#i might give up on pretending i’m gonna achieve a lot academically

[breathingsong]

every year i say this will be the year where i do all the things and then consistently i fail to do all the things

[adamsvanrhijn]

Hello there! I have been happily working through your incredible wtmy,tbws fic like a duck enthusiastically eating a bowl of peas, and was wondering if I may request a director’s commentary on the "never cared to 'til a minute ago. Always been a delicate bloke." conversation OR whatever scene from that fic that you most enjoyed writing? Thank you!

thank you! i am loving that simile very much.................. a duck enthusiastically eating a bowl of peas. amazing.

under cut because the fic itself is Adult Content haha

& also because this is Absurdly long... doing this meme for other people is really hammering in for me how much i rely on single line dialogue & short paragraphs lol. i’d love to work on that, but, womp womp, it hasn’t really been happening.

there is ... a lot going on in this scene lol. i feel very galaxy brain while writing this fic and it’s very pretentious, but i’m just gonna poke at the relevant bits around that quote instead of quoting The Whole Thing. this is from chapter 5 of when to my soul, the body would say ! 

context -- they’ve had morning sex in front of a mirror, then they went for breakfast at the place they’re staying, where richard is using a persona for Safety Reasons, & now they’re just hanging out and richard has been checking thomas out for the last 5-15 minutes without him noticing... until he comments on thomas smoking, and then thomas...

...lets his eyes wander, himself. 

Richard, fully dressed save for his shoes, is turned from the bureau, arm slung over the top of the chair. He did his hair this morning, because Evelyn Price would not have gotten up to anything in the night that could possibly alter the work of a week's worth of Brilliantine, and Thomas sort of hates it.

Not how it looks.

What it means. Or represents, rather. That they've got people other than each other upon whom they need to make good impressions, be they in service or just in the world at large.

right, so, this is like, the Ground Work Thoughts for thomas here as far as this particular interaction is concerned, because this is Very Much about perception / Being Perceived, and before the conversation even happens he’s paying richard a lot of attention, almost to the point of scrutiny. and richard is put together in a way that is very much not for thomas’s sake, it’s for they-left-the-room’s sake, and so he’s noticing that and that’s his frame of mind as they move on.

side note! hair styling oil & pomades really were worn for multiple days in a row. amazing. i could never. there should really be more in this fic about richard’s hair being all floraly <3 <3 <3 but there isn’t. womp womp. that would have been a Factor in this bit huh lol.

"You ever try it?" asks Thomas. Meaning smoking.

"No," he says. He tilts his head thoughtfully. "Never cared to 'til a minute ago. Always been a delicate bloke."

Thomas coughs impolitely.

"I don't see the harm in saying it, Thomas."

The feeling he can't describe leaves him, and a different one forms, in his gut instead of his lungs, an uncomfortable and unwelcome weight. Knotted.

aaaaand boom. thomas Did Not Sign Up For This. 

richard’s being 100% honest, just speaking casually, but thomas’s reaction is enough to get him on the defensive & he’s not an idiot so he knows why, but this is also not something he has lately put a lot of thought into. he’s Accepted It About Himself (we’ll get into this). thomas meanwhile is not ready to approach the subject of Delicacy for anybody he cares about, because to him it’s not a good description, it’s not something he aspires to be or wants to come across as, but he has many times in his life come across as it anyway. he’s Not Like That. 

so the word alone sticks in the wheels of his rolly suitcase emotional baggage, even though it’s richard using it on himself.

"Well, you clearly haven't got a problem with playing at being normal," Thomas says pointedly. Tough not to be pointed when he feels like this, because he's no stranger to it, is he. "If I didn't know better I'd be asking after your wife and baby like the rest of this place."

Lucky those people were leaving after breakfast; Thomas wouldn't be able to take two full days of it.

