ampshd

[hyperfixated-homo]

im probably not going to upload any art or writing or anything until next week. classes are going to be ROUGH

[starr-fall-knight-rise]

Humans are Space Orcs, “Humans 101.”

Sorry for not posting yesterday. I have had the WORST motivation the past few weeks, but I thought you might like to see some more of Krill. Hope you all have a great day!

Krill walked up the university hallway turning his head to look out the window at the vast expanse of space before him. It had been a very long time since he had been to University, in the Vrul sense of the word, which was less like University and more like on the job training, but he had recently accepted an assignment at the Intergalactic Institute of Biological Science. Granted, he wasn’t a real professor, not fully, but an adjunct who had signed on to do a series of lectures for the next few months while he waited for Admiral Vir’s return. 

Since Simon had become acting Captain of the ship, it seemed that there was less and less reason for him to be there. She wasn’t experienced enough to take on the real dangerous assignments that the Admiral had excelled at, and due to her rule following nature, and the assignments they were sent on, mostly diplomatic and exploratory in nature, Krill had found less and less use for himself on the ship. He didn’t expect to be gone forever, and he doubted he would be able to leave at this point.

He couldn’t return to his home planet, not now there was a standing order for his termination, which he was planning to avoid with great prejudice. Though he found it wildly Ironic that they had asked him to come teach, when many of the professors at the school were, in fact, other Vrul.

It was with this small piece of amusement that he scuttled into the lecture room: Large and circular with seats rising on all sides and a projection hub right in the middle. The room was already packed full despite him being five minutes early. He had been told his lecture series would be popular, but he hadn’t expected there to be standing room only, and even then, there were students sitting on the floor, and a few Vrul floating in the air high above other students' heads.

He moved to the center of the room to set up his projections and, from the corner of his eye watched as a few of the front row students shifted back slightly. The Tesraki, Rundi and Finnari students didn’t seem to notice, but the Vrul students certainly did, sarong at him like he was some sort of freak.

He  could hear the whispering, and he reveled in it.

It was nice to be intimidating sometimes.

Overhead the lights flashed once, and then twice, and the entire room went quiet expectantly looking down at him with their wide eyes.

He drew himself up Resting two of his hands together and another two behind his back as he began pacing his way around the projection field. Students Continued to whisper quietly, “Good morning class, My name is Dr. Krill Galaxy renowned trauma surgeon, and the galactic leading expert in xeno-medicine with an emphasis in humanity.”

There was a uiet muttering around the room.

“I have been acting medical officer aboard the UNSC Omen once Harbinger for more than two years, and I have practiced surgery in hospitals From Andromeda and Irus to the milky way and Earth.”

More shifting wide eyes and some nervous muttering.

He looked around the room shrewdly at all the new faces, “How many of you are interested in working with the intergalactic community.”

A slow raise of hands.

“Then I should probably let you know. Humanity has begun to profuse through all the major sectors of space, business, government, shipping, sales, medical. Humans are everywhere, and humans can do anything. If you wish to work in the wider intergalactic community, you will be working with humans, and many of you will work extremely closely with humans.”

Nervous expressions all around.

“I noticed many of you, the Vrul students especially have noticed the strange effect that spending time with humans can have on an individual.”

He looked around and saw some acknowledgement.

“The colloquial term for it is called the humanizing phenomenon and it will happen to you no matter how hard you try. Scientists have said that you will become more aggressive in order to interact with humans, your movements will become more predatory, you will come to focus on facial cues and the pitch of voices to determine emotion, and soon,you will even begin to utilize human body language in order to communicate better with them.” He motioned to himself, “Out of all the alien species,I have spent the most time with humans, and as you can see, I communicate primarily in a way that humans would understand, mostly with nonverbal body cues. I don’t often use my helium sack as I get in the way with keeping up with humans.” he turned to look around at the room, “Human’s no longer scare me. As pack animals, your social influence is often more important than your physical influence. Given the fact that I have built myself up in social influence within a human pack, I no longer worry myself with being round humans. In fact, I Have never been safer in my entire life.”

His antenna vibrated slightlin amusement, “In fact it is well known that I already have a termination order placed on my head by the Vrul council.”

There was a shocked gasp from certain Vrul parts of the room.

He swaggered about the room a little smugly. He didn’t usually get reactions like this from people.

“They actually took me from an assembly meeting with the GA and brought me back for termination, but one of my humans, as I certainly do consider them mine as much as they consider me theirs, came and rescued me single handedly.”

Another murmuring from around the room.

“How did he do it?”

They waited.

“He used his complex human vocal cords and clapping to simulate a beat. In that way he disabled all the guards, and climbed his way up the guiding rope to the council chamber.”

More soft muttering.

“If you make friends with a human, you are probably as safe as you are ever going to be, especially if you happen to become friends with a very audacious human=, in which case there is nothing that they will not do for you.” He spun on the spot, “Enough for introductions, I will please have you open your files to page one of the textbook, and we will go over a brief discussion of human mechanical anatomy.”

There was a shuffling around the room as Data pads were produced.

Krill brought up an anatomical projection of a human. Looking up it amused him to know that this anatomical model, the one used in almost every nonhuman textbook, was modeled on one single human, that being Adam Vir, all accept for the right leg of course, which was modeled on another human of similar height.

“Humans are are omnivorous bipeds with an endoskeletal structure supported by a vascular system. I know a lot of you have been wrongfully told that humans are primarily carnivores, though that is not true, while human can eat a variety of foods, there are humans that choose to live without eating meat, and they can be sustained on a herbivore diet if they wish. As you can see here, the front facing eyes of the human mark them off as a predator species, though this isn’t always the perfect indicator. Vrul eyes are on the front, but, as we know, Vrul also have prismatic vision that is more closely related that of insects on an earth-like planet.” he glanced around the room, “These predator classifications only exist for a class of alien known as the vascular type, which uses a pump to push fluid through the body. As you know Vrul, Burg, Gromm, and Lumins as well as a few others are not represented in this category.”

“Can anyone tell me which species ARE classified as the vascular subtype.”

There was a raised hand and he pointed, “You there.”

“I can provide a short list sir, Tesraki, Rundi, Humans, and Drev to name a few, but the Drev are a notable outlier for this rule because their war-like culture has supported the slow movement of the eyes towards the front of the face despite them being a herbivore species.”

Krill nodded, “Very good. Yes, humans are in fact a REAL predator species, however it is important to note that the greater 80% of human diets are supported by fruits and vegetables. Based on the amount and distribution of consumed foods, humans are actually closer to herbivores in their dietary choices than they are carnivores.”

There was a soft muttering around the room. Either disbelief or interest, he couldn't tell.

“Historically, humans would have evolved from tree dwelling omnivores, though their diets would also have been primarily fruit, and maybe insects as hunting only really came after they moved to land based travel on two legs. As far as earth animals are concerned, humans are not a top tier predator, and years of life in padded habitats using technology have actually dulled their hunting senses and abilities. A human COULD take a chunk out of you with their teeth, but they certainly wouldn’t WANT to. It would definitely be a last resort. Following that, humans only eat cooked meat as they can grow very sick on consuming certain raw products.”

The class shifted and whispered to each other.

“Yes, I know you have been told many strange and odd things about humans, but most of those are heavily exaggerated. However, it is true that humans are more versatile than most of us. Humans can run, walk, climb, throw, jump and swim, and while they don’t do any of those particularly well, their ability to do all of them  to some degree makes them the most versatile alien in the GA. Furthermore humans also have a multitude of senses, ones that are common to most of us balance, heat cold, pain, etcetera, but there is one sense that they have which is very uncommon in the galaxy, and that is a sense of smell.”

All around him, students were taking notes, “This is the ability for a human to detect particles in the air and, often, identify their sources. Everything sheds particles, and the human nose can pick up those particles. For instance humans generally like the smell of Iotans because Iotins shed compounds similar to foods that humans like to eat. Once upon a time it might have been used to help humans detect poison or other predators, but like I have said before, a human is a middleman in abilities. All of a human’s senses are relatively dull in comparison to some of their earth counterparts.”

He turned to his projector and flipped it to the anatomical structure of a dog, one that had been oddled off the only dog that many aliens had ever met.

Waffles the admiral’s dog.

“This creature’s sense of smell is powerful enough,they have been known to track a sent trail for miles through densely wooded forests. They can smell a change in hormone and pheromone levels on other creatures, and are even being used to detect certain diseases. The best a human can do is smell a cooking meal.”

He walked in a wide circle looking out at the students, some of them looking excited, others staring on in trepidation.

“Human eyesight is on a similar level to their smell. Humans have binocular vision which makes their depth perception quite good. A human is perfectly capable of snatching a flying object out of the air as their predatory instincts draw them to movement. This also makes humans very adept at navigating through obstacles like they might once have had to do in trees. Furthermore, it allows them to guess distance to prey during hunting.” He switched to a picture of a drev, “However humans do not have the best vision out of all aliens species. While the acuity of a human and a Drev are similar, Drev can detect Ultraviolet wavelengths where humans can only see the visible spectrum.” He looked at some of the Vrul, “Take solace in the knowledge that you can see thermal where humans cannot. They have relatively poor night vision, but better than that of you or I and far better than the Drev who traded the use of multiple cones to very frew light sensing rods.”

He looked up from his lecturing, “Are there any questions so far.”

Every had in the room shot into the air.

He paused to look at them faces lit by the glowing bluish light of the hologram behind him and sighed, he supposed this is what he was here for.

“Let’s star in the back then, shall we.”

One of the hands went down.

“Sir, is it true that humans are capable of surviving cortical tissue damage.”

Krill snorted, a sound he probably shouldnt have been able to make since he didn’t have a nose but one he had learned how to make because it expressed a very important emotion when interacting with humans. The entire class looked at him funny.

He sighed, “Yes, The first surgery I preformed on a human involved removing an eight inch steel rod from an eye socket which had gone into cortical tissue. To this day that human… well hes been doing fine, a bit of a dumbass sometimes, but I think that was a part of his personality before brain damage.”

They stared at him confused until Krill realised that dumbass probably wasn’t in their vocabulary. It probably translated to silent butt or idiot butt which didn’t have the same kind of ring to it.

Krill waved a hand, “In certain cases humans have been known to survive with only one hemisphere of their brain.”

A chorus of disbelief, “It is true, in certain cases where electrical abnormalities n the brain cause convulsions, surgeons intentionally remove half the brain to increase quality of life. There are a couple of downsides to this of course, like the inability to play musical instruments, but most humans still live a productive and fulfilling life after the procedure.”

More hands shot up again.

He turned and chose one at Random.

“Can humans smell fear”

Krill frowned, “No humans can’t smell fear. Whoever told you that was smoking something.”The class stared blankly at him until he picked another hand.

“Are you worried that the humans will ever…. Turn on you?”

Krill raised his hands into the air in exasperation, “They are SENTIENT beings not wild animals  Humans have strict social rules like you or anyone else. It would be illegal for them to hurt me , and I doubt they would let it happen at all. Humans aren’t feral. In fact my partner aboard the ship is Doctor Katie Quinn, and she is just as experienced in the field of medicine as I am. SHe can match me in almost any medical procedure and she only has two cortical hemispheres, and less than half the amount of hands.”

He frowned at the room, “I have no idea where ou all got these ideas from. Humans are thinking creatures not animals. The reason they survived on their planet is not because they are the strongest predator, but because they are the smartest, just like you or I. the only difference between us is that the Human planet is so hostile, they have been forced to keep some of their more instinctive tendencies.”

More hands raised.

“Have you seen one of these larger earth animals, sir?”

“Yes on plenty of occasions.” He flipped his diagram back to that of a dog, “This animal here is called a dog, the ancestral  evolution of the wolf, which is just a much larger version of this animal here. These animals are higher on the food chain that humans and have the ability to easily outrun, attack and rip the throat out of a human.” He paused as the class pulled back, “Which is why humans often use them in security, protection and law enforcement, because no human wants to fight one of these creatures.” He smiled a bit grimly, “Also humans just love to keep them as pets.”

There was an uproar around the room.

How could anyone want to keep something that could rip their face off as a pet.

Krill raised a hand to quiet down the room, “I know, I know, it all sounds very strange, but you must understand, humans and dogs are both descended from highly social pack groups. At one point a human took wolf cubs and began raising them and breeding them for desirable traits. As wolves are pack animals they slowly would have begun to see humans as members of their own pack family. In this humans molded a creature into being one of their greatest allies. Dogs rely on humans and humans rely on dogs for many jobs. Humans love dogs and dogs love humans. In fact, humans have bred this animal so extensively that dogs are one of the only creatures on their own planet capable of reading human facial expressions.”

He pulled up an image from his personal files, one where Adam sat on the floor, and the dog Waffles sat next to him. He made a face as her long, pink tongue ran up the side of his cheek.

The class gasped.

“She could easily use this opportunity to kill him.” krill said, “But she never would.” He turned to another image of himself standing next to the dog, a hand resting on her back.

More gasping.

Krill was somewhat amused. “Humans, as I said are social in the extreme, and this fact is going to be our best ally when meeting them. Anyone and anything can become part of a human pack. In fact, this instinct in humans is so strong that inanimate objects can easily be accepted into a human’s pack. They routinely name plants and attribute personalities to them. I once conducted an experiment where I placed fake eyes.” Googly eyes to be exact, “On a waste receptacle, and the humans named him Mr. Rubbish and began throwing away their items exclusively in that specific receptacle as ‘Offerings’ to Mr Rubbish….. That is not a joke, that actually happened.” He appraised them with a stern look, “Befriending humans is the most important thing you can do, and probably one of the easiest things as well. If you find yourself incapable of making friends with a human, its probably time to look at yourself personally because you must be horrible.” he pointed to himself, “I will openly admit that my personality isn’t exactly the easiest to be around, and yet I still managed it on accident.”

His lecture continued for some minutes, covering more anatomy, bone structures and some interesting facts about their internal organs.

However he was forced to stop as little lights began blinking overhead, and he went to dismiss the class, “Next week we will be discussing the effects of adrenaline on humans as a special treat to those who decide to return after this first lecture. And for your assignment, I want you to find one news article that perpetuates a myth about humans and write a short essay debunking it. Since this is the first week I am going lenient on assignments but by the end of the term I do expect full essays at publishable quality.”

Everyone in the class stood, and he found himself suddenly swarmed by a mass of figures.

It seemed as if he was going to be here for a while.

Little did Krill know that his lecture series was becoming so popular that the administration was going to have to upgrade his lecture hall two more times in the concurrent weeks.

Everyone wanted to know about humans.

[dhaaruni]

Your belief in personal responsibility would be Republican if Republicans weren't the party of "let's cover up a coup" and "Why should I wear a face covering to prevent others from getting sick?" You do have a sense of calling yourself out for your past misdeeds, which I don't think Republicans do.

I don't know if it's Republican or not, but I do think that Democrats and liberals/leftists really do shy away from personality responsibility and it drives me insane. I'm not saying that people shouldn't have room to make mistakes but actually, there are consequences to the decisions we make and the actions we take, and we have to be cognizant of that.

Like, not everybody is equally good at everything and that's fine, not everybody has to be equally good at everything! However, people being better at certain things that are valued more in our society doesn't mean those things are worthless and morally inferior or whatever. I've seen this so much with humanities people online yelling that like everybody who's good at STEM is a war criminal that supports Raytheon or whatever and it's morally superior to be working at a literary agency making $37k a year, but actually, the reality is that a lot of STEM jobs are well-compensated because everybody who complains on social media about how much engineers are paid uses Twitter and Tumblr to complain!!! These jobs are paid well because their services are in high demand! And, I'm saying this as someone who is not great at coding but has worked very, very hard to be slightly better than mediocre at coding so I'm able to compete for jobs that pay more than $37k a year.

Also, even if people aren't naturally good at things, they can improve their skills through hard work and putting in the due diligence like your capabilities in academia or in sports or in art aren't immutable. For instance, I took a physics class in college and I struggle with physics a lot, so my boyfriend at the time would work with me on every single problem set and help me study for the prelims and final. But, despite all my effort, I still barely scraped a B- in the class after begging the professor to round my grade up while that boyfriend got an A+ in the class with very little effort because he's simply much, much better at physics than I'll ever be.

And, if I hadn't worked as hard as I did in that physics class, I flat out wouldn't have passed. I did every single homework assignment and was always at office hours, but I got a C on the first prelim, I got a D on the next prelim, and it's only because I busted my ass to get an A- on the final after doing practice problems for a week straight that I managed to get a B- in the class. It's not fair that I had to work so hard to get a B- while other people coasted and got A+s but that's just how the world works, and my choices were either to fail the class or do the work so I did the work. And besides, I managed to ace some other classes that people who are amazing at physics and computer science comparatively struggled with, so it kind of evened out.

And I honestly wish other people would have that same mentality instead of like, being salty that Tumblr user Dhaaruni doesn't think that effectively banning calculus in public schools is a good policy because it screws over kids that are good at math.

[charlthotte]

Breaking Through the Iron Wall - Aone Takanobu x Reader

Chapter 3

Compared to my last school, Date Tech High was much more modern, since my old school was a traditional Japanese structure. However, this grand new change wasn't that unwelcome to me. It looked like a school that you'd find on your television. Weeks ago, I thought this change would be rather daunting to me - but meeting someone who already felt quite trustworthy was a pleasant little surprise.

