#I've learned 3 or 4 other programming languages before for my study??

[popcornkwantum]

I made a silly little comic. I think I lost my autism creature programming abilities

[eviegrmhld]

I had this idea where Evie found a baby in the streets of the Isle and decided to take care of it. Decided to write it down. This is between d2 and d3, almost the beginning of d3.

It's also Jayvie centered cause I'm so soft for them <3.

Sorry for any grammatical mistakes, english is not my first language. Hope you like it (if you do, let me know cause I've already written like four parts, got excited lol)

Rescued and Restored - Part One

It was finally happening. Evie's beloved program to rescue all those children from the Isle of the Lost was finally up and running. The Second Chance Program.

After the Royal Ball and Uma's escape from the Isle, there had been several months of preparation. Ben appointed Evie as the King's Counselor, and she had never felt happier in her life. Due to her lack of experience in the field, Fairy Godmother enrolled her in some courses to help Evie learn and understand all the responsibilities that came with being a counselor. It was intense weeks of studying and classes, but Evie managed to impress everyone with her efficiency and organization in this royal position. And when she finally had time to discuss her ideas with Ben, the program for the children of villains was finally ready. She was finally able to make a difference, just as she had always dreamed.

Evie was proving to herself that she was not just a pretty face, as her mother had taught her all her life.

Being the King's Counselor helped Evie financially above all else. The salary was good, and with the profits that Evie 4 Hearts was generating, she managed to make a good deal for her first property. It was a cozy house, spacious enough to live in, host her friends, and work on her designs. It was everything Evie didn't know she had dreamed of.

After all, she wasn't a girl of grand castles. She discovered her love for small and cozy cottages. At least for now.

Jay, Carlos, and Mal helped with the move. Jay practically didn't leave since Evie's first night in her own home. The girl's wardrobe was gradually being taken over by pieces of Jay's clothing. It was the time of rest that both of them needed.

While Evie had all these responsibilities, Jay had now become a coach at Auradon Elementary School when he wasn't helping the blue-haired woman with the details of the villain kids' Program. He had never connected so well with children as he did with his team. The little ones adored him and had enough energy to last the entire week.

They never thought their lives would take such different turns than expected. They never envisioned a life completely free. And now, with the opportunity to offer that to other children, they couldn't be more excited.

"We have to meet Mal at the castle in an hour," Evie said, sitting next to Jay on the kitchen island. The four VKs would be meeting this morning for a discreet visit to the Isle of the Lost. Only Ben, their parents, and Fairy Godmother knew about it. They were going to the Isle to assess the number of candidates for the new project. Evie was eager. She forked a piece of her pancakes and murmured with satisfaction as she took a bite.

"Please tell me Ben isn't going this time," Jay joked, smiling as he saw Evie laugh. "Seriously, I couldn't handle another rescue so soon. I'm still recovering from the first one."

"Mal made sure he stayed at the castle this time," Evie replied, chuckling as Jay leaned in and buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing in her scent and giving a gentle kiss to her collarbone. "We do need a vacation, don't we?" She reached up to caress the cheek of the dark-haired boy with one of her hands.

"Desperately," Jay murmured, still leaning against the blue-haired girl. "Let's go to Neverland, or Agrabah..." After thinking about it, he said,"You know what? Let's go to both. And maybe the beach afterward."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Evie whispered, giving him a quick peck before they both returned to their breakfast.

It didn't take long for the four friends to be on the other side of the barrier. Before they began their actual work, Mal reminded them of the task at hand. "We need to attract as little attention as possible. We're here just to observe a sample of children who might be suitable for studying in Auradon. If they recognize us, it's fine, we can be polite, but we can't stay here longer than necessary."

"What about Uma's territory?" Carlos asked anxiously. They were never 100% at ease when they were on the Isle, too many enemies, and especially because it was their second time there without finding their parents. It wasn't something they wanted to do; no one was ready for that yet.

"While we're apart, we'll stay away from the pirates' territory. We'll do our assessment there together," the girl said. "The same goes for any place near our homes, unless you're willing to find your parents."

"Definitely not," Jay said, while Evie nodded. It was too soon.

"Alright, let's get to work then. We'll meet back here in 30 minutes," Carlos concluded, and the four young people separated to observe, talk to the children on the Isle, and learn what they thought about living in Auradon and having a new life.

It was a fierce battle. Half of them couldn't care less about the "land of princes and princesses," but the other half dreamed of the opportunity to be whatever they wanted with the endless possibilities of Auradon. Evie spent the 30 minutes doing just that, and to her relief, most of the children and teenagers she spoke to were excited about the program.

However, the return to the meeting point was not as quick as Evie had expected. She walked calmly and purposefully back to the designated spot when she heard muffled crying as she passed by Enoja's Shop. The daughter of the Evil Queen abruptly stopped to give it her attention. It wasn't uncommon to hear cries on the Isle of the Lost, but this one seemed much more fragile and desperate than usual.

She looked around a few times, searching for a child huddled in a corner but found nothing. That's when she noticed something moving inside a dumpster in front of the shop. Evie's heart squeezed as she walked closer, and the crying became more audible. She looked down, and the scene immediately brought tears to the princess's eyes.

Wrapped in tattered cloth was a baby, inside a trash bag, discarded in the dumpster as if it meant nothing. Evie knew it wasn't an accident. The child was tied and wrapped enough to conceal the living being within the garbage. It was intentional.

"Oh no..." the blue-haired girl whispered, a mix of anger and sadness flooding her heart as she reached out to pick up the baby.

"Evie!" she heard a familiar voice call out, but she didn't bother to look back. Her eyes remained fixed on the baby, who cried louder than ever. "We were all at the designated spot, and you didn't come back. We got worried," Jay said, not yet seeing the child Evie was trying to untie from the trash. "Evie, what are you doing..." He trailed off as he caught sight of the same sight as the girl. Jay furrowed his brow.

"Jay, help me. There's something tied around her neck," Evie's voice was choked up, and the young man quickly approached, carefully tearing apart the dangerously tied cloth from around the baby's neck. He fell silent, stunned, as she removed the trash bag from the small being squirming in desperation. "I just found her. It's a little girl."

"Was she just thrown there?!" Jafar's son questioned indignantly. He saw Evie nod without saying a word as a solitary tear slid down her cheek. She cradled the baby in her arms and sighed, her heart breaking as Evie tried to soothe her.

"What do we do?" Evie whispered, her voice barely audible, as Jay approached and ran his hand through her blue hair. She couldn't bear to leave the little, fragile baby there after what she had witnessed, and Jay felt the same way.

"We'll take her with us," he said gently. Evie nodded without hesitation, and the two of them returned to the meeting point of their four friends. Carlos was the first to notice the bundle squirming in the arms of the daughter of the Evil Queen. Jay's nervous expression didn't go unnoticed by the platinum-haired boy.

"Who is this?" he asked, and only then did Mal notice their friends.

"We're taking her with us," Jay said. "We found her in the dumpster in front of Enoja's Shop."

"Oh my God," Mal exclaimed. "Wasn't there anyone around?" She approached to get a better look and tried to read her best friend's expression, but Evie never took her eyes off the baby. It was Jay who guided her through the streets.

"No, she was wrapped up enough to not survive until tomorrow," Jay replied angrily, and Mal and Carlos exchanged glances, shaken. Nothing more was said. The four of them returned to the car they came in. Evie managed to calm the crying child on the way. She seemed more tired than hungry. And that's when Evie looked up to meet Mal's gaze.

"Can we get a pediatrician to visit her at home?" she said, her voice sounding more fragile than Mal had ever witnessed.

"Of course, E," Mal smiled, tucking a strand of blue curls behind her friend's ear, offering some comfort. "I'll let Ben know and ask him to bring the best."

"Thank you," Evie smiled.

(...)

"Have you drunk the water I brought you?" Jay asked, taking Evie's hands as she stared at the baby lying on her bed, being examined by an excellent pediatrician and two nurses. "I'm talking to you..."

"I had a little bit," Evie finally answered, looking into the eyes of the dark-haired boy. "I'm not very thirsty." Her voice still carried anxiety, and Evie's mind was a whirlwind of thoughts.

"Hey, look at me," Jay called her attention once again. "She's fine, we're safe now. You can relax." He pulled her into a hug, and Evie wrapped her arms around her boyfriend's waist, taking a deep breath and releasing all the adrenaline that was rushing through her body, calming down a little more.

"I know," Evie affirmed. "Thank you." She smiled, expressing gratitude not only for his recent words but for Jay's calmness and support when she was on the verge of losing it. He responded with a kiss on her forehead and took Evie's glass, heading to the kitchen.

"Well, Miss Grimhilde," the pediatrician began. "We're dealing with a mild case of malnutrition. The little one has a slight fever due to that. Therefore, for the next few days, we'll continue feeding her with breast milk, along with some regulated vitamins. You can retrieve the milk from our Auradon bank, and I believe your proximity to King Ben will help with the process. We've already brought the milk for today; you just need to pick it up tomorrow." The doctor explained while Evie nodded, paying attention to every detail.