He hasn't asked about the photographs in the wallet yet, either, and he's not sure if he will.

normal being heterosexual, in this instance, which is contemporary vocabulary.

and richard is very good at playing straight when he’s not fearing for thomas’s life, so. it’s true! it’s a legitimate opinion. but it’s also a pretty significant logical leap that richard is about to pick up on, because that makes him uncomfortable, given thomas is basically saying.... you seem straight, what are you talking about, which isn’t going to make him feel excellent about the sense of identity he’s settled into. 

the rest of this is an Achievement Thomas Is Yet To Unlock so i won’t say much other than that this is not a significant addition to richard as the reader might know him from ywntmha, but, a lot of the big emotional work & development in that fic happens in 1929, with this meeting as the impetus... so it is very significant for thomas, at this point. we’re still in january and they still have a ways to go both in the next 24 hours and in the rest of the year.

Richard raises his eyebrows. "And what's that got to do with it?"

He shrugs.

It should be obvious. It would be obvious, to anyone who bothered to think about it for more than half a second.

that’s not a good faith question; richard’s goading him into actually saying the underlying thought. on one level thomas knows that, which is why he doesn’t say that part out loud and only thinks it.

"It's pretending, is all it is," Richard continues, a little too gentle.

"Don't call yourself what they call you," Thomas returns, a little too sharp.

and since goading doesn’t work, new tactic on richard’s part here, and though thomas can tell it’s intentional it does work on him, so.

writing this was interesting for several reasons but one of the big ones is, and anybody who’s been following me since Before da will probably know this, i like... have very little patience for discussion about personal identity, especially when it comes to reclamation ? i am way more interested both on a personal and academic level (bc i can’t lie about that lmfao, hashtag english major) in community + external ideas imposed on people.  

and this might seem like a very 2010s conversation for them to be having, but... this period of time was really the Dawn of queer/lgbt identity Concepts: words were being coined, communities were coming together in new ways, in continental europe & the us especially there was a lot of rapid development and transition here owing to various roaring 20s factors, and i think richard given his situation would have been exposed to that, for one, but also just, it’s gonna be in both their environments because it was getting to be a thing from the victorian era w/ the medicalisation of homosexuality and things are only expanding. 

"delicate” is a euphemism, not a slur, but it has hella connotations & they are both fully aware of them.

"Rather it be me saying it than them."

Blasé like it doesn't mean a thing at all.

You should know better, he wants to say, you should know better than anyone.

"Don't see how you can feel that way when it's not true to begin with."

thomas’s Only Gay Friend Is My Boyfriend is showing here lol, this is shining light on a gap in what he knows about richard & what he Thinks he knows about richard, so there’s a dissonance. and he sees richard as Masculine on a conscious or subconscious level, and he’s in a These Are Antonyms place re “delicate”. some black & white thinking going on here.

& i feel like the other part is probably fairly explanatory but, richard gets a sense of control and self-assurance by using a word for himself that might not be kind coming out of other people’s mouths and Being Okay With That.

"Thomas…"

They lock eyes.

A tense moment passes.

It is Richard who breaks first. He turns back to the desk with a small sigh.

"This has very little to do with you," he says carefully.

richard, knowing thomas as he does, is able to tell that he’s taking this personally, because he Is, so that’s that there, but again this is something he’s already settled in himself and so there’s also an element of having to justify again this thing he’s already figured out, which he isn’t exactly fond of.

anyway i said i’d get into this -- there’s a lot of interesting like, Societal / Subcultural / Etc politics with regards to being a male servant in this day and age and Gender In General, and valets especially -- throughout the time period leading up to this but ESPECIALLY in the 1920s when there are fewer men in service than there ever have been and more and more kinds of, say, manufacturing jobs as the automobile industry picks up & labour saving devices start having more complicated parts, and probably yknow most of the boys he went to school with are in that or mining or railways, so he’d have thought about it earlier on in his life probably. or Has rather. ftr his brother was in the carriage works i don’t think that ever comes up but there’s a lot there lol. there’s some family stuff in but level in time that we’ll get to........... someday. ANYWAY. 

the point is.

valeting is an effeminate job.

