r/AmITheDevil • u/Arktikos02 • 23h ago
Calling Her Husband Uneducated
/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/174mawk/aita_for_telling_my_friends_that_my_husband_isnt/246
u/la_bibliothecaire 23h ago
I'm a librarian, and I have a Master's degree. One of my favourite books is To Kill a Mockingbird.
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u/Dowager-queen-beagle 23h ago
I was gonna say, as if TKaM is not a wildly well-regarded classic? Not that that should matter, but it does make OP look even stupider.
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u/OniyaMCD 21h ago
I think OOP is implying that the only reason anyone reads TKaM is because it was an English assignment in high school. (Which also does not add to OOP's credentials.)
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u/frolicndetour 23h ago
It's my all time favorite book and one of the reasons I became a lawyer. My boyfriend bought me a first edition. I'd fight that rude AH Steve.
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u/Dragonscatsandbooks 23h ago
I worked in libraries for 14 years of my life(out of 34 years), I have a bachelor's degree in English. My best friend is an English teacher and has a master's. Ya know what books we discussed the last time we met up?
Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Being educated is a totally different thing than being boring, pretentious and stuffy.
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u/ScienceGiraffe 22h ago
Honestly, I'd argue that being educated includes being curious and generally well rounded in things that aren't exclusively literary or high literature or doesn't need to be even the act of reading itself.
No one person will ever be able to read every book or know every single subject. It's not possible. Nobody will ever be educated in everything. I doubt OP knows much about nuclear science, so does that make them uneducated?
And heaven forbid someone enjoys something that isn't considered high culture. If OP was perhaps more educated in history, they'd know that many things we consider to be high culture today was actually considered low culture in its day. (Although I was under the impression that TKaM is a literary classic, which is why it's read in high school to begin with!)
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u/Dragonscatsandbooks 21h ago
Yeah, I mean Shakespeare was essentially the Marvel franchise of its day (with more dick jokes).
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u/ScienceGiraffe 21h ago
Exactly. I thought about how Charles Dickens essentially wrote his novels as magazine serials before they were published as books, something that lots of people look down upon as a low form of reading.
Heck, a lot of great sci-fi started out as pulp fiction or magazine serials.
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u/Emergency-Twist7136 19h ago
My grandfather read a Dickens book over and over to get him through World War Two.
It was the book he had.
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u/hoginlly 22h ago edited 22h ago
I have a PhD in Molecular Genetics and outside of research papers I read nothing but smutty romance
Guess I'm uneducated
but I would have loved to give self-important Steve some graphic recommendations
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u/the_road_infinite 21h ago
In one of my first classes in grad school one of the ice breakers was what the last book everyone had read was and I was like “uhhh.” I had to make something up because I didn’t want everyone’s first impression of me to be smutty romance reader.
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u/llamadramalover 17h ago
I’m partial to sci-fi myself. There’s a book that combines both that I’m not usually a fan of but damn do I love this fucking series
“The Games Gods Play”
2 of 3 are currently available.
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u/Anxious-Slip-4701 2h ago
There was some incredibly famous Englishman who wrote quite a number of books, had three doctorates. He read romance novels for fun. Completely out of character it would seem.
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u/RedLicorice83 22h ago
As a voracious reader I really hate to write this, but being "well-read" hasn't helped in my day-to-day. My husband is as empathetic, intelligent, and able to converse as well as others I went to college with, but he is not formally educated and never bothered to read. He hates reading anything but instruction manuals, which has come in handy far more times for us as homeowners than my understanding of the themes of 'Moby Dick'
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u/eli_sayres 23h ago
I named my oldest son after a character in TKaM!. Although, I am just a lowly high school graduate 😔
In my defense, I had him my senior year so, not too long after I actually read the book.
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u/Sad-Bug6525 22h ago
I was named after a character in a TV show and one of my siblings for a VC Andrews book, people find names that they like everywhere and there is nothing wrong with that. At least you picked a classic and not from a fiction author known for incest in their books.
