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construction-material-info · 2 years ago

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Best 10 Best Door Manufacturing Companies in India

A door is a hinged or otherwise moveable barrier that permits people to go into and depart a room. The hollow made in the wall is a door or a portal. The primary and most critical purpose of a front is to hold people secure by controlling the right of entry to the doorway (exit). Usually, a panel suits into a building room. Most entrances are made of a fabric that provides the doorway job. Most entrances are held collectively by hinges, but they also can move in different methods, such as by slides or being pushed or pulled.

Many entrances have ways to lock them in order that only positive people can open them (such as with a key). People can let you know they are knocking at the door or ringing the doorbell. In a few places, like Brazil, it's common to clap from the sidewalk to let people know you're there.

Aside from letting people get in and out of a room, front also can do things like keep people from prying eyes, separate rooms with specific purposes, permit mild in and out, control air flow or air drafts so that rooms may be heated or cooled extra efficiently, lessen noise, and stop fires from spreading.

The entrance may be used for looks, symbols, and rituals. For example, getting the important thing to a wooden door can mean going from being on the outside to being internal. In addition, entrances and doorways are often used as symbols or allegories in literature and the arts to show that something is set to change.

Different kinds of entrances are used for different types. The maximum common kind is the single-leaf front, which has a single rigid panel that fills the entrances. However, this basic layout has many variations, like the double-leaf front or double front and French windows, with adjacent independent panels hinged on every aspect of the entrance.

Saloon entrances are a couple of mild, swinging doorways not unusual in bars, mainly withinside the American West. Saloon entrances, additionally known as cafe entrances, regularly have hinges that paintings in each directions. These hinges use springs to shut the doorway irrespective of the way it opens. Batwing entrances are saloon entrances that handiest move from knee stage to chest stage.

Let’s talk about the Top 10 Door Manufacturing Companies in India

NCL Door

NCL Door. Located at Malkapur, Telangana. NCL Door is one of the Best wooden door company in India. NCL Door offers a vast range of quality products such as Doors, Windows, Glazings and much more to our clients’ at most economical prices. Our entire product range is developed in compliance with predefined industrial standards and conform to international quality standards.

These products are developed at our manufacturing unit under the supervision of our experts, who possess years of experience in their respective fields.

NCL Doors are fireproof, waterproof, scratch resistant, chemical resistant and termite free.

Door Types:

Natura series

Signature series

Soft touch series

Fire rated door series

2. Greenply Wooden Doors

Greenply Wooden Doors is thought to be one of the best places in India to make wooden doors. Greenply started in 1990 and made front orders for every customer. The major things they sell are:

Green Gold entrance

The Ecotec entrance

Green entrance

Green Club entrance

Optima G SWF entrance

Greenply’s flush entrance is ideal to be a number of the best on the market. They are strong, have an excessive stage of protection, and might stand up to different climate conditions. In addition, Greenply’s approach of ensuring enough products on the market makes them stand out in the front industry. Even though it's one of India’s most famous and low cost door manufacturers, the employer is also using a sustainable farm control strategy to expand farm forestry that can meet their cloth needs.

centuryply affords firewall technology - youtube

3. CenturyPly Plywood

When looking for the best door company in India, CenturyPly Plywood comes to mind. Since its inception in 1982 in Kolkata, CenturyPly has built an amazing reputation for itself and is now called one of the most popular and best plywood door manufacturers. The major matters they sell are:

Straight entrance

Veneer entrance

Bond Doors Club Prime entrance

Melamine Door Skin

The entrance is made to match the beauty of the inside and the outside of the house. One of the main motives to apply CenturyPly Plywood is that it makes an great cloth for creating a specific entrance, each for homes and businesses.

Maxon doors | doors producer in pune, india | bangalore

4. Maxon Doors

In 2007, Maxon Doors was founded. The company makes engineered entrances that combine “beauty with strength” to fulfill the desires of today. Maxon Doors is one of the exceptional door manufacturers in India. They do this by the usage of a variety of superb machinery and tools to make the system of making entrances extra efficient.

Maxon Doors receives its raw materials from companies that care about the environment. There are videos at the company’s website that show how the different layers of timber make the entrance stronger. This is why the employer says it's going to make a long-lasting and good front for the environment. The major things Maxon Doors makes are:

Teak Wood entrance

Natural Veneer entrance

Recon Veneer Laminate Line entrance

Laminate Royal Art entrance.

5. Shree Balaji Wood Impex

Shree Balaji Wood Impex works in specific parts of the country to make decorative doors. Shree Balaji Wood Impex has been round considering the fact that 2011. It is famous for its huge variety of timber doors and window frames. Shree Balaji Wood Impex sells doorways under “GSM Doors.” They are idea to be one of the exceptional front companies in India. The employer has made changes to its plant which are good for the environment. This is a common exercise in the door industry. The employer promises to give you style and safety. The major things that Balaji Wood Impex sells are:

6. Pure Wood Doors

Pure Wood Doors is known for its custom wooden front. They have a lot of enjoy making doors for houses and resorts. Since it commenced making timber doorways in 1997, the company has grown to become one of the best in India. Pure Wood Doors makes excessive-give up doorways which are a good fee for homeowners. Customers always choose Pure Wood front when they need a strong and durable timber entrance. The major products of the company are

Contemporary Wood entrances

Solid Wood entrances

Oakwood entrances

Teak Wood

Door Beechwood

7. Mikasa Doors

Mikasa Doors is known as one of the biggest door makers in India. The company is likewise recognized for having a large selection of door accessories. Mikasa has a number of front frames to fulfill the needs of every customer. In addition, the employer makes entrances prepared to be installed, which allows save you damage while the doorways are being made and put in. Mikasa also has many laminates, paints, and veneers to pick out from, depending on how the door will be used and where it is going to be within the building.

Mikasa additionally makes many add-ons that may be used to beautify the internal of a domestic. Also, they could occasionally give you new designs that have given them a part over their competitors. These are what they promote:

Fire-resistant entrances

Doors that aren’t fireproof

Single wood entrances

Double wood entrances

Sets for special entrances

8. Mini Max plywood

Mini Max plywood is famous as one of the exceptional door companies in India. With customer pride at the heart of the business, the company is always prepared to make doorways that shape the needs of every customer. In 2003, Mini Max Plywood opened for business. They understand loads about timber due to their few years of enjoyment. This lets them provide custom designs that assist clients get the maximum for his or her money. So if a homeowner needs a sturdy, long-lasting front, they could continually anticipate this logo, whose main merchandise are:

Flush front

Moulded fashion dressmaker front

9. Supreme Industries

Supreme Industries has been located in Telangana. Supreme Industries has been around since 1942. It is called one of India’s best front manufacturers, and its superb wooden doorways are trendy. They have made plywood, timber front, and veneers, all of which are kinds of wood front merchandise. How nicely a timber product does on the market relies upon the way it’s made at the internal.

So, Supreme Industries specializes in growing superb front at each low and aggressive prices. Also, the company has an great reputation for delivering on time and being aware of customer service needs. The Supreme Effects aid team is continually ready to reply questions from customers. The major things they sell are:

Steel entrance

Cold room entrance.

10. Doormark

The principal office of Doormark is in Jaipur, Rajasthan. The company’s ability to fulfill the needs of young people has made it very famous in its field. As a brand aimed at younger human beings, the company does studies on how young people’s tastes and trends change so it could meet their desires. Doormark makes superb doorways with designs that appeal to younger people and guard the environment. Since it commenced, the employer has teamed up with numerous worldwide manufacturers to convey contemporary and modern merchandise to the marketplace. The major things they promote are:

Modern slab entrance

Traditional square front

Standard doors with a round corner

Applying Molds

#door #manuracturing #companies #india #ncldoor #ncl door #indian door #door manufacturers #door suppliers

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spacedikut · 4 years ago

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exam help ; spencer reid

pairing: spencer reid x gn!reader

summary: a self-indulgent blurb about spencer helping with exams :) 1.7k

a/n: first fic of the year :D happy 2021!

masterlist

Another anguish-filled screech reverberates from your and Spencer’s shared office, bringing even your pet fish in the tank to attention.

It’s the third one this hour. Spencer tries to ignore it, just like you told him to, but God you sound like you’re in pain and Spencer can’t exactly ignore that, can he? He loves you and cares for you and- oh. A thump reaches his ears. A textbook, maybe? Did you punch your textbook?

He considers for a moment that the neighbours will be alarmed, perhaps call the police or tentatively knock with a, “Is everything okay in there?”

It wouldn’t be the first time.

What would he tell them? Oh, my apologies, my partner has exams coming up and just told me they get why unsubs do that now. I am also terrified.

There are many instances where Spencer feels useless. During his job, when his mother would have an episode, when his friends have problems he just wouldn’t understand. But, somehow, and maybe controversially, this is the worst type of uselessness. The type that leaves him staring at the wall, questioning everything, the type that makes his stomach drop because all he can do is watch.

He’s been watching you for the last two weeks. He’s sick of watching, of being no help, and he needs to do something before he breaks and does something illegal.

(The illegal thing is doing your exams for you - not illegal as in, perhaps, murder)

Your frazzled head pops out from the office, one hand rubbing your eyes and a permanent frown etched on your face, and with a fragile voice you ask, “Can you make me a coffee, please?”

Now, Spencer feels hypocritical, but he has to say it. “Another? Are you sure?”

He sees the internal battle within you, how you try your hardest not to snap. It’s not his fault you’re stressed. He’s just trying to help. “Yes, I’m sure. Please, Spence,”

“Of course. I’ll bring it in.”

“Thank you.” With a pained smile, you’re gone again into the dark abyss of where you’re studying.

With quick, ingrained movements, Spencer makes your coffee with too much creamer and marshmallows. Unusual, yes, but your current diet consists of coffee and whatever he can force you to consume – like marshmallows.

But then, hello, he spots a chocolate bar haphazardly close to the bin, grabs it, and hopes you let him watch you eat it.

Stepping into the room as quietly as possible, he’s smacked in the face by the smell of lavender. It makes him nauseous, the intensity of it, quickly followed by a lurch of his heart because you poor thing, you’re being crushed by the weight of your degree – literally. The other day you purchased an insanely heavy weighted blanket and you’re drowning in it.

Now, if you were to ask Spencer who the most beautiful person on the planet is, he’d say you in a heartbeat. He’s thought that since you first met and, years later, still stands by that. But now, right now, glowering at him in the dimly lit, lavender drenched study that you used to love oh-so-much? You have the face of a French bulldog, all grumpy and furrowed and too many creases on your face to make Spencer feel like he’s actually helping when he places the coffee and snack on your desk.

Despite the crabby expression, your words are filled with love and appreciation – which happens to be Spencer’s favourite mix. “Thank you, my love.” You take a sip of the coffee, hum in delight, and for the first time in days there’s a spark of something other than torment. “You’re the best.”

Spencer’s hand holds the back of your neck and he places a series of soft kisses to your temple, mumbling, “I love you. Very much. Is there anything else you need?”

“Death.”

“Okay. I’ll work on it.”

At that, you grace Spencer with a weak half-smile. It’s enough to overwhelm Spencer, overflowing and only able to be shown through a chaste, encouraging peck on your lips and a half-hug, Spencer bent at the waist to hold you in your desk chair. He noses your hair, hoping his closeness will alleviate some stress, before stepping back and praying his eyes tell you everything he wants to say but know will elicit annoyance from you.

I love you. Take care of yourself. Rest, please. You can do this, but not if you over exert yourself. I love you.

Your eyes tell him, I’ll try. I love you. And that’s all he can ask for.

But when he leaves, shuffles past his bookshelf, his eyes catch sight of an old file that reminds him of when he was preparing for his own exams.

He gets an idea.

+++

It takes another two days, full of late nights involving work that isn’t staying up and distracting himself with books to avoid worrying over you and how late you go to sleep, and reading that leaves Spencer in awe of you and everyone in your field.

A part of him is amazed by how he wheelbarrowed the resources behind you without you noticing, another is worried about that fact, and the rest of him is excited that he can finally do something that will actually help. At least, he hopes.

(When everything is said and done, despite being endlessly grateful, you also inform Spencer that simply being there and being him and getting you coffee every time you ask is more than enough, really)

With pride, he leans back on the couch, observing his creations on the coffee table. There’s plenty of different colours, all representing a different topic, and he presses the thumbs up to like the Youtube video he was using to ensure his handwriting is easy to read.

Flashcards. Hundreds, if Spencer counted correctly. The textbooks he stole – borrowed – from under your nose lie next to his feet, the weight of them combined more of a workout than he’s (voluntarily) done in eons.

He only hopes you don’t think it’s too late, think he’s overstepping or-or that he’s doing those things that he’s been accused of before – thinking he knows best (he does, but whatever), overbearing arrogance, an unwillingness to hear and accept other people’s way of doing things.

He just wants to help. He wants you to know he’s here for you, no matter what you need. This is the thing that lets him believe he’s doing something, something good and useful. Spencer just wants to be useful.

He’s convinced you to eat a proper breakfast – fruit, oats, bread, meat, a whole buffet – and you sense something is amiss when you hear slow, tentative footsteps creeping from your bedroom.

Spencer, still in his pyjamas, glasses perched on his nose, approaches with a shallow box in his grasp. You swallow your bite, turn to face him. “What’ve you got there?”

The box is slid onto the counter next to your plate hesitantly, as if he regrets his actions as he’s doing them. Peering in, you see a blur of colour, stacks on stacks of rectangular paper filled with writing and questions and even a tips! section.

You pick up the first batch, all light blue, and flick through them, heart getting bigger and bigger with every word you read. And when you realise what they are, what Spencer’s done – for you – your heartrate has skyrocketed and the watch on your wrist is asking you if you’re okay.

“You made me flashcards?” You ask, in awe, again looking at the love of your life to find he’s already staring at you.

“I did,” He tells you, apprehensive and scared, already backtracking, “But, if you don’t think they’re useful, or-or you think I’m overstepping – I’m not trying to, I promise, I just thought…” He starts nervously shuffling and reshuffling some of his creation. “Flashcards are known to engage active recall and metacognition. Research consistently finds that applying metacognitive strategies tends to ingrain memories deeper into your knowledge, and that this kind of active recall retrieval practice leads to one-hundred and fifty percent better retention than passive studying, so…”

Your hands have a mind of their own, pulling what feels like an endless amount of cards out and turning them in your hands, from the questions on the front to the answers on the back, the ones with hints and advice and there’s several with doodles that are so Spencer you hold them to your chest. You’re so enamoured by this man that is still rambling and bumbling because he takes your silence as distaste.

