#i'm a student currently working full time. i use the limited free time i have to write things to share with you

[monsterhugger]

hey unless an author or artist explicitly asks for requests. don't ask them to draw or write something for you

if you want them to draw or write for you the opener is "do you take commissions" lol (caveat that if they're a writer please ask this on their other socials and not ao3)

[4dkellysworld]

Hi Kelly, I currently am really lost in my "journey" and busy studying, how will I be able to realize Self if I'm always identifying with being a girlfriend, student, daughter and a friend... Ik it looks like I'm complaining and it might be true but life is different to everyone, maybe this isn't for me. Personally, manifestation, AV y ND, was and is a rabbit hole... This past summer I decided to let go of everything and behave "normally" again, always following the hipotetic rule of "do A to get B" and I think it's working fine, life is boring as it was before. However I also really want to know self, experience it and finally understand my true nature, but I guess it will take a bit longer. Thanks for your posts

I used to think like that too until I realized it was all ego (as usual). Ego wants full realization now and gets frustrated when it can't drop its identification. During the times I was in that state of mind, I got nowhere. Sure you can go back to the world but it won't truly fulfill you, we're all looking for Self where it's not - in the world. Eventually, you'll come back to this and then be faced with the same conundrum.

Maybe it works for some but I can only speak with my own experiences. Trying to force myself to think/see 'I am not the body' straight off the bat didn't work no matter how hard I tried. However, being open to that possibility without believing nor disbelieving, and then doing spiritual practice to drop more and more ego eventually allowed me to come to that realization. It took patience. Kindness. Allowing things to just be. Accepting things as they are. Surrender. Faith. It happens when it happens. I stopped caring *when* I would be realized, I stopped looking for signs of progress and results. I stopped comparing myself to other's experiences. I stopped getting frustrated that I "wasn't there yet" and stopped defining and labelling where I was at which allowed me peace in the present moment. I just practiced because the practice itself was freeing me more and more. Then one day I found myself (the ego identity) to be quite changed, just things I could not put into words, things that are only intuitively felt but so completely throughout my whole being. Then I understood what the masters meant when they say not to look at time and that everything will happen on its own accord. The disidentification happens on its own as you let go of ego.

So I'd say perhaps you're going about it the wrong way.

If you don't feel ready to completely detach from ego, that's okay too, no judgment there - many people are not. You can work on letting go of whatever limitations you can without trying to give up the ego entirely. Everything has its own time and place. Let things be. It's not something you can force anyway, everyone comes to that decision of their own volition eventually.

I'd recommend that you stop resisting the fact that you have all these identifications, that does nothing to drop them. Just find the practices that work for you and keep dropping ego. Things will happen on their own. Also I recommend reading this and this (or the whole tag) on why mental purification (dropping ego concepts) is important and necessary. It looks like there's too much expectation in general on being able to drop the entire body and mind identification with a single thought but most people will not be able to do this. If you're unable to wipe the mind completely and drop those thoughts that are attached to the dream itself, then dropping the ego through mental purification is how you make progress. This allows more and more of Self to shine through.

Use the mind to investigate the manifested. Be like the chick that pecks at the shell. Speculating about life outside the shell would have been of little use to it, but pecking at the shell breaks the shell from within and liberates the chick. Similarly, break the mind from within by investigation and exposure of its contradictions and absurdities. - Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That

[melancholy-marionette]

Hi hi! I'm a fan of your yandere games and I just recently found out about your Tumblr account while hunting for fandoms of your games X3 I just finished playing Solipsism Reigns after letting it just sit there somewhere on my laptop for a whole year cuz I got attached to Kuro XD Ik your hands are already full from the amount of visual novels you've been creating so far but would you consider re-creating SR if you can? You don't have to feel obligated to ofc, I'm already impressed with the amount of visual novels you've cooked up XD (I'm quite nervous asking this cuz SR is so underrated and it's rarely talked about these days)

Hey hey! That’s awesome :D Super glad to hear it <3 

Yeeeeah, I mean, I don’t know for sure cos I’ve never looked, but I can’t imagine there's much in the way of fandoms for any of my games since they tend to fly under the radar x3 (my own fault for being incapable of using social media to promote stuff, I know T_T haha)

Since my following is mainly concentrated on itch I guess maybe that doesn’t help since other devs tend to post stuff in places like this and interact with people more. Heck, one of my supporters was even kind enough to make me a Discord server, which is incredible! But even with that, I struggle to use it regularly cos I can’t cope with live conversations very well >.< My social processing power is extremely limited T_T

The most frustrating thing is that I would like to be more active with social stuff, I just can’t handle it very well thanks to my ASD :( It only takes a little bit of social media for me to become completely overwhelmed and have to force myself to come off it so I don’t shut down, haha. It sucks.

Anyways, I’m rambling, sorry x3

That’s so cool you played SR :D my original baby, haha. It looks so old now T_T Every time I see it on my itch dashboard I end up thinking of all the things I would change now I have more experience as a dev! It makes me a happy bunny to hear that you got attached to Kuro though ^-^

Funnily enough... I had already planned to remake SR at some point :D 

As much as the project will always have a special place in my heart with it being my first-ever VN, there are many things about it that bother me too, haha. 

My hope is to eventually remake it from scratch (I kinda have no choice in that anyhow since I no longer have the old Tyranobuilder project files x3) in Naninovel :3 Cos I know Tyrano was kinda clunky >.< In Nani, I could make it all work more smoothly + add more in the way of visual FX and stuff too.

On top of that though, I plan to go over all of my writing because there’s sooooo much I’m not happy with (mainly glaring at the student route >.>) + with any luck add an entirely new route as well that I cut from the original release due to a lack of time to write it properly when I found out Kuro’s VA was going to be moving to another country and putting voice acting on hold, haha. 

There was also a BxG version in the works that’s currently on hold but features redesigned sprites by LazyPolarBear + CGs for a male protagonist x fem Kuro.

I’m not sure what I want to do about the music in the project because I feel like I chose the tracks well to fit the game, BUT, I’ve heard those same tracks in soooo many other people’s games now that I kind of hate that I used so much from Incompetch, haha. Kevin’s music is incredible, but since it’s very generously free to use, it does mean it’s kind of overused in games >.< I didn’t have any other option at the time cos I couldn’t make my own music and I didn’t have any money to buy asset packs.

Now that I tend to create my own OSTs, it would seem kind of insane not to make one for SR in the process of a proper remake. It’s just it would require me to make a lot of tracks x3 I’ll probably give it a go though + maybe keep a handful of Kevin’s ones that I really like too much to let go of, haha.

