#i did call the goal new laptop for college era

[loafbud]

I ordered the new laptop w/ the funds i received from the kofi goal, so I'm still waiting on that to arrive!! Crossing my fingers that it still arrives in time before school starts! 😭

But I realized I had a little amount of money leftover from it, so I went and got me a capture card 👀

Gaming livestreams & Let's Plays from me is about to become real very very soon

[celestialmystical]

The Waiting Game

As I sit here in this square room, staring out over the Han river at Incheon, with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company, I ask myself: Why did I really decide to move here to South Korea?

Why am I purposefully putting myself in such an uncomfortable situation?

I mean, leaving my friends and family and living in a country where I can barely speak the language and I don’t really know anyone?

Why would I do that to myself?

I think back to about five years ago, when I was nineteen, I came across a video on Instagram of some girl dancing. I saw there were judges and other girls like her in the back. I don’t how but I assumed from the video it was a show about making a girlband.

Intrigued, I looked up what the show was and found out it was Produce 101.

Produce 101 was a show about 101 South Korean girls auditioning to make a kpop group.

I really enjoyed the show and then became obsessed with South Korea. I listened to lots of different kpop groups as well as kr&b and watched a lot of kdrama, Flower Over Boys being my first one. I watched several videos on youtube about what it was like to live in South Korea and how I could possibly move there.

That’s how I found out that you could live in Korea for a year simply by teaching there.

At the time, it was just an idea that I could do that. I didn’t really have any goal for that to happen.

I was in my second year of college. I was in relationship with someone I thought I’d marry. What I was going to do after college was far away from my mind.

A lot has happened since I came across that video of Chungha.

I’ve experienced a lot of losses in my life in these past 5 years—friends, lovers, family, pets. Literally and figuratively.

I experienced a really dark period of my life. I constantly felt numb and disconnected from everyone and everything.

But I also experienced great growth from that difficult era of my life. I wrote a book as my healing medium.

It was a period of my life where I really learned so many things about life and myself. The biggest one of them all being the importance of loving yourself before and more than anyone else.

After college, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I knew I didn’t want to live back home with my parents but I had no other choice.

I got a job and met some wonderful people there. And while I had many fun, easy times working there and hanging out with my coworkers who eventually became really good friends of mine, I felt like I needed more.

Lots of people make the decision of taking more school after graduating college—like getting a Master’s, for example.

I didn’t feel like that was the right decision for me. At least, not immediately. While I really do dread the thought of going back to school and writing a bunch of essays where I have to cite people because personal opinions can’t be taken into consideration unless it’s been backed up by ‘science’ and ‘numbers’—which aren’t always accurate given the study and don’t really take into consideration the minority outside of the numbers.

Anyway, while I dread going back to school, I also don’t really know what kind of career I want to go into.

While I was with my boyfriend for two years, I thought becoming a therapist was what I wanted. Even though that had never struck any bells within my heart, I felt it was the safest and easiest route for me. I’m a great listener and advice-giver (if you’re okay with it being a little brutal)—and while the idea doesn’t repel me right now, it surely doesn’t attract me either.

At the moment, I’m kind of over being the trash can for people to dump their problems on.

I’m okay with hearing my friends problems and being there for them in whatever way they need—but to have people just blab blab blab about their problems at me all day, especially people who are narcissistic, sounds extremely draining.

I want to live and be with people who also want to live.

And I think part of living is stepping out of your comfort zone.

Initially, my interest for South Korea was because of the kpop and the kdrama and the fashion. I won’t lie.

After a while though, it morphed into wanting to do something completely out of my comfort zone where everything is new and different for me. I know living in a country that doesn’t speak my language and not many people look like me would do this.

Korea became the option not only because of the sweet deal of teaching here for a year while they give you an apartment to live in and really just help you out in general, but also because, it just called to me.

I can’t say it’s because I know this country the most because I don’t. I only know what kpop and kdrama show me which I know is like the rosiest lense possible. I can’t say it’s because it’s the only country that interests me cause that’s not true. Japan, Iceland, and Italy really interest me too.

I do really want to work with kids--but again, I could do that anywhere.

I don’t know. I just feel it in my soul that I need to be here for some reason. That I need to experience whatever it is I’m going to experience here.

It’s hard to see right now what that is or what it will be.

After coming here the first day and experiencing such a distressing time being lost, it became extremely apparent to me how difficult this was going to be.

My body is honestly so overwhelmed, that even though I want to keep studying Korean, I barely have any energy except to watch shows on my laptop, like Itaewon Class. (which is a great show, I highkey recommend.)

As someone who doesn’t really watch shows, that’s all I’ve had the energy to do. I can barely read or write (creatively, it’s different for me than doing something like this)

That and I’ve been craving food, which is really not like me either. Usually, I forget to eat. But lately, I’ve just been like, what can I stuff myself with?

I know this overwhelmed feeling comes with the fact that I’m having so much new information coming into my brain at once.

Part of it though, I think comes from the fact that I have extremely high expectations of myself.

The fact that I don’t know Korean fluently, makes me think I need to do everything in my power right now to make it so. The pressure adds to the overwhelmingness.

I think I have to be great at everything immediately.

I paradoxically feel like I need to have it all done right now but also feel that have no motivation to do it.

It’s just kind of funny to me. 

The Universe always, always reminds me to stay patient and humble.

My mom always says to me, “Rome was not built in a day.”

And she’s so right. I’m not going to be fluent in Korean right this moment.

I’ve literally only been here for two days.

I have to take it a step at a time. Like with everything. 

I constantly come back to this concept. It’s equally frustrating as it is hilarious to me.

Though there’s so many things I want to do and see, though I want to be able to speak Korean well, I know that will come, eventually.

But right now, right now I need to be just be here with this little step.

It’s not about the destination, but the journey. It is about those little victories.

This mentality has helped me gain some energy back and has made me realize my purpose for being here will present itself when I’m ready.

As my father has said to me: “Tough times ahead but they will be important life lessons you can carry with you for the rest of your life! There’s a reason you were meant to be there at this stage of your life!! Go find it.”

And that I will. Eventually.

But for now.

For now, I’m going to watch Itaewon Class and eat some chips :)

[spine-buster]

Alone, Together | Chapter 11 | Morgan Rielly

A/N:  If you’d like to see a face claim for Briony, send me a message and I will send you a pic.   

Another thing people have started doing is asking questions about Morgan and Bee’s relationship - the stuff you don’t see in the chapters.  If you have questions about canon, please send me an ask and I’ll answer it.  There’s a tag for this: morgan and briony canon

Line breaks also mysteriously disappeared because Tumblr is Tumblr so I guess the stars will have to do to denote a change in scene.

For the first time in a while, Briony was happy.  

It wasn’t that she was ever depressed.  Most of the time, she was too busy and too driven to feel any other emotion besides determination.  The need to get shit done without giving it much thought.  She just didn’t have the luxury to feel anything else.  Classes still stressed her out, she still hated marking first year undergraduate essays, and she was still poor as fuck.  But she was happy.  Unapologetically happy.

It was a combination of things.  Morgan, obviously, played a pretty big role in it all.  She didn’t think she could be this happy in a relationship, judging by her past ones, but it was possible with Morgan.  She was doing well in her courses and maintaining a high GPA – she even aced that behavioural economics assignment – and her professors had agreed to be her references and put in a good word for her job applications to the “Big Five” banks.  Mason’s various funding grants had been accepted, which meant his PhD was going to continue to be fully funded.  Angie had gotten a promotion at Indigo head office, which meant she was pushing less paper and directing others to push the paper she was no longer pushing.  Angie also moved up a pay grade, which was always nice.  She’d finished watching Schitt’s Creek with Morgan and they had moved on to Kim’s Convenience.  The Leafs were playing really well.  Morgan had even set a new record for the best five game start by a defenseman in the modern era, passing Bobby Orr, and he was set to shatter all expectations this season.  They had celebrated accordingly.

Everything just seemed to be working out.  

Even tonight.  It was a Wednesday but Bee had done enough schoolwork to be able to attend the Leafs game against the San Jose Sharks.  She was glad she did, because the boys ended up winning 5-3, with John and Auston getting two goals each.  The team had played really well, and although at some points it looked like the Sharks were going to catch up, Fred put up his wall.  