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u/mama-nikki 21h ago
I named my youngest after a tv character and not the damn Shakespeare novel. Its Juliette. She's 12 and I've taught her that if anyone says "I'll be your romeo", to roll her eyes and walk away but if they say Shawn, you have a keeper. 🤣
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u/Emergency-Twist7136 19h ago
If someone offers to be her Romeo she should be more wary than that. "I'll develop an unhealthy obsession with you that will get people killed including us" is not a romantic promise
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u/la_bibliothecaire 23h ago
Atticus is a great name, and a great namesake. One of the best characters in English literature.
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u/McNallyJoJo34 22h ago
I love To Kill A Mockingbird! I never finished college, just wasn’t for me, but I can literally read a book a day sometimes so I’ve read A LOT of books…. Not being college educated doesn’t mean dumb or not well read. I hate people! Side note I think if I didn’t love my career I’d love to work in a library
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u/JustbyLlama 23h ago
Calling your husband uneducated while he works on nuclear reactors on submarines is certainly a choice.
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u/lyricaldorian 22h ago
She's obviously insanely jealous that a man who isn't "well educated" knows more about science, physics, nuclear science, math, and logistics than she does.
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u/OniyaMCD 21h ago
I'd tell Will to start using the title of one of his textbooks. Imagine Steve's face when he comes out with something like: 'Last actual book I cracked open was Shultis and Faw's "Fundamentals of Nuclear Science." Since then, it's been operation manuals for the Ohio class.'
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u/Tumble85 19h ago
"Sorry, the last things I've read would land you in prison for owning, they are literally top secret" would be quite the epic flex.
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u/Sad-Bug6525 19h ago
I like this idea.
Her friend might be reading some books sometimes, but her sitting down and reading to relax and reading a manual or otheer texts then both remembering and applying that information are two fully different activities.
OOP sounds like she values her friends opinions too much and can't see her husband without that lens of impressing her friend.6
u/OniyaMCD 13h ago
I happen to have majored in mathematics. While I do consume a *lot* of literature (mostly audio, because my eyes are crap), I have been known to page through some of my Dad's old engineering textbooks for funsies.
'Some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians, and to wonder, therefore, how they got that way.' - Tom Lehrer, mathematician, satirist and personal idol since childbirth.
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u/papamajada 20h ago
She could have pivoted the conversation into his work and how smart he is instead of basically going "Yah hes a dumbass" in front of a guy whos probably not even well read himself
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u/Bice_thePrecious 15h ago
Literally this. And it's so ridiculously ironic that Ms. College Educated doesn't know the difference between being uneducated and not being bookish.
And when has "not well educated" ever been equivalent to not being college educated? If I hear someone is "not well educated," I'm thinking they dropped out before college was even on the table.
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u/atomicsnark 15h ago
Are physicists also not well educated just because their curriculum doesn't include a lot of fictional works? Like ...
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u/your-yogurt 19h ago
i have family in the military, and they dont like to read recreationally. not because they're dumb or lazy, but because they read SO MUCH FOR WORK, they want to do other things than read.
the fact oop does not understand that aspect for a military man makes me think her own reading comprehension is shit
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u/totallycalledla-a 17h ago
Some people will just always see people without college degrees as idiots no matter what they do its pathetic.
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u/womenaremyfavguy 5h ago
You shouldn’t be calling your partner uneducated, period. Especially in front of friends, and then laughing at his expense.
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u/Unfriendlyblkwriter 23h ago
> We all had a good laugh
https://giphy.com/gifs/TVL40WcOiazxPYUTRz
My favorite book is one that I read when I was nine years old. I still reread it every year to get something new out of it. (Title: Let the Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor).
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u/frolicndetour 23h ago
Anne of Green Gables is one of my favorites and I reread it at least once a year. And it's a young adult novel. And I'm grad school educated, so OOP can fk all the way off.
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u/EatMorePieDrinkMore 22h ago
I love Anne of Green Gables with all my heart and soul. I wore out the binding on several of the books in that series. I tried my darnedest to name our youngest Marilla.
