#but no. gotta start the bibliography

[sirspeep]

i fucking hate italian universities, i'll have just one month to write my thesis because of burocratic bullshit

[nessvn]

i just need to make it to shabbat i just need to make it to shabbat i just need

[workingtowardsthatphd]

Friday 26th April

So I didn't complete all the tasks from yesterday again, some of them are still on the list and I'm working at home this morning because I have some chores and stuff to do before my meeting this afternoon.

Incomplete from Yesterday:

Collect up the quotes for Chapter 2 of my dissertation into one document.

Annotated bibliography for the notes I took yesterday.

To do:

Laundry.

Water my plants

Meeting at 1pm. Cancelled :(

Grocery shopping and fill my car up.

Complete:

Laundry is in the washing machine! Out of the washing machine and hung up (indoors because it is raining).

Finally finished collecting up the quotes for Chapter 2 and have realised that there are way too many (probably part of the reason it seemed to take so long), so I am now going to go back through and try to take some out.

Groceries and petrol acquired!

Emailed my supervisor to tell him that I want to rewrite the chapter I sent him, so now he wants that ASAP.

Started rewriting Chapter 1, reached 1121 words, which isn't bad, some of it I have been able to take from the original draft but most of that is not helping at all. Don't know why I had next to no analysis in the first draft but hey! that's life.

1596 words and I am out of coffee :((

2063 words in total! Gotta format the document correctly and send that off to my supervisor and then it is back home for dinner. :)

Very quickly filled in the annotated bibliography before I went home, and also remembered to water my plants before I ate!

Cups of Coffee: ☕☕

[litnerd]

First daily update, Monday 21.10.24

First lecture wasn't super interesting due to the fact I changed my course of study. It was the first lecture for new university students and I, since I'm already in third semester, didn't learn/need to learn much. But I'm excited about starting to study German as well as English and looking forward to next week's lecture! :D

After an extended nap (and contemplating all of my life choices) I started working on my term paper. Maybe "working" is a bit of an overstatement because I only did things like figuring out which font size to use, which spacing etc. I need for it and other formal requirements. I want to found an MLA hate club, please... whY is it so complicated to make a bibliography using MLA... thanks to whomever that word has the option of doing it for you, this is -literally- saving my life atp!!

Tomorrow I'll buy some groceries in the morning (running out of food is an adult thing I really haven't gotten used to yet, despite having moved out of my parents house a year ago), attend my first English seminar this semester and go to my acting class (which is 07:00-10:00, so pretty late...)

Somewhere in between I gotta continue on the term paper :') we'll see how I manage.

Today is gonna be the first night of 7h30 sleep to fix my sleeping rhythm, so, good night! 💚

[battle-of-alberta]

i am staring at the ask box and starting to think about how to tackle it again, there’s still a backlog of about 25-30 that ideally i would like to get through before the end of the year.

i have this anxiety sometimes that i spend lots of effort on some and little on others, either because of a lack of time or patience or a shift in my art style or whatever reason, but I should just lean into whatever i’m feeling and not worry too much about doing something very polished. the blog is, as always, a work in progress that i’m doing for free out of my own energy and i need to be okay with contradictions and inconsistencies, including in the quality and effort put into my responses. 

I can always revisit ones I’m not satisfied with later, and I hope no one will take it personally if I don’t answer their particular ask as a multi panel full colour comic with an added bibliography if I can’t for whatever reason. likewise- current event asks are fine and dandy but they will range wildly from “sat on them for a year and forgot” to “answered in 5 minutes in ballpoint pen” and I just gotta be okay with that.

since i have basically lost my previous job that i was lucky enough to be able to draw during, sitting at my desk all day at my current job now actually requires my full attention / a lot of mental effort, and it means the first thing i do when i’m done work is go for a walk or do chores, so my ability to put effort and focus into my art is changing and I just need to roll with the punches at this point.

thanks for your patience with me, and please fill out the survey in the pinned post if you haven’t yet! :3 it will help me lots!

[florenceisfalling]

eventually im gonna start being extra annoying when i discourse. i try to talk casually with you guys but one of these days someones gonna piss me off and im gonna write a 6 page essay on it with a proper bibliography. gotta be a professional

[nitrosodiumfmp]

Docks are (nearly) Finished

As you can see, the map is basically done. I could call it a day now and it would be respectable, but not as polished as I'd like. For one, it's not totally clear that the gold key is in the Earthly Possessions building, so I'll probably put a note somewhere that explains that based on where players go first. I also need to add the Mortality Anchor, the boat, and preferably a bunch of sound effects. I'm tempted to remove the Grave Digger idle sound - my idea was to have it signal that the player is near an enemy, but you can hear it from wherever on the map, so it's just noise. I might add some sorta block in the sky that plays droning ambience off a Timeline, just so it's not super silent. I also need to make a city skyline behind the wall.

It looks like I'm on top of things, but I'm beginning to slack on the red tape aspects of the FMP. I need to fix up my project proposal, add to my bibliography, make another one of those mindmaps, start on my end-of-project slideshow... It makes me wonder about the true length of the FMP game-development-wise. Whether this three-month turnaround isn't to allow us to develop a massive game but to account for all the mountainous levels of pencil-pushing required. Put it this way, it stands for Final Major Project, not Final Major Game. The "game" part of this course seems ironically irrelevant when it comes to marking at the end - it's more about proving you know what you're doing with research and screenshots. But I'm also pretty good at doing both of those things. This weekend will probably be filled by the less riveting parts of the course, but it's gotta be done at some point right?

[explode-this]

So now i’m getting so deep into my spreadsheet project (ebook library, audiobook library) that Audible is about to take me out with its inconsistencies, and YES, I KNOW it’s my fault for having an account with and buying from a fucking AMAZON DOT COM company, but why, why, why the fuck why does Audible sort authors alphabetically by surname (regular; accepted practice) in the app but alphabetically by first name (not regular; expected of a sixth grader writing their first bibliography) on the browser interface? Why can I sort by “read” and “unread” on both but not by “bought” or “borrowed from catalogue”? Why do books featuring a cast not sort the cast by alphabetical order?