“I just- I hate seeing you so stressed, so I made these. You don’t have to use them, of course. They’re not even that great. It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable, you’re beyond capable, or that your methods don’t work- Just, personally, I love flashcards. I used them all the time when studying, even though I didn’t really need them, so perhaps a change of medium would do you good-“

A warm hand on his own that keep fidgeting stops him mid-stream of consciousness.

“Thank you,” You say, earnestly, “Really. These are lovely.” You leap from your seat, wrapping Spencer in warmth and love and care, and he shivers when he feels your hot breath on his ear when you repeat your thanks again and again.

When he pulls you even closer, so your torso curves into his own, you feel the lightest you have in weeks. You’re in the arms of the man you love, who knows you love him too and you know loves you so much – enough to spend several nights reading your cursed textbooks so he could create something that might help – and now you’re confident that you can do it. With the help of Spencer and his lovingly hand-made flashcards, you can do it.

And if, somehow, it goes awry, that’s okay too. Because you’ll still have Spencer, your number one fan, who will be there to comfort you and advise you in any way he can. He’ll never let you doubt yourself, never allow a self-deprecating joke if he can help it, because if he has to, he’ll love and support you enough for the both of you until you can do it yourself.

The world feels a little brighter, your breaths feel a little lighter, all because of Spencer. So you kiss him, murmur love against his lips, and get ready to take on whatever dares to come your way.

+++

tags: @pinkdiamond1016 @bluerose512 @andreasworlsboring101 @roses-and-grasses @ta-ka-shi-ma @ogmilkis @chiffonchronicles @rexorangecouny @unmistakablyunknown @goofygubler14 @gublertoon @averyhotchner @wheeledup @shadyladyperfection @joodeduarte @calm-and-doctor @

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds x y/n #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #mine #the end is super cheesy but #eeeeeeeeeeeeee

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demi-shoggoth · 4 years ago

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COVID-19 Reading Log, pt 22

As my state goes back into lockdown, and the numbers of COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing, I am happy to stay inside and keep reading. My behavior hasn’t changed all that much through the various “waves” (because I’ve studied disease ecology and I know how this works. Also, I’m lucky enough to be able to work from home). The opening of my local library for curbside pickup has increased the variety, and decreased the cost, of the influx of books.

116. Sloths: A Celebration of the World’s Most Misunderstood Mammal by William Harston. This is a breezy book, a combined natural and social history of the type that British authors seem to specialize in. The book talks about sloth anatomy, behavior and conservation, as well as how they were maligned by early natural historians and given the name “sloth”. This comes down to, in this account, a lot of French bashing and claims that the English redeemed the sloth’s reputation, which I found charmingly parochial. The book also discusses the modern phenomenon of sloth popularity through YouTube, and the possible hazards that their new stardom puts them in through profit, but this is more a passing mention than a focus. Ample color photographs in multiple sections help remind the reader that yes, sloths are fricking adorable, and serve as a contrast to the inaccurate engravings and other Early Modern renditions.

117. Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells by Harold McGee. McGee is a food author, which makes sense. This book profiles the organic chemistry of volatile compounds in their guise as scents, grouped into broad categories and following the journeys of “Hero Carbon” through the land, sea, sky and living things. The book is filled to the brim with interesting connections between the molecules produced by different things, and is a surprisingly deep dive into the world of the microbiome (as many volatiles are made through bacterial and fungal digestion, not by animals themselves). Each of the things it talks about has “tasting notes” of different scent molecules and their aspects. This might be a fun book to have on hand while engaging in a wine tasting or dinner party (remember those?)

118. Luke Skywalker Can’t Read and Other Geeky Truths by Ryan Britt. Another book recommended to me by library algorithms, this is a collection of essays about pop culture nerd topics. Most of them don’t really have a thesis, just sort of a general “let me tell you about a thing I like” vibe. The title essay, about why the Star Wars universe sucks because of pervasive illiteracy, is one of the better ones, as is the mirror image later in the book about how Star Trek, even most bad Star Trek, incorporates literary themes. The author has a few good zingers sprinkled throughout that I enjoyed, but also makes enough glaringly obvious factual errors (in a nerd book! gasp!) that I suspect that he’s trolling the reader. Also, it’s a glaring act of hubris to include the word “truths” in the title of your book of opinions. Overall, it was fine, but I’m probably never going to think about it again.

119. Life Changing by Helen Pilcher. After being pleased with Death by Shakespeare, I went on a binge of the Bloomsbury Sigma catalog, which my local library has seemingly all of. This is one of their books from this year, about human directed evolution, both intentional (domestication and genetic engineering) and unintentional (humans as a selective pressure on environments). The writing style is pleasant, and the book wanders down quite a few garden paths, making it a highly enjoyable read and purveyor of trivia. Did you know that Argentina’s premier polo player keeps a stable of cloned ponies, and has been known to switch between clones during matches? Did you know that the inventor of Sea Monkeys was a violent white supremacist? Did you know that about 65 billion chickens are killed for food every year? The whole book is filled with tidbits like this, and ends with a discussion of conservation and a plea for rewilding—not necessarily the dramatic examples like introducing elephants to Europe, but just letting large animals like cows and pigs behave like animals instead of commodities, and the positive impact that can have on biodiversity.

120. Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World by Philip Matyszak. I always forget how much I enjoy archaeology and anthropology until I read some. This book is filled with brief articles about cultures in the history of the Levant and Mediterranean that have less name recognition than your Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks or Romans. Some of these are peoples mentioned in the Bible but forgotten outside of their influence on histories or parables, like the Chaldeans, Philistines and Samaritans. Others are those that are more famous for their namesakes than their actual cultures, like the Vandals or Phrygians. Some are people I’d never heard of before. The book has a subtle, wry humor to it, and begins and ends with a reminder that all civilizations are temporary and our perspective is inherently a biased one. After all, Sargon of Akkadia thought his empire spanned the four corners of the world, and he would be remembered forever.

#reading log #archaeology #smell #artificial selection #sloth

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eduminatti · 3 years ago

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MOST USEFUL APPS OR WEBSITES FOR STUDENTS

In this era of online schooling, educational apps have become new teachers for students. These apps are interactive, and many have features like animated videos to make the subject interesting. Any app store on this day has thousands of apps that help students with their studies. It is tough to choose which one to use. For every field, you'll find apps like languages, competitive exams, literature, professional skills, history, etc.

nowadays schooling and studying on blackboard or white board is like an outdated idea to students. We are surrounded by applications and technology nowadays. If you want help in your studies or want to learn new things, there are many options in the Google Play Store. Today we have compiled a list of the most useful apps for students. Even top schools in India are recommending online classes and 3d app learning rather than a 2d board. which makes it difficult for students to understand a figure or an image.

ADDA 247

Anil Nagar started it in 2016. Adda247 has been ranked the number one Android App in the educational apps category in India. The organization has an app, but they have a YouTube channel and several websites like bankersadda.com, teachersadda.com, etc. Adda247 has resources for exams of SBI, RBI, IBPS, Railways, Staff Selection Commission, etc. They also offer Ebooks, books, mock tests, video courses, and live classes.

BYJU'S

It is the world's most valued ed-tech company which was launched in 2015. Its headquarter is in Bangalore. The platform provides customized programs for standards first to twelfth. The app has also been used for JEE, NEET, IAS, and many other competitive exams.

COURSERA

Coursera is a globally renowned platform where anyone can access thousands of courses from anywhere. Many prestigious universities like Stanford University offer these courses. Coursera has more than 100 on-demand courses and various master's degree programs. The platform is suitable for any student looking to have a dual degree or getting a certificate for a subject they love by paying a small amount. If they want to learn, they can access the modules and videos too without paying anything.

DUOLINGO

Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker founded Duolingo. It has a website and app. Both can be accessed freely, but people can opt for the premium version too. The app teaches over 40 languages which are taught in more than 100 different courses. You can read, listen, write and speak on your phone to learn any language of your choice.

EVERNOTE

Developed by the Evernote Corporation, this app is used for taking notes and managing tasks to stay organized. There is a free version that offers many perks like creating unlimited messages, syncing up to 2 devices, clipping web pages, attaching files, images, documents, etc. Still, they also give you the Personal and Professional categories paid and give your extra features. These include creating custom templates, connecting to Google Calendar, extra space, etc.

FOREST: STAY FOCUSED

Forest is an app made specifically for you to be focused and productive. You get to plant a seed, and by being productive, you let it grow, but if you leave to check your phone's notification or Insta Live, your plant dies. The app has a very minimal aesthetic which makes it really pretty and easy to use. Also, the organization works with a real tree-planting organization that plants trees when users use their virtual coins or donate.

GRADEUP

Grade was founded in 2015 and is loved by millions of students for providing courses for competitive exams. There are thousands of mentors working on the platform answering questions of students regarding SSC, Banking, JEE, NEET, UPSC, Defense, State level exams, etc. The platform has various quizzes and mock tests for students to learn from.

JIGSAW ACADEMY

Jigsaw Academy has personalized learning programs for Data Science, Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, Product Management, and many more. Whether you're a freshman in college or a graduate or a retired person, you can get trained here. The organization was awarded the "Partner of Excellence Award 2019" by NASSCOM and it is recognized by the Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE).

KHAN ACADEMY

Khan Academy is a non-profit organization that provides education to everyone for free. They have practice exercises, videos, and customized dashboards. Their courses range from science, maths, computer, history, economics to prepare for SATs, LSATs, etc. There are millions of students learning more than thirty-six languages from Khan Academy like Spanish, French, etc.

MERITNATION

It is an online platform that has study materials for students of 1st to 12th standards of CBSE, ICSE, Maharashtra Board(MSBSHSE), Kerala Board(SCERT), Karnataka Board (KSEEB), and Tamil Nadu Boards. They provide live classes, tutorial videos, interactive exercises, expert help, practice tests, etc. You can also find chapter-wise NCERT solutions for each class. Moreover, the portal provides courses for JEE, NEET, BBA, NDA, CPT, and Hotel Management.

SKILLSHARE

It is an online portal where you can find thousands of classes for various subjects like design, photography, videography, creative writing, cooking, etc. There are millions of users who come online every day to learn and teach. The platform was founded in 2010, and in a decade, it has become one of the best educational platforms all over the world.

#best apps for students 2021 #useful websites for students #best learning apps for students #apps for students

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 5 years ago

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Eccentricity [Chapter 2: You Can Run Around Infinite In My Head]

Series Summary: Joe Mazzello is a nice guy with a weird family. A VERY weird family. They have a secret, and you have a choice to make.

Potentially a better love story than Twilight (we’ll let @killer-queen-xo decide when it’s all said and done 😉).

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: Rome by Dermot Kennedy.

Chapter Warnings: Language, mentions of violence.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Tagging: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @killer-queen-xo @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! 💜

Missing In Action

I wish she would stop staring at me.

Lucille sat at the Lees’ usual table and apathetically picked through a heaping salad. (Friday was salad bar day, which I appreciated considerably more than the chicken finger obsession that marred Mondays at Calawah University.) Every once in a while, Rami nudged her and Lucille would spear a cherry tomato with her fork and bite it in half with perfectly even, white teeth. But her large blue-green eyes—they reminded me of webs of seaweed tumbling in the cold, frothing La Push waves—always found their way back to me, strangely focused, inquisitive, perhaps accusatory.

Ben probably told them how much he hates me for whatever nebulous reason and now they all hate me too and I’m going to spend the next two years being death-glared by five ridiculously attractive and somewhat incestuous foster kids.

Chemistry was a three times a week class. Ben hadn’t shown on Wednesday, and I was 99% sure he would skip again today. I spotted him around campus periodically, always from a distance: dropping quarters into a vending machine, clandestinely vaping behind dorm buildings (what self-respecting pre-med student VAPES?!!), browsing YouTube videos in the library next to a tower of unopened textbooks, biology and chem and physics and calculus. He wasn’t home, he wasn’t sick; there was no attempt made to construct any sort of pretext. He was patently avoiding me.

I stabbed moodily at the serrated disks of cucumber in my salad. Jessica was blathering away about the latest season of The Bachelor and ranking the contestants’ eyebrows from best to worst. “...Like seriously, has she never heard of microblading?!”

“For real,” Angela offered, not especially invested but forever a good sport.

Lucille’s eyes settled on me again as she sipped a cup of steaming tea, staring until her forehead crinkled with the effort, staring hard, almost leering.

“What’s her problem?” I muttered.

Jessica shot a glance towards the Lee table and slurped her Sprite. The great mystery surrounding her potential Mormon-ness persisted. “Who? Lucy?”

Only Lucille’s friends called her Lucy. Jessica, a shameless aspiring socialite, presumed she was everybody’s friend unless they explicitly informed her otherwise, which of course no one ever did.

“Yeah,” I answered glumly.

“Maybe it’s your dress.”

“My dress? What’s wrong with my dress?”

Jessica wrinkled her nose and surveyed me as if I were a bug, and not a cute bug like a roly-poly bug or The Very Hungry Caterpillar or whatever. Like a really hideous bug. Like one of those spider-cricket hybrid things that hopped straight out of a hell dimension and into the dark, drippy corners of your basement. “It’s, like, very 1960s. But not in a sexy Woodstock way. In a ‘I’m about to join a hippie murder cult’ way.”

“I got it at TJ Maxx. It was on sale.”

Jessica snorted. “Probably for a reason.”

“That’s it. I’m giving all the hippies in my new murder cult your address.”

She and Angela laughed. Mike and Eric, the missing pieces of our daily lunch puzzle, were preoccupied with a campus protest to convert fried fish day (Thursdays) into tacos day. I sympathized with their efforts, but didn’t feel that my one-week tenure as a Calawah University student gave me much right to go around overhauling the dining hall schedule.

“I doubt she’s actually offended by a dress,” Angela said, nibbling on French fries that shed grains of salt like snowflakes.

Jessica sighed dreamily. “But Lucy’s just so fashionable...and that accent...” She drifted off into some daydream which began—I could only assume—with Lucy’s invitation to go shopping together and concluded with marrying Ben on some lush tropical island in the South Pacific.

Lucille was definitely fashionable, especially today: short black dress with sheer sleeves that ran to her fragile wrists, black polka dot tights, black heeled oxfords, dangling ruby earrings like beads of blood. She would have blended in perfectly at Paris Fashion Week. Rami was wearing a cardigan and khakis, per usual; Joe was in dark fitted jeans and a roomy U Chicago hoodie despite the fact that Forks was at minimum a thirty-four hour drive from the Windy City. What did Angela say his major was? Finance? No, Mathematical Economics. So he’s probably aiming at Chicago for an MBA or Econ PhD someday. Angela had told me that Joe was wicked smart. He better be if he’s entertaining fantasies of grad school at the University of Chicago.

