#i meant to finish this by june 5th lmao

[ruthytwoshakes]

happy pride everybody, hope you had a good one! And I hope everybody's excited for disability pride month this July :)

We can't forget our friends and family in Palestine during the celebrations. There is no Pride in Occupation. And happy pride to our family in Palestine, we won't forget about you. Stay strong and fight like hell. I love you.

donate to the fundraiser below and join your local Palestine solidarity group. Hani Al-Sharif, his wife, and five children need to evacuate. They are very far from their goal. Any amount helps.

[glitchpirate]

It's 2023 and I'm still using the same template now 7 years in a row! Yippeee!

This year I decided to ramble about each artwork presented so uh. Storytime! Under the cut.

(Also usual reminder that now I have a GW2 side blog so that's where I'll upload GW2 artworks from now on -> @glitchgw2 (except the zine piece because I entered the zine with this blog))

January: I was going through a bit of an artblock, most of the things I drew this month were traced. One of the only things not traced was this Anassy! "Ah, etto... bleh!" I said after tracing the 5th drawing I saw on the internet.

February: a commission! Long overdue, but I finally finished it. Sylvaries are always tough to render. >.< The other things I drew this month were art party doodles and personal stuff.

March: one of the two months where the featured piece is the only thing I "finished" that month. And last minute, too! Made for trans visibility day which was on the very last day of March.

April: due to several things, Tyria Pride 2022's art commission giveaways got delayed to 2023. This was my piece for the person I was assigned to! ^_^ This was fun, I found out some new ways to render sylvari hair...

May: I vividly remember seeing a Diavolo art with this same reference and I was like hey. I could do this too but with Lucien. How haven't I done this before. P.S.: he's actually nothing like Bateman but it's a sick cover anyway lol. Mmm knife...

June: it was a sick (as in like epic) month for me. I reworked Dawn and Incendere (my Ghost OC), welcomed my unhinged self and drew a lot of nsfw. But not good nor holy enough to share. :P But it was a nice practice anyway. I chose one drawing of Dawn because out of everything I drew it looks the most "clean" and finished.

July: I remembered My Life as a Teenage Robot as I do tri-monthly and almost made an AU for Lucien. Almost. So instead I just made whatever this is. This was one of the most fun pieces I've ever did, I finally feel comfortable lining in CSP and just in general this was super shapey and smooth to work on. <3

August: Tyria Pride giveaway commission but this time, in time! I got to work on a lovely charr which I don't do often! My other choices would have been a cropped nsfw commission but I lowkey like this one better.

September: the other month where I didn't draw anything but this. Had a banger idea for Gliaster's future which is them becoming a lich but also being corrupted by malignant powers so they're now even more evil and also driven by vengeance towards the Commander and Aurene. Tried to come up with a design for them, alas this piece. It's... very in progress. But I like said progress so far.

October: the opportunity for an art related full-time job came up which meant I had to up my portfolio and draw some realistic/semi-realistic studies. I was surprised by myself lmao but ngl it was also a big pain in the ass. Art is suffering. <3

November: the continuation of October but now with an original piece! Felt like drawing one of my best friend's GW2 characters. <3 Haven't uploaded this one yet as I might rework the background sometime.

December: and finally, my piece for Commander Of Your Heart GW2 zine! Which wasn't actually restricted to only Commander characters, but any other OCs/player characters too, so of course I chose Gliaster. :D And we can apparently show teasers, so I can include this little bit! But what is Gliaster up to? Find out in February, for free!

*

Aaand that's it. It was actually super fun to look back to the year not only in pictures but some words too. :D If you read this all, I appreciate you, thank you so much. <3

[lesbeet]

hi! I saw u said u were going to be an english teacher and I'm in my first year of university studying English lit. I was wondering if u did any teaching assistant work or got any experience in teaching whilst at uni? and if you did how did you find it? I rly think teaching might be for me but I'm kind of not confident lol n the thought of actually pursuing is a bit intimidating to me bc im so shy.

so i do have a fair amount of like informal and unofficial teaching experience, all of which i gained between finishing my undergrad and beginning my masters (i did an online program that allows you to progress at your own pace, so it took me 6 months to do my undergrad which i finished in feb 2016, and i started my masters this past july and will most likely have it done by summer of 2020, and i hope to be student-teaching for real this time next year [NO EVIL EYE]

between the two programs i spent over a year as a substitute teacher in the schools where my parents teach (my mom is a middle school sped teacher and my dad is a hs science teacher), i spent a year teaching english in israel and just got back this past june, and i work as a sunday school teacher (and also staff the testing center at my dad’s high school)

but i’ll still have to student-teach and everything, like i said hopefully this time next year [NO EVIL EYE!!!!!]

i totally totally get being nervous about it bc of a lack of confidence - literally anyone who knows me well will tell you i have like the lowest self-esteem of anyone they’ve ever met lmao i hate getting up in front of people, i hate making mistakes in front of people, etc

but kids are kids. i teach 5th graders in sunday school, work with high schoolers all day, taught 4th-6th graders in israel, subbed for all grades between 7-12, and before that was a camp counselor for kids from grades 6-11. they’re all different, but they’re all kids!

not in the “kids aren’t real people” way, but in the sense that you, as someone older whose brain has finished developing and are in a different stage in life, have more knowledge and experience and perspective, meaning you can’t take their judgments as objective facts! 

it always sucks when kids don’t like you or don’t listen, but it’s so important to remember that it’s not personal. think back to your own behavior when you were a kid, and the behavior of other kids you knew, think of what they were going through and why they acted the way they did, and how their teachers might have perceived it without that context

sometimes they really are just shits, or are really judgmental, or cruel, or uncooperative, or disrespectful, etc, and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it other than try your hardest not to let it negatively impact the other students

but sometimes that can clue you in that maybe the kid is struggling with something, and showing a little bit of sensitivity might encourage them to open up to you or, at the very least, not feel the urge to take it out on you because you were kind to them

once you really start to internalize that (and it’s not perfect, some days it’s really hard for me not to take everything as a slight against my personality or my teaching abilities, esp with rejection-sensitive dysphoria lmao) it becomes easier to be yourself in front of the students, because they intimidate you less

it’s like that thing they say about bugs and whatever about how “it’s more afraid of you than you are of it” that totally applies to most students, and some of them act on that “fear” by acting out almost preventatively so if you ever call them on something they’ve done they’ve already decided they don’t care about you, so it won’t hurt them and they won’t have to take the critique seriously bc they can blame it on you being shitty because they don’t like you

honestly just think back to your favorite teachers, the traits they possessed that made you like them, trust them and their judgment and knowledge. it could just be me, but i loved the ones who were human. i had some who kept pretty much their entire selves from us, they were 900% prim and proper and professional at all times, and most of the time they were competent teachers. but i never developed relationships with them, which meant i was pretty indifferent to them, or i flat-out disliked them.

i loved the teachers who had a sense of humor, who were open and honest -- not even necessarily about their personal lives, but explaining their thought processes, telling us when they made a mistake about something so we understand adults make mistakes too -- it just humanized them to me and made them into people i wanted to listen to, people i trusted, and i was always more engaged in those classes 

it’s definitely scary, espeically when youre shy! but, like also it just gets more and more true the younger you go with grades, elementary school kids won’t judge you at all, middle schoolers will but they wont be as harsh, are easier to please, and are more obvious than high schoolers about showing that they still need you, high schoolers will be the most judgmental but will also form the deepest connections and make conscious decisions to perform well for teachers they like

i’m high right now so literally i don’t even know what i just said basically but it’s true, i hope it made some sort of sense, please be a teacher!!