or NUM was unreliable, because the government kept trying to sequester their funds since no ballot had been held to declare the national strike, so it was according to the government-run National Coal Board’s new laws, illegal. Due to this, many support groups would twin with a mining community to directly support them. However, LGSM was worried about finding a mining town who would respect them and be willing to take the money they had collected. Luckily, a member of LGSM knew Hywel Francis through the Communist Party, and he was apart of the Neath, Dulais, and Swansea Valley Miners Support Group in Dulais. So, the group reached out to him and he agreed to take the money, not caring that they were gay. He sent Dai Donovan, who had been traveling often to London to raise money for the community, to meet the group and that is how this unexpected relationship started.
Mike Jackson, after meeting with Dai Donovan, wrote to the support group to formally ask to twin with them. However, neither Dai nor Hywel had told the group prior to their meeting that they were going to meet with them and accept their money. When the letter was read out at the support group’s meeting it was met with a bit of laughter and shock that Dai had actually met them, as Christine Powell explains “ ‘Silence. Shock. I mean gays were people who existed elsewhere’,” (Tate 133). The support group decided that it would twin with LGSM and did not mind too much the fact that they were gay. The support group needed about £3,000 a week to supply families on strike with food parcels and additional support, and LGSM donated about £400-500 a week, becoming the largest donating group.
As their relationship grew, the support group decided to invite LGSM to their meeting hall in Dulais to meet the communities they were supporting just like they had with all of the other groups that they twinned with. There was a little rumbling about whether or not a gay group should be allowed to come, but these were quickly quieted as the members of the support group felt they had helped a lot and should be treated just as all of the other groups. When LGSM arrived they stayed with various families throughout the communities, went out to a few picket lines, and came to the Dulais meeting hall where they met others in the community. The men were a little shy at first, but the women warmed up to LGSM quickly and loved that all of the gay men would dance with them, something the men in South Wales never did. Though the men were a bit more reserved, they respected LGSM and thanked them for the help. Overall, LGSM’s worries about not being accepted by the South Wales community were unfounded, and the groups got on quite well. Both groups felt that it was powerful and important that they got to meet one another. Those from the support group found that the members of LGSM went through the same sort of police harassment that they did for picketing and having the media portray them as the “enemy within” and that they had more in common than they thought. The members of LGSM found that staying with these families and seeing the poor conditions they were forced to live in due to low or no income during the strike made them more passionate to raise more money. The biggest trouble the support group had with LGSM was the fact that most of the lesbians and some of the gay men were vegetarians or vegans. This was something that was most certainly NOT in Wales and they found it hard to feed them while they stayed with them. Even the threat of AIDs did not scare them. The only objection from the LGBT side was people outside of the LGSM who thought, “Why should we help the miners, what have they ever done for us?” This meeting caused friendships to flourish and the bond between them to strengthen.
Over the next year, LGSM visited South Wales multiple times and the support group would also come up to London and stay with LGSM members, where they helped collect money and go out to gay clubs and bars and learn more about the gay community. Members of LGSM who were dealing with AIDs, like Jonathan Blake who was one of the first men diagnosed with HIV in England just a year before, confided in the women of the support group. They did not want to hide who they were and wanted to be transparent with the women they had gotten so close to. One of LGSM’s most successful benefit events was their Pits and Perverts concert at the Electric Ballroom in Camden headlining gay group Bronski Beat, where they raised £5,000 and about 1,500 people both miners who got in free of charge and gays attended, (Kellaway 1). Here Dai Donovan got onstage and gave a powerful speech, “ ‘You have worn our badge, “Coal not Dole”, and you know what harassment means, as we do. Now we will pin your badge on us, we will support you. It won’t change overnight, but now 140,000 miners know that there are other causes and other problems. We know about blacks, and gays, and nuclear disarmament. And we will never be the same.’”(LGBThistorymonth.org 1). LGSM also purchased the support group a van, which they desperately needed to deliver food parcels and help take miners to the picket lines. The van was emblazoned with LGSM’s logo, which the group thought was great because it would make people stop and stare and then think about the gay community which most people there did not often do. LGSM continued to support the group until the end of the strike on March 3rd, 1985 almost a year after it had started on March 6th, 1984.
During the year that LGSM supported the South Wales community, a group of lesbians within the group decided to break off and form Lesbians Against Pit Closures. Some members of the group felt that this was ridiculous, but others welcomed it as another way to help the cause. The women who left wanted a group that wasn’t dominated by men and that would be able to collect at women only spaces and teach the women in the mining communities about feminism. The support group did not care much that they formed a separate group, though some preferred LGSM because they did not like all of the talks and politics of Lesbians Against Pit Closures, not to mention the horrible vegetarian food at their meetings. Lesbians Against Pit Closures remained a small group and raised about £1,000.
That June LGSM had planned to walk in the Pride march and invited the mining communities of South Wales to join them. They were not sure if any of the communities would come, but on the day of Pride so many people showed up to march with them that they had to be moved to the front to lead the march. Later that year, gay rights had made it onto the Labour Party’s ballot to decide whether or not it be something that the Labour Party adopted into their agenda. They won by 600,000 votes, with the trades-unions pushing them through. The NUM had come out in support of gay rights and since they were the largest union, all of the other unions followed them, and gay rights officially became a Labour Party issue. This is mostly due to LGSM’s support of the NUM in the strike, which changed many miners’ opinions about gay people.
By the late 1990’s, LGSM and their unlikely friendship with mining communities in South Wales had become merely myth among the LGBT community. Some people knew about it, but no one was quite sure if it was true. In 2010, writer Stephen Beresford told film producer David Livingstone that this myth was one he wanted to explore and turn into a movie. So, he found past members and interviewed them as well as those from the support group in South Wales, and in the fall of 2014 he premiered the movie Pride based on the true story of LGSM and the miners, (Kellaway 1). The movie was a huge success and caused LGSM to reform and many new, young members joined. The group has also formed new sects of itself such as Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants and other Lesbians and Gays Support… groups. However, according to their website, lgsm.org, that in 2015 the group was stopping campaigning to focus on keeping their legacy and history alive. Even so, the movie encouraged many young gay people to get involved and support causes and communities like the LGSM did, and gave birth to a new generation of gay activism.
What happened in 1984-85 between LGSM and the South Wales mining communities was remarkable and changed the game for both communities. Even though they ultimately lost the strike, many families would not have been able to last in the strike that long if it was not for LGSM, and they gave the community a new understanding of gay people and created an air of tolerance and acceptance. The miners in turn helped get gay rights into the Labour party agenda, which subsequently led to the lowering of the age of consent for gays, anti-discrimination laws, and the legalization of gay marriage. This story of two very different groups persecuted by the government, has inspired many, and with the help of the film Pride and the recently published book by Tim Tate of the same name, this story is being shared with the world.
Works Cited
Kellaway, Kate. “When Miners and Gay Activists United: the Real Story of the Film Pride.” The Observer, Guardian News and Media, 31 Aug. 2014, www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/31/pride-film-gay-activists-miners-strike-interview.
“Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners in Their Protests for 'Coal Not Dole'.” Claiming Our Past, Celebrating Our Present, Creating Our Future, LGBThistorymonth.org.uk/lesbians-and-gays-support-the-miners-in-their-protests-for-coal-not-dole/.
“LGSM.” LGSM, lgsm.org.
Tate, Tim, and LGSM. Pride. John Blake Publishing Ltd, 2017.
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The science of spying: how the CIA secretly recruits academics
The Guardian, 10 October 2017
The CIA agent tapped softly on the hotel room door. After the keynote speeches, panel discussions and dinner, the conference attendees had retired for the night. Audio and visual surveillance of the room showed that the nuclear scientist’s minders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were sleeping, but he was still awake. Sure enough, he opened the door, alone.
According to a person familiar with this encounter, which took place about a decade ago, the agency had been preparing it for months. Through a business front, it had funded and staged the conference at an unsuspecting foreign centre of scientific research, invited speakers and guests, and planted operatives among the kitchen workers and other staff, just so it could entice the nuclear expert out of Iran, separate him for a few minutes from his guards, and pitch him one-to-one. A last-minute snag had almost derailed the plans: the target switched hotels because the conference’s preferred hotel cost $75 more than his superiors in Iran were willing to spend.
To show his sincerity and goodwill, the agent put his hand over his heart. “Salam habibi,” he said. “I’m from the CIA, and I want you to board a plane with me to the United States.” The agent could read the Iranian’s reactions on his face: a mix of shock, fear and curiosity. From prior experience with defectors, he knew the thousand questions flooding the scientist’s mind: What about my family? How will you protect me? Where will I live? How will I support myself? How do I get a visa? Do I have time to pack? What happens if I say no?
The scientist started to ask one, but the agent interrupted him. “First, get the ice bucket,” he said.
“Why?”
“If any of your guards wake up, you can tell them you’re going to get some ice.”
