#SQAS

[chwarlie]

The song 'One Day More' has never hit harder than when you know exam results day is tomorrow.

[thekingofspin]

the doctor is an accurate representation of me trying to study for English rn

[thainperegrinn]

if i don’t pass art it’s literally over

[philzokman]

GUYSSS I GOT MY EXAM RESULTS BACK :D

[the-greek-monster-in-your-walls]

I cannot accurately put into words how much I hate exams and the SQA

I hate exams I hate exams so much why do they exist I do know this just not all at once bc it’s ridiculous to want me to remember 8 essays to be able to complete half of an exam and you want me to learn how much physics and be able to compare everyday actions to physics concepts with no prep and English? I speak it everyday is that not enough? Maths… it’s okay but FUCK it’s a lot to remember. French isn’t to bad tho considering I get a dictionary for most of it but listening?? And the recording isn’t gonna be clear and they’re gonna mumble????? Just why, why do exams exist like this

[chronicallyphysics]

left my chemistry revision way too late and now its 9 hours until my preliminary exam and ive done almost no studying 😰

also update i got rejected from cambridge :(( well technically waitlisted in a way.. i might make a separate post explaining that at some point

encouragement and tips on finding the motivation to study are much appreciated !!

[thatrickmcginnis]

MOE BERG Toronto 1990

I’m going to make a broad generalization here and say that Moe Berg’s band The Pursuit of Happiness are a cultural marker for Generation X here in Canada. If you were in your twenties and – even more so – single and living in a city you’ll probably have a surge of memories when you hear the singles from Love Junk, their first album: songs like “Hard to Laugh”, “She’s so Young” and “Hard to Laugh”. I know I do. Which is why I have a kind of fond memory of my portrait sitting with Moe back in the spring of 1990 – a shoot for the cover of the free weekly where I had started to work, in my studio loft in Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood.

Moe Berg was born in Edmonton in 1959 – technically a late Baby Boomer, but there’s always a lot of drift when it comes to culture. He’d played in several local bands before moving with drummer Dave Gilby to Toronto and forming The Pursuit of Happiness. They released “I’m an Adult Now” as an indie single a year later and landed a deal with Chrysalis Records based on radio airplay and a low-budget video for the song. They released the Todd Rundgren-produced record Love Junk in 1988 and One Sided Story in 1990; Berg was probably doing publicity for the record when he showed up at my studio.

My photo editor at the free weekly told me that the paper’s publisher was a friend of Moe Berg as a way of warning me that I needed to turn in some flattering shots for the cover story. I did my best; I had moved into a live/work loft space so I was buzzing with having my own studio to shoot in, and thanks to coming into a bit of money I’d bought some new gear – a Bronica SQ-A medium format camera (a kind of poor man’s Hasselblad that was popular with wedding photographers) and a kit of ProFoto strobe lights. The colour shots were for the cover, which had a rigid format to allow for type and the magazine logo. I went all in on coloured gels to make it pop on the stands, but for the inside black and white shots I went for the kind of flat, clean, high-key lighting scheme that I’d been trying to nail down for several years, and which was infinitely easier to pull off in a studio with multiple lights. I remember Berg being very soft-spoken, happy to take direction but palpably wary of the camera.

The Pursuit of Happiness have gone through several line-up changes but still occasionally perform, while Moe Berg has his own solo career in addition to working as a producer and working with the Trans-Canada Highwaymen, a supergroup with members of Sloan, the Odds and the Barenaked Ladies. TPOH never really broke big outside this country but it would be hard to make a soundtrack of Canada at the turn of the ‘90s without including their biggest hits.

[radicalsansa]

I'm so fucking stupid I can't even do national 5 maths, I have to do national 4 and even then it still makes me want to dig my eyes out with a pepsi max bottle cap

[t470n]

One thing that's becoming increasingly obvious is the running theme of Old vs New and how Team New is definitely winning. The whole thing about Jonathan and Mina being very young, like early twenties or something, and their youth being clearly reflected in their behaviour and this clashing with how immensely old Dracula is from his withering body to his ancient castle to the implied centuries of history he has lived through and personally participated in.