"Can we determine her age?" the blue-haired girl asked.

"With the examinations we've conducted, we estimate that she's only about three weeks old, which makes her survival a miracle," the doctor surprised Evie with her response. "And that also means that the next few days will be a bit challenging. Will you be her temporary caregiver?"

"I believe so."

"Alright, since I already have your contact information, I'll provide you with further necessary care instructions for the baby over time," the pediatrician continued, writing her prescriptions on paper. "I'll also be available if you have any doubts."

"Okay, thank you very much," Evie smiled, bidding farewell to the medical team.

Once Evie was alone with the baby, she sat beside her, getting close to the little one. Now that all the adrenaline had subsided, Evie felt a mix of fear and excitement about the idea of temporarily caring for the baby.

She would never understand how such an angelic being could be discarded in the trash.

She began tracing the small features of the sleeping little being with her fingers. The sparse brown hair she had, her rosy cheeks, her tiny, pointed nose, and her rounded chin. Evie smiled, her heart filling with a warmth she had never felt before. She gently ran her fingers over the chubby little hands of the baby, plump even for a malnourished baby. And as she touched the baby's tiny feet, the baby squirmed as if tickled.

Evie's giggle caused the little one to slowly open her eyes, wriggling. "Oh, sorry for waking you, little miss," she whispered. Evie carefully picked up the baby and cradled her, placing her head against her chest, smiling as she heard the contented sigh from the little girl.

Jay slowly opened the door to the room, only to find Evie singing a lullaby while gently rocking the baby back to sleep. He smiled, quietly closing the door, giving them more privacy.

[marlo-noni]

Thank you @cynosurus for asking if I've ever written about my Mandarin learning journey, because I haven't, and I have stuff to say about it!

So, why and how did this middle-aged white lady learn Chinese? Here's the first part of that story, which focuses on why and how I started, and gets pretty introspective.

First of all, I was born and raised in the suburbs of Vancouver, Canada, and I've lived in Vancouver proper since 2003. We have a very large Chinese-Canadian population. As of 2009, about 30% of people in Vancouver have some Chinese ancestry.

I've always been really into languages. In my first year of university, I studied Latin, and the grammar was so difficult that I wasn't motivated to continue studying a dead language.

So in my second year, in 1999, I started studying Mandarin. I thought (1) it would be a challenge, (2) it's a very useful language to know in Vancouver, (3) I grew up around a lot of overt anti-Asian racism and wanted to combat that, and (4) I wanted to learn more about the Chinese culture that was always around me but that I knew practically nothing about. It also helped that my grandmother, always a free thinker, had been practicing tai chi since 1980 (the year I was born), and my grandparents went on a trip to China in the mid-90s and came back with interesting photos and stories.

I think it also must have been in the zeitgeist in the 90s that Asian culture was cool, and white people wanted to appropriate it. I was certainly into J-pop and anime by then, and I actually wore a qipao to grad (Canadian equivalent of senior prom) that I bought in Chinatown. If you've seen or read Scott Pilgrim, which takes place in Toronto (which also has a very large Chinese population) in the 90s, that gives you a bit of an idea of white Canadians' relationship with Chinese-Canadians at that time.

I say all this just to make it clear that although very few white people in my community studied Chinese back then, and one of the reasons I started studying it was anti-racism, I wasn't some galaxy-brained politically pure being. I had good intentions, but I still lived in that time and did a lot of the same ignorant stuff other white people did. I had Chinese friends, but I cringe when I think of some of the things I said to them and did back then. It has been a decades-long learning process for me.

I'm also very lucky that my university (the University of British Columbia, aka UBC) has an extremely robust Asian Studies program. My Chinese* classes were very intensive - 2 hours long, 4 times a week, with language labs on top of that (I can't remember anymore how long). We got 6 credits per semester instead of 3 because it was double the coursework and class time of a regular class. Because I intended to minor in Chinese, I also took Asian Studies classes, including a general overview of Asian history (2 semesters long), modern Chinese literature in translation, and early Chinese dynastic history.

I studied Chinese in university for 3 years. UBC had two Chinese language streams - one for "non-heritage" speakers, and one for "heritage speakers". They interviewed all the students beforehand to decide which stream we should be in. Being in the non-heritage stream made it nearly impossible to minor or major in Chinese, simply because it takes so long to learn. I would estimate we were only at HSK 2, approaching HSK 3, by the time my third year was done. But the fourth year, the last year, placed all the heritage and non-heritage students together, and the fourth-year classes were reading Chinese literature. One girl in my class, who'd lived in Taiwan before and was the best student in our class, went to speak with a fourth-year professor to ask if she could take his class because she wanted to minor in Chinese. He basically told her it would be impossible. I can understand the university's dilemma, though. I don't know how they teach it now - if they've ever come up with a solution. I think now there are probably more non-heritage students who studied Mandarin in high school. That simply wasn't an option when I was growing up.

The other thing is that I wasn't a great student in university, because I hadn't yet been diagnosed with depression and wouldn't be until my 5th year (I was also working part-time, so I did fewer classes and attended for an extra year). University was slowly making my mental illness worse until I finally had a breakdown in my final year. So my first year of studying Chinese, I got pretty good grades, but by my third year (fourth year of being in university), I was getting C+'s.

So by the time I was done university, I'd say I was at about HSK 2 level, and it was time for me to start working. From then on, any Chinese study I did would be self-study, and like many people's hobbies, my interest waxed and waned over time. More on that in future posts.

(*)at that time, UBC didn't teach Cantonese, even though the vast majority of the Chinese diaspora in Vancouver spoke it. I think that's been historically true for most West Coast cities in North America, although that has been changing. So the only option at that time was Mandarin. Also, we learned simplified characters.

[izicodes]

hi, i followed your blog for a while and i feel inspired with what you do.

so, back in my college, i took coding classes because i thought i really like coding. but since i've graduated, i didn't get any job that i can apply my knowledge. it's been 5 years and i kinda lose hope and stop coding. there's also many new language out there that i have to learn and i felt overwhelm. it stop me to learn.

i have another job now that has nothing to do with coding. any tips on what can i do?

thank you so much.

Hiya!

I’ve answered a similar post just a couple days ago { the post } you could see if that helps you!

Other advice I have is:

1. Find the job title you want. What work-life balance you want + what you would like to be doing (skills + interests) + what your goals are financially and career-wise = your dream job. I’m telling you to really think about it, not just “Oh a developer” but think how the job matches you. For instance, I wanted a job that involved programming websites, allowed me to work from home and pays good so I can save = Web Developer/Software Engineer.

2. Follow a roadmap for your learning: now you found the job title, learn the skills. But before you learn the skills, you need to know what skills to learn. Try roadmap.sh for most Computer Science based jobs and the route in learning to become the job(?) I don’t know how to word that sorry! But look around the website and follow a roadmap.

3. Now I don’t know what area in coding you want a job in, so I can’t recommend you specific resources for learning, but in the post I shared at the top, I listed most places you can learn coding and even earn certificates!

4. Get your LinkedIn top notch. Connect with random developers/engineers/tech-related recruiters. You don’t need to know them, just ‘connect’. That’s literally what I do!

5. Fix your CV/Resume. You don’t need to rely coding work experience, so even if you have none… ⬇️

6. A handful of good projects to showcase is even better!

7. If possible, find some free bootcamps that fit your schedule. If you’re in the UK, the Government has been giving out free 12-week bootcamps for the last 2 years now and I joined one to learn React, Node and Express - the tech I use in my job now! Find something similar in your country.

8. Most important of them all: be kind to yourself. I don’t know how the last 5 years has been treating you that you couldn’t find a coding job, but starting to put your head down and say “Enough is Enough” and work on yourself and skills to get that coding job you want is way better. The past is the past, we can’t do anything to change it. “Oh I wish I did this and that” no, focus on what you can change - your future. Don’t push this for later but get to planning and scheduling time to study, build projects, make mistakes but carry on, take breaks, repeat until you get yourself that interview for a job. Just don’t story until you reach your goal 🥅

Hope this helps~! 🙋🏾‍♀️✨🌸

[leilawoo]

Returning to Tumblr...

After some much needed time away from this site following the untimely loss of my original blog, I think I'm finally up for slowly rebuilding a semblance of what I had before. Although, I don't think there are as many artists on this platform as there used to be, so I doubt I'll be getting back up to over 1000 people to follow.

On my old blog I had an entire About page set up that one could get to on the desktop, but I don't think it ever once got seen so I'll make this a pinned post instead and include some short info below the read more.

I go by either Leila or Lupo. Just default to they/them with me (you can unlock extra pronouns through friendship :3). I've been using Lupo as part of my handle online for the longest time, so if you're looking for one to go with that's a safe choice.

This blog will primarily be filled with reblogs instead of original content, and mostly just of anime art (with sources of course, added by me if I have to). While I don't plan on having explicit stuff here (but it's not a non-zero chance), I'm just going to enforce that this should be considered an 18+ only space. If I think something is ecchi/nsfw/sensual it'll be tagged with #e (for ecchi); other sensitive topics will probably get a tag of some sort too.