In perhaps its most audacious and elaborate incursion into academia, the CIA has secretly spent millions of dollars staging scientific conferences around the world. Its purpose was to lure Iranian nuclear scientists out of their homeland and into an accessible setting, where its intelligence officers could approach them individually and press them to defect. In other words, the agency sought to delay Iran’s development of nuclear weapons by exploiting academia’s internationalism, and pulling off a mass deception on the institutions that hosted the conferences and the professors who attended and spoke at them. The people attending the conference had no idea they were acting in a drama that simulated reality but was stage-managed from afar. Whether the national security mission justified this manipulation of the professoriate can be debated, but there’s little doubt that most academics would have balked at being dupes in a CIA scheme.
More than any other academic arena, conferences lend themselves to espionage. Assisted by globalisation, these social and intellectual rituals have become ubiquitous. Like stops on the world golf or tennis circuits, they sprout up wherever the climate is favourable, and draw a jet-setting crowd. What they lack in prize money, they make up for in prestige. Although researchers chat electronically all the time, virtual meetings are no substitute for getting together with peers, networking for jobs, checking out the latest gadgets and delivering papers that will later be published in volumes of conference proceedings. “The attraction of the conference circuit,” English novelist David Lodge wrote in Small World, his 1984 send-up of academic life, is that “it’s a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism with tourism, and all at someone else’s expense. Write a paper and see the world!”
The importance of a conference may be measured not just by the number of Nobel prize-winners or Oxford dons it attracts, but by the number of spies. US and foreign intelligence officers flock to conferences for the same reason that army recruiters concentrate on low-income neighbourhoods: they make the best hunting grounds. While a university campus might have only one or two professors of interest to an intelligence service, the right conference--on drone technology, perhaps, or Isis--could have dozens.
“Every intelligence service in the world works conferences, sponsors conferences, and looks for ways to get people to conferences,” said one former CIA operative.
“Recruitment is a long process of seduction,” says Mark Galeotti, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague and former special advisor to the British foreign office. “The first stage is to arrange to be at the same workshop as a target. Even if you just exchange banalities, the next time you can say, ‘Did I see you in Istanbul?’”
The FBI warned American academics in 2011 to be cautious about conferences, citing this scenario: “A researcher receives an unsolicited invitation to submit a paper for an international conference. She submits a paper and it is accepted. At the conference, the hosts ask for a copy of her presentation. The hosts hook a thumb drive to her laptop, and unbeknownst to her, download every file and data source from her computer.”
The FBI and CIA swarm conferences, too. At gatherings in the US, says one former FBI agent, “foreign intelligence officers try to collect Americans; we try to collect them”. The CIA is involved with conferences in various ways: it sends officers to them; it hosts them through front companies in the Washington area, so that the intelligence community can tap academic wisdom; and it mounts sham conferences to reach potential defectors from hostile countries.
The CIA monitors upcoming conferences worldwide and identifies those of interest. Suppose there is an international conference in Pakistan on centrifuge technology: the CIA would send its own agent undercover, or enlist a professor who might be going anyway to report back. If it learns that an Iranian nuclear scientist attended the conference, it might peg him for possible recruitment at the next year’s meeting.
Intelligence from academic conferences can shape policy. It helped persuade the George W Bush administration--mistakenly, as it turned out--that Saddam Hussein was still developing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “What our spies and informants were noticing, of course, was that Iraqi scientists specialising in chemistry, biology and, to a lesser extent, nuclear power kept showing up at international symposia,” former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou wrote in a 2009 memoir. “They presented papers, listened to the presentation of others, took copious notes, and returned to Jordan, where they could transmit overland back to Iraq.”
Some of those spies may have drawn the wrong conclusions because they lacked advanced degrees in chemistry, biology or nuclear power. Without expertise, agents might misunderstand the subject matter, or be exposed as frauds. At conferences hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on topics such as isotope hydrology and fusion energy, “there are probably more intelligence officers roaming the hallways than actual scientists,” says Gene Coyle, who worked for the CIA from 1976 to 2006. “There’s one slight problem. If you’re going to send a CIA guy to attend one of these conferences, he has to talk the talk. It’s hard to send a history major. ‘Yes, I have a PhD in plasma physics.’ Also, that’s a very small world. If you say you’re from the Fermi Institute in Chicago, they say: ‘You must know Bob, Fred, Susie.’”
Instead, Coyle says, the agency may enlist a suitable professor through the National Resources Division, its clandestine domestic service, which has a “working relationship” with a number of scientists. “If they see a conference in Vienna, they might say, ‘Professor Smith, that would seem natural for you to attend.’”
“Smith might say: ‘I am attending it, I’ll let you know who I chatted with. If I bump into an Iranian, I won’t run in the opposite direction.’ If he says, ‘I’d love to attend, but the travel budget at the university is pretty tight,’ the CIA or FBI might say: ‘Well, you know, we might be able to take care of your ticket, in economy class.’”
A spy’s courtship of a professor often begins with a seemingly random encounter--known in the trade as a “bump”--at an academic conference. One former CIA operative overseas explained to me how it works. I’ll call him “R”.
“I recruited a ton of people at conferences,” R told me. “I was good at it, and it’s not that hard.”
Between assignments, he would peruse a list of upcoming conferences, pick one, and identify a scientist of interest who seemed likely to attend after having spoken at least twice at the same event in previous years. R would assign trainees at the CIA and National Security Agency to develop a profile of the target--where they had gone to college, who their instructors were, and so on. Then he would cable headquarters, asking for travel funding. The trick was to make the cable persuasive enough to score the expense money, but not so compelling that other agents who read it, and were based closer to the conference, would try to go after the same target.
Next he developed his cover--typically, as a businessman. He invented a company name, built an off-the-shelf website and printed business cards. He created billing, phone and credit card records for the nonexistent company. For his name, he chose one of his seven aliases.
R was no scientist. He couldn’t drop in a line about the Riemann hypothesis as an icebreaker. Instead, figuring that most scientists are socially awkward introverts, he would sidle up to the target at the edge of the conference’s get-together session and say, “Do you hate crowds as much as I do?” Then he would walk away. “The bump is fleeting,” R said. “You just register your face in their mind.” No one else should notice the bump. It’s a rookie mistake to approach a target in front of other people who might be minders assigned by the professor’s own country. The minders would report the conversation, compromising the target’s security and making them unwilling or unable to entertain further overtures.
For the rest of the conference, R would “run around like crazy”, bumping into the scientist at every opportunity. With each contact, called “time on target” in CIA jargon and counted in his job-performance metrics, he insinuated himself into the professor’s affections. For instance, having done his homework, R would say he had read a wonderful article on such-and-such topic but couldn’t remember the author’s name. “That was me,” the scientist would say, blushing.
After a couple of days, R would invite the scientist to lunch or dinner and make his pitch: his company was interested in the scientist’s field, and would like to support their work. “Every academic I have ever met is constantly trying to figure how to get grants to continue his research. That’s all they talk about,” he explained. They would agree on a specific project, and the price, which varied by the scientist’s country: “$1,000 to $5,000 for a Pakistani. Korea is more.” Once the CIA pays a foreign professor, even if they are unaware at first of the funding source, it controls them, because exposure of the relationship might imperil their career or even their life in their native country.
Scientific conferences have become such a draw for intelligence agents that one of the biggest concerns for CIA operatives is interference from agency colleagues trapping the same academic prey. “We tend to flood events like these,” a former CIA officer who writes under the pseudonym Ishmael Jones observed in his 2008 book, The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.
At one 2005 conference in Paris that he anticipated would be a “perfect watering hole for visiting rogue-state weapons scientists”, Jones recalled, his heart sank as he glanced across the room and saw two CIA agents (who were themselves professors). He avoided their line of sight while he roamed the gathering, eyeballing nametags and trawling for “people who might make good sources”, ideally from North Korea, Iran, Libya, Russia or China.
“I’m surprised there’s so much open intelligence presence at these conferences,” Karsten Geier said. “There are so many people running around from so many acronyms.” Geier, head of cybersecurity policy for the German foreign office, and I were chatting at the Sixth Annual International Conference on Cyber Engagement, held in April 2016 at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The religious art, stained-glass windows and classical quotations lining Gaston Hall enveloped the directors of the NSA and the FBI like an elaborate disguise as they gave keynote addresses on combating one of the most daunting challenges of the 21st century: cyberattacks.
The NSA’s former top codebreaker spoke, as did the ex-chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the deputy director of Italy’s security department, and the director of a centre that does classified research for Swedish intelligence. The name tags that almost all of the 700 attendees wore showed that they worked for the US government, foreign embassies, intelligence contractors or vendors of cyber-related products, or they taught at universities.
Perhaps not all of the intelligence presence was open. Officially, 40 nations--from Brazil to Mauritius, Serbia to Sri Lanka--were represented at the conference, but not Russia. Yet, hovering in the rear of the balcony, a slender young man carrying a briefcase listened to the panels. No name tag adorned his lapel. I approached him, introduced myself, and asked his name. “Alexander,” he said, and, after a pause, “Belousov.”
“How do you like the conference?”
“No,” he said, trying to ward off further inquiries. “I am from Russian embassy. I don’t have any opinions. I would like to know, that’s all.”
I proffered a business card, and requested his, in vain. “I am here only a month. My cards are still being produced.”