Dracula holds onto old ideas about useless peasants being nothing more than an endless supply of cannon fodder that he used to use as meat to throw at his enemies and now uses as food for himself (and his roomies) and there is also his thing about wistfully looking back on the history of his great house. He's happy that the house Jonathan found is old because a new one would have been impossible for him to live in. He has a grossly inflated sense of his own entitlement due to his noble status despite the fact that he is considered a dead man from an extinct lineage. He still considers himself as noble and respectable as he would have been hundreds of years ago, hence why he is so concerned about not being respected/revered in England, his predatory feasting on the local peasants as well as his treatment of Jonathan. Jonathan is a working man who is there in service of Dracula and therefore beneath him. Dracula can barge into his room whenever he wants, destroy his property, force him to acclimate to nocturnal life for Dracula's comfort and use him as a means to an end that will eventually die, in a way using him up just like he does with the local peasants. The way I see their relationship is that Dracula is possessive of Jonathan, not protective. To him, Jonathan is an object for his use that he has taken a fancy to, little more than an entertaining puppy or jester who means nothing in the grand scheme of things because he is hardly his own person, he is Dracula's. It's the same "I am noble therefore I matter and if you aren't noble you are here to be used" mindset that would have been acceptable in the ancient past he comes from but not in the modern day.

On the contrary, Jonathan and Mina are aggressively modern to the point where Jonathan explicitly mentions this when he's afraid ("19th century up to date with a vengeance"). They are young, they write in shorthand and (*SPOILERS FOR LATER ON IN THE BOOK*) there is one point in the story where Good Guy Squad needs to do a lot of blood transfusions which, at the time, was the Hot New Science and extremely modern, hence the complete disregard for blood types which weren't really a thing back then. Jonathan mentions that writing in shorthand would have confused the Count and therefore allowed him to send messages or keep writing that Dracula wouldn't have been able to decipher and being able to keep his shorthand diary does help keep Jonathan sane. Mina also mentions in her letter practising shorthand so she can keep diligent notes on the conversations she hears and oh boy I sure do wonder if that's going to be useful when someone needs to take notes on what happens in the rest of the book. The relationships between the heroes are also very, for lack of a better word, modern. Dracula and his roommates have a clear hierarchy that is very traditional but doesn't exist with the heroes. There is no one person in a position of power over everyone else in the group, including in the individual marriages. Neither Mina nor Jonathan have any more power over the other than the other has over them. They are equals, both mutually in love and mutually intelligent and productive. At the same time, it's fairly non-traditional for three suitors of the same woman to become very good friends. In most traditional narratives of gothic fiction you'd probably find a dual for the Lady's hand, a secret love, some kind of tragic heartbreak or something like that but these are "19th century up to date with a vengeance" young men who will not be so silly. Not to mention the fact that the group mostly comes together because of the relationship between two women which is refreshingly modern. The technology, attitudes, and relationships of the heroes are what set them apart from the Count as well as what lets them succeed.

I just love the dichotomy between the withered villain trying to relive the glory of the ancient past while desperately holding onto expired ideals of bygone days vs the modern and up-to-date heroes making full use of modern technology and stereotype-breaking to defeat him. In a way it almost spits in the face of the very common romanticisation of the past that is especially common in gothic fiction where the pretty old castles and cathedrals make people forget about the endless supply of downsides to those time periods and how horrifically nightmarish it would have been to live in those times if you weren't part of an extremely tiny group of extremely powerful people

[vitamin-zeeth]

just witnessed a dream smp reference in one of the 2022 example papers I'm looking through for the assignment I'm working on. immediate war flashbacks. quitting forever you will not be hearing from me again goodbye

[ozzyfromscotland]

i panicked in the middle of my english essay and accidentally quoted arcane 😭

[ofotograph]

Beach Lifestyle on the Gold Coast. Absolute beach frontage.

[thekingofspin]

the way I'm running out of motivational music that's actually motivational so I've resorted to these bangers

[princepsfianna]

How I be after reading my SQA results (5's and a's in everything .I have peaked)

[postixr-blog]

Who else is attempting an all nighter for results tomorrow ☠️ no way I can sleep

[whatkindoflifeamiliving]

I got my SQA letters today which meant I could send proof to admissions to turn my conditional offer for HNC to UNCONDITIONAL OFFER! I can't wait to do HNC Social services next term.

I am going to be the best student in the class, making sure I get straight As or I am a loser. I just have to get my funding done and enrol at the end of the month then I am all sorted for the next term of college.