After the final buzzer rang and the stars of the night were announced, fans began to file out of the arena.  It became a routine for Bee to file out with the wives and wait in the employee area, near the locker room, where they boys would meet them.  She followed Aryne and Christina as the continued to discuss her exam schedule, Christina making sure the Christmas party the Marleau family were hosting didn’t interfere with her schedule.  

As Morgan drove through the streets of Toronto, on his now familiar route to Briony’s apartment before he’d turn around and go back to his, he kept her hand clasped in his and in his lap.  He would look over to her at red lights, and she’d catch him and smile and laugh, embarrassed, but he’d just do it again at the next light.  The Leafs were going on a roadtrip for a week, to Minnesota and Buffalo, so he wanted to make sure he got a good look at her before he left.  Not that he didn’t look at her enough.

“Can you drop me off at the Metro at Spadina, actually?” she said as they passed College Street.  “I need to pick up some groceries I ran out of.”

“Can’t wait till tomorrow?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “I need milk for my coffee.  You know how I think coffee is too bitter without milk.”

He smiled.  He learned that early.  She made fun of him for how much sugar he put in his, whereas she had weaned off it in the past year.  “Okay, fine.  I can wait for you.”

“No no no, you go home and you go to bed,” she said.  “You need your rest.  Metro is like a three minute walk from my apartment.  I’ll be okay.”

“Briony.”

“I’ll be okay,” she repeated, squeezing his hand.  

When Morgan finally got to Metro, he pulled up to the curb and put his car in park.  Briony gathered her bag and made sure nothing fell out before looking at him.  He leaned over the centre console, giving her light kisses.  There were many, and only stopped when Briony began to giggle from all of them.  

“I’m gonna see you tomorrow right?  Before I leave for the road trip?”

“Of course,” she nodded her head, and Morgan leaned in for another kiss.  And another.  And another.

“I’m gonna go now,” Briony whispered in between one.

“No.”

She laughed, pulling away.  “Bye Morgan.”

“One more.”

She digressed.  She leaned in one more time and he kissed her, making sure his tongue grazed her bottom lip to leave her wanting more.  When she pulled away, she slapped his forearm playfully.  “Tease.”

“You’re one to talk.”

She gave him a look, opening the door before climbing out.  “Drive safe,” she called before slamming it shut.  He watched as she walked in, and watched until he couldn’t see her in the store anymore.  Licking his lips, he put his car in drive.

***

As Morgan settled into his bedroom, he rushed to take off his suit and change into an old t-shirt he was using as his pajamas.  He felt so lazy that he didn’t even hang his suit or fold his pants properly – he just left them flat on the chair before walking into his ensuite to brush his teeth lazily before bed.  Eventually, he plugged in his phone, climbed into bed, and wrapped the covers around him.

He checked his phone one more time.  His lock screen, a picture of Briony sitting on his lap as they both smiled at the camera, opened up to his background: a picture of him and Briony from the fall.  They had gone for a walk in Trinity Bellwoods and had stopped under a tree to lay down for a bit.  Her head was on his chest, her hair spread out on it, and his arm was around her tightly.  It was their sleeping position almost every time they were in the same bed together (besides the traditional spooning), so it was no wonder that they ended up taking a quick nap under the tree.  Sometimes he would catch himself staring at his phone just to look at the pictures.  

After clearing all his notifications, he set his phone down on his bedside table and closed his eyes.  With the hockey schedule in full swing, it didn’t take him long to fall asleep.  His mind was just as tired as his body these days, and he found his eyes falling heavier and heavier with each passing second.

Until his phone rang.  

He almost didn’t hear it; he almost thought it was a dream, but he eventually regained enough consciousness to realize it was blasting loudly.  He grumbled, turning over to his side and grabbing to answer it.  He didn’t bother looking at the caller ID because he knew the brightness of the screen would hurt his eyes.  If it were Auston or any of the guys, he’d murder them.

“Hello?” he grumbled into the phone.

“M-M-M-Mo…” he heard Briony’s voice shake on the other end.

His eyes immediately went wide at the sound of her voice.  Why was she calling so late at night?  “Briony?”

“M-Mo…”

“Briony, what’s wrong?”

She sounded like she was hyperventilating but trying to hide it.  “Mo, s-somebody broke into my ap-partment,” she hiccupped.  “Somebody b-b-broke in and took all my st-stuff-f.”

Morgan shot up from his bed and threw the covers off his body.  “Have you called the police?”

“M-M-Mo, they took my laptop.  They took my j-j-jewellery box.  T-T-They t-t-took --”

“Briony, did you call the police?” he asked more firmly.  His heart was running a mile a minute now.

“Y-Yes,” her voice continued to shake.  “M-Mo…they took everything.  Even my clothes.”

Holy shit.  Holy shit.  He rushed to throw on a hoodie he left on his chair and struggled to put on a pair of track pants without falling over.  “I’m on my way,” he said quickly.  “Are the cops coming?”

He heard her breath hitch in her throat a few times.  “M-Mo…”

“Did the cops say they were on their way?”

“Y-Y-Yeah, they’ve sent s-someone and he’s j-j-just out-tside now.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in five,” he said, grabbing his keys and slamming the door behind him.  “Do you want to stay on the phone with me?”

“M-M-Mo, what am I gonna do?” she cried.  “Th-They stole everything.  My front window is b-broken a-a-and I d-d-don’t know --”

“Briony it’s going to be okay,” he assured her.

“N-No it’s-s-s n-not.”

“Yes it is.  I’m on my way.”

***

Morgan was sure he sped through the streets, probably even ran a couple of red lights, because he made it up to the Annex in record time.  By the time he got to her apartment, there was already a cop car with its lights flashing outside.  He didn’t even attempt to park his car; he practically left it in the middle of street, behind the cop car, and rushed towards the front door.  He noticed the front bay window completely smashed, glass all over the front lawn.

 When he opened the door to her apartment, like he had so many times before, he saw her standing with the police officer.  She immediately turned her head the second she heard the door open and when she realized it was him, ran towards him.  “Morgan!”

She clung on to him for dear life.  She began crying again as she buried her head in his chest.  It was only then when he noticed the state of the apartment – broken glass near the window; all drawers open or literally taken out of the slot and thrown half way across the room; mud all over the floor from muddy boots; her kitchen cabinets open and her food thrown everywhere.  It looked like a tornado passed through.  There were two other people in the apartment that looked like they were dusting for prints.  “Are you hurt?” he asked.  She shook her head.  “Did you see them?”  Another head shake.  

He noticed the police officer approach him.  “My guess is you are the boyfriend.”

“Yes sir.”

“Ms. McTavish mentioned you stay over sometimes.  Do you keep any valuables at the apartment?”

Morgan shook his head.  “No sir.  I…what happened?”  Briony had pulled away and was wiping the tears on her cheeks with the back of her hand.  “What happened?” he asked her directly.

“W-When I c-c-came back from the g-grocery store I noticed the w-w-window, and I ran inside and I s-saw th-th-this,” she stuttered out.  “I d-d-don’t…I d-don’t know…”

“We are assuming it happened during the period she was absent from the residence,” the police officer said.  “I’ll just need to finish writing Ms. McTavish’s statement and record a list of all her belongings that were stolen.”

“Yeah, of course,” Morgan said, grabbing at Briony’s hand.  He looked around again to see more mess.  Her covers thrown off her bed, even the mattress protector gone – clearly whoever did this was banking on the old ‘keep your money under the bed’ trick; her fridge door wide open, contents again spewed all over the floor.  He was feeling more and more sick the more he took in.  He couldn’t imagine how violated Briony must be feeling.

“My l-l-laptop is the b-biggest thing,” she began.  “A-And they t-t-took my c-clothes.  Almost all my c-clothes.”

“Were there any items of significant value?”

She shook her head vehemently.  “And then my j-jewellery box.”

“Again, any items of significant value?  Family heirlooms?”

“No.”

Morgan knew Briony didn’t have much, and he knew she didn’t spend much, but his heart broke when she had to give the officer an itemized list of all the clothes and pieces of jewellery that were stolen and how much she had paid for them.  He had $200 dollar shirts and custom suits hanging in his closet, and he didn’t think he’d ever heard Briony go above $30 for how much she spent on something.  The fact that she could even give the officer an itemized list of every piece of clothing and every little piece of jewellery she had meant something.  It meant she knew exactly what she owned – however little it was – and she kept tabs on it all.  He wasn’t even sure about that.  He didn’t really keep tabs on things like he should.  If the same thing ever happened to him, he wouldn’t be able to give an accurate number or descriptions.  He could remember some prices of significance, like his $8000 watch or the general ballpark he paid for all his pairs of Jordan shoes, but he could never be specific like she was doing.  