like, point blank. i’m seeing that idea both in sources specifically about servants & just general of-the-era stuff about great houses. when you’re talking about gay men in service a lot of them are valets, and some of that lines up w stereotypes & common lifestyle habits of gay men in general -- looking after hair shoes and clothing, obvs, attention to detail in physical appearance (note that men who Get Valeted also care about details, but they are not the ones who actually have to think and decide about it; whereas their wives are probably giving their ladies’ maids more directions as to hair styles and dresses etc etc because they’re expected to care about that part of the process in a way that men weren’t), exposure to social mores in a variety of different contexts, being well-connected within both the communities that help him get work done: tailoring, hairdressing, shoemakers, drapers, etc and in General, having softer skills like sewing and whatnot. and you’re unmarried and looking after the presentation of another man so there’s some like, desexualisation stuff there.

and thomas and richard would both know this very, very well. they’d have encountered the idea both as men in service and as gay men and especially as gay men in service.  

this richard has been working at buckingham palace for more than twenty years at this point, minus his war backstory which....... is complex and i haven’t gotten into it very much anywhere but he was getting cosy with some higher ups and having To Do about presentation there too and like, was in the service corps which was non-combat supply lines ....... and apprenticing valeting / actually (non-principally) valeting the Literal King Of England for nine.

he has had a LOT of time to get over his shit.

he not only likes his job* but he’s also very good at his job, literal 2nd highest valet position in frankly The World, which is fucking wild, and that combined with his Childhood of like, being second best to his older brother who was like, a perfect human being so far as he could ever tell and that included being very traditionally like, athletic and Leaderly and having-a-sweetheart-in-your-youth-you-then-marry when he was more interested in, you know, story telling and Arts N Crafts (i’m being tongue in cheek) and just generally not ... especially into the Boys Will Be Boys stuff............................

he’s fine with it! he is Fine with being called delicate, it’s helped him get over a lot of his issues just to decide oh, this actually fits my personality and the trajectory my life has followed, so i’m going to just accept that and move on ! etc. 

but thomas is not anywhere near there for himeslf and therefore he isn’t for other people, too, because one of thomas’s Problems is that he hates seeing other people comfortable and happy when he isn’t... and that even applies to richard, because love does not make us perfect. 

*he wants to leave service and he’s tired of the constant scrutiny of working where he does for whom he does, but he does like his actual duties in a lot of ways.

well here’s a novel. i hope this satisfies you!!! <3 <3 <3

[cece2046]

Close the Curtains - Chap 1

Thank you my beta @reynardinepttr! Sorry I'm shit at English apparently omg.

Teddy Lupin × Hermione Granger

FFN: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12748991/1/Close-the-Curtains

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12922338/chapters/29528235

@sissannis because... yeah.

I saw her and I said to James, “I’m in love.”

James was texting to Albus or Victoire or whichever cousin our twisted huge family has. He hummed. I waited. About ten text-sent pop sounds later, he jumped a bit and turned his eyes to me. “What?” he asked.

“I’m in love? That thing’s gonna get you killed you know, if you keep putting all your goddamn attention into it.”

James wasn’t having any of it. “You’re in love with who?”

“Whom,” I replied calmly. “With her.” I pointed to her as discreetly as I could manage.

James turned his head and let out a soft “whoa”.

I know. That’s what I felt several moments ago.

The thing about me that you have to know is, I’m a very calm person. You have to be if you want some degree of emotional privacy as a Metamorphmagus. You need to train yourself not to change your hair colour according to your favorite person in the vicinity. That’s very cute and all when you’re a baby. Still cute when you’re a kid, but once you step into teenage years, it becomes inconvenient when all you want is to “play it cool”, you know? And now I’m an adult, that’d be simply embarrassing.

I know my mum didn’t care about showing her emotional status for everyone not colourblind to see, according to hearsay from Harry or Ginny or Ron. But I’m not my mum. I’ve been told many times that my mum was a lot more chipper than me. I don’t know why they keep telling me that. Maybe they just want me to be happier by setting up a role model out of my late mother, as ridiculous as that sounds?

I sometimes think that even though I’m a Metamorphmagus like my mum, I’m more like my dad. Not that I know about him much, mind you, but a kid has a lot to think about when he’s an orphan yet at the same time he has thousands of family members. Have you seen the Weasleys? Honestly.