Oh, FYI, I have JD with honors and passed two bar exams. OOP is a massive snob. And is probably not that smart.
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u/frolicndetour 22h ago
Gilbert Blythe (both the book version and the Canadian minseries version) was my first love ❤️
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u/TheGreatLabMonkey 22h ago
I love love love Anne of Green Gables and I plan on introducing my kid to this series soon (Kiddo is 9 now). I want to read the books as well as show Kiddo the movies and the series (Anne of Avonlea). This is my childhood and I longed for a bosom friend like Anne had in Diana.
Also, aside - the actress who play d Diana is super gorgeous and Megan Follows has a special place in my heart.
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u/GlenCocosCandyCane 19h ago
Schuyler Grant, the actress who plays Diana, is Katharine Hepburn’s great-niece.
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u/EatMorePieDrinkMore 22h ago
My son and I listened to this version on LibraVox together. It was lovely. There’s also a graphic novel!
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u/AdmiralOwO 23h ago
Same, my favorite is still Inkheart by Cornelia Funke and I might have been 8 or 9 when I first read it.
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u/EmperorChariot 12h ago
Mildred!!! currently reading Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry for the first time in probably 20 years with my tutoring students and I am enjoying it so so much. an incredible book at any age.
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u/Raven1906 23h ago
Does she even like her husband? I can’t imagine making someone I cared about out to be the class dunce so everyone can laugh at them, that’s straight up bullying behavior. I hope the poor guy managed to escape his awful wife and her pretentious friends.
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u/purpleplumas 20h ago
I promise that he's more capable of making 6 figures than her and most of her friends lol. I hope so too
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u/Llayanna 19h ago
I mean, the capabilities to make huge money is not always the same with well educated.
My current boss is scarily overqualified and while I don't know his exact earnings.. he is grossly underpaid for what he does.
Life is sometimes not fair this way.
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u/purpleplumas 11h ago
If all these college people care about is sounding smart to other people then they're not spending time actually getting smarter. He has top secret clearance and experience working with some of the most valuable equipment in the country
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u/llamadramalover 23h ago edited 17h ago
Well then. My all time favorite book is also one I read in high school. I read frequently. Was in the military, marines, and am currently in college.
Clearly I am even more uneducated than OPs husband according to her and her stuck up friends.
I love how she says “not well educated” to everyone else then when called out says “not college educated.” Like it’s the same thing. They are not.
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u/Andromeda321 21h ago
I’m a university professor and my favorite books are all from my formative years. A book can be great these days, but it can never rock an entire world when you’re older like a book can in teenage years I feel.
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u/kali125 23h ago
I remember this one! My husband is also a submariner who works on the reactor and I was seeing red reading her comments. The shit he has to know is absolutely insane - not to mention dealing with the pressure and all other stresses of the job
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u/WildwoodShadow 22h ago
My hubs was on aircraft carriers. When he was in ELT training he'd wake me up in the middle of the night shouting orders for SCRAMS. It was damn intense.
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u/lancerisdead 15h ago
I remember how mad this one made me at the time too. Saying someone who is a nuclear engineer, let alone one who works on a submarine, is uneducated is SO WILD
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u/WildwoodShadow 22h ago
This really irritated me. My husband was a Navy nuke. In fact, he was an ELT, which means he was a nuclear chemist. The Navy puts their nukes through a basic bachelor's program in six freaking months and then the chemistry program is another 3 months. To say her husband is not well educated is an insult! The Navy program is incredibly harder and more focused in on what it takes to keep their reactors working without issue. (Even under this crap administration there haven't been any nuclear accidents in the Navy program.) So he didn't have all the Fine Arts additives, but he had ALL the theory, chemistry, application, and more hands on practical work than ANY college student in the same degree program.
She was definitely TA here.
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u/SpaceCommuter 23h ago
I'm dying to know what college she went to. For that one degree she seems to have.
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u/BooBoo_Cat 22h ago
I love To Kill a Mockingbird. People consider me well read, as I have read a lot of books, but there are a ton of the classics I haven't read. That being said, I have read TKAM several times, but we never read it in high school!