“Okay Ms. McTavish.  I’ve already made the call for the crew to come to board up the front window and I’m going to be putting a heavy padlock on your apartment door.  Do you have a place you can stay tonight?”

“Yes, absolutely,” Morgan answered for her quickly.

“Okay.  Once the boards are up I’ll file your report and statement.  I’m also going to ask your neighbours if they saw or heard any suspicious activity.  I suggest you take whatever belongings you can for now, anything of value or significance that perhaps the intruder didn’t take, and I will call you tomorrow to discuss your options,” the officer informed her.  

“W-What about my stuff?”

“Pardon me?”

“M-My belongings.  What’s gonna happen with finding my s-stuff?”

The officer gave her a concerned look.  He looked at Morgan briefly too before taking a deep breath.  “Ms. McTavish, there’s really nothing further we can do unless we find the culprit.  Usually in these situations the culprit keeps the items or sells them for any value, if they are even of any value.  We can look at local pawn businesses in the area, but…”

“So my stuff is just gone again.”

The officer nodded his head once, his face still concerned.  “I will try my hardest.  Maybe I’ll look in some of the electronic shops for your laptop, but I really can’t guarantee anything.”

The only things left to salvage were Briony’s books.  Because of course the thief didn’t take the fucking books.  The officer waited for them as she moved in a complete daze around her apartment – no more tears, but her face still stained with them, and with an aura of fear about her.  Morgan could see her hands trembling as she grabbed at her textbooks, the ones she was using this semester in particular, and handed them to Morgan.  She then looked at her small half bookshelf of only two rows, with all the fiction books she had accumulated from various book sales – the book sales she told Morgan about in one of their first conversations – and looked at him.  “Will this fit in your car?” her voice trembling as much as her hands.

“Of course.  What else do you want to grab?”

“That’s it.”

“Briony --”

“I want to go now.”

“B--”

“Please, Morgan.  I don’t want to be here anymore.  Please.”

“Come here.  Come here,” he outstretched his arms to her, and she began crying again as she nestled into his hug and buried her face in his chest.  “It’s gonna be okay baby.”

“Can we p-p-please just g-grab my b-b-books and g-go,” she mumbled into his chest.  “There’s nothing else, M-Morgan.  N-N-Nothing else is-s-s mine.  It all came with the apartment.”

He nodded his head, moving to give her the textbooks she had handed to him.  He bent at the knees and picked up the bookshelf easily, all the books still in it.  He looked at the officer.  “We’re done.  You can lock it up.”

The officer nodded his head.  “Alright then.  You stay safe.  I will call you tomorrow for further information.”  He locked up the door with a padlock as they left, and waited for the crew to arrive to put up the wood boards on the broken windows.

Morgan carried the bookshelf and placed it into the trunk of his car.  Briony, still clutching her textbooks, climbed into the front seat.  When he climbed in and started the car, he looked over at her.  Her cheeks were fresh with tears, her winter jacket haphazardly put on.  He reached over the centre console and grabbed her hand, bringing it up to his lips and kissing it.  “It’s going to be okay, Briony.”

She tucked her knees into chest as he drove away from her apartment, her textbooks where her feet were supposed to be.  She looked out the window, tears still streaming down her face occasionally.  As the city streets passed by her, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of emptiness within her; an emptiness that felt all too familiar.  An emptiness that seemed to follow her for her entire life.  She came from nothing, and now she had nothing.  She could accumulate, she could amass, but she would always end up empty.  The emptiness was not a new feeling, but it didn’t hurt any less just because she had felt it before.  It hurt more now because she knew how it felt to be full.

Everything was a blur until she climbed into bed.  She knew at some point they arrived at his apartment, and they got out of the car and took the elevator to his place, but she didn’t remember.  She didn’t remember anything until she got into bed and practically wrapped her body around Morgan’s to feel any semblance of safety.  Despite the cold outside and the cold in her body, he felt so warm and so full, and she wanted desperately to feel that too.  She knew she wouldn’t – not anytime soon – but it was worth a try.  If she couldn’t have it, she could at least feel it.  

“Briony…” Morgan’s voice was soft as he wrapped his arms around her, placing light kisses on her forehead and the crown of her head.  “Briony, look at me.  Please.”  She pulled away only slightly, enough to get a look at his face.  Her eyes were red and puffy still from all the tears.  “I need to know what happened in your childhood now,” he said.  

She shook her head.  “No.”

“You said ‘So my stuff is just gone again’ to the police officer.”

“Morgan.”

“Briony, please.  Please.”

Tears welled up in her eyes again.  “I th-thought I was finally safe,” she hiccupped again, still shaking slightly as Morgan held on to her.

“What do you mean?”

“Th-Th-This happened all the time as a k-kid.  All the t-t-time,” she revealed finally, wiping a stray tear away.  “Esp-p-pecially when we were between places.  Or at the homeless sh-shelt-t-ters.  And they’d t-take all my mom’s s-s-stuff.  They’d take m-my st-stuff too.  Anything they thought was of value.  Th-That’s why I always ended up w-with n-n-nothing.  And that’s w-why we’d always end up with n-nothing.  I was always s-so s-s-scared.  We’d always have to st-start from s-s-scratch.”

In-between places.  Homeless shelters.  They’d take my stuff.  Starting from scratch.  Morgan felt sick to his stomach.  This had happened to her before.  Often.  As a fucking child.  As a child with an alcoholic mother who had no will to protect her.  With a mother who had no will to attempt to make their situation better.  How somebody could create that environment for a child; how someone could be complacent in making a child that scared; how someone could not care about their child to that degree, Morgan would never be able to understand.  

“You don’t have to be scared anymore,” Morgan said.  “You’re safe with me.  You don’t have to worry.”

“She’d never t-tell me everything was going to be okay because sh-she knew it was never going to be ok-kay,” Briony continued, and Morgan knew she was talking about her mother.  “And when I finally l-left I thought everything was going to be okay.”

“I’ve got you now.  I’m here for you now.  It’s going to be okay.”

“N-No it’s n-n-not,” she shook her head, unable to believe him.  “M-My laptop’s gone, I have no c-clothes, I didn’t even have m-m-much to begin with and now I have n-nothing again and-d- I --”

“Briony, no, no,” Morgan repeated, squeezing her tighter.  “You have me.  You have me.  You don’t have nothing, you have me.  I don’t want you going through this alone.  You can’t go through this alone.  Because you’re not alone anymore.”

She buried her face in his chest again, unable to cope with his words as tears streamed down her face.  There was too much emptiness, too much pain.  She could only cry herself to sleep, and Morgan, heartbroken, could only listen, his heart breaking with each passing sob, each passing tear he felt wash his skin, each passing tremble of her body.

[therealdonnytran]

23

As 23 comes to an end I look back through all my pictures. For better or worse I kept a lot of memories with me from 2009 to today, lol. 

As a kid, like everyone else, I thought people who were 23 had it all figured out. They had the things I wanted. They had an apartment. They had a good paying job. They had a girlfriend. They had these exciting pictures of drinking every night with their friends.

Boy, was I wrong.

I remember wanting to be so free at like 18 that I slept on couches and ran around the city trying to figure out the man I was becoming. In hindsight my mother was crushed that she came home and all my shit was packed and I was moved out without a letter or goodbye. She thought that her son had become a drug addict and bad guy (never became a drug addict HAHA)

I was just trying to be an adult. I wanted to quit being a burden to my parents at 18 and I decided it was my time to go out there in the world whether I had stability to survive or not.

I owe my beginnings to the people who let me sleep on their couches. The piece of shit restaurants that I washed dishes and waited tables for for some pocket change to get cigarettes and a blunt.

I have these flashes pop into my head that make me regret all of the decisions I made.

I think when you turn left you always wish you turned right and vice versa. We’ll never get it right in life, unfortunately.

