PaulEberhardt at 9:52AM, June 17, 2025

That's just the thing, isn't it? It's something you never fully realise until you get a job at another place where most of everything works as it should. It's something I learned the hard way, too, during the early days of my teaching career. Found it stupidly hard to get the habit of constant wariness out of my system later. And just like you I could never bring myself to launch a counterattack when I should have, in part probably also because I was too inexperienced to know how to.