Anyway, I’m in love but I’m pretty sure that my expression didn’t change at all. Totally cool. This woman is gorgeous. Not in a super model way or something. She’s just so… I don’t know. I just can’t take my eyes off her. She’s different, like she knows a lot of things and has been to a lot of places, yet I can still picture her sitting next to the fireplace in the Burrow and drinking tea with a book on her lap. It’s unsettling, to be honest.

James is saying something.

I turned my eyes to him. “What did you just say?”

“She’s coming our way, mate.” James stuffed his phone in the back pocket of his jeans, seeming a little nervous, which is totally out of character for him.

She is coming our way. Yes she is. Suddenly I don’t know the purpose of my own hands anymore. Where should I put them? Why do I have them if I can’t come up with a comfortable place to put them? Do I look at her? Do I pretend that my phone buzzed? Do I pretend to have a stroke? Do I pretend to be high?

I don’t know what I'm doing and she’s in front of us. She might be in her 30s? I don’t know. I can’t breathe.

She opened her mouth.

“James? James Potter?”

What?

James visibly jumped. Chill, mate. She just said your name. It’s not like she screamed your name when she came.

Wait, what? What now?

“Yes, ma’am. I mean, My Lady. I mean, yes. Yes. I am. James Sirius Potter. James Potter. The Junior. Just James. I mean, yes. My pleasure. And you are?” James stuttered his way through it. I’m proud of him. I still can’t form a sentence.

She smiled. I’ve never seen such a smile before. It’s not sunshine or daisies or unicorns or rainbows. It’s a little warm and a little sad at the same time. It’s like that first moment when there’s a breeze and you realize that summer is ending soon, but it’s not unpleasant, especially if you’re a fan of autumn.

“I’m Hermione Granger. Glad to make your acquaintance, too.”

“Hermione Granger? You’re Hermione Granger? Oh my god. Oh my god. I’m such a fan. You fought next to my dad in the war, yeah? And your thesis on that new application of dragon blood is so inspiring!” James is beaming.

“Thank you.” She gave him another smile. “Are you taking me to Harry? Is that why you’re here? Harry said in the last letter that he was going to send you to welcome me, since he has this meeting that he can’t get out of.”

“Oh yes, definitely. Jeez, dad didn’t say that you’re so hot. What are you, 40 years old now?”

Way to go, James.

She didn’t take offence. “More or less.” And then she turned to me. She’s staring at me. “Teddy?” Her voice is somehow lower. She looks a lot younger at that moment, like a school girl.

I straightened. “You know me?”

She closed her eyes for a bit. “You were still very young when I left Britain,” she said. “No wonder you don’t remember me.”

And suddenly she’s hugging me. She’s tiny compared to me, but I still feel enveloped. Her hair smells nice. I don’t know that scent. I tentatively put my right hand on her back between her shoulder blades. I shouldn’t have done that, because now she’s hugging me harder. She’s so soft. I’m getting hard. This hug needs to stop. Right. Now.

She pulled back like she heard my thoughts. “Shall we?” That’s directed to James, who’s currently staring at me with a thoughtful look.

“Yes, this way, Hermione. May I call you Hermione?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m practically your aunt."

We’re driving to James’s flat in Muggle London and then taking the floo. James is driving. Hermione takes the shotgun. I’m on the backseat. James struck up a conversation about her academic theory about something. I’m not listening. I’m just feeling her voice and thinking.

It’s not a secret that Harry and Ron have a third best friend. They talk about her. Not a lot, but they’re not keeping her a secret from us kids. We’ve all been curious once, but the moment we got a textbook she wrote, the curiosity disappeared. You don't really get curious about your textbook writer. No one does. We all tend to avoid them. So all we know is that she’s their best friend, she fought in the war, and she left for academic achievements. Nice and easy.

Come to think of it, why hasn't she come back to visit? Ever? If she’s such a good friend of Harry and Ron’s?