So now that i’m no longer on a couch wondering where my next meal will come from what are my next steps? I look around at my peers and I see such a diverse group. There are people who graduated college and made their parents proud. There are people who started but didn’t finish or flat out never went to college and are trying to climb the ladder at work or find their passion. Of course we have a lot of both of the groups getting married or having children or both.

I think both groups always have criticisms of each other. 

The college graduates think the ones who never went are gonna be bums. The ones who never went to college think the college graduates are stuck up or had it easier in life. The people who are married think that the single lifestyle is full of cheating and pointless partying. The single people think the married people are getting married too young and are making huge mistakes.

While my views lie in between it all, who are we to judge?

I think that kid that loves to write is still there. Though it’s no longer romantic story telling or transparent windows into my personal life it’s still there.

I try to talk to friends about working hard towards goals and dreams. Saving money to invest. Business ideas come and go like fleeting dreams. This country is a very pay to play lifestyle and we need that cushion of capital in order to start businesses and build credit etc. I think I was so poor as a kid I worked hard to stack money any means possible. Don’t get me wrong i’m still poor as shit but i’m not wondering where my next meal will be anymore.

I still love music so much but I think i’m starting to become an old head in the sense that I kind of never left 2009 era hip hop or 90′s hip hop. I don’t remember the last time I sat down and played some music and sat down and wrote on my laptop.

This year has brought a lot of growing pains. I still have a lot of pride and ego I think I need to work through. I always thought of the people I love as a group. I wanted EVERYONE to have successful jobs. I wanted EVERYONE to think like me and make money like me and go these routes I think they’d be perfect at.

The 23rd year of my life taught me that you can’t contain people in this bubble you have for them in your head. You have to just focus on you and your trajectory. I have opportunities that my friends do not and they have opportunities I do not have. Ego is a big problem here. We think this guy is making a mistake and he thinks i’m making a mistake and it just causes a tension between us all. In the end we can always meet up for a beer or just call and check up no matter where life takes us.

I think the real world beat me down for a while and my ego put me in a place where I was unable to create or see further than what everyone else’s ego was boxing me into.

I haven’t figured out anything in life like how to land that job after college that I will grind for the next 30 years. But I hope that’s alright. 

We’re in an age where Twitter and Instagram are popping. It’s all about jokes or showing people the most beautiful sides of life. I don’t think life is always meant to be the Instagram worthy picture.

I miss this place because it was where I shared a lot of my thoughts and ideas growing up for a while. A lot of me has changed and I know in my heart i’m trying to be a good man to people around me. I’m a better son to my mom than that angry trapped 18 year old. I hope i’m a good big brother to look up to to my extremely successful sister even though we took different paths at 18. I hope my friends know that the advice I give them are from the heart. I hope the girl I broke up with a few months ago knows that I love her unconditionally and needed to figure out who I am.

I think I really hurt that girl after 3 years of a relationship. She was always let down that I didn’t write romantic think pieces about her but I valued her so much I don’t think I ever cared to write about it. I just was in love and living in it. Maybe I should come to write about that, but I think that will be a hindsight reflection for later on in life.

Real talk I hate making people feel like I let them down. I forget so much of what I say to people or how I treated them in the past I hope if there’s any unresolved issues that they get brought up and squashed. I always have to close cracked doors to open new ones.

I think this year will be the first one in like 10 years where I didn’t throw a party or took a trip somewhere like Miami or to a cabin in the mountains with friends.

I think it comes down to 2 things. Me taking a trip alone to really unwind or sitting in my mom’s living room eating some Vietnamese home cooking being around immediate family. Am I really that old? 

I hope 24 brings me internal growth like 23 did. I hope it isn’t as hard but I know it will be harder. My uncle told me that you can’t run away from hardships in life. You have to face them head on and see the true pain in order to grow. He told me all the problems I have now are small compared to the problems that are to come. 

I never wanted fame. I always wanted money to take care of my family and friends. But now i’m about to be 24 I don’t think I want either.

I want peace of mind and freedom from ego.

- dt

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT YC

I'm not sure myself. The danger of symmetry, repetition and recursion.1 I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is bullshit. The second counterintuitive point is that it's not that important to know a lot of what ends up driving you are the best predictor of how a startup will find the preceding portrait to be missing something: disasters.2 Copernicus' aesthetic objections to equants provided one essential motive for his rejection of the Ptolemaic system. Why do so few founders know whether they're default alive or default dead is that the founders will no longer have complete control. Google. The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: After Altamira, all is decadence. But if you consciously prioritize bullshit avoidance over other factors like money and prestige, you can use this information in a way that was entirely for the better. He had all of us roaring with laughter.

You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. $300 a month, which was an order of magnitude less important than solving the real problem. It was really close, too. If it seems surprising that the gap was so long, consider how little progress there was in math between Hellenistic times and the Renaissance. The era of credentials began to end when the power of large organizations peaked in the late twentieth century.3 The smarter spammers already avoid it. This lets me get ip addresses and prices intact. And while having the best people to work for him unless he is super convincing.

When we switch to the point where much of what you're measuring is artifacts of the way schools are organized is that we invest in the earliest phase. As those examples suggest, a recession may not be so naive as it sounds. Every startup's rule should be: spend little, and work fast. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. They think they're trying to avoid.4 What made YC successful was being able to pick good founders. But working on this is not going away. Most Perl hackers would agree that Perl 5 is more powerful than machine language. Hard as it is to believe now, the big money then was in banner ads.

The mercurial Spaniard himself declared: After Altamira, all is decadence. But there are at least big chunks of the world in 587, the Chinese system was very enlightened. Like angels, VCs prefer to invest in this startup. So it's annoying that we keep hearing from you, you should never do this.5 The safest kind were the ones that occur a lot. Blub? I can do at this computer is work. There are two senses of the word portal, what they do is related to strength. Many of which will make you a better parent when you do have kids. It's like skiing in that way.6 People need to feel that what they create can't be stolen.7 Of all the useful things we can say, which are the most general truths.

But I don't wish I were a better writer.8 Strangely enough, if you get this stuff, you already have most of what you want to slow down, your instinct is to lean back. The five languages that Eric Raymond recommends to hackers fall at various points on the power continuum, he doesn't know how anyone can get anything done with it. Sealing off this force has a double advantage. The component of entrepreneurship that really matters is domain expertise. The official story is that legacy status doesn't carry much weight, because all it does is break ties: applicants are bucketed by ability, and legacy status is only used to decide between the applicants in the bucket that straddles the cutoff. —Total 1950 100 This picture is unrealistic in several respects.

I went to work there. Others thought YC had some special insight about the future of technology. For every idea that times out, new ones become feasible. So keep typing!9 And when you convince them, use the same matter-of-fact language you used to convince yourself. And to support this claim I'll tell you now: bad shit is coming.10 I read a lot of other ambitious and technically minded people—probably more concentrated than you'll ever be again. Fortunately an audience for software is now only an http request away.11

The reason young founders go through the motions of starting a startup stays alive in everyone's brain. Then you can measure what credentials merely predict.12 Anything so admired and so difficult to read must have something in it, among other things, he tells would-be startup founders, and I have a separate laptop on the other. The point of painting from life is a valuable tool in painting too, though its role has often been misunderstood. I'm skeptical about the idea of starting a startup, you shouldn't worry that it isn't widely used. And yet in the very first filters I tried writing a Bayesian spam filter, it caught 99. You may not realize they're startup ideas, turn your mind into the type that startup ideas form in without any conscious effort.

They use the same matter-of-the-future, because this is what I call a spam-of-the-future, because this is what I call degeneration. If we send them an email.13 7—total 1950 100 This picture is unrealistic in several respects. There are tricks in startups, as there are in any domain, but they invest other people's money, and it is very hard to do in college? Here are some of the current probabilities: Subject FREE 0. Bill Gates must have been when startups wrote VisiCalc. We aren't, and the living expenses of the founders of Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft both executed well and got lucky. She'd seen the level of vitriol in this debate, and she shrank from engaging. In grad school I decided I wanted to keep it that way.

Notes

The IBM 704 CPU was about the size of the 1929 crash.

But I'm convinced there were 5 more I didn't care about may not even be symbiotic, because some schools work hard to avoid the conclusion that tax rates were highest: 14. Even if you get of the twentieth century. When I use.

If language A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that alone could in principle is that you're not sure. Who continued to dress in jeans and a t-shirt, they're probably a real salesperson to replace you. This kind of bug to track ratios by time of day, thirty years later.