Back to this post: why would Steve assume Will only read it in HS? And, even if Will had read it in HS, why assume he hasn't read any other books? TKAM is a fantastic book regardless of when you read it!
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u/purpleplumas 20h ago
It's very standard in most US high school curriculums. Most people read it for the first time because of English class.
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u/BooBoo_Cat 20h ago
It’s standard in Canadian curriculum too. But for some reason, with the exception of 1984, my English class never read what the other classes were reading. All the standard high school curriculum books, I read out of school.
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u/purpleplumas 20h ago
To Kill a Mockingbird is a banger. I think my favorite HS read was Macbeth.
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u/BooBoo_Cat 19h ago
While everyone in HS (including other end judges classes) read Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, we had to read Hamlet.
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u/purpleplumas 19h ago
I never did read Hamlet. None of my teachers picked it.
I did read Coriolanus for AP Lit, which I feel is a lot less known than Hamlet.
I also read Midsummer's Night Dream last year of my own want and loved it
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u/BooBoo_Cat 14h ago
I had to read Hamlet in both grade 11 and 12, as well as see the movie. Ugh, I hate Hamlet! Outside of school, I have seen A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth several times, so I am most familiar with those plays. (My city, Vancouver, has an amazing Shakespear festial every summer called Bard on the Beach.)
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u/purpleplumas 11h ago
I need to go back to Canada 👀
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u/Llayanna 19h ago
Definitely not a standard in german and I've never read it yet. Nowadays, my taste has changed towards very light literature and back in the days as a teen, I read more German classics like Goethe and Schiller.
Still am not less or more educated because I read them.
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u/lyricaldorian 22h ago
I've read thousands of books. I have two degrees. If I had to name a favorite book, it works likely be the Wizard of Oz, which I first read at like, 7.
TW: child abuse A few years ago it would have been the Belgariad series by David and Leigh Eddings (first read it at 12). But it came out after he died that he started writing those novels while he and his wife were in prison for being horrifically abusive to their adopted children. Like how do you write a series about an orphaned boy with a loving adopted family while in prison for keeping a toddler in a literal cage in the basement? Like oh how nice, your made your wife coauthor because you needed a "woman's perspective", like how she would point out that there no way the boy's aunt wouldn't make him bathe more often. Meanwhile she used to regularly whip your toddler son with a leather strap
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u/Ok_Reach_6527 20h ago
Thanks for letting me know one of my all time favorite fantasy worlds has to join Harry Potter in the Fork You Author pile. Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey are still safe, right?
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u/deadthylacine 20h ago
Tamora Pierce acknowledges where her opinions and understandings of things have changed and where she can do better now. She's basically perfect.
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u/Grammatical_Aneurysm 19h ago
I've never heard a bad thing said about Mercedes Lackey and the Arrows of the Queen trilogy had side characters that were my first exposure to the concept of polyamory. I think it was my first fantasy universe where queer relationships were just totally normal. And those books came out in 1987!
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u/Dark_Moonstruck 18h ago
I mean. Wild magic had an adult in his thirties groom his teenage student and eventually marry her, which was treated as romantic, a lot of her work had undertones of racism towards black characters and she spoke out against a black Dr Who
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u/Mauvaise3 18h ago
I have a similar experience with the book Mists of Avalon. I read it in my mid-teens (not too long after it was published) and it remained a favorite of mine for years. I would recommend it, gift it, and then I found out what an abusive pedophile she was and now I don't even like to admit I read the book.
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u/Available_Horror_396 20h ago
Well shit I was a big fan of that series when I was younger and I never knew that well thats another book to add to my do not reread list with Xanth.
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u/Mitrovarr 19h ago
Piers Anthony is like, weird and creepy, but last I checked nobody had actually caught him doing anything.
I really hope J.R.R. Tolkein remains untainted. He still was, last I heard.
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u/Odd_Ingenuity2883 18h ago
He’s been dead for fifty years. Hard to imagine what could come out about him that hasn’t already.