HELP ME I GOT INTO AUTISTIC FOCUS AND CANNOT REST UNTIL THIS PROJECT IS FINISHED BUT I GOTTA ADMIT, I DONE GOOFED BY EVEN STARTING IT

[ravxnstudies]

research proposal 101

how to write one and not die trying!! a guide by me.

1. find something you're willing to work on for months/years at ungodly hours. this project will take up a LOT of your time, so make sure you're getting into something you won't end up hating with every bit of your soul, m'kay?

1.1. if you're out of ideas, read a bunch of papers about a general topic you're interested in and find a niche. this can be anything from "this is neat and hasn't been properly explored yet" to "professor dumbfuck phd argues this but they're wrong and i'm gonna drag them to the depths of hell to prove it"

2. do a, and i cannot stress this enough, THOROUGH reading of the previous literature. i don't care if it's 5 or 70 papers, but make sure you understand them, because you WILL need them to make your case.

2.1. personally though, i recommend skimming through google scholar, reading a bunch of abstracts and picking what will/won't be useful. keep if brief but precise. you do NOT wanna read fifty papers on the same topic before you write your proposal (let alone your actual paper) because by the end of it, your brain will be burnt. out.

3. do you have a hypothesis? fantastic! write that down.

4. do you not have a hypothesis? okay, no problem! what do you want to get from this research? what do you want to learn?

4.1. come up with one broad-ish question

4.1.1. got the question? fantastic! now come up with two or three more specific questions based on the broad-ish question

4.2. come up with another broad question

4.2.1. come up with three more specific questions

4.3. repeat process a couple more times

4.4. try to come up with objectives that align with the questions you just wrote down.

e.g.:

Que.: how are neologisms formed in this context?

Obj.: -to identify the linguistic processes taking place in the formation of these neologisms, and

-to identify patterns that may explain the prevalence of certain processes over others.

5. onto the method!

5.1. ask yourself, how do you plan to conduct your study?

5.1.1. please, PLEASE, think of a REALISTIC, PLAUSIBLE way that fits your budget, your time availability, your resources and your will to live

5.1.2. got an idea for how to carry it out? great! break it down into little steps and write it down

5.1.3. don't have an idea? no problem! ASK. YOUR. RESEARCH SUPERVISOR. FOR HELP.

5.1.4. no, you're not bothering them, they're your supervisor for a reason. talk. to. them.

6. i assume you're writing this proposal for a) a job, b) funding, or c) to pass a class. you need someone's approval. that means you need to CONVINCE THEM that what you're proposing is IMPORTANT. that it has a PURPOSE. now, i don't give a goddamn shit if your study is about the colour of unicorn faeces; you need to figure out a way to convince the Important Superior That Makes Decisions™ that the unicorn faeces you want to study are of the UTMOST importance to the scientific community. just write something like "though equine faeces have been studied in the past, little research has been carried out into unicorn faeces specifically. this study seeks to fill that gap. we believe that this introductory taxonomy of unicorn faeces will provide much-needed knowledge about fantastic creatures' gastrointestinal functionings and illnesses thereto related. we hope, thus, to shed some light on this so-far unexplored yet puzzling area." that'll do. you just gotta make it SOUND nice and convincing.

7. once you have all of this info, GO TO YOUR SUPERVISOR. ask them for a second opinion. ask for ideas on how to organize it. don't be afraid to ask them for constructive criticism, because that criticism might just get you the Important People in Charge™'s approval for your study.

8. remember all the bibliography you've consulted so far? yeah, start writing down that shit BEFORE you write your proposal, because the deadline WILL come sooner than you expect it to, and trust me, you do not want to be typing a reference list on six cans of redbull at 11:40 pm. speaking from experience.

9. if you're struggling to get down the first few words, look at other papers in the same field. see how those authors do it. figure out the structure they use. do NOT copy, but use it as a model if needed.

10. fuck around and find out

hope that helps!

🩷if you like my content, feel free to support me on ko-fi!🩷

HOW TF DO YOU WRITE A RESEARCH PROPOSAL?

[raksh-writes]

Alright, is this the day? Is this the day I finally finish writing the conclusion for my thesis?

I sure hope so!

[moonlight-fawn]

not my laptop deciding to play games with me when i have a bibliography that’s worth 15% of my grade due sunday and i haven’t even started 😐🤡🤪🥲💀

[writingabouteverything]

The Perfect White Flower--and Other Nonexistent Things

a/n YALL THIS IS PROBABLY DUMB BUT I HAD THIS IDEA ABOUT A HARRY STYLES X READER FIC THATS BASED ON THE PLOT OF JANE THE VIRGIN AND I WANTED TO WRITE IT SO BADLY I MADE THIS ACCOUNT

disclaimer--wont follow the show exactly 

Pairing: Harry Styles x latina! reader (a key factor of the show revolves around the lead being latina, and im latina and honestly love writing for us but anyone can still read and understand/hopefully enjoy and the fic doesn’t involve any physical descriptions:)) 

Series Summary: Y/n l/n has had the world figured out since she was a child. She won’t be a writer because it’s risky, she’ll just focus on school and becoming a teacher. She’s never been a child, because her mother had her at sixteen and hasn’t aged a single year since. That’s part of the reason the promise she made to her grandmother means so much to her--if she doesn’t have sex before marriage, her child will never have to grow up as quickly as she did. And Harry Styles is at the top of the world--his music has never been more successful, he has a lovely girlfriend, and he’s never been more in demand. He has everything in the world...except a child, and through a series of unbelievable events--y/n might be his only chance to have one. Ever. 

Chapter One Summary: Who knew getting a pap smear on two hours of sleep and three cups of coffee was as bad as having unprotected sex? 

There’s something dangerous about taking public transportation in LA. And no, I don’t mean it in the ‘there are bad people in the world’ type of way. I mean it in the ‘I live in one of the casual influencer, celebrity, tourist hubs of the world and each time I step onto the bus I find myself mesmerized by all the stories I see in them’ way. Kind of pathetic, I know, but sometimes a child with blonde pig tails or a woman streaming on instagram live will catch my eye and the urge to pull out my lap top and start something I’ll never finish. 