Scarlett had come straight from Fencing Club and was wearing bright pink yoga pants and a t-shirt with the sleeves cut out, sprinkling Hot Cheetos into her open mouth, her blonde hair secured in a tight French braid. You know those girls who are so irrationally, gluttonously, unfairly beautiful that it doesn’t seem possible the genetic lottery could spit out so many winning numbers at once, and you comfort yourself with the certainty that there must be some set of circumstances that would level the playing field—I bet she looks like anyone else without all that makeup, she just has a really good sense of style and knows how to maximize her assets, there are definitely some goofy oversized ears hiding beneath that hair and that’s why she always wears it down—and then one day you run into them wearing sweatpants and a ponytail in the tampon aisle at Walmart and they’re still so perfect it stings you, baffles you, makes you feel like there must have been some divergence in the evolutionary chain because there’s no freaking way you’re the same species? Yeah, Scarlett was one of those girls. Scarlett was the queen of those girls.

Ben was conspicuously absent from the table.

Scarlett’s pink leopard-print iPhone rang and she answered. “Hello?” She turned to Joe. “Dad says you left your phone at home. Do you need it?”

Joe was gnawing his way through his third slice of pepperoni pizza. “No, I’m good, thanks though.”

Scarlett relayed the message. “Dad says he’s going to bring it by just in case.”

“Oh my god, ScarJo, I’m fine! Tell him not to!”

“Dad says he doesn’t trust you and he’s going to be here in fifteen minutes. He’s also bringing the Game Theory homework you left by the hot tub.”

Joe groaned and rolled his lively dark eyes as Rami grinned at him; Lucille was still watching me and entirely oblivious.

“Isn’t it weird that Ben and Lucille have accents?” I asked Jessica. “That they’re from the U.K.? I didn’t think fostering kids was an international thing.”

“It’s not that weird. Dr. Lee is British too. Maybe there’s some kind of exchange system, I don’t know. But you know what I do know?”

“What?” Now my interest was piqued.

She smiled. “That the British accents are hot.”

“Ugh,” I exhaled involuntarily.

“Please get a hobby,” Angela begged Jessica. “Start a YouTube channel. Make care packages for orphans. Grow marijuana. Adopt a cat. I have a shift at the animal shelter this Sunday morning, you want to come with me?”

“Sorry, can’t. I have a temple thing.”

Temple on Sunday. The mystery is solved. She’s a Mormon for sure. I mentally resolved not to let her set me up with anyone unless I was still single on Valentine’s Day. Which, obviously, assuming I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere, I will be.

I gathered up my trash and slung my backpack over my shoulder. “Okay, well this has been a bizarre lunch to be completely honest, and now I have to go to Chemistry so I’ll see you later and hopefully we can brainstorm some more alternatives to Jessica’s current life trajectory on Monday. Because I am not looking forward to being a bridesmaid in these impending Lee nuptials.”

“Oh please!” Jessica lamented. “He doesn’t even know I exist. You, on the other hand...”

I scoffed. “Yeah, he wants to kill me. I truly have a gift.”

They waved as I left. I could feel Lucille’s eyes on me until I reached the door.

Sure enough, Ben wasn’t in Chemistry. I tried not to notice. I drew my atoms, wrote my equations, took my notes diligently and in my favorite sky blue ink. But I felt the emptiness in the chair next to me like a black hole, like an immense and dragging weight, like a snag in the fabric of all those interwoven strands of physics that orchestrate the universe like an immortal puppeteer. Why can’t I forget this guy? Why do I still feel like I’ve met him before?

Halfway through class, I hauled my emergency sweatshirt out of my backpack and pulled it on over my dress, floral and flowing and golden yellow like the sun, the sun that never shines here in Forks. I had liked it plenty under the florescent lights of the fitting room at TJ Maxx, and I had still liked it this morning; but Jessica’s words hummed around in my skull like wasps. The zipper of the sweatshirt was broken, but it accomplished the task of obscuring my dress well enough.

After Chemistry, I journeyed to the campus library to find a book I was supposed to read and present for a different class. I looked it up in the computer catalogue, spent an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out how the Dewey Decimal System works, eventually wound up finding the book on the highest floor of the library...and, to add a little extra peril to the mission, on the highest shelf. The book mocked me from its lofty, unattainable stronghold. The title was embossed in gold letters down the crimson spine. The Walruses And Me: A Transformative Experience. Idiotic title, I’m aware. It’s about some marine biologist who spent months alone in the Arctic studying the lifecycles of walruses. A noble pursuit, sure, but still a terrible title.

There wasn’t a chair or stepstool in sight. I tested my weight by stepping up onto the second-lowest shelf. The metal immediately squealed and shifted in protest. I retreated back down to the carpet, defeated by gravity. I scowled up at the book and sighed melodramatically. Ugh.

“Need something?”

I spun around to see Joe in his University of Chicago hoodie and pale flawless skin and intangible magnetism, that bewildering trademark Lee ethereality. I instinctively crossed my arms, clutching the sleeves of my sweatshirt, shrinking inwards like a startled armadillo in the Arizona desert.

“Are you, uh, anemic...?” he ventured.

“Oh no, I’m not cold. I’m just trying to hide my dress. My friend said it was too hippie-murder-cult 1960s.”

I figured he’d laugh, make a snide comment, maybe just blink in confusion. Instead, he glimpsed down at my dress—what could still be seen of it, anyway—and shook his head. “The neckline isn’t right for the 60s. And you seem like you’ve showered at least once in the past two weeks, so definitely not a hippie.”

I smiled, completely unexpectedly. “I didn’t realize Econ majors knew anything about leftist counterculture.”

“Disparaging it is our favorite pastime. Are you trying to get a book or are you just disrespecting university property for entertainment?”

I pointed. “The big red one.”

“The Walruses And Me...?”

“I know, it’s a horrible title. Not my personal preference. It’s for a class.”

“Bestiality 101?”

“Good guess. Marine Mammals.”

“Ahhh.” He glanced up and down the aisle, tapped his chin with agile fingers, pondered something I wasn’t privy to. “Turn around for a second.”

“What? Why?”

He waved his hand mysteriously in front of his grinning face. “It’s a magic trick. I’m going to make your problem disappear.”

“You can’t climb that,” I warned. “You’ll fall and break your neck. Or you’ll knock the whole shelf over and cause a tragic domino effect and the university will withhold your diploma until you pay them restitution.”

“I’m extremely athletic.”

“Are you sure?” I appraised him with exaggerated skepticism for comedic effect. “My dad refers to you only as the spindly annoying Lee.”

Oh my god, WHY did I say that?

Now he would definitely hate me. Now I’d have two mortal enemies on one campus. I mentally calculated how humiliating it would be to transfer to some Florida college, any Florida college, after only one week at Calawah. Hi mom, yeah I’m coming to live with you and Paul, a gang of hot pasty foster kids wants to slaughter me.

Instead, Joe threw back his head and cackled wildly. A librarian—mid-fifties, angry red hair from out of a box, fuzzy cat sweater—glared into the aisle and shushed him.

“Chief Swan...he actually...he calls me that? Really?!” Joe managed, wiping his leaking eyes. “That’s hilarious. I’m so glad my life is in his hands. Okay seriously, turn around.”

“Why would you help me?” I asked suspiciously.

“That’s just what I do. I’m a friendly guy.”

“This friendliness must not run in the family.”

Again, Joe’s cheerful demeanor didn’t falter. “You mean Ben? Forget about Ben, he hates everyone. Don’t take it personally.” Then he added: “Plus, as I’m sure you know, we’re not biologically related. No overlapping genetic material whatsoever. I didn’t get the male supermodel gene, he didn’t get the irresistibly charming gene, life’s not fair but the world keeps spinning.”

“It sure does,” I agreed softly. Unexpected wisdom from my new favorite Lee. I turned away from him. “Fine, I’m not looking, go ahead and dazzle me with your supernatural friendliness—”

“Done.”

“What?” I whirled around. Joe held The Walruses And Me in his hand. “How...did you...?!”

He passed me the book as I sputtered incoherently. “I told you. Magic trick.”

“I don’t....?!” I gawked up at the top shelf, at Joe, back to the top shelf. Sure enough, the space where The Walruses And Me once lived was now just a vacant slit in the row of dusty books. How could he have climbed up there that quickly? How could I not have heard anything? “The shelves didn’t even creak,” I murmured shakily.

“Yes, well, that’s due to my conveniently spindly physique.” Joe winked. “Any other problems I can help you solve at the moment, Baby Swan?”

“No. And don’t call me Baby Swan, or I’ll push this whole bookshelf over and tell the feisty librarian lady you did it.”

“That’s cold, ma’am.”

I liked that Joe didn’t make me feel like Ben did: unworthy, unloved, infuriating. Joe made me feel something else, something lighthearted, casual, buoyant; like the world didn’t have anything in it worth worrying about, regretting, agonizing over. Like unadulteratedly myself was all I ever needed to be.

I heard a muted buzz and Joe slid his iPhone out of his jeans pocket. Dr. Lee must have successfully delivered it. “Whoops, I forgot that Ordinary Differential Equations existed. Got to go. See ya.”

“Bye,” I replied. And then Joseph Lee was gone, very quickly, a little too quickly, the same way that Ben had vanished on that first afternoon after Chemistry.

Forks is weird. Calawah University is weird. And the Lee kids are super fucking weird.

Long Walks On The Beach

“Can I ask you a random question?”

“You just paid me $100 for an oil change that took fifteen minutes. You can ask me anything you want.” He grinned, flashing bright teeth and deep dimples.

It was Saturday afternoon. I had shoveled down a Chipotle veggie bowl as Archer changed the 1999 Accord’s oil in a small garage with a cracked concrete floor and the searing pungency of gasoline fumes thick in the air. He had apprenticed all through high school and rented his own shop after graduation. Archer now had a loyal clientele that encompassed virtually the entire Quileute reservation and a growing chunk of Forks...including Charlie and me, of course. Archer was the only child of Larry Foxchild—Charlie’s best friend since they worked together at Dairy Queen as teenagers—and the closest thing to a son my dad would ever have. I guess that made him like a brother to me, something that seemed intuitive now that I’d thought of it.

After the Accord was serviced we drove it down to La Push to walk on the beach, climb the salt-lashed rocks, toss pebbles into the roiling surf, reprise our childhood enthusiasm for poking dead washed-up marine creatures with shards of driftwood.

“Do you know anything about the Lees?” I asked Archer, investigating a deceased green shore crab.

His brow furrowed. He looked so serious like that, suddenly so much like Larry: the same tan skin, jet black hair, umbral eyes like oil wells, strong jaw overlaid with the stubbled shadow of a beard. We really aren’t kids anymore, are we? “The doctor and his kids?”

“Yeah. The foster kids. They’re really pale and strange and half of them are British.”

Archer chuckled. “I know who you mean. They’re hard to miss.”

“Are they...” Just eccentric rich people? Traumatized from abusive childhoods? Government experiments? CIA agents? Secret murderers? The image of Ben in that first Chemistry class came roaring back to me, including the adjective that had flashed red behind my eyes like an emergency exit sign: fierce. Finally, I decided: “Dangerous?”

Now Archer full-on laughed, gripping his belly, shaking his head. Drops of saltwater flew from his short hair. “Seriously?!” he exclaimed. “Come on, they’re freaks but they’re not, like...that kind of freaks.”

“Are you sure?” I was starting to feel better already. Of course they’re not actual demons, you fucking idiot. This is Washington, not The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. Not goddamn American Horror Story.

“Yeah.” Archer skipped a grey pebble over the water, something I’d never been able to do. “I’ll be honest, I don’t know them all that well. They usually keep to themselves. But I’ve never heard anything bad about any of the kids. And everyone respects Dr. Lee and appreciates him for taking the pay cut to come to some bumblefuck town like Forks. He’s insanely highly credentialed, has degrees from Harvard or Yale or somewhere like that. Super impressive. We’re lucky to have him. I definitely sleep better at night knowing he’ll be the one to fix me up if I ever get a few fingers ripped off on the job.”

“Don’t even say that. Then who would I grossly overpay for oil changes?”

Archer smiled, then sobered as he peered out over the Pacific Ocean.

“What?” I asked, feeling a plummeting in my guts like primal fear.

“Well...okay, so there is one thing that’s always bothered me. You remember Grandpa Foxchild?”

“Yeah, of course.” He had been an impossibly ancient man with long grey braided hair, a low rumbly voice, gnarled arthritic hands, ceaseless wrinkles. I remembered Charlie calling me when he passed away last spring. Renee and I had picked out a flower arrangement to send to the funeral.

“So,” Archer said slowly, like he was still puzzling it out himself. “Grandpa used to say things like ‘That Dr. Lee has been around a long time.’ Which of course makes no sense, the Lees moved here like two years ago. And I’d tell Grandpa that, but he completely ignored me. He would just keep repeating it. ‘That Dr. Lee shouldn’t still be here.’ ‘That Dr. Lee should go on home to where he came from.’ ‘That Dr. Lee isn’t right.’ Creepy shit like that. My dad and I always assumed it was the dementia talking, but...I don’t know. It just bothered me. Because Grandpa...he wasn’t just being gossipy or suspicious. He was angry. And he was afraid. Grandpa was at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima and he would talk about that no problem, mention landmines or flesh melting off a soldier’s face like it was nothing. He was a tough guy. Immeasurably tough, I’ll never be half the man he was. But if you mentioned the Lees, Grandpa got scared. Why the hell would he be so scared of them?”

I didn’t have an answer for him, not a single word. I just stared at Archer, my eyes growing huge, my heart sprinting, blood pounding in my ears. He knew. Grandpa Foxchild knew there was something off about them, and now I know it too. I don’t know how I know, but I do.

Archer tittered nervously. “Anyway, that was genuinely disturbing. But like I said. It was probably just the dementia.”

“What if it wasn’t?”

“It had to be,” he insisted. “There’s no other logical explanation.”

“I guess,” I agreed, scooping up the green shore crab corpse with my bare hands. I hurled it out into the waves, imagined it sinking through murky water and suspended grains of sand, the body settling into prehistoric silt, the scavengers descending upon it, the inescapable wheel of birth and death and resurrection through those who unwittingly carry our atoms with them into the next generation, into the perpetual future.