I persisted, asking about his job at the embassy. (A check of a diplomatic directory showed him as a “second secretary”.) He looked at his watch. “I am sorry. I must go.”
When the CIA wants Prof John Booth’s opinion, it phones him to find out if he is available to speak at a conference. But the agency’s name is nowhere to be found on the conference’s formal invitation and agenda, which invariably list a Washington-area contractor as the sponsor.
By hiding its role, the CIA makes it easier for scholars to share their insights. They take credit for their presentations on their CV without disclosing that they consulted for the CIA, which might alienate some academic colleagues, as well as the countries where they conduct their research.
An emeritus professor of political science at the University of North Texas, Booth specialises in studying Latin America, a region where history has taught officials to be wary of the CIA. “If you were intending to return to Latin America, it was very important that your CV not reflect” these kinds of presentations, Booth told me in March 2016. “When you go to one of these conferences, if there are intelligence or defence agency principals there, it’s invisible on your CV. It provides a fig leaf for participants. There’s still some bias in academia against this. I don’t go around in Latin American studies meetings saying I spent time at a conference run by the CIA.”
The CIA arranges conferences on foreign policy issues so that its analysts, who are often immersed in classified details, can learn from scholars who understand the big picture and are familiar with publicly available sources. Participating professors are generally paid a $1,000 honorarium, plus expenses. With scholarly presentations followed by questions and answers, the sessions are like those at any academic meeting, except that many attendees--presumably, CIA analysts--wear name tags with only their first names.
Of 10 intelligence agency conferences that Booth attended over the years--most recently a 2015 session about a wave of Central American refugee children pouring into the US--the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence [ODNI] ran only one or two directly. The rest were outsourced to Centra Technology Inc, the leader of a growing industry of intermediaries in the Washington area--”cutouts” in espionage parlance--that run conferences for the CIA.
The CIA supplies Centra with funding and a list of people to invite, who gather in Centra’s Conference Center in Arlington, Virginia. It’s “an ideal setting for our clients’ conferences, meetings, games, and collaborative activities,” according to Centra’s website.
“If you know anything, when you see Centra, you know it’s likely to be CIA or ODNI,” said Robert Jervis, a Columbia University professor of international politics and longtime CIA consultant. “They do feel that for some academics thin cover is useful.”
Established in 1997, Centra has received more than $200m in government contracts, including $40m from the CIA for administrative support, such as compiling and redacting classified cables and documents for the five-year Senate Intelligence Committee study of the agency’s torture programme. In 2015, its executive ranks teemed with former intelligence officials. Founder and chief executive Harold Rosenbaum was a science and technology adviser to the CIA. Senior vice president Rick Bogusky headed the Korea division at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Vice president for research James Harris managed analytic programmes at the CIA for 22 years. Peggy Lyons, director of global access, was a longtime CIA manager and officer with several tours in East Asia. David Kanin, Centra analytic director, spent 31 years as a CIA analyst.
Like Booth, Indiana University political scientist Sumit Ganguly has spoken at several Centra conferences. “Anybody who works with Centra knows they’re in effect working for the US government,” he says. “If it said CIA, there are others who would fret about it. I make no bones about it to my colleagues. If it sticks in their craw, it’s their tough luck. I am an American citizen. I feel I should proffer the best possible advice to my government.”
Another political scientist, who has given four presentations for Centra, said he was told that it represented unnamed “clients”. He didn’t realise the clients were US intelligence agencies until he noticed audience members with first-name-only name tags. He later ran into one or two of the same people at an academic conference. They weren’t wearing name tags and weren’t listed in the programme.
Centra strives to mask its CIA connections. It removed its executives’ biographies from its website in 2015. The “featured customers” listed there include the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Army and 16 other branches of the federal government--but not the CIA. When I phoned Rosenbaum and asked him about Centra holding conferences for the CIA, he said: “You’re calling the wrong person. We have nothing to do with that.” And then he hung up.
I dropped by Centra’s offices on the fifth floor of a building in Burlington, Massachusetts, a northern suburb of Boston. The sign-in sheet asked visitors for their citizenship and “type of visit”: classified or not. The receptionist fetched human resources director Dianne Colpitts. She politely heard me out, checked with Rosenbaum, and told me that Centra wouldn’t comment. “To be frank,” she said, “our customers prefer us not to talk to the media.”
For Iranian academics escaping to the west, academic conferences are a modern-day underground railroad. The CIA has taken full advantage of this vulnerability. Beginning under President George W Bush, the US government had “endless money” for covert efforts to delay Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, the Institute for Science and International Security’s David Albright told me. One programme was the CIA’s Operation Brain Drain, which sought to spur top Iranian nuclear scientists to defect.
Because it was hard to approach the scientists in Iran, the CIA enticed them to conferences in friendly or neutral countries, a former intelligence officer told me. In consultation with Israel, the agency would choose a prospect. Then it would set up a conference at a prestigious scientific institute through a cutout, typically a businessman, who would underwrite the symposium with $500,000 to $2m in agency funds. The businessman might own a technology company, or the agency might create a shell company for him so that his support would seem legitimate to the institute, which was unaware of the CIA’s hand. “The more clueless the academics are, the safer it is for everybody,” the ex-officer told me. Each cutout knew he was helping the CIA, but he didn’t know why, and the agency would use him only once.
The conference would focus on an aspect of nuclear physics that had civilian applications, and also dovetailed with the Iranian target’s research interests. Typically, Iran’s nuclear scientists also held university appointments. Like professors anywhere, they enjoyed a junket. Iran’s government sometimes allowed them to go to conferences, though under guard, to keep up with the latest research and meet suppliers of cutting-edge technology--and for propaganda.
“From the Iranian point of view, they would clearly have an interest in sending scientists to conferences about peaceful uses of nuclear power,” Ronen Bergman told me. A prominent Israeli journalist, Bergman is the author of The Secret War With Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power, and is working on a history of Israel’s central intelligence service, the Mossad. “They say, ‘Yes, we send our scientists to conferences to use civilian technology for a civilian purpose.’”
The CIA officer assigned to the case might pose as a student, a technical consultant, or an exhibitor with a booth. His first job would be to peel the guards away from the scientist. In one instance, kitchen staff recruited by the CIA poisoned the guards’ meal, leaving them incapacitated by diarrhoea and vomiting. The hope was that they would attribute their illness to aeroplane food or an unfamiliar cuisine.
With luck, the officer would catch the scientist alone for a few minutes, and pitch to him. He would have boned up on the Iranian by reading files and courting “access agents” close to him. That way, if the scientist expressed doubt that he was really dealing with the CIA, the officer could respond that he knew everything about him, even the most intimate details--and prove it. One officer told a potential defector: “I know you had testicular cancer and you lost your left nut.”
Even after the scientist agreed to defect, he might reconsider and run away. “You’re constantly re-recruiting the guy,” the ex-officer said. Once he was safely in a car to the airport, the CIA coordinated the necessary visas and flight documents with allied intelligence agencies. It would also spare no effort to bring his wife and children to the US--though not his mistress, as one scientist requested. The agency would resettle the scientist and his family and provide long-term benefits, including paying for the children’s college and graduate school.
Enough scientists defected to the US, through academic conferences and other routes, to hinder Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, the ex-officer familiar with the operation told me. He said an engineer who assembled centrifuges for Iran’s nuclear programme agreed to defect on one condition: that he pursue a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Unfortunately, the CIA had spirited him out of Iran without credentials such as diplomas and transcripts. At first, MIT refused the CIA’s request to consider him. But the agency persisted, and the renowned engineering school agreed to accommodate the CIA by waiving its usual screening procedures. It mustered a group of professors from related departments to grill the defector. He aced the oral exam, was admitted, and earned his doctorate.
MIT administrators deny any knowledge of the episode. “I’m completely ignorant of this,” said Gang Chen, chairman of mechanical engineering. However, two academics corroborated key elements of the story. Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California who studies Iranian nuclear and political development, told me that a defector from Iran’s nuclear programme received a doctorate from MIT in mechanical engineering. Timothy Gutowski, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering, said: “I do know of a young man that was here in our lab. Somehow I learned that he did work on centrifuges in Iran. I started thinking: ‘What went on here?”
With Iran’s agreement in 2015 to limit nuclear weapons development in return for the lifting of international sanctions, recruitment of defectors from the programme by US intelligence lost some urgency. But if President Trump scraps or seeks to renegotiate the deal, which he denounced in a September speech to the United Nations General Assembly, CIA-staged conferences to snag key Iranian nuclear scientists could make a clandestine comeback.
This is an edited extract from Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities, published by Henry Holt on 1 November at £22.99.
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How the CIA staged sham academic conferences to thwart Iran’s nuclear program
http://ryanguillory.com/how-the-cia-staged-sham-academic-conferences-to-thwart-irans-nuclear-program/
How the CIA staged sham academic conferences to thwart Iran’s nuclear program
The CIA agent tapped softly on the hotel room door. After the keynote speeches, panel discussions and dinner, the conference attendees had retired for the night. Audio and visual surveillance of the room showed that the nuclear scientist’s minders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were sleeping but he was still awake. Sure enough, he opened the door, alone.