I know that writing isn’t some kind of disease. But I can’t let myself fall in love with it the way I want to. There’s nothing wrong with writing a short story or two, but trying to write a novel? That’s impractical. It will distract me from school, from the four year plan I’m almost done with.

Sighing, I brave taking at my surroundings. I deserve this today, after the anonymous, rude costumer at the hotel today, I need positivity. No one is particularly inspiring. The bus stops and I watch out the window. At first the crowd is ordinary, and then i see them...paparazzi. Flashing cameras from all angles, grown men violating all rules of personal space. It never sits right with me, but I guess it’s just part of living in LA. The bus starts moving again. When it stops again, I see even more paparazzis, but their cameras aren’t flashing. Good for whoever escaped that. 

The bus door opens and I snap my attention back to my computer screen. I rub my eyes as I stare at my word document. How is there more that needs to be edited? This professor is the harshest grader I’ve ever had, and my friend, Gisa, is kind for giving me even more notes. But I’m exhausted. Two tests and an essay due before 12:00. And it’s...11:38. Great--I have to upload it the second I’m at my doctor’s office and have WiFi again. 

I spend some time highlighting and rewording sentences, and once I’m done I reward myself with more people watching because I deserve it and I can’t fall asleep here. I’m kind of invested in the girl live streaming her bus ride...maybe she’ll say her instagram handle. 

But when I look up, she’s not on the bus anymore. Almost no one is. An elderly couple is sitting towards the back. A woman with a toddler sit two rows in front of me...and there’s now a man directly across from me. I blink for a moment, imagining a story for someone who’s face I can’t quite see beneath such dark sun glasses. His dark waves and strong jaw do most of the imagining for me--he deserves a mystery, a dramatic one with a happy ending and just enough romance to keep the people interested. A good romance, too--not too sappy. Enemies to lovers, maybe. A mysterious stranger that’s not really a stranger because something about him is just...familiar. 

He turns his head and I drop my gaze immediately. There’s no doubt he caught that, but I still pretend to edit the title of my essay. “You’ve been typing stubbornly since I first got on the bus.” There’s an accent--of course he’s english. But it’s more than that, I’ve heard that voice before. I’ve been...soothed by it. And--oh my god, I’m sitting across from Harry Styles.

Okay, don’t freak out. Don’t freak him out. He’s probably on here to escape the the whole ‘oh my god, you’re Harry Styles!’ thing.  

“What are you writing?” Harry Styles just spoke to me. I greeted my one direction poster every single day in middle school, and Harry Styles just spoke to me. Okay--relax, breathe--it’s only weird if you make it weird. 

There’s a kind of curt curiosity to his question. He could have been ruder, considering how blatantly I was staring at him. “I um...an essay.” I’m temped to turn the screen so that he can see I’m telling the truth. Though he wasn’t hostile, a part of me is paranoid that he thinks I am writing about him. It’s a fair assumption, for all he knows I’m drafting a tweet about who I saw on the bus this morning or preparing to send something in to some gossip girl-esque blog. “It’s due today at noon and normally I’m way more on top of things, but I had this last minute doctor’s appointment rescheduling because my usual doctor is out of town and--” I cut myself off before I can tell Harry Styles that I’m ovulating and that if I don’t go to my OBGYN now, I have to wait an entire month and I’ve already been off birth control longer than I’d like. I might not have actual sex in my near future, but my cramps have been extra terrible. “An essay, I just finished an essay.”

He nods once. Maybe he feels bad for so thoroughly startling me into such a rambling, because the corner of his mouth tilts upwards. A soft smile adds even more grace to his features, I focus on the dimple that appears in his cheek. “An aggravating essay, I take it, considering the death glares you’ve been giving your laptop screen.”

I smile at his polite humor. “It’s for the harshest grader on campus. She took three points off of my first essay freshman year because I spaced my bibliography wrong.” 

He cringes in sympathy. “Good luck.” 

“Thanks,” I hum, proud of myself for not letting him know that I know who he is. The bus stops, I can see my doctor’s office behind a few paparazzi. “This is my stop.” 

Harry nods once, ducking his head slightly. A tiny part of me feels sympathy for him; from what I’ve gathered, he genuinely loves his fans and the relationship they have, but it must be draining to never have a moment of privacy. Especially when it’s people who care more about selling your picture than your mental health. 

I linger on the bus’s step, watching the men with large cameras look around. “Excuse me, are you guys looking for Harry Styles?” Most of the men disregard me, but one looks at me. “I know he’s near here because I’m a really big fan and my friend just texted that she saw him.” This gets me the attention I wanted. “He’s at Northfield--a cafe like three blocks down. I just know that if she got a picture with Harry in like a magazine or something she’d totally lose it--in a good way, and she’s been having a bad time so if you see her can you try to make it happen? Knowing her she’ll be at his side, she’s blonde, shortish hair.” 

The men seem skeptical, but I guess they realize that this is the best lead they have. I think the fact that I gave a reason to justify selling Harry out for no reason helped. They disperse together, heading at least three blocks away from Harry. I don’t know if I’ve actually helped him, but I hope I have. 

“Essay girl.” I freeze, half cringing. Did he hear that? That’s embarrassing. I consider darting away, but decide that would just make me cringe more. So I turn on my heels. “You...you forgot your phone.” 

He just saved my life. “Thank you.” I take my phone from his outstretched hand, ignoring the slight thrill that runs through me when our fingers brush. “You’re my hero--the last thing I needed today was to run all over the city searching for my phone.” I finish the awkward admission with a partial laugh. 

“Least I could do,” he mumbles, “especially considering what you just did.” 

...He did see that. “Oh um--it was nothing, I just kind of made a connection and assumed the only reason you’d be on a public bus is because you were trying to avoid some things, and you make really great music and a lot of people happy, so you deserve that break.” Why does it feel like I’ve been talking forever? “Anyways, thanks for the whole phone thing, and I hope I got them off your tail.” 