#dalle dita del lupo = my text post tag

#dalla bocca del lupo = my ask tag

A little about me:

My most heavy interest is linguistics, specifically historical linguistics / philology, and conlanging. I'd love to talk about anything languages and if you want to know more about my conlangs please ask!

With my interest in languages came also the interest in learning to speak a foreign language. Sadly I am not fluent in any second languages yet. I had 4 years of Spanish in high school but I never used it so I've lost a lot of what I learned. I self-studied German and then Dutch to near B1 level after high school, even getting good enough at the former to understand most of what my German teacher would say when she would be teaching the class entirely in German in my intermediate classes at uni. But like with Spanish I have not used either of these languages consistently and lost a lot of what I gained. My current focus is learning Japanese, which I have been off and on at technically since middle school, but I am now taking it more seriously. Eventually I also want to learn Korean and some Chinese languages.

I got my Bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science with a computational emphasis, but this wasn't what I was accepted for in the beginning. That was Astrophysics. I'd like to return to school sometime soon to pursue higher degrees in CogSci and Linguistics, working toward doing research in what I'm calling Cognitive Computational Linguistics. I worked as a math tutor for community college and high school students for a while during my time as a community college and university student. My favorite subject to tutor was Statistics.

I'm looking to improve at programming in general but I lack any projects that I want to work on (I gained two ideas shortly after I made this post lol. They're both beyond my current ability but hey, they're something to aim for). I also only really know fundamentals in several languages and not enough to actually accomplish significant things with them. To be honest, I could really use an experienced mentor and some challenging projects to work on.

Hmm, not much else to say here. Thank you for reading, and I hope you'll stick around :3

よろしくお願いします～

[loser-female]

How do I get into cybersecurity? It looks fascinating but I don’t even know where to begin (for context, I am 28, have a BA in a completely unrelated specialization, and live in the US) 💛

Hi! I wasn't ignoring you, I just had shit days at work. Keep in mind that I work in EU and the labour market is different. I've heard a lot of lay-offs in the last few months but I have no idea if this involved cybersecurity positions or not. Also I'm a SOC Analyst specialising in Threat Intelligence. There are a lot of more positions to look out for, like if you are a lawyer you could go on the cyberlaw, privacy or auditing route.

Languages skills are appreciated a lot of you work in Threat Intelligence (I speak 4, currently learning Mandarin and my country sign language), coding skills are useful too.

Now, the usual path is:

1. Degree in computer science or software engineering (or math or physics, I did two years at physics)

2. You take a specialising course of some sort.

Some universities offers cybersecurity degrees I think (in my country it's a master's for example), and sometimes they might prepare you for CompTIA certs too. If you are lucky sometimes companies hire interns for like 6 months and they too make them study. My company did this... For the last interns. I had to be start my shifts after a month of learning lol. Idk if my manager threw a dice to choose between me and the other guy or if he noticed my ability.

I didn't follow that path, for various reason. I did a bootcamp and I took my certifications. But:

1. I've volunteered in a similar field for years and years (information research, debunking);

2. I speak 4 languages;

3. I did two years of physics before my health declined.

I do not recommend that part, because while I'm stupid good at my job, frankly my previous experience as volunteering did much more than any bootcamp.

Two points I feel I need make:

1. Certs. There are like an hundred or more, and it's a mess to figure it out. Plus it all depends what kind of role you want. Good news: most likely the company that will hire you will provide you access to few courses and the possibility to gain some of them, but IMHO taking a Sec+ or a Net+ is not a bad idea before looking for a job. While EC-Council is what HR looks at... Frankly let your company pay for it. Sec+ is like 350$ while a Ceh is 900$.

2. Downsides of my job - these are not talked enough imho.

-I work insane hours, I have two weekends free every two months because I work in shifts. I get paid more in my country (like I have a base hour rate and I get paid from 25% to 75% more of that rate if I like work on Christmas or a Sunday, nights get paid more obviously)

-I spend a significant amount of time studying and looking at news sites, social media to catch "the last news".

-Male environment. When I go to a conference I'm one of the like 20 women out of 1000, of which like 5 have a technical role like I do. It does make it feel like you are a freak even if no one is mean to you. I work from home, and I have only a female colleague - when I go to the office I'm the only woman out of 20 men. I love my colleagues and my manager, mind you, but if you are not in a good environment it's going to be a mess.

- Every company has a different set of tools, standards, programs etc that they use, and of you want to change job it can be hard to adapt.

-A SOC is a fast-paced environment and can be very stressful by nature, because it's a 24/7 service, and in certain parts of the day you can be inundated with alerts and issues to solve. And sometimes you have empty hours because nothing happens and it's boring.

- it's very important also to have soft skills because (like I did it today) you will be in charge of explaining what's going on to clients in a way that a 5 yo will understand, you will be in charge of projects, need to set enough time to study...

- You will meet people 1000x better than you are - and if you don't have the right mentality it's hard to deal with them, because you (well at least I do lol) will feel like an idiot and no one likes feeling like an idiot.

-Long hiring process. It took me a month from the first interview to be confirmed and two months to actually start - and this could really be a problem.

-Networking and connecting with others while it didn't land me a job definitely improved my skills, my credibility in the environment and who knows what else will happen in the future. Take what you can from others, most will be happy to share and help.

BUT!

Before committing you can try it with popular games such as Tryhackme or Hack The Box. They have learning environments where you can "play" and learn some basics. A real SOC or pen-test is like doing 10 of these challenges together but I had a lot of fun.

I hope this is enough! I tried to explain everything that someone considering a career in cybersecurity. Again, consider that I'm in Europe so this info might not be 100% accurate in the US.

[xuune]

Hi! I've been following you for a while (don't really remember why or when) and I love your art! I just wanted to ask:

What's your favorite and least favorite part of animation?

oh cool! thanks for sticking around for so long :) honestly, if you've been following me for some time now it might've been either bc of my fanart, oc art, or both haha

thats a big question which prompts for a big answer so here's me rambling about it below B)

when asking fave/least fave things abt animation, its hard to answer without getting in depth on a variety of things LOL. animation, as a medium and field, is very nuanced with its own concentrations so its kind of a disservice to not recognize those areas esp when the skills u learn have a lot of overlap on how it improves other areas of study

i had practice in some 2D/3D ani, storyboarding, visdev, 3D modelling. here's my general experience with all of those:

2D

fave: figuring out how movement is created, rough animation stage, analyzing and figuring out timing/spacing, esp love the fact that you are creating motion, not pretty illustrations to gawk at, seeing the entire ani come together at the end feels very rewarding

least: cleanup and colors lol, feels very time consuming. if im gonna spend time making lines clean, id rather do that with an illustration piece

3D (in maya)

fave: can rely on the program to do the heavy lifting while you do the keys and adjustments, doing 3d actually enhanced my understanding of how the body moves in motion and space and where drag, follow thru, overshoot could be applied in both 2d/3d

least: i dont get to draw :( majority of my experience in the adjustment process is looking at a mass nebula of graphs and figuring out where i fucked up or smoothing out areas and fixing it. prefer 2d since i can just redraw what looks wrong vs scavenging thru multiple graphs. also modelling the key poses can feel like it takes forever vs drawing it

storyboarding

fave: creating strong, key story beats, keeping drawings rough when possible, shorthanding drawings, researching reference for shot compositions + studying them

least: can be very hard figuring out how to fill in the gaps between certain beats, easy to become uninspired/uncertain abt a sequence drawn

visdev

fave: seeing the final piece come together, figuring out composition, blocking in values/shapes, character design, research phase/looking for references and creating moodboards

least: i hate doing backgrounds lol. complexity affects how much i'll end up dreading it. personally not a fan of working on pieces for very long. im also not a fan of constantly doing paintings/bgs as a job

3d modelling (in maya)

fave: painting the model and texturing it, uv mapping and arranging it

least: the modelling part. fuck up 1 part and you fuck up the rest, you'd have to restart from square 1 or be lucky enough that you had a previous save before the fuck up. a proper process matters a lot in saving yourself the pain and headache from fixing everything (i redid a model that i worked on for 3 wks 4 times bc of my fuck ups)

overall, as a field of study

fave: its fun getting surrounded by others who can talk the same language as you do. ive always wanted to be around people who can get as hyped up and excited over discussing and analyzing story and animation, since i didnt have that with some of my other friends or family members. i've also been able to build proficiency in variety of programs too, which is useful. working in a team project is fun if you've got the right kind of ppl and that makes the experience fun when you the project finished. i've worked on various short films for rough animation, and i always love seeing the final film/composited shot and going "i worked on that part!! look at how nice it turned out with the rest of it! whoever did the [cleans/colors/compositing] did so good!!" i think my biggest satisfaction in this field is understanding the why and how something works (i.e. why/how does this animation effectively sell its movement? what makes these boards convey strong story moments? what about this composition is so appealing? why does this story beat matter to the rest of it? why do i/what makes me care about these characters?) it can easily deter people, but this field's a huge time commitment and youre constantly evolving your own craft. it doesnt come easy to everyone, but when you start seeing your own mileage, it feels very rewarding and pays off

least: industry's hard to get into lol, its kinda like that no matter where you go and once youre graduated, the time you spend in limbo is primarily working on your portfolio and catering to studios you wanna get into. its also easy to get the impression that being a "somebody" and maintaining a reputation matters to just increase your chances and connections of getting a job. that shits hard to deal with when youre not the most extroverted person on the planet, and even if your classmates do know you, are you gonna be the one that they end up talking about constantly or regarded highly a lot? names spread within circles, and it can feel like a competition to just get yourself known. its very easy to beat yourself up over seeing other people's work too. we're desperate, we're starving, we want our work to be acknowledged and validated, we want a job that satisfies our creative needs.

this field is incredibly demanding and its more than just having fun and drawing pretty pictures when much of it is a collaborative effort for a project. the disciplines you learn will majority of the time, without a doubt, will be applied for a larger team. at the same time, what you learn has overlap into other areas too which is always fun when you have this moment of "holy shit, i get it now"

[hikaritranslations]

Hello :0c, I love your translations! I was wondering what program you use to translate them. (Or does someone else translate it?)