Some professors do create a web-based applications, and b the local startups also apply to types of people, how little autonomy one would say that it will thereby expose it to colleagues. They thought most programming would be to advertise, and that we wouldn't have had little effect on the spot, so much on luck.

But it's a significant effect on what you call the years after 1914 a nightmare than to call you about an A round. If you don't get any money till all the rules with the issues they have a taste for interesting ideas: Paul Buchheit adds: I remember about the size of the first question is not too early for a couple hundred years or so, even if it's convertible debt with a cap. After a bruising fight he escaped with a faulty knowledge of human anatomy.

Dan was at Harvard is significantly better than the time and became the twin centers from which they don't, you're using a dictionary to pick the words we use the standard series AA terms and write them a microcomputer, and that injustice is what people will pay the most general truths. When investors can't make up their minds, they tended to make people richer. The second biggest regret was caring so much worse than close supervision by someone who doesn't understand what you're doing something different if it means to be self-imposed. But it can buy.

What people who currently make that their explicit goal at Y Combinator is a trap set by evil companies for the entire cross-country Internet bandwidth wasn't enough for one another directly through the founders: agree with them.

Put rice in rice cooker. It doesn't happen often. Founders rightly dislike the sort of investor behavior. This of course, that he be spared.

The dialog on Beavis and Butthead was composed largely of these limits could be adjacent. Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously. A lot of time.

Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or mining equipment, such a dangerous mistake to do would be investors who rejected you did.

There's not much use, because they were forced to stop raising money, in writing, he found it novel that if a company tried to raise the next stage tend to be something you can control. Foster, Richard, Life of Isaac Newton, p. Founders at Work.

We couldn't talk meaningfully about revenues without including the numbers like the bizarre stuff. I saw that I know of any that died from releasing something full of bugs, and a little about how to be a distraction. This plan backfired with the New Deal but with World War II had become so embedded that they cared about users they'd just advise them to stay in business by doing another round that values the company is Weebly, which amounts to the yogurt place, we should work like blacklists, for example, it's not always intellectual dishonesty that makes the business, Bob wrote, for many Americans the decisive change in how Stripe felt.

It may indeed be a founder, more people you can stick even more dangerous to have the concept of the 70s, moving to Monaco would give you money for other reasons. You may be the next round. What you're too busy to feel guilty about it well enough to do it is more of the lies we tell as we are not mutually exclusive. If you're expected to do this right you'd have to include in your country controlled by the Corporate Library, the mean annual wage in the US is the only way to make you expend as much income.

[smallnico]

Idk man. On a moral and ethical level heart of darkness is for sure a really gross book but I think it’s also undeniably impressive on a technical level. While it should and will always inform our absorption of media, I don’t think we can examine pieces of art from the past /only/ through our modern experiences and views. Books like hod display racist viewpoints which can’t be excused but racism wasn’t even a concept at that time. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t subjectively well written

...yeah! i mostly agree!

i actually had complaints with the conflicts of the two books, HoD and things fall apart, being likened in such a way. TFA is about how colonialism affected the nigerian people and their culture – it’s a tragic and compelling story about being forced to watch as the life you’ve known and made for yourself systematically crumbles to pieces around you, because there’s nothing you can do about it. HoD is way more about individualism and how delusional the idea of english theoretical inherent superiority really is, and the fact that it takes place in colonial africa has basically nothing to do with the actual story: this is even more evident when you consider that apocalypse now, the de facto film adaptation of HoD, takes place during the vietnam war, and virtually nothing about the core story changes.

i assure you, all this you’ve said is stuff i know. i’m not one to judge books exclusively from my modern perspective. just being totally honest with you, it kind of annoys me to have that assumption of ignorance made of me, given that i’ve spent many, many years of school having it hammered into me that some books are just a product of their time, and that I Get That. but i do, and always will, maintain that just because something is a product of its time, doesn’t mean i have to like it, nor does it mean that my modern opinion of it is invalid, or made without consideration for its historical significance. i promise that i know it’s historically significant, and therefore technically qualifies as classic literature. but all the same, that doesn’t make my personal issues with it irrelevant, since i’m allowed to have non-academic opinions about stuff.

i have a couple of things to point out before i begin the requested HoD rant, since i take issue with a couple of the things you’ve said, and i want to respond to them:

1) racism, as we know it today, has always existed conceptually. the fact that the term “racism” referred to something else back in the days of colonialism, before people were generally accepting that black people were human and that treating them like less than such was horrifying and disgusting, doesn’t mean people weren’t still racist. exhibit a, that previous sentence. the fact that western society had a different level of understanding of what was fundamentally Wrong with the way they saw africans, doesn’t excuse what they did in response to that understanding. it explains it, yes, but it hardly excuses it. just because critical race theory didn’t exist, doesn’t mean people weren’t still incredibly racist. and for the record, the fact that anyone has to excuse how disgusting the racism in HoD is in order to enjoy it… kind of emphasizes that part of why i hated reading it. like, it can theoretically be a groundbreaking piece of classical literature, but that doesn’t mean i have to enjoy having to slog through colonialist-era racism that makes me want to vom uncontrollably. this is about why i personally can’t stand the book, not why it’s not a classic.

2) i think you meant to say “objectively” when you said “subjectively”, because if you did mean subjectively, then you and i are on the exact same page. some people think HoD is undeniably technically impressive and well-written and enjoyable. i humbly disagree! and that’s totally fine. my goal here isn’t to convince you or anyone to hate HoD, my goal is to help people like my college professors and some classmates understand why i hated having to read it. also, if you meant objectively, then i have some fun news for you about how poorly and confusingly HoD is written. spoilers: it’s poorly and confusingly written. how it was written from a technical perspective is one of the things i feel is objectively Terrible about it, even disregarding my own experience. 

all i mean to say is that i hated it for legitimate writing choices, what joseph conrad decided to include in his story and how he handled those inclusions, on top of my modern intolerance for racism, and said modern intolerance for racism isn’t an invalid reason to hate the book. 

i promise i’m not attacking you as a person, and if that’s how this comes off, i’m truly sorry. i’m sure you’re fine, and i hope you know that i’m not trying to invalidate your opinions – you’re entitled to them, as am i to mine – i’m just using this as a springboard to leap dramatically into ranting about HoD and how i feel about it.

here we go! :D

heart of darkness, for those not in the know, is a short novel written by joseph conrad in 1899. it’s widely considered to be a classic meditation on the nature of humanity and how twisted and awful we all are deep inside, with themes of racial prejudice and the individual internal struggle between savagery and civilization. the plot can be summarized as such: an unnamed narrator is preparing for a seafaring voyage of some kind, but is trapped in the river thames with his shipmates by the low tide. they are forced to wait a few hours before they can get underway, so a strange and serene man, the main character charles marlow, begins telling everyone a story to pass the time, about the time he set out on an expedition to explore deepest africa along the congo river, an experience which fundamentally changed him.

in marlow’s story, he weaves a wild tale rife with symbolism about his journey, starting with his planning and arriving in the congo, the delays his expedition suffered due to a lack of rivets for his steamboat, and finally, the process of his expedition, all the “horrible savages” he encounters, and the thrilling conclusion. along the way, marlow describes his growing obsession with an ivory-trading legend named kurtz, who supposedly spends all of his time at the end of the river in the heart of the congo, and hasn’t been seen in a while. marlow keeps hearing great things about this guy, like how good he is at getting ivory, and communicating with the natives, and determines himself to find kurtz; however, he finds himself disappointed, as when he finds kurtz, the man’s hardly the paragon of european virtue described by the ivory traders – he’s very physically ill, and has long since been “made savage” by his experiences in the deepest congo, decorating his house with severed heads and demanding human sacrifices from the natives, who venerate him like a cruel god. marlow ends up taking kurtz back to the trade post at the mouth of the river congo, but kurtz dies along the way, and marlow ends the story on the boat in the thames by concluding that no person, english or otherwise, is above the base savagery innate to the human condition. hilariously, when he finishes his story, it turns out that everyone was so utterly enthralled by him that they missed high tide again, and now have to wait even longer for their next chance to leave.

reading a summary of the book and actually reading the book are two very, very different things. it is… bad. i don’t even know where to start.