That night my dreams were full of pale skin and scorching eyes, Ben and Joe and Rami, Lucille and Scarlett, crashing waves, cold water and bleached bones; and Grandpa Foxchild’s mistrustful refrain: That Dr. Lee has been around a long time.

Benjamin

I soared down the staircase and through the dining room. Gwil was working late at the hospital, Mercy outside tending the animals, everyone else presumably scattered throughout the house. I had to get out before anyone noticed me. I had to get out without Rami or Lucy knowing.

I yanked open the door to the back porch. Rami was waiting there.

“Good evening,” he greeted me in that slow, thoughtful drawl.

“Stay the fuck out of my head.”

“You know how it works, Benny Boy. I can’t ignore the loud thoughts. And you’ve been having some very loud thoughts lately.”

I stared down at my shoes, all black Adidas. Black is good. It doesn’t show stains. For example, purely hypothetically, splatters of human blood and organs. “I can make it quick. I can make it painless.”

Rami’s aura flared maroon; not enraged, no, not quite that, but certainly revolted. I was always finding new and horrifying ways to revolt them, whether I was trying to or not. “She has a family, Ben. A father. You know Chief Swan, you’ve seen him around town. He’s a good person. She’s a good person. You really want to do this? You really want to relapse like this?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t have to. Hearing thoughts is a tricky thing, and not a gift that I would ever want; unspoken words are rarely a steam and usually a storm, disjointed and twisting, interrupting each other, bottomless layers of whispers and screams. But I was sure Rami could catch the important parts: that I didn’t know the difference between good and bad people, that I didn’t know what to think of people at all, that for me her blood was not a desire but a compulsion. I couldn’t stop envisioning it spilling over my tongue and teeth, down my throat, hot and pulsing erratically and fading. “Why can’t you hear her? Why can’t I see what she’s feeling?”

Rami shrugged, characteristically placid and restrained. It was maddening. “There are seven and a half billion people on this planet. So maybe every once in a while you get one that lives in our blind spots, there’s something chromosomal or psychological that puts them on a different frequency. I don’t know. How the hell should I know? All I know is that you definitely shouldn’t be seriously considering...well. What you’re considering.”

“Have you ever met someone whose thoughts you couldn’t hear before?”

“No,” Rami admitted; and was that a ghost of unease that crossed his face?

“Please, Rami. Let me go. Pretend you never saw me.” My words come out strained, hushed, like a spilled secret, like a confession. I’ve never wanted anyone’s blood like I want hers.

He heard that; I could see the dismay in his eyes. Now his aura is dark grey, almost black. Disappointment. Resignation. Mourning. “I told you what Lucy saw.”

“What she saw is impossible and you know it.”

Again, Rami shrugged. That blind, mindless faith. I wished I knew what it felt like. “She’s never wrong.”

“Have you told him?”

“Who, Joe?! Of course I haven’t told Joe. He...”

“He wouldn’t believe it either?” I snapped, like it was a victory.

“No,” Rami amended carefully. “No, he would believe anything Lucy saw.” Lucy had visions: flashes of the future, the past, the present. They were rare and unpredictable, often fragmented, snapshots rather than arcs. But they were always true. Or, rather, the other Lees claimed they were. The real Lees. “I don’t know what he would do about it,” Rami said finally. “So I’m waiting it out. And killing one of the primary participants is definitely not waiting it out.”

I seethed as I glared at him, hating him in that moment, hating myself only slightly more; and he heard that too. But then that wispy, fleeting haze around him was a pink like the last threads of sunlight sinking into the Western horizon. Forgiveness. Attachment. Love.

“Come with me, Ben,” Rami said gently, opening the door. “Come back inside. You can beat this. You’re better than this. You’re a good soul. You wouldn’t be with us if you weren’t.”

I tried to laugh. It came out like a snarl. “I haven’t had a soul in a long time.”

#joe mazzello fic #joe mazzelo x reader #borhap #borhap fic #borhap cast fic #twilight au #twilight #supernatural au

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hazelandglasz · 5 years ago

Text

OMG They Were Zoommates

Based on this post

I really couldn’t resist, and like @tchrgleek said, “Everything is a Klaine prompt”!

On AO3

All things considered, yes, this quarantine is a huge hassle.

Kurt doesn’t particularly like to be forced into confinement, and while he can put on a professional face like pretty much any thirty year-old, he doesn’t like being forced into social interactions through video conferences.

He may be an introvert, but even he needs more than this second-best choice to get in touch with his colleagues and partners.

Speaking of which.

“Mrooow?”

“Oh, stop being judgmental, Wildcat Jackson,” Kurt tells his cat, who is sitting on his bed and looking at him with what is, truly, a judging look. “At least I put on pants.”

The cat looks down at his legs before rolling herself into a ball, away from him.

“They’re pants,” Kurt mumbles. Yoga pants, sure, but they are still pants.

And Kurt put on his pristine pink shirt and his brooch.

From the camera’s point of view, he’s every bit the professional he needs to project for this meeting with their new partners.

The Zoom meeting is not planned before 2pm, but it’s 1:50pm when Kurt logs in, because that’s just the kind of person he is. And yet, he’s not the first one in the Zoom.

“Um, hello? I just logged in.”

The person was away from his computer, and Kurt had just enough time to see a bookshelf filled to the brim with books, manuals and several Funko Pops.

Nothing unusual from a company specialized in developing educational apps for teenagers and young adults.

But then the man slides back in place, and wow, that is not how Kurt pictures Dalton's CEO.

“Hi. I’m Blaine Anderson.”

The man looks like a lot of things—a model from the 1950s, a romantic male lead, a wet dream in the flesh, your pick—but not like the man who sent several emails regarding the intellectual property of both parties and who was a stickler for proper language.

Kurt waves. “I’m Kurt, Pavarro’s founder and CFO.”

Mr. Anderson smiles, waving back at Kurt. “Looks like we’re the early birds.”

“I always prefer to be early. Fashionably late is too 1990s.”

Blaine nods, waving his hand toward Kurt. “Though you seem to know a thing or two about fashion.”

Kurt looks down at his (visible) outfit and cocks one eyebrow at Blaine. “So do you,” he replies appreciatively, swallowing whatever flirtatious sentence was about to follow when other participants join in the conference room.

Blaine straightens up, his hand smoothing down his tie, before smiling to the camera.

Kurt can’t help but notice it is a very different, tighter smile than the one he had before.

“Now, I want to begin this unusual meeting by thanking all of you for agreeing to the accommodations we all had to make…”

---

They are at the very beginning of the negotiations to include Pavarro’s music sheets and vocal coaching videos to Dalton’s latest app, designed for high school students wanting to focus on the Arts.

After a dozen or so Zoom meetings involving different members, it quickly comes down to only Kurt and Blaine meeting through Zoom, either to explain the technicalities ...

“No, Kurt, I’m not saying this coaching lesson is wrong, all I’m saying is that maybe the coach shouldn’t look …”

“What.”

“Constipated.”

... or to compare their business models and projected numbers.

“Blaine, if I may …”

“Of course, Kurt.”

“You seem overly enthusiastic about the potential breakthrough we would have in the Midwest.”

Through the meetings, both Kurt and Blaine have relaxed, both in outfits and composure.

Kurt is this close to say that they’re friends (for want of anything closer).

Blaine sighs and leans back in his chair, his yellow polo slightly stretched over his chest causing a hitch in Kurt’s heartbeat. “It’s where I’m from, Kurt. I need to be optimistic about my home state. I need for it to grow to become a place of origins for artists.”

“Midwest, uh?”

“Ohio.”

Kurt sits up, leaning toward the screen. “Ohi--no way! Me too!”

Blaine looks startled. “Really?”

“Lima!”

“Westerville!”

They both start laughing, before Blaine returns his attention to his notes. Kurt takes advantage of the moment to admire Blaine’s face so close, his eyelashes casting a shadow over his cheeks in the soft glow of his screen.

“We may have been just a teensy weensy bit enthusiastic, though,” Blaine finally says, looking up and surprising Kurt who can feel his face heating up immediately. “I’ll get over it with Wes and we’ll have to meet again in a couple of days.”

“Ah, the hardship.”

“Ha, ha.”

Blaine has mastered the art of talking with his eyebrows, and his cocked one clearly says “I see through your bullshit, Hummel”.

“I’ll let you set up the next meeting, then,” Kurt rushes to conclude the meeting before he lets himself blurt something totally unprofessional and embarrassing. “In the meantime, Tina will send David the singing coaching videos we developed while in confinement, so please disregard the poor quality and focus on the subject, ‘kay?”

“Will do. Take care, Kurt.”

“You too. Good evening, Blaine.”

As soon as the conference window is shut, Kurt picks up Wildcat and screams into her soft belly.

This crush has to stop.

…

It won’t stop, will it?

---

Kurt knows that he’s in the right conference Zoom, because he clicked on the link Blaine sent.

That’s the only element he has to know that he didn’t get “lost”.

Because right now, filling his screen, is not Blaine’s gorgeous mug.

An adorable mug it is, sure, but not the one he was expecting.

“Blaine?”

“Oh shit, ‘Gana, move!”

Blaine rushes into the screen, picking up the smiling corgi and unceremoniously pushing her away. His shirt is opened and Kurt wants to thank whichever deity is having fun right now for the sight, both of Blaine’s chest and of his blushing cheeks.

“I am so, so sorry for that, Kurt,” he whines softly. “I don’t even know how my dog came up here.”

“That’s a cute corgi you got here.”

Blaine runs his fingers through his hair and smiles, obviously relaxing. “She is very cute. And very stubborn.”

“What’s her name?”

Blaine’s blush is back at full force. “Um …”

“Come on, I promise I will level the field.”

Blaine cocks his head to the side and shrugs. “Fine.” He moves away before returning with his dog in his lap. “Kurt, meet General Pupgana Anderson, leader of the Resistance.”

On the Corgi’s collar, Kurt does notice a couple of buttons that give clues about Blaine’s political leaning.

Particularly, a rainbow one.

Interesting.

“Your turn.”

Luckily, Kurt’s cat was just out of frame, lying on his desk to catch the afternoon Sun. He picks Wildcat and presents her like an offering. “Here is Wildcat Jackson Hummel,” he says, and Blaine frowns, resting his chin on top on his dog’s head before snapping his fingers.

“Hey look me over, lend me an ear

Fresh out of clover, mortgage up to here

Don't pass the plate folks, don't pass the cup …,” he sings, not even off-key.

Wildcat opens one eye and bats the camera, interrupting Blaine’s singing in favor of laughter.

Kurt really doesn’t know which sound he prefers. All he knows is that he should have recorded it.

“I didn’t know you were a singer too,” he comments, letting Wildcat walk away in a huff.

“Oh, yeah,” Blaine says, absentmindedly fluffing up his dog’s already fluffy ears. “I was the leader of my school’s choir, back then.”

“Choir?”

“Ok, Glee club. Happy?”

Kurt beams at the camera. “Would be if you had proof.”

“No.”

“So you tell me if I search Blaine Anderson choir on YouTube, nothing will come up?”

Blaine mumbles something.

“Beg your pardon?”

“It. Better.”

Kurt bursts out laughing. “Okay, fine. I won’t look it up.”

Blaine cocks one eyebrow.

“Okay, maybe I will look it up, but I won’t bring it up.”

“Hm-hm.”

“I won’t make it a big deal.”

“Right.”

“Pinky swear.”

Blaine smiles crookedly at the camera, a look of disbelief on his face, before he does hold up his pinky in front of him.

Kurt mirrors him, all while quietly and internally losing his shit over how cute Blaine is.

That level of cuteness and geekiness and just gorgeousness should be illegal.

“Now, back on the matter at hand. Let me show you the new numbers we cranked up for our Midwest penetration …”

Oh Lord, Kurt thinks while putting his glasses on, do not let me focus on the idea of penetration for the next hour.

…

Try again.

---

“I’m sorry, Kurt, but the files have been compromised in the transfer.”

Tina looks like on the verge of tears, and Kurt himself is this close to cry.

“How did it happen?” he simply asks.

“Artie is looking into the tech of it, but in the meantime, we, um …”

“What?”

Tina glares at him. “Don’t bite my head off, Hummel, I can smack you down via video and we both know it.”

Kurt takes a deep breath. “What?” he repeats, softer this time and with a smile plastered to his face.

“We need to re-record the songs we planned to send to Dalton.”

“You know what we could do, instead?”

“Fling ourselves through the window because nothing matters?”

Kurt blinks. “Err, no. No. We’re not going to do that. What we are going to do, is mirror what the musicians from the National French Orchestra did.”

“Play Ravel’s Bolero?”

Kurt shakes his head. “No, but we can have a Zoom conference with Blaine and David--”

“Blaine, uh?”

“Yes, Blaine.” Tina’s smile could rival the Cheshire’s. “What?”

“Nothing. I’m glad you and Blaine managed to build such a good relationship while apart.”

It’s Kurt’s turn to glare. “I see what you’re trying to imply, Cohen-Chang, and it’s not--it’s not that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I may wish it was that, but it’s not, so can you please drop it and brainstorm something with me for a good …”

“Audition?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

Tina’s smile is softer as she ends the call, promising to come up with a list of songs they wanted to add to their catalogue anyway.

As the call ends, Kurt swirls around in his chair, worrying his lower lip.

Has he been so obvious?

Does every participant into their Zoom meetings see how he feels about Blaine?

Does Blaine know?!

Blaine must know, oh shit.

“Goddammit,” he mutters, pushing himself off his chair to get a well deserved homemade pumpkin spice coffee because he needs it and he’ll be a cliché in his own damn home if he so chooses it.

“Blaine?”

For once, Blaine seems very unfocused today on their meeting. He frowns into space, asks Kurt to repeat what he just said and just seems … upset.

“Yes, sorry. I’m here.”

“Wanna talk about it?” Kurt asks, pulling Wildcat into the frame.

Somehow, along the weeks, adding their respective pets to the discussion has become a signal that the meeting is about to take a turn for the more personal.

Blaine hesitates, before leaning down and picking up Pupgana, who seems delighted to see Kurt.

“So, what’s going on in that cute head of yours?” Kurt continues, throwing caution to the wind, mostly because Blaine doesn’t react one way or another to his little flirting.

Which is both a blessing and a curse for Kurt’s mental well being.

“I had tickets for a play for tonight,” Blaine says softly. “And I understand the lockdown, I understand the quarantine, I understand the necessity and the safety of it …”

“But.”