James is enamoured. He might have a crush on her. I can tell. What about her? I can’t see her face on the backseat. Well, a little. I can see her left ear, partly obscured by her hair. It’s pale and delicate. I want to touch it. I want to lick it. I’m being weird. Her neck is there for me to observe, too. I know if she turns around this moment and sees me, I might as well kiss my chance with her goodbye. This is so creepy, staring at that little patch of skin like a serial killer or… skin… fanatic.

James saved me from myself. “Are you coming with us, Teddy?”

I turned my eyes to him. “Sure. Why not?”

He has this meaningful little evil smile in his eyes in the rear mirror. “I thought you had a date with a certain blonde?”

“It’s not a date. It’s just a drink.”

“So? Are you going or not?”

“I can cancel.”

James whistled. I know what’s on his mind. He’s such a child.

“Are you single, James?” Hermione asked.

James suddenly tensed. “Ah, no?”

Hermione laughed. “Is that a question?”

James chuckled nervously. “Hey, Hermione, are you obligated to tell my parents everything regarding to me? Like, real-aunt stuff?”

I guess that’s the problem when you have parents. You love them. They love you. But somehow you just cannot be the people who know each other the most.

I’m a little surprised that Hermione actually thought about it for a bit. I can tell James is surprised too. People all give quick answers when they’re asked about this. Angelina will say “you bet your ass I will tell Ginny everything kids”. George will say “nah dude this is between you and me, pranksters’ honour”. But Hermione, she’s thinking about it like she’s not sure.

After a moment, she said, “I guess it depends.”

James is a little miffed. “Depends on what?”

She shrugged. “On whether or not it’s necessary to tell them?”

“How do you decide that?” I asked. I didn’t realise that I was already leaning forward and ready to participate.

She turned around and looked at me. “Well, I guess if James’s secret might put him in grave danger, then I should tell Harry about it. Otherwise I’m a pretty good secret keeper.” She paused for a moment, added, “What about you, Teddy? Do you tell Harry everything about James?”

I don’t know why, but her words warmed me in an unexpected way, like in her way of asking, she put me in the same level as her - adult, independent, guardian of that big child sitting in the driver’s seat. It means that she doesn’t see me as a child; instead, she sees me as a partner in crime in this car if James spills one of his secrets, and that pleases me enormously.

I looked into her eyes and said, “I’m the best secret keeper in the world.”

She shivered. Maybe. Maybe it’s just a trick of light and shadows and the speeding scenery outside the window. She didn’t look away though. I didn’t look away either. One moment passed and then we missed our opportunity to look away without being awkward or weird, so we have to keep looking at each other. I can’t control myself that well. I looked down to her lips for a split second, but she caught me. I can tell.

Damn it.

She silently turned around completely. James glared at me for a bit. Merlin, give me a break.

“So,” James said, “if I tell you something about my love life you wouldn’t tell my parents?”

Her voice is steady. “No. Unless your girlfriend plans to kill you.”

“That’s not as far-fetched as you would imagine,” James laughed a bit.

She’s totally relaxed now. “So you have one? Girlfriend?”

James hummed.

“And Harry doesn’t know?”

James hummed again.

She laughed a bit. “Okay. I won’t tell him, but I want a full report.”

James laughed along. “You need to win my trust first.”

She might murmured something like “Harry Potter’s fucking son”. I’m sure I heard wrong.

It’s pretty uneventful after that. We flooed to the Ministry, sat outside Harry’s office, and waited for him to end whatever’s going on in there. An assistant Auror, Kris, said that Auror Potter knew we’d arrived and he’d meet us as soon as possible. It’s interesting, the Auror Office. Everyone’s constantly on the move. Only one or two are sitting at their desks and chewing their quills. I’m guessing case closing report.

Hermione sits between me and James. James is on his phone again. He’s been on his phone ever since Malfoy Industries invented a method to make Muggle devices work normally in magical environments, which means five years ago. I think. Harry threatened to reducto that thing once, but he never did. I guess for a man like Harry, the more ways to find his family at any given time, the better.

She wasn’t doing anything, just watching the office and taking it all in. She’s been away for quite some time, after all. I can feel her beside me even when I’m not looking at her. I don’t feel warmth or smell her scent or something like that. No. I just feel her presence.

And then someone said, in a weak voice, “Merlin’s balls. Hermione.”