from a technical standpoint, the writing is somehow both incredibly dense and all over the place. the beginning and end of the story, on the ship in the thames, are a poorly-thought-out framing device that could’ve been foregone altogether with no change to the story aside from an in-world audience to tell us how awesome and amazing marlow is and how deeply disturbed we should feel by his story. not only that, marlow’s whole story is told as dialogue in the framing device. meaning it’s written in such a way that mimics the character marlow’s oral tics, and it’s laid out in truly monolithic paragraphs, some of which take up several pages, with no breaks. as i read it, i also came to the conclusion that joseph conrad must be afraid of ending a sentence, because the innumerable run-on sentences are… a crime against readers. that’s not even touching on all the tangents he goes off on. and like, haha, i know there’s a certain amount of hypocrisy in me calling out others for going off on tangents, but at least i know not to leave lengthy and pace-breaking word vomit in my stories when i have a point to make. i tend to edit them out, because they’re distracting.

speaking of distracting, i have adhd. this isn’t a commentary on conrad’s writing (though i know many people without adhd who also suffered this problem with HoD), but it’s worth mentioning that HoD is so densely packed with irrelevant nonsense, formatted in giant walls of text, written like regular human speech, that there’s physically no way for me to decipher it without my brain making an audible sound like an overheating, lagging laptop with a very stressed fan, before breaking down entirely. now again, this is probably more of a personal problem, but like i said, it’s a problem a lot of other people had, and it directly crippled my own personal ability to enjoy any part of reading the book. besides – and this is a problem i have with a lot of philosophical texts as well – i’m a firm believer that writing is a form of communication. therefore, writing that is deliberately and aggressively incomprehensible to readers is bad writing. objectively. reading HoD felt like getting up at 8:00 and sitting in a lecture hall, listening to your old, old, incredibly racist professor speak in monotone and go off on endless tangents, because he didn’t bring notecards, and he didn’t prepare a powerpoint or any visual aid because he doesn’t believe in computers or whatever. and you can’t leave because you’re physically shackled to your desk. and after the lecture is finally, finally over (because it lasted longer than the appointed time), you have to listen to people compliment the professor’s lecture, calling it fascinating, and referring to his teaching style as brilliant and masterful like it wasn’t the most miserable, frustrating, and altogether screaming-rage inducing experience you’ve ever been forced to endure in a classroom setting.

but like, if you’re okay with that, then more power to you, i guess.

moving on to the racism, because there is a lot of it, and not just from a modern viewpoint. i stand by that something being subjectively good or bad to individual people is just as valid as something being objectively good or bad according to its placement in history. i would never write an academic essay about the former, but the latter isn’t strictly enough to change any individual’s personal experience with the book. i know, for instance, that the epic of gilgamesh is the oldest recorded written story that we know of, and that in and of itself is incredible, and speaks to its significance. but that’s not quite enough to affect my experience of having to read the repetitive writing style, or my opinion of the story itself (which is actually positive – it’s an interesting story, and it represents a change in the ancient sumerian perception of the place of humans in a world of powerful gods. i love that shit). the writing style is representative of how the unknown writer would have communicated using their language, to others who also speak their language; ergo, it’s not hard to read, just quirky and occasionally distracting, though the story itself is enough to make up for that.

(cw for Bad Racism)

the importance of something as a product of its time often isn’t enough to make up for a shitty reading experience. and with HoD, that experience is made all the more shitty (for me personally) by conrad’s compulsive inclusion of the mutilation of africans, cannibalism, graphic depictions of gore and severed heads, describing native africans as primitive and savage versions of english people (naturally made violent and savage by living in the congo, as he describes their skin as, to paraphrase, “indicative of how long they must’ve spent roasting in hell”, like the rainforest carbonized them or something), somehow still exotifying african women as demonic temptresses, and describing an african person on his own crew as “like a dog standing on its hind legs, dressed in its master’s clothes and performing a trick” (the “trick” in question being steering his damn ship). he doesn’t use the setting to comment on colonialism at all, really, aside from the conclusion that colonialism is bad because aren’t they just like us, if we were at our most savage state? don’t you just, somewhere deep inside, want to join in their Weird Horrifying Chanting And Drumming?

like, conrad doesn’t want to raise africans and black people to the same level of personhood as europeans and white people. he would rather insist that we, the readers, see the lives and culture of africans as a lesson – this could be you, if you’re not careful, because deep down we’re All Violent Savages.

(cw over)

i don’t particularly care that this is all historically accurate to how conrad, as a white european, would’ve perceived african folks. i don’t care that it might be groundbreaking in one sense or another because it describes white and black people as being inherently the same – i don’t like reading it. i find blatant disregard for the impact of taking a human life and committing horrifying violence unreadable. that’s just a personal taste of mine. i don’t like shock humour, i don’t like shock tragedy, i don’t like slasher movies, i don’t like visceral gory imagery, and, surprise, i don’t like racism. i don’t like when shock is used to make a point, and i dislike even more when that point is “ooh look how little people care about this terrible violence because it involves ______”.

to a lesser degree than the previous point, i don’t like that particular thesis on humanity, either – that deep down we’re all monsters. i like to think that most people, if not all people, are defined by their experiences and how they respond to them, not how they Just Innately Are. this isn’t a matter of me not wanting to admit that there’s a darker side of me that i don’t want to see, because there is one of those, but it’s not who i truly am. i’m more than just my flaws, and my flaws aren’t a monstrous core, around which all the rest of my personality is built to Hide it. negativity isn’t inherently more true than positivity, and there is no innate human condition. kurtz could have just as easily befriended the natives and attempted to understand them, rather than subjugating them and committing horrible violence against them. that’s just the story of colonialism on the whole, honestly – the violence and subjugation was unnecessary. the horrors were unnecessary. people could’ve kept their own land to themselves and developed trade, people could’ve done cultural exchanges, it didn’t have to be the way it was, and the way it was did not happen because All Humans Are Inherently Awful. colonialism, and all the smaller decisions made by european colonizers, were decisions made by people with power they unquestionably abused, and much as i dislike the notion that all humans are inherently Savage and Evil, i dislike the false equivalence between colonizers and the colonized even more. most of all, i loathe the abdication of responsibility. i loathe the attitude that every awful, violent decision made by colonizers can easily be attributed to Africa Just Done Got To Them that HoD feels determined to push. 

so to recap, it’s a product of its time, yes, but it’s also bad, and i hate it. i hated reading it, i hated talking about it in class, i hated its message, i hated its shock value, i hated its disgusting racist overtones, i hated its writing style, i hated its walls and walls of texts, i hated its stupid framing device telling me how to feel, i hated marlow and thought he was a smug piece of shit, i hated the stupid plot device with the rivets (seriously i don’t know if it just wasn’t explained or if i couldn’t parse the explanation from the rest of the irrelevant tangents our oh-so-great narrator constantly went off on), i hated how long marlow spent in that fucking trade post because it made the story go on for longer than it had to just to stroke kurtz’s shaft a little more and depict that many more Nameless Irrelevant Africans be brutally abused, and i hated that kurtz, despite everything awful he did, somehow deserved a quiet and dignified offscreen death, while everyone else who died got to have their brutalization lovingly described. i hated the experience of trying to read it and having to give up after two hours of trying and trying to understand a single 3-page-long paragraph. i hated the word choices. i hated the sentence structure. i hated having to read it even though essentially the same message had been conveyed better in lord of the flies, which we’d read the previous year (LotF was published in the 50s, so that’s not conrad’s fault at all, but HoD truly felt like a way shittier repetition of something we’d already talked about). i hated how mockingly small the book was compared to the gargantuan steaming pile of torturous language that lay inside, waiting.

tl;dr: heart of darkness is the worst, and the terrible experience anyone had while reading it is not and never will be invalidated by its historic significance.

[thesnhuup]

OFYE Matters: Building Rapport

Perhaps one of the most important relationships in Online First Year Education (OFYE) students’ learning experience is the one fostered with their teacher. New students come to class with varying degrees of preparedness, confidence, educational experience, and skill. Many new students struggle with asking for help and hesitate to reach out when necessary. A strong, positive rapport between the OFYE student and teacher can help eliminate those barriers to communication and enable students to achieve their goals. Working to develop a strong rapport with students who require varying levels of support is no easy task. It is, however, time very well spent.