“But,” he repeats, smiling sadly at Kurt. “There is no way to be sure that the play will be reprogrammed for a later date. I have been reimbursed and everything, but still.” He sighs. “I was looking forward to it, and it may make me sound like an entitled white man, but …”

“But,” Kurt echoes. “I had tickets for an opening last week, too. One of my best friends plays in it, so I had first row tickets too.”

“Oh? Which show?”

“Six.”

Blaine straightens up immediately. “No. Way.”

Kurt can feel his jaw clicking open. “No.”

“Yes!”

“You--”

“And you!”

Kurt leans back in his chair, a startled, breathless laugh escaping him. “Wow.”

“Took the word out of my mouth.” Blaine chuckles. “Which part was your friend supposed to play?”

“Ah, Mercedes was supposed to be Queen Catherine of Aragon herself.”

“Mer--your best friend is Mercedes Jones?!”

Kurt preens a little. “Yep. Since high school.”

“Wow. You keep getting more and more interesting, Kurt.”

His face heats up enough to make him worried about getting a fever, but Kurt knows it shouldn’t have anything to do with the pandemic. “...Oh.”

Blaine’s cheeks do pink up too, but he doesn’t lose his composure. “I mean it, Kurt. You’re probably--no, without a doubt, the most interesting man I have ever met.”

“And we haven’t even met yet.”

Blaine leans his head against his closed fist and stares into Kurt’s soul--that is, into his camera. “Do you really feel that way?”

Blaine’s voice is soft and low. Intimate, in a way Kurt cannot comprehend or translate or interpret in his emotional state.

“I …” he starts, ready to deny whatever Blaine is imply, but he can’t.

Kurt can’t lie to those golden green eyes.

“No, I don’t. Feels like we have known each other forever.”

“It does.”

Kurt sighs, and Blaine follows.

When Pupgana imitates them, they chuckle and look away, focusing once again on arranging Pavarro’s demonstration for Blaine’s board.

---

It goes pretty well, if Kurt may say so himself.

Adding the Beatles has always been a goal of his, if only because his dad loved the British band so much, and performing “Blackbird” to the camera, while Tina provides backup and Artie plays the guitar, along with their teaching methods, was a stroke of genius.

Everybody agrees that the demo is a success. Wes, David and Trent leave the Zoom chat first, having another appointment with investors, and Artie spends some time talking to Blaine about how their codes could be more compatible--a conversation that flies over Kurt’s head--but after a while, it’s just the two of them, alone again in their Zoom meeting.

Blaine seems thoughtful as he looks at Kurt every two seconds, his eyes and fingers otherwise busy typing away.

“I could get used to this,” Kurt says to break the heavy silence.

“Hm?”

“You, me, working together. It feels right.”

Blaine bites his lip as he nods before pushing his keyboard away. “Kurt, I have to tell you …”

This is it, Kurt thinks. He’s going to tell me that I have been inappropriate, that we’re barely friends, that we need to stop talking to each other every day…

“... I didn’t expect to feel so emotional about your performance.”

Ah.

Ah?

“I mean, I heard recordings of you singing before, but that was … You moved me, Kurt.”

“Oh, really?”

“I had to restrain myself from clapping when you were finished.”

“Blaine …” Kurt takes a deep breath. “You know that a lot of the subjects we talked about during our meetings were not my forte.” Blaine cocks his head to the side with a frown. “Why did you decide to have them with me anyway?”

“Oh.”

“Not that I mind, but it just feels …,” Kurt hesitates and lets his silence fill in for him.

It just feels … odd.

Abnormal.

Surprising.

Like it’s leading to something else, please tell me if there is something else, because I am feeling that “else” too.

“You know, Kurt, since we’ve been in lock down, I didn’t think I would--,” Blaine pauses, looking away and muttering something Kurt doesn’t catch. And then, Blaine looks back up, jaw squared as if getting ready to enter battle. “Kurt.”

Kurt has never been more focused on the sound coming from his speakers.

“There are some people you meet along your Life’s journey, and it doesn’t feel like a meeting but like a reunion with someone you already know. When we first met, I thought “oh, there you are”, like I had been looking for you forever, like all my decisions ever since Ohio were meant to bring us back together.”

Ho. Ly. Shit.

“And I know it may sound like a rehearsed speech, and yeah, I did, a little,” Blaine continues, running his fingers through his curls and chuckling self-deprecatingly, “but I didn’t have to look for the words. I had to rehearse to be able to say it all without stuttering over my own heart. Because he’s in charge here, and he told me to do anything necessary to spend more time with you.”

Kurt is about to faint, and he doesn’t even care.

“I know we met in an unconventional way, but I can tell you that all I want right now is to kiss you, if you’d let me.”

“I would.”

“Oh,” Blaine blushes, looking surprised (and, really? Surprised? So he didn’t know?), relieved and, well, ecstatic, really. “I guess we both know what we’ll do the first time we meet without cameras between us.”

“Oh, I do. Describe it.”

Kurt knows he’s pushing his luck, but a cute, intelligent guy just made him the most romantic love declaration, he is high on feels.

Blaine cocks one eyebrow, his smile turns into a slightly cocky one and he leans closer, describing in excruciating details all the micro-actions that would lead to their kiss.

Truth be told, Kurt is no longer a blushing virgin, but it still leaves him blushing fiercely and hot all over.

And that was just a virtual first kiss.

They don’t know how long this confinement is going to last, but Kurt knows one thing.

It won’t be boring with his new boyfriend.

Wildcat Jackson Hummel

General Pupgana Anderson : https://www.reddit.com/r/corgi/comments/b11ngx/pancake_would_like_to_facetime/

#sometimes i write #klaine au #covid-19 au #colleagues to friends to lovers #mutual unrequited pining #fluff #adorable pets

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alexmitas · 4 years ago

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Abandon Ideology

In Jordan Peterson’s second foray into self-help, he writes his VI’th rule for life: ‘Abandon Ideology.’ As an ardent follower of Jordan’s, on first reading of this, I took this rules’s implications at face value; that is, the implication that an ideology is something that is held by a group of people, but that the individual, striving for what is true and pure, should rid themselves of all ideology, in the interest of progressing new and helpful ideas to the culture at large. Recently, particularly after having watched this YouTube video by Philosophy Tube, a question which I wrestled with subtly after reading Jordan’s recent work has made its way to the forefront of my mind: Are we so sure that it is even possible to abandon ideology? and I don’t mean once you already ‘have one’, so to speak (though this is a valid question also, albeit requiring a few more prior assumptions), but rather, is it even possible for an individual to not have an ideology? (Paraphrased,) Philosophy Tube makes this point explicitly, comparing ideology to a**holes: everyone has them, they use them everyday, but nobody tends to take a good look at their own unless something has gone wrong. So who is right?

Interestingly, both philosophers consider ideology to be something that actually exists - which, to me, is by no means a foregone conclusion. Jordan assumes that it is a sort of group-think parasite that infests the mind, while Philosophy Tube believes that ideology is an inevitable function within the individual. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed that the latter tends to be a more common belief among those with left political leaning, while Jordan’s point tends to be expressed by individuals who are more popular with those with right political leaning*. As we know that political leaning seems to be a result of a temperamental difference between individuals, it could be that this is just another form of what one could theorize as the fundamental question between the extremes of such differentiations, which is the question of whether the individual is fundamentally formed through nature or nurture. I have personally arrived at the conclusion, as have others, that the answer to this question is clearly both; however, the question of whether or not ideology is fundamentally group-oriented or individual-orientated doesn’t quite fit neatly into the dimensions of this theory. This is because, in no small part, that the roles of thought in regards to ideology in this case are antithetical to the typical hypothesis presented by the theory: in this case, the left leaning individuals are the one’s more likely to believe that ideology is an innate characteristic (nature), where as the right leaning individuals are more likely to believe that ideology is a product of culture (nurture). While it may not be a perfect comparison, this is the reverse of what an individual who agrees with this line of logic would likely guess. Is there a reason for this?

Perhaps it is the more fundamental tenant of conservatism, which tends to prize its own culture’s tradition, that demands from its right-wing thinker a bias in believing that their own way of interpreting the world is the ‘correct’ way to do so, based on the interpretation of the facts of ‘objective reality,’ which is free of ideology, because that is the way it is has always been; or perhaps it is liberalism’s inclination towards progression - its greatest strength and weakness simultaneously - that forces it to be open to all possibilities, and therefore implying that there is no single way of being, there is no objective reality, because reality could be anything based on the individual’s own subjective experience, based on their own ideology, which must therefore be present in all of us; or, perhaps, (and this is in no way to imply a comprehensively exclusive list) there is the consideration which I mentioned above, which questions the existence of ideology as an objective truth altogether.

[Aside: for sh*ts and giggles, let’s explore this last idea. So ‘ideology’, stems from the french word idéologie, where idéo- or ideo- is “idea”, and -logie or -logy is “the (scientific) study of the subject field represented by the stem.” (From Merriam-Webster.com). Also from Merriam-Webster: “Though ideology originated as a serious philosophical term, within a few decades it took on connotations of impracticality thanks to Napoleon, who used it in a derisive manner. Today, the word most often refers to ‘a systematic body of concepts,’especially those of a particular group or political party.” So according to this definition, ideology is more of a strictly philosophical or scientific term referring to the study of ideas. Well, everyone has ideas. But somehow this definition doesn’t quite seem to fit the bill. It seems as though both sides of the political spectrum seem to regard ideology as something deeper than the this definition gives it credit. It seems as though according to the political (to use a loose term to define the parameters of this debate) debate, believes that ideology is either a type of group-oriented idea that can inhabit a large swath of people, or it is the fundamental subjective framework that the individual uses to interpret the world. Of course, I doubt many serious thinkers on the right would deny that everyone needs a framework for which to use to interpret the world (Jordan Peterson certainly doesn’t). Instead, they would argue that framework is not the same as ideology, but simply a tenant of being human, as a combination of both an individual’s objective and subjective experience (and of course one could argue about whether objective experience actually exists also, but that’ll have to be another topic for another day; today we will assume that both objective and subjective experiences are real). But this also begs the question, why is it that some people can have an ideology while others can be free from it? This brings the argument illustrated nicely by Gad Saad into play; namely, that ideology is the equivalent of an idea pathogen, echoed by the complimentary position presented by Jordan’s work which contends with the idea that although not everyone need be infected by an idea parasite, everyone must have a narrative framework to operate in the world. This in and of itself, of course, asks us to contend with the question of whether or not there is even a difference between this “narrative framework” and ideology, to which we may get different answers based on the political leaning of the person whom we ask. As my inherent bias seems to lean to the right in most cases, my intuition tells me that there is a difference, that narrative framework is superordinate to ideology, but again, its difficult to assess whether or not that is my tendency towards conservatism and its respect of (let’s say the west’s) cultural background getting in the way of objectivity, sustaining that objectivity is real in the first place. But to play devil’s advocate to the side opposite to my intuition in a different way, I would say that it’s possible that the real problem is that we do not have our definitions straight: what is ideology to one may be narrative framework to another; and in this sense, I might also add that it is entirely possible that ideology itself does not exist past what may also be considered a narrative framework, since what one would call an ideology another may say they are only acting in according to their own narrative framework (or, “yes, I do have an ideology, but - of course - so do you). The obvious argument to refute this would likely refer to the nature in which an individual with an accused ideology would hold beliefs which mirror that of another individual with the same ideology, therefore rendering the ideas non-unique. And this is indeed a powerful argument. It’s also an argument which, hitherto, I never second guessed. But thinking now, of course it isn’t the case that two individuals narrative frameworks cannot be influenced by similar subjective experiences. This gets more complicated when you compound uncountable numbers of people who have “the same ideology,” and therefore expressing similar subjective experiences that derived their narrative frameworks; after all, could that many people really have had such identical experiences that they are brought to such similar beliefs independent from and “idea parasite” or ideology? Maybe not, but also, maybe the subjective experiences and narrative framework (or ideology), of the accuser has led them to a sort of confirmation bias, where one signal of similarity leads them to the expectation of uniformity; where the sight of a leaf of a certain type or color leads to certainty that that leaf must belong to a specific breed of tree, rather than perhaps a tree of only similar lineage. In this regard, with special consideration given to the possibility of miscommunication of words and their definitions, it is possible that the deeper form of “ideology” within the context of our current culture, does not even exist. It’s certainly a possibility which I will be keeping my eyes and ears on, anyways. End Aside.]

A conclusion about who is right certainly won’t be reached in a blog post by me today. What I can conclude from this thought experiment, however, is yet another example of why your intuition - based from your temperament and experience - can lead you astray when considering complex questions. Or even seemingly non-complex issues, for that matter. The perspective that Jordan Peterson provides may very well be the correct one. But the perspective that Philosophy Tube highlights as well feels as though it could be superior. Then there is the possibility that they are both wrong - or both right (it is such a strange world we live in, after all, where paradoxes are known to exist). One thing is for certain: both of these people are much smarter than I, so, as per usual, there is much left to consider and ponder. And to gather erratically.

One day I will start to write blog posts that focus more on my reader than my inner ramblings. But for now, I still need to sort myself out, and I hear writing can be incredibly useful for that. This is ErraticWoolGathering, after all.

Best,

- Alex

*An example of this that I can bring to mind is exemplified by Gad Saad, author of The Parasitic Mind, who similarly claims - as I understand it - that ideology is a matter of group-think, or in his words, that an ideology is no different than a type of “idea pathogen.” Now, whether Gad claims to be of right political leaning or not (as far as I know, he does not), his book and his ideas clearly seem to be more popular with the the right-wing of our culture than they are with our left-wing.

#philosophy #JordanPeterson #Philosophy Tube #writing #ErraticWoolGathering

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ladyhistorypod · 4 years ago

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Episode 19: She Blinded Me with Science

Sources

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell

PhysCon

Star Child – NASA

NPR

Reflections on women in science -- diversity and discomfort Ted Talk (YouTube)

We are made of star stuff Ted Talk (YouTube)

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell describes the discovery of pulsars (YouTube)

Concepción Mendizábal Mendoza

People Pill

México Desconocido (Mexico Discovered)

She Builds Podcast

Instituto de Investigaciones (Investigations Institute)

CAPSULA DEDICADA A LA ING. CONCEPCIÓN MENDIZABAL (Capsule dedicated to Concepción Mendizabal, YouTube)

Seattle Times

Further Learning: Nuestras Voces (Our Voices)

Rosalind Franklin

US National Library of Medicine

SDSC

National Geographic

Further Learning: PBS NOVA

Click below for a transcript of this episode!