My joke seems to somewhat land. His lips part, like he’s planning on saying something else. A timer on my phone interrupts him. I instinctually look down--great, the alarm on my phone warning me that I’m only ten minutes away from being late. “I’m late.” I turn towards the bus’s exit. “I gotta go, but thanks again, and I hope you have a good day.” 

I disappear after that, still not sure that that whole thing wasn’t some kind of hallucination. Did I just meet Harry Styles? He...he gave me my phone. Harry Styles has touched my phone. I can’t wait to tell Gisa, she’ll lose it.

I’m still thinking about Harry Styles when I finally reach my OBGYN’s office. When I get there, things are a lot more hectic than I thought they’d be. Many people crowd the waiting area and the receptionist’s desk is clearly understaffed. Two young girls are trying to address multiple upset pregnant women and take phone calls at the same time, all while practically buried in a sea pf paperwork. Wow, I didn’t realize that transferring was such chaos. One of the girls waves me over and barely checks my name before shoving a form towards me. I fill out as quickly as possible. 

 I upload my essay quickly after checking in. Who knows, maybe Harry Styles’s blessing will get me an A? A third person in scrubs emerges from the back after a moment and ushers me into a room. I tell myself to focus on going over the facts I need for the test I have to take in a little over an hour. Or to focus on the fact that I just met Harry Styles. But instead, I feel my heavy eyelids fall shut. 

I don’t know how long I sleep, but I know that I wake up during the middle of a doctor’s sentence, “...I know I’m not your usual, so I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.” 

“Hm...Yeah, yeah I’m comfortable.” She nods once, her wide eyes slightly red. “But I do have a class today in like an hour, so I was wondering if this was going to take longer because of the office’s move?” 

“Oh, no,” she shakes her head. “Just because Dr. Rodriguez gave us no notice before deciding that she no longer wanted to work here...or in the country. Or even live in the US, despite the fact that we just signed a lease on a place together...” Tears well in the stranger’s eyes, pity settles in my stomach. 

“That sounds incredibly complicated, I didn’t mean to rush you.” 

She blinks twice, her expression blanking as she fights against the pain of what’s clearly a terrible break up. “No, no--you have every right. Today is your day and if..honestly, if you’re strong enough to go to a class after this, and do what you’re about to do by yourself, then I’m strong enough to get through today.” 

Um...didn’t realize a pap smear counted as something that needs moral support, but I’ll chalk it up to her heightened emotions. “Thanks.” 

She snaps on her medical gloves. “No, thank you for your patience. Now lay down.” 

I do as told, preparing for a sensation I haven’t often experienced. A moment passes and I know she’s started. She’s moving away from me much faster than expected. Oh--I guess pap smears are a lot shorter than I expected. 

“That’s it?” 

“Yep,” she hums, pulling her gloves off. “Now just take it easy, and hydrate.”

Weird...but that’s like general doctor advice. “Thanks!” 

--

I’ve never wanted to keep a secret from Gisa, but sometimes I really regret telling her I met Harry Styles. It’s been almost a month and I find my mind wandering back to the moment in which our fingers brushed more than I should. Sometimes I let myself wonder what he might have said if my phone hadn’t rang. I was probably just imagining the way his lips parted, but my ind refuses to let it go. 

“...You know it’s kind of sad, I read an interview in which he spoke about the fact that he has some genetic condition that makes it hard to have kids. He has so many godchildren, and I feel like he’d make such a great father.” 

I try to keep up with Gisa’s words, but the dull ache in my head makes it feel so far away. “Yeah...he seemed really patient.” 

Gisa nods, turning to face me. “You alright, you’re looking kinda green?” 

“Yeah...” I reach for my canvas bag. “I think I just...I probably just need some water.” 

My hand grazes the metal of my water bottle and then the corners of my vision blur into blackness. I sway, Gisa’s hand is on my shoulder...and then it all goes black. 

--

I sit uncomfortably on the hospital’s cot. Gisa is a traitor for telling my mom that I fainted. I knew she’d just drag me here--hispanic mothers, they either believe they can cure you with vic’s vapor rub or they want you in the ER. No in between. 

“I know you didn’t want another test, but you’ve been throwing up in the morning for days and now you’re fainting.” 

“Fainted,” I correct, “it happened once.” 

“C’mon, mija, it’s just one doctor’s appointment.” 

Speaking of, an ER nurse returns. “Fainting and nausea spells explained,” he says, glancing at his clipboard, “you’re pregnant.” 

My mom and I can’t help but exchange a look before bursting into laughter. Pregnant. If I’m pregnant then the second coming is here. “That’s impossible, I’m a virgin.” 

He glances at my mom, “maybe we should have this conversation in private.” 

“No, what you say in front of me you can say in front of my mom.” 

My mom raises an eyebrow. “Y/n, did you and that guy from your english class--” 

“No! No, we did not. I am a virgin and there’s no way I’m pregnant.” I glare at the nurse. 

He then ushers me to a bathroom so that I can provide a urine sample. After I’m finished, he shows me a pregnancy test strip. “Pink means pregnant.” I bite my tongue as he tests the strip in my sample. He pulls it out and it’s...it’s bright pink.

“I’m calling my doctor, because this has to be a mistake. It has to be like a hormonal thing.” 

“Exactly, pregnancy hormones.” 

I glare even harder, calling the doctor that I saw last week. “Hello, Dr. Ash? I was wondering if I could get a consultation because I’m in the ER and some crazy doctor is trying to tell me I’m pregnant.” 

Silence on the line for a long second. “...I actually cleared my calendar for you.” 