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u/Available_Horror_396 18h ago
So what I learned recently is that while Piers Anthony has never been charged with anything he has made published articles defending pedophilia and arguing that there is nothing wrong with it. He also made an impassioned defense of a friend who was charged with pedophilia. He also wrote the book firefly which has explicit sexual scenes with children in it.
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u/Biteme75 16h ago
I LOVED the Xanth books when I was young. At some point, I realized it wasn't normal for an adult character to always be talking about how sexy preteen girls were, conclude they were deliberately being sexy for him, and talk about how great he was for not doing anything sexual with them.
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u/rhkeirjg 21h ago
I also was very sad to realise about the Belgariad, and have made sure others know about what they did (I’m in a sci-fi book club). It’s surprisingly under the radar.
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u/windexfresh 22h ago
And on the flip side, ive read plenty of fiction and Im super uneducated. Reading doesnt mean youre smart
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u/Agent_Skye_Barnes 22h ago
He works on NUCLEAR REACTORS but she says he's uneducated since he didn't go to traditional college.
Jesus Christ, lady
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u/Distinct-Ant-9161 23h ago
I always have a book on the go - it’s my favourite form of escapism. And I have a university degree. Some of my favourite books are ones I read as a child, not because they’re “literature” but because they were there for me at a time when I needed to be somewhere else. Books that save your life hit different. OOP’s contempt and condescension are enraging.
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u/hoginlly 22h ago
I have a PhD in molecular genetics and run a cancer research lab, and outside of work I haven't read anything but sappy filthy smutty romance books in years.
You could not pay me to hang out with that group of friends- self important morons, sitting around jerking each other off to feel superior. Ironically, a sign of ignorance
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u/Jiang_Rui 22h ago
I have a master’s in comp sci. My favorite novel series—Redwall by Brian Jacques; along with his other novels—I read in elementary and middle school.
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u/Solanadelfina 22h ago
Loved that series, especially 'Pearls of Lutra'. My favorite author has been Tamora Pierce since middle school and still is. I had people in high school telling me to 'read my level' and got a STEM bachelor's with honors at 20.
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u/Slow_Astronomer_3536 22h ago
She insulted her husband to her friend and has to ask if she sucks for it. Just the worst.
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u/dasunt 20h ago
I would love for someone to explain her lack of knowledge in a certain area as "she's not well educated" and see what her reaction is.
For example, asking what her favorite period of classical music is, or her favorite sonnet, or who is her favorite Roman emperor.
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u/Adventurous_Jicama_9 16h ago
Weirdly enough, I have given thought to that last question. I want to say Marcus Aurelius but his son was a bad emperor and I can't help but think that poor parenting may have contributed to that.
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u/dasunt 15h ago
I only know of Marcus Aurelius through Meditations and its role in Stoicism. Other than that, I only know he's tradionally one of the five good ones.
There are large chunks of the Roman Empire's history I know very little of. The last century of the Roman Empire is basically a black hole to me.
(Totally uneducated, I'm a lost cause...)
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u/Gerberpertern 20h ago
Is it that fucking hard to just say “Oh, he doesn’t like reading much” instead of insinuating that he’s stupid?? She suuuuuucks.
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u/ventitr3 22h ago
Some of the best books are required high school reading lol, what the fuck. I hope after 3 years that OOP’s husband has now found somebody who doesn’t belittle him. All that education and she’s too dumb to realize how much of an asshole she was.
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u/No_Intern_4328 22h ago
I have an English education degree, and still read Little House on the Prairie books. Something about them is comforting for me.
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u/ChaoticPotential 22h ago
3 degrees. Favorite Book? "The Giver" read it in fourth grade, loved it ever since.
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u/makeitcool 22h ago
lol I majored in English literature, and that woman can fuck right off with that condescending attitude. If it weren't for my degree I doubt I would've read all those books myself. Syllabuses have classics for a reason. To Kill a Mockingbird is a solid choice.