For this iteration of OFYE Matters, we gathered a variety of rapport-building strategies from OFYE educators that bring student and teacher together to increase student success.

How do you work to establish a positive rapport with OFYE students in your class? What steps do you take or strategies do you use to develop rapport?

Building rapport through storytelling

Gale Cossette, SNHU Instructor

I like to connect and develop a rapport with students through storytelling. Storytelling goes as far back as the prehistoric era and continues throughout history. It was done either on a cave wall or through speaking. We all have stories. I have had a rather colorful life including being followed by KGB in Russia and being swept away by a riptide for a mile from where I should have been. Stories such as these, as well as other journeys we have had in our lives become stories to connect to others, teach, and model. Stories all by themselves are just stories and while these are nice, when you can link them to some purpose they become more meaningful to the audience.

Linking stories to a purpose is what connects one person to another or an instructor to students. There is always something that can be connected; however, the instructor needs to help students make the connection. For example, in the introductory course SNHU 107, students are new to college and filled with all kinds of worries. Being online is another worry. I like to share my educational story which is filled with significant ups and downs, doubts, and about those who did not think I would ever make it. This story immediately connects to students, because they are experiencing these exact concerns. When they know that their professor, who has a doctorate, began where they did, it gives them hope and inspiration.

I tell my stories in discussion forums as I link a story to what the student wrote and in relation to the discussion prompt. I link my stories to questions students ask of me through email or in a phone call. I also share my relevant stories in Announcements. I grew up in a household of stories including those about great, great, great grandparents. My favorite mantra to students is this, “Let me tell you a story about that.” We all loved stories as children and as adults, even more so.

Building rapport through assessment

Ryan Korstange, Assistant Professor of University Studies, Middle Tennessee State University

Any strategy for building rapport with students must include careful consideration to the assessment of class work. This is all the more the case for online instruction where written feedback of student work is a primary mode of direct communication with individual students. In my OFYE class, the students are assigned a one-page reflection paper each week in addition to participation in an online discussion board, which means that I have two opportunities for connecting with each student per week. Therefore, written feedback on student work is an essential vehicle for building rapport with students.

Using feedback to build rapport with students includes the following components in some measure.

The feedback begins with an introduction, affirming the student’s value and potential to master the content and reach the classroom expectations. David Scott Yeager talks about this in his article “Breaking the Cycle of Mistrust: Wise Interventions to Provide Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide.” It is worth remembering that the purpose of feedback is to help students improve their academic performance, not merely to give them a score, or to point out errors.

In academic circles, feedback is expected to contain some assessment of the work itself, and so both the content that the student has already mastered and the information that the student has yet to master should be identified. Carol Dweck discusses the role that the word ‘yet’ can play in effective feedback in her book, “Mindset: the new psychology of success” and in her article, “Revisits the ‘Growth Mindset’. It is helpful to commend the student on their successes and to identify some next steps for correcting any errors or misunderstandings in those areas where the student has yet to express mastery.

My OFYE course uses reflective writing to help students refine their academic processes and to articulate their academic mindset. Written feedback provides an opportunity to identify more effective paths to learning or more efficient workflows by pointing out alternative methods or relevant campus resources.

Finally, students frequently reveal things going on in their lives within their writing. These are not throw away statements, and even if they are not on the main topic of the assignment, acknowledging this information and offering assistance can help to build rapport with students.

Regular constructive feedback goes a long way to helping increase students learning and can contribute to building rapport with students. Feedback is an indispensable tool for the OFYE instructor.

Building rapport through personalized videos

Dr. Wendy Conaway, Assistant Professor, Ashford University

One of the most effective strategies I have found to establish a good, positive rapport with OFYE students is to create and embed personal videos within the classroom. I create a video to welcome each and every student in the introductions. I find something that relates to what they have said and comment on it. I also find that embedding a short video in the discussions at strategic times to further discuss a concept is extremely helpful. I have received positive feedback from students regarding these practices. Here are some examples:

“I absolutely love your video responses!  It is so nice to “see” you and now I have a real feel for what kind of instructor you are! I am so excited to start this new journey of mine and I feel blessed that you are my first instructor, so thank you!”

“I am absolutely in love with your videos. It is so easy to sit and listen like we are in the classroom with you. But also I have been finding myself listening and watching you and then replaying it again as I write my responses to you or to another classmate. It allows me to then listen and remember your key points and makes me try to remember to hit all of the questions and statements that stand out to me.”

There are several strategies that I use to ensure that the videos I generate for students are not just positive and helpful but also engaging and real. First of all, I think through what I am going to say. I have some prompts in front of me that remind me of what the key points are, but I am reading directly from them. I keep my eyes focused on the webcam as much as possible to be perceived as “looking them in the eye”. Second, I make sure I am nicely groomed but not overly so. I wear some lip color but don’t use much other makeup because I want to seem as “real” to them as I can. Third, I don’t necessarily eliminate the “bloopers” because these little things can help humanize me to the students. For example, I was recording a video for a discussion board when my cat decided to walk over my laptop right in front of my webcam. I made a cute comment about it and simply continued my talk. The students loved it!  You don’t have to be perfect…just be genuine and the students will be more inclined to listen and engage with you.

Building rapport through personalized and relevant care, support, and instruction

Kate Butler, SNHU Instructor

The key to developing rapport with students is threefold. First, I meet them where they are. Every student has a unique set of circumstances, making them feel alone. I use anecdotes about and responses from past students to demonstrate that their circumstances matter and that they are not alone. Second, I establish my own humanity by sharing my own stories of trials, mistakes, and successes. My goal is to provide feedback not just as an instructor with academic experience, but rather as a student, mother/parent, employee, and partner in learning. Thirdly, I try to demonstrate in every interaction that I truly care about each student’s success. I use their names and take note of crucial/personal details to demonstrate that I am listening and to make personal connections.

Building rapport by going the extra mile with personalization

Debby Hailwood, Lead Faculty, Ashford University

Names are such an important part of our identity. There’s so much online instructors can do with names to help build rapport with students.  I think it’s important when I start a conversation with a student in a discussion forum or I’m leaving feedback in the grade book to acknowledge the person by name.  This is like making eye contact in the online classroom.  I ask students if they have a nickname they would prefer I use during the course.  Some students go by a shortened version of their legal name or use their middle name instead of their first.  I take note of this and then call students by this preferred name, which goes a long way in showing the students that I see them as an individual on the other side of the screen.

It’s also important to know how to properly pronounce their name.  I like to use videos to introduce myself to each student in an introduction forum and I refer to the student by name in their video.  If it’s a hard to pronounce a name, I will practice before and then ask the student to correct me if I’m wrong.  I make it a point to let them know that I want to be able to say their name the way they pronounce it.  I recently had a Korean-American student whose name was one I hadn’t encountered before.  I Googled it ahead of time to try to find a pronunciation and then practiced it aloud before recording my welcome video to her.  As usual, in my video, I specifically asked if I had pronounced her name correctly and if I hadn’t, to please feel free to correct me.  She replied to my video and expressed her appreciation to me and said that I had pronounced it perfectly which is rare for someone to do so.

What do you feel is the biggest challenge in establishing rapport with new OFYE students?

Kate Butler, SNHU Instructor

The most frequent comment I get in a first-year classroom is that online education is drastically different and consequently more difficult) from ground education for two specific reasons: a lack of personal presence and a lack of forced accountability. Whether or not students have ever participated in online education themselves, there is an entrenched perception that these assumptions are true. In fact, many students are already convinced that they are going to fail because of these two factors, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is a major obstacle in terms of rapport because both a lack of personal presence and a lack of accountability undermine a sense of community, making it difficult to establish relationship, understanding, and kinship.

What evidence have you received from students, or observed, that your rapport strategies are working and have made an impact on their learning experience and/or success?

Kate Butler, SNHU Instructor

There are several indicators when these strategies are working. The most obvious is a direct note of thanks in the classroom and/or a referral from one student to another to check out my posts in the classroom for inspiration. More indirectly, I often notice an increase in both depth and frequency of participation. In fact, developing a rapport with one student can often be the spark to start a fire within the classroom. When one student thanks me for sharing my personal experience, especially related to my personal struggles as a student, that student begins to share. This prompts another student to add to the depth of his or her own posts, which then snowballs throughout the class. I make sure to call out this growth in the grade book, since these students tend to be more reserved than others. When students feel connected and that their voices are important, they strive to put their best foot forward and come out of their shells. Developing rapport is about connection, a sense of shared vulnerability, and a sense of shared success.