I actually use several to double check work! Funny enough, though I recently discovered another rather amazing site that does this for free as well as one I do plan to use to pay for to help further my studies! (Kanji still trips me up but the break didn't help xD)

I'll start with the latter first, I'm currently studying under WaniKani.com, an AMAZING site that works with you online to really get the kanji down and explains them in such simple terms that it's actually been fairly easy for me to understand! They do a rather reasonable amount of teaching for free so you can do the trial and see if it's something that will stick with you before paying for the full amount.

You get to use it for free up until Level 4 but even lessons 1-3 are very useful for someone learning the language! To equivalate that it's a full school year's worth of Kanji and for the JLPT N5 test about 55% needed to know for it. Quite a helpful source if I say so myself! (NOT sponsored by the way! Just really impressed with the program so far!) Next would be actually using Google translate to draw out the sentences so I have a better understanding in writing them, if I write them down, they tend to stick better for me so I use this method quite frequently. There are occasionally some that are VERY complex, as I'm sure you as a reader would be aware of if you have seen the originals in their beautiful form, from there I go to Jisho.org! A completely free site that let's you narrow down the kanji via stroke order and even look further into sentence structures/ words that have that specific kanji, ect. It's been a GODSEND for years in my work and research. Finally, last one is a recent addition to my help links in referencing and understanding the structure of sentences completely. How to make them appear more fluid and readable to those of us who understand English easier. This wonderful site is known as DeepL Translate. Now, there are two versions of it that I'm aware of and so far it has been 100x's more intuitive compared to Google in translation and sentence wording! Impressive since it was designed by a much smaller company in EU. You can use either free or if you find it's worth the price, Pro depending on your situation. I'm only operating on the free version so far and I'm finding that this is currently all I need to help reword and restructure sentences to make them more cohesive to English speakers/readers. So, to recap, I write down what I know in Google translate, research what I don't on Jisho, copy and paste those into GT and once I have the complete sentence, I move over to DeepL to double check my findings along with wording of the story so it shows the same fluidity that it would in the original creation! It's VERY time consuming but a HUGE amount of fun for someone like me who desperately wants to keep the integrity of the artist's work intact but ensure others in the audience can experience it first hand! I do plan to implement these and other methods as I go from here since it's been quite some time since I've been able to return due to circumstances beyond my control but hopefully this will give you a small idea to what I use primarily for translating assistance. And yes, unfortunately I am but one person doing all of the editing, translating, and polishing for each one individually so it does take quite a bit of time to accomplish xD

[chemblrish]

hi i dont think you'll read this and answer cause i didnt saw any answers on asks but i really want to ask something to you, also sorry here is may be mistakes english is not my first language, and for very long ask lol

my dream is to be a chemist, when i was a child i was really surprised and excited when i discovered that my dad was working in lab with oil, he is a chemist too. I thought as a joke that i want to follow his steps and be a chemist too. But i grew up, so this is not joke anymore. I hope my father will proud of me :D i love chemistry SO MUCH

What i wanted to ask,

1. i have really bad phobia of planets, galaxy, etc. astrophobia in short. Was you learning about astronomy in lessons? Is there any photos of planets?

2. Who are you studying? Just curious :]

3. Do you need to know biology and physics good?, i am not lover of these sciences, i can be tho

4. Is it hard? Want to connect profession with pharmaceutica(idk how to spell), i heard pharma is hardcore

Hi there! No worries, I answer everything that shows up in my inbox + English isn't my first language either :)

It's great that your dad is a chemist, it seems you're going to get lots of support, so that's definitely something to cherish and appreciate! I'm sure he'll be proud of you. Whenever somebody pops up in my notifications saying they want to study chemistry too, I get very happy, and I'm not even a mom, so I can only imagine how excited scientist parents get when their children want to pursue science too haha.

I didn't study any astronomy at all! I did have to pass a physics course but there was zero astronomy there, save for a picture of Earth during a lecture on gravity.

I'm afraid I don't understand this one, sorry! :(

Biology - no, given that you pick "pure" chemistry. I think it's a common misconception that biology and chemistry are very similar but that's not entirely true. Biologists do need to know some chemistry, chemists don't necessarily need biology. You say you're interested in pharmacy though, so something like medicinal chemistry or biochemistry might be a better choice for you. In that case - yes, there will be quite a lot of biology. I study "just" chemistry, so I can't tell you much about these other majors, but my uni offers a medchem program and I know they have to take courses like general biology, human physiology, microbiology, immunology, molecular biology, cell chemistry, and many more. Physics - well, there is some physics in chemistry (in a way, chemistry is a branch of physics... I think a lot of the time chemistry is just wet physics). Chemists are mostly interested in thermodynamics, some quantum physics and modern physics in general, but some aspects of the other branches pop up here and there occasionally too. Besides, speaking from experience, physics should be learnt in layers: classical mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, then modern physics. Otherwise, it can get hard to understand everything properly. Don't be intimidated though. I think if you're determined and disciplined enough, you'll be fine. I had very little knowledge in physics before uni, but I worked very hard throughout the semester and got pretty decent grades + I definitely saw a lot of progress in my understanding of the field, so that's totally doable.

"Hard" is highly subjective haha. Personally, I think it all comes down to discipline, commitment, and the right priorities; but here where I live chemistry is famously one of those majors that knock out over half of all the students within the first semester, and I'm really not sure how that happens lol. So far, chemistry has been reasonably hard for me, but with consistency and enthusiasm it has not been overwhelming or extremely difficult to get through. Medchem / pharma are a different story, or so I think. I can't really compare though, because I've never been involved in this sort of thing + honestly... I don't like biology, so I wouldn't be objective anyway ahaha. Any pharmacy students on board? Would you like to share your experience?

[minilpark]

hi :) - i was just thinking about what languages the top gun maverick pilots can speak ... and you're the first person i thought of to ask. feel like you have quite a good grasp on them (i say that as if i've already watched it. i haven't). not sure if you even do something like this 🙈

oh my god wait i feel so honoured i was the first person you thought of to ask- i'll do my best but a majority of these pilots will probably be similar

1. rooster

so in his file that appeared on screen closer to the beginning of the movie, we see he has a proficiency in spanish! i'm not sure how well he is in speaking it but he did study it so there's that. i definitely think he has an opportunity to improve if he talks to fanboy or is stationed in spanish speaking countries though!

2. hangman

concerning jake, i think he would know spanish as well. i like to think that jake's known a bit of spanish since high school, but not through taking classes, more so just passive learning through people he's met or interacted with (i def believe he grew up in texas like glen powell). he only really started becoming fluent in college and when he got stationed to spanish speaking countries.

3. phoenix

besides speaking spanish, (i think she'd already be proficient in it because i think nat is part latina-) phoenix probably learned a bit of french as well (don't ask how i know i just have a feeling) but she doesn't use it as much as she does with spanish so she's starting to forget it

another language she totally learned was asl! i like to think she has a cousin and aunt who are deaf and hard of hearing (respectively) so she learned from them and practices it often.

4. bob

now i fully believe bob was enrolled in a spanish immersion program in elementary school so he's fully fluent. his parents thought it would be a useful skill considering how common it's spoken.

besides spanish, bob learned asl in high school and continued those studies in college. he practices often with phoenix and sometimes the two gossip or talk shit through sign

5. fanboy

fanboy knows spanish, bUT i like to think he also learned tagalog too since the languages are somewhat closely related! plus he was stationed in manila for a while (my hc, idk if he actually was). he even made some filipino friends while he spent time in the Philippines and he keeps in touch with them.

6. payback

i feel like payback has been stationed a bunch of places and picked up and learned a lot of languages. however, before leaving the states he learned spanish through classes (which aren't always the best) and improved his skills being stationed in a spanish speaking country. then he learned some russian (and lost it), learned german (and lost that too lmao), and lastly he was stationed in japan for a while before going stateside so he had to pick up japanese.

i would say the only language he can speak now is spanish, but he still understands some things in the others he's learned (especially japanese).