So yeah, my hope is to eventually remake the original otome version of SR in a different engine with edited + new writing, some new art, new UI, new FX, possibly an OST, and I guess new VA to go with the new writing :D 

I don’t really know when because I need to finish CiQ, DD, and Blue Blythe’s route in Bitter/Sweet before I tackle any more long-term projects x3 So it won’t be any time soon. Once I’ve managed to finish all of those though, I’ll probably make it my next long-term priority project :3

I’m genuinely flattered that you actually liked SR enough to even ask this! It always amazes me when anyone leaves a positive word about SR because I assumed that it had kinda just been lost to the sands of time at this point xD I know it’s definitely showing its age, haha. It’s nice to know there are still people out there who are willing to give it a chance if they happen to come across it somehow ^-^

I feel like my games are probably rarely talked about in general, haha. I mean, since I’m a fan of yandere games and play them myself, I do lurk in some communities + sometimes look at recs threads other people post to get ideas for things to add to my own playlist, and it’s not often that I see any of my games mentioned on recs or being discussed x3

I always kinda hope it’s cos people don’t know they exist rather than it being a case of them thinking they’re not worthy of mentioning xD Either way isn’t exactly great though I guess, haha. 

I just can’t promote stuff for the life of me cos I find it too overwhelming & exhausting + I don’t really have the self-confidence to try and put my games in front of people anyways cos I always feel like what I make isn’t good enough >.< I’m basically 100% reliant on other people sharing my games for anyone to even discover them x3 Either that or searching the yandere tag on itch, but even then, they might be kinda hard to locate cos they’re not super near the top since I don’t get as many people rating my games as other devs do. SR is my oldest game and it doesn’t even have 100 ratings yet on itch xD

If you search the yandere tag on itch and sort by ‘top rated’ 14 Days With You is first with a whopping 1238 total ratings as of searching right now while I type this… my first game to appear is Darling Duality as the 13th result with a mere 427 ratings by comparison, haha. And I’m pretty sure DD only got rated that much because of Manly’s video x3 Bitter/Sweet is next with only 228 total ratings by comparison.

I know people can just click on my itch profile if they happen to find and like 1 of my games and maybe want to see if I’ve made others, but a lot of people don’t realise you can do that, or they don’t know that I primarily make games with yanderes in x3 So they just go unnoticed.

Heck, Dawn of the Damned is related to Darling Duality, and even though DD is my most popular project, I can’t seem to get people to check out Dawn of the Damned, haha. At this point, the tiny demo for DD has 44.7k downloads (this still blows my mind o.o), and yet despite Dawn of the Damned being a completed project and set in the same universe featuring future DD characters, it only has 4036 total downloads as of today x3 If I can’t get the majority of my own followers to check out a game I made that’s set in the same universe, I have no hope of getting them to find my other yandere stuff T_T and even less hope of getting my games in front of people who have never heard of me as a dev, haha.

I’ve even had a handful of people tell me that they think Apartment No.9 is my best game, and that Doyle is their favourite ever yandere guy, but the project only has 3680 downloads x3

But yeah, my analytics on itch are really skewed cos pretty much all the numbers are for Darling Duality and my Yandere Heaven fandub. I may have somehow managed to get a fair few followers on there over the years, but I think probably something like 90% of them (possibly even more than that) are waiting for DD and aren’t interested in my other projects.

My poor Yandere Heaven fandub has received some attention (in fact, it’s actually beating DD on total downloads somehow), but there has been a lot of negativity + a looooot of 1* and 2* bad ratings on itch because, for some reason, people don’t realise it’s a fandub even though I put that very clearly on the page T_T So they rate the game badly with comments saying the story sucks, or that having no choices is stupid, the characters are dumb, or that it’s too goofy and OTT. None of which is even my fault since I’m trying to faithfully recreate the original content. All I wanted to do was make a Japanese drama CD into a VN fandub game >.< haha. 

I can’t believe I’ve rambled so much anyhow xD I’m so sorry, haha. It’s just one of those things that causes me a lot of confusion x3 I know I can’t handle social media very well and I fail at promo, but I can’t understand why a majority of my projects receive so few views/downloads in comparison to DD >.< I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s so appealing about DD and not my other stuff, haha. Unless it’s literally just cos Manly played it x3

Before I go though, I just wanna say a big thank you for playing my stuff :3 It really means a lot! I hope you get to have a super duper year ahead <3

[mysmestranscripts]

Hello and welcome to MysMesTranscripts!

The Ultimate Master List can be found here!

What is this?

This is a blog where I will be compiling and posting full transcripts related to Mystic Messenger, including but not limited to chat rooms, phone calls, text messages, and emails. I may also reblog various Mystic Messenger content, including translations.

Images from the game (Including CGs, title screens, and seasonal images) will be posted with image descriptions. I will do my best but since I myself don't use alt text, feel free to DM me or send an ask with tips/advice on how to improve them.

This is not a guide or walk through. Earned and broken hearts may be listed next to answer choices, but that does not automatically mean it is the "right" answer. Hearts can get you closer to a Bad Story Ending as much as a Good Ending. Emails will have the correct choice marked.

This blog is completely unofficial and is run by a fan. I couldn't find any full transcripts, just guides, so the idea wouldn't leave me alone. Everything is currently IN PROGRESS.

So who are you?

You can call me Luc, they/them. I am a very tired graduate student from the U.S. who definitely doesn't have enough free time for this. But hey, Seven makes fire-breathing robots, Jaehee watches musicals, Yoosung plays LOLOL, and I... commit to transcribing the entirety of an otome game that's almost seven years old. Listen--the hyperfixation demands tribute. My main blog is @pastelsapphy. Right now it's mostly Mystic Messenger but that can change at the drop of a hat depending on what I'm hyperfocusing on.

What do you mean by "[X] box"?

I note when special textboxes are used during chats. I try to keep the "description" as brief as possible so each post doesn't get too crazy. While most are self-explanatory ("cloud text box") others may not be as obvious ("droopy text box"). If you're unsure of what I mean, you can look at examples of each here.

What order are you posting in?

Honestly? Whatever I feel like. Route chats I'll probably do as I play them, emails and calls may come more randomly, as well as DLC content. You can probably expect Another Story content first since I unlocked it not long ago and I've been replaying both routes over and over lol.

Non-participant versions of chats are likely to come out faster than those MC participates in. I want to mark which choices give which hearts, if any, which gives me a smaller window of time to work on them.

Bro, your typos

I'm transcribing things exactly as written. This means there will be some typos, odd sentence structure, incorrect your/you're and the like, etc. that is sometimes found in the game. Blame the game not me. If you find a legitimate typo, let me know and I'll check it out.

Why is Zen orange?

Tell tumblr to add grey text.