According to a person familiar with this encounter, which took place about a decade ago, the agency had been preparing it for months. Through a business front, it had funded and staged the conference at an unsuspecting foreign institution of scientific research, invited speakers and guests, and planted operatives among the kitchen workers and other staff, just so it could entice the nuclear expert out of Iran, separate him for a few minutes from his guards, and pitch him one-on-one. A last-minute snag had almost derailed the plans: The target switched hotels because the conference’s preferred hotel cost $75 more than his superiors in Iran were willing to spend.
To show his sincerity and goodwill, the agent put his hand over his heart. “Salam habibi,” he said. “I’m from the CIA, and I want you to board a plane with me to the United States.” The agent could read the Iranian’s reactions on his face: a mix of shock, fear and curiosity. From prior experience with defectors, he knew the thousand questions flooding the scientist’s mind: What about my family? How will you protect me? Where will I live? How will I support myself? How do I get a visa? Do I have time to pack? What happens if I say no?
The scientist started to ask one, but the agent interrupted him. “First, get the ice bucket,” he said.
“Why?”
“If any of your guards wake up, you can tell them you’re going to get some ice.”
In perhaps its most audacious and elaborate incursion into academia, the CIA secretly spent millions of dollars staging scientific conferences around the world. Its purpose was to lure Iranian nuclear scientists out of their homeland and into an accessible setting where its intelligence officers could approach them individually and press them to defect. In other words, the agency sought to delay Iran’s development of nuclear weapons by exploiting academia’s internationalism, and pulling off a mass deception on the institutions that hosted the conferences and the professors who attended and spoke at them. The people attending the conference had no idea they were acting in a drama that simulated reality but was stage-managed from afar. Whether the national security mission justified this manipulation of the professoriate can be debated, but there’s little doubt that most academics would have balked at being dupes in a CIA scheme.
More than any other academic venue, conferences lend themselves to espionage. Assisted by globalization, these social and intellectual rituals have become ubiquitous. Like stops on the world golf or tennis circuits, they sprout up wherever the climate is favorable, and draw a jet-setting crowd. What they lack in prize money, they make up for in prestige. Although researchers chat electronically all the time, virtual meetings are no substitute for getting together with peers, networking for jobs, checking out the latest gadgets, and delivering papers that will later be published in volumes of conference proceedings. “The attraction of the conference circuit,” English novelist David Lodge wrote in “Small World,” his 1984 send-up of academic life, is that “it’s a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism with tourism, and all at someone else’s expense. Write a paper and see the world!”
The importance of a conference may be measured not only by the number of Nobel Prize winners or Oxford dons it attracts, but by the number of spies. U.S. and foreign intelligence officers flock to conferences for the same reason that Army recruiters concentrate on low-income neighborhoods: They make the best hunting grounds. While a university campus may have only one or two professors of interest to an intelligence service, the right conference — on drone technology, perhaps, or ISIS — may have dozens.
“Every intelligence service in the world works conferences, sponsors conferences, and looks for ways to get people to conferences,” says a former CIA operative.
“Recruitment is a long process of seduction,” said Mark Galeotti, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague and former special adviser to the British foreign office. “The first stage is to arrange to be at the same workshop as a target. Even if you just exchange banalities, the next time you can say, ‘Did I see you in Istanbul?'”
The FBI warned American academics in 2011 to be cautious about conferences, citing this scenario: “A researcher receives an unsolicited invitation to submit a paper for an international conference. She submits a paper and it is accepted. At the conference, the hosts ask for a copy of her presentation. The hosts hook a thumb drive to her laptop, and unbeknownst to her, download every file and data source from her computer.”
The FBI and CIA swarm conferences, too. At gatherings in the United States, says a former FBI agent, “foreign intelligence officers try to collect Americans; we try to collect them.” The CIA is involved with conferences in various ways: It sends officers to them; it hosts them through fronts in the Washington area, so that the intelligence community can tap academic wisdom; and it mounts sham conferences to reach potential defectors from hostile countries.
The CIA monitors upcoming conferences worldwide and identifies those of interest. Suppose there is an international conference in Pakistan on centrifuge technology: The CIA would send its own agent undercover, or enlist a professor who might be going anyway to report back. If it learns that an Iranian nuclear scientist attended the conference, it might peg him for possible recruitment at the next year’s meeting.
Intelligence from academic conferences can shape policy. It helped persuade the George W. Bush administration — mistakenly, as it turned out — that Saddam Hussein was still developing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “What our spies and informants were noticing, of course, was that Iraqi scientists specializing in chemistry, biology, and, to a lesser extent, nuclear power kept showing up at international symposia,” former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou wrote in a 2009 memoir. “They presented papers, listened to the presentation of others, took copious notes, and returned to Jordan, where they could transmit overland back to Iraq.”
Some of those spies may have drawn the wrong conclusions because they lacked advanced degrees in chemistry, biology or nuclear power. Without expertise, agents may misunderstand the subject matter, or be exposed as frauds. At conferences hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on topics such as isotope hydrology and fusion energy, “there’s probably more intelligence officers roaming the hallways than actual scientists,” says Gene Coyle, who worked for the CIA from 1976 to 2006. “There’s one slight problem. If you’re going to send a CIA guy to attend one of these conferences, he has to talk the talk. It’s hard to send a history major. ‘Yes, I have a PhD in plasma physics.’ Also, that’s a very small world. If you say you’re from the Fermi Institute in Chicago, they say, ‘You must know Bob, Fred, Susie.'”
Instead, Coyle says, the agency may enlist a suitable professor through the National Resources Division, its clandestine domestic service, which has a “working relationship” with a number of scientists. “If they see a conference in Vienna, they might say, ‘Professor Smith, that would seem natural for you to attend.'”
“Smith might say, ‘I am attending it, I’ll let you know who I chatted with. If I bump into an Iranian, I won’t run in the opposite direction.’ If he says, ‘I’d love to attend, but the travel budget at the university is pretty tight,’ the CIA or FBI might say, ‘Well, you know, we might be able to take care of your ticket, in economy class.'”
A spy’s courtship of a professor often begins with a seemingly random encounter — known in the trade as a “bump” — at an academic conference. One former CIA operative overseas explained to me how it works. I’ll call him “R.”
“I recruited a ton of people at conferences,” R told me. “I was good at it, and it’s not that hard.”
Between assignments, he would peruse a list of upcoming conferences, pick one, and identify a scientist of interest who seemed likely to attend after having spoken at least twice at the same event in previous years. R would assign trainees at the CIA and NSA to develop a profile of the target — educational background, college instructors and so on. Then he would cable headquarters, asking for travel funding. The trick was to make the cable persuasive enough to score the expense money, but not so compelling that other agents who read it, and were based closer to the conference, would try to preempt him.
Next he developed his cover — typically, as a businessman. He invented a company name, used GoDaddy.com to build a website and printed business cards. He created billing, phone and credit card records for the nonexistent company. For his name, he chose one of his seven aliases.
R was no scientist. He couldn’t drop in a line about the Riemann hypothesis as an icebreaker. Instead, figuring that most scientists are socially awkward introverts, he would sidle up to the target at the edge of the conference’s get-together session and say, “Do you hate crowds as much as I do?” Then he would walk away.
“The bump is fleeting,” R says. “You just register your face in their mind.”
No one else should notice the bump. It’s a rookie mistake to approach a target in front of other people who might be minders assigned by the professor’s own country. The minders would report the conversation, compromising the target’s security and making them unwilling or unable to entertain further overtures.
For the rest of the conference, R would “run around like crazy,” bumping into the scientist at every opportunity. With each contact, called “time on target” in CIA jargon and counted in his job performance metrics, he insinuated himself into the professor’s affections. For instance, having done his homework, R would say he had read a wonderful article on such-and-such topic but couldn’t remember the author’s name. “That was me,” the scientist would say, blushing.
After a couple of days, R would invite the scientist to lunch or dinner and make his pitch: His company was interested in the scientist’s work and would like to support it. “Every academic I have ever met is constantly trying to figure how to get grants to continue his research. That’s all they talk about.” They would agree on a specific project, and the price, which varied by the scientist’s country: “One thousand to five thousand dollars for a Pakistani. Korea is more.” Once the CIA pays foreign professors who are unaware at first of the funding source, it controls them, because exposure of the relationship might imperil their careers or even their lives in their native country.
Scientific conferences have become such a draw for intelligence agents that one of the biggest concerns for CIA operatives is interference from agency colleagues trapping the same academic prey. “We tend to flood events like these,” a former CIA officer who writes under the pseudonym Ishmael Jones observed in his 2008 book, “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.” At one 2005 conference in Paris that he anticipated would be a “perfect watering hole for visiting rogue state weapons scientists,” Jones recalled, his heart sank as he glanced across the room and saw two CIA agents (who were themselves professors). He avoided their line of sight while he roamed the gathering, eyeballing nametags and trawling for “people who might make good sources,” ideally from North Korea, Iran, Libya, Russia or China.