I looked up, and there’s Ron. He’s pale as a corpse.

Hermione stood up and said calmly, “Hi, Ron.”

And then he’s kissing her. And my blood turned to ice in my veins.

[adventureswithdepression-blog]

Every Action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction

Dichotomy

[dahy-kot-uh-mee] 

A division into two mutually exclusive, opposed, or contradictory groups.

Our world is rarely black and white. This is something that is repeated over and over again, and yet the thought of shades of grey seem so aloof that it needs repeating. Even from childhood these dichotomies in life are highly emphasized, there’s the dashing prince and the evil queen, there’s the evil stepmother and the good daughter. It’s easy. Night or day. Good or bad. And yet as we grow up these separate ideals or ideologies seem to blur together. There’s the hero that does morally questionable things for the right cause. There’s the villain that loves his family more than life itself. It’s not easy anymore. Yet these dichotomies live and are perpetuated in everything we consume. I didn’t really spend much thought on these divides, good or bad, east or west, night or day, man or woman, not until I started at university.

Sociology was a new and exciting area of science for me, not quite psychology nor social sciences but instead something in between. A somewhat ironic place for a science so obsessed with the dichotomies of everyday life. Gradually I grew to see dichotomies everywhere, no matter how minute the detail of interest was. Are we creatures of freewill or are there underlying societal structures that define who we are and what we do? Are human’s social creatures or egotistical? Is anything real, and most importantly how do we define what is and what isn’t? All these questions or statements are true, or none of them are depending on who you ask. Another quirk of sociology; if you can motivate it, you can basically say anything about anything.

Not gonna lie I struggled with my subject for a while. I became agitated about the endlessness of it all, nothing was real and at the same time everything was. I sought out my old notes from math in a futile attempt to get my hands on something that was either right or wrong. Yet another dichotomy. But over time, I grew to tolerate, then like these contradictions. 

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about dichotomies this week. I write this realizing that dichotomies are the foundation for my science and a tool for me to understand the world with, but it’s rare that I actively think on these things outside the campus.

Fundamentally there’s conflict between dichotomies. A professor once told me that no science would be interesting without a juicy dichotomy. Another told me that if you find a dichotomy you didn’t expect in your thesis you know you’ve done your job. Academically I’ve grown used to this thought of seeking out the contradictions, but contradictions are fundamentally uncomfortable in everyday life.

Arguing with yourself

Why are you laying there you lazy, stupid girl! What will people think of you, netflixing your life away like this! Just do something! You should be working, studying, working out, writing, cleaning, socializing-

Admitting that you have “voices in your head” is never easy. This is true even when those voices are your own thoughts and ambitions and not hallucinations. It took me over 15 visits with my first therapist, a young woman a few years older than me with a laugh so wonderful it spread like wildfire, to admit to “hearing things”. It was the autumn of 2015 and I had spent weeks with her as her test subject. The institution for psychology that trained psychologists at my university needed volunteers the just about done students could practice on under supervision by their professors. It was a step I could take. Deep in denial of my issues I reached out to talk about my motivation and the lack there of.

She was nice about the whole thing. She pondered about what I said and told me that maybe the two voices arguing were my depression and my own drive. My depression trying to bring me down and not do anything, and my drive chastising me for not giving it a direction or a goal. I didn’t think much of it then, but the thought stayed with me the entire week. I lacked a goal. I’m not going to pretend that I have a goal or a purpose nowadays, living life a day or a year at a time with no clear vision for the future is one of the many side effects 10 years with depression has had on me.

As much as I hate to admit it, the dichotomy between the drive to do things, whether it be from my own volition or from a societal push for productivity and meeting unspoken standards and expectations, and the apathy and boredom of depression has become the norm for me. I’ve lived with this divide for ten years and I do not remember who I was without it. I was a child. All of my character development stems from this contradiction, this easy excuse for being “lazy”. My friendships, my relationships with family, my studies, all of this might change. I might be a totally different person. I have issues with control, I don’t like to drink, smoke, drink coffee or tea, do drugs, alter my personality in any way because I don’t know who that person is. I’m so afraid of loosing control, to take a leap of faith. Do you see the issue this has with beginning my journey to recovery?