[astriiformes]

Hi! I’m a different person asking about applying for herbarium jobs. I actually followed you a little bit ago specifically because I saw you post about working in one, I just hadn’t gotten the courage up to ask about it.

I’m in college now, with plans to go into plant research, and I’m probably going to graduate with a good amount of lab experience. I recently realized though that herbarium work might also be a good fit for me. I’m not quite sure what to ask here, but is there anything that would make that transition difficult? Or anything I should know or focus on before I graduate? I saw you said you had more of a science background so maybe you know what I’m getting at here

Thanks!

So, full disclosure, my herbarium position was a work-study job last year (I have had a.... winding and tenuous path through college and am currently going back to school at 26 to attempt to finish my Bachelor's by doing a weird syncretic individualized degree instead of a standard biology one) and I do not have experience with applying for similar positions as a graduate or more standard professional candidate, which can obviously be quite different for some jobs.

That said, I don't know how long you have left in school, but looking to see if your own university offers any similar options OR if there's a local herbarium or museum where you could volunteer in your (limited, I imagine) free time would probably serve to make you a good candidate for herbarium work. Even working or volunteering in non-herbarium collections may help -- I know one thing that came up as a positive in my interviews was that I already had a lot of collections experience on my resume, even though it was all in zoology and paleontology collections. Any collections job will get you acquainted with basic curatorial duties and procedures, and may even familiarize you with specific methods of data entry or other skills you can namedrop on your resume. Even if it's volunteer work (all of mine was -- my herbarium position was my first ever paid collections job) it's a great thing to be able to show you have experience in.

As far as particular difficulties go... nothing particularly glaring is coming to mind. Working or volunteering in a collections job as a student before you graduate would also probably help you figure out if it's the right field for you, which is always another bonus. If you've largely got lab experience I'm sure you're very familiar with the tedium of data entry even when you're doing cool research (although there is the occasional entertaining error message, haha) and a lot of collections work is pretty data entry-heavy, though with the immense bonus that you are entering data about some pretty fascinating things and may find yourself crying over the human experience while handling lichen specimens that were collected in the mid-19th century (I speak from experience).

Best of luck with whatever route you go down, and I'd love to be able to consider you a collections comrade. Folks who make the jump from research science to museums are sometimes particularly great advocates for the importance of specimen collections, considering how useful they can be to researchers and having the background to explain how collections are used for contemporary science and not simply kept around as relics of the past, which may be an angle for you to consider if you dip your toes into the field.

(And don't be shy if you ever have other questions! I love talking about this stuff.)

[itspeachyp0p]

⥼♡⥽ I only write for fem bodied! reader with smut. For angst, fluff or general hcs I write gen. neutral reader. I do not write for amab! male! etc

⥼♡⥽ I'm about to be a part time student so I don't go by a specific schedule, and a schedule would burn me out quickly or make it feel like I have zero time for other hobbies. I post at random, whenever I get a chance & depending on my mood

⥼♡⥽ I said it in my BYF follow but please ask before translating my works

⥼♡⥽ I reserve the right to deny any request. I do not have to write every one, I do not have to write it if it breaks my rules, causes me discomfort, or is something on my limits list

⥼♡⥽ Requests: currently open. If you ever want to know if requests are open or closed I'll update it on my pinned, here and will temporarily take away the ask button

⥼♡⥽ I reply at my own pace, requests may take time since I want to make sure what I put out is enjoyable

⥼♡⥽ What I wont write is: Incest, pseudo-cest, scat, free use, watersports, mommy kink, race play, vomit, vore, feet, ageplay, electroplay, knifeplay(I can write mentions of use for cutting rope), gunplay, g!ngbangs

⥼♡⥽ If you have already have sent a request please do not spam my inbox with the same one

⥼♡⥽ When describing reader they'll always be shorter than the characters I'm describing unless you request tall reader. I will try my best to avoid making reader a set anything to make my works enjoyable for a wider audiance

⥼♡⥽ SInce I'm multifandom I write for: Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, for DC I'll really only write Bruce, Dick, or Jason. I will not write underage characters, only the confirmed adults. If they are canonly adults or canonly age like Haikyuu I will write it. I do write for female characters as well, so don't be afraid to ask for them either

⥼♡⥽ In additon to full fics I write drabbles, imagines ,and headcanons

⥼♡⥽ My personal tag is ❥justpeachy

[tj-shmt]

A Day of Curation

Unless its Wednesday, it should be around 11am right now when i get up. First things first, put in my headphones and go get some good music! Its Monday - time to listen to my Discover Weekly playlist, which Spotify usually tailors perfectly to my tastes.

1. 🎶 SPOTIFY 🎶

Fun fact - this weeks "Discover Weekly" suggs. Usually I get the best music from there. I don't really recall the last time any of my friends really showed a song I didn't already know or was adequately good. Tho, I have to give Amelie some credit here, she constanly hits me with great Spanish tunes. (Also to Jasi and Safae which hit me up with some dope music from time to time) I mostly get inspiration from (sad to say but its true) tik tok or by randomly shazaming the world. I also really hate to limit myslfe to music i understand. On the contrary I LOVE LOVE LOVE music arround the world. Trust me i hear Tibetian Throat Singing to Russian Electro and even Islandic and Nativ American Tribal Music. To give you an impression of how important music consumption is for me:

Last Year i spent a total of 210 441 minutes on spotify alone. That is about 9 Hours a day. The average person uses Spotify for about 18 000 minutes a year. (My friend took the freedom to calculate how much money Spotify "looses" by my consumption. i pay $30 a year an Spotify gives $0,004891 per stream to the creator. An average of 3 minutes per song (70.000 streams) means spotify pays $342.37 to the creators. Thats $312.37 of deficit LOL)

Apart form that i cant really give Spotify a certain schedule when i listen to it cuz i listen to it all the time. During gaming, during coding, laundry, gym, work, class, before sleep. ✨Always✨

2. 💬 WhatsApp 💬

There is nothing better than sleeping for an eternity while everyone is already awake for probably 4 or more hours, working! *laughs in privileged design student* Since everyone is already living its live while I still drool, I gotta get up to date in the morning. Before i even leave bed, i checke my messages there. Similar to Spotify, I use WhatsApp the whole day and can't really tell when I would not use it. Except, my phone is always on silent (casual zennial phone call phobia) meaning i wont notice anything while zoning out or gaming (which usualy is the same).

3. 👨‍🏫 TEAMS 👩‍🏫

Yeah Yeah i can already hear it. "You wake up 5 minutes before class withouth breakfast or anything..." - bla bla bla. Yeah that is the case! I would usuly go on teams and enter the classroom, while preparing a breakfast (if you can call it breakfast after 12) sit down at my desk and listen to class. Causally everything that is too theoretical with music and whatsapp. Other classes that are interesting I`ll put my full attention to it.