“I’m surprised there’s so much open intelligence presence at these conferences,” Karsten Geier said. “There are so many people running around from so many acronyms.” Geier, head of cybersecurity policy for the German foreign office, and I were chatting at the Sixth Annual International Conference on Cyber Engagement, held in April 2016 at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The religious art, stained-glass windows and classical quotations lining Gaston Hall enveloped the directors of the NSA and the FBI like an elaborate disguise as they gave keynote addresses on combating one of the most daunting challenges of the twenty-first century: cyberattacks.
The NSA’s former top codebreaker spoke, as did the ex-chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the deputy director of Italy’s security department and the director of a center that does classified research for Swedish intelligence. The name tags that almost all of the seven hundred attendees wore showed that they worked for the US government, foreign embassies, intelligence contractors, or vendors of cyber-related products, or they taught at universities.
Perhaps not all of the intelligence presence was open. Officially, 40 nations — from Brazil to Mauritius, Serbia to Sri Lanka — were represented at the conference, but not Russia. Yet, hovering in the rear of the balcony, a slender young man, carrying a briefcase, listened to the panels. No name tag adorned his lapel. I approached him, introduced myself and asked his name. “Alexander,” he said, and, after a pause, “Belousov.”
“How do you like the conference?”
“No,” he said, trying to ward off further inquiries. “I am from Russian embassy. I don’t have any opinions. I would like to know, that’s all.”
I proffered a business card, and requested his, in vain. “I am here only a month. My cards are still being produced.”
I persisted, asking about his job at the embassy. (A subsequent check of a diplomatic directory showed him as a “second secretary.”) He looked at his watch. “I am sorry. I must go.”
When the CIA wants Professor John Booth’s opinion, it phones him to find out if he’s available to speak at a conference. But the agency’s name is nowhere to be found on the conference’s formal invitation and agenda, which invariably list a Beltway contractor as the sponsor.
By hiding its role, the CIA makes it easier for scholars to share their insights at its conferences. They take credit for their presentations on their curriculum vitae without disclosing that they consulted for the CIA, which might alienate some academic colleagues as well as the countries where they conduct their research.
An emeritus professor of political science at the University of North Texas, Booth specializes in studying Latin America, a region where history has taught officials to be wary of the CIA. “If you were intending to return to Latin America, it was very important that your CV not reflect” these kinds of presentations, Booth told me in March 2016. “When you go to one of these conferences, if there are intelligence or defense agency principals there, it’s invisible on your CV. It provides a fig leaf for participants. There’s still some bias in academia against this. I don’t go around in Latin American studies meetings saying I spent time at a conference run by the CIA.”
The CIA arranges conferences on foreign policy issues so that its analysts, who are often immersed in classified details, can learn from scholars who understand the big picture and are familiar with publicly available sources. Participating professors are generally paid a $1000 honorarium, plus expenses. With scholarly presentations followed by questions and answers, the sessions are like those at any academic meeting, except that many attendees — presumably, CIA analysts — wear name tags with only their first names.
Of ten intelligence agency conferences that Booth attended over the years, most recently a 2015 session about a wave of Central American refugee children pouring into the United States, the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence directly ran only one or two. The rest were outsourced to Centra Technology Inc., the leader of a growing industry of Beltway intermediaries — “cutouts,” in espionage parlance — that run conferences for the CIA.
The CIA supplies Centra with funding and a list of people to invite, who gather in Centra’s Conference Center in Arlington, Virginia. It’s “an ideal setting for our clients’ conferences, meetings, games, and collaborative activities,” according to Centra’s website.
“If you know anything, when you see Centra, you know it’s likely to be CIA or ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence],” said Robert Jervis, a Columbia University professor of international politics and longtime CIA consultant. “They do feel that for some academics thin cover is useful.”
Established in 1997, Centra has received more than $200 million in government contracts, including $40 million from the CIA for administrative support, such as compiling and redacting classified cables and documents for the five-year Senate Intelligence Committee study of the agency’s torture program. As of 2015, its executive ranks teemed with former intelligence officials. Founder and chief executive Harold Rosenbaum was a science and technology adviser to the CIA. Senior vice president Rick Bogusky headed the Korea division at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Vice president for research James Harris managed analytic programs at the CIA for 22 years. Peggy Lyons, director of global access, was a longtime CIA manager and officer with several tours in East Asia. David Kanin, Centra analytic director, spent 31 years as a CIA analyst.
Like Booth, Indiana University political scientist Sumit Ganguly has spoken at several Centra conferences. “Anybody who works with Centra knows they’re in effect working for the U.S. government,” he said. “If it said CIA, there are others who would fret about it. I make no bones about it to my colleagues. If it sticks in their craw, it’s their tough luck. I am an American citizen. I feel I should proffer the best possible advice to my government.”
Another political scientist, who has given four presentations for Centra, said he was told that it represented unnamed “clients.” He didn’t realize the clients were US intelligence agencies until he noticed audience members with first-name-only name tags. He later ran into one or two of the same people at an academic conference. They weren’t wearing name tags and weren’t listed in the program.
Centra strives to mask its CIA connections. It removed its executives’ biographies from its website in 2015. The “featured customers” listed there include the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Army and 16 other branches of the federal government — but not the CIA. When I phoned Rosenbaum and asked him about Centra holding conferences for the CIA, he said, “You’re calling the wrong person. We have nothing to do with that.” And then he hung up.
I dropped by Centra’s offices on the fifth floor of a building in Burlington, Massachusetts, a northern suburb of Boston. The sign-in sheet asked visitors for their citizenship and “type of visit”: classified or not. The receptionist fetched human resources director Dianne Colpitts. She politely heard me out, checked with Rosenbaum and told me that Centra wouldn’t comment.
“To be frank,” she said, “our customers prefer us not to talk to the media.”
For Iranian academics escaping to the West, academic conferences are a modern-day underground railroad. The CIA has taken full advantage of this vulnerability. Beginning under President George W. Bush, the U.S. government had “endless money” for covert efforts to delay Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, the Institute for Science and International Security’s David Albright told me. One program was the CIA’s Operation Brain Drain, which sought to spur top Iranian nuclear scientists to defect.
Because it was hard to approach the scientists in Iran, the CIA enticed them to academic conferences in friendly or neutral countries, a former intelligence officer familiar with the operation told me. In consultation with Israel, the agency would choose a prospect. Then it would set up a conference at a prestigious scientific institute through a cutout, typically a businessman, who would underwrite the symposium with $500,000 to $2 million in agency funds. The businessman might own a technology company, or the agency might create a shell company for him, so that his support would seem legitimate to the institute, which was unaware of the CIA’s hand. “The more clueless the academics are, the safer it is for everybody,” the ex-officer told me. Each cutout knew he was helping the CIA, but he didn’t know why, and the agency would use him only once.
The conference would focus on an aspect of nuclear physics that had civilian applications and also dovetailed with the Iranian target’s research interests. Typically, Iran’s nuclear scientists also held university appointments. Like professors anywhere, they enjoyed a junket. Iran’s government sometimes allowed them to go to conferences, though under guard, to keep up with the latest research and meet suppliers of cutting-edge technology — and for propaganda.
“From the Iranian point of view, they would clearly have an interest to send scientists to conferences about peaceful uses of nuclear power,” Ronen Bergman told me. A prominent Israeli journalist, Bergman is the author of “The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power,” and is working on a history of Israel’s central intelligence service, the Mossad. “They say, yes, we send our scientists to conferences to use civilian technology for a civilian purpose.”
The CIA officer assigned to the case might pose as a student, a technical consultant or an exhibitor with a booth. His first job would be to peel the guards away from the scientist. In one instance, kitchen staff recruited by the CIA poisoned the guards’ meal, leaving them incapacitated by diarrhea and vomiting. The hope was that they would attribute their illness to airplane food or an unfamiliar cuisine.
With luck, the officer would catch the scientist alone for a few minutes, and pitch him. He would have boned up on the Iranian by reading files and courting “access agents” close to him. That way, if the scientist expressed doubt that he was really dealing with the CIA, the officer could respond that he knew everything about him, even the most intimate details — and prove it. One officer told a potential defector, “I know you had testicular cancer and you lost your left nut.”
Even after the scientist agreed to defect, he might reconsider and run away. “You’re constantly re-recruiting the guy.” Once he was safely in a car to the airport, the CIA coordinated the necessary visas and flight documents with allied intelligence agencies. It would also spare no effort to bring his wife and children to the United States — though not his mistress, as one scientist requested. The agency would resettle the scientist and his family and provide long-term benefits, including paying for the children’s college and graduate school.
Enough scientists defected to the United States, through academic conferences and other routes, to hinder Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the ex-officer familiar with the operation told me. He said an engineer who assembled centrifuges for Iran’s nuclear program agreed to defect on one condition: that he pursue a doctorate at MIT. Unfortunately, the CIA had spirited him out of Iran without credentials such as diplomas and transcripts. At first, MIT refused the CIA’s request to consider him. But the agency persisted, and the renowned engineering school agreed to accommodate the CIA by waiving its usual screening procedures. It mustered a group of professors from related departments to grill the defector. He aced the oral exam, was admitted and earned his doctorate.
MIT administrators denied any knowledge of the episode. “I’m completely ignorant of this,” said Gang Chen, chairman of mechanical engineering.