Rifling through my bag, I managed to locate my timetable and presented it to Aone. He took it - softly - from between my fingers, the same delicate touch that was careful not to hurt anything, even the paper. My eyes laid fixed on the floor, giving him enough time to scan my timetable, when I thought the time I had given him was adequate enough, my eyes flicked back up to his face; only to see the left side of his lip curl up ever so slightly. Something about that timetable must have made him feel a little bit happier than normal. A few more seconds passed until I realised that I was staring straight at him. Quickly snapping out of that state, I asked, "Do we have any classes together?" His eyes met mine, and nodded, that curled lip not leaving his face for even a split-second. "How many?" I inquired. He then proceeded to turn the timetable to face me and pointed at nearly every single box on it. A smile of relief soon laced itself onto my face, it seemed that we were in the same class, that news couldn't have been anymore welcome in my ears. 

With a swift gesture from his hand, he beckoned for me to follow him, first taking me to the science laboratory, smartly placed on the ground floor. Mathematics was next, followed by modern Japanese, History and then Homemaking. Briefly, I paused in my tracks, quick to jot down the classrooms locations, so I wouldn't get lost when having to navigate the school solitaire. For the remainder of the first two periods, I followed Aone's gargantuan strides - almost trailing behind him like a lost puppy. All that whilst also scribbling down a rough diagram of the school's architecture, but without a ruler, it was pretty tough. The first lesson that I actually would be attending was social studies, entering that classroom was absolutely daunting to say the least, seeing all of those people staring at me as if I was fresh meat practically made my spine shiver. Unlike the students, the teacher held a warm smile upon their mouth. Aone filed in right behind me and took his assigned seat. Introducing myself to the class wasn't any less frightening, all the students faces were barren. All except for one boy in the very back corner with a scheming smirk plastered across his face. He had fawn-brown hair, neatly swept across his forehead. From surveying him quickly, I noticed he had the same volleyball club bag as Aone, but what was he smirking at me for?

I was then instructed to take my seat, but since my luck had been running dry that day - the seat I took was directly behind Aone and to the left of the boy with the smirk. And of course that was the only free seat in the room. Soon after the teacher turned their back, the smirk leaned further towards myself - his arms folded in what you could call a playful manor. "So...", he propositioned, his smirk growing even larger, "What were you and Aone doing together that would cause you to be this late to class?" His eyebrow raised, as if he was trying too hard to come off as intimidating. 

"Nothing." I blurted, trying not to give him the entertainment he was thirsting after.

"Are you sure?" He grinned, his expression becoming comical to a point that it was comparable to a child trying to be funny.

"Nothing." I repeated, "It's just a long story."

If it was possible for his expression to become even more cartoonish, he retorted. "Oooooh, how interesting. Do tell me more!"

"Oh just shut up." My words flew back in his face in quite a curt fashion, seemingly wiping the ungodly smirk from his face, even by just an inch.

"Of course, whatever you say your highness. Your wish is my command." He slumped back in his chair, seemingly defeated that I didn't have more of a dramatic reaction to his given topic of conversation. His eyes shifted back to the lesson, the whole reason we were there in the first place. In doing the same, I came to realise how much of a mountain the man in front of myself was. Something... Seemed off about him, his whole body was tensed, tensed so tightly I thought he may explode. Had he been listening to my 'conversation' with the grimace sat to my right? I couldn't imagine having to be on a team with that creature.

Whilst taking notes from the teacher's verbosity, it occurred to me how difficult it would have been to see the board - seeing as though Aone's iron wall was completely blocking my view. I attempted to shift around in my seat to try to identify the words on the board, but trying to peak around him was a completely failed quest. I thought maybe Aone had maybe heard me shifting around in my chair, and he proceeded to duck down in his seat, to the point where his chin was close to touching the desk. I whispered an almost inaudible 'thanks' to him to show my gratitude, he again, took notice of that and nodded his head, this time; as if to say 'no problem'. The rest of the lesson went by pretty smoothly, even if Aone was in a pretty difficult position to write comfortably in.

After the bell rang to signify the third period ending, everyone packed their bags as the teacher dismissed us. With barely a foot out of the classroom threshold, the grimace man poked his head into my personal space once again, this time, however shifting inside of Aone's business. "So who's this fresh new face that you've been hanging around with, huh Aone?" He inquired, that infuriating smirk returning to his face one again. 

Aone glared at him, clearly annoyed, "Futakuchi." He growled, compelling the grimace to shut his forsaken mouth. Finally, there was a name to put to this creature of the underworld. Life with him around could be called some level of 'interesting'.

The next two periods were also ones I shared with Aone and the grimace that was Futakuchi. Thankfully, this time - Aone didn't have to bow down for me to simply see in front of him. Looking down at my timetable, I clocked that my last lesson was physical education, for one part I was excited due to the fact I loved to run around, sewing chaos into almost every sport I played. The factor I didn't quite enjoy was that neither Aone or Futakuchi shared that lesson with me. Deciding to not be so gloomy, I realised that it would be a perfect opportunity to meet new people, but that was a given with starting a new school. I waved farewell to Aone and the grimace, sighing at the unfortunate news of having to see his face again.

After, changing into the school's sport uniform, I entered the gym - half expected to be crushed by the competitive type, but to my surprise, a few people acknowledged my entrance and smiled. Quite different than the first interaction some people gave me. Perhaps the one that stood out the most was a girl with her sleek, black hair neatly compiled into a bun, her smile was much larger and warmer than the others. She made her way over to me - however her pace was more that of a soft charge, slowing down just enough to not bombard her body into mine. "Hi! I'm Fuse Hiroko! It's really nice to meet you, you must be new here! What's your name?" She rambled, each word hurtling out like cannon fire. She really was a fiery ball of energy. 

"Hey, I'm (L/N) (F/N), nice to meet you too, Fuse." Her inviting demeanour practically commanding me to smile back.

"Just Hiroko is fine, we're all friends here (Y/N)!" I guess formalities weren't that much of a big deal to her. Suddenly, she started beckoning to another girl whose presence seemed a lot less forward than Hiroko, she simply stuck her hand out for a handshake.

"Shinsato Rea." She spoke in a monotonous voice, not taking the time for any pleasantries.

I greeted her with my name after hers, and she gave a more unenthusiastic handshake, those girls were really polar opposites. 

The three of us bundled together for the rest of the lesson, Rea hardly spoke a word that wasn't a complaint, whereas - Hiroko remained as giddy and excited as ever. Even after the lesson had finished and we were getting changed she practically stayed glued to me, with Rea closely shuffling behind her. She practically begged me for my phone number and after a few seconds, her begging made me cave in. She even sneaked Rea's number with hers so that she wasn't left out. We walked out of the changing rooms, Hiroko still bombing me with question after question, each I answered obediently; nearly feeling drained by her constant output of happiness.

On the other side of the path, stood Aone with his eyes fixed upon me. Smiling as I greeted him, I proposed the question, "Do you know of any clubs I could join?" He shook his head in defeat, but then stood statuesquely in a state I could infer to as thought, time passed and his eyes eventually widened, as if he had hit an epiphany. Once again, he gestured for me to follow him, his strides still beating the ground and an immense pace. Confusion filled my head as to where exactly we were headed, the confusion quickly lifted when we arrived at another gym. Peeking inside the building, I saw about a dozen boys setting up volleyball nets. As confused I was, I was strikingly intrigued by the new opportunity.

[lizord-lord]

The Invisible Language

(This is a vent fic. I was struggling with having to dump a friend yesterday and it got me dwelling on my social struggles..and so I tried my hand at actually writing a fic to project all my problems through! XD)

(For anyone who doesn’t know, I have autism-Aspergers specifically, and I totally 100% headcanon Logan as an aspie. I have this post detailing why. So..for those of you who also stan autistuc Logan (and maybe a bit of ADHD Roman) here is this, me basically throwing my entire life story on our poor nerd and I am so sorry but also not XD. Also, the book I mentioned is very real, and I actually own it. It’s really useful, if a bit dated and heteronormative)

Warnings: Descriptions of sensory overload (similar to a panic attack) social struggles, very brief mention of selfharm, mentions of fistfights and minor physical violence.

Ships: none, but you can probably see my logicality heart in there lmao

The Invisible Language.

It was all just so complicated now.

Or rather, now he knew how complicated it was.

Before, Logan had always just thought he was bad with people. That was fine. It fit, with his habit of staying inside with his nose in a book. The socially awkward, introverted nerd who wasn’t good with kids.

It was simple.

But that’s the thing. Life isn’t simple. And neither was Logan. Even as a six year old.

The socially awkward, introverted nerd, from what he’d seen on tv, would have cried or just silently tried to make due when another kid ‘accidentally’ spilled tomato juice all over his copy of Alice in Wonderland. Logan Sanders leapt from his desk, grabbed the kid’s wrist, and yanked him down so his head smashed into the wood.

The socially awkward one was laughed at. Logan was sent to the office.

Time and time again this would happen. Until he turned eight, and his parents pulled him out of school. He was homeschooled after that, and it was simultaneously like a breath of fresh air and entering a stifling hot room. He was free of the children, free to discover on his own, but he found himself itching for more, to ask questions about things his parents could answer, to do projects he’d heard about online but often ended up screaming in his attempts to recreate them because it wasn’t explained, why this, why that, how do I do that, it doesn’t make sense!!

Homeschooling was a blessing and a curse. He made due. He did well in fact, almost all of his online courses were marked complete with a neat 100 for the score. It was enough for them, but not for him.  Eight year old Logan hated it. Ten year old Logan was used to it.

Eleven year old Logan dug his heels into it.

Middle school. His parents wanted to send him back. He understood their reasoning, the rational half of his brain did. Middle school was a big change, adolescence, and the middle ground before high school, which he always knew he would be going to-you can’t get college credit from online courses and library books after all, not the ones he was using. It would give him time to prepare. And yet he was a creature of habit, so used to his solitary life..

Logan has no choice however.

On the first day he stepped inside, armed with only the knowledge of American Girl books he’d skimmed through (who cared if they were meant for girls, they didn’t write helpful guides for boys!) and distant memories of elementary school. The first weeks went by as a blur, and Logan ate it up. The assignments, the grades, the smirk he always found himself wearing when he placed his assignments in the bin. That triumph didn’t even compare to the rush of pride and satisfaction he felt when the teacher told the class that he test they’d been given was apparently too hard, many kids failed and only one student actually got a perfect score, and his paper was handed back with a 100 written on the top.

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t hold the paper up a bit and catch the eyes of the numerous people who stared at him with no surprise in their eyes.

Logan even found friends in those first few weeks. A darkly dressed kid who, much like him, never really knew where to go during paired projects and ended up working with him. He found that Virgil was actually very bright, a relief when he looked around the room to see people talking and not doing anything useful. The pale boy was quiet, but listened as Logan chattered away about his  plans for the assignment.

Patton was next, a round-faced boy who seemed to share at least a few words with everyone he saw. Logan didn’t mind that. He wasn’t a lazy student, maybe a bit easily distracted, but when he was sat next to Logan in science his work quality was always at least a solid B, as long as he was shushed every now and again. He seemed better with people too, and Logan found himself enjoying his company.

Then there was Roman. He was introduced to their little trio by Patton, who apparently shared a drama class with the tanned boy. He was..a handful. And yet Logan found himself challenged by him. Their friendship was an unusual one, full of debates that more often than not ended in yelling, but at least they started off with intelligent points and interesting ideas-and if often Patton had to break off their passion so neither of them landed with lunch detention, well that was the price to pay.

He was enjoying himself here.

Then the second month. Logan remembered where he was when a redheaded girl told him he was wrong in that ‘you’re a moron’ tone when he told her that actually, the word for the study of space was astronomy, not astrology. When a boy in a green sweater had blatantly ignored him when he asked him to stop scooting his chair across the hard floors. When an entire group of people had continued to call him Logie even though he’d told them over and over he hated it. Many of them seemed to do it just because it annoyed him. This went on. Every day another simpleton would disrespect him. Every day he’d tell him to stop. Often he’d snap at them, or swear. That always got him snickers in return. And Logan found himself clenching his fists as his whole body burned red hot.

It happened again a week after this started. A boy with a Minecraft t-shirt cut him off in the lunch line, and when Logan told him to go to the end, the boy only scoffed and responded with “Are you in kindergarten?” in a tone that made his blood boil with how fucking snotty it was.

Logan’s hand was fisted in the back of that obnoxious t-shirt and pulling back with all its might before he could think.

The boy ended up on the floor crying, and Logan ended up suspended.

There were more incidents that year. Mostly yelling or swearing, but minor physical violence was not unheard of. It was common even.

Logan didn’t want that. He wanted to be cool, to drop the bullies and idiots with bullets of intelligence from his tongue, but everything he tried a witty comeback they’d give him either confused looks, no acknowledgement as all, or retort with ‘Your mom’ jokes, a sort of ‘insult’ that required barely a single brain cell to perform.

They never listened. They were stupid, childish, disrespectful. Logan stuck only to his three friends and the many teachers he’d grown quite friendly with, They liked him after all, he was precocious and that was something teachers always found fun. with adults, he also found he could make himself actually heard, his theories, ideas, suggestions, it was a glorious freedom he had previously only had with Patton, Roman, and Virgil.

But things didn’t get that much better.

In fact, in seventh grade Logan found his outbursts getting worse. They were farther and fewer between, but the eventual rage that would explode was far worse than before. It was like the dam that held back his rage had grown stronger, but that meant it took more water to barrel it over, and that sent far more devastating floods down the peaceful valley of his mind.

In eighth grade, he got into a fistfight with a boy who had called Roman gay as an insult, not knowing that it was true or that the word should not be used in such a manner. When the boy refused to listen to Logan’s explanation of what the word meant and instead switched tracks to scoffing every time he said it was a normal and perfectly acceptable, beautiful thing. And by the time the midget of a bigot tossed in the dreaded f-slur Logan’s mind was so crimson he only felt a rush of relief when his fist connected with the boy’s head.

It was two weeks of suspension for that. And it was during that time that Logan’s mother revealed something to him that he had never expected.

Tales of his childhood-or babyhood rather, where he had exhibited strange behaviors no other parent seemed to have seems.

“I think you might have Aspergers,” she had said.

And now, here he was. He couldn’t believe it had taken her this long to tell him of her suspicions. But now Logan was sitting on his bed, the blanket covered with constellations, staring at the cover of a book.

It was a familiar scene.

But this wasn’t a book chosen by Logan’s own hand, or by the school, or even a recommendation from his parents or a loan from his younger sister Abby.

It had been gifted to him by the man at the Autism Center.

The Asperkid’s Secret Guide to Social Rules.

He’d read the whole thing.

Before, he’d thought he was just awkward.

But no. Of course it couldn’t be that simple. It wasn’t that he just didn’t know that w to say. He was. missing an entire way of communicating that people his mind now knew as ‘neurotypicals’ spoke in without realizing it.

The secret language. Body language, facial expressions, tone, he knew that all existed yes..but he’d never seen it. At least not in the subtleties the book described. And all these double meanings of phrases? So the dark-skinned girl who had asked him what he was reading during math class didn’t want to just read the back and learn Sherlock Holmes’ latest mystery? She’ wanted to get to know him?

Why didn’t she just say so!

It was so much more complicated now. The vague, yet simple term of ‘weird’ was replaced by the vast, yet specific, confusing, and multifaceted word that was autistic. A word he’d never have expected to apply to him. Mental health went really a subject he’d looked into, feelings were too wound into it.. and feelings had always been his greatest vice.

So now, with that book in his hand, he thought.

There was a whole other world he couldn’t see..that’s what he had been missing all this time? was the specific shifts in tone in posture people made-what he’d always thought to be absently-something his parents expected him to understand and that was why he always seemed to have to be elbowed when running his mouth?

It was like….like telepathy. Yes, to Logan, the cues he now found himself putting extra effort into finding; his sister’s slightly hunched shoulders at the dinner table, his dad’s slightly turned up nose when he mentioned his history teacher, were a sort of telepathy that the ‘normal’ population all shared. But it wasn’t as if it was that simple. Of course, it was tauntingly, agonizingly complicated. You see, these people were all telepaths, sharing cues in an invisible tongue-and yet, none of them knew they were telepathic. And yet still, they all expected everyone else to be.

So that was why he was strange. Logan had looked up how much of communication was non-verbal - he felt his eyes go wide when he saw the percentage dedicated to ‘body language’.

Fifty-eight percent.

Fifty-eight percent.

What else could he have missed?

Logan was both happy and uncomfortable with the diagnosis. He now knew terms, words, blessed reasons for his little ticks, why he felt like something was terribly wrong for at least an hour just because he’d had to take an alternate route to school (routine disruption), why was such a picky eater (finickiness caused by sensitivity to textures and certain flavors/smells), why people always responded with confusion whenever they saw him pepper the science teacher with question after question, challenge after challenge like he was trying to understand how the universe wove itself in the span of five minutes, and looked surprised when Roman asked him if he knew why Patton was being quiet. Logan had responded with a simple no, informing the other that Patton hadn’t told him-and when the slightly taller boy had suggested that he ask, Logan realized the thought had never occurred to him.

Most importantly, it explained what Roman had dubbed ‘The Fitness Fiasco’. To sum it up, Logan had thought of a new game for their groups to play in gym class—something besides basketball for once in their lives, and yet as he tried to explain, the girl who seemed to have taken charge of the group he was trying to explain the idea to kept talking over him, ignoring him, challenging what he said—and the noise. The noise, how all the chattering and the sound of balls bouncing on the floor, the rage he felt at being slighted in this way, how it had attacked him. How he’d suddenly found himself tensing, wanting to run or to yell, unsure which, how the sound turned solid and pressed in-his muscles going taut, his hands twitching with every word from the students mouths,  how his arm violently jerked away as Patton tried to comfort him- And then the scream. He’d screamed at the top of his lungs for quiet, falling to the ground and sobbing in the fetal position—eyes screwed shut behind his glasses and hands clamped tight to his ears, unsure of what was even falling from his mouth aside from the fact that he was begging, begging for silence. It had only quieted a bit as people turned to stare, and then he’d felt hands on his shoulders, ones he jerked away from—but no one knew what to do. Virgil’s low whispers for him to breathe, to use the 4-7-8 method that the emo always used to calm his own panic attacks, was only met with more incoherent begging for silence. It had been Patton who rescued him, who brought the teacher over and ended up guiding the sobbing Logan to an empty classroom. There he had been met with silence. There he felt his terrified bawling turn to weeping with relief. In the silence, he’d recovered, his muscles lost the tension, and he allowed the freckled boy to wrap him in a hug.

He’d only been able to call it a panic attack before. But now he knew the term. Sensory overload, brought on my the noise and the stress.

It had been a relief just to know that. To know that in moments when he stood among too many people, feeling his muscles clench as their shoulders brushed his, that his hands should not go out to push them away, but to his ears, to block out the trigger.

It became a cue, when debates with Roman got heated—they were friends after all, if rivals as well, and it was understood that if Logan’s jaw suddenly clenched and his hands went up to cover his ears, they had to pause for at least a minute.

But of course, knowing where the holes in his social skills were led to Logan compensating, and it didn’t..always feel natural. He found himself staring at people, trying to read their faces, for a little too long on many an occasion, or overreacting to something because he’d overanalyzed the tone. He found himself having to bite his tongue on many an occasion to keep himself from simply explaining why he did what he did to his parents, who would only take it as making excuses.

It was a balance of the good, the bad, and the ugly. He understood now that his all-or-nothing attitude was why he found himself simply not doing projects if he couldn’t grasp the material—and this led to him having to more often than not, swallow his pride and ask for help when he was getting frustrated. Yet the same black-and-white philosophy got him gasps of shock from Roman when he explained that, in the story Roman had been iterating to him, the whole second half of the plot could have been avoided if Leealli had simply decapitated Sorcerer Kai while they were trapped in her dungeon. Roman had protested, saying it would make her just as terrible as they, but Logan had frowned, explaining that yes, the act was cruel, but if a single act of evil by her direct hand was all it took to stop countless others by her indirect hand, wasn’t it worth it?

But he had also been the one to convince Patton not to remain friends with Oliver, when one day, sitting on the cotton candy clouds that patterned Patton’s quilt, the smaller boy had confided in him that Oliver had vented about his habits of self-harm to the kind soul for three hours the night previous, yet refused any help Patton gave, shot down any attempt at saying he was worth more than he thought.

It was Logan who had took Patton’s hand and told him that people like that could only be helped by themselves and a therapist, that he should not take it upon himself to bear others’ problems in that way. Who had given him a hesitant hug and told him that his mental health was just as important as theirs.

His friends were his lifeline. Maybe they tripped him up—well, they definitely did, yet as much as he found himself apologizing to Virgil for seeming angry when he was simply tired and being a bit blunter and more insensitive with his words than usual (not that he usually was tactful or sensitive when it came to criticism, even constructive criticism) he found himself sighing in relief as the anxious boy shared with him his own experiences in worrying about the negative undertones in the words of others too much to be considered healthy. They would sit and talk about it, the same experience for two different reasons, one of them due to the irrational fear of people disliking him or being angry, and the other due to worrying he was doing something incorrectly that he was not aware of, failing to pick up on a crucial piece of information.

As much as Logan found himself and Roman butting heads, even shouting at each other during friendly debates gone sour, name-calling and snapping fault after fault, he reflected fondly on the time he had been ecstatic to discover that Roman’s own ADHD-riddled brain hyperfixated on Disney just as his own did on Sherlock, and they would both go on for hours about their obsessions while sadly recalling how old interests had faded.

As much as he often found himself hurting Patton unintentionally, and even worse, learning that Patton had been hiding that fact from him for weeks as to spare his feelings, as difficult as it was to convince (well, more plead with) Patton to tell him these things, as he wouldn’t be offended much and he had no other way of knowing what he was doing wrong, he found himself sitting by his side, all attention completely fixated on what to him were mindblowing truths about people and yet seemed common, boring knowledge to Patton, as the freckled boy explained cues and rules, that invisible language Logan did not speak.

Those friends stuck by him, even though others did not. With all the walls Logan had built up around his emotions, to protect himself and others, few could breach the fortifications—except for those who had already been on the inside as he built them. And he was fine with that.

Going to a therapist was...awkward at first, but it helped. Mr. Picani understood his aversion to talking of his feelings, and instead cleverly tricked him every time, asking questions about events until Logan was off on an angry rant. With that expelled, they’d talk through possible solutions.

He kept the book. And most of the other books he was given on the topic, eager to learn and understand more things about himself, knowing the reasons behind behaviors, quirks in things had always been one of his favorite things, and now he found it was possible in people.

As Logan worked through his discovery during the last semester of eighth grade and through that summer, with his Virgil, Patton, Roman, his parents, Mr. Picani, and occasionally even his rainbow-haired little sister, he found his mind shifting. He was truly calm now more often than not, able to express his rationale...well, rationally, rather than through insults. His debates grew calmer, and while he certainly had his slip-ups..he was improving. Slowly. Steadily.

His viewpoint of the world was unusual, like an outsider, and while that could be isolating, if he explained it well, people were often interested to hear it. It was different, his own; the metaphor Logan found himself using was that everyone else was a Macintosh computer, and he and his fellow spectrumites were PCs, capable of all the same things, though in ways the world was not wired to accommodate. Also, clearly superior in many a way.

His core programming was different, even if his exterior seemed the same, and Logan was okay with that. He’d never know the invisible language, not as a native would, but he could learn it—the same way he learned slang, through help, a lot of online research, his friends, and some study notes here and there.

It was complicated, they way he figured things out, the systems he’d devised. But complicated problems would never be solved with simple solutions.

And he still had plenty of time left to learn.

(Thanks to @poisonedapples for betaing this and basically screaming RELATABLE every two second, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear!)

(...I don’t really have a general fic taglist so imma just- y e a here)

Tags: @royallyanxious @whatwashernameagain @sandersmarvel @the-incedible-sulk @supremestoverlord @hanramz-the-fander @childhood-wishes-and-dreams @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 @madly-handsome @galaxy-warping @extremist-water-agenda @ierindoodles @princeanxious

[iheartseo]

MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: THIS IS ALL BASED ON MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCES AND WHAT I FOUND HELPFUL !!! KTHNXS ✨

hello honey! I just finished my first year at my new uni doing my new degree and I am honestly so happy about the results I am currently getting compared to what I was getting last year. so I decided to write this little post in order to help those who are going into their first year of university/college or those who just wanna change their mindset.

just a very quick story time: last year was my first REAL year at a university and being fresh outta high school, I was extremely excited about studying the subjects I wanted to study and ready to make new friends etc. etc. However, I realised right after semester 1, that I was in way over my head and it most definitely did NOT help that my dumbass was in a horrible mindset and was not mentally mature for university and the social life of university. Due to this, as well as my quick declining interest and motivation to study, I pretty much bombed out and failed my entire first year of university. And when I said I failed my first year, I’m talking I completely failed and I knew I had failed by semester 2 and so I decided not to do my semester 2 final exams cause what’s the point?

that mindset honestly, was one of the worst I have ever been and my anxiety honestly has never been so high and I would not relive those moments ever again. so here are 10 tips and some advice on how to survive your first year of university/college and hopefully you guys will have a better 1st year experience than I did. ♡

TIP #1: GROW OUT OF YOUR HIGH SCHOOL MENTALITY (it will be an ongoing journey even past your first year of uni tbh)

not gonna lie, the second you tell someone that you are 18 years old and that you are in university, everyone suddenly expects you to be an adult and have your shit together and to have suddenly matured out of your high school mentality and that your break between your high school graduation and your first few months at university, you are expected to have mentally matured by like 20 years or some shit. yes, it is strongly advised that you get out of your high school mentality and yes it is strongly advised that you have to grow the fuck up once you get into university.

however, you should not force yourself to grow up. university will most definitely throw things your way that will completely change and shape the person you will just eventually grow to be. 

TIP #2: ACTUALLY GO AND ATTEND YOUR UNIS/COLLEGES OPEN DAYS OR INFORMATION DAYS. JUST VISIT YOUR DAMN SCHOOLS.

my ACTUAL first year of uni, I was accepted into one of Australia’s top universities on a scholarship for a double degree course. So you can imagine the amount of pressure and hard work that was needed to be put in for me to even stay at this school. When I got accepted, it wasn’t like I didn’t know that it was going to be hard. But I personally never expected for it to be as hard as it was on me both academically and socially.

At first, I liked my course, but I am personally one of those people who thrive off of whatever environment that I am put into so if I am placed into a uni where the environment is highly toxic and almost everyone is a harsh competing rival, I won’t put in the effort. But if I am in an environment that is much more relaxed and opened, but is still willing to push me to work harder, I will actually try. But some people are able to work in incredibly harsh and competitive environments and are able to handle snobby people, I personally couldn’t at my first university which is why I transferred to the uni I am currently attending.

ABSOLUTELY NO HATE OR SHADE TO MY FIRST UNIVERSITY. IT IS TRULY A GREAT UNI. My sister went to my first uni and she absolutely loved it, but everyone has a different uni experience and sadly, I didn’t enjoy it. So I most definitely recommend researching about the schools you are thinking about attending and it would really benefit you if you personally went to visit the school yourself. If you can see yourself being happy there, if you can see yourself enjoying the environment, if you can genuinely say you like the school, go to that school. Because there is honestly no point on attending a university just for the name and the title and you don’t even like going the damn library that is on campus. 

TIP #3: TRY AND STUDY SOMETHING YOU ACTUALLY LIKE

this tip is very hard and I honestly shouldn’t be saying it? But like hear me out. My belief is that if you are studying something you genuinely enjoy, you will actually study for it. Or at least that mentality definitely applies to me. I was studying a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts together last year. My majors were Psychology and Economics. AS MUCH AS I LOVED PSYCH, STUDYING ECONOMICS WAS A BITCH.

I personally fucken hated studying Economics and with that, I also had to study Maths as a subject under my science degree, which I also personally hated. No matter how much I tried and listened in my lectures, I could honestly never get the material and it was so disheartening to me that I couldn’t understand. Granted, I was dumb and didn’t check my classes (which I will discuss in my next tip), and I knew that university classes were going to be 100 times harder than the shit I got in high school, but that didn’t escape the fact that it was so disheartening that I wasn’t able to understand the material.

That lead me to slowly and simply not caring about what it was that I was studying and learning. I didn’t care anymore about my degree. I was so unhappy with what I was studying that I would spend more time going out and partying than actually trying to get even a Pass. Nothing wrong with having fun, but I prioritized partying over studying, which is not good.

Now I am doing an Education degree and I am so much happier! I genuinely like studying what I am studying. I even actively listen to my lectures online and take notes as if I was physically attending the lecture myself (and most students don’t even bother listening to online lectures). I even stay back after all of my classes are done to catch up with anything I have missed or get ahead of my classes. I seriously like what I am studying. Sure, I lose motivation from time to time, but I am studying way more now than I did a year ago.

BUT REMEMBER. IT IS OKAY NOT TO KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO STUDY. THERE ARE KIDS IN THEIR 4TH YEAR WHO STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT TO STUDY. Finding something that genuinely makes you happy and makes you want to work hard for it is hard to find, but it is so worth it once you do. So be smart with what you pick and choose.

TIP #4: CHECK UP AND RESEARCH ABOUT YOUR CLASSES

If you are lucky enough to pick and choose your individual classes, please for the love of god, research about them! look up your classes! read your damn unit guide! do not pick a class cause it sounds cool and fuck yourself over by not reading the prerequisites or not reading the amount of assignments related to that class.

I was dumb and did not read up on my classes nor did I research about them fully my first year. I honestly just read their mini blurb and went off my merry way which fucked me over so bad because I did not personally understand the actual contents of each one of my classes. 

literally find your class unit guide or class information online, look into what assignments have been done in the past, what kind of weightings they each have and read the stuff that you are suppose to learn even if you just get a simple Pass in the class. the more you look into a class, the better understanding you will get of what that class actually provides.

also, majority of the time, you can see what textbooks are needed so you can grab them off before the semester even properly starts. 

just as a little side tip

TIP #4.5: If you can literally pick and choose what your time table looks like, DO NOT FUCKEN GIVE YOURSELF 3-4 HOUR BREAKS BETWEEN YOUR CLASSES. You are lying to yourself when you say that you are going to be studying in those long ass breaks, like shut up. no. don’t do that to yourself.

TIP #5: DO NOT BUY YOUR TEXTBOOKS (if possible)

for the love of god, DO. NOT. BUY. YOUR. “MANDATORY”. TEXTBOOKS. it is a waste of money. you are blowing $200 minimum for a damn paper weight. I am not even kidding. I never have purchased a textbook and I never will unless that textbook is nowhere else to be found.

Be smart about your textbooks. If you are able to find a copy of your textbook in the library, BORROW THAT SHIT IMMEDIATELY. my university lets us borrow copies of books for like 16 weeks at a time and my semesters last for at least 13, so it is enough to class me throughout all of class. your universities should have multiple copies of whatever textbook that you need for class. even if the library copy is a few editions older, it does not matter, the content is still the same. It is not worth forking out $200-$500 for a couple of extra pages.

If you can’t borrow a copy from the library, try and find it online. There are some generous people out there who have uploaded a free full copy of the book somewhere. If you can’t find it online, borrow a friends copy and photocopy that shit like crazy. You might end up paying like $50 worth of paper but 50 is better than 200.

AND IF YOU SERIOUSLY CANT DO THAT, go onto slugbooks.com to get your textbooks. I personally haven’t used that website myself, but I hear it’s pretty fucken good to get textbooks.

TIP #6: JOIN A CLUB/SOCIETY/FRAT/SORORITY ETC.

for your first year of uni/college, just join something. there is deadset something for everyone. you do not need to join greek life if you personally do not want to. i didn’t join greek life cause australia doesn’t really have that kind of shit.

if you like debating, there is a debating club. if you like drama, 10000% there is a drama club. if you are a strong LGBTQ+ ally or are apart of that group and you wanna meet queer people, 1000000000000% there is a club for that. i’m not even kidding you, at my first university there was a damn memes society and a quidditch society. you will most definitely find something that will interest you.

if you aren’t a big fan of clubs, that is fine. i just would personally recommend joining one so you can make friends more easily and it’s sort of like a little bit away from your studies. it’s something fun for you to enjoy and you get to meet some incredible people along the way. I am apart of VSA (Vietnamese Student Association) and I have done SOOO many things all the way to modelling, charity events, partying and planning out major events etc. all whilst meeting some new people and creating friendships.

TIP #7: LEARN WHAT TO PRIORITISE

I feel like this should be a no brainer but it is important. It is okay to have fun whilst you are at uni but it is not good nor is it smart to throw away a perfectly good education that you are paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for.

if you have a party on Saturday and an essay due on Sunday, do not go to the party. I know that there is some people who pull all nighters to finish off an assignment or to study for an exam, I am extremely guilty of that. However, that does not mean I will sacrifice one extra day of studying for a party.

this is where you have to be an adult and understand how you, yourself study the best and how you retain information the best and if you need an extra couple of days, skip out on some parties and reschedule those lunch dates and dinner dates. your friends will understand and will not judge you for wanting to studying. if your friends do judge you for wanting an education, then you should drop them.

TIP #8: LEARN TO REFERENCE

I cannot stress how important referencing is in university. That shit is an absolute fucken bitch and it does not help that there are like 5 different styles or some shit. But it is important that you learn how to reference correctly because you will lose marks for not doing it correctly and some professors/tutors are just straight assholes and will deduct like 10 marks cause you aren’t using the correct referencing style for the class.

in my experience, for first year anyway, they will teach you how to reference in your tutorials so you get the general gist of what to do and how to do it. I learnt how to reference in APA format in high school, so I am fine, but I know not alot of people learn it that early and first hear about referencing once they get to uni. so learning to reference is a big thing. a lot of my tutors recommended me installing EndNote which does the referencing for you. I personally just let Word do it for me. If you go into your Word and find ‘Document Elements’ (for Mac),  click on ‘Manage’ in the References section and a citations list will pop up. Click on the plus sign in the bottom left hand corner and just literally fill out the form and you are done.

OR IF YOU ARE A WINDOWS USER, just go to the ‘References’ tab and click ‘Insert Citation’ and then click ‘Add New Source’ then fill out the form. Then you are literally done. You basically have corrected did in-text citations within your essay along to whatever format is needed. *The only shitty thing about this method is that it will only automatically do in-text citations, not footnoting. Footnoting you will have to insert manually yourself*

After you finished with all of your citations, just click on ‘Bibliography’ and put in in as ‘Works Cited’ and literally your ENTIRE reference list will be organised into alphabetical order for you.

TIP #9: GET A CALENDAR OR DIARY

whether that shit is digital or physical, start using one. it is honestly so helpful to know when you have got assignments and exams coming up and you can kinda start planning out when is a good time to start researching or studying etc. etc.

it seems like such a small thing, but it works so well. I personally just use the iPhone calendars app and make sure it reminds me at least like a week or 2 ahead of the actual due date so I know that it’s coming up.

i also highly recommend that once you read your unit guide/class information sheet, that you write down ALL of your assignments, when they are due and how much do they weigh into your calendar/diary. because then you have no excuse to say that you never knew about it and yet you wrote it down. it also just helps you to be productive and work around/add in other dates like outings with friends into your schedule. 

TIP #10: IT IS OKAY TO FAIL

I feel like there is such an extremely high expectation to pass every single one of your class with amazing grades and graduate with like a 4.0 GPA, like for some reason that is the standard that is expected out of every uni/college student, even those attending a really shitty uni is somehow expected to be blitzing through every single one your your classes, but the truth is, you will probably fail a class and that’s okay.

trust me when i say, it is okay to fail a class. i’m not saying that you SHOULD fail a class, but if you do, it’s not the end of the world. even though I failed so many classes last year, my first university was still willing to keep me enrolled and even offered some help. staying in university/college is sort of like baseball, very simple; 3 strikes and you’re out, but even then, they will still offer you services to help you study better or if you are struggling at home or you have your own mental issues that affect your studies, there are services at university/college that will help you and it’s for free.

i cannot stress how important it is to let your university/college know that if you suffer from any sort of mental illness, have a rough background, do not have the resources to study etc. etc., that you should let them know because they can help you.

that is all of the tips and advice that i can think off at the moment. i hope this helped at least one person. if i can think of anything else/more, i’ll be sure to update this post and add it on. or if i am brave enough, maybe just do a full blown youtube video? we will see on that. BUT UNTIL THEN. I HOPE THIS HELPS AND I HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR FIRST YEAR AT UNI OR THE REST OF YOUR YEAR AT UNI IN GENERAL !! 

[light-of-being]

05.02.19 (treading tentatively forward)

Today was good. Long, exhausting, but good.

Last year was really hard for me and I spent pretty much all of it in survival mode, which is kind of just a sad way to live and was bad for my academics, leadership roles, etc, although I accept that there was no other way at the time. I can confidently say that I’m probably a lot better at coping now than I was before. But I wanted to take a more proactive approach this year -- to live more...intentionally, so to speak. To kinda build a life beyond just survival.

My main concerns were around energy and being able to do this without just collapsing entirely. I find it hard to imagine successfully sustaining studies, health and household tasks simultaneously. But perhaps I’m just being excessively miserly with my energy and I should just allow myself to be tired, to do things beyond the point of exhaustion, and then rest. I’ve been afraid that the rest wouldn’t help, that the exhaustion would become paralysing, as it often has. But the truth is, I haven’t allowed myself to reach that point in a long time because I’ve been afraid, so I don’t actually know whether that still holds at all. I might just be able to be achy and tired, get a really good sleep, and then get up and live another full day. I’m going to experiment with that, let’s see how that goes.

I got books from the library last week, but I didn’t get very far with reading them (probably coz they were slightly dense and not-so-slightly boring and depressing). So I returned those today, and got new ones that I’m actually excited about, intend to, and actually expect to read. I made deliberate efforts to pick out those that are accessible and/or noncommittal, such as a collection of short pieces that I can approach and abandon easily while still having appreciable gains.

I spoke to a therapist while on campus about problems in the general direction of this post. It was actually quite fruitful. I expressed a lot of concern about disintegration/falling apart/losing control that comes with the swamp of uncertainty surrounding my dissociation and my history of experiencing such. The sense of stumbling in the dark. I won’t pretend that I feel any more confident in being able to hold it together, but I do feel more willing to have faith. I’m slowly becoming more comfortable with the idea that I’ve rarely actually put shit behind me, but rather fled from them, that I still carry the corpses of all of myself that I’ve killed. She said we need to explore that and the past more the next time. I agree, I think. I’m still not sure what that’s meant to achieve, but I’m slightly less sure it’d be a waste of time. She says I need to put down the corpses to make space for those I’ll collect in the future, if I think that’s going to happen. Which seems fair, although I’m not certain speaking about them will put them down any better.

I took some time out yesterday to exercise (active) self-compassion. Most of my recollections and thoughts of the past had been so tainted by the visceralness, terror of recurrence and uncanny sense of similar-but-other, that I’d never bothered to look back at those stranger selves as people of their own right. I mean, if they were actually strangers, I would probably have responded to them with empathy and support, but all I was doing to myself was recoiling. So I extended to them an olive branch of sorts. Forgave them for not making it through, appreciated them for doing their best nevertheless. Promised kindness and greater support henceforth. Which was, in turn, inductively comforting to me.

But I was also angry. Very angry. At my parents, my bullies, everything that had put me in these positions. People whom I’d thought I’d long forgiven, although I’d never even properly given myself a chance to be angry at them. I’d jumped to “they did their best and didn’t know any better” type of thinking and knew I couldn’t reeeally blame them for it if I was applying my own approaches consistently. Never mind that I’d only just grokked after yeeears that this hadn’t been my fault, that it wasn’t due to anything being fundamentally wrong and horrible about me, that they were just...fucked up, and were in fact doing this to everyone. That this was wrong.

I felt, last night, the same kind of mental shift I did long ago when I moved from “slavery was 30 years ago we need to move on coz it doesn’t matter anymore” to “wow no this is still affecting every part of people’s lives and will continue to, we can’t just ignore it”. The same kind of bitterness I see when people talk about how a lot of  white people in this country never apologised, still look back to apartheid nostalgically, don’t begin to accept any responsibility or even understanding of the harm they caused...and yet we’ve “forgiven” them and “reconciled”.

Idk. I’ma write out a lengthy exposition of exactly what they did and how it affected me at some stage. I wanted to send it to my mother, or even my father, but sensibly, I probably won’t. It won’t have any productive benefit: while I’d really like them to understand and accept responsibility, I’ll almost certainly get only invalidation and hostility. Soo I’ll probably just write it for my own sanity and hopefully at some point (actually) let go.

So yeah. I’m working on things. This morning I also joined tai chi again, conditional upon being able to opt out of physical contact and social chit-chat things. I bought pretty candles that I look forward to using for meditation things and general niceness. I finally got around to buying a lace curtain so I can open the dark ones without rendering my entire room exposed to the fkin street, and I swear, the outside light transforms the ambience. It’s the best thing. I like light, a lot. I’ve set up my journal for this month, and it’s very pretty and welcoming. My bursars emailed today confirming that they’ll fund me again for this year, which although was expected from the T&Cs, brought a huge sense of relief for my financial state.

Classes start on Monday. I’m very slightly anxious about the workload and the fact that it’s final year and everything counts A Great Deal, but the content seems really cool. I dropped my maths course last year because I was overwhelmed by my own head, and I think that contributed to reduced stability and grounding. I’ma be doing it this year, which is nice. Algebra was pretty cool while I was doing it before I dropped, and Discrete Maths has always been exciting.

Applied cognitive psychology seems overall like a very exciting course. It covers stuff including neural networks, decision making, memory in forensics, clinical cognition and evolutionary cognitive psychology. There’s also an Actual Research Project done in groups: complete with research proposal and poster, and the power to grant kids course credits for partaking...which is in equal parts extremely fkin cool and absolutely terrifying.

Computer science has been said to be challenging, which is probably nice (and also, again, slightly scary). We’re doing more in-depth and probably more complex things like networks and operating systems, which is cool and superior to the largely superficial programming stuff we’ve spent so long on. I enjoyed last semester (concurrency, computer architecture, etc -- conceptual things) so this should probably be good as well.

I’m looking forward to the structure of lectures and the purposefulness of having assignments etc to do. I’ve also been reminded (again today) how much I like my (very beautiful) campus and how it brings me a sense of peace and belonging (generally when there’s nobody else there, not when scared new first years are anxiously attending everything...but anyway).

Things are, for now...okay. I’ve always liked beginnings. I’m willing to try. I’m holding out a tentative hope.

[spitestudies]

hello everyone!! as a high school junior taking 4 aps, 3 other classes, preparing for the act, trying to do college research, stage managing a musical, and trying not to lose my mind, here are some fun n handy tips for not Dying when ur schedule is hell!  

if you found this post helpful maybe give it a like/reblog and check out my other posts here!

01 | PLANNING AND PREPARING

so much of getting and staying organized has to do with organizing your time in advance.  there are a million ways to do this--google calendar, a bullet journal, a planner, some post-it notes.  my system involves three parts: a google calendar, a planner, and an online to-do list app.  

google calendar: this is mostly for events.  i can see when i have rehearsals, classes, doctor’s appointments, etc.  this helps me see how much available time i have and budgeting it properly.  

planner: i take this with me to school, and i use it to right down when i have assignments and tests.  i use the ban.do planner, but these are a bit pricey, and really anything will do.  just somewhere to put down tasks so you can keep track of them

getplan.co: this app is, honest to god, the only reason i am still alive and breathing.  it plugs into your google calendar and then allows you to create and schedule tasks around events.  @studycxlture has an amazing post about plan here that i def recommend checking out!

general tips about planning: 

plan out the events of your month at least two days before it starts

set aside a night (i like sunday evenings) to set up a system for the upcoming week and go over what you have planned so you don’t forget anything

you are NOT gonna remember that assignment that teacher told you about.  write it down.  

you do not need a fancy system.  it’s okay to try lots of different things until you find what works 

never spend more time planning out tasks than completing them.  unless you have that much free time, don’t dedicate two hours to making a lovely weekly bullet journal spread.  

color codes!!! are a life saver.  i have one with a color for each class (red for english, orange for spanish, yellow for history, green for science, blue for math, etc) as well as some for my extracurriculars (pink for the musical, teal for model un, etc).  

always have ur planner open when ur working, so that you can make sure u r actually completing all the tasks u said u were gonna complete

02 | STAYING ORGANIZED 

oh my god oh my god oh my god staying on top of your work is SO important when you’re busy.  being able to find your worksheets and keep track of your homework and your million responsibilities is essential to being successful.  to stay organized, i have an expandable file folder with tabs for each class.  because i take most of my notes in notebooks instead of binders, this is a good way to keep all of my handouts, worksheets, and syllabi centralized.  

also, make sure you have a way to keep your online materials organized.  create a folder for each school year, and within that folder, create more folders for each class.  from there, it’s up to you about how you’ll organize files. you can create even MORE folders (yeet) for things like homework, notes, study guides, etc, or folders for each unit you study.  the possibilities are endless!!!! isn’t technology exciting

here r some pieces of advice for staying organized: 

have a series of folders/binder/expandable file folder to hold your worksheets.  or one for each class, though i prefer to keep all my papers in one a) to save money and b) to save space.

label your notebooks/binders so that you know which ones to bring home with you

never just shove something into your backpack.  never.  i’m gonna manifest into ur classroom and FIGHT you if u do that.  it’s not good, it’ll end up getting lost or crushed under the weight of all ur textbooks, and you’ll end up panicking when u can’t find it 

have ur planner on u at all times

keep a good filing system of ur stuff at home.  u don’t need to carry around every single bio assignment you’ve gotten back, but by the time ur final rolls around ur gonna want 2 b able to look at all the materials you’ve gotten during the semester

that being said, throw stuff away when the year is over!  i, for one, know i’m never gonna think about calculus after this class is done, so i will be recycling all of my papers (save the earth) and moving tf on 

keep a recycling bin in your room!  even if it’s just a paper bag, it’ll make throwing paper in the trash way less tempting (save the earth)

u don’t need a ton of pens.  i’m being a giant hypocrite saying this but you really don’t need all that stuff.  if you want it and you can manage it, great, but if it’s just another thing to keep track of, leave ur staedtlers and ur mujis and ur fineliners and ur calligraphy pens at home, and just take the essentials with u to school

03 | MAKING THE MOST OF UR TIME

in order to succeed, it’s v important to make every second count.  this doesn’t mean studying 48 hours straight (pls don’t), but try not to waste time. whether this means you spend fifteen minutes napping, doing some reading for english, or having a quick snack, make sure u are being productive and healthy!  i, for one, sometimes have 1-2 hour breaks between school and rehearsal, and i like to use these to walk to the grocery store by my school and get some food and then study in the deli.  

some ideas for being productive! 

carry a clipboard around everywhere.  this way, u don’t need to spend as much time transitioning in and out of tasks, u can just put ur work onto the clipboard, and put it in ur backpack at the end of a break, and then the next chance u have to work on it, just take it back out.  easy peasy

work during commutes! nOT if ur the one driving the car though that’s VERY dangerous and distracted driving = bad.  but if ur on the bus, or ur mom is driving u to school, that might be a good time to go over some notes you took last night, or some reading you need to catch up on.  nothing too insane, please don’t do ur chem labs on the public bus but.  u know.  

read over the notes you took that day on the ride home.  this will help reinforce the information in ur brain, and it’s not super difficult. i go over my apush notes during the 40 minute drive home and sometimes talk about them w my mom, which gives me a much better grasp of the material

don’t waste time on social media.  either delete instagram altogether, or log off/mute notifications before u start work.  same with tumblr.  don’t start scrolling obsessively if u have three tests to study for. 

power naps!!!! napping for about 10-20 minutes, maybe on the way home or to practice/rehearsal/whatever u gotta do, can help u feel refreshed!  anything longer will make u more tired tho, so be sure to get up when u say ur gonna get up.  

study smarter: when ur going over material, u don’t need to handwrite 60 beautiful flashcards.  use quizlet instead.  don’t revise if it’s not gonna help u.  prioritize which assignments r gonna be most impactful over the little ones u can easily make up

take good breaks!! breaks r VERY important and should be utilized properly.  here r some good suggestions for things to do: 

throw in a load of laundry

empty the dishwasher

stretch/do some jumping jacks

drink some water!

go for a walk

talk to a family member 

get a snack!

read some fun novels n such

scream?

!! in case of emergency !! the following tips should only be employed when ur short on time.  don’t use these just bc u can, this is just when it’s about getting close enough to grasping material, not actually grasping it

do every other math problem assigned, and either star the ones u didn’t do, or get the answers from the back of the book.  this way, u get some practice but u also save time

sparknotes ur reading beforehand.  this way, u can recognize what’s going on.  it’s not v good for developing ur reading comprehension, but assignments will go by quicker

NEVER google translate ur language homework, but u can use word reference for helping u find the right word and proper conjugations

flagpole it: didn’t study enough for a test?  are u guessing on like 10 of the questions?  if it’s multiple choice, but the same answer for all the ones u have no clue about, unless that answer choice seems highly unlikely.  then pick a different one.  this way, ur statistically more likely to get some of the ones you guessed correct. 

when u have an online assignment due at midnight and it’s 11:53 and u haven’t started, find another assignment you’ve already completed that has a similar document name.  for example, “scarlet letter chapters 9-11″ instead of ur actual assignment “scarlet letter chapters 12-14″.  submit the other one, and then when u finish the other assignment (either that night or the next morning) email ur teacher and apologize, say u accidentally submitted the wrong document

if ur parents will let u (if ur in high school) or u can let urself (if ur in uni), it’s okay to skip a day to catch up.  just make sure u actually work, get the notes u missed, and talk to ur teachers/professors abt the material u missed.

04 | STAYING HEALTHY 

ur health comes before any assignment, test, or extracurricular.  i know lots of ppl r probably telling u that and it doesn’t seem like they mean it, but i mean it.  no exam is worth sacrificing ur mental, physical, or emotional health for.  yeet!  so here r some things to keep in mind

eat!  ur fuckin!  breakfast!  whether it’s a smoothie or oatmeal or a cup of orange juice or an apple or an elaborate french toast dish, u need some food in ur stomach so that u have the energy to start ur day

remember to take ur meds if u need to!

drink water!  drink! water!  have a glass when u wake up, and then at least one with every meal, and one before u go to bed.  hydration is v important.  if u can, invest in a water bottle and take it with u to class.  

pack a lunch!  and if ur staying later after school, pack snacks!  tech week for me is always hell because i get to school at 7:30 am and don’t usually leave until 11 that night.  it’s v important to stay nourished and hydrated so that u don’t get dizzy or faint.  

remember!  that u are beautiful, and ur body is beautiful, and it deserves 2 b loved! especially by u.  

get 6 hours of sleep.  aim for 8, but six at the very least.  if ur done with ur work, go to bed early!  don’t just stay up for no reason.  

shower everyday, or every other day at least.  give yourself those 15 minutes as a break from work or school or anything else that’s keeping you busy

write down ur thoughts in a journal?  

talk to a friend if ur feeling sad, or just feeling things very intensely.  share ur joy with other people!  vent ur sadness and anger so u aren’t carrying it around everywhere. 

make some time to have fun.  see a movie w ur friends or ur bf/gf/datefriend or ur family over the weekend.  go to a museum.  hang out at the mall.  sleepover at someone’s house.  taking breaks is healthy.  

make an effort to have dinner with ur family if u can (also if u like ur family.  i know some ppl have bad relationships w them so skip this step if that’s u).  it can be nice to reconnect w everyone, even when ur stressed or they’re annoying u, it can be nice.  

remember that it’s okay to be imperfect!  u don’t need to be good at a lot of things.  i got a b for the first time last semester, i just got a c on an apush test, i failed my driver’s test again yesterday.  but i also aced my math quiz, i celebrated six months of knowing my best friend, i walked my dog, i helped put a production together.  it’s okay to have rough days and bad days and bleh days, as long as you keep pushing through them and working for the days to get better.  

i love u!!! stay hydrated and nourished and get enough sleep.  put on some lotion if u have it available.  brush ur hair.  if u ever wanna ask a question, my ask box is always open!  <3

[shoury01]

THE FIVE LEVELS OF REMOTE WORK

COVID-19 has forced companies the world over to enact — or create — remote working protocols. The likes of Box, Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have all told their employees some variation of “work from home”. But so too are more traditional organisations across fields such as real estate, accounting and local government. Zoom team-selfies, are slowly polluting Twitter and LinkedIn feeds.

 But like most things worth doing, there are different levels of proficiency and sophistication to scale. Many newly-remote workers seem to conflate simply downloading Zoom, Slack, and having access to email with having this remote working thing sorted out.

But having a ball and a bat does not make you a Cricketer.

 A Case – Automattic Company.

When it comes to swimming in the deep end of the remote working pool, few companies are doing it better than Automattic — the company behind Wordpress, which powers 35% of all websites on the internet. Automattic has about 1,200 employees scattered across more than 75 countries, speaking 93 languages. It boasts a company valuation of US$3 billion and has made several significant acquisitions such as that of WooCommerce and blogging platform, Tumblr. The company does not have an office, with its employees collaborating almost exclusively online. 

Automattic’s founder, Matt Mullenweg (hence the “double t” in the company’s name) recently appeared on a popular podcast to talk on what he calls the five levels of distributed teams (he prefers ‘distributed’ to ‘remote’ because the latter implies that there is still a central place of work). Encouragingly Mullenweg’s sentiments echo the fact that the tools are only as good as how you use them. In fact, abuse of tools can actually make us less productive.

The Five Levels of Distributed Teams

Level 1: Non-Deliberate Action

Nothing deliberate has been done by the company to support remote work, but employees can still keep the ball rolling somewhat if they are at home for a day. They have access to their smartphone, and email. Perhaps they dial in to a few meetings. But they will put off most things until they’re back in the office and will be a shadow of their office-bound selves. Level 1 is where the overwhelming majority of organisations were prior to the COVID19 outbreak.

Level 2: Recreating the Office Online

This is where most organisations now reside — especially traditional ones. It is where your employees have access to videoconferencing software (eg. Zoom), instant messaging software (eg. Slack) and email, but instead of redesigning work to take advantage of the new medium, teams ultimately end up recreating online, how they work in the office.

This extends to many of the bad habits that permeate the modern office and suppress the ability of knowledge workers to actually think, with..:-

a)      . . . . 10-person video-calls when two people would suffice,

b)      . . . . 60+ interruptions a day — now via Slack and phone calls,

c)      . . . . the sporadic checking of and responding to email more than 70 times a day throughout the day,

d)      . . . . hyper-responsiveness that is expected of all employees, leaving them wired to desktop,

Mullenweg equates lack of redesigning work around the medium. A similar example was with the radio drama of the 1930s, which was essentially the acting out of plays over the airwaves. Adapting the content to the radio medium was not fully considered or appreciated at the time. At Level 2, people are still expected to be online from 9 to 5, and in some cases to be subject to what essentially amounts to spyware, with employers installing screen-logging software on their employee machines to ensure compliance.

Level 3: Adapting to the medium

At level 3, organizations start to adapt to and take advantage of the medium. Mullenweg points to shared documents (such as a Google Doc), that is visible to all and updated in real-time during a discussion, so that there is a shared understanding of what is discussed and decided, eliminating the risk of lost in translation errors and time wasted thereafter.

It’s at this stage that companies start to invest in better equipment for their employees as well, such as lighting for video-calls and background noise-canceling microphones. Effective written communication becomes critical the more companies embrace remote work. With an aversion to ‘jumping on calls’ at a whim, and a preference for asynchronous communication (more on that later), most of Automattic’s communications is text-based, and so accurate and timely articulation becomes key. In fact, Mullenweg says that most of the company’s hiring is performed via text as opposed to candidate phone or vide calls.

When it comes to meetings:

a)      Only hold a meeting if it is absolutely necessary and the same outcomes cannot be reached via a quick ad-hoc conversation, phone call, email, text or instant message.

b)      Set the meeting to 15 minutes by default, and only make it longer if absolutely necessary (the shorter the meeting, the more succinct you will have to be, and the less time there will be for pointless small talk and rambling).

c)      Set a specific agenda and desired outcome going into the meeting.

d)      Invite only ‘must have’ people (unless this is a big Type-1 decision, two people should usually do it with three on the rare occasion).

e)      Agree on next steps, allocate responsible person(s) and set due dates (this is especially important to avoid boomerang meetings).

f)       Never, ever, use a meeting simply to communicate information — that’s what email or IM is for. Many are indeed learning that all those meetings could have in fact been emails.

Level 4: Asynchronous Communication

‘I’ll get to it when it suits me.’ This is the nature of asynchronous communication. The reality is that most things do not require an immediate response. For most things, a one-way email or instant message should do the job, with the recipient responding when it suits them. If something really is urgent, then the mode of communication should reflect that. Pick up the phone, or tap that person on the shoulder, but only if it is truly urgent.

Aside from the obvious and massive benefit of giving knowledge workers time to think, create and get into the flow state (a psychological state whereby we are up to five times more productive according to McKinsey), but asynchronous communication predisposes people to making better decisions. If you want to cut emotion out of the equation, increase your response time. Giving people time to think between question and response, rather than fall victim to blurting out the first thing that comes to mind in a meeting or when tapped on the shoulders, delivers a compound benefit to the organization over time.

In order to avoid tennis games and duplication of effort, ensure that asynchronous messages:

a)      provide sufficient background detail, where necessary provide clear action item(s) and outcome(s) required.

b)      provide a due date

c)      provide a path of recourse if the recipient is unable to meet your requirements.

For example:

“Hey Sunil. Attached is the incorporation document for our new spin-off company. Please sign the document where requested and send it back to me by 4 pm this Friday. If you have any concerns, give me a call on 555 1983.”

Globally distributed teams, who work asynchronously, and master ‘passing the baton’, can get three times more done than a local team relying on everybody to be in an office between 9am and 5pm.

Awaken the Night Owls

Science suggests that our preferred sleeping patterns — our chronotypes — are programmed at birth. People are either night owls or early birds. Several studies have found that about 30 to 40 per cent of the population are night owls, which means that the modern 9-to-5 workday is sabotaging the creative and intellectual efforts of almost half the workforce. Studies show that while early risers are more alert in the morning, night owls show stronger focus and longer attention spans 10 hours after waking than their early-bird compatriots.

Level 5: ‘Nirvana’

This is where your distributed team works better than any in-person team ever could. Mullenweg equates this level with having more emphasis on ‘environment design’, insofar as the organization’s culture, and the physical environment people work in is concerned.

The disadvantages:

Three big disadvantages or concerns that face newly remote teams, and how to counter them, can be found below:

1)      Team bonding and building

a)      Instead of telling their employees to be at the office 11 months a year, and have 4 weeks off, the script gets flipped. Employees have 11 months of remote work a year and have to make time to travel for up to 4 weeks a year for team bonding and building events.

i)        To counter this, organizations can make use of custom-built apps which keep track of who has met who, and then assign seats, say at a dinner party, so that people sit with people they’ve not yet met before.

2)      Osmotic and office communication

a)      With everybody working online, you miss out on watering hole conversations, overhearing other people say something that you can help with, or just having a general awareness of your team’s activities by virtue of being within earshot of discussions.

i)        To counter this, some organizations use an internal blog, and a place where an incredible amount of conversation and activity is chronicled and captured.

3)      Security

a)      Mullenweg points to endpoint security —computer networks that are remotely bridged to client devices — and used for BYOD such as laptops and smartphones.

b)      The alternative — being inside the office wall, as Mullenweg says —essentially becomes a single point of failure, and compromises depth in defense.

c)      What we should be doing instead is rather than over-emphasizing just access control, we need to be protecting against malicious behaviors. With over 70% of IT hacks using social engineering to get inside, he has a point.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

 ***Concept Courtesy – www.automattic.com

[livingbutamireally]

AY2019/2020 Y1S2 Module Reviews

AY2019/2020 year 1 semester 2 review

Wew this semester was more of a honeymoon period for me still since I cant advance past CS1010S - this is only the first CS mod i have to take big oof. First half of the sem was spent mostly on (re)doing CS1010S AFAST and the rest went to catching up on other modules that are of relatively lower intensities compared to modules i imagine i will have to take next semester? The most challenging mods this sem goes to CS1010S, EC1301 and also.. ST2334? About half of the semester was done at home though due to the COVID-19 pandemic and so the never-ending heap of online lectures to review (for which i am always behind on unfortunately). I have no need to S/U any module this sem fortunately but that also means I might have effectively wasted my last COVID S/Us. I’m also the kind that is happy enough just to pass.

Modules taken this semester:

CS1010S (AFAST)

GEH1031

GES1041

EC1301

ST2334

MKT1705X

CS1010S Programming Methodology (Python) – AFAST

School of Computing

Prof: Ben Leong

Exam Dates: 16 Jan (Midterm Mock - not graded) / 24 Feb (Practical Exam) / 28 Feb (Finals)

Weightage:

Coursemology – 25%

Participation – 5%

Midterm test – NA

Practical exam – 20%

Final assessment – 50%

Since i took the alternative finals i have updated the final weightage for this module (last sems CS1010S had different weightages).

As we already know, this module (or any CS modules in general) easily has the highest workload compared to other modules, except this time without needing to complete missions every week? Also since its a re-module, there were no lectures/tutorials/recitations for this module and the prof spent lesser time than the first module with us. There is just one consultation slot per week that lasts about 1.5-2h, where the TAs/ prof Ben goes through exam questions over the past years and where students get to voice any doubts they might have. Hence, a lot of self-discipline is required on our part to grind past year papers consistently and drill our brains. Not sure if i’ve mentioned this before, but it’s nice of them to provide comprehensive worked solutions for about 50 exam papers (or maybe more) the profs claimed it was the only module in NUS to be doing this. Prof mentioned he was a bit disappointed in our batch as many werent putting in considerable effort right from the start aka ponning consultation slots arranged over the holidays (in December) - which is a lot of effort coming from the professor to arrange this just for our batch (first batch of CS1010S AFAST). Just name me any prof who does this for their students, coming back over the holidays to teach unpaid. Those who were not at level 50 in Coursemology had more time now to finish the missions/side-quests needed to achieve level 50 and get the full points for Coursemology (as we were expected to in Sem 1). Things were a bit rusty after the holidays at the start but it became better with practice. Was a bit disappointed at not being able to get question 2 right during the written paper (finals) it was a bit of an IQ-ish problem solving question. Anyways winged the 4m what-did-you-learn essay question (as usual) at the end as a saving grace and passed albeit by a very bit. I improved by 2 marks ?? compared to the last semester for finals, not the nicest thing to see after so much effort being put in but still. I think I’m just better at writing essays than coding....

Results for the PE

Mean is 14. Median is also 14. Standard Deviation is 7.6. Highest grades was 30/30 Question 1 turned out to be harder than we had intended, but Q2 was quite easy and most of Q3 was doable by most, as you can see in the results. Passing mark for PE is roughly 10/30. 

Mean is 51/10, median is 53/100 and standard deviation is 14.4. Highest was 81/100. Generally, the performance was much worse than we had expected. Pass grade for Finals is roughly 40/100.

Basically, if got 10/30 for PE and 40/100 for Finals and you have done your Coursemology assignments you can expect a C grade. If not, then prepare to SU. CS1010S is not graded on a curve. We set question to test that you have mastered certain concepts and your final grade is a reflection of what you seem to have mastered as reflected by your exam performance.

This whole module was done by recess week so we have more time to focus on other mods. Honestly will be happy enough just to pass. Now, how do i survive CS23030 and CS2040 rip.

GEH1031 Understanding the Universe

Faculty of Science (Physics)

Prof: Cindy Ng

Weightage:

Term Test 1 (3 Mar) – 25%

Term Test 2 (16 Apr) – 25%

Video presentation 5 Apr – 25%

Video critiques 17 Apr – 10%

Astrophotograph 17 Apr – 10%

Quizzes – 10%

Ng is relatively a slower-paced lecturer, which is good for someone like me who cant keep up with faster-paced profs. 2x on her elearning lecture videos makes the best pace imo. Her lecture slides are concise and simple, and will suffice in revision. While she does explain more in depth especially for concepts that are harder to grasp (not many) during the lecture i love that she keeps her lecture slides straight forward to the point. Everything was in point form, short and sweet much appreciated. Also if you pay attention to her lectures, you will do well for the quizzes at the end of each chapter for sure. Though i think you get the marks for quizzes as long as you did them before each deadline like participation marks kinda (?) rather than being graded on whether you answered them correctly. I didn’t do too well for term test 2 unfortunately and I also only just found out you can display the statistics of where you place among the cohort in LUMINUS and needless to say I didn’t place too well. It’s a relatively manageable module though there’s still a lot of content. Term test 1 consisted of MCQs and about 3 2m questions which she call “essay questions” which can be misleading for some (like me!). The MCQs are very tricky and most come in the format of these options: is A/ is not A/ is B/ is not B and you have to pick the right combination (2) out of these 4 options to score 1 point, which of course means less chances of getting them correct compared to the usual 25% in a typical MCQ. Term test 2 was held on LUMINUS at home, and this time since its an e-exam there was only 10mins to do about 25 MCQ, leaving only 0.4 minutes = 24s for 1 MCQ, which proved to be really stressful for many as voiced out by other cohort mates in the forum section (so very valid). The e-exam also had an essay component, 2m per question with 4 questions under 10 minutes. The implementation of this time constraint was to prevent cheating but the duration given was (I feel) unreasonable. As for the video presentation, we had to come up with a 7 min (at most) video most of which lasts 5/6mins on a news article in 2020 regarding astronomy. We had to form groups of 3 at the start of the semester, and were told to look for members on the forums if we did not have enough members. It is not necessary to show your face so you can be creative! For my group, we had a Germany graduate exchange student to work with us which was really cool.  Our group’s theme was NASA’s discovery of exoplanets with the use of TESS which was wrapped up in March, before the deadline in April. Really thankful for him to prompt us each week for progress and have it done and over with instead of rushing it last minute when things get busy during reading week. (I think the guy was really done with us im so sorry Philipp if you are reading this.) Also since term test 2 was done by mid-April we had more time allocated for other modules to prepare for finals (swee). Video critiques were supposedly 50 words long if i remembered correctly but i didnt find out until i hit the submit button and :_D i left 1/2-liners for each. One of the criteria of this video critique was showing that you have watched the videos of other groups well but i dont rmb my critiques proving that ive watched the videos carefully though i really did. I think our group did the best in our cluster though! (based on the critiques). For the astrophotograph, we could take part in the astronomy sessions held on a Friday of every month to use the telescopes but there wasn’t any this semester sadly due to the pandemic.

GES1041 Everyday Ethics in Singapore

Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Philosophy)

Prof: Chin Chuan Fei

Weightage:

4 Journal Entries – 20%

4 Reading Quizzes – 20%

Group Report – 10%

Group Presentation – 20%

Finals – 40%

Chin’s lectures are pretty enjoyable, his voice/tone really suits lectures. He is a very approachable person too and willing to share a lot of experiences relevant to the topic at hand. He includes snippets of related videos in his slides many of which are insightful that made me share with my friends too. There is a total of 4 main themes in the module which are namely inequality, meritocracy, multiculturalism and migration and he also introduced the use of an ethical toolbox to helps us reach a more definitive thought process especially for an abstract topic like philosophy. I didn’t realise this was a philo mod when bidding for it so I was really surprised when i went for the first lecture (like bro it clearly says ETHICS what was i thinking). I also thought it would be something similar to Social Studies but was proven wrong. There are compulsory readings to do each week, about 20 pages long usually per reading and they are all chapters from books written by other Singaporean philosophers regarding the themes gone through which helped to widen my perspectives and broadened my horizons, those were some really good selection of readings. I have learned more things than I previously knew about the foreign domestic workers, migrant workers, racism in Singapore among the many topics we have dealt with.

This module is for those who are : 

Comfortable with reading a lot every week (i put a lot here because i dont usually read)

Comfortable with writing essays (journal entry) 500 words each

Proficient in English (some of the expressions used can be quite complex and may take you a much longer time to process and understand especially with the reading quizzes that tests your comprehension of the readings - really just comprehension in true GP fashion)

Have a lot of experience in this field, those under social work would have many and will be able to share relevant experiences in the journal entry

Interested about the aforementioned themes

Reading quizzes are like comprehension style questions: do your readings and the questions tests you on what you have read so you just have to look for evidence of each option, the questions will refer you to the specific page/reading that will guide you (nice of them to do so). Journal entries and reading quizzes occur on an alternative week basis so reading quizzes followed by journal then reading quiz again and so forth. Nearing the end, you will be grouped according to who you sit close with and you will work together with your group members to work on a project that will have 2 overlapping themes about any policies/ observations of Singapore. It is advisable for the scope to not be too broad. e.g. we chose to talk about offering Muslim food in school canteens vs non-Muslim food (fewer food options for Muslims) and this encompasses both the multiculturalism and inequality themes. The group report will be due before the presentation and it helps identify some main points you will then talk about later during the presentation. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the group presentation this semester was done on Microsoft Powerpoint through voice-over slides. God bless, and there goes the need to memorise scripts especially with the finals season so near. The professor was really accommodating and gave us more time to prepare the voice-over slides when he announced that it will be held on powerpoint too. Finals was 20 MCQs in 1 hour on LUMINUS, the questions were similar to the reading quizzes (5 MCQs per quiz).

EC1301 Principles of Economics

Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Economics)

Prof: Ong Ee Cheng

Tutor: Devika

Weightage:

Pre/post-lecture Quizzes

Class Participation

Midterms 7 Mar

Finals 29 Apr

Can’t find the actual breakdown of scores sorry!

Bell-curve is really really steep for this one since its purely MCQ. Divided into micro and macroeconomics so first half of the sem was micro then the other half was macro. Finals was about 70% macro and 30% micro since micro was already tested for midterms. Every week, there’s a pre-lecture quiz to be done before the lecture and a post-lecture quiz due before the next lecture to reinforce your learning. There’s also supplementary readings that were given but i gave up on it by the third week. The way it is taught is a bit different from what I was used to in JC the things they focus on is also a bit different. There’s more calculations than JC whereas JC economics was more conceptual? I took only H1 economics so a lot of concepts were fresh for me like monopolism, comparative/absolute advantages, income elasticity etc. Both midterms and finals was held on Examplify with a lockdown on everything including wifi. The lecturer also provides additional practice questions in the form of quizzes nearing the exams instead of exam papers. To be honest, I felt this module was hard?? Not sure if anyone else felt the same way, it was a struggle.. I thought it was a fluff mod and boy was i very wrong about this. Also important thing to note is though this mod has MCQ-only exam, the MCQs are not 4 options but 6 options long with many tricky options and of course time constraint. Finals was 70/80 questions long in 1h iirc. Midterms was 40 questions. After the 3rd (?) tutorial, there was no more physical tutorials held just zoom tutorial sessions which only 3 ppl in my slot regularly attended. Towards the finals, a lot more zoom sessions were opened up and we could attend other TA’s zoom sessions this was a godsend thank you. My tutor wasn’t really clear in her explanations or maybe it is just me her accent came off a bit strong. I emailed her some questions but even now I have not receive any answers from her, she told me next week, and the next week became next next week and so on. I guess she must have had a lot on her plate. I didn’t think she was a good tutor. I flunked my midterms (5% percentile) so I was a bit dejected.

ST2334 Probability and Statistics

Faculty of Science (Statistics and Applied Probability)

Prof: Chan Yiu Man

Tutor: Li Shang

Weightage:

1. Quiz 1,2,3 (CA1) – 30% (?)

2. Finals – 60% (?)

Prof was really funny and friendly. Although his tutorials left me confused (my friends would care to disagree), his lectures were still pretty good. He always emphasised knowing what we are doing rather than doing the math blindly. The tutor was fast in his replies whenever I asked him questions by email. This module is an extension of statistics in JC, probability and many more probability distribution (F, chi-square, t test, z test) with terms we have never encountered before too (unless you took BT1101 but this mod focuses more on deriving the values than having a program-R calculate it for you). Ever since the outbreak, the lectures were converted to e-lecture slide style but each lesson would take 4 lectures (4h), instead of the 2 lecture per week so we had to spend more time watching the videos than usual. It is easy to be behind on videos when there is only e-lecture videos so much discipline is required to stay on task.

Finals was proctored with zoom and held on Luminus in the form of a quiz. We were expected to scan and submit a pdf with our workings after the exam. I did not have time to finish about 8 questions (a lot of marks gone) there were a total of 30 questions, spent too much time in front on the easier questions. I did study for the later questions but had no chance to utilize what I have revised (sad). I am really dead for this module i hope i dont fail this.

Update. God bless, thought i was really doomed for because i lost so many marks from not being able to finish 8/30 questions that have the most marks rewarded. Guess i really took time to make less mistakes on the previous questions.

MKT1705X Principles of Marketing

Business School (Marketing)

Prof: Regina Yeo

Tutor: Ms Canley

Weightage:

Individual Assignment – 15%

Group Assignment – 25% due in tutorials 4/5

Subject Pool – 10% *

Class Participation – 10% *

Final Exam 30 Apr – 40% *

* not too sure, checked from other reviewers

Individual assignment questions (total of 5) for tutorials 1-3 are given at the start for which the tutor will go through in the allocated weeks. We get to choose the question we want to do and if that week, the question will be discussed that week will be the deadline for our IAs. The other questions in the IA do not have to be submitted but will be discussed in class. There’s class participation for this module so people were more eager than I was used to, to answer questions in class. I had no opportunity to though in this module (halfway into the semester it became elearning), the tutor had too many hands to pick. The tutor was very accommodating and knew our difficulties and was willing to work out compromise. However, her classes were centered mainly on her experiences (which can be a bit boring) it could have been better if she went through the content. Understand that it is a fluff module that requires many examples, but would be good to relate them back to the content we are expected to master. Tutorials are held every alternate week and we are expected to do the individual questions even if we do not need to submit so that we have something at least to share in class. Subject pool was giveaway marks basically do 6 research surveys and u will get the full marks for that. Final exam comprises of 3 essay questions (40m, 30m, 30m) that you have to submit in 1.5h (i thought it was 2h during the paper rip mad rush for the end), no references/research needed but there’s a plagiarism checker by TurnItIn on luminus basically testing the application of concepts to examples.

I got a B+ for group assignment, and A- for individual assignment. I think i can only do essay styled questions, is this a sign to do arts.....

Oh the presentation was changed to a one-shot video recording (no stitching of individual videos together) instead of an actual presentation in front of your tutorial mates. I think a lot of other groups also read off their scripts but ours was really obvious. The tutor grades (structures her own bell-curve) based on those who attempted the same question to be more fair rather than comparing among all the different questions so in a way, the difficulty of the questions won’t affect your grade.

Epilogue. this is probably the last and only time i could do this well.... even if it does not fit the conventional definition of doing well......

[teltoadstool]

Sorry for not posting for so long. There was no real reason, other than the fact that I just didn’t feel like it. This household is made up of four supernatural friends and their government handler, (who happens to know how to use magic, but that’s got nothing to do with not being human, right?). They live in Isla Paradiso in one of the EA houseboats. I’m actually looking for a better house, but I haven’t had any luck. Mostly because it has to be on the water somehow. They’re going to university. Well, not their handler. He already has an degree. This is incredibly long, so don’t say I didn’t warn ya! :P I think before I place a ‘read more’, I’m going to state their species. Going clockwise from the top right corner we have a plantsim, a merman, a werewolf, and a vampire. 

The order this time is for their descriptions to make the most sense, so we’re starting with the werewolf in the lower left corner. His name is Elliot Lane. He hates the name, so he usually only answers to Wolf. Although he has always been werewolf, the rich family he ran away from weren’t. Their handler, Oscar, who had to investigate his charges’ origins, will only say that his origins were scandalous. Wolf doesn’t really care. He is only thankful for his wolf form, after all it was incredibly helpful when he ran away at fifteen. Wolf is very possessive of everything he has, which weirdly includes his friends. They aren’t allowed to have friends that he hasn’t chosen to be his friend.They put up with this, because Wolf protects them. Despite this, everyone wants to be his friend or girlfriend. He tends to take advantage of his new ‘friends’, but he really doesn’t want to have anything to do with romance. He knows how to make people do what he wants, and is very good at knowing just how to talk to someone. He is studying physical education at university, but that’s mostly because his friends were going and he didn’t want to be left with Oscar. His traits are: Mean-Spirited, Charismatic, Athletic, Rebellious, Brave, Irresistible, and Hot Headed.

Next is the vampire in the lower right corner. His name is Thaddeus Bradley, although he usually goes by Bat. He was born an odd kind of mutant human. Oscar investigated and found that Bat’s mother was a scientist that was working with vampire bat dna. Needless to say, an accident happened while she was pregnant. His mother died when he was ten, leaving him alone since his father had abandoned his mother and him when Bat was born, because he blamed Bat’s mother for Bat’s mutation. The government had no idea Bat existed, since his mother kept him a secret, so Bat was left to fend for himself. Unfortunately distant relatives inherited the house he was living in, so he ended up on the streets. Bat lived on the streets for awhile, but didn’t have the strength to feed off of random passersby. He would have starved, but Wolf found him and decided that Bat was going to be his friend, so assisted in getting blood for him. Bat met Wolf when Wolf was sixteen, and is Wolf’s first and closest friend. He loves messing around with machines, so he is studying for a Technology degree. He’s very good at guessing what kind of person a person is, so the others always ask him what his opinion of people is. Random fact: Despite the fact that his mutation is comes from bats, most people think he’s some kind of wolf-man at first sight.  His traits are: Over-Emotional, Handy, Perceptive, Eccentric, and Friendly. 

Corey North is the plantsim in the upper left corner. Wolf saved Corey after the forest where he was living was sprayed with some kind of poison, which left Corey unconscious. The next day immediately after Corey came to, he ran to find a dirt mound and buried himself in it. He didn’t emerge for a couple weeks, which left Wolf and Bat worried about his well being, so Bat went over to him and just started rambling. Eventually Corey emerged to tell him to shut up. Having nowhere to go, Corey stayed with the strange duo, and started his long search for art supplies. He hates being around people, and tends to get angry if anyone talks to him. Most of the time he’s outside painting or drawing, which he hates to be interrupted when doing either. Corey’s going to get a fine arts degree.  His traits are: Brave, Loner, Loves the Outdoors, Artistic, and Hot-Headed. 

Caiden Moss, the merman in the upper right corner, was part of a very rich and influential family under the ocean. He’s now on land against his will. Oscar has questioned Caiden many times about this, but can never get a straight answer. In Oscar’s opinion, Caiden was either exiled or cursed, but most likely exiled, since Caiden still has his merman tail. Caiden washed ashore unconscious and hurt. The others rescued him from the beach and nursed him back to health, because Wolf, who was the one that found Caiden, had taken a shine to Caiden. Caiden at first really doesn’t like living with these ‘street urchins’, but they saved him, and to tell the truth he couldn’t live on his own. Caiden was the last to join the, besides Oscar, so he isn’t as close to the others as the others are to each other. Caiden hates being alone and is constantly looking for someone to talk to. Unfortunately that usually backfires tremendously, due to Caiden’s uppity attitude. It doesn’t help that Caiden’s a genus, and uses his knowledge against them. They get back at him by making fun of his clumsiness. Technically he’s only clumsy on land, but he can’t seem to get this argument to stop the teasing. He’s going to university for a science and medicine degree. His traits are: Social Butterfly, Clumsy, Genus, Proper, and Snob. 

Oscar Briggs is the one in the bottom picture. He works for a government organisation trying to understand the recently revealed supernatural population. He was assigned to this group of supernatural creatures as their caretaker. Oscar has the same level of authority over them that a parent has over their children. He doesn’t like kids much, which as everyone knows includes young adults, and he’s usually in a bad mood, but he warms up to his charges... eventually. Oscar isn’t scared of any supernatural being. He’s usually just annoyed at any show of power. At first the kids didn’t know about his magical abilities, but they found out after he used them to protect Caiden from Monster Hunters. His charges knowing allows him to use his powers to discipline them, but it also means they have some dirt on him, which they can tell the Organisation, which really wouldn’t be a good thing for Oscar. Oscar definitely isn’t stupid in any way. He’s very good at reading his charges and figuring out their secret terms. He also had no trouble collecting the information about their pasts, which he did without the parties involved knowing.  His traits are: Dislikes Children, Grumpy, Perceptive, Brave, and Genus. 

[florandfawning-blog]

Tips for College Classes (Sciences)

1.   If you know what you want to pursue, don’t take too many classes you don't need. Not only does it add to your debt but some states (such as Florida) have an excess hours law, which doubles your tuition if you pass a certain number of hours.

2.  Your advisors may think its good to take ‘fun’ classes with your hard ones, but in my experience fun classes only tack on more work and projects to my already busy schedule. If you have to take something fun make sure its an easy pass class you’ll truly enjoy without too much out of class work.

3. Research ahead of time what prerequisites are needed to take each class. Your major might not necessarily require something but a particular class will (which is stupid, but it happens).

4. Take Chemistry I and Biology I together. I learned the hard way that a lot of concepts in Bio I reinforce concepts in Chem I and vice versa.

5.  Don’t take more than 4 classes per semester. I made this mistake by taking five science/math classes all at once since I was used to having 5-6 classes in high school. It’s incredibly difficult to make time for them and the concurrent labs. For example, any given semester I may take Physics II+Lab, Bio II+Lab, Social Psychology, and first aid. I try not to take more than 3 hard classes at once.

6. Don’t skip class! It’s easy to do so since most professors don’t make you go, however, a lot of what’s on the tests is usually from the lecture! Also, if there are points given for participation (aka going to class) DO NOT take them lightly! 50-100 points may not seem a lot but it can make the difference between an A and a B.
 Side note: depending on your college going to class really isn’t that bad! Most lecture halls are huge so if you’re really not feeling it you could sit in the back and snack, or watch netflix, or even leave if you’re really not feeling it. So just go because (usually) no one is making you stay!

7. If you’re not a morning person DO NOT take morning classes unless you have to. Trust me, it’s easy to think ‘this time I’ll be different, I can change!’ but no, chances are you won’t so don’t put yourself in a situation that makes it harder on you to go to class.

8. READ THE SYLLABUS! Sometimes teachers write things like “Do the end of chapter questions, they’re similar to the test questions” or “Tests will be lecture based”. This will allow you to study more efficiently.

9. Along with number 8, figure out your teachers style early on. Are their exams lecture based? Text book based? Are exam questions identical to the homework or end of chapter questions? This prevents you from studying unnecessary things and overall, saving a lot of time!

9. The syllabus usually has the due date of every project, homework, and test for the entire semester. Take time during the first week to put everything on your calendar or whatever you use to stay organized, that way you never miss anything. There’s nothing worse than losing easy points because you forgot a homework assignment was due.

10. Read the textbook chapters and look over the notes if your professor posts them online, so you can answer your professors questions during class and make a good impression for recommendations later on.

11. Keep up with the work so you can frequent your professors office hours to ask relevant questions. This is another way to get to know your professors so you can hit them up for recommendations later on.

12. Check your email every morning and every night! Actually, just quickly check it all the time. Sometimes I would get an email ten minutes before class started that class was cancelled.

13. Try to evenly space your classes together if you live off campus. One thing I noticed was that I had the urge to just leave and go home if I had to wait an hour or more for my next class. I ended up missing those classes completely.

14. Bring healthy (or unhealthy, to each his own) snacks with you and water! There’s nothing worse than feeling dehydrated or hungry during class. It makes it so much harder to concentrate.

15. Try to score as high as you can on everything that’s not an exam (homework, online quizzes, projects etc.), those are usually incredibly easy points that can save your grade. Also, do the extra credit assignments! You never know if an exam in the future will be exceedingly difficult and drop your grade.

16. If your university has free tutoring, use it! I know it seems like an extra thing to tack onto your schedule but in the long run it’ll save you more time. You can get a good grade the first time and not have to retake the class another semester!

17. For note taking, I usually print out the lecture slides if the professor puts them online and take notes on them. Then, I’ll go home and rewrite everything onto a separate piece of paper to have uniform, pretty notes.

18. Actively engage with your notes. Read them in your head or out loud as you write them. Really think about what you’re writing and make sure you understand the first time.This is an effective form of studying. Don’t put your mind on autopilot, otherwise you’ll have to go back and reread what you already wrote and that’s a waste of time!

Everyone is different. Depending on what school you go to or your major, these tips may not be relevant. But they’re things I learned throughout my college experience that were super helpful for me. Hopefully, they’ll help you!

[perfectzablog]

Eight Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom

NPR/IPSOS did a national poll recently and found that more than 8 in 10 teachers — and a similar majority of parents — support teaching kids about climate change.

But in reality, it’s not always happening: Fewer than half of K-12 teachers told us that they talk about climate change with their children or students. Again, parents were about the same.

The top reason that teachers gave in our poll for not covering climate change? 65% said, “It’s not related to the subjects I teach.”

Yet at the same time, we also heard from teachers and education organizations who are introducing the topic in subjects from social studies to math to English language arts, and at every grade level, from preschool on up.

Which raises the question: Where does climate change belong in the curriculum, anyway?

The “reality of human-caused climate change” is mentioned in at least 36 state standards, according to an analysis done for NPR Ed by Glenn Branch, the deputy director at the National Center for Science Education. But, it typically appears only briefly — and most likely just in earth science classes in middle and high school. And, Branch says, that doesn’t even mean that every student in those states learns about it: Only two states require students to take earth or environmental science classes to graduate high school.

Joseph Henderson teaches in the environmental studies department at Paul Smith’s College in upstate New York. He studies how climate change is taught in schools, and believes it needs to be taught across many subjects.

“For so long this has been seen as an issue that is solely within the domain of science,” he says. “There needs to be a greater engagement across disciplines, particularly looking at the social dimensions,” such as the displacement of populations by natural disasters.

At the same time, there’s a tension in pushing more educators to take this on. “I worry a lot about asking schools to solve yet another problem that society refuses to deal with.”

As a potential response to this criticism, the nonprofit Ten Strands follows an “incremental infusion” model in California. In other words, environmental literacy becomes part of subjects and activities that are already in the curriculum instead of, the organization says, “burdening educators” with another stand-alone and complex area to cover.

We also heard from teachers who say they are searching for more ideas and resources to take on the topic of climate change. So, here are some thoughts about how to broach the subject with students, no matter what subject you teach:

1. Do a lab.

Lab activities can be one of the most effective ways to show children how global warming works on an accessible scale.

Ellie Schaffer is a sixth-grader at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, D.C. She’s done simulations on greenhouse effects in science class, using plastic wrap to trap the sun’s heat. And she’s used charcoal to see how black carbon from air pollution can speed the melting of ice.

These lessons have raised her awareness — and concern. “We’ve ignored climate change for a long time and now it’s getting to be, like, a real problem, so we’ve gotta do something.”

Many teachers we talked with mentioned NASA as a resource for labs and activities. The ones in this outline can be done with everyday materials like ice, tinfoil, plastic bottles, rubber, light bulbs and a thermometer.

On the Earth Science Week website, there’s a list of activities and lesson plans aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. They range from simple to elaborate.

2. Show a movie.

Susan Fisher, a seventh-grade science teacher at South Woods Middle School in Syosset, N.Y., showed her students the 2016 documentary Before the Flood, featuring Leonardo diCaprio journeying to five continents and the Arctic to see the effects of climate change. “It is our intention to make our students engaged citizens,” Fisher says.

Before the Flood has an action page and an associated curriculum. Common Sense Media has a list of climate change-related movies for all ages.

The 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth and its 2017 sequel, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power have curricular materials created in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation.

3. Assign a novel.

Rebecca Meyer is an eighth-grade English language arts teacher at Bronx Park Middle School in New York City.

She assigned her students a 2013 novel by Mindy McGinnis called Not a Drop to Drink.

“As we read the novel, kids made connections between what is happening today and the novel,” Meyer says. “At the end of the unit, as a culminating project, students choose groups, researched current solutions for physical and economic water scarcity and created PSA videos using iMovie about the problem and how their solution could help to combat the issue.”

She described the unit as a success. “They were very engaged, they loved it,” she explains. “A lot of them shared this information with their families. When parents came in for parent-teacher conferences they mentioned their kids had been talking to them about conserving water.”

Not A Drop To Drink belongs to a subgenre of science fiction known as “cli-fi” (climate fiction) or sometimes eco-fiction. You can find lists of similar books at websites like Dragonfly.eco or at the Chicago Review of Books, which has a monthly Burning Worlds column about this kind of literature.

Looking for English topics for younger students? EL Education covers environmental topics, including water conservation and the impact of natural disasters, in its K-5 English language arts curriculum.

4. Do citizen science.

Terry Reed is the self-proclaimed “science guru” for seventh-graders at Prince David Kawananakoa Middle School in Honolulu. He’s also spent a year sailing the Caribbean, and on his way, he collected water samples on behalf of a group called Adventure Scientists, to be tested for microplastics (spoiler: even on remote, pristine beaches, all the samples had some).

He has assigned his students to collect water samples from beaches near their homes to submit for the same project. He also has them take pictures of cloud formations and measure temperatures, to see changes in weather patterns over time. “One thing I stress to them, that in the next few years, they become the voting public,” he says. “They need to be aware of the science.”

5. Assign a research project, multimedia presentation or speech.

Gay Collins teaches public speaking at Waterford High School in Waterford, Conn. She is interested in “civil discourse” as a tool for problem-solving, so she encourages her students “to shape their speeches around critical topics, like the use of plastics, minimalism, and other environmental issues.

6. Talk about your personal experience.

Pamela Tarango teaches third grade at the Downtown Elementary School in Bakersfield, Calif.. And she tells her students about how the weather has changed there in her lifetime, getting hotter and drier: “In our Central Valley California city of Bakersfield, there has been a change in the winter climate. I told them about how, when I was growing up in the 1970’s we often had several two and three-hour delays to school starting because of dense tule fog which affected visibility. We really never have those delays in the metropolitan area. It is only the outlying areas which still have two and three-hour dense fog delays, and they are rare even for the rural areas.”

(Although the Central Valley winter has indeed become hotter and drier due to climate change, recently a University of California, Berkeley study has attributed the reduction in tule fog specifically to declines in air pollution.)

7. Do a service project.

“I teach preschoolers and use the environment and our natural resources to highlight our everyday life,” says Mercy Peña-Alevizos, who teaches at Holy Trinity Academy in Phoenix. “I stress the importance of appreciation and eliminating waste. My students understand and have fantastic ideas. We recycle and pick up around our neighborhood.”

Environmental service projects can be simple, elaborate or just for fun. Check out the #trashtag challenge on social media, for example.

8. Start or work in a school garden.

Mairs Ryan teaches science at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School in San Diego. “The sixth-graders oversee the school garden, as well as, our vermin composting bin, christened the ‘Worm Hotel’. The garden is their lab and the students ‘live and learn’ soil carbon sequestration and regenerative agriculture. Our school’s compost bin is evidence that alternatives exist to methane-producing landfills. In looking for more solutions to reduce methane, students debate food reuse practices around the world.”

Check out ThePermacultureStudent.com for resources on building school gardens with rainwater capture and compost systems to regenerate the soil. There are local and regional resources like the Collective School Garden Network in California,and Growing Minds in North Carolina, which offers basic plans for a school garden as well as lesson plans that connect gardening to Common Core standards.

Here are some more resources

After the publication of our climate poll story on Monday we heard from people all over the country with dozens more resources for climate education.

Alliance for Climate Education has a multimedia resource called Our Climate Our Future, plus more resources for educators and several action programs for youth.

The American Association of Geographers has free online professional development resources for teachers.

American Reading Company sells an English Language Arts curriculum called ARCCore that includes climate change themes.

Biointeractive, created by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has hundreds of free online education resources, including many on education and the environment, and offers professional development for teachers.

Climate Generation offers professional development for educators nationwide and a youth network in Minnesota.

CLEAN (Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network) has a collection of resources organized in part by the Next Generation Science Standard they are aligned with.

Global Oneness Project offers lesson plans that come with films and videos of climate impacts around the world.

Google offers free online environmental sustainability lesson plans for grades 5-8.

The Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility has a group of 19 lessons for K-12.

“We believe that the social and emotional skills we help strengthen in young people and adults are sorely needed to combat the fear and avoidance we and students experience around climate change,” spokesperson Laura McClure told NPR.

The National Center for Science Education has free climate change lessons that focus on combating misinformation. They also have a “scientist in the classroom” program.

The National Science Teachers Association has a comprehensive curriculum.

The Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, NY has a book called the Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change.

Ripple Effect “creates STEM curriculum” for K-6 “about real people and places impacted by climate change,” starting with New Orleans.

Ten Strands offers professional learning to educators in California in partnership with the state’s recycling authority and an outdoor-education program, among others.

Think Earth offers 9 environmental education units from preschool through middle school.

The Zinn Education Project (based on the work of Howard Zinn, the author of A People’s History Of The United States) has launched a group of 18 lessons aimed specifically at climate justice. Some are drawn from this book: A People’s Curriculum For The Earth: Teaching Climate Change And The Environmental Crisis.

Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eight Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom published first on https://greatpricecourse.tumblr.com/

[bisoroblog]

Eight Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom

NPR/IPSOS did a national poll recently and found that more than 8 in 10 teachers — and a similar majority of parents — support teaching kids about climate change.

But in reality, it’s not always happening: Fewer than half of K-12 teachers told us that they talk about climate change with their children or students. Again, parents were about the same.

The top reason that teachers gave in our poll for not covering climate change? 65% said, “It’s not related to the subjects I teach.”

Yet at the same time, we also heard from teachers and education organizations who are introducing the topic in subjects from social studies to math to English language arts, and at every grade level, from preschool on up.

Which raises the question: Where does climate change belong in the curriculum, anyway?

The “reality of human-caused climate change” is mentioned in at least 36 state standards, according to an analysis done for NPR Ed by Glenn Branch, the deputy director at the National Center for Science Education. But, it typically appears only briefly — and most likely just in earth science classes in middle and high school. And, Branch says, that doesn’t even mean that every student in those states learns about it: Only two states require students to take earth or environmental science classes to graduate high school.

Joseph Henderson teaches in the environmental studies department at Paul Smith’s College in upstate New York. He studies how climate change is taught in schools, and believes it needs to be taught across many subjects.

“For so long this has been seen as an issue that is solely within the domain of science,” he says. “There needs to be a greater engagement across disciplines, particularly looking at the social dimensions,” such as the displacement of populations by natural disasters.

At the same time, there’s a tension in pushing more educators to take this on. “I worry a lot about asking schools to solve yet another problem that society refuses to deal with.”

As a potential response to this criticism, the nonprofit Ten Strands follows an “incremental infusion” model in California. In other words, environmental literacy becomes part of subjects and activities that are already in the curriculum instead of, the organization says, “burdening educators” with another stand-alone and complex area to cover.

We also heard from teachers who say they are searching for more ideas and resources to take on the topic of climate change. So, here are some thoughts about how to broach the subject with students, no matter what subject you teach:

1. Do a lab.

Lab activities can be one of the most effective ways to show children how global warming works on an accessible scale.

Ellie Schaffer is a sixth-grader at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, D.C. She’s done simulations on greenhouse effects in science class, using plastic wrap to trap the sun’s heat. And she’s used charcoal to see how black carbon from air pollution can speed the melting of ice.

These lessons have raised her awareness — and concern. “We’ve ignored climate change for a long time and now it’s getting to be, like, a real problem, so we’ve gotta do something.”

Many teachers we talked with mentioned NASA as a resource for labs and activities. The ones in this outline can be done with everyday materials like ice, tinfoil, plastic bottles, rubber, light bulbs and a thermometer.

On the Earth Science Week website, there’s a list of activities and lesson plans aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. They range from simple to elaborate.

2. Show a movie.

Susan Fisher, a seventh-grade science teacher at South Woods Middle School in Syosset, N.Y., showed her students the 2016 documentary Before the Flood, featuring Leonardo diCaprio journeying to five continents and the Arctic to see the effects of climate change. “It is our intention to make our students engaged citizens,” Fisher says.

Before the Flood has an action page and an associated curriculum. Common Sense Media has a list of climate change-related movies for all ages.

The 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth and its 2017 sequel, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power have curricular materials created in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation.

3. Assign a novel.

Rebecca Meyer is an eighth-grade English language arts teacher at Bronx Park Middle School in New York City.

She assigned her students a 2013 novel by Mindy McGinnis called Not a Drop to Drink.

“As we read the novel, kids made connections between what is happening today and the novel,” Meyer says. “At the end of the unit, as a culminating project, students choose groups, researched current solutions for physical and economic water scarcity and created PSA videos using iMovie about the problem and how their solution could help to combat the issue.”

She described the unit as a success. “They were very engaged, they loved it,” she explains. “A lot of them shared this information with their families. When parents came in for parent-teacher conferences they mentioned their kids had been talking to them about conserving water.”

Not A Drop To Drink belongs to a subgenre of science fiction known as “cli-fi” (climate fiction) or sometimes eco-fiction. You can find lists of similar books at websites like Dragonfly.eco or at the Chicago Review of Books, which has a monthly Burning Worlds column about this kind of literature.

Looking for English topics for younger students? EL Education covers environmental topics, including water conservation and the impact of natural disasters, in its K-5 English language arts curriculum.

4. Do citizen science.

Terry Reed is the self-proclaimed “science guru” for seventh-graders at Prince David Kawananakoa Middle School in Honolulu. He’s also spent a year sailing the Caribbean, and on his way, he collected water samples on behalf of a group called Adventure Scientists, to be tested for microplastics (spoiler: even on remote, pristine beaches, all the samples had some).

He has assigned his students to collect water samples from beaches near their homes to submit for the same project. He also has them take pictures of cloud formations and measure temperatures, to see changes in weather patterns over time. “One thing I stress to them, that in the next few years, they become the voting public,” he says. “They need to be aware of the science.”

5. Assign a research project, multimedia presentation or speech.

Gay Collins teaches public speaking at Waterford High School in Waterford, Conn. She is interested in “civil discourse” as a tool for problem-solving, so she encourages her students “to shape their speeches around critical topics, like the use of plastics, minimalism, and other environmental issues.

6. Talk about your personal experience.

Pamela Tarango teaches third grade at the Downtown Elementary School in Bakersfield, Calif.. And she tells her students about how the weather has changed there in her lifetime, getting hotter and drier: “In our Central Valley California city of Bakersfield, there has been a change in the winter climate. I told them about how, when I was growing up in the 1970’s we often had several two and three-hour delays to school starting because of dense tule fog which affected visibility. We really never have those delays in the metropolitan area. It is only the outlying areas which still have two and three-hour dense fog delays, and they are rare even for the rural areas.”

(Although the Central Valley winter has indeed become hotter and drier due to climate change, recently a University of California, Berkeley study has attributed the reduction in tule fog specifically to declines in air pollution.)

7. Do a service project.

“I teach preschoolers and use the environment and our natural resources to highlight our everyday life,” says Mercy Peña-Alevizos, who teaches at Holy Trinity Academy in Phoenix. “I stress the importance of appreciation and eliminating waste. My students understand and have fantastic ideas. We recycle and pick up around our neighborhood.”

Environmental service projects can be simple, elaborate or just for fun. Check out the #trashtag challenge on social media, for example.

8. Start or work in a school garden.

Mairs Ryan teaches science at St. Gregory the Great Catholic School in San Diego. “The sixth-graders oversee the school garden, as well as, our vermin composting bin, christened the ‘Worm Hotel’. The garden is their lab and the students ‘live and learn’ soil carbon sequestration and regenerative agriculture. Our school’s compost bin is evidence that alternatives exist to methane-producing landfills. In looking for more solutions to reduce methane, students debate food reuse practices around the world.”

Check out ThePermacultureStudent.com for resources on building school gardens with rainwater capture and compost systems to regenerate the soil. There are local and regional resources like the Collective School Garden Network in California,and Growing Minds in North Carolina, which offers basic plans for a school garden as well as lesson plans that connect gardening to Common Core standards.

Here are some more resources

After the publication of our climate poll story on Monday we heard from people all over the country with dozens more resources for climate education.

Alliance for Climate Education has a multimedia resource called Our Climate Our Future, plus more resources for educators and several action programs for youth.

The American Association of Geographers has free online professional development resources for teachers.

American Reading Company sells an English Language Arts curriculum called ARCCore that includes climate change themes.

Biointeractive, created by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has hundreds of free online education resources, including many on education and the environment, and offers professional development for teachers.

Climate Generation offers professional development for educators nationwide and a youth network in Minnesota.

CLEAN (Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network) has a collection of resources organized in part by the Next Generation Science Standard they are aligned with.

Global Oneness Project offers lesson plans that come with films and videos of climate impacts around the world.

Google offers free online environmental sustainability lesson plans for grades 5-8.

The Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility has a group of 19 lessons for K-12.

“We believe that the social and emotional skills we help strengthen in young people and adults are sorely needed to combat the fear and avoidance we and students experience around climate change,” spokesperson Laura McClure told NPR.

The National Center for Science Education has free climate change lessons that focus on combating misinformation. They also have a “scientist in the classroom” program.

The National Science Teachers Association has a comprehensive curriculum.

The Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, NY has a book called the Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change.

Ripple Effect “creates STEM curriculum” for K-6 “about real people and places impacted by climate change,” starting with New Orleans.

Ten Strands offers professional learning to educators in California in partnership with the state’s recycling authority and an outdoor-education program, among others.

Think Earth offers 9 environmental education units from preschool through middle school.

The Zinn Education Project (based on the work of Howard Zinn, the author of A People’s History Of The United States) has launched a group of 18 lessons aimed specifically at climate justice. Some are drawn from this book: A People’s Curriculum For The Earth: Teaching Climate Change And The Environmental Crisis.

Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eight Ways To Teach Climate Change In Almost Any Classroom published first on https://dlbusinessnow.tumblr.com/

[minniellie-18]

Mark of NCT imagine // Why So Shy

Word count: 2624 Mark POV** Ugh I failed this test again. Now I have to get a tutor to help me. Hopefully y/n can tutor me. No no no I would never get work done. But she is so pretty. It would be great if I had her. Then I can spend time with her. “Mark, can I speak to you after class?” The teacher asked me. I just nodded and went through the rest of the class and this was my last class. I usually walk home so it didn’t matter if I stayed late. I noticed that y/n was packing her things up slower than normal. Maybe she was tired? “Mark, you do remember that time we talked last week? Saying that the next time you were to fail a test in my class, you would need a tutor. I have already assigned you one.” Oh no please don’t say it while y/n is here. I don’t want her to know that I am not that good at school. “Y/n, please step over here for a moment. Y/n is your tutor.” She just looked at me a smiled with a comforting look on her face. Great now she knows. “She is the best in this science class and she will be helping you out with this topic. She will continue to do so until you can prove to me that you are learning sufficiently. You guys can sort out what time you want to meet up, just make sure that it is at least once a week. Now go on home you two.” He dismissed us and she struggled to put her backpack on. It looks really heavy. As soon as I had decided that I should help her, she got it on. “Mark, I can’t meet up today because I haven’t told my parents yet. But if tomorrow works for you, I can stay here until 4.” My face got red because I was thinking about hanging out with her, and about the teasing I would get from the rest of NCT for getting a tutor who is my crush. I thought about after school tomorrow for a second and realized that I wouldn’t be able to find a way home tomorrow because Taeyong would have to leave due to schedule. But I don’t want to have to hold her back from a friday night. “Oh uh, I don’t think I could stay after tomorrow because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to get a ride.” I explained, she just nodded as she understood. “How about I come over to your dorm. If you are okay with that. The dorm area isn’t that far from my house and I could just walk home.” All I could do was just nod. I pushed the front door open and walked out of the school. We ended up walking home together because it was such a nice day. It was silent and I felt sorry for her because I was being so awkward. I just can’t stop thinking about tomorrow after school. --time skip-- The end of the day finally came and now y/n if coming over to the dorms. Only a few of the members will be there. But I don’t think that Chenle, Haechan and Jisung would stay very quiet for long. They always yell at each other and play around and keep yelling. I just really hope that they would stay quiet. The walk to the dorm was quiet and awkward after we got out of the car and then it was just like when we had walked after school yesterday. We reached the final pathway to reach the dorm. She suddenly spoke up. “So how many of your members will be there? If some are there, is it okay if I meet them?” Why on earth would she want to meet my annoying members? I got out my phone real quick and messaged them saying to make sure they looked presentable and that we were going to be arriving in a minute. I got teasing in response. We walked into the dorm to see Chenle and Jisung playing some game and Haechan had his headphones in while playing on his phone. They didn’t seem to notice us yet. Y/n had taken off her shoes and we walked to the kitchen table and set our backpacks down. She sat down right next to me and started pulling her notes and textbook out. “I am going to stay here until we finish this whole packet together. There are 3 pages front and back and yes it will take a long time with me teaching you. But we have to do this. I would be able to get this done in study hall. I will work on this and you do what you know and tell me when you are finished, okay?” She told me. Ugh this packet is going to be the death of me. I don’t really recognize half of this stuff. “Hyung! How long will you be studying? Can I join?” Chenle walked in. If they bother us we will never get anything done. “No Chenle, I need to get this done. She is probably going to be here for a while. This is y/n she is a noona to all of you guys.” “Will she be here long because you are stupid?” Haechan asked while walking in. “Now Haechan Hyung, don’t say that to Mark hyung.” Jisung defended me. “Okay so these are the only members that are here. You see them and you have met them now they can go.” I said annoyed. “Oh sorry guys, you can’t join us because this is all for grades higher than yours. Plus I think Mark here wants to get it done quickly. But that’s okay. If you ever do need help with anything I can help you later or another day.” She told them, she is so kind. “Even my math?” Jisung asked quietly with a blush. Oh he better not start to like her. “Even you math. I can help with English, Chinese, Spanish, Korean, language arts, physics, astronomy, algebra, geometry, biology, zoology, history, social studies, psychology, chemistry, art, music, nothing in gym besides dancing. I can do most subjects. But any history or science or language arts bases topics I can do the best.” “Wow, do you ever really have time to yourself? You seem to know so much. Are you any good with computer science? Because I kin-” I interrupted Haechan. “I am. Here is my number so you can message me.” She gave her number to the boys, but not me. Why?! She is supposed to be tutoring me! They all walked away and went to their rooms. About 30 minutes later I finished what I could do and she was like ⅔ done with the packet. She looked so concentrated. But I need to get help now. Oh but she is so pretty. The light is going down but the light appears gold on her skin. Everything in this room looks gold and sparkly and magical. Stop it Mark just ask her for help. “Uh Mark, are you done? You have been sitting there doing nothing for a couple minutes.” I nodded. I only got 12 questions done out of 40. She scooted closer to me and I felt my cheeks heat up as her arm brushes against mine. “Okay so let’s start with page one. I personally find these quite easy.” She started. “Yeah, um I am sorry because I am not very smart and I just couldn’t pay attention that day a-and um… yeah. I’m just not good at this.” She looked up from the paper at me. She gently set her hand on my shoulder and I blushed even more. “No Mark, it’s just that some people are not as good at doing things as other people are. Just like you are good at rapping, I am good with this. Not everyone is the same.” Oh gosh she just complimented me. Do I say thank you or should I like try to actually work. I think she just wants to work because she had gotten back to the paper. “Okay so this is the atomic symbol, if they have the dots around it, it is a Lewis Dot Structure. Now the element Argon would have 8 dots around it because it is in the 8th column and…” she kept explaining to me but I kind of stopped listening. I just found myself staring at her and biting my lips. “Right, so the column that the element is in, that’s how many dots there are around the atomic symbol?” She nodded and smiled. I did the rest of the front page. She was so good at explaining things because I was able to understand it well. She explained the next page to me and then let me do it. And the ones I got wrong she would go back and made sure that I understood before we moved on. She would be such a good teacher. It was getting late and I was trying to quiet the sounds of my stomach but to no avail. I should eat some food. I wonder if she is hungry. Oh but we don’t really have any food here. My stomach needs to shut up. “Mark I think we should go and get some food, don’t you think? You sound pretty hungry. Come on, I know this little Thai place to get some food from. The servings are quite big there so we wouldn’t have to get much. We could also just walk because it’s not that far. And I have enough money.” “Oh no no no. You shouldn’t have to pay. I will. Come on, let’s go get some food.” We got to the place and the food came out quickly. We got some drinks and I paid and then we went back to the dorm. By the time we got to the dorm it was pretty much almost dark out. We have been studying for quite a bit. She needs to go home and rest. About 2 painful hours later we were almost done and it was dark out. I wish she didn’t waste so much time on me. But I mean like, she did stay just for me. Stop being so selfish, she had to stay and tutor me because I am so stupid. I should stop thinking that I am able to be with her. She probably doesn’t even like me like that. “Okay Mark, here we go. The last page. Then I get to stop bothering you and go home.” She laughed. Wow her laugh was so great. “Oh, no you’re not bothering me at all! I enjoy you being here. I-I mean that I like you. YOUR HELP! I LIKE THAT YOU ARE HELPING ME! Not I like you. I mean I like you, no I mean...Ugh I am sorry. Thanks for helping me study I guess is what I was trying to say.” I stuttered, why can’t I say anything right around her? I probably looked like a tomato right now because I was blushing so much and I was so nervous. “Hahaha no it’s okay! Don’t be sorry. We will just finish the last page okay. And then you should get some rest.” She looked into my eyes and brought her hand up to my cheek slowly and turned my head a little bit. Oh shit she it touching my face. I can’t stop looking at her lips. Should I kiss her? Should I not? Why are her cheeks pink? “Uhm, I will try to hurry through this last page because you look tired, and um I should be getting home soon.” She took her hand away from my face and I could barely look her in the eyes. I have to turn away from her for a second. “Uh uhm, I am going t-to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.” I darted out of there as fast as I could. I just tried to breath normally but I just couldn’t I need to know if she has feelings for me. But I am so scared. What if she doesn’t like me back. But she blushed when she touch my face. Not it was just hot in the room. Or maybe it was just me. Because when I am around her I get so nervous that my whole body gets hot and my heart stops when she says my name. I just can’t not tell her how I feel. I like her way to much to just let her go and probably find someone else. I mean I have already seen her with someone else. I remember how sad I got because she didn’t like me. UGH I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO! Tears of frustration started welling up in my eyes. I wiped them away and I was getting ready to walk out the door. I opened it and I heard her voice. Was she talking to herself? Did one of the guys come out of their rooms? I looked around the corner and saw her on the phone. “Yeah Unnie, I will be home soon. Maybe an hour... I already had dinner... Just some Thai food… I think the tutoring is going well… Oh it is with Mark… Yes Unnie that Mark… No I haven’t and I can’t. Listen I have to go okay. Bye.” I walked over and sat back down. I purposely pretended to get the questions wrong so she can help me with them and stay longer. She was so beautiful when she was explaining things to me. Her smile and the way she laughs. Her eyes glisten and light up when I finally get a question right. She is so smart and kind and funny and just- gah so amazing. I love the way she explains the problems with things that I already understand instead of just throwing new stuff at me. The last page was done in no time and when I saw the last question answered my heart dropped. Now she has to go home. “Look, I am sorry for making you work so late. I just think that it is best to get it out of the way now rather than taking up your whole weekend. I will have a study guide made for you by Sunday. It will take some time for me to create it. I have to go now.” She said while packing up her things. “Wait y/n, I will walk you home. It is dark out.” My stomach got butterflies as she pushed a piece of her hair out of the way. “No, please don’t. I will be okay.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I mean I only live like a street over. I guess that I will be going now. Goodbye Mark.” She stood on her toes and gave me a hug and my face turned red. I felt her slip something into my pocket. I pulled it out and it was her number. I opened the door back up and called to her outside. “Y/n is this why you wanted to walk alone? Just a creative way for you to give me your number?” “Yes, that and if I get caught with you at my house, my mom would go crazy.” I laughed out loud. I covered my mouth from my embarrassing laugh. “Don’t stop laughing. I think your laugh is cute, just like you.” I almost fainted. She called me cute! I giggle and waved then closed the door. Man she is amazing. ~Admin Ellie

[reallytenacioustyrant-blog]

A dozen scientists and their curious hobbies

ALFRED LÓPEZ FEBRUARY 06, 2016

There are many occasions when, depending on what type of professional it is, we have stereotyped certain people and we assign them (perhaps involuntarily) certain cliches. One of these groups is that of scientists, who are often considered serious types, dressed in a white coat, put in a laboratory all day and always thinking about their research and discoveries.

But really scientists are not like that (or at least most of them) and throughout history, there have been a handful who have been famous and famous figures of science but who have also known how to have a great time thanks to their curious hobbies.

Below you have a dozen examples (you will see that they are all male scientists, but don't worry, I am preparing the next post with the curious hobbies of female scientists ).

Albert Einstein, between the violin and women

Undoubtedly, the father's best-known hobby of relativity theory was music and his passion for playing the violin. From a very young age, he was very attracted to the violin, taking private lessons and once throwing a chair against his teacher, because he did not see that he did not advance as he wanted.

But there is another hobby that marked the life of the genius of German origin: his weakness for women. He liked them all and whenever he had the opportunity he tried to seduce some. Its characteristic somewhat scruffy image, coupled with its great intellect made it give off a great attraction to women, a fact that the physicist knew how to take advantage of on countless occasions.

He had romances with a large number of women, including practically all the secretaries of Kaiser Wilhelm II. This hobby led him to divorce Mileva, his first wife.

An anecdotal fact about Einstein, before he married a second time, was when he was strongly attracted to Ilse, the daughter of his fiancé Elsa. The young woman, who was 22 at the time, wrote a note to a friend in which she told him:

"Yesterday the question suddenly arose about who Albert should marry, whether it was me or my mom. "

John von Neumann with his wife Clara

John von Neumann, the king of the party

Known for being one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the modern era, von Neumann was a great lover of parties and social gatherings. His image as a serious man and dressed in his elegant gray suits were far from the funniest face he offered to his guests.

He was a great enthusiast of ancient and medieval history, as well as everything related to the Roman Empire. It was frequent to see him do a fun exercise with his wife Clara, in which one of his guests chose a page at random from the extensive library that the mathematician owned and he was able to recite the text from the indicated line by heart.

Many were the weeks in which two parties were held in the house that the von Neumann couple owned in Princeton, where John was in his sauce being a perfect host and entertaining those present with a good number of green or Jewish jokes.

 Edwin Hubble with his fellow college basketball team in 1909

Edwin Hubble, a prominent amateur athlete

Hubble has been one of the most important astronomers of the 20th century and is considered the father of observational cosmology. From an early age, he had always been a good student and he combined his studies with the reading of adventure novels by Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard.

But his true passion during his college years was sports. Receiving the occasional special mention in disciplines as disparate as athletics, basketball or boxing, and it was in the latter that he stood out the most, so much so that he was proposed to be a professional and face the then world heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson,

But Hubble knew of its potential for astronomy and decided to reject the offer and accept the important Rhodes scholarship that he was awarded to study at Oxford. Who knows if, if his decision had been reversed, now the books would speak of Edwin Hubble as a major boxer, world heavyweight champion and astronomy would have lost his important and decisive contributions.

    A bodybuilder named Santiago Ramón y Cajal

Santiago Ramón y Cajal and bodybuilding

The multiple photographs of an adult Ramón y Cajal show him as a thin man, somewhat skinny and somewhat stooped, due to the posture acquired after spending a long time under a microscope.

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1906, he had spent part of his youth surrounded by fights and bets with his spree comrades. On one occasion, while still a student, he lost a pulse with a friend. This hurt his pride and he decided to go to train in a gym. He agreed to teach the owner anatomy classes in exchange for physical training.

His progress in the gym, added to the strong fondness he took for bodybuilding was such that he came to describe himself as:

"Back width, with monstrous pecs, my chest circumference exceeded 112 centimeters, and when walking showed that inelegance and rhythmic contour characteristic of the strong or Hercules de Feria"

Harald Bohr on the Danish Olympic Football Team

Niels and Harald Bohr, passion for balls and gunmen

Brothers Niels and Harald Bohr shared a passion in their native Denmark: soccer. The two players, as students, on the Akademisk Boldklub team in Copenhagen. Niels did it as a goalkeeper and Harald was a scorer, the latter participating in the 1908 Olympics representing the Danish team and with which he won the silver medal.

The day Harald defended his doctoral thesis in the auditorium, more soccer fans than mathematicians were found.

For his part, it is said that the physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Niels Bohr was a great enthusiast of western films. He frequently interrupted his work in the library to go watch a cowboy film. He used to do it accompanied by a couple of students, with whom he talked about the complicated plots found in these films.

Bohr had developed a theory in which he explained "why even though the villain always draws first, the hero is faster and manages to kill him. " And he managed to demonstrate it in one of his classes in which they simulated the typical duels of the old west and, with two toy revolvers and their corresponding cartridge cases, he played the role of hero, being much faster in drawing and shooting than all his students.

Illustration of the William and Caroline Herschel telescope

William Herschel, a virtuoso musician

This is a curious case in which we find that the hobby became the profession, while the profession became the hobby. I am referring to the German astronomer and discoverer of the planet Uranus William Herschel, who discovered his passion for music rather than for heaven.

Herschel had an important musical training, being, along with his father and brother, a member of the band of the Army Infantry Guards Regiment. His bad experience at the Battle of Hastenbeck led him to move to England, where he continued his musical studies and worked as a teacher.

Later he would go on to direct the orchestra in Bath, in which his sister Caroline was a soprano. In their spare time, they began to observe the sky and the stars, becoming increasingly fond of it. One day he bought a book entitled "Astronomy" that would completely change his life.

William and his sister built their own telescope with which they observed the sky, making great contributions to astronomy. Until he dedicated himself professionally to astronomy, he was combining this hobby with his work as a conductor, taking advantage of the breaks of the intermission to go out and observe the sky.

Eusapia Paladino spiritist session held at Camille Flammarion's house

Scientists passionate about parapsychology and the paranormal

Charles Robert Richet, who in 1913 would receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine, was an enthusiastic and passionate lover of parapsychology, at the time known as " met a psychic ", making important contributions to this field and eventually chairing the Society for Psychical Research (Society for Psychic Research). He brought metapsychics to life as a purported science that studied all phenomena that find no normal explanation.

William Crookes, inventor of a good number of gadgets, which would facilitate the work of countless scientists, among which are the radiometer and the Crookes tube (for the study of the properties of cathode rays) was an ardent supporter and defender of the spiritism and one of the pioneers in the investigation of psychic phenomena, especially in the areas of materialization and mediumship

Another passionate about pseudosciences was the French astronomer Camille Flammarion who felt a deep admiration for everything related to spiritualist doctrine, which led him to have a deep and great friendship with Allan Kardec, considered to be the father of spiritualism and with, the supposed medium, Eusapia Paladino, holding spiritualist sessions in her own home.

          Feynman in a topless bar

Unbridled passion for women

This post began with Albert Einstein's fondness for the violin and women and I dedicate the last part of this entry to these, due to the large number of scientists who have had the greatest of their hobbies.

Erwin Schrödinger had a weakness for all women, including his wife Anne Marie, and this corresponded to her love for him, allowing her to have as many lovers as she wanted, being complicit in her love affairs and taking care of 'dispatching' the mistress on duty when her husband got tired.

Much has been speculated about the identity of the mistress who was in a hotel next to Schrödinger at the time when he deduced his famous formula.

Richard Feynman, one of the most important American physicists of the 20th century, had a great weakness for going to bars where there were topless ladies. The atmosphere of the place was ideal to find inspiration and after watching an entertaining coming and going of the young waitresses without bra, Feynman wrote reflections and equations on the napkins of the premises.

In the book on biographical anecdotes "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" (Are you kidding me, Mr. Feynman?) He tells how he went to hostess rooms while his wife was sick in the hospital. But this was not the only hobby of the physicist since he had an amazing ability to open safes.

During his stay in Los Alamos, during the Manhattan project, he used to open filing cabinets and safes in the dependencies to entertain himself in his moments of boredom, which caused him more than one problem.