But i hate teams in gerneral. Not cuz its sh**, no, usualy people that do their clases there have a weird way of using it. Finding material or looking up homeworks is such a struggle sometimes. (Props to you Kevin here, I have never seen anybody using teams in such a clean and struktured way than you do. Even tho you dont neccesarily use it as it was meant to be. (which might be the turning point on why its great))

4. 📺 YouTube 📺

Yup YouTube is usually the place to go after (sometimes during (I NEVER SAID THAT!)) class.

Actually, YouTube is the place to go for me. Relaxation, Entertainment, knowledge - anything! After class I'd usually watch "Cut" or other channels that produce let's plays or entertainment of some sort.

But it's also THE place to go during coding. I rather listen to Lofi or (Slowed, Reverbed) Music that doesnt really distract me. ALSO, during coding watch A SH*TLOAD OF TUTORIALS, cuz I am proud selftaught Zennial. #BestOfBothWorlds

5. 👨‍🍳 CHEFKOCH 👨‍🍳

I love to try new things and I constantly stalk the web for new recipes. Lately a lot of Asian and Vegan stuff. Chefkoch is the app to go where i also write down my own recipes to have them with me all the time. Great thing here is, i share this account with all my family members (currently 13, including my mom, aunts, other relatives). Great way to share the secret family recipes at any time!

(Cant recommend the recipe in the img, tho!)

6.🏐 ADDIDAS TRAINING🏐

Unlike all my sporty friends that used to hit the gym before covid and not got lazy, I started to use Training Apps like Addidas Training with its free Workout plans. I use it regularly and am happy i finally found a way to stay sporty.

7. ⌨️ VS CODE ⌨️

Its either Visual Studio Code, where I would code on my current project, or gaming. As mentioned above, I would get most of the inspiration from tutorials or using dev tools on different platforms.

8. 🎤 DISCORD 🎮

I´ll use Discord as a general term for Gaming since I play a lot but many different games, tho, always use discord to communicate with my freinds while gaming.

A great place to share random BS with friends and talk about anything that comes to my mind. I spent most of the evenings on Discord with my friends. Always did, in fact. Maybe the reason why I don't really feel so affected by the pandemic. I am used to being separated from my friends since they live all over Germany or the world in general. I always enjoy Online Live Events WITH my friends.

For me the web as always been a "with" not an "alone", which is why I never understand why so may struggle with feeling "alone" on live events online. JUST GRAB A FRIEND AND DISCOVER IT ✨TOGETHER✨!

9. 📼 DISNEY+ / NETFLIX 📼

Since I use both the same amount there is not thos or that. I never Really let anybody recommend me anything, cuz ... trust me, I WON'T watch it. IDK why that is, but I need a specific mood for each show. And nobody but myself can provide that. Probably why most ove the algorithms (esp Netflix) do not have an effect on me. I'm not in the mood for your ****, sorry!

Never the less, i periodically Binge a Series and then feel empty after it ended. Then i need some time to face reality again.

Funny tho, I binged Starwars Rebels on Disney+ and after it ended i just decide to buy 4 books on amazon that expand the story to starwars (#nerd i know). I will spend the next few months reading and probably not watching anything on both Streaming services.

10. 🤤 TIKTOK 🌈

... YUP.... I grew up with vine ... but TikTok got me. And honestly I don't regret it. It's the perfect algorithm that constantly finds the best videos that feed my thirsty queer ass. I mean ...

LOOK AT THE IMG ABOVE. YES, give me more....!

Its prolly not good for my digital wellbeing or my mental health but do I care at the moment..? noooooo...

Just give me more of Starwars Parodies, Sleepwalkers, Best off's of streamers, Queer content (cuz its time this heteronormativity world is fed with it! and no i do not indentify as anyting, im just the + at the very far end!) and yeah, even some sexy content if the creator feels good about it.

AND DONT YOU GIVE ME THAT SIDE EYE OF JUDGEMENT HERE - WE ALL THIRST FROM TIME TO TIME!

TOODLES!

[cancerbiophd]

Hey, I am rotating in a cancer bio lab, this will be my third one. The first two worked around my class schedule very well, but for the first semester, these classes are everything. In my third rotation, my PI expects a lot of me in the short time I'm there, and I am working 6-10 hours there every day. This leaves me almost no time to study or do classwork. She knows how much work these classes are, because she used to teach it. Any advice to help me have less stress?

Hello Anon! Ahh I totally understand your frustration. I remember how demanding and absolutely time-consuming (and very important, as you mentioned!) those grad school classes were, and how stressful it was to balance all that and lab work. 

It took me a while to answer this because it really is a difficult problem to tackle. A PI demanding a lot from the rotating student at the expense of the students’ grades in class should not be the norm. Most PIs understand that a rotating student isn’t there primarily to generate mountains of usable data; their priority is to get a feel for how they fit with the lab, and vice versa. So I guess what I’m trying to say: you’re doing amazing, and your PI shouldn’t be treating you this way. 

But I think I’ve thought of a few things you could try (which does not encompass every route you could take), and you can see which one you’re most comfortable doing, or if they give you any other ideas to try. 

The first question you’ll need to ask yourself is whether there’s a chance you’ll want to select this lab as your dissertation lab. I think this is a very important decision, because if you do want to stay, you’ll have to consider options that are more long-term. In other words, staying in this lab may require more energy on your part in finding a schedule that works for both your grades, your research, and your life outside of the lab if your PI appears to have less emphasis on work-class-life-balance. 

If you know you won’t be continuing on in this lab after your rotation is done, you only have to work with a short-term solution. By no means do I mean slack off or not do your research or make a bad impression, of course--but it’ll be more like a sprint than a marathon. 

Once you’ve decided that, here are some options to consider:

Work with your PI to set goals together. Sometimes PIs are super far-removed from classes (even if they teach them) because time makes us all forget the finer details, like how much work it actually takes to study for an exam! And some may just not understand that just because they have photographic memory and never needed to study, doesn’t mean everyone else is like them. Therefore it’s important to communicate with your PI about your limitations and boundaries. If your PI tells you do X, Y, and Z by Friday, counter back with: “Due to my course-load, I may not be able to complete all those tasks by the deadline. If that’s the case, which of those 3 should I prioritize my time on?” and/or “I can get X and Y done by Friday, but I will need until next Wednesday to finish Z.” I think these are very professional ways to reach a compromise. 

Ask for more help from other lab members. Seeing how we can’t freeze time or clone ourselves, sometimes the only way to get more done in a limited amount of time is to get more bodies on the task. When I’m new to a group, I will ask the PI/my boss “If I need help with these tasks, who should I go to?” A lab is a team with a common goal, so I hope yours will see that to help one person is to help everyone. Going off of the first example, you can respond, “Sure, I can get X, Y, and Z done by Friday, but I will need help. Is there anyone in the lab who can help me with ____?” (And if the answer is “no”, that’s something to consider when deciding which lab to ultimately join.)

Say no to any new tasks until you’ve finished your current ones. In lab you can say something like, “I would like to first finish these experiments before moving on. Can we table this until next week?” or “Ok I’ll put this on my to-do list, but I don’t have time for it this week.” or simply a “I don’t have the time to do this.” This also applies to stuff outside of lab as well, like any extra-curriculars or social events. I also think this is a good skill/habit to have throughout one’s life too, but especially in grad school where PIs are just constantly sprouting out new project ideas without any consideration as to how to pause time so we can do it all.

Ask for extensions for lab tasks when you need it. It’s ok to ask for a few more days. Time in academic research can work differently--milestones tend to move a lot slower, and a difference of a few days hardly makes a huge impact down the line. So unless it’s a hard deadline (like data for a grant submission), it’s ok to let your PI know “Hey, I’m working as hard as I can on this, but I did not anticipate some of the set-backs so I’ll need until ____ to get the data to you.” 

Multitask (but smartly). Do you have small but recurring “downtime” during your experiments that you can use for studying? When I ran Western blots, I would have five 5-min washes throughout the day, and that was 25 min of time I sometimes spent reading for class, or even doing small tasks like catching up on emails. Definitely use those natural “breaks” in lab to your advantage if you’re able. 

Block off more time before and after classes to spend away from the lab. Since you have to leave for class anyway, you can try to squeeze more out of it. Maybe like, leave lab 30 min earlier for class, then come back to the lab 30 min later--that’s 1 full hour! If people in lab (ie. your PI) pry, just tell them you like to give yourself the opportunity to meet with the professors before/after class if necessary (not a lie, because it could be true!). Or you can set up a legit mini-study-session with classmates during those times to review materials before/after class. If 30 min is too long, even 15 min before and after is a good chunk of time. 

Ask for advice from someone who’s had experience with situations like these. This includes other grad students (the ones already in this current lab would be a good place to start, as they’ve surely been-there-done-that) and your program advisor/coordinator who’s had years of experience mediating these conflicts. It may not stop your PI from being demanding, but they could give you pointers on how best to handle it. 

And with the time you do have to study, be sure to be as efficient as possible. I know you’re already doing the best you can, but if there are any aspects of your study routine you think could be improved upon, now’s a good time to implement those changes. There are many ways to do this, including study groups, seeking additional resources like educational videos and help from professors/TAs, etc. Work smart, not hard, right?

My last bit of advice is: Make your grades in those classes your priority over the lab rotation. Some, if not all, programs have very strict rules on grades lower than B’s, and it could jeopardize your chances of remaining in the program. Here’s another way to look at it: you can choose to not stay in your current rotational lab, and perhaps even have minimal contact with that PI for the rest of your grad school career; but you can not choose to not have a grade affect your academic records and/or place in the program. 

Good luck anon. I hope this helped a bit and it all goes well for you!

If anyone else has ever experienced something similar in grad school and have any additional advice, please feel free to help reply to/reblog this post! Thanks!

[grand-shitral-station]

HB 233 does not require students and staff to report their beliefs to the government or state.

(Sort of long) TL;DR.

HB 233 does not make it legal for anyone to demand anyone report their political beliefs to anyone. Political beliefs are protected under the 1st Amendment and a school/organization can't violate your 1st Amendment rights. The bill is worded in a way that's kind of difficult to understand, but it doesn't say that anyone will be required to report any of their beliefs to anyone.

It's now law that colleges (In Florida) have to survey students and staff to find out if the school's environment is intellectually free and full of diverse viewpoints. This does not say ask everyone what their views are. It says ask everyone if this school's environment allows everyone's views, not just the popular views, to be voiced and allows people to think and speak freely rather than being told what they can and can't think or say.

CS/CS/HB 233: Postsecondary Education PDF. (The bill itself on the Florida Senate's official website.) v

The Florida Senate's page for House Bill 233 on the official website. v

In this bill "exposure" and "encouragement" means what it actually says, to expose students and staff to ideas regardless of whether those ideas fit their personal views and encourage them to explore them.

This does not require students and staff to agree with and/or believe anything. This also does not protect anyone who attempts to force someone into agreeing with or believing anything. That would violate your rights and if that happens go to their superiors and raise hell. It is not legal for anyone to threaten you (with a lower grade or job loss for example) into believing in and/or agreeing with an idea, opinion, etc. All they can do is teach you about it and basically say "Here's (insert idea or whatever here), here's what it is, and I encourage you to look into and form your own opinions about it.". This also protect's staff from being forced to believe and/or agree with anything. They can not punish you for not agreeing and this bill does not allow anyone to do so.

HB 233 also does not require students and staff to report their political beliefs to anyone. That would violate the Right To Privacy which is protected under The First Amendment.

https://constitution.laws.com/right-to-privacy

What HB 233 DOES do is:

1. Require that schools and school staff cannot shield students and staff from from views and speech they might not or do not agree with or like. Basically they can't omit facts, ideas, views, etc. that they don't like or agree with, or that students may not like or agree with. They have to teach about all of it. If a teacher doesn't like the fact that a historic figure owned slaves but still has to teach about them as part of the curriculum they cannot leave that out, lie about it, or tell you not to research it. They cannot tell you what to believe regarding anything. They also cannot leave out the word "slaves" if they don't like that word or feel it may offend some students and/or teachers. This applies to everything in the curriculum.

2. Require schools to conduct a survey assessing intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity at the school.

This means it's now law that colleges have to survey students and staff to find out if the school's environment is intellectually free and full of diverse viewpoints. This does not say ask everyone what their views are. It says ask everyone if this school's environment allows everyone's views, not just the popular views, to be voiced and allows people to think and speak freely rather than being told what they can and can't think or say.

This survey is what I see a lot of people freaking out over and I don't blame them. The way this is worded is somewhat hard to understand on the first read, even for me and I used to study law for fun. (Not in law school or anything similar, take what I say with a pinch of salt. I could be wrong but this is as I understand it.) Combine that with concerns about privacy that's rapidly being snatched from us day by day, fears of the government taking more control over our lives, which is very much valid, that would freak anyone out. I freaked out until I read the bill myself, and I had to read it a few times to understand it. I'll break down the parts that mainly have everyone's concern right now the best that I can.

"The State Board of Education shall require each Florida College System institution to conduct an annual assessment of the intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity at that institution."

This is just requiring that the State Board of Education requires an assessment that sees how intellectually free and how diverse viewpoints are in each college. In this case, colleges in Florida.

"The State Board of Education shall select or create an objective, nonpartisan, and statistically valid survey to be used by each institution which considers the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented and members of the college community, including students, faculty, and staff, feel free to express their beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom."

The State Board of Education will either select a survey made by someone else or create one themselves.

The requirements for the survey are:

1. The survey must be objective. The survey must be realistic.

2. The survey must be nonpartisan. The survey cannot lean towards any political side/party/view. The survey must be free of political affiliation and unbiased.

3. The survey must be statistically valid.

4. The survey must ask to what extent competing ideas and perspectives are presented to students and staff.

5. The survey must ask students and staff if they feel safe/free to express/voice their beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom.

"The State Board of Education shall annually compile and publish the assessments by September 1 of each year, beginning on September 1, 2022."

The State Board of Education will keep and publish the assessments by September 1st every year, (and as stated on page 1. the Board of Governors will also be looking at these results.) I interpreted this in three ways, there could be more. I believe it's up to the SBOE how they want to gather and publish the results. I'm unsure of which is going to be how this actually plays out or if any of them are how it will happen at all. I'm assuming the Board of Governors will just look at the results but they could be the ones tallying them up as well. Maybe both the SBOE and the BOG will be tallying and publishing the results.

1. This means the questions and answers will go to the SBOE and/or BOG electronically or via paper, and the SBOE and/or the BOG will publish the questions and answers, possibly not anonymously, by September 1st every year.

2. This means the survey results are tallied up by the school and probably turned into a percentage, (like % of how free students and staff feel to speak their minds) then sent to the SBOE and/or BOG and the SBOE and/or BOG will publish the results by September 1st every year. Probably more likely as that's less work and generally how survey results are displayed rather than putting out everyone's answers for everyone to see.

3. This means the surveys themselves are sent to the SBOE and/or BOG and the SBOE and/or BOG will tally up and publish the results as percentages by September 1st every year. This is probably about as likely as 2. since it's also less work and how survey results are generally displayed rather than putting out everyone's answers for everyone to see.

I guess it will depend on who trusts and/or assigns who to do the tallying. It could be these, it could be none of these, we currently don't know. This actually starts in 2022.

"The State Board of Education may adopt rules to implement this paragraph."

The State Board of Education can make rules on how to implement this in colleges in the state.

This bill does not require you to participate and does not require schools to make the survey mandatory. However, it also doesn't say that you won't have to participate, nor does it say that schools cannot make the survey mandatory. As far as I know, the survey can be mandatory if it does not ask for information that's protected under the law like political beliefs and that's because they cannot violate your right to privacy.

Basically, schools have to have the survey but this bill itself cannot force anyone to take it. From what I understand, that's either up to the Florida Department of Education or the schools themselves, maybe the Board of Governors.

About the survey itself? According to a spokesperson for The Florida Department of Education, it won't be asking you for your political opinions and the survey will be voluntary.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jun/25/viral-image/new-florida-law-requires-public-universities-surve/

If the survey does end up questioning you about your political beliefs, you do not have to answer and they cannot physically make you. This bill can not and does not give anyone the right to demand your political, religious, etc. beliefs from you.

If you do somehow end up forced into taking a survey that demands your political, religious, etc. opinions, views, beliefs, it's ok to lie or just not answer at all. Answer blatantly off the wall shit or just don't answer. Get up and walk out, exit the page, etc. It ain't any of their damn business.

If you have to answer before submitting it just fill out answers that don't make any sense.

Ex: If it asks who you support for president, answer Daphy Duck, your favorite character, Clef's hat, DickButt, [insert name here]'s left nut, flower petals, basically anything. Hell, answer a McDonald's order in Irken, Wookie, or any fictional language you know. Answer in Gallifreyan. (Imagine a bunch of circles getting sent to the government or educational board lmao.)

Click through the whole test and submit it blank! Turn in an empty Scantron/paper. If there's a minimum time limit, sleep or draw.

If you want to, write an entire essay on why you're not answering the questions and why you believe no one has the right to demand your beliefs/views/opinions from you. Write or type it anywhere you can, even if that's directly written over the questions if they let you/tell you to answer by writing on the packet/in the book, etc. Ask for scratch paper or write it on your answer paper otherwise.

If your school tries to make you take it via threatening punishments of any kind, and/or saying that this bill gives them the right to demand your opinions from you, (they are lying, it does not) blatantly ask them if they are trying to violate your right to privacy. Schools, work places, etc. CANNOT violate your rights and neither can this bill, nor does it.

Sometimes schools act like they have more power than they really do but that's just it. They're acting, and might even try to manipulate you into doing things/giving up info they have zero right to. Learn how to defend yourself, and what they are and are not legally capable of. Especially in these situations should they ever happen to you. I don't have a lot of good resources save for what I've posted here may be able to help? The internet however has tons. Seek them out, ask someone you trust, ask someone you agree with, ask someone you disagree with. Gather as much knowledge that you can and form your own opinions.

I can't promise there won't be repercussions of some kind if something like what we were all (and all things considered, to an extent still might be) afraid of ends up happening and you fight it, but you can fight it. They still have to obey the laws of the land and we deserve our privacy.

Do we have anything to worry about?

With the bill itself? As far as I know, no. The bill itself seems to be an attempt to make colleges a safer space for free speech and for ideas to be taught without being censored by staff or students. That's a good thing. Even if we disagree with something we need to be able to hear everything about it without anything being omitted or censored and allowed to challenge our own ideas ourselves with every bit of information from both sides of an argument rather than being told what to think or given a manipulated view that aims to sway our opinions and beliefs. Our opinions and beliefs should ALWAYS be OUR choice. Not someone else's and from what I understand this bill is all about that. If there's anything to worry about it would be a school, or anyone really, trying to lie about it and act like it gives them more power than they actually have.

There is however this:

The fact that HB 233 was inspired by surveys that do ask for political opinions raises an eyebrow. However, both of those surveys are anonymous and voluntary, and this bill doesn't ask for or demand political opinions, leanings, etc. to be included in the surveys, nor does the SBOE that's making/choosing the survey. It just asks if the environment is safe to speak freely in. So they just took the good parts as inspiration.

Honestly, I think we're fine.

[paipayaseeds]

When Shuichi came back, he'd be met with a sullen faced Kaede sweeping the room. Where the broom had came from? Unknown. The girl perked up upon the Detective's return, hand here her heart would be seeing the sensor hadn't gone off, meaning the mastermind hadn't attacked just yet.

"So no mastermind activity yet huh?"

------------------

The girl would sigh upon Rantaro's suddenly leaving, heart aching in guilt from the forehead kiss she just received. As much as she wanted to believe Rantaro..

She somehow knew that he wasn't going to the restroom. Especially not at a time like this.. Then again what would she know about his bathroom -

Off topic.

The time to act was now. She needed to get to him before he gets to the library.. So she can end this..

So she can protect Rantaro just as he did for her. No more crying.

No more hiding.

It needed to be done.

She'd silently tear out the note from her notebook, leaving behind however her notebook and pen on the pool table before taking advantage of Tenko and Kaito's arguing. She scurries over to the door and slides out of it carefully before making a dash to where Rantaro went.

Unbeknownst to her however,

Keebo had been looking in confusion.

"That's odd. Ms. Anya forgot to bring her writing utensils." He'd announce suddenly.

--------------

Anya had caught up with Rantaro in secret, though she was nearly almost too late.

The door to the library was almost within Rantaro's reach had he kept walking.. But she couldn't allow that. She's doing this for his own good the violinist chanted mentally, closing in on him from behind with a brick before closing her eyes, jumping and striking the back of his head with all the strength she could muster—a good amount it turned out to be.

With shaky hands and teary eyes she quickly wiped, the girl would apply the note*into his hands,closing the fingers around the paper and kissing it softly.

'Im sorry Rantaro.. I hope.. You can..-'

No.

'You can feel bad later.' Rantaro's gadgets in hand and memorizing his plan, the girl walked through the library door. She quickly grabs a pre-placed wooden pole she acquired from the warehouse from behind a bookshelf, sticking it through the door handles. This should prevent the mastermind or anyone from barging in. Her legs took her towards the secret door, just about to get to work before jumping at a sudden bright light.

'Huh?What the.. A camera?'

With an annoyed pout, the girl would use her free hand to try and disable the flash.

-----------

*what the note says

Rantaro, if you're reading this, it means uhm.. I knocked you out.. Sorry. This sounds stupid but, the day that bear gave that motive was the day I started having these.. These visions of your dying,

In the library. Crazy right?

I overhead you talking about your plan when you thought I was asleep on the last day.. I'm sorry. But, I'm not. If this means I can protect you then.. I won't regret it! I won't be scared this time! I'm gonna stop this and then.. And then we can go home.

So I ask you this last time,

To trust me.

To big bro Taro,

From your lil sis,

Anya Hoshiyama

p. S. I will consider letting you ruffle my hair after we get out of this 🙄

----------

It's about to fucking happen I hate it I hate it-

Kaito looked at the spot where Anya had been seated earlier, eyes widening by barely an inch as K1B0 had been right. "Oh, well, I'm sure she'll come back and get it." Tenko jerked her head towards him, an almost offended look in her eye, "Of course a degenerate male would be that inconsiderate of a woman's needs!" Tenko, without another thought, grabbed Anya's leftover things and made her way to the door, huffing as Kaito followed like a lost puppy behind her path. "W- wait, I can give it to her!"

Tenko, ignoring him, slid open the door and walked through, only to halt in her step as a distressed detective, and a panicked pianist nearly crashed into them and caused them to tumble back like dominoes.

--

As soon as Shuichi found Kaede... sweeping? Um, anyways- He shook his head in slight relief, and strangely, disappointment. “No... N- not yet—” Shuichi yelped, entire body jumping and tensing up as the receiver he held in his hand, started going off. After juggling the receiver—and almost dropping the damn thing—he caught it, and looked at Kaede with an alarmed expression, “The alarm! It went off! We have to go- Kaede, hurry!” With his voice booming in assertively and urgently, he sprinted out of the classroom.

Leaving Kaede behind without another thought, he called out for her to hurry, before hurrying down the stairs himself, for the second time. Shuichi had gone into a full-on sprint, nearly barrelling into Kaito and Tenko who had been standing there in confusion, yet also determination—and pride, for whatever reason.

"Oh hey, Shuichi! We were just about to go find Anya to give her, her supplies!" Shuichi shook his head, seemingly out of breath from sprinting down a single flight of stairs. "I- N- no! There's a chance t- the mastermind is in the library right now!"

Brushing past them, he immediately started rushing towards the library doors, only to jerk back and skid to a halt as he saw Rantaro's unconscious body, lying stiffly in front of the library doors. Kaito turned to see why Shuichi had made such an icky noise with his shoes, only to gasp and take a step back himself. "W- what the hell!?"

Tenko let out a blood-curdling scream, "Oh my god, he's dead!" Shuichi gulped down his own nervousness, inhaling a breath as he tried to remain level-headed(as if he was level-headed before smh). Unsure of whether to leave Rantaro there or to catch the mastermind, he inhaled once again and made a split-second decision; something he would never do if it hadn't been a life-threatening situation. "Kaede- just- all of you! Get into the library through the other doors, I'll- I'll check on Rantaro!"

With his voice commanding and strong, he signalled to the doors; sure, it probably would've been better if the only detective within the 17 students witnessed the scene himself, he wasn't thinking properly and there was only so much time before the mastermind escaped.

After the fast tapping of everyone busting into the library, he wasted no time approaching the green-haired male with shaky, but stable steps. Shuichi crouched down to put his hand in front of his mouth to check for breathing, sighing as he felt air exit from Rantaro's mouth.

Shaking the male awake, Shuichi felt a heavyweight lift off his shoulders as Rantaro groaned; another sign that he was alive, something the detective didn't know he needed.

"Wh-" Rantaro creaked his eyes open, only to shoot up as everything seemed to hit him at once, just like that brick. His plan! Feeling around for his pockets for the survivor perk, he felt a panic rise up in him, as well as a throbbing pain at the back of his head. Did the mastermind find out his plan? Had he just been a victim of attempted murder? What about the time limit? Why weren't they all dead? How long had he passed out for?

"No, no, no, no-! Shuichi! T- the time limit! What happened!?" Rantaro whipped his still aching head towards the worried detective, holding onto the wall for support as he got up with the help of the door handles of the library he hadn't even set foot in.

Shuichi panicked, "D- don't you need to sit down-?" Rantaro ignored him, pulling against the doors frantically in a surge of adrenaline-evoked panic. "Why is it locked!?" Rantaro huffed, suddenly feeling a shortage of breath as his arms went limp on the doors. A wave of frustration and exhaustion washed over him, as well as a feeling of failure.

Furrowing his brow at the frantic, yet currently heavyhearted and tired man, Shuichi found himself questioning Rantaro's panic-induced actions. "Why do you need to get into the library...? Do... Do you know about the secre-"

Tenko's blood-curdling scream interrupted Shuichi's suspicion.

"A- ANYA!?"

Rantaro darted his head back up to the sound of Anya's name, coming from inside the library. Moving to run, he found a wave of new pain hit him, and he had to hold onto Shuichi for help. "I- H- her name, she- We need to get into the library now!" Rantaro cut off his near panic attack, instead, settling for using Shuichi as a cane as he practically 'ran' to the other door of the library.

Bursting open into the doors, they somehow lumped in with Gonta, Korekiyo, Himiko and Angie who had come running to the sound of the scream.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi there. I've been scrolling through your "school stuff" tag but thought I'd ask directly - how did you find the transition to actually moving outside of the U.S. for your PhD? I'm looking at something similar and I'm wondering about your experience with the logistics (finding somewhere to live, visa, etc!). Thanks in advance, and congrats on being a doctor!

Oh lord. Why would you do that to yourself? I feel like that tag is mostly just intense kvetching, bogglingly obscure nitpicking complaints, and existential despair, and/or yelling at various institutions and/or people who could not do their god damn jobs. If you have read that and still actually want my advice, I salute you. I’m presuming you’re asking in regard to the UK, since it’s the only experience I can speak on, so hopefully that’s applicable?

In my case, I studied in the UK for a year as an undergraduate, at Oxford, so I was already familiar with the process (at least somewhat) when it came time to do it again for the PhD. Upfront, we must acknowledge the ugly deformed rabid elephant in the room that is Brexit, and the idiotic reform of UK immigration policy currently ongoing. Long story short, they seem to think they can function without low-skilled migration, that the domestic UK workforce will just happily lark off to do the jobs that working-class EU migrants have been doing, that this won’t totally bomb-crater the NHS, that they can run a country by basically only allowing in PhDs in STEM making over £30,000 a year, etc… so yes, this is a complete joke of an immigration policy and it’s what happens when you elect floppy haired xenophobic douchewads and their nightmare party as prime minister! ANYWAY, they’re introducing a points-based system from 2021, which may not affect you for an application under Tier 4, but UK immigration policy is going to have a lot of very stupid reforms and you’ll want to keep on top of those. If you have an offer in hand from a UK university, it is made somewhat easier, but you’ll still need to budget for processing costs, an NHS subsidy paid in for every year you will be there (something like $300/year), and a trip to a UK visa office to have your fingerprints and biometric information taken. If you don’t live near one, that will be travel expenses and so forth. You then have a temporary visa issued for first entry into the country, and a Biometric Residence Permit which you pick up at your university.

That, at least, was the process the last time I applied for a student visa, and it may all have changed by the time you do it. As noted, there are a lot of upfront visa costs, so you’ll want to be aware of those. You need a number of supporting documents, including offer of study, proof of income or ability to financially support yourself (since most Tier 4 visas either don’t let you work or only work a limited number of hours), proof of English proficiency (as a native English speaker/person from an English-speaking country, you won’t need this), and so on. You can’t start the process before you have the offer, but you’ll want to start it as soon as possible afterward, because it can take several months, and obviously needs to be done before you can travel. You will also want to open a UK bank account as soon as you arrive, which can be done once you have your residential address and a certificate from the student services office at your university verifying that you are in fact a student there. It’s pretty difficult to pay out of non-UK accounts, at least for monthly/recurring transactions, and there are international fees. You will also want a UK phone. I still have my UK phone/phone number despite my current hiatus in America, since most carriers offer free or low-cost roaming in Europe (though subject to change with EU trade negotiations), which is nice. I pay only a little extra to have Global Roaming in North America, so I can still use my phone as if I’m in the UK. If you’re planning to be traveling, this is a nice perk to have.

As far as finding programs goes, I’m sure I don’t need to give you advice on what you’re interested in and where you’re looking. Obviously, universities in the UK are grouped as “Oxford and Cambridge” and “everyone else,” though there are also rankings within those. I have been at both of these; Oxford as an undergrad, and then I did my PhD at a large public university in the North that ranks within the top 10 in the UK. The North will be much lower, living-cost wise (actually, if you can swing it, just… don’t do it in London, the cost of living in London is out of control. Of course, if the program you really have your heart set on is in London, then go for it, but just be aware of what you’re getting into). It’s also a rule of thumb that you don’t go anywhere for a PhD unless they’re paying you. Don’t self-fund a PhD, it’s just too expensive, and any decent university will give you some kind of financial stipend. I had a scholarship that covered three years of full tuition at international rate, which was good, though I had to take out some living-cost loans. So if you’re trying to decide between two programs that have both accepted you, a situation I was also lucky enough to be in, it sounds crass, but: take the money. One university had already offered me the tuition/scholarship, while the other had accepted me but wasn’t sure about funding. So I took the one that paid the scholarship. You need every penny you can get. You will be comically, absurdly, unbelievably broke as a graduate student. I was looking back on it like “wow I really lived for four years on BUTTFUCK NOTHING.” It is not for the faint of heart; you will have financial stress along with academic pressure, and while I was lucky enough to have generous friends and family contributing to my living costs, I still barely scraped through. It is something you should be aware of.

I don’t know if you’ve studied in the UK system before (I’m assuming not), but the structure for a PhD is much less determined than in the American system. It will also vary from university to university, so it’s worth establishing contact with a potential faculty supervisor to ask questions and refine your project proposal. I made contact with my eventual supervisor at my PhD university before I actually applied there; I gave him my (much too broad and pretty unrefined) project proposal and what I was interested in, and he helped me tailor it into something that could be done in a feasible time frame and which would make use of his expertise and contribute to the field. Whatever you’re thinking about pitching as a thesis topic, you probably need to make it more specific. I don’t know what field you’re in; I’m a humanities/history person, obviously, so the rule always seems to be WRITE MORE, INFIDEL. But the point is, the UK system has much less structured time, and basically relies on you to have the self-motivation to go out and conduct the research and write it up, and if you’re someone more used to rigid requirements and classes and so forth, you might find it a little hands-off. If you’re like me and can just be set loose in your field of interest and do your own thing, you’ll like it. I feel like anyone who is serious enough about their subject to want to do a PhD has to be primarily self-motivating, but some people function better with clear guidelines, and those are not always forthcoming. I can’t count the number of times I wished my supervisors would just TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK TO DO, but they usually highlighted something and had me work to figure out how exactly to fix it. They weren’t negligent or uncaring or unsupportive, and the project became much better as a result, but yes, it’s on you to do, and it can again be frustrating.

As far as living, I didn’t try to rent a flat from afar, sight unseen, in my first year. I