Looking Ahead

The next installment of OFYE Matters will focus on a skill that many OFYE students struggle with, time management.  OFYE students who are able to establish strong time management skills early often find success. In our next blog we seek to discover the strategies educators use to help students strengthen this important skill. As such, please share your thoughts on one or more of the following:

How do you approach “time management” in a way that resonates with your students?

What strategies or technologies do you share with your students to help them strengthen their time management skills?

How do you showcase the value of this skill and make it relevant to students both in and out of the classroom?

Are there technologies that you use as an OFYE educator to help students stay on track with their work and participation in class?

What common time management challenges do your students most commonly experience, and what do you do to resolve those specific challenges?

How do you proactively navigate time management challenges like the holidays with students to help them find success?

Please submit your short two- to three-paragraph – 300-450 words maximum responses for publication consideration. Send to Jamie Holcomb, associate dean of First Year Experience, at j.holcomb@snhu.edu by Jan. 19.

We will regularly pose questions about specific OFYE challenges and seek responses from educators for each post. Our goal is to work together to help our new online learners find success. Read our most recent OFYE Matters blog here.

We also encourage you to continue the conversation in the comment area. Working together we can increase our virtual toolbox of skills, best practices, resources, ideas and strategies.

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Using computer games to teach your class : Tips

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Using computer games to teach your class : Tips

We communicate to Ollie Bray, the Countrywide Adviser for Emerging Technologies in Getting to know at Education Scotland, about how gaming may be utilised in Training. With a fruitful and varied profession as a trainer, head of branch and college leader, uses computer fun games,to teach her class. Ollie believes that one of the many advantages gaming brings to Education is giving instructors a danger to innovate and do matters in another way. Here, he tells us what he hopes the future holds for video games primarily based Mastering, a way to convince a reluctant head teacher of its potential and recommends a few sources for Learning more. You could observe Ollie on Twitter @olliebray.

How did you get into games primarily based Studying?

Years ago, I used to be teaching public improvement and, frankly, locating it quite dry once I realised we had this thrilling Recreation, Sims Town. The belief Here is that everybody starts at the same point with the equal give up a goal, which is to construct a Metropolis. Anybody takes a unique path to getting there, and that turned into the part of the technique that captures and engages the imagination. This Game has day snapshots, actual stimulation and encourages aggressive Learning.

We would send domestic Learning responsibilities and each week for the duration of an evaluation session the kids might tell me what they’d learnt. This ranged from stepped forward understandings on pollutants and drainage to higher insights into nearby authorities re-elections. The proof of their Mastering wasn’t just in productive dialogue, the class would additionally share screenshots of what they’d constructed, and We would have a top Town of the week.

How can game from the experience of Mastering more widely?

I’ve coined the word ‘contextual hubs’ for Studying. You are taking a Recreation, possibly a commercially available Recreation, and it is up to the instructor to create educational ability around it. The Studying and learningfrom the game itself, however, will become the context for Mastering. If you think about Guitar Hero, it has no educational value in any respect, however in the hands of the proper instructors, it all of sudden becomes an assignment approximately tune, designing CD cases, advertising the band, there are all kinds of links to it. They play zombies games,shooting games , cars games etc.

studying

We did a major challenge in 2010 when the Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympics play  Game become released, and we had a video assignment with a college in Canada. The Canadian teacher we spoke with stored her kids in college all night time for a kind of sleepover, and when they related to us at 6 am their time, it changed into three.30 pm, and we had kept our children back after near. The interesting issue approximately this was that our kid’s concept it evolved into a venture about the Olympics, however sincerely it turned into about connecting rural groups internationally, with all sort of classes approximately citizenship. The academics then implemented the enjoy to training on time zones, which is something kids only struggle with. All of this got here from the contextual hub of the laptop Recreation. The Studying had little to do with the Wintry weather Olympics Sport however it furnished a stimulus to get youngsters enthusiastic about Studying and define grasp.

In case you’re a trainer who can see the capability in gaming however you are not confident with the era, what natural recommendations should you provide to assist introduce it into their lecture room?

If a trainer can receive they want the youngsters to set up the console for them, the rest will contend with itself. Games are tremendous due to the fact they produce information; one instance might be Mario and Sonic at the 2012 Olympics for the Wii. After the break, You can get the kids to turn the console on and play the hurdles, which takes mins. You’ve got kids writing down rankings and instances, and that they supply this records to the trainer. What they have got done is create wealthy, accurate statistics inside the context of a numeracy lesson. The instructor at no factor has come into contact with the technology and simply does what they’re excellent at, that educates the learner.

You may feel relaxed within the domain of being a teacher, and the children can sense at ease within the area of computer video games; while these overlap it is while it turns into an undoubtedly thrilling space for Studying. You do not should take a leap out of your comfort region; it is approximately taking a little little bit of a threat and trusting children with the era.

What do you keep in mind the maximum positive result or achievement story to return from games primarily based Getting to know?

It is given hundreds of humans throughout the United Kingdom permission to try to do things a piece differently. If you’re trying to introduce a new subject matter in class, you are searching for aid from another team of workers in a faculty. However, this is a vertical relief, and often it does not produce new ideas. With the use of video games consoles in the closing three years, quite regularly there’ll handiest be one teacher in a college looking to push the limits. They must look horizontally for his or her help and expert development, and attain out to peers throughout us of a and around the sector. They haven’t been offering each other with the solutions due to the fact it is almost impossible, but they have got been sharing ideas, and taking some of these, using them, adapting them or ditching them. It is all approximately effect within the school room, and I think it’s been the maximum fantastic stuff that’s pop out of all of this, is that human beings have permission, to innovate and do matters in a different way.

If you’re raising towards a head who would not assume video games based totally Mastering is appropriate, how may want to you attempt to make them see in any other case?

First of all, we can display them the studies which prove it has a high-quality impact. Secondly, we will place them in contact with different head instructors who’ve it off their schools. In instances of financial drought, why are we continuously investing money into ICT gadget while definitely, we recognise kids have were given matters at domestic they might convey in, and parents are inclined to allow them to.

The 1/3 aspect is to remind head teachers that, apparently, what we’re talking about is not PC video games, it is played. While you get a room full of teachers to play with consoles, they may feel silly at the start, but they get into it! I’d never say, anyone, however with most people; you see this lightbulb moment. In case you’ve forgotten what it is want to play and be a baby, it is hard to speak, and therefore it ‘s hard to improve their Studying. Lots of these teachers are mother and father themselves, but they have not the idea that what they have at domestic might be beneficial in colleges. It’s pretty much drawing up the dots.

teaching

Are there any e-books or assets You could suggest for teachers and heads interested by Gaining knowledge of extra?

• Jesse Schell spent seven years as the innovative director of the Disney digital reality studio and has written an interesting e-book called The Art of Recreation Layout.

• Professor James Paul Gee has a substantial involvement in literacy studies and is a member of the Countrywide Academy of Schooling. His e-book ‘What Video games need to train Us approximately Gaining knowledge of and Literacy’ is worth a read.

• Mark Prensky, has lately released an e-book, ‘Teaching Virtual Natives: Partnering for Real Learning’ which explores how we can engage kids in Gaining knowledge of using the social internet and the net.

• I’ve just finished studying, ‘truth is Damaged’ by way of US social technology researcher, Jane McGonigal who talks approximately how encouraging people to play extra video games, and the right games could remedy some the world’s problems.

game

• Subsequently, I have created and which may be determined on the Dad or mum Trainer Network. This explains more about the contextual hubs I have cited and how to triumph over those first demanding situations involved in getting started.

What do you wish the destiny holds for video games primarily based Studying?

I’ve just been doing this task, and I’ve called it ‘impressive Mastering’ due to the fact I do not assume games based Studying is the be all and give up all. Top teachers use tools correctly, and occasionally that’s a Game, sometimes it’s taking the youngsters outside, and from time to time it’s a test on a piece of paper. What I want to look from this, is that this concept of permission, and that I need to see governments and local government and especially head teachers – because I think it really is wherein a number of the block is – giving instructors permission to do what they assume is best for those kids they’ve got in front of them.