7. coyote

i think coyote learned spanish at a later age but once he picked it up he worked hard to keep it fresh in his mind and he converses a lot with the crew too. besides spanish, i think javy learned portuguese because he has some family from portugal and he wanted to be able to talk to them without his mom translating :)

[nereb-and-dungalef]

Y'know I realize I should probably just,,, have a masterpost explaining how I learned Russian in case anyone asks. Because "memorizing rock opera lyrics" isn't a lie but it's not the whole story so like. Here it is below the cut

Disclaimer Russian is the only language I've self-studied to a B2, so yeah not a lot of experience but maybe this'll still help someone somewhat. Hmu if you ever need Russian materials or anything mentioned here I am more than happy to help

Lemme start from before the beginning like

6 years ago (2016) I learned the Cyrillic alphabet to recognize the names of Silmarillion characters in fanart and realized that Finrod-Zong exists

4 years ago (2018) NAQT put out a list of Russian language short stories to read for Quizbowl. I went and read a fuckton of Gogol then Master and Margarita and Crime and Punishment landing myself in the Russian literature fandom

3 years ago (2019) I decided to solidly go at it after learning about the concept of a critical language and how speaking Russian gets you state department kudos

How I went about it:

Started making Anki cards with the list of 10000 most common Russian words. Got bored of it.

Realized I could make Anki cards from Phobs comics and started learning some absurdly niche shit. Accepted that if I was gonna be fluent in Russian I had to learn this absurdly niche shit at some point and should not torture myself over what was useful or not. 100% recommend

Did the same thing with Chekhov short stories and famous Master and Margarita quotes

Tried to get into Finrod but watched the 2010 version and didn't love it. Learned the first stanza of the Oath of the Sons of Fëanor anyway

Applied to the NSLI-Y program to study Russian abroad

Discovered Epidemia. Fëanor was the first song I memorized. Tried to speak Russian with a Ukrainian guest using words I'd learned from Fëanor. It was not pretty

Worked through the FSI fast course. 100% recommend, they have free textbooks for beginners in a metric fuckton of languages

Started using HelloTalk and making my language partners' text messages into Anki cards

Fucking everything was an Anki card, I made cards out of the airplane interface when I switched the language to Russian, so much random shit

Also shout-out to Drops, I used the free version and it fucking slapped

Had a Russian guest for a week who didn't speak English and we had a few rudimentary conversations

Discovered Последнее Испытание, memorized a few songs, started watching Evgeny Egorov concerts in class every day, went down the Russian musicals rabbit hole and started watching musicals constantly regardless of whether or not I understood anything

Started listening to music only in Russian, discovered shit like КиШ and Ария

Had a Russian dinner guest who I bonded with over Russian musicals. Decided PI lyrics were a perfectly valid way to communicate. Memorized some more

Met some Russian visitors who overestimated my Russian ability a ton and were super willing to speak with me in Russian and it was just such an ego boost, we bonded over bands and they recommended a bunch more 80s shit

Got rejected from NSLI-Y, coronavirus was declared pandemic, my phone deleted all my Anki cards, didn't do any Russian at all for like a month

Started taking italki lessons

Attended every possible virtual Russian concert (one of the plus sides of covid), would read the chat and repeat stuff other people said like "огонь!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥" "браво! супер!!! 👏👏👏👏" and "*машет фонариком*" it was an entire vibe I loved it

Made a goal to finish Master and Margarita by Halloween

Basically spent the rest of the year getting deeper into Russian musical subculture and reading random shit, started reading Russian fanfic and got a ficbook account, got like 30% of the way through M&M by Halloween and then basically got burned out and gave up on it and started jumping around reading the first chapters of different random Russian books instead

Throw in some movies and cartoons and stuff

Discovered the Lay of Leithian rock opera and became fucking obsessed

Translated it (not very well) and subtitled the soundtrack

Got accepted to NSLI-Y and decided to get my Russian As Good As Possible before the OPI, resumed Master and Margarita and some other stuff

OPI result was intermediate high (equivalent to B1)

Subbed the LoL stream with a better translation

Went to Moldova uwu

In the first month I read Eugene Onegin and The Little Prince in Russian and finished Master and Margarita

Read Crime and Punishment and another book the next month and became totally burned out re: reading

But it's ok bc I was still doing four hours of Russian class a day and I was there for like eight months so you kinda can't not learn

Made a noun case chart to stick in my phone case. Noun case phone case. That plus a formal education in grammar plus daily practice meant I actually learned noun cases

Kept a diary (kinda). Fun to look back and see progress

Read like two more books

I also tried to make friends with locals as much as possible

Started watching interviews with Russian musical stars, realized I could understand a fuckton and my Russian was like actually useful at this point

Got back home and got advanced mid on my OPI (B2 equivalent) which was kinda just,,, yeah what I was expecting. So yeah it's language plateau time for me yeehaw but at least my Russian is functional and I can say I speak it without feeling like an imposter

Uh yeah that's all I can remember

Random advice and stuff if you care:

I uh. Probably have ADHD and. It can work to your advantage if you jump between hyperfixations. This technique works especially well with languages because there's just so much out there and no difference between reading one thirty chapter book vs the first chapter of thirty different books. You don't have to complete a single goal or finish a single thing to the end, just find a handful of things to hyperfixate on and you're set (for me it was Tolkien, musicals, ruslit, and Soviet rock, there was enough variety that I always had something new to run through)

I pretty quickly embraced not understanding a word of Russian and made up a game called "foreigner describes the plot of a Russian musical without knowing a word of Russian" that I kinda miss now that I speak it. Some people swear by only consuming things you understand but it's such a struggle to seek it out and really was best for me to just follow my interests

Your brain has a Very good mechanism for understanding the difference between registers, so don't worry about over exposing yourself to antiquated/obscure material as long as you have other input. Your brain will sort the words into their place on its own, I promise you will not go around talking like Pushkin just bc all you read is Pushkin. Worst case scenario is: all words learned from Pushkin + brain understands these are not conversation words = brain prevents you from talking at all. But as long as you have at least like 10% conversational input your brain will go "oh I heard a Pushkin word in the wild! That means we can say it now!" and since putting a word into a new box is much easier than creating a new word entirely the Pushkin (or rock operas or whatever have you) will ultimately help a lot

If language advice is telling you to stop doing something you enjoy, disregard it. Better to do something inefficient that you like than nothing at all

Have fun have fun have fun. It's ok to sometimes be tired (that's when you're learning the most) but you should never be bored on purpose

Balance reading, listening, writing, and speaking. How you do that is up to you but basically if you get tired of one type of learning or feel like it's no longer helping, try out another and mix things up. All skills feed into each other so it's good to have at least a bit of a mix.

The first few months are the most grueling, there's not as much coasting involved and every day you have to basically choose to learn. So like, try to have some sort of habit at least at first. My personal technique with Czech was to just marathon it for a month until I could actually understand a few words of natural input so idk maybe that's a good idea but time will tell. Most important is to stick with it however you can

Controversial take: passive input (things you can consume while multi tasking that don't demand full attention) is hella important. Maybe you're not in the headspace to do flashcards but you can at least listen to a musical while cooking. Passive input will get you pretty dang far on low spoon days so it's a good thing to put your stat points into. It's nice to have a textbook for active studying bc it is technically more efficient, but a fuckton of music, fanfic, podcasts, and whatever else are a must have esp if you're busy or have executive dysfunction

If you don't force grammar on yourself you might actually start liking grammar

Understand that linguistic features exist ultimately for ease of communication and not to frustrate you. If you're morally opposed to a rule, figure out why it would be helpful instead of letting frustration get in your way

All this is suggestions and if you disagree with me please go with your own instincts bc you do ultimately know what's best for you, I'm not you so I can't actually tell you how to do this

Ask yourself "what do I think would help me most right now" then go do that. Yes right now. You can do this I believe in you.

Also if any of my Russian blorbos sounded appetizing to you hmu I'll give you a reading list

[virunathestarbaby]

Sorry if these were asked before.

👪🍁📸✏️📏📎 for Otoha :)

OOHH MANY💕

LETTUCE STAART >:3

👪 FAMILY - what is their family like? what is your ocs relationship to them? does your oc have any siblings?

>>Otoha doesn't really have a biological family. At least she doesn't consider them to be her family anymore since they often abused her and neglected her. Heck, they didn't even give her a proper name and just called her whatever.

She does however, consider A, B, Watari, L, Mello, Near, Matt, and Nini to be her family though along with the other children at Wammy's as time went by.

Luckily and fortunately, she now has a family she could call her own with Matsuda and they have 4 energetic children (minus their youngest, Aito— he's as energetic as L)

🍁 MAPLE LEAF - what is their favourite season? why?

>> I don't think Otoha has a favorite season, but if she were to choose a hated season, she absolutely despises summers in Japan especially with all the cicadas and beetles and all sorts of bugs that are available during the season.

📸 CAMERA - do they enjoy having their picture taken? what's their go-to pose? do they like taking photos? what do they take photos of?

>> OH YES, Otoha loves getting her picture taken. She loves doing all sorts of poses, but she usually poses suggestively, or in a sort of sexy way especially if she's in a sexy outfit. Mirror selfies is what she loves most.