Archival Audio: “There’s something else. When you and Jack were little and wanted to know what made it rain, what made the telephone work, whom did you ask? Not dad. He was at work. But I didn't learn about science in school. I had to dig out the encyclopedia later to satisfy you. So you see, women need to know as much about science as some men do.” Haley: Lady History made me smarter. So my dad and I were watching Jeopardy, and I can't tell you when this was but Alex Trebek was in it and also I don't think the new season came out but I digress. It's the final question where you have to like write it down and it's like this whole very awkwardly put question about like French history and it was like who did she– like she murdered X, Y, and Z who is this. And my dad’s like Joan of Arc and I was like no, Charlotte Corday. And he said “how did you know” and I was like “honestly dad this is like a ninety five percent like balls to the wall guess, but I'm gonna say Charlotte Corday” and it was Charlotte Corday and I was just sitting there like haha! Because my dad– I think I spoke about this I think it was with like Erin– that my dad, the way we would get like our allowance was through… Alana: Riddles and trivia questions. Haley: Yeah. So he's still on that like this whole– Lexi: You still get allowance? Haley: No no no no. Lexi: Oh. I was like wow, okay. Haley: No. I still– I don't get allowance, I wish. The way that we like we just spend the holidays was either playing Codenames, which is like a fun fun board game, everyone should just play it, and then doing crossword puzzles. New York Times comes out with these like questions from the news… like it's ten– usually ten questions, or for the new year they did like thirty questions. So his thing will be like everyone has to answer the New York Times, and he won't give out the answers until we've all done it just to see like who's the smartest of the week. And I've only got like the smartest of the week once. Alana: Nice. Haley: To be fair, they watch the news everyday and I do not. I use like my like news app to get like notifications and if I go on some sort of site, that's how I get the news. I'm awful, no one like model after me. But Jeopardy came in clutch just because of this podcast. My dad was like “oh so the podcast like is actually like helping education, growth” and I was like… Alana: Yes! Haley: Yaaaas. Thank you. He also said we have a cool logo. Alana: Um, shout out to Alexia Ibarra, you can find her on Twitter and Instagram at LexiBDraws. Lexi: So we've proven that the show's educational. Haley: Yes. Lexi: We now can continue that claim. Haley: Yes. Alana: We knew the show was educational. Lexi: Although, is it only educating us? Haley: I have faith we have listeners. Hi listeners. Alana: Hi listeners. To be fair, we’re kind of the primary… like we can see our reactions to the podcast the most. Lexi: Hey, listeners. Are you there, it's me Margaret. [INTRO MUSIC] Alana: Hello and welcome to Lady History; the good, the bad, and the ugly lady you missed in history class. I'm not sure how she ended up always being first introduced, Lexi. Lexi, what's your favorite science? Lexi: I should probably say like astrophysics or something because I'm currently interning at the Air and Space Museum, but that would be a lie because my favorite science is probably like earth science, environmental science would be my real favorite science. Alana: That means next up is Haley. Haley, what's your least favorite science? Haley: Physics. Hard core physics. Alana: I really wanted you to say astrophysics. Haley: I was about to, but like I will forever say physics just because I have a really hard time with numbers and letters being in the same math groups. Alana: And I'm Alana and as a child I went to science camp for upwards of five years. Haley: Okay, so my question is did y’all ever learn about like the history of science in class? Because I don't remember, especially I was thinking about this for twentieth century like STEM women because that's our theme. And I realized like I conceptually like didn't realize like what happened in the twentieth century, even though I know it's like the nineteen hundreds that's the twentieth century. But realizing that like my history class didn't really go through that. Like I had no concept of like people from the twentieth century doing impacts of science. Lexi: We didn’t learn about it in history class, we learned about in science class. Haley: Yeah, in my science class I can't pull from it I can’t– Alana: I had– I forget who the author is, but I met him at a Politics and Prose event– when I was in my tenth grade chemistry class, we had reading from a book called The Disappearing Spoon, which was like the discovery, the history of the discovery of a bunch of elements which was really cool and so that was like kind of our history of science thing, that was fun. Also Crash Course recently did a history of science. Haley: Yes, that’s why I loved it. Yes. So, Crash Course– Hank and John Green, hello. Alana: Hello. Hank? Lexi: it wouldn’t be an episode without a Green brothers reference. Haley: I truly was trying to like figure out a way that wouldn't bring them up with this question. Alana: I literally was like… you said history of science and I was like Crash Course. Crash Course. Crash Course! Haley: That's how I got into like not just like forensics and like history of like science and history. But they were the ones that made like science fun for me in high school. And then I got hooked on their history, and then it was college where it was like you can study history, medicine, and bones! Congrats, Haley, here it is! But like in my high school curriculum nothing like twentieth century history and or science was like… science was not a thing. We just were still learning basic cells. Like I just remember every year, come January, we were fucking learning what a cell was. And it's like, okay, mitochondria– Lexi: You were talking about biological cells every year in school? Haley: I don't know why, but like at least two years in high school because I was in like the intro to bio and then chemistry even we talked about like cells because it was biochemistry as a unit. And then I took AP bio junior year and then for forensics she brought up cells because of like blood cells and everything. Lexi: I mean, cells are important. Haley: Yeah, cells are important. Alana: Do you remember Punnett squares? Lexi: Yeah, I love Punnett squares. Alana: Those are my favorite. Lexi: Genetic science is actually my favorite science. And it's my mom's favorite science, my mom was actually a biology major. Haley: Low key… Lexi: Because she loved Punnett squares. Haley: I thought like something was wrong with me, like I had a terrible genetic mutation because I could not tell the difference between a capital P. and lowercase P.. Archival Audio: Is astronomy a significantly more inviting field for women today than it was thirty years ago? Jocelyn Bell-Burnell: Yes, I believe it is and I believe it's getting better all the time. We are becoming more conscious of the differences between men and women– the different ways they work, and the contribution of women is becoming more and more recognized. It's still got a bit to go, but it's coming along very nicely. Lexi: On July 15th, 1943, Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell was born near Lurgan, Northern Ireland. As a young girl, she encountered astronomy through her father’s extensive book collection. Her family, who knew educating girls was important, encouraged her to explore her interest in the subject. She received support in her studies from the staff of the Armagh Observatory, which was near her home. When Jocelyn was attending preparatory school, only boys were permitted to study science. In a TEDx Talk from 2013, Jocelyn recounted being separated from her male peers and assuming it was for physical education, but it turned out the girls were being sent to the “home economics” class while the boys were being sent to science class. Of course, she went home and told her parents. And her parents, who as I mentioned before, believed girls should be educated just like boys, were angry to hear that the school did not allow girls to participate in science class. So along with the parents of two other girls at the school, Jocelyn’s parents fought for her right to study science. The three girls were moved into the science class, but being the only girls in class was not easy. The teacher kept a close eye on the girls. So it was hard for them to overcome being the only girls in that class. But, Jocelyn received the highest score on her science final at the end of that term. She did it, she passed all the boys, and got the highest score despite being disadvantaged by being one of the only girls and by them trying to keep her out of that class. Jocelyn went on to study at the University of Glasgow, where she earned a degree in Physics. She graduated in 1965, and went on to pursue her doctorate at Cambridge. Jocelyn worked with her advisor Antony Hewish to study the mysteries of space. And she assisted in the construction of a radio telescope, which would be used to track quasars, which are large celestial bodies and there’s like a lot more science that makes them… It’s a deep science thing… deep astrophysics. Again, astrophysics is complicated and too big brain for me. But they’re things in space. And when the telescope was ready to operate, Jocelyn was assigned to operate it and analyze the results it produced. And this was like way before computers as we know them today, so the telescope actually printed its results out on a big chart and then she would look at the chart as it was printing out and analyze it that way. Jocelyn began to notice strange results on the charts produced by the telescope, which were faster than those typical of the quasars. Jocelyn did not know it yet, but she had discovered the first evidence of pulsars, highly magnetized rotating compact stars, which are different than the previously mentioned celestial bodies. At first, Jocelyn and her advisor were suspicious that the signals may have been signs of alien life, so they nicknamed them “little green men” signals. A year later, her findings were published in an academic journal. As scientists around the world began to investigate the signals further, they were able to identify them as coming from the stars that I mentioned. And the term pulsar was applied to this type of signal. The press, upon finding out that the discovery had been made by an attractive, young, female graduate student, pounced on the story, of course. But instead of asking her about her scientific studies and the research she was doing, they pestered her with questions about her appearance like “what’s your waist size” so we love that. In 1968, Jocelyn earned her doctorate. That same year she was married, and unfortunately spent much of her marriage focused on her husband’s career rather than her own, moving place to place as he moved place to place. In 1974, her advisor was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for Jocelyn’s contributions to the discovery of pulsars. Alana is raging in the background. After her marriage ended and her son had grown up and gone off to live on his own, she went back to pursuing her own passions. She went on to teach with the goal of making science welcoming and accessible to all students, regardless of gender, class, or race. She became a professor at the Open University, a non-traditional college that allows students to take courses at their own pace, and she was appointed as the chair of physics. Her appointment made her one of only two female physics professors in the United Kingdom, so she joked that they had doubled the number of physics professors that were women in the country, so that’s a little sad, but you know… at least there’s two. In 1999, Jocelyn was interviewed for NASA’s StarChild program, which I believe is now defunct but it was an educational program in the 90s, and you can hear some great audio clips of her answering interview questions on the StarChild website which I will link in the show notes. And Jocelyn has also given several TED and TEDx talks, one of which is about women in science and what it’s like to be a woman in science. And I used it as a source so that will also be linked in the show notes. You can find that there if you’re interested– in the further learning. And I will leave you with a quote from her 2013 TED talk which I thought really summed up her experience, “Those of us who've been early in a field have often had to… play the male game. And I hate to think what a lifetime of doing that has actually done to me.” She should have won the Nobel Prize but they gave it to the guy who was her advisor instead, even though she actually made all the discoveries. And her accent’s adorable. Alana: Is she still alive? Lexi: Yeah, she’s 77. Alana: I’m not good at math. Lexi: She’ll be 78 this year. Alana: She’s a Cancer you didn’t point that out. Lexi: You’re– that’s your thing. Haley: Concepción Mendizábal Mendoza. I definitely pronounced her middle name incorrectly, I am so sorry. The Z-A with un acento on top of the A always messes me up for some reason. My little lisp comes back. But Concepción is how I’m gonna refer to her. Actually I think it means conception in Spanish, so like that's fun. Here's my little side note read this: my Spanish is declining because my mom is Cuban, therefore my Spanish came from my grandparents so when they died I never had that continuous we talk every single week every… sometimes like every single day, and I'd be speaking Spanish so in those like six years I have not spoken Spanish. I’ve read it and translated it for various projects, however, pronunciation is difficult, apparently. And that also comes in with our gal, coming from Mexico City, a lot of like the publications and references are coming from Mexico, so it took me like ten plus hours because then I was like trying to see what resource was a blog or what resource was like an actual resource and then I found some YouTube and some podcasts. But again, don't stop researching someone even if they come from a different country and you have a hard time like researching. It was still fun. I knew her from like a book of like STEM– she's an engineer, we'll get into it, don't worry. Just sit back and relaxing. It was fun reading in Spanish honestly. My Google translate kept popping up, but some of the Google translates for like the scientific terms were just no Bueno and also with how they like conjugated her name of being conception didn't look great sometimes. But that's Google Translate’s problem. So her being an engineer is rad in itself, but she's Mexico's first female to earn a civil engineering degree, so snaps for that. Ahora abramos nuestro libro de historia! I practiced that five times in the mirror even though I knew how to say all those– Lexi’s cracking up, I just wanted to do a good job. I have a big fear about speaking Spanish even though I'm technically fluent. Alana: It made me smile. I thought it was cute. Haley: So Concepción, with her upbringing, it was written in the stars if you will because she was the daughter of the famous engineer Joaquín de Mendizábal y Tamborrel and growing up she was motivated to study. And like one article described her as like her life being a little sheltered? Honestly I think that… that was just like me translating because it did use the word– literally translated sheltered, but it's noted that like her father was an engineer motivating her as well to study. And again being like the first woman engineer, yeah your life was probably a little sheltered in Mexico City where like no other females were studying the same thing in a sense. And in school– and for orienting ourselves in the timeline– it's 1913 to 1917, and her… she had her like basic education at la Normal para Maestras de la capital which is the normal for teachers in the capital. That's like the crude translation. And then she was enrolled into a higher level math in another school, the Escuela de Altos Estudios– which is the school for higher education essentially– and she was one of four women at that school. And this gets a little dicey because not only did she stand out for like being that sparkly fish in the pond, being one of four women, but she was able to tackle difficult civil engineering courses, finishing them without failure. And moving forward a little bit to 1922, she attended Palacio de Minería which is the Palace of Mines and Mining, which is now a museum actually. So it was first built as a space for the Royal School of Mines and Mining, like the royal court there, and then changed to the school for engineering, mines, and physics. However, it's now a museum. Like I said, it kind of gets dicey around the 1913/1917 when she’s taking classes and now we’re a few years later in the 1921s, where she got into the school in the sense that she… she was there listening to classes; however, not fully enrolled until 1926 because she didn't have the high school certificate yet. But again, she passed with flying colors because obviously. And she passed the engineering exam on February 11, 1930 and quick side note because some of y'all are screaming at me saying that she was not the first woman to get a civil engineering degree in like Mexico. There is contention, because around like 1930ish– before, because 1930ish was when Concepción Mendizábal got her degree, so her being the first at 1930. There's another woman who apparently went to the engineering school before her, but from the end result of my snooping, there was no other registered woman at the school between 1792 and 1909, and then also no other like registered woman to have graduated. At this point, it's Concepción because she graduated, and she was the first woman to graduate. She wrote down a lot through her education and post education, and it’s Memorias Prácticas, which is practical memories. And literally what I'm thinking of practical memories is books and notes. Again with my research it's very much scattered of translating from what I deemed as the best resources coming from Mexico. Please give me more research sources, let me learn more about this gal. So practical memories, I'm guessing are just like her books and notes and they're still in the Palacio de Minería or the Palace of Mines and Mining, again, which is now a museum. So I thought that was like really cool how like her school like recognized that she was just like such a beautiful mind and like so great and talented that they've kept all her stuff. I really want to see it. The Palace of Mines and Mining is not a great website, so I couldn't like go through their collections and actually see it. Maybe one day I'll make it down to Mexico City. And in 1974 she received the Premio Ruth Rivera which is the Ruth Rivera Prize which goes to the best woman in engineering and architecture, which I thought was like really cool because she like continued– she didn’t go after school and like settle down like none of what I read was like her settling down with like a husband and kids, it was all like concretely what she did for engineering. So post her getting the prize and just also she died in 1985, just up to her death she was still working. She wrote a lot. She was the author of like a fifty two volume book– she just knew how to conceptualize or kind of put a lot of hard engineering concepts into writing and into paper which is a really hard thing to do. And the fact that I obviously couldn't see many of them… I tried, maybe I was looking in the wrong places. But I just wanted to see if there was more for like the engineering mind, or if she wrote some things for us as non engineers to read them. Kind of like what Hank Green does. Because that's what interests me. I love when people take what they're like very very good at, especially when it's like a hard science and dwindle it down for people not in that field. Alana: That's what we do. We’re trying to make our knowledge more accessible. At least that's what I feel like we're doing. Lexi: That's what we're trying to do. Alana: That’s why we interrupt each other to be like Hey… Haley: Yeah. Alana: What is that? Lexi: Hey, explain more in depth that thing… Alana: ...that we all kind of understand, but yeah just in case. Alana: So. I'm going to start off my story here with a joke that you might know, you might have seen, that joke is… What did Watson and Crick discover? Haley: Absolutely nothing. Alana: Rosalind Franklin's notes. Haley: Gold. Alana: Thank you. It’s not mine, but I really like that. Lexi: Exquisite. Alana: Thank you. If I do a bad job– just like a heads up if I do a bad job explaining the science part of this, I'm sorry. Lexi doesn't speak Chinese, I don't speak science. That's just how it is. So Rosalind Franklin was born July 25, 1920, a Leo, in London, England to a prominent Jewish family… and I'm having an identity crisis because I think I was born into a prominent Jewish family? Anyway. I should talk to my mom about that. She attended Saint Paul’s School for Girls which focused on women getting degrees other than their M. R. S.. Haley: What’s an MRS? Alana: Oh, I was waiting for a laugh at my joke and Lexi snapped but I didn't get an audible laugh. M R– your MRS degree is Mrs degree… you know… Haley: Oh my God I just got that! Lexi: Wait, I thought you were like playing dumb. You’ve never heard that? Alana: You've never heard MRS degree? Haley: No. Alana: It’s my favorite thing. It's like why women in… Like it was this phenomenon of women in the forties and fifties going to college… Lexi: Yeah. Alana: … to meet their husbands. Lexi: To meet men. Haley: Ring before the spring, I know that one. Lexi: I’ve never heard ring before the spring but I have heard MRS degree. Alana: MRS degree! Haley: So dumb. Alana: I think they make that joke in Grease. Haley: It has the same letters as… Alana: MRS degree. I was waiting for a laugh because I– Lexi: Your Master’s in being married to a man. Alana: The MRS– I love that joke, it’s my favorite joke. I think it's so funny. We can dive into why I think that's so funny in therapy. But I have more pressing issues for therapy. So Rosalind was very good at math and science and also languages. She left St Paul's a year early to go to Newnham College which is part of Cambridge University and was one of only two all women colleges at Cambridge. She graduated in 1941. I'm going to summarize the rest of her academic work so that we can get to the good stuff. She earned her PhD in physical chemistry from Cambridge in 1945 after studying the microstructures of carbon and graphite at the British Coal Utilization Research Association where she had done research during World War II. Instead of going into the kind of war work that other women were doing during the war she was doing war-oriented research on carbon and graphite which was more what she was interested in doing the science-y stuff and not like building weapons which was another important part of women’s work in World War II but we're not talking about women in World War II even though I have a lot of feelings about that. In 1947 she started working at a lab in Paris, the name of which I'm not even gonna try to pronounce where she learned how to analyze carbons with x-ray crystallography which is sometimes called x-ray diffraction analysis. I'm sorry I can't explain more about what that is, it's just what it's called. You use X-rays to– Lexi: If you tried to explain it I wouldn't understand the explanation. Alana: But maybe… Maybe our listeners will understand and can help explain to me what X-ray crystallography slash diffraction is. Let us know. Write in. A friend of hers, Charles Coulson, suggested, “hey what if you did this, but make it larger biological molecules.” So she took over a project at King's College in London from a scientist named John Randall using X-ray diffraction to take pictures of DNA molecules. This is where Rosalind crosses paths with Maurice Wilkins, who is the first villain of our story. He’s not actually a villain, he's just kind of a chauvinist and annoying. I'm just being dramatic, as usual. Maurice Wilkins thought that our dear Rosalind was just a lab assistant when in actual fact she was conducting her own research. One of my sources was like “this is understandable given the university's attitude towards women at the time.” It's not an excuse. That's not an excuse. You suck. Period. Anyway, so. The specific note that Watson and Crick discovered was a photograph called Photo 51. I can't find any copyright free images of it, but if you go to our show notes… which will be at ladyhistorypod dot tumblr dot com… under further learning there's a PBS website where you can learn more about the photo specifically and see it. The point is it's a very clear photograph of a DNA molecule where you can kind of pretty clearly see the double helix structure, which is like a twisted ladder. It really was only a hop, skip, and a jump for people to figure out that, using this photo, the structure of DNA was the double helix which is like a twisted ladder if you don't know. Maurice Wilkins showed this picture to James Watson and Francis Crick who were also doing DNA research without Rosalind's knowledge or permission. Frustration noises! I'm so angry about this. So Watson and Crick beat Rosalind Franklin to the punch publishing their research even though they were really publishing Rosalind's research. It's like if they were doing a 200 piece puzzle and Rosalind had put in 198 of the pieces, but Watson and Crick came in and put down the last two and were like “look we did a puzzle!” I almost knocked my headphones out I was so angry. Oops. Lexi: It's like when my mom makes dinner but then my grandma takes it out of the oven and she tells my dad that she made dinner. Alana: Yeah pretty much. Rosalind left King's College– I wonder why– for Birkbeck College where she did some X-ray diffraction work with the tobacco mosaic virus– which as far as I can tell only infects plants– as well as the polio virus, specifically on their structure. Rosalind Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of 37. Four years later, Watson and Crick were awarded the Nobel Prize, which Rosalind would not have been eligible for anyway– I guess– because they don't nominate or award posthumously, but still really annoying. Anyway, Rosalind Franklin, she's really cool, she deserved better. I love her very much, my girl. Even though I have no idea– what she… like I know what she did but I don’t understand how. Lexi: You know it's absurdly easy to nominate someone for a Nobel Prize. Alana: It is absurdly easy to nominate someone for a Nobel Prize. And the research was published before she died, so maybe just be like “hey–” Lexi: It's even easier today. I mean I can't speak for back then, but literally there's a form on a website you fill out. So like someone could have done it before she died. Like I said, they did not have the website back then. But it's not easy today… Alana: Yeah. Lexi: There was like… easier then too. Alana: So that's really annoying to me. They couldn't even be like “hey, you know Rosalind Franklin actually took this picture, and that really helped us.” Lexi: Just like what happened with my lady. Alana: Yeah. Lexi: Her supervisor could be like “actually my grad student really did all the grunt work on this,” you know. Alana: It's not like Rosalind was even a grad student though. Like she had a PhD and was doing this research. Lexi: Yeah, it’s just women in science get real… What all women in science, regardless of… the situation. Haley: And this wasn't that long ago. Alana: This wasn’t that long ago! Lexi: We’re talking about the 20th century. Alana: We’re talking about the 20th century, it’s the 21st century. My grandfather was born in 1927 and he's still alive. And Rosalind was born in… Lexi: The woman I talked about is younger than my grandmother, yeah. Alana: They're all still here, there’s still work we gotta do on being more welcoming to people of non male genders just in general. Haley: There’s just work we have to do as human beings just all across the board. Alana: In science fields and ever. Ever where. Lexi: You can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram at LadyHistoryPod. Our show notes and a transcript of this episode will be on ladyhistorypod dot tumblr dot com. If you like the show, leave us a review, or tell your friends, and if you don't like the show, keep it to yourself. Alana: Our logo is by Alexia Ibarra you can find her on Twitter and Instagram at LexiBDraws. Our theme music is by me, GarageBand, and Amelia Earhart. Lexi is doing the editing. You will not see us, and we will not see you, but you will hear us, next time, on Lady History. Haley: Next week on Lady History; she will be the history. We're talking about some modern gals and their impact on our lives. Really we’ll be fangirling a lot. I'm excited, are you excited? Of course you are. Lexi: It's called “Tomorrow She’ll Be History'' if that inspires anything. Haley: That's what I was gonna do. I was just gonna repeat the title and see what else comes out of my mouth. Lexi: Yes I love when… I love when you like mouth– mouth vom. Word vom. Normal vom is mouth vom. But… mouth vom.