I can't even imagine making fun of my husband like that in front of another person. I bet she has looked down on her husband in her head for quite some time, maybe even said something insensitive in the past, and this is the first real pushback she received. She really comes across as the one in dire need of education here.
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u/iopele 21h ago
I've been a nurse for 26 years, perhaps not as impressive as some, but enough education to be trusted with life and death decisions in high stress, high emotion situations, in a field where there is often zero room for error.
I read a lot of fanfiction, honestly. I like Transformers comic books, especially MTMTE. Dungeon Crawler Carl is an excellent series. The Martian and Project Hall Mary are also fantastic, and I can't count the number of times I've reread the Discworld books (GNU Sir Terry). Reading to de-stress and rest my brain doesn't make me stupid.
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u/Purlz1st 17h ago
DiscWorld is full of literary references; if you track down even half of them you’re getting quite an education. GNU Sir Terry.
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u/iopele 17h ago
They truly are such smart, deep books, disguised as ridiculousness. Small Gods is my favorite book of all time. I have nights where I can't sleep (thanks, covid PTSD) and I got Small Gods on audiobook, and I'll play it softly and it helps me relax and rest. I guess I'm still just a kid, I sometimes need a bedtime story!
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u/Conscious-Card5611 20h ago
Ok, so Steve is a dick, to begin with. If someone made fun of my spouse like that I'd be wanting to defend him, not lean into making fun of him. Your spouse is your team, you don't team up with the other people against him!
And "Oh yeah, he's not well educated" is NOT the same as "My smart and accomplished husband didnt go to university, his higher education was through the military, so it didn't involve literature."
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u/Needmoresnakes 18h ago
Yeah what is Steve's issue? What a rude arse response to someone sharing their favourite book.
Wife could easily have said "husbands more of a nonfiction guy" or something. This party sounds awful OP and her friends are gronks.
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u/Bustysaintclair_13 21h ago
I have an English degree from an Ivy League university and my favorite books are still the ones I read in high school.
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u/Live-Tomorrow-4865 20h ago
"Works on nuclear reactors."
Yeah, I'd put some mad respect on this man's name, I don't care how many of Oprah's Books Of The Month he's read. 😁
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u/papamajada 20h ago
Did she ever say what her and Steves favorite books were? Since they apparently hold a PhD in world literature or something
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u/purpleplumas 20h ago
Dude, nukes make a FUCK TON of money after 1 contract because of how stressful their job is.
If he gets out, I guarantee he'll make more money than any of her college buddies.
And fuck her friends, too. There's nothing wrong with liking a book that you had to read for English.
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u/Responsible_Cry_427 22h ago
Beyond everything else that’s just depressing about this post, it’s weird and objectively wrong to argue that a) someone who works on nuclear reactions that on offensive and defensive military vehicles isn’t “well-educated” and that b) people who don’t have advanced degrees wouldn’t have any reason to read extensively.
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u/mama-nikki 21h ago
In high school, we had monthly reading days. Like 20 minutes once a month where all we did was read whatever we wanted. My English lit teacher was walking around, asking what everyone was reading. There were a lot of magazines and a few books. She asks me. I'm reading a fun book called "Virgins". She just said "okkkaayy" and moved on.
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u/Jackfruityloops 13h ago
Not every smart person reads books. But not every smart person can maintain submarine nuclear reactors, either. What an AH.
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u/Gachaman785 21h ago
Thats definitely......she feels some type of way about that moment. I have that exact same dynamic, myself going the navy route and my wife being the college educated (by that I mean she complete her degrees).
Not sure where they are located but I remember the sentiment "if you dont go to college, you failed" rhetoric being pushed heavily in the 2010s in California. I even felt that way about myself that I had to pivot during my time in the navy (versus doing it because I want to, which I am and I am enjoying college much more than I did prior to the navy), to make sure I am properly educated.