[mex-sickos]

William golding really was a sick little freak but I honestly don't even feel like LotF even gives you like all of the context on this his bibliography in its entirety are all poorly written edgeposting that I can only assume got popular by the fact that racist could jerk off to perceived "human nature", his next best known work, pincher martin, is basically just a 20th century equivalent of an m night shamalayan movie, with the premise "having themes of sanity and insanity" but is just a guy surviving a shipwreck, floating to an island, having a bunch of hallucinations, and then finding out he actually died and this is hell or smth, and the real reason I don't respect any British literature award given out is because to my knowledge I only think he only ever won one for any particular book (he also won a nobel prize for his bibliography as a whole but they'll give a nobel prize to anyone famous enough) his book "rites of passage" was the start of his trilogy and the last of what I consider his "real" works (paper men was blatantly written to fuel his alcoholism in his later years "a look into his psyche" my ass all writing is a look into the writers psyche, and other writers have more on their mind then "please let me just drink myself to death") but yeah rites of passage is literally I shit you not about a guy sailing to Australia and he's gotta keep the crew from turning on each other for like really no reason except for golding just really wants them to fight, the reverends plot line is literally just meet guy, think he's nice, he does something stupid, fights with the captain, gets drunk, has gay sex with a crew mate, dies and I shit you not "of shame", gets a burial at sea, then the main character feels bad about not getting to know him better, and that's basically the fucking book, William Golding was an absolute dogshit writer and the only "illumination of the human condition in the world of today" he did was make me respect a whole lot of establishments know for their prestige a whole lot less for thinking his work was anything less then shitty proto-fanfiction

🤝

Us predicating our least favorite English class """classic""" based on the merits of it only being a classic because it's racist and frankly poorly written early english doomposting

Lord of the flies always reminds me of that one teacher who left the class by themselves as a test/proof that children left alone would naturally cause chaos and instead they ended up just like being confused before a couple of the kids were like ok I guess we gotta teach ourselves like wow I guess William Golding was just a sick old freak

[student-by-day]

since we’re officially a few weeks into second semester and i’ve had to write another paper by now, i thought it was about time i shared some precious knowledge for the benefit of the greater good.

some basic things i can’t believe no one taught us:

wikipedia IS NOT EVIL. repeat after me. wikipedia IS NOT EVIL. just be smart about using it. (hear me out on this one.)

it can oftentimes be a great place to start because you can get a quick, simple summarization on the topic you’re trying to learn about.

make sure to check out the bibliography at the bottom---a lot of those sources are credible (which means you can cite them in your work!) and can provide further reading/context.

there are a lot of linked topics within the articles---read up on those too if they’re relevant (for a better overall understanding/extra background knowledge).

just don’t quote or paraphrase from wikipedia (the same goes for any other non-scholarly source) and cite it as a source in your paper---your teacher/prof may or not murder you, knowing this site can be edited by their four-year-old child lol.

put quotation marks around specific words (like names, dates, etc.) to narrow down your search results in case the ones that pop up first are irrelevant or too general.

narrow down domains by sticking site:.edu, site:.org, etc. to the end of a search instead of manually sifting through blogs and a bunch of “unusable” stuff.

explore the other advanced search options that don’t have shortcuts by googling something > settings > advanced search to narrow things down based on language, region, publication date, usage rights, etc.

use ctrl+f on articles to find the most relevant passage(s) if you read through the first paragraph and think “yea man this ain’t it” or if the page is super long/wordy. this will save you a lot of wasted time. 

figure out how to do a split screen and snap windows on your device! this is great for taking notes during a video/documentary or when manually retyping something that you can’t copy+paste while looking at the source for reference. it’s alt+[ or alt+] for chromebooks and windows key+left arrow key or windows key+right arrow key for windows pcs (google it if you have a mac---didn’t want to give out info i couldn’t test myself).

RECORD ALL (ALL) THE RELEVANT SOURCES YOU ENCOUNTER while you research. i don’t know how many times i’ve read a tidbit of information and didn’t think i’d use it later but then spent like an hour scrolling and clicking through my history to find the right site because it turned out i did need/want that piece of information later once i changed the direction i was going in. my method: pasting the link on a doc and writing a little reminder below it about what info it contains/what i would use it for.

if you’re extra lazy, use the docs.new shortcut to create a new google doc.

when citing, WAIT UNTIL YOU’RE DONE WRITING and then use a generator (fyi: i like easybib.com and hate the google docs add-on) to get the brunt of the work out of the way, edit any incorrect blanks, add to ones you have extra info for, and PROOFREAD THE FINAL CITATION while referencing the criteria of your standard (whether that’s chicago, apa, mla, or whatever) using owl.purdue.edu, as mistakes *do* happen, and you don’t wanna get docked points for something as simple as a citation.

remember you’ll have better results if you stop using a ton of filler words and punctation just to be grammatically correct---use fragments or list key words instead when you search things that are harder to find.

reword and reorder the words in your search in several ways. don’t give up right away if you can’t find things---you’ve gotta show some resilience.

read past the third result. please. i can’t stress this enough, considering how many people i know that don’t do this. you have to realize some things just take digging.

explore “related searches” that are suggested at the bottom. even if they’re not as specific as yours, they might pull up different/more results bc they’re common searches!

there are ways to get through paywalls. i’m *not* saying you should go find the loophole links on tumblr... i’m definitely not saying that *at all*.

[fagundescamila]

Power Couple #7 (Severus Snape x Reader)

Heeeeeello again! I'm sorry it took so long again! I promiss I'll try harder to update the story faster 😅

Some reminders: english is not my native language, so expect errors and if you asked to be tagged but weren't, send me a message and I'll try to fix it on the upcoming chapters

Tagzzz: @lizlil @misselsbells06 @mitchiesdungeon @sleepiesapphicxoxo @severuslovebot

As soon as they left the room, Severus' mind started to race and he thought about what he would say and the awkward silence that would inevitably fall upon them while they walked towards the dungeons.

But again, as it always seemed to happen to his impressions about their interactions, he was wrong. 

"It's so weird to talk to all of them without feeling judged or under evaluation…" Y/N commented. 

"Your former teachers, you mean?" He asked, almost relieved by the fact that they had just so easily started a conversation. 

"Yes! They seemed weirdly interested!" 

"It happens whenever they see old students. It was like that with me, when I started teaching here, then with Lupin…"

"What do you mean by 'old', may I ask you?" She asked, pretending to be offended. 

"I didn't mean… After all, I'm..." He turned to her as they reached the corridor that led to the potions' room. 

"I know, Severus! I'm just teasing." Y/N laughed. Snape chuckled and shook his head. 