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the-pineapple-talks · 5 years ago

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A little preamble going into this post. Where I'm from there's a big stigma around learning disorders, here it is still considered just being dumb or difficult.

I have never been diagnosed, because I have never been tested for anything, because of said stigma, and now I'm an adult, I'm guessing it is a little late for me and I also don't have the money.

Growing up teachers always gave me a hard time for not taking good-looking notes, specially because I'm a girl and unnecessary gender roles are a thing. I couldn't write straight in paper with lines, one letter would be higher than the other, then the next lower and crooked to one side, and so on. I still can't.

Then my struggle was that I couldn't keep a writing style. My writing would be inconsistent, changing from day to day, and from grid paper to striped paper and I started struggling taking notes at all specially when I was trying to be orderly because my brain got tired from writing like that. I still don't have a writing style.

Then I started mixing up letters. The ones I most frequently mix up are: P & R; q,p,b,d; n,s,r,l if they're at the end of the word; (, C; and also generally mix them up, even though out loud I can 100% spell correctly, for example I may write "yeast" as "yseat" and almost immediately notice and correct it. And numbers, I would read 345 and my brain would correctly hear it a 345 but I would write it 354, which, stydying in a STEM field, has caused me some lower grades than I would like.

At this point I started wondering if I had dyslexia, but I looked up the symptoms at it didn't fit. I've never had trouble understanding the words I'm reading, and I read a lot. Finally I looked up "dyslexia when writing" and lo and behold, I found an answer that fit my criteria: Dysgraphia.

As I said I haven't actually been diagnosed by a professional because sadly here that is not an accessible option, but since learning the name of what I have I have learned what works best for me:

Don't fight it. Don't try to have a pristine writing because your brain will fight you. If I'm concerned with my writing style being consistent it is harder for me to take notes, 10/10 times, my writing will just be worse.

Switch it up. Whenever I get tired of normal writing I write cursive and somehow that makes me feel rested.

Double check your work for any spelling errors, even if you think you caught them all.

Generally for me, if I'm using thin paper which is over a somewhat soft surface (can be more paper) my writing will be messier but it'll be easier to write

Use pens that don't make you apply too much pressure (if any at all) to write.

I also have some issues concentrating, I don't know if it is linked to something else, but my mind tends to wander a lot, even when I don't want it to, so here are some things I've done for that.

If I'm in class and it wanders, there's honestly nothing I can do. Sometimes taking a walk and then coming back can help but it can also make me more distracted.

Going to places filled with people. For example the mall, it is filled with activity and noise. Some of my most productive studying is done in malls.

Putting on background noise when doing exercises (like math problems). If I'm studying alone in my room my mind will easily wander, so if I'm solving problems or doing a workshop or a project, I'll put a tv show or movie I have watched many times before, meaning that I don't have to actively pay attention to it, but I still know what's going on, and do the work while listening to that. I may also listen to music but that's less usual. Also if I put on a youtube video I won't do my homework at all and if I put a show or movie I've never seen it will stress me out that I'm not paying attention to it, so it has to be something I've memorized.

If I have to read something for the first time or memorize something the previous one doesn't work for me, specially I think because I watch series in english, my homework is in french, and my native language is spanish, so I think my brain does need silence for this. However, what does work for me is using a pomodoro timer, I don't strictly stick to it, I may extend work or break times for a few minutes, but knowing there's an end to what I'm doing helps me get started. What used to stop me from working on an assignment was the knowledge that I would probably spend all day on it, but knowing I'll only have to do it for 25 minutes (even if it is again and again and again) not only helps me get started, but also makes 25 minutes feel like nothing. It is really important though that you try to do the 25 minutes completely, even if you extend your break, cutting the work time will only make you less productive I think, so don't start the clockwork until you actually start working.

I also find that if I exercise I am more focused after.

I think that's all. As I said, I am not a professional nor have I been professionally diagnosed, these are just what work for me in my experience as a human being and a student, feel free to add more. Have a nice day

#dysgraphia #dyslexia #learning #learning disabilities #learning disorders #education #my experience

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bunkershotgolf · 5 years ago

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High five at Real Club Valderrama in the BMW Indoor Invitational powered by TrackMan

Five players, including home favourites Sergio Garcia and Rafa Cabrera Bello, finished in a tie for first place as the action in the BMW Indoor Invitational powered by TrackMan moved to Real Club Valderrama.

Major winner Garcia and his compatriot and fellow Ryder Cup star Cabrera Bello played at the same time in the interactive feature group. They were joined at the summit by Scotland’s Connor Syme, who is celebrating a second win in the series of virtual events following his victory at Royal Portrush two weeks ago.

England’s Matthew Jordan and Damien Perrier of France also recorded one under par rounds of 70 to secure a share of the $10,000 first prize - to go to charities chosen by each of the five players - as the famous Spanish venue proved a tricky test in the fourth of five events in the new series of virtual golf tournaments using the latest simulator technology.

The 38-player field, which also included former World Number One Martin Kaymer and Belgian Ryder Cup star Nicolas Colsaerts, competed virtually from their own homes in the one round, 18 hole stroke play event.

Tournament footage was shown on the European Tour’s social media channels and bmw.trackmaninvitational.com, with fans able to follow using #BMWTrackManInvitational.

Garcia, who has famously triumphed four times at the Sotogrande venue in the Estrella Damm N.A. Andalucía Masters hosted by the Sergio Garcia Foundation, opened his round with a triple bogey before recovering with three birdies in the next four holes. He is donating his share of the prize fund to the Red Cross of Spain, a cause that he recently donated to alongside fellow Spanish sports stars to help in the fight against Coronavirus.

Garcia said: “I can’t think of a better cause than the Red Cross to donate to, to try to help as many people as possible in these very difficult times. It’s great to be a part of this and have the possibility to help people who need it most in uncertain times and I’m glad that I was able to play well enough to be part of the donation. I can’t wait to see all those people get better and hopefully get back to normal lives as soon as possible.