She also likes taking photos but unlike her selfies and photos of herself, she likes taking "in-the-moment" photos, aka candid photos and stolen photos. L is stacking sugar cubes? Photo taken! Matsuda sleeping on the couch? Photo taken! Nicole getting lost in her writing? Photo taken!

✏️ PENCIL - is there a particular quote / lyric that you associate with them?

>> I got multiple!!

"I know, I've heard that to let your feelings go, Is the only way to make friendships grow. But I'm too afraid now. " - Sia, unstoppable.

"Not your Barbie girl, I'm livin' in my own world. I ain't plastic, call me classic. You can't touch me there, you can't touch my body. Unless I say so, ain't your Barbie, no. " Not your Barbie girl, Ava Max.

"Who am I supposed to be? When will they be proud of me? It's getting harder to see. " Worthless, Eli.

"My family always said I was the bad child. Throwing me away into the bad pile. " Tones and I, Bad Child.

"Cause I feel like I'm the worst so I always act like I'm the best. " Oh no, Marina and the Diamonds.

I have more but like, I'll just keep this short hshs.

📏 RULER - is your oc well educated? where did they get their learning from?

>> Let me be honest, Otoha isn't the sharpest tool im any shed or toolbox, nuh-uh. She's educated but she's not that smart. She struggles with academics and finds it really hard to focus whenever she took classes at Wammy's, and since she often daydreams and her focus is elsewhere, she often gets punished by the teachers. While she always fails her classes, she's still got brains enough to function as a normal human being. She knows basic math and science, language studies is one of the few she excels at along with information technology where she sharpened her skills in hacking and programming. She's really bad at writing essays, explaining, complicated math equations and science.

She honestly didn't know where her programming and hacking skills came from but it was a natural talent of hers and the reason she got to stay at Wammy's. Hadn't she shown signs of her skills in this field she would have bean sent off to be adopted.

📎 PAPERCLIP - a random fact.

>> can I give multiple? HSHHS

- Otoha likes ramen. It is the only thing she can cook without burning it or the kitchen.

- Despite always rocking her heels, flawlessly walking and running while wearing high heels, whenever she's wearing flat shoes or just barefoot, she trips. Hard.

- She gets lost easily. Not just because she doesn't have a sense of direction and bad memory, but she also gets distracted with a lot of stuff and she often ends up straying away from her original path.

[cookinguptales]

I've a small query (if it doesn't float your boat, no worries!) I was interested in how you got into learning languages, what led you to it? I've become curious since learning a new language as an adult has only increased my awe of multilingual folk (additionally, I vaguely remember a post about a request in exchange for a donation to charity, and wondered if there were any you'd like a donation to)

First of all, good luck with the language learning! It’s not easy as an adult, but I do think it’s worth it, both in terms of cultural fluency and brain elasticity.

My answer to the language thing is actually extremely complicated, so I’ll be putting it under the cut. I’ll put the charity stuff above the cut so more people can see it.

— I’d just like to warn you, though, before I start, that I have been locked in this house for over a month with no respite and I HAVE A LOT OF WORDS AND FEELINGS IN ME SO THIS POST HAS SO MANY OF BOTH OF THOSE THINGS!!

anyway

There are so many charities that I want to donate to now that it honestly makes my head spin. Every time I look at a site like GoFundMe it kind of makes me want to cry. So a lot of donations I’ve made have been to like local businesses, restaurants, etc. who will close down without help. (Also a lot of local native groups, who are disproportionately suffering right now.) I’ve also been donating to various food banks — Philabundance, a Philly-centric charity that deals with food insecurity in general, is a good one. That was a regular of mine even before the outbreak. I’ve also donated to a lot of the local services in the small town where I’m in now, though you’ll need to PM me if you want the name of that. (It’s… very small.) 

Off Their Plate is another great charity that’s been working with small restaurants (who can’t open for business) to get food to first responders. They’re partnered with World Central Kitchen, which is another fantastic charity that helps out during disasters. Plus well-known ones like Feeding America, No Kid Hungry (important while school is out and kids aren’t getting breakfast/lunch there), Direct Relief, etc.

(I uhhh may have overstrained my charity budget the past couple months. It’s odd how that adds to stress and relieves it at the same time.)

I tend to avoid religious charities, especially Salvation Army, because they’re occasionally discriminatory in how they distribute resources and we no longer have laws & oversight to make sure they don’t do shady shit. So I just avoid them in general now. I also avoid the American Red Cross because they’ve been known to misuse funds. Research is key!

I also worry about some of my regular charities, like Immigration Equality & Rainbow Railroad (helps LGBTQ people in dangerous countries immigrate to less dangerous ones), the Native American Rights Fund, various local abortion funds, RAICES (provides legal services to immigrants & refugees), the ACLU, Dysautonomia International, the Rainforest Action Network, etc… A lot of them are getting fewer donations than they’re used to because we’re in the middle of such life-shattering events.

If you are really interested in making a donation (please, please, please do) those are all good options. I also fully recommend looking up needy organizations, services, people, etc. in your own area. I try to donate to a healthy mixture of national/international organizations, local needs, and temporary issues du jour. (Disaster relief, bail funds for protesters, fighting new discriminatory laws, etc.) I would genuinely appreciate any donations, especially if you find a cause near and dear to your heart that I would never even hear about. Anything along these same lines, y’know? If you have anything you’d like me to do in return, just hmu.

I constantly stress about who to donate to — there are so many good organizations and so few dollars to give them — but at a certain point, every dollar to a cause you believe in counts. Every dollar you donate helps to make the world a little bit better for at least one person. That’s what I have to tell myself to calm myself down, haha. So even the smallest donation you make to any of these groups would mean a lot to me.

Anyway, onto the language stuff:

For me personally, I grew up bilingual. Deafness runs in my family, so I learned sign language from a very young age. Note: I say “sign language” rather than ASL. I learned sign language kind of organically, which ended up making a mess later in life. My parents mostly taught me, but so did my daycare (at a deaf school) and so did my babysitters and so did other family members, etc. The point is, not all of them used the same sign language. There was a wide mixture of ASL, SEE, and home signs and my current signing style is… problematic. lmao. My family all understands it (hey, they taught it to me) and I can have conversations with American sign language users, but I know they can’t love my signing lmao. I’ve considered sitting down and taking a legit ASL class for years, but there are so many classes I want to take… I don’t know.

After that, it largely became a case of taking languages whenever they were made available to me. I’ve always liked them. We moved around a lot when I was a preteen so I went to a lot of different schools. (4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade were all different schools.) It was rough at home and hard to make friends so I guess I threw myself into academics a lot. My sixth grade school was an odd one; it was a 6-8 grade school and you were supposed to take a crash course in three different languages in sixth grade so you could choose one and take it in 7th and 8th grade. I ended up taking Spanish, French, and German that year. I liked French best! But then we moved so it was kind of moot. (And I hated German, sorry Germans. My mouth doesn’t like the noises. It didn’t help that my teacher was weirdly sympathetic to Nazi-era Germany…? But I guess that’s another post.)

When we moved to Florida, you had to have special permission to take language classes in 7th grade. (FL doesn’t have great academics.) But since I’d already had some Spanish in NC, they let me take it! And then I moved schools again. This new school, my 8th grade school, I’d be in until I graduated 12th grade years later — but the employee turnover at that school was almost comedically bad?  I took Spanish for like a year and a half there and had three different teachers. So at this point I’d had 5 different Spanish teachers, all from different countries (where they spoke slightly different Spanish!), all reteaching the same ideas over and over again because they didn’t know where the last teacher had left off. In the end, my last Spanish teacher sent me to the school library with some textbooks because he felt like I was very good at languages and he couldn’t adequately teach me in the environment he’d been thrown into. (My high school was very terrible. So he was right.)

SO I SWITCHED TO FRENCH. I took French for 3-4 years in high school (can’t remember when I started) but the same shit started happening. By the last year, my French teacher had the French I, II, III, and IV students IN THE SAME CLASS and she just put the advanced students in small groups and had us do independent study. Sigh… Around this same time, I started three other languages. At this point, I was getting kind of accustomed to self-study so I applied for a Latin class in the Florida Virtual School and took a year of that. I also spent a summer studying at the University of Chicago when I was 16-17 and learned Middle Egyptian then. (Yes, I was an ancient cultures nerd even back then.)

The Japanese has always been an odd case. Like I said, my 8-12 education was fairly terrible. They had this thing where they used a computer program to teach kids math and the teacher kind of taught along? When I transferred to the school in the middle of 8th grade, the teacher didn’t know what to do with me so he just plopped me in front of a computer and told me to do as much as I could. They started me in… Pre-Algebra, I think? Which I’d already taken in sixth grade. So I ended up getting through Pre-Algebra, Geometry, Algebra, and Algebra II, which… wasn’t in the teacher’s plans. I’d kind of finished several years of math in like a quarter. And then they didn’t have any more classes. So he just told me to like. Sit quietly and amuse myself for the last few months of school?? (Terrible, terrible school.) So I went to the library and found a book about Japanese and started teaching myself that. I really, really liked Japanese! Like it’s a language that just clicks really well with the way my brain works, I think. It’s very logical, I like the syllabary, etc. And I think growing up signing helped me with pictographic languages like Middle Egyptian and Japanese. My brain easily connects visual symbols with concepts.