I learned that the only difference between military learning and academic learning is that you don't get the same structure as academic learning. It's just "digest all this information in two days and then be tested on it, also if you fail then your career is on hold at best or going into a different direction". At least that is what I experienced doing both submarine school as an ETV 7 years ago, and barely graduating CTT A-school as of last week 🤣
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u/frustratedDIL 19h ago
Holy fuck. She called her husband who works on NUCLEAR REACTORS uneducated?!?! Well I bet we can all guess who the actual brains of the relationship is.
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u/Pricklypearl 17h ago
One of my favorite books is a classic I read in high school. It's a classic for a reason. Many people enjoy it.
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u/BloodRush12345 18h ago
My favorite books are Drums, girls and dangerous pie, and the phantom toll booth. Not because they are exceptionally written but because they spoke to me deeply at the time. Based on her and her friends attitudes they may literally consume literature but have no deeper thoughts other than they got through it.
Sub nuke guys are the special forces of science and engineering. They have to know all the theory, engineering, physical aspects of their reactors, damage control, and troubleshooting of not just a reactor but the rest of the sub. And oh yeah they are doing it hundreds of feet underwater with minimal/no contact to the outside world. They live a balancing act between being a Chernobyl and ocean gate for months on end (yes I'm being a bit hyperbolic).
At least according to the nuke plant operator I watch sometimes on YouTube getting fully qualified for nuke sub operations is like getting bachelors in both nuclear physics and engineering at minimum.
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u/Radmode7 17h ago
…….i read all the time. I would never say a sailor or soldier’s education is less than my college degrees.
ESPECIALLY if they work on a nuclear goddamn submarine.
What a pretentious and insufferable person OOP must be.
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u/Impossible-Bison8055 17h ago
My favorite book series is something I read in high school. Sometimes an interesting book is just something you find and enjoy younger.
Also, feels like she’s projecting Homer Simpson onto the guy, since not sure why else she thinks nuclear engineer is ‘uneducated.’
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u/SarkastiCat 17h ago
Joining the club of STEM people that got their degree and wrote qPCR way too many times.
I was swallowing books before high school, munching on them during it and then rarely touching them.
My reading taste is all over the place with the last book that I finished being volume 2 of Mo Dao Zu Shi and I am currently trying to finish Metro 2033.
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u/totallycalledla-a 17h ago
Tell tale of the snobbish but actually deeply stupid is when they turn their nose up at incredible pieces of work like To kill a mockingbird just because they did it in high school. These are certificate collectors who think their pieces of paper make them better than everyone else and lean on them for their identity. Yuck. Hope this guy got away from her.
1
u/Fraerie 16h ago
Honestly the icing on the poo-cake is that her username was NavyWife.
It very much sounds like she’s happy to reap the benefits of being the wife of a navy nuclear engineer, but doesn’t respect him as a person. I wonder if she was filling the void in her life while her husband was away at see for months at a time with her ‘friendship’ with Steve.
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u/StrangerCharacter53 16h ago
Oh boy, I hate this OP, holy shit. Her and her friends are horrible. Hope he divorced her stupid ass.
1
u/Biteme75 16h ago
I too really like To Kill A Mockingbird, even though I read it in high school and have read hundreds of books since. You know what I can't do? Work on a nuclear reactor.
Not only did OP call her husband poorly educated, but then she and her friends laughed about it.
1
u/tits-mchenry 16h ago
Why would the friend even ask that question about reading outside of high school? That feels just as douchey as she was with her comment.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic book for a reason. It's very good. And having that he someone's favorite isn't crazy at all.
1
u/MintyCoolness 13h ago
So, husband is serving in the army, and works with nuclear equipment?
So what if he doesn't read enough books? Sounds like he's pretty smart.
2
u/Purrminator1974 12h ago
Divorce lawyer here. The one consistent factor in divorce is when one or both of the parties have contempt for the other. This incident is likely to be one of many instances where the OP has expressed contempt for her husband. I don’t see this marriage lasting.
I really hope that OP’s (ex) husband can find someone who actually respects him.
2
u/sheerpoetry 9h ago
"He works on nuclear reactors," but he's not "well-educated"? That's basically like literally saying "it's not rocket science" to an actual rocket scientist.
Then she explained to him how "military education and college education are simply not the same"? I mean, they're obviously not, but not in the way she's implying. As a librarian, I am the first to admit that reading for pleasure isn't for everyone and that's okay. If they have other hobbies and/or are otherwise well-rounded and fulfilled? Excellent. I wonder how many of OP's and her snotty friends' favorite authors are "college-educated"--and specifically in writing. (Not to mention that I'm sure OP has ~opinions on what books would have been acceptable. If he'd said the new John Grisham or something, she'd probably also have made a rude comment.) OP does realize there are "college education" programs in engineering, etc., right?
I'd love for her to be handed a manual and be asked to complete one task from his workday and see what she thinks then. She clearly thinks she's so much better than him and can do anything he does and more because she went to college, so she should definitely be able to handle anything that comes up. (I am also personally college-educated. I personally believe education is important. But I acknowledge that it doesn't look the same for everyone--and it shouldn't!)
1
u/phenixfleur 7h ago
Aw, she's one of those people that make having gone to college their entire personality.
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u/mronion82 22h ago
I think you can mean 'uneducated' two ways- either that the person didn't pursue education- which makes no comment on intelligence- or that they're thick as mince.
OP might have meant one or the other, but I can't blame her husband for assuming the latter in a crowd of her laughing friends.
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u/Sad-Bug6525 22h ago
It doesn't even matter which she meant, no one has this job: " he works on nuclear reactors on submarines" and doesn't have an extensive education that far outweighs just going to college. He likely has a much highere level of education both in traditional schooling and experience than anyone who was at that party.
Either she thinks he's not intlligent (which I agree it sounds like she meant) or she thinks he just magically knows how to keep a nuclear reactor safe, which allows people to continue living.
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u/mronion82 22h ago
There's a possibility she was trying to be funny. Massive fumble either way.
Or he's tried to explain the basics of how nuclear subs work to her but she's a bit dense herself and it may as well be magic to her. My husband's really into space and whatnot and past a certain point I just write it off as 'will never understand'.
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u/Sad-Bug6525 21h ago
If she thinks that insulting her husband is funny, then she's just as big an AH as any of the other scenerios.
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u/mronion82 21h ago
No he isn't. A dick maybe, but have you seen some of the other posts?
1
u/judgy_mcjudgypants 20h ago
... u/Sad-Bug6525 said "other scenarios" -- explanations of her motivations -- not other AITD posts.
Unless you mean OOP's other posts?
1
u/Sad-Bug6525 20h ago
that's exactly what I meant, this post, all the options included make OOP the AH
Thanks!
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u/AutoModerator 23h ago
In case this story gets deleted/removed:
AITA for telling my friends that my husband isn’t well read?
Background: My husband (let’s call him Will) is in the Navy, and he works on nuclear reactors on submarines. We’ve been together for 4 years, married for 2.
We were at a small house party with a few friends of mine from college and we were discussing books we’ve all read, when at one point one of my friends (let’s call him Steve) asks Will, “So Will, what’s your favorite book?” and my husband responds, “Oh, I really like To Kill A Mockingbird.” Then Steve gives him a quizzical look and asks him, “Have you read any books outside of high school?” and Will hesitates a bit and says, “Outside of manuals at work, I guess I haven’t.” So then I try to explain to Steve, “Oh yeah, he’s not well educated, so he’s never had a reason to be well read.” We all had a good laugh, but then Will didn’t really contribute a whole lot to the conversation the rest of the night.
On the car ride back, Will was pretty quiet. I ask if he’s fine and all he says in a sarcastic tone is, “Peachy.” I ask him if I did anything to upset him and he responds back with, “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m educated enough to properly explain myself.” I tell him I didn’t tell my friends that he was unintelligent, just that he wasn’t college educated. He accused me of minimizing how hard his Navy schooling was, but I explained that military education and college education are simply not the same. We continued to fight until we got home. I texted my sister about what happened and she called me a huge asshole and that I need to apologize and now I’m having second thoughts about how I handled this. AITA Reddit?
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