“We had a good time Rafa and I playing together. Unfortunately I had a terrible start with a triple on the first but I came back nicely and Rafa eagled 17 to get to one under. It was fun to do it. It was different, but it shows you how difficult Valderrama is even on TrackMan with pretty benign conditions, that one under par was a tie for the lead.”

Cabrera Bello had a rollercoaster round that included four birdies and an eagle as well as three bogies and a double. He said: “It was different of course playing the course on TrackMan, but it did have a lot of similarities and it did feel pretty real. On the green shapes you could see the run-offs and it was playing as real as it could possibly be.

“BMW does a lot of charitable work, not only during these hard times but also every year, they are a very generous company, so to be able to participate in this event for charity was really fun. Also to have the opportunity to win alongside friends and share it a little bit was great.”

Syme is celebrating for the second time in three weeks after topping the leaderboard at Royal Portrush. He said: “It feels great to be a tied winner this week. Guys like Sergio and Rafa were involved, so to compete with them and be tied at the top was cool. Valderrama was as tough as it is in real life. On holes like the second where you try to run it under the tree on the fairway, it is so realistic. My wedge game was good and that was the only reason that I managed to get the joint best score. It’s great to be a part of it and I can’t thank BMW and TrackMan enough for these opportunities.”

Perrier finished in second place in week one over the Old Course at St Andrews, and he went one better this time, birdieing the last two holes to recover from a double-bogey on the 16th and seal a tie for top spot.

He said: “After my second place at St Andrews, I’m very happy to be tied for the win this week alongside great names such as Sergio Garcia, who we all know loves this course. I remember the last time I played at Valderrama I was alongside Martin Kaymer. We almost didn’t see each other because I spent my whole round enjoying the shadow of the trees. This week I took my revenge and I’m proud of it!”

Jordan was participating for the second consecutive week and he leapt up the leaderboard after an 18th place finish last week at Golf Club Munchen Eichenried.

He said: “I’m delighted to get the win at Valderrama – it’s one of my favourite courses. It’s a bit tight and narrow so any of my friends watching this will be confused as to how I won. I would like to say a massive thank you to BMW, the European Tour and TrackMan for putting this event on. Lockdown has been difficult for most of us, so just to have something to look forward to and compete in, has been great.”

The winning fivesome finished one shot ahead of a group of seven players who shot level par rounds of 71, including French trio Benjamin Hebert, Raphael Jacquelin and Romain Langasque. Kaymer, Italian Nino Bertasio and England’s Paul Waring were then a shot further back in a tie for 13th place.

Footage of the BMW Indoor Invitational powered by TrackMan is now available on the European Tour’s social media channels (Twitter: @europeantour; Instagram: @europeantour; YouTube: EuropeanTour) and via https://bmw.trackmaninvitational.com.

BMW Indoor Invitational powered by TrackMan venues and dates:

Saturday May 9 - Old Course, St Andrews (Winner, Joost Luiten)

Saturday May 16 - Royal Portrush (Winner, Connor Syme)

Saturday May 23 - Golfclub München Eichenried (Winner, Wil Besseling)

Saturday May 30 - Real Club Valderrama (Winners, Rafa Cabrera Bello, Sergio Garcia, Matthew Jordan, Damien Perrier, Connor Syme)

Saturday June 6 - Wentworth

#Sergio Garcia #EuropeanTour #golf

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your-fit-bpd-princess · 5 years ago

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10 tips to start to learn french

Hello ! I’ve been struggling for a long time to learn english and spanish, and I was so glad to find posts sharing tips, so I decided to do the same !

French is known as a really hard language to learn and well, I’m french so I know how much it can be tricky... To be honest, even I sometimes have trouble knowing if my sentences are right.

I work in a “lieu des littératures en scène” (literally : “place where we put literature on stage”) so I work at the heart of these issues.

The following tips apply to the french language but can be adapted to the learning of any new language, I think. In any case, give me your opinion!

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1 / Understand that mistakes are not such a big deal

Of course you want to learn french the good way ! But understanding that you’re allowed to be wrong is fundamental. First, because even french people don’t know sometimes. As it’s a catchy language, we make A LOT of mistakes when we speak and when we write. Having impeccable grammar and spelling is required in some situations, like if you apply for a job or a school, and in those cases we're having our letters and resumes reread (by people who have good french skills). But obviously, when french is not your native language, people are a lot less demanding. That’s the same in any conversation : that’s easy to speak with someone who’s fluent, but if you’re not it’s not a big deal ! We know we don't pronounce some letters in our language, and we sure know it’s weird and can be disturbing. If you don’t pronounce correctly, we’ll still be able to understand what you mean. And we can even explain you what is the proper prononciation if you want to.

Also, many of our grammar rules (especially the most complicated ones to understand) are not really rules... but rather "recommendations". I like to hijack them sometimes, because some of them even exist just because of mistakes in ancient writings (so that they're not logical at all). So, try to learn them, that’s cool, but don't get too attached to them, it's not vital to follow them to the letter...

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2 / Read, read, read...

I have nothing to add here. Just read in french or any language you want to learn. It’s awesome. It will improve your skills so much. At first you won’t understand anything, but hang in there. The more you will read, the more you will understand. And don’t try to translate in your head, even if it’s reaaaaally hard ! (but that’s the tip number 6...)

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3 / But start with reading children's books

That’s great for a first immersion in a language. You've probably already read this advice everywhere, but it's really effective ! Be like a child, discovering new emotions, new words, new syntaxes... Illustrations are great to understand the meaning and the emotions behind the sentences though. Here are two great websites where you can find free children’s books online :

Whisperies : it’s specially made for children with dyslexic troubles, so the syllables are decomposed and the silent letters are greyed out (super cool for learning !)

Storyweaver : stories are classified by level, and you can chose the language !

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4 / Work on your vocabulary...

Having a notebook dedicated to vocabulary will help a lot. You can, for exemple, try to learn a new word a day, or regularly. Come back to it, write some comments, use colors to help you... Make it your own ! Plus, writing down words can really help to memorize...

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5 / Categorize

For a more effective vocabulary learning, categorize ! It’s not necessary to learn a bunch a words you’ll never use juste to learn : you're just gonna confuse your mind. For instance, you can focus on the family vocabulary the first week and learn two new words a day, or a word and its synonyms a day... Don’t forget to write them down in your vocabulary notebook !

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6 / Don’t translate !

It’s important not to try to translate ! Desperately trying to translate can be very tricky... Either because some words or sentences are not translatable, or because it will take a lot of energy from you. Try to learn like a child : start from scratch. Each language has its own rules, even if it can look alike. Immerse in the syntaxe, in the grammar, try to understand it instead of applying the rules of your native language, because it's bound to mislead you...

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7 / Watch series, movies, tv...

That’s the most obvious piece of advice, but it’s actually a very good one ! Watch a movie, youtube videos you like or a tv show you know by heart and just change the language and the subtitles. An old roommate of mine worked on many languages by watching all the Friends seasons again and again ! You can start with the subtitles in your native language, or the sound in your native language and the subtitles in the language you want to learn... There are many possibilities to make your knowledge evolve !

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8 / Take classes

Yes. That’s it. Sign up for classes. A professor can sure help you more than tumblr posts... Meet natives, meet learners like you, join workshops, meetings... Speak with others, challenge yourself, take tests to see your evolution and tou have access to new skills and knowledge...

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9 / Learn from your mistakes

Everyone has their weaknesses... You probably know that, in any field, the difficult things to understand are different for everyone. In language, that’s the same ! Maybe you’ll struggle with accents, with conjugation or with some grammar rules... And that’s ok. Again : everyone has their weaknesses. The most important thing is to spot them and learn from them. When you understand you made a mistake, write it down, and come back to it later. If you know what you have to work on, it will be easier later, I promise...

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10 / Enjoy it !

It may be the most important tip here... If learning makes you suffer, stop it. I’m serious. Find something else. Learning languages is great, but there is no need to suffer for that. You NEED to enjoy it. Because it’s so damn good to be able to express yourself in another language than your native one... It can be difficult, but don’t do it if it’s painful. Nothing deserves that you get hurt. If you have trouble with school, a school phobia, dyslexic disorder or anything, approach your doctor to discuss it and come up with a solution.

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Let me know if this was useful (or not !) and if you want more posts like this :) I love that.

I’m sorry again for my english, don’t hesitate to let me know if you spot mistakes, I’m happy to learn from them ;)

See you soon, love

#mytips #studytips #studyblr #studyspo #study #sutying #learning #french #learning french #language

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bananonymity · 6 years ago

Text

oh dear a hetalia university au

THE PROFESSORS

Alfred Jones - Film Studies

-Specializes in genre film, especially film comedy

-Class participation points is if you livetweet your observations and thoughts on a film that you watch in class with the hashtag #JonesJokes1100 (1100 is the course number)

-If you go to him for office hours he will spend half of the time recommending cult films to you

-Will find any excuse to screen at least one (1) Fast and Furious film in any of his class

-Hides snack food in the (public) classrooms he teaches in, will share with the class if a student finds it first

-thinks jean-luc godard is a punk bitch who weighs 20 pounds soaking wet

Arthur Kirkland - Literature

-Children’s Literature and Fantasy specialization

-that one professor who bumbles into class in sweater vests and an entire teapot

-”Hi everyone, class is canceled today. I couldn’t find a fucking parking spot.”

-Bring up in his class that Lord of the Rings is an allegory of WWII. I dare you.

-YouTube autoplay defeats him every time

-”IT’S. IN. THE. BLOODY. SYLLABUS.”

Ludwig Beilschmidt - Advisor

-Poor man is responsible for arranging the schedules and eventual graduation of 18,000 students who eat spaghetti out of a shoe when they run out of plates

-Takes every panicked and not necessarily sober student’s frantic emails about a major change with weary stride

-Definitely drinks in the office

-Brings his dogs to campus for therapy dog Thursdays. Then proceeds to pet the dogs himself for two hours

Francis Bonnefoy- Studio Art (all credit for characterization goes to @thedisappointedidealist12 )

-A tortured contemporary artist who needs to teach millennials/gen Z students to appreciate and critique modern art

-makes it a goal in life to baffle and infuriate his students, but once in a blue moon would make a really good point in his lessons that blows everyone’s minds

-Forces students to go to gallery openings and art exhibits with him for extra credit so that he can talk to death about what he thinks about every piece to them

-will fail anyone who said ‘I could have painted that.”

-bonus: argues with Alfred all the time about the merits of French new wave cinema

Gilbert Beilschmidt - Political Science/History

-Leadership class to study famous leaders in history, how they exercised and spread their influence to the people.(is it just me or does Frederick the Great take up a lot more of the syllabus than the other topics?)

-Seemingly easy-going and a human disaster but once add-drop period is over your nose is on the grindstone and you realize that this man actually knows his shit plus some and also you might fail but hey, you’ll have fun doing it

-if his class survives the semester he will take them to the bar and buy them all shots

-”Dear Professor Beilschmidt, This is Xiao Mei from your Political Psychology class. Would it still be okay for me to take the final tomorrow at 12PM? Thank you for your time! Regards, Xiao Mei.” “whatever -- Sent From iPhone”

Elizaveta Hedervary- Gender Studies

-on one hand, she’s the professor who will invite students to her home to spend the holidays if they cannot go home for break

-on the other hand, there is a reason why No Other Faculty dares to take her parking spot

-she and Gilbert use the same class room back to back, which has led to petty territorial rivalries and pranks

-Will publicly drag you and your unfounded opinions in class in the gentlest, most ruthless manner

-You can skip the test if you beat her in arm wrestling in front of the class (spoiler alert: you can’t)

Lovino Vargas- Dining Hall Manager

-Makes it his life goal to change the campus’ perception of the dining hall food by working hard and cooking delicious food

-WILL complain with every breath about budget, quality of groceries, poor pay, and college students who think putting spaghetti-os on a piece of bread is a meal

-on the flip side, very attentive to the students, especially female students, and keeps an eye out for any sign of unhealthy or eating disorder and encourages them to eat wholesome meals. if he catches a student skipping meals because of workload, he will shove a bruschetta in their hands and glare at them until they eat

-a bit too scared to go on strike over pay, although Francis encourages it wholeheartedly

Antonio Carriedo- Librarian

-In the past, he and Arthur were rivals to graduate summa cum laude in their programs. now, Antonio is taking it easy

-Still unironically uses nineties style catalogue cards because it relaxes him, also his computer mysteriously malfunctions every time he tries to use it to locate a book for someone

-if you ask him for a book he will somehow have you sharing your life story right at the help desk for a good fifteen minutes. he WILL forget what book you were asking for

Yao Wang - Business

-Uses memes to stay relevant with the youth (“Don’t forget to YEET”)

-Often invites students to a group lunch after class is over and remembers all his old students’ names

-Don’t even think about trying to leave class early. He may not call you out but expect a threatening Office jpg to airdrop into your phone

-loves it when students bring their children to class, will hold the baby while lecturing

THE STUDENTS

Emil Steilsson - First Year Undecided Student

-Freshman from Iceland, first time leaving his home and struggles to put himself out there to make friends or meet new people

-Raised in a large and close household but because he’s quite a bit younger than his brothers, doesn’t always feels like he belongs

-Also, his first time being away from his brothers, which gives him an anxiety that he will never admit

Leon Wang - First Year Film Studies Student

-Freshman from Hong Kong and Emil’s roommate

-Professor Wang’s kid brother; Yao Wang will bring him tupperware of home cooked Chinese meals every Thursday which Leon will not admit to deeply appreciating

-He will share all his food with you, but he will also eat all your food in return

-A bit of an age gap between him and his brother, and he was raised mostly in boarding schools in England growing up, so he doesn’t get to see his parents often and therefore unconsciously deals with a complex of feeling unwanted or shuffled around

-If he wasn’t such a nice kid Emil would probably have a nervous breakdown having Leon as a roommate (their tidiness levels are Very Different)

Michelle - Second Year Art Student

-Sophomore from Seychelles and fast friends of the boys

-Has a work study job at Professor Bonnefoy’s department

-She has trouble fitting in with the other students and often feels a bit left out from her peer group, despite her friendly efforts

-Because she pursues art, she often worries about her future job prospects, and lacks much confidence in her skills in any other field

#hetalia #aph #aph prussia #aph germany #aph america #aph england #aph france #aph spain #aph china #aph iceland #aph hong kong #aph seychelles #aph south italy #i made a side blog just to post this #doesn't matter to me if this is the only post on this blog i just needed it somewhere #thedisappointedidealist12

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