When I went to college, the plan was honestly to learn more Egyptian and start translating, and I kept taking French to help me read old research in various ancient study fields. I ended up transferring out of the NELC major, though, due to some ethical problems… I guess that’s another post. Several years into my RELS/FOLK degree I went to my parents like. Look. I love learning this stuff but none of it’s useful. Remember how much I loved Japanese? Can I go back to learning that? I could translate that and that’s a legit skill. So I applied to a program through my school and studied in Japan for a while and ended up really doubling down on that language. Weird how I came back to it years later, but I guess it was always the one I loved best.

I have a mind that’s very pattern-based, so I guess I’ve always loved learning languages and the patterns behind them. (This may be why languages with a lot of rule exceptions, like French, irritate me.) They’re like puzzles that I’ve always enjoyed teasing out. Unfortunately, the way my education bounced around meant that I never got a good grounding in most of those languages, so I’ve largely lost them. I can still read French fairly well and my Japanese is good… My Spanish is like. Enough to get me around in the southern US. My German is abysmal. I remember very little Latin & Middle Egyptian. (It’s been over 10 years, I guess.)

So I guess what I feel the need to say to you is that if you don’t use it, you will lose it. I did well in all my language classes. They’ve always been fairly easy for me. Like. Straight As, no problem. I don’t say this to brag. I say it so you know that even for someone like me, whose brain is fairly well-wired for languages, it’s very, very difficult to retain languages when you’re not using them. If you’re not used to taking languages or you started late in life, it’s even harder. So even on the days you don’t want to practice! You gotta practice! Ganbare! Bon chance!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

I'VE BEEN PONDERING STOCK

And are English classes even the place to do it. By definition they're partisan. Would the transplanted startups survive?1 One of the best in the business. The other reason the number of startups started within them. Do they let energetic young people get paid market rate for the work they do.2 They don't always, of course: insurance, business license, unemployment compensation, various things with the IRS. But if I have to pause when I lose my train of thought. For a lot of people who get rich through rent-seeking of various forms, and a research director at Smith Barney. An essayist can't have quite as little foresight as a river. And so began the study of ancient texts had such prestige that it remained the backbone of education until the late 19th century.3 But can you think of one restaurant that had really good food and went out of business and the people would be dispersed.

A wimpy little single-board computer for hobbyists that used a TV as a monitor? Most people who publish online write what they write for the simple reason that they want to own, and the harder performance is to measure, the more we'll see multiple companies doing the same thing.4 At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times reporters on their cell phones; a graphic designer who feels physical pain when something is two millimeters out of place. But only graduation rates, not how much students learn. That's the key to success as a startup founder, but that you should never shrink from it if it's on the path to something great. I seemed awkward and halting by comparison.5 And they're going to be developing it for people like you. And since all the hackers had spent many hours talking to users, we understood online commerce way better than anyone else. Almost by definition, if a startup succeeds its founders become rich.6 The main reason they want to. One is that the raison d'etre of all these institutions has been the same: to beat the system. Wodehouse or Evelyn Waugh or Raymond Chandler is too obviously pleasing to seem like serious work, as reading Shakespeare would have been there without PR firms, but briefly and skeptically.

This does happen. This is called seed capital. This seems a common problem. Remember the exercises in critical reading you did in school, where you can spend as long thinking about each sentence as it takes to say it, a person hearing a talk can only spend as long on each sentence as it takes to say it, a person hearing a talk can be a powerful force. And the days when VCs could wash angels out of the picture. Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back?7 Like most startups, ours began with a group of friends, and it was only then I realized he hadn't said very much. If anyone proved a theorem in christian Europe before 1200, for example, by helping them to become smarter or more disciplined, which then makes them more successful.8

Sometimes I even make a conscious effort to remind oneself that the real world you can create wealth as well as as apportioning the stock, you should either learn how or find a co-founder. Our offices were in a wooden triple-decker in Harvard Square.9 But this is a situation where it would really be an uphill battle. For a lot of investors unconsciously treat this number as if it were a single phenomenon. Reading P. You have more leverage negotiating with VCs than you realize.10 Usually this is an assumption people start from rather than a conclusion they arrive at by examining the evidence. We should fix those things.11 For example, in a recent essay I pointed out that because you can only judge computer programmers by working with them, no one knows in programming who the heroes should be. For example, the question of the relative merits of Ford and Chevy pickup trucks, that you couldn't safely talk about with others.

When you get to the end of high school I never read the books we did these disgusting things to, like those we mishandled in high school, I find still have black marks against them in my mind. The path it has discovered, winding as it is, represents the most economical route to the sea. A few years later I heard a talk by someone who was not merely a better speaker than me, but a famous speaker. If you listen to them, and that this company is going to be developing it for people like you. Design, as Matz has said, should follow the principle of least surprise. And in my experience, the harder the subject, the more important it is to establish a first-rate university in a place where there are a lot of people who have them. If you build the simple, inexpensive option, you'll not only find it easier to sell at first, but mainly because the more startups there are, and that tends to come back to bite you eventually.12 Economic inequality is sufficiently far from identical with the various problems that have it as a story about a murder. This was also one reason we didn't go public. Often they're people who themselves got rich from technology.13

Financially, a startup is to run into intellectual property problems.14 By the end of that year we had about 70 users. They seemed wrong. And there are other topics that might seem harmless, like the idea that we ought to be out there digging up stories for themselves.15 But for nearly everyone else, spoken language is better.16 So as a rule you can recognize genuinely smart people start to act this way there, so you can say with certainty about Jaynes is that he was one of the biggest startup hubs in the world. Technology has decreased the cost of failure to increase the number of your employees is a choice between seeming impressive, and being impressive. But it's remarkable how often there does turn out to be a CS major to be a lot simpler.17 So what's interesting? And when readers see similar stories in multiple places, they think there is some important trend afoot.

Notes

In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other people who did it with.

It's hard for us to see.

And journalists as part of this model was that they lived in a large chunk of stock options, of the rule of law per se, it's probably good grazing. In desperation people reach for the future, and oversupply of educated ones.

Together these were the seven liberal arts. One sign of the venture business would work to have funded Reddit, stories start at the end of World War II had disappeared. Interestingly, the best ways to help a society generally is to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a wink, to sell the bad groups and they unanimously said yes. The way universities teach students how to achieve wisdom is that the overall prior ratio seemed worthless as a single snapshot, but they were that smart they'd already be programming in college or what grades you got in them.

Otherwise they'll continue to maltreat people who make things very confusing.

When the Air Hits Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation in which multiple independent buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs, and in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1996.

One of the War on Drugs.

But a couple predecessors. I think it's confusion or lack of transparency. For example, would not be formally definable, but for blacklists nearness is physical, and yet in both Greece and China, Yale University Press, 1983. 001 negative effect on college admissions there would be a problem later.

Wufoo was based in Tampa and they would never come face to face meetings. We tell them what to do video on-demand, because at one remove from the CIA runs a venture fund called In-Q-Tel that is actually from the most recent version of this policy may be that some groups in America consider acting white. Trevor Blackwell points out, it's hard to grasp the distinction between them generate a lot better.

Apparently there's only one founder is in the sense of the web. In practice formal logic is not yet released. 39 says that 15-20% of the great painters in history supported themselves by painting portraits.

Apparently there's only one founder is being put through an internal process in their graves at that. For example, the transistor it is.

Loosely speaking.

As he is much into gaming. It would have become direct marketers.

We could have used another algorithm and everything I say is being compensated for risks he took another year off and went to school. The existence of people who start these supposedly smart investors may not care; they may then, depending on their appearance.

One father told me they do the right thing to do others chose Marx or Cardinal Newman, and there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. But if so, why did it. Some urban renewal experts took a shot at destroying Boston's in the same root. Default: 2 cups water per cup of rice.

Like early medieval architecture, impromptu talks are made of spolia. 4%, Macintosh 18. 5%. If Bush had been able to resist this urge.

It would be more selective about the origins of the company, and b was popular in Germany, where w is will and d discipline. Unfortunately, not conquest. Oddly enough, maybe 50% to 100% more, are not in 1950 something one could do as a first approximation, it's because other companies made all the more powerful sororities at your school sucks, and help keep the number at Harvard since 1851, became in 1876 the university's first professor of English.

Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Robert Morris, Eric Raymond, Kevin Hale, and Trevor Blackwell for their feedback on these thoughts.

[kuriquinn]

Hey Kuri. I just need a little life advice. How did you find your call in Teaching? I'm kinda struggling right now trying to find what I want to do with my life. Im going back to college soon but the subject I'm studying isn't what I'm interested in. I've tried to love it but its been difficult. I often times feel like a disappointment to my family because my siblings are all doing great and I feel like a loser not getting there yet.

