College

First year, done. My friend didn't go to a single class in the last 3 weeks. Got all Fs. My GPA is second out of my core group of five friends. Not too bad. I'm not completely proud of the grades, but you know what? They're pretty damn good for not doing shit. Thanks for reading. Bye guys.

Jim Rome

I hate Jim Rome. He's such a scrawny little shit. And why is he so full of himself, what makes him so special that he can shit on anything and everything happening in sports. He needs his ass kicked off and handed to him more often. This piece of fuck man. Agree? y/n

Bannings explained

You’ve done something stupid. Perhaps you have pissed off other members; posted something that was prohibited or just acted fucking stupid. You think that you’re invincible; NOTHING can stop you from having this much fun. An admin just saw what you did. And what happens? You were just banned. You are now unable to do what was fun, can’t post anymore and can’t access pages that you used to prior to being banned. And even worse; you deserved it. Shame on you.

Joyce Carol Oates Wiki

Oates was born in Lockport, New York to Carolina Oates, a homemaker, and Frederic Oates, a tool and die designer.^[3] She was raised Catholic but is now an atheist.^[4] Oates grew up in the working-class farming community of Millersport, New York,^[5] and characterized hers as "a happy, close-knit and unextraordinary family for our time, place and economic status".^[3] Her paternal grandmother, Blanche Woodside, lived with the family and was "very close" to Joyce.^[5] After Blanche's death, Joyce learned that Blanche's father had killed himself and Blanche had subsequently concealed herJewish heritage; Oates eventually drew on aspects of her grandmother's life in writing the 2007 novel The Gravedigger's Daughter.^[5] A brother, Fred Junior, was born in 1943, and a sister, Lynn Ann, who is severely autistic, was born in 1956.^[3]

At the beginning of her education, Oates attended the same one-room school her mother attended as a child.^[3] She became interested in reading at an early age, and remembers Blanche's gift ofLewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as "the great treasure of my childhood, and the most profound literary influence of my life. This was love at first sight!"^[6] In her early teens, she devoured the writing of William Faulkner, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry David Thoreau, Ernest Hemingway, Charlotte Brontë, and Emily Brontë, whose "influences remain very deep".^[7] Oates began writing at the age of 14, when Blanche gave her a typewriter.^[5] Oates later transferred to several bigger, suburban schools,^[3] and graduated from Williamsville South High School in 1956, where she worked for her high school newspaper.^{[citation needed]} She was the first in her family to complete high school.^[3]

Oates won a scholarship to attend Syracuse University, where she joined Phi Mu.^[8] Oates found Syracuse "a very exciting place academically and intellectually", and trained herself by "writing novel after novel and always throwing them out when I completed them."^[9] It was not until this point that Oates began reading the work of D. H. Lawrence, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Mann, and Franz Kafka, though, she noted, "these influences are still quite strong, pervasive."^[7] At the age of nineteen, she won the "college short story" contest sponsored by Mademoiselle. Oates graduated Syracuse as valedictorian in 1960, and received her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1961.

Evelyn Shrifte, president of the Vanguard Press, met Oates soon after she received her master's degree. "She was fresh out of school, and I thought she was a genius," Shrifte said. Oates' first book, the short-story collection By the North Gate, was published by Vanguard in 1963.^[10