Earlier this week therapist number 2, the one with the nice office, asked me what I see in my future. I told her I don’t know. That answer is never easy to give, there’s this partially unspoken expectation that we’re supposed to know who we are, what we want and what we’re ready to do to achieve that goal. I don’t know if I know any of those. 

Seeking help has been a concrete step for me. It’s admitting that I have issues I want solved. It’s also admitting that I don’t want to be this way anymore, I don’t want to be “this person”. This creates this unspoken bond, between who I am now and who I want to be. Admitting that I want to make the change is fine. The issue is that I don’t know who the end product is. This whole thing is like jumping into a deep dark void, needing to trust that there’s something worthwhile down there and not just a void that keeps on going. 

What a wholly unpleasant thought. 

[kwonyuri]

Heya! This is random, but I was wondering how you achieve your high academic grades? What study tips do you recommend since I want to improve, but I don't know how? You take a lot of APs and get great grades, so I want to since I'm currently in an AP class myself (and there's a chance that I might take all APs next year). Do you have study resources you're willing to share, especially for English writing, bc I need it lol. I love your blog btw~ and sorry this is completely random time to ask

No lovely, you’re fine. To be honest with you, my family and the environment I grew up in played a large role in my academics. My mother was a valedictorian (and mostly on top) during her days, and I was always told to prioritize education so that I can have a wonderful future. Rather than pressuring me, they showered me with encouraging words. But I wasn’t always this bright, I had my moments too. The long advice I’m gonna give contains the things I’ve done, and still doing, to survive my life as an IB/AP student, and I hope you find them useful.

General advice:

To have a successful school year, there are three things you must keep in mind: staying organized, time budgeting and management, and asking for help when necessary. Staying organized is one of the tactics I deem most vital to being successful. Labeling materials - such as your notebooks, folders, and binders - makes it easier for you to access everything you need. By keeping all your notes and assignments in the right places, you’ll worry less about cramming. This ensures conveniency, which helps with budgeting and managing your time wisely. Create a schedule ahead of time to keep track of due dates and school timeline, so that you won’t be behind. Trust me – the more you turn assignments in on time, the better relationship you’ll have with the teachers and the more you’ll feel good about yourself. And if you do happen to be behind, it will be in your best interest to ask for help. Once you identify what the problem is, you should immediately seek help to resolve it. This will ensure that you understand the lessons/concepts - and that you are aware of what’s going on in that class - instead of  pretending you are on track. If you face the issue ahead of time, it’ll be easier to deal with it when the time for AP exams comes.

Additional study tips: 

Get into the habit of making chapter outlines + vocabulary notes. 

Color code your notes with highlighters or colored pencils.(Ex: blue = word, yellow = definition, orange = extra facts, etc.) 

Make neat flashcards (physically or electronically).

When reviewing, use the 30% read and 70% recite method. Spend at least 20 minutes on one topic, then do a quick brain dump and write down everything you 80-100% know and remember. Repeat ‘til you’re comfortable.

At least try to do your homework for extra practices. 

Make sure your materials are within reach. Study on the floor, honestly. 

Practice lots of multiple choice and spend some time answering some previous Free Response Questions.

Have a planner, by the way. List your tasks and put a time next to each. For example, english homework (30 mins), history homework (50 mins), etc.

Resources:

Buy or check out an AP Barron’s Guide and Princeton Review (the latest edition for the course you are taking). 

Check the AP CollegeBoard website occasionally just so you know what’s up. They have everything anyway.

Quizlet is a life saver so make an account now if you have not.

OwlPurdue is a great writing resource. Basically it deals with different techniques and citing your sources properly to avoid plagiarism. I use it all the time.

WritersDigest also has tons of resources, all sorted. 

VocabSushi to expand your vocabulary. 

Lastly, have lots of determination and faith in yourself, darling. As long as you’re giving everything you can, you’re a winner. Drop by anytime and let me know if you want more specific suggestions. And thank you for appreciating my blog. Have a good day!