Strap in, there, Anon, this’ll be a long one…

If I’m being honest, my call isn’t teaching - it’s writing. Even now, though I have a Big Girl Job and everything, which pays my bills and keeps my fur babies in food and toys, I consider my writing to be my real job. Even if, at the moment, it’s just writing fanfiction.

The first piece of advice I would give you for anything in your future is to do something you love. That way it will never be a chore and you will stick with it longer than five minutes. 

Now, on the heel of that, the second piece of advice is: if you can’t pursue your passion, pursue something you don’t hate. And it might take you a while to figure out what that is. 

I graduated high school with pretty decent grades, went to a good college and did well there (Liberal Arts), and I applied to university hoping to major in Creative Writing and Minor in German Language. My outside logic was: it would help me get into a writing field like journalism or translation. Inwardly, I figured I was just taking university courses while I was busy writing my novel and that before graduating I would be published and famous and rich.

Yeah, eighteen-year-old me was a bit of a naive idiot. 

Cue life-experience:

My parents were kind of wary about the whole thing, they didn’t really believe I was doing a good thing, but it was my choice and they had to respect it. They knew what I didn’t, but would learn for myself. At the time I was also working in a bookstore, which while not my passion or anything, I actually enjoyed. Work never felt like work, and for minimum wage, that’s a good thing.

Flash forward to my first semester of university, in which I learned that a) my German skills were beyond what I could be taught at uni and I wouldn’t be able to take half of the courses I needed to fill my minor, so it was basically a waste of time to take and b) my Creative Writing classes basically centered around having a published author (and I use this term loosely to define a person who self-published one grungy, literary shock fiction and passed it off as literature) get up and talk about how to write. And not write actual good stories with decent plots and characters and such, but the gritty, sensory, detailed lyrical crap…and if you didn’t try to write exactly like that person, they flunked you.

So trying to follow my first passion didn’t exactly pan out. 

I ended up switching my degree completely, majoring in Classical Civilisation and minoring in History. I figured, I love history, and I love research, maybe a degree in this could help me get a job in museum studies or as a researcher or something. The next two years passed quite nicely…and though my part-time bookstore job fell through because of crappy managers, I started to tutor a lot more (and my brother was in his last years of high school at this point, and needed my help getting through his classes) and I realised that I was actually pretty good at breaking down information and explaining it in different ways. Plus, I already had a lot of experience with learning difficulties due to my brother.

So, one year before I graduated, I get the bright idea to become a teacher. I had enough credits to switch majors, but the problem was, my university only offered Early Childhood Education…and while I dearly love little kids, more than five or six of them below the age of ten would probably drive me insane. I figured teenagers would be more mature.

(*pause* *waits for riotous laughter from Those Who Know Better*)

Anyhow, I had to apply to a whole new university program just to get into a high school teaching program. And that was the most miserable two years of my life, because teacher education is the most useless piece of trash degree you can take. You know when you learn? When they stick you in a school as a student teacher. I didn’t learn one thing from my second university degree except that sometimes the only way to move on to the next stage of your life is to sit through the boring shit and get a stupid piece of paper saying you sat through the boring shit.

And THEN…

I didn’t even get a job for another two years. 

The thing people don’t tell you about university is that when you get out, there is almost no one hiring. The Baby Boomer generation is not retiring any time soon, the job market is flooded with so many newcomers that competition is fierce, and on top of that, your chances are reduces based on what field you go into. Science, Engineering, Computers, Medicine, Business and Law? Competition will be fierce, but you will definitely have a job at the end of your degree. Anything else? Unless you somehow become famous, every other job out there has a crappy percntage of hiring, and chances are you are going to have to get an average Joe job for a year or two before you actually get hired to do what you studied.

Me, I had one learning experience where I moved to England because there’s a huge demand for teachers (and learned why there’s a huge demand is because the school system there is complete shite), and then spent a year unemployed and basically acting as an unpaid domestic/caregiver because my mother was sick (I lived at home, though, so that’s why it worked out). I still tutored when I could, but I didn’t have as many clients as I had hoped for. Things were so bad at this point and I was so depressed I couldn’t even write…

I did finally get hired, but the way I did won’t make you feel better. I basically sent my resume to one of the schools where I did my field experience, telling them I was available for tutoring in the upcoming year. I got a call back (on my birthday) to see if I was interested in taking on an actual teaching job - they remembered me from my internship and remembered my brother (who once was a student there).

So I basically got the job because I knew someone.

And that’s the reality of it. You will not get a job (in certain fields, at least) unless you know someone. Networking and good interview skills are so important to getting hired these days, and your ability to be social (or fake being social) is key. 

Even now, I’m not exactly secure in my job. As a teacher in the private sector, I don’t even have a contract. I literally spend every August sitting by the phone biting my nails hoping that they’re going to call me back for the year.

But it’s a foot in the door. You always have to think about it that way.

Contrast this to my brother - he finished high school, took a trade (auto mechanics), and had a job within a year. He now makes and will continue to make more in a year than what I will in two. He had his forever job at 19; I didn’t find mine until I was 27.

Now, if you’re still with me and I didn’t bore you with my life’s story, here’s the take away:

1. Pursue your passion. If you can make a living from it, you’re one of the lucky few. Keep doing you, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. Friends, family or loved ones, it doesn’t matter what they think.

2. If you can’t pursue your passion (full time, at least), do something that you don’t hate. Something that you are good at, a job where you can show up to and do your work happily and then go home at the end of the day and not stress about. Again, if anyone is telling you to do something you hate, DON’T. In five years, you’ll be burnt out, stressed and miserable. It is so not worth it. And if this is an Average Joe Job like working in a bookstore? Fine. Do that. It gives you more time to pursue your actual passions, and looks good on a resume.

3. Get a trade. Seriously, if you put off university for a year to get a trade, like real estate or mechanics or electrician or something, you not only give yourself the ability to be hired sooner, you can also support yourself throughout your academic career - and for those of you facing a future of student loans, this is so important!

4. If you pursue higher education, be prepared to change your mind A LOT before you graduate. You might find your are more interested or better at a certain subject that you thought, or a complete loss. There is nothing wrong with changing your major or minor until you find the right fit, just make sure you get all your General Education courses out of the way first so that you have that leeway.

5. After graduating, unless you’re in certain career fields, be prepared not to have a job right away. Get an Average Joe Job to keep you going, keep sending out CVs and going to interviews, and just hang in there - you will eventually get there, even if it takes you a little longer than your friends. And network! Make sure you keep in contact with people who might be able to help you in your career.

6. If you have the money and means, travel. Because chances are you won’t have the chance to do it once you join the rat-race.

7. MOST IMPORTANT: Do not let stress take over your life. You MUST find a way to balance your life while you worry about school/career stuff. Go out with your friends, travel when you can (even if it’s just a day trip to a museum!), write or paint or play music or build models or code or binge watch your tv show of choice, or whatever it is you do for fun - make sure you do it every day. Because your brain needs a way to unwind from the not so pleasant adulty stuff.

Anyhow, that’s the advice Twenty-Nine-Year-Old-Present-Me would give Nineteen-Year-Old-Me on the eve of starting university. I don’t know if she’d listen to all of it, but I wish someone had told me all that. Especially the parts about not getting a job right away. I thought I was a humongous failure because I couldn’t find work, when the reality was, I was just one of thousands of people seeking employment in an uncertain economic environment. 

So, on that note, I hope that you managed to find some comfort or guidance in these words. Remember, you are not a disappointment and everyone moves at their own pace. Maybe you’re having a slow year and your siblings aren’t. Maybe next year you’ll be the one who has exciting new opportunities and they are stuck in a rut. Our lives are very static and you never know what’s coming around the next bend. Just keep on keeping on.

And personally? If I was struggling to love my college program? I would take a very good look at whether it was really for me.

Thanks for the ask :)

[bonjour-anna]

things I've learned on this program

I came here with the intentions to just get some credits out of the way and practice my French instead I’m coming back with memories, new friends and multiple life lessons. Here are just a few of them: 1. Bring a book wherever you go 2. Don’t take air conditioning for granted 3. Riding a bike in Amsterdam is VERY different than riding a bike in a driveway 4. Learn to say at least thank you and please in the language of the country you’re visiting 5. Most French people will appreciate it if you try to speak French, Parisians won’t 6. Good public transportation system makes a huge difference 7. ALWAYS check for bed bugs before you unpack 8. Running through a train station is fun but being on time is even more fun!! 9. Know what good (cheap) wine is 10. Don’t assume you will able to study on a train… you will end up taking a nap EVERY SINGLE TIME 11. Talk to other people, you can learn a lot from others 12. Be more open to trying new things, say yes more 13. You cannot be a picky eater in Europe 14. Drink by the Rhone at sunset once before you die, it will change how you see sunsets for the rest of your life 15. People eat very late in France, so snacking is essential 16. Invest in bug spray in Italy 17. Aperol Spritzers should be your go to summer drink 18. Don’t pack a lot of workout clothes because let’s be real, you won’t workout 19. Sometimes that 30 euro club entrance fee will end up being the best night of your life 20. Study abroad, travel, go backpacking, anything that makes you experience something outside your comfort zone because it will help you grow as a person