As they were about to enter the classroom, they heard some hurried steps behind them and, right after that, someone calling for Y/N. Severus recognized Hermione's inquisitive tone without having to turn around. He rolled his eyes in annoyance before facing the girl. 

"Sorry to bother, Y/N! And you too, Professor Snape…" Hermione hesitantly said. Y/N smiled at her and signalized for her to go on and Snape had to fight the urge to roll his eyes again. "But I wanted to ask you something! I was wondering if you had any recommendations on books about Defense Against the Dark Arts." 

"Oh, I see!" Y/N said, impressed by the girl's attitude. "Since you're asking, I assume you covered all the titles recommended for the school year, am I right?" Hermione confirmed with a shy nod. "Okay, so I'm going to make some not-so-obvious recommendations, since it seems you already dominate the basics, is that ok?" Another nod. "I'd say you look for Confronting the Faceless…" At that Severus couldn't help but be impressed. "Quentin's bibliography is also really good, I think you probably have already read some of his books, but it's always a good choice and…I probably shouldn't…"

"Please do! I'd love any recommendation, really!" The girl asked. 

"Alright. This will sound a bit unorthodox, but you're a clever witch!" Y/N stated and Hermione smiled proudly. "I'll recommend that you look for the Dark Arts basic theories and practices. Search for books like Secrets of the Darkest Art, Confringo Spellbok and Basic Hexes for the Busy and Vexed… That's a fair starting point, I believe." Y/N then looked intensely at the girl that seemed in shock. "Don't get me wrong! I'm only recommending this 'cause I believe in your good intentions and I know that you'll only get to read them if one of your Professors allow it. I know it sounds weird, but I have this theory that in order to fight something, you have to understand it first. Trust me, if you know how a spell works, it's easier to learn a counterspell, if you know the poison, you can make an antidote and so on!"

"I see! You're absolutely right! Thank you so much!" Hermione said, already looking forward to her next study sessions. 

"Anytime!" Y/N smiled. "Just be a little critical with those readings and keep foccused on your actual goal, these books can be very persuasive sometimes…"

"Don't worry, I'll keep that in mind! Thanks again!" She was about to leave, but refrained herself. "Professor Snape, would you… write that permission for me?"

"I'll think about it, Miss Granger." He said with an eyebrow raised, but there was something in his tone that gave her some hope and she left with a smile.

"Did I just put you in an awkward situation?" Y/N asked, her tone and smile already asking for an apology.

"You mean making an insufferable teenager start bothering me about books? As if they didn't annoy me enough?" He asked sarcastically, which made her chuckle. Severus smiled at himself, almost proud of the fact that somehow - he didn't know exactly - he seemed to always make her laugh.

"My bad… But you can always refuse to let her read those books…" She said as they entered the room. "I mean… They are a bit disturbing, but…"

"I know… But I agree with everything you said to her… It's an unusual study approach, but it works. And if there's any student I would ever allow to read those kind of books at a young age, it would be Granger…" He said sitting at his desk to write the permission. "But you never heard me say it." 

"My lips are sealed." She smiled at him, amused by the way he tried to appear cold and distant to his students when he actually cared about them. "So, those essays…" She started, leaning against the table, looking at his writing. 

"Yes, I read them and got quite intrigued by that one with the brazilian herb…" He took a moment to process the fact that she was so nonchalantly standing really close to him. It wasn't exactly intimidating, but he felt his cheeks burning, so he decided not to look at her. "I actually did some experiments of my own…"

"Really?" She sounded impressed, which made him smile a bit and raise his head to see her amused face. "Can I see?"

Severus struggled with himself, debating if he would share his experiments with someone or keep them private, as he always did. He didn't know if he actually trusted the woman in front of him or if he just wanted to impress her, but he was inclined to show her his studies. 

"You don't have to, though." Y/N was quick to say, seeing he wasn't sure about showing his work. "I mean…" But Severus didn't let her finish.

"Come." He said getting up, a smirk on his face as he led her to his private chambers behind the classroom. He held the door open for her and she entered his living room. 

"So this is where a Hogwarts' Professor stays during the school year." She said taking a look around. 

"A potion master, yes." He confirmed. "It was Slughorn's chambers before me." 

"I see! It's nice! I mean… to have a house inside Hogwarts." She trailed off.

"It is, I guess…" He went to the kitchen and signalized for her to follow. With a wave of his hand he made the water in the tea kettle start to boil. "Fancy some tea?"

"Sure!" Y/N said, with a smile. Another wave of his hand and two cups of perfectly brewed tea were ready. "Okay, you gotta be kidding me, right? You're a potion master, so you make better tea than the rest of us, mere mortals, is that so? Are you an amazing cook as well? That's so cliché, Severus…" 

Severus laughed lightly and opened the door to his personal lab, allowing her to enter before him. "I don't know about the cooking…" 

"I don't believe you." She teased. "But that's a topic for some other time, let's see what you've been working on! I just have to remind you that I probably won't understand a single thing about your experiments."

"Now I don't believe you." He teased back and allowed himself a smirk, one that she couldn't see because his lips were hiding behind the cup of tea. Severus approached one of the cauldrons that was covered by a heavy cover. "I began by reproducing the author's recipe, which turned out quite well… The effects of the herb she mentioned really perform as she predicted. The calming draught that resulted is basically as effective as the original one." Snape explained as Y/N stepped closer to take a look at the potion. He observed her features as she seemed to really pay attention and for a moment or two, he forgot to continue. "But then I figured that, since this herb can replace a large number of ingredients, it meant that, there should be a way of making this potion stronger by the use of other supplementing elements." He then took the cover from three smaller cauldrons. "I've been able to manage some minor advances, but there are some ingredients missing in Hogwarts' storage."

"Really? Rare ones?" Y/N asked, still looking intensely at the potions, amazed by his progress. 

"Some of them, yes. But mostly foreing insumes." Severus explained.

"Do you have a list? I could check the Ministry lab and storage and fetch you some of them, if they happen to be available there." She said looking up to face him, Snape raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "Severus, the Ministry has more ingredients than we care to use. I'm sure no one will even notice some of them are missing. And even if they do, as head of the department, I'm in charge of the storage." She shrugged. "It's better that you use it than to let everything rot inside the aurors' cabinets."