However, two academics corroborated key elements of the story. Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California who studies Iranian nuclear and political development, told me that a defector from Iran’s nuclear program received a doctorate from MIT in mechanical engineering.
Timothy Gutowski, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering, said, “I do know of a young man that was here in our lab. Somehow I learned that he did work on centrifuges in Iran. I started thinking, ‘What went on here?'”
With Iran’s agreement in 2015 to limit nuclear weapons development in return for lifting of international sanctions, recruitment of defectors from the program by U.S. intelligence lost some urgency. But if President Donald Trump scraps or seeks to renegotiate the deal, which he denounced in a September speech to the United Nations General Assembly, CIA-staged conferences to snag key Iranian nuclear scientists could make a clandestine comeback.
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How the CIA staged sham academic conferences to thwart Iran’s nuclear program
http://ryanguillory.com/how-the-cia-staged-sham-academic-conferences-to-thwart-irans-nuclear-program/
How the CIA staged sham academic conferences to thwart Iran’s nuclear program
The CIA agent tapped softly on the hotel room door. After the keynote speeches, panel discussions and dinner, the conference attendees had retired for the night. Audio and visual surveillance of the room showed that the nuclear scientist’s minders from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were sleeping but he was still awake. Sure enough, he opened the door, alone.
According to a person familiar with this encounter, which took place about a decade ago, the agency had been preparing it for months. Through a business front, it had funded and staged the conference at an unsuspecting foreign institution of scientific research, invited speakers and guests, and planted operatives among the kitchen workers and other staff, just so it could entice the nuclear expert out of Iran, separate him for a few minutes from his guards, and pitch him one-on-one. A last-minute snag had almost derailed the plans: The target switched hotels because the conference’s preferred hotel cost $75 more than his superiors in Iran were willing to spend.
To show his sincerity and goodwill, the agent put his hand over his heart. “Salam habibi,” he said. “I’m from the CIA, and I want you to board a plane with me to the United States.” The agent could read the Iranian’s reactions on his face: a mix of shock, fear and curiosity. From prior experience with defectors, he knew the thousand questions flooding the scientist’s mind: What about my family? How will you protect me? Where will I live? How will I support myself? How do I get a visa? Do I have time to pack? What happens if I say no?
The scientist started to ask one, but the agent interrupted him. “First, get the ice bucket,” he said.
“Why?”
“If any of your guards wake up, you can tell them you’re going to get some ice.”
In perhaps its most audacious and elaborate incursion into academia, the CIA secretly spent millions of dollars staging scientific conferences around the world. Its purpose was to lure Iranian nuclear scientists out of their homeland and into an accessible setting where its intelligence officers could approach them individually and press them to defect. In other words, the agency sought to delay Iran’s development of nuclear weapons by exploiting academia’s internationalism, and pulling off a mass deception on the institutions that hosted the conferences and the professors who attended and spoke at them. The people attending the conference had no idea they were acting in a drama that simulated reality but was stage-managed from afar. Whether the national security mission justified this manipulation of the professoriate can be debated, but there’s little doubt that most academics would have balked at being dupes in a CIA scheme.
More than any other academic venue, conferences lend themselves to espionage. Assisted by globalization, these social and intellectual rituals have become ubiquitous. Like stops on the world golf or tennis circuits, they sprout up wherever the climate is favorable, and draw a jet-setting crowd. What they lack in prize money, they make up for in prestige. Although researchers chat electronically all the time, virtual meetings are no substitute for getting together with peers, networking for jobs, checking out the latest gadgets, and delivering papers that will later be published in volumes of conference proceedings. “The attraction of the conference circuit,” English novelist David Lodge wrote in “Small World,” his 1984 send-up of academic life, is that “it’s a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism with tourism, and all at someone else’s expense. Write a paper and see the world!”
The importance of a conference may be measured not only by the number of Nobel Prize winners or Oxford dons it attracts, but by the number of spies. U.S. and foreign intelligence officers flock to conferences for the same reason that Army recruiters concentrate on low-income neighborhoods: They make the best hunting grounds. While a university campus may have only one or two professors of interest to an intelligence service, the right conference — on drone technology, perhaps, or ISIS — may have dozens.
“Every intelligence service in the world works conferences, sponsors conferences, and looks for ways to get people to conferences,” says a former CIA operative.
“Recruitment is a long process of seduction,” said Mark Galeotti, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague and former special adviser to the British foreign office. “The first stage is to arrange to be at the same workshop as a target. Even if you just exchange banalities, the next time you can say, ‘Did I see you in Istanbul?'”
The FBI warned American academics in 2011 to be cautious about conferences, citing this scenario: “A researcher receives an unsolicited invitation to submit a paper for an international conference. She submits a paper and it is accepted. At the conference, the hosts ask for a copy of her presentation. The hosts hook a thumb drive to her laptop, and unbeknownst to her, download every file and data source from her computer.”
The FBI and CIA swarm conferences, too. At gatherings in the United States, says a former FBI agent, “foreign intelligence officers try to collect Americans; we try to collect them.” The CIA is involved with conferences in various ways: It sends officers to them; it hosts them through fronts in the Washington area, so that the intelligence community can tap academic wisdom; and it mounts sham conferences to reach potential defectors from hostile countries.
The CIA monitors upcoming conferences worldwide and identifies those of interest. Suppose there is an international conference in Pakistan on centrifuge technology: The CIA would send its own agent undercover, or enlist a professor who might be going anyway to report back. If it learns that an Iranian nuclear scientist attended the conference, it might peg him for possible recruitment at the next year’s meeting.
Intelligence from academic conferences can shape policy. It helped persuade the George W. Bush administration — mistakenly, as it turned out — that Saddam Hussein was still developing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “What our spies and informants were noticing, of course, was that Iraqi scientists specializing in chemistry, biology, and, to a lesser extent, nuclear power kept showing up at international symposia,” former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou wrote in a 2009 memoir. “They presented papers, listened to the presentation of others, took copious notes, and returned to Jordan, where they could transmit overland back to Iraq.”
Some of those spies may have drawn the wrong conclusions because they lacked advanced degrees in chemistry, biology or nuclear power. Without expertise, agents may misunderstand the subject matter, or be exposed as frauds. At conferences hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on topics such as isotope hydrology and fusion energy, “there’s probably more intelligence officers roaming the hallways than actual scientists,” says Gene Coyle, who worked for the CIA from 1976 to 2006. “There’s one slight problem. If you’re going to send a CIA guy to attend one of these conferences, he has to talk the talk. It’s hard to send a history major. ‘Yes, I have a PhD in plasma physics.’ Also, that’s a very small world. If you say you’re from the Fermi Institute in Chicago, they say, ‘You must know Bob, Fred, Susie.'”
Instead, Coyle says, the agency may enlist a suitable professor through the National Resources Division, its clandestine domestic service, which has a “working relationship” with a number of scientists. “If they see a conference in Vienna, they might say, ‘Professor Smith, that would seem natural for you to attend.'”
“Smith might say, ‘I am attending it, I’ll let you know who I chatted with. If I bump into an Iranian, I won’t run in the opposite direction.’ If he says, ‘I’d love to attend, but the travel budget at the university is pretty tight,’ the CIA or FBI might say, ‘Well, you know, we might be able to take care of your ticket, in economy class.'”
A spy’s courtship of a professor often begins with a seemingly random encounter — known in the trade as a “bump” — at an academic conference. One former CIA operative overseas explained to me how it works. I’ll call him “R.”
“I recruited a ton of people at conferences,” R told me. “I was good at it, and it’s not that hard.”
Between assignments, he would peruse a list of upcoming conferences, pick one, and identify a scientist of interest who seemed likely to attend after having spoken at least twice at the same event in previous years. R would assign trainees at the CIA and NSA to develop a profile of the target — educational background, college instructors and so on. Then he would cable headquarters, asking for travel funding. The trick was to make the cable persuasive enough to score the expense money, but not so compelling that other agents who read it, and were based closer to the conference, would try to preempt him.
Next he developed his cover — typically, as a businessman. He invented a company name, used GoDaddy.com to build a website and printed business cards. He created billing, phone and credit card records for the nonexistent company. For his name, he chose one of his seven aliases.
R was no scientist. He couldn’t drop in a line about the Riemann hypothesis as an icebreaker. Instead, figuring that most scientists are socially awkward introverts, he would sidle up to the target at the edge of the conference’s get-together session and say, “Do you hate crowds as much as I do?” Then he would walk away.
“The bump is fleeting,” R says. “You just register your face in their mind.”
No one else should notice the bump. It’s a rookie mistake to approach a target in front of other people who might be minders assigned by the professor’s own country. The minders would report the conversation, compromising the target’s security and making them unwilling or unable to entertain further overtures.
For the rest of the conference, R would “run around like crazy,” bumping into the scientist at every opportunity. With each contact, called “time on target” in CIA jargon and counted in his job performance metrics, he insinuated himself into the professor’s affections. For instance, having done his homework, R would say he had read a wonderful article on such-and-such topic but couldn’t remember the author’s name. “That was me,” the scientist would say, blushing.
After a couple of days, R would invite the scientist to lunch or dinner and make his pitch: His company was interested in the scientist’s work and would like to support it. “Every academic I have ever met is constantly trying to figure how to get grants to continue his research. That’s all they talk about.” They would agree on a specific project, and the price, which varied by the scientist’s country: “One thousand to five thousand dollars for a Pakistani. Korea is more.” Once the CIA pays foreign professors who are unaware at first of the funding source, it controls them, because exposure of the relationship might imperil their careers or even their lives in their native country.
Scientific conferences have become such a draw for intelligence agents that one of the biggest concerns for CIA operatives is interference from agency colleagues trapping the same academic prey. “We tend to flood events like these,” a former CIA officer who writes under the pseudonym Ishmael Jones observed in his 2008 book, “The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.” At one 2005 conference in Paris that he anticipated would be a “perfect watering hole for visiting rogue state weapons scientists,” Jones recalled, his heart sank as he glanced across the room and saw two CIA agents (who were themselves professors). He avoided their line of sight while he roamed the gathering, eyeballing nametags and trawling for “people who might make good sources,” ideally from North Korea, Iran, Libya, Russia or China.
“I’m surprised there’s so much open intelligence presence at these conferences,” Karsten Geier said. “There are so many people running around from so many acronyms.” Geier, head of cybersecurity policy for the German foreign office, and I were chatting at the Sixth Annual International Conference on Cyber Engagement, held in April 2016 at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The religious art, stained-glass windows and classical quotations lining Gaston Hall enveloped the directors of the NSA and the FBI like an elaborate disguise as they gave keynote addresses on combating one of the most daunting challenges of the twenty-first century: cyberattacks.
The NSA’s former top codebreaker spoke, as did the ex-chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the deputy director of Italy’s security department and the director of a center that does classified research for Swedish intelligence. The name tags that almost all of the seven hundred attendees wore showed that they worked for the US government, foreign embassies, intelligence contractors, or vendors of cyber-related products, or they taught at universities.
Perhaps not all of the intelligence presence was open. Officially, 40 nations — from Brazil to Mauritius, Serbia to Sri Lanka — were represented at the conference, but not Russia. Yet, hovering in the rear of the balcony, a slender young man, carrying a briefcase, listened to the panels. No name tag adorned his lapel. I approached him, introduced myself and asked his name. “Alexander,” he said, and, after a pause, “Belousov.”
“How do you like the conference?”
“No,” he said, trying to ward off further inquiries. “I am from Russian embassy. I don’t have any opinions. I would like to know, that’s all.”
I proffered a business card, and requested his, in vain. “I am here only a month. My cards are still being produced.”
I persisted, asking about his job at the embassy. (A subsequent check of a diplomatic directory showed him as a “second secretary.”) He looked at his watch. “I am sorry. I must go.”
When the CIA wants Professor John Booth’s opinion, it phones him to find out if he’s available to speak at a conference. But the agency’s name is nowhere to be found on the conference’s formal invitation and agenda, which invariably list a Beltway contractor as the sponsor.
By hiding its role, the CIA makes it easier for scholars to share their insights at its conferences. They take credit for their presentations on their curriculum vitae without disclosing that they consulted for the CIA, which might alienate some academic colleagues as well as the countries where they conduct their research.
An emeritus professor of political science at the University of North Texas, Booth specializes in studying Latin America, a region where history has taught officials to be wary of the CIA. “If you were intending to return to Latin America, it was very important that your CV not reflect” these kinds of presentations, Booth told me in March 2016. “When you go to one of these conferences, if there are intelligence or defense agency principals there, it’s invisible on your CV. It provides a fig leaf for participants. There’s still some bias in academia against this. I don’t go around in Latin American studies meetings saying I spent time at a conference run by the CIA.”
The CIA arranges conferences on foreign policy issues so that its analysts, who are often immersed in classified details, can learn from scholars who understand the big picture and are familiar with publicly available sources. Participating professors are generally paid a $1000 honorarium, plus expenses. With scholarly presentations followed by questions and answers, the sessions are like those at any academic meeting, except that many attendees — presumably, CIA analysts — wear name tags with only their first names.
Of ten intelligence agency conferences that Booth attended over the years, most recently a 2015 session about a wave of Central American refugee children pouring into the United States, the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence directly ran only one or two. The rest were outsourced to Centra Technology Inc., the leader of a growing industry of Beltway intermediaries — “cutouts,” in espionage parlance — that run conferences for the CIA.
The CIA supplies Centra with funding and a list of people to invite, who gather in Centra’s Conference Center in Arlington, Virginia. It’s “an ideal setting for our clients’ conferences, meetings, games, and collaborative activities,” according to Centra’s website.
“If you know anything, when you see Centra, you know it’s likely to be CIA or ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence],” said Robert Jervis, a Columbia University professor of international politics and longtime CIA consultant. “They do feel that for some academics thin cover is useful.”
Established in 1997, Centra has received more than $200 million in government contracts, including $40 million from the CIA for administrative support, such as compiling and redacting classified cables and documents for the five-year Senate Intelligence Committee study of the agency’s torture program. As of 2015, its executive ranks teemed with former intelligence officials. Founder and chief executive Harold Rosenbaum was a science and technology adviser to the CIA. Senior vice president Rick Bogusky headed the Korea division at the Defense Intelligence Agency. Vice president for research James Harris managed analytic programs at the CIA for 22 years. Peggy Lyons, director of global access, was a longtime CIA manager and officer with several tours in East Asia. David Kanin, Centra analytic director, spent 31 years as a CIA analyst.
Like Booth, Indiana University political scientist Sumit Ganguly has spoken at several Centra conferences. “Anybody who works with Centra knows they’re in effect working for the U.S. government,” he said. “If it said CIA, there are others who would fret about it. I make no bones about it to my colleagues. If it sticks in their craw, it’s their tough luck. I am an American citizen. I feel I should proffer the best possible advice to my government.���
Another political scientist, who has given four presentations for Centra, said he was told that it represented unnamed “clients.” He didn’t realize the clients were US intelligence agencies until he noticed audience members with first-name-only name tags. He later ran into one or two of the same people at an academic conference. They weren’t wearing name tags and weren’t listed in the program.
Centra strives to mask its CIA connections. It removed its executives’ biographies from its website in 2015. The “featured customers” listed there include the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Army and 16 other branches of the federal government — but not the CIA. When I phoned Rosenbaum and asked him about Centra holding conferences for the CIA, he said, “You’re calling the wrong person. We have nothing to do with that.” And then he hung up.
I dropped by Centra’s offices on the fifth floor of a building in Burlington, Massachusetts, a northern suburb of Boston. The sign-in sheet asked visitors for their citizenship and “type of visit”: classified or not. The receptionist fetched human resources director Dianne Colpitts. She politely heard me out, checked with Rosenbaum and told me that Centra wouldn’t comment.
“To be frank,” she said, “our customers prefer us not to talk to the media.”
For Iranian academics escaping to the West, academic conferences are a modern-day underground railroad. The CIA has taken full advantage of this vulnerability. Beginning under President George W. Bush, the U.S. government had “endless money” for covert efforts to delay Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, the Institute for Science and International Security’s David Albright told me. One program was the CIA’s Operation Brain Drain, which sought to spur top Iranian nuclear scientists to defect.
Because it was hard to approach the scientists in Iran, the CIA enticed them to academic conferences in friendly or neutral countries, a former intelligence officer familiar with the operation told me. In consultation with Israel, the agency would choose a prospect. Then it would set up a conference at a prestigious scientific institute through a cutout, typically a businessman, who would underwrite the symposium with $500,000 to $2 million in agency funds. The businessman might own a technology company, or the agency might create a shell company for him, so that his support would seem legitimate to the institute, which was unaware of the CIA’s hand. “The more clueless the academics are, the safer it is for everybody,” the ex-officer told me. Each cutout knew he was helping the CIA, but he didn’t know why, and the agency would use him only once.
The conference would focus on an aspect of nuclear physics that had civilian applications and also dovetailed with the Iranian target’s research interests. Typically, Iran’s nuclear scientists also held university appointments. Like professors anywhere, they enjoyed a junket. Iran’s government sometimes allowed them to go to conferences, though under guard, to keep up with the latest research and meet suppliers of cutting-edge technology — and for propaganda.
“From the Iranian point of view, they would clearly have an interest to send scientists to conferences about peaceful uses of nuclear power,” Ronen Bergman told me. A prominent Israeli journalist, Bergman is the author of “The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power,” and is working on a history of Israel’s central intelligence service, the Mossad. “They say, yes, we send our scientists to conferences to use civilian technology for a civilian purpose.”
The CIA officer assigned to the case might pose as a student, a technical consultant or an exhibitor with a booth. His first job would be to peel the guards away from the scientist. In one instance, kitchen staff recruited by the CIA poisoned the guards’ meal, leaving them incapacitated by diarrhea and vomiting. The hope was that they would attribute their illness to airplane food or an unfamiliar cuisine.
With luck, the officer would catch the scientist alone for a few minutes, and pitch him. He would have boned up on the Iranian by reading files and courting “access agents” close to him. That way, if the scientist expressed doubt that he was really dealing with the CIA, the officer could respond that he knew everything about him, even the most intimate details — and prove it. One officer told a potential defector, “I know you had testicular cancer and you lost your left nut.”
Even after the scientist agreed to defect, he might reconsider and run away. “You’re constantly re-recruiting the guy.” Once he was safely in a car to the airport, the CIA coordinated the necessary visas and flight documents with allied intelligence agencies. It would also spare no effort to bring his wife and children to the United States — though not his mistress, as one scientist requested. The agency would resettle the scientist and his family and provide long-term benefits, including paying for the children’s college and graduate school.
Enough scientists defected to the United States, through academic conferences and other routes, to hinder Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the ex-officer familiar with the operation told me. He said an engineer who assembled centrifuges for Iran’s nuclear program agreed to defect on one condition: that he pursue a doctorate at MIT. Unfortunately, the CIA had spirited him out of Iran without credentials such as diplomas and transcripts. At first, MIT refused the CIA’s request to consider him. But the agency persisted, and the renowned engineering school agreed to accommodate the CIA by waiving its usual screening procedures. It mustered a group of professors from related departments to grill the defector. He aced the oral exam, was admitted and earned his doctorate.
MIT administrators denied any knowledge of the episode. “I’m completely ignorant of this,” said Gang Chen, chairman of mechanical engineering.
However, two academics corroborated key elements of the story. Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California who studies Iranian nuclear and political development, told me that a defector from Iran’s nuclear program received a doctorate from MIT in mechanical engineering.
Timothy Gutowski, an MIT professor of mechanical engineering, said, “I do know of a young man that was here in our lab. Somehow I learned that he did work on centrifuges in Iran. I started thinking, ‘What went on here?'”
With Iran’s agreement in 2015 to limit nuclear weapons development in return for lifting of international sanctions, recruitment of defectors from the program by U.S. intelligence lost some urgency. But if President Donald Trump scraps or seeks to renegotiate the deal, which he denounced in a September speech to the United Nations General Assembly, CIA-staged conferences to snag key Iranian nuclear scientists could make a clandestine comeback.
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Diary of Clawdia Wolf
I’ll make you a villain if you read my diary.
August 25th
Today I was walking through the streets of Londoom I just wanted to howl and do a little dance because I’m so excited to be here. I didn’t, of course, do the dancing part, since I’m the one with the “clumsy gene” in our family and I didn’t want to fall through an open monster hole cover. It has never bothered me that I’m not as athletic as the rest of the pack, because I think it was pretty apparent even when I was a cub that I was better at writing stories about my brothers’ and sisters’ athletic exploits than participating in them. It’s not that I didn’t try, but my mind and body may have been in concert but they were not playing the same tune. I remember the last organized soccer game I played: the coach put me in the goal partly because I was tall for my age and partly because he thought that perhaps the prospect of a ball being rocketed toward me might keep my attention. It worked for a bit, until the ball stayed at the other end of the pitch for a while, and a butterfly landed on the net. All of a sudden I became a ferocious were-spider who decided to give the butterfly a reprieve. So I climbed up in the net to shoo it away when I heard my dad yell, “Clawdia, turn around!” A ghoul was on a breakaway, and the only thing between her and me was open pitch and the ball. I tried to turn, and my spikes caught in the net, so I just closed my eyes and leaped toward the front of the goal. Somehow the ball ended up in my claws, and I kept the ghoul from scoring. It was my one and only athletic achievement, so I retired with my legacy in check and got a good story out of it, which, I’m sure, will end up in one of my screamplays some day.
September 8th
I was sitting in the lecture hall today not really paying attention like I should have been, partly because I was working on a not-for-that-class writing assignment and partly, okay, mostly, because symbolism in ghost-modern, neo-realist goblin cinema is only slightly less painful than rolling in flea-infested wolf’s bane. Honestly, I have no idea what a goblin miner wearing a red hat and pushing an empty ore cart says about the state of modern goblin-kobold relations. I’m sure it is profound and important, but well... it doesn’t matter. What did matter, howere, was that the professor asked a question that he wanted all of us to answer, and I didn’t hear the question. I could have asked him to repeat the question, of course, but then I would have had to acknowledge that I had not been paying attention, and since this particular professor hates that, I knew I was going to have to wing it on the answer. Which made me nervous, which made me look for something to chew on, which meant I wasn’t listening to the other answers, which meant I didn’t have a clue when he got to me. So when he said, “Ms. Wolf?” I said I didn’t think I could add anything to the discussion that had not been more profoundly stated in the answers my classmates had already given. This caused the rest of the class to burst out laughing, to which the professor said, “While I appreciate your humility, your answer leaves us no closer to knowing how many siblings you have.” I was mortalfied, but even more so when he said, “Please do try and pay better attention going forward.” Unlive and learn, Clawdia, unlive and learn.
September 15th
I’ve been using my iCoffin tablet to do some of my writing lately, and I really like it. I mean, I like the tablet. It’s great for doing video chats, and there are some really cool Londoom based apps that have helped me find my way around the city better. As for the writing part, I still prefer my chewed pen and leghoul pad. It may be old-fashioned, but there’s something about a blank sheet of paper that’s less intimidating than a blank scream with a blinking cursor.
October 1st
The only thing that’s coming down faster than the temperature in Londoom right now is the rain. I’m not sure what the real temp is, but you know it’s cold when a werewolf has to put on her fuzzy wool socks... brrr... fortunately, dad did a good job preparing me for this climate by never allowing to turn the thermostat up past the “I can see my breath” mark during the winter. We would say, “Dad, the house is freezing!” to which he would always reply, “You can either have heat or you can eat.” Followed quickly by, “We’re werewolves, for ghoul’s sake, put on a sweater if you’re cold.” Then we’d all look at mom, who would just shrug her soldiers. It was one of the only things she couldn’t change his mind about. So we’d all just sit snuggled together on the couch watching bad TV, complaining about Howleen’s sharp, unclipped paw nails and making promises about what we’d do when we all moved out and got our own places. I distinctly remember saying that I would turn up the heat so high that it would make Gloom Beach seem like a Yeti cave. So the first time it got cold here, I did just that, and it was every bit as amazing as I imagined it would be, until I got my first heating bill. Let’s just say that grocery shopping for the next few weeks gave me a completely different perspective on dad’s old saying. I’m pretty confident that saltines and marmite will never darken the shelves of my cupboard again after having that formerly tasty combination as my only breakfast and lunch option for a fortnight. I’m really missing being able to snuggle up on the couch with my pack of siblings, and I wouldn’t even complain about Howleen’s uncut paw nails... well, maybe not a lot.
October 6th
I had a great video chat with the fam tonight, and they could not stop talking about Draculaura being chosen as queen of the vampires. They were in complete shock, and I have to admit it was quite a surprise to me as well. The vampires haven’t had a queen since the last chosen one, a young vampire ghoul named Elissabat, disappeared some 400 years ago. What is really curious about this, as if Draculaura being chosen as the new queen right out of the boo wasn’t curious enough, is that Clawdeen told me Draculaura’s choice was confirmed by the Vampire’s Heart. I have actually been doing quite a bit of research on the heart, which is really just a massive jewel with magical properties, for a screamplay I wanted to write about the mystery of the missing queen. There are many scholars that believe the jewel disappeared at the same time the ghoul who would be queen did; so either the scholars are incorrect, or there is more here than meets the eye. I didn’t want to be the one to rain on the funeral though, until I had a little more proof, especially with Clawdeen being so excited about attending the coronation. I did notice that Clawd wasn’t in the room with everyone else, and I’m wondering how he is dealing with this news.
October 7th
Clawdeen has sent me at least 30 texts and emails since last night detailing the fashions she’s thinking about taking to the coronation. I can see her now running around the room with absolutely every piece of clothing she owns spread out so she can mix and match fashions. She’s probably also been through Draculaura’s closet several times as well. I love her so much and I wish I could be there to make her laugh when she starts getting too serious. She’s so beautiful, though, that whatever she chooses will probably steal the show. I finally got an IM from Clawd asking if we could talk. This wasn’t unusual, since Clawd prefers one-on-one conversation to fighting for face time in a group. When he popped up on the screen he looked terrible, almost like he’d been crying, although it might have just been bad lighting. As usual, Clawd didn’t want to talk about himself and instead wanted to know every little thing I was doing. I finally had to say, “Stop howling around the moon and talk to me, little brother.” So he did. He told me that he didn’t trust the Lord Stoker character that showed up with the Vampire’s Heart claiming it led him to Draculaura. What’s more, neither did Draculaura. They both thought Draculaura would be miserable being queen, but that she would feel honor and duty bound to take the throne. Even so he was trying to be as supportive as possible and went on for a few more minutes about things that were worrying him. When he stopped I said, “You really love her, don’t you?” He looked down for a moment and swallowed hard, “She’s my best friend, sis, and I’m about to lose her forever.” Now it was my turn to swallow hard, and then he made an excuse about having to leave for practice and said a hasty goodbye. I’m going to do some more digging into this, because something doesn’t pass the smell test here, and a Wolf’s nose is always right.
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