"In that case, I can make a list and send it over to your office." Severus said. "Thank you."

"Oh, don't thank me!" Y/N tried to suppress a smile. "It's not like it's gonna be free of charges, you know…"

"No?" Somehow, he couldn't take her seriously. 

"Definitely not." She took a sip from her tea. "You didn't think I would simply give you the ingredients, did you?" Y/N had this almost devious smirk playing at her lips as she watched Severus become more and more confused. "I mean, I have to see your list to know the actual price, but I'm guessing that at the very least, you're gonna have to buy me some drinks."

Snape almost choked on his tea. Was she really implying what he thought she was? Sooner that afternoon he was thinking about possible ways to ask her out and gave up on that idea because it seemed completely ridiculous and here she was, making it look like a joke.

"Is that so? That's how the Ministry charges for potions' supplies?" He managed to ask, trying with all his might to sound nonchalant.

"Hey, I don't make the rules…" She feigned innocence. "If you still want those ingredients, send me the list tomorrow and we can discuss the payment later." She shrugged again. "You know better, of course, but I'd say a dinner is a fair price considering you'll get to develop your researches."

"I'm sorry, did you say dinner?" He asked, already playing along. "I thought you said earlier it was just some drinks…" His sarcasm was finally being put to good use against her.

"I believe I said 'at least' some drinks. Who knows? Those ingredients can be really expensive sometimes…"

"Right…" Snape said, trying to keep the serious façade. 

"Anyway… If you still want them, send me an owl with your list and I'll see what I can do." She said finishing her tea.

"I'll think about it…" Now he was just trying not to agree with going out with her right away. 

"Of course you will." She chuckled. "I guess I'll leave you to your thoughts for the night then! It's getting late... Can I use your floo network?" Severus nodded and led the way to his living room. 

"I'll send you the list tomorrow." Severus said as he watched her step into the fireplace. 

"Good!" Y/N smiled at him. "Bye, Severus!" With that, she left his chambers in the green flames brought by the floo powder. 

Severus stared at the empty fireplace for sometime, thinking about the nonsense of everything that happened.

For some reason, he didn't seem capable to stop smiling for the rest of the night.

[litafficionado]

Four Questions with Garielle Lutz:

I’m extremely beholden to Garielle who took the time to respond to my silly, garbled, childish, intrusive questions. You can purchase her latest book Worsted here and here, among many other sites.  --------- Q.  You've attributed the resuscitation of your literary career in quite considerable measure to your teacher and editor Gordon Lish. It seems like you guys are particularly close, even as you seem to have largely confined yourself to Pittsburgh(mostly driven by your erstwhile teaching career but also by your liking the city over time). How does it feel to hear someone like Gordon speak so highly of you, “I think there’s more truth in one sentence of my student [Lutz] than in all of [Philip] Roth. Lutz gives [herself] away. “The speaking subject gives herself away,” says Julia Kristeva. I thoroughly believe that. What you see in Lutz, [her] lavish gift, is [her] refusal to relax [her] determination to uncover and uncover. It is, by my lights, quite wonderful, quite terrific.[…]Lutz is entirely the real thing?” Does one feel vindicated? How do you navigate the waters of self-effacement and self-indulgence as a writer and as a person? A.  I haven’t had a literary career before or after studying with Gordon Lish.  I don’t think one finds one’s way to him in hopes of launching a career.  Anyone with vulgar ambition along those lines would have been shown the door pretty quick.  I would never presume to be close to Gordon or to feel that I am part of his life other than in my role as a student. He dwells in another realm entirely. I attended his classes and tried to grasp, to the best of my abilities, the things he was saying about how to get from one word to the next.  He also talked about how to free a word from the constricting range of its permissible behaviors, how to drain it of every sepsis of received meaning, until there is nothing left of the word but the skeleton of its former self, just the lank, gawky letters sticking out this way and that, and then how to fill the thing up again, to the point of overspilling, but this time with something that would never have been allowed to belong in there before, and then see whether the word, now close to bursting, can hold up and maybe have a new kind of say.  I’m always surprised and relieved whenever Gordon says anything approving about anything I write.  I think that for a lot of his students, his opinion is the only one that counts.  

Q.  You've said, "A typical day goes like this: noon, afternoon, evening, night, additional night, even more night, furtherest night, then bedtime, though I don’t have a bed or furniture of any kind.” Have you always been a lychnobite, sensing the overwhelming superabundance of life after the sunset or is it a relatively recent development facilitated by your retirement from teaching? Do you consider yourself in any way to be a minimalist? Does your room bear any resemblance with a sparsely lit opium den where all exchanges happen at the floor level?

A.  I think the pandemic has had a lot to do with it.  Lately I’ve been up until five, sometimes six.  But I’ve always found mornings the harshest and ugliest part of the day (maybe it’s just because of the place where I live, but I never open the blinds anyway).  There can be something awfully scolding about a sunrise the older you get  Evening seems to extend every form of leniency, and in the dead of night, expectations go way down, which is where they maybe ought to stay.  I do spend all of my time on the floor, but my apartment doesn’t bear any resemblance to an opium den.  It’s more like a crawlspace or the back of a  dollar-store stockroom.    

Q. Even with your reputation of being a page-hugger than a typical page-turner, how do you decide which books to read apart from your line of work? Do you try to keep it largely in the familiar territory, like exploring the oeuvre of a time-tested writer? How does one unshackle oneself from this constant niggling that one ought to read so many books? Here's Ben Marcus: “When I was in graduate school, there was this sort of cautionary adage going around by the poet Francis Ponge that we can only write what we’ve already read and one way to hear that is you’re just sort of doomed to kind of regurgitate everything you’ve read and so if you’re just reading all the popular books, the books everyone else is reading, in some sense you’re maybe unwittingly confining yourself to a particular literary practice that’s gonna look pretty familiar. I remember at the time thinking, okay well if that’s true, if I’m just fated to that, then I’m gonna read things that no one else is reading. I loved to just go to the library and pretty randomly grab books, because I think for a little while, and I’m kinda glad this passed, but I really just had this feeling that a writer just consumes language and just sort of spits it out. So it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t have to be a great novel for it to be worth-reading. And I still read very little fiction in the end compared to non-fiction, essays, works of philosophy, science. And the other sort of dirty secret is: I don’t finish a lot of books. I just don’t care enough. I only finish a book if I have to or if I really want to. And, often, I’ll stop reading a book three pages from the end. I think that as writers, we probably feel a lot of pressure about what kind of a reader to be, what kind of a writer to be in, and we feel this shame, like “I haven’t read DH Lawrence, I’m such an asshole.” You begin to feel like you’ve these deficiencies and you gotta make them up and you never will and a lot of it is just kinda tyrannical. Of course, obviously, we must be naturally motivated to read and read and read and read but I guess I just started to notice that…I got a lot of my ideas by just reading…e.g. a gardening book…like the weird way a sentence was structured.” Then there's Moyra Davey: “Woolf famously said of reading: “The only advice … is to take no advice, … follow your instincts, … use your reason.” A similar thought was voiced by her elder contemporary Oscar Wilde, who did not believe in recommending books, only in de-recommending them. Later, Jorge Luis Borges echoed the same sentiment by discouraging “systematic bibliographies” in favor of “adulterous” reading. More recently, Gregg Bordowitz has promoted “promiscuous” reading in which you impulsively allow an “imposter” book to overrule any reading trajectory you might have set for yourself, simply because, for instance, a friend tells you in conversation that he is reading it and is excited by it. This evokes for me that most potent kind of reading — reading as flirtation with or eavesdropping on someone you love or desire, someone who figures in your fantasy life.”“What to read?” is a recurring dilemma in my life. The question always conjures up an image: a woman at home, half-dressed, moving restlessly from room to room, picking up a book, reading a page or two and no sooner feeling her mind drift, telling herself, “You should be reading something else, you should be doing something else.” The image also has a mise-en-scène: overstuffed, disorderly shelves of dusty and yellowing books, many of them unread; books in piles around the bed or faced down on a table; work prints of photographs, also with a faint covering of dust, taped to the walls of the studio; a pile of bills; a sink full of dishes. She is trying to concentrate on the page in front of her but a distracting blip in her head travels from one desultory scene to the next, each one competing for her attention. It is not just a question of which book will absorb her, for there are plenty that will do that, but rather, which book, in a nearly cosmic sense, will choose her, redeem her. Often what is at stake, should she want to spell it out, is the idea that something is missing, as in: what is the crucial bit of urgently needed knowledge that will save her, at least for this day? She has the idea that if she can simply plug into the right book then all will be calm, still, and right with the world. […] Must reading be tied to productivity to be truly satisfying […] Or is it the opposite, that it can only really gratify if it is a total escape? What is it that gives us a sense of sustenance and completion? Are we on some level always striving to attain that blissful state of un-agendaed reading remembered from childhood? What does it mean to spend a good part of one’s life absorbed in books? Given that our time is limited, the problem of reading becomes one of exclusion. Why pick one book over the hundreds, perhaps thousands on our bookshelves, the further millions in libraries and stores? For in settling on any book we are implicitly saying no to countless others. This conflict is aptly conjured up by essayist Lynne Sharon Schwartz as she reflects on “the many books (the many acts) I cannot in all decency leave unread (undone) — or can I?”” What way out do you suggest? Do you deem it worthwhile to eschew any shred of obligation and be propelled in any direction naturally? Like you said you found grammar books and lexicons more engaging and enjoyable than the novels.

A.  I seem to remember that in some magazine or another, James Wolcott once said “Read at whim.”  That has always sounded like the best advice.  And I assume it means to feel free to ditch any book that disappoints.  Like Ben Marcus, I’ve had experiences of abandoning a book just a few pages from the end, but I often don’t make it that far in most things anymore.  I came from a long line of nonreaders, so I’ve never felt any guilt about passing up books or writers that so many people seem to talk about a lot, and I don’t expect other people to like what I like. Some books I’ll start about halfway in and then see whether I might want to work my way back to the beginning.  Others I’ll start at the very end and inch my way toward the front, one sentence at a time, and see how far I can go that way.  I seem to remember that in The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes recommends “cruising” a text, and maybe something like that is what I’m doing at least some of the time, if I understand what he means.  And every now and then I’ll read  a book straightforwardly for an hour and afterward wonder whether the time might have been better spent staring off into space. Too many books these days seem ungiving.  It’s the ungivingness that disappoints the most.  A lot of contemporary fiction has the gleam and sparkle of a trend feature in a glossy magazine, and I can appreciate the craft and the savvy that go into something like that, but I am drawn more toward stories and books that demand being read slowly and closely, pulse by pulse, the kind of fiction where everything--what little might be left of an entire blighted life--can pivot on the peal of a single syllable. Q.  I'd like to ask you so many questions. But let this be the last one for matters of convenience. Also, in a capitalistic world, one's enshrouded with guilt for taking one's time without being remunerative in any way. Among the books and films that you recently encountered, which ones do you think deserve rereads/rewatches? A.  I used to feel like the woman you’ve described so movingly above, someone who questions her choice of books almost to the brink of despair.  At my age, though, I no longer have a program for reading, a syllabus or a checklist, and I’m okay with knowing there’s a lot I’ll never get around to.  I’m happy being a rereader of a few inexhaustible books and chancing upon occasional fresh treasure.  The one book that has shaken me the most in the longest time is Anna DeForest’s  A History of Present Illness, which will be out next August.  It’s a blisteringly truthful novel written with moral grace and unsettling brilliance and an awing mastery of language.  A couple of recent books I have read in manuscript, books that totally knocked me out with their originality and uncanny command of the word, are Greg Gerke’s In the Suavity of the Rock (a novel) and David Nutt’s Summertime in the Emergency Room (a short-story collection).  I haven’t watched many movies in the past few months, and the ones I watched aren’t ones I’ll probably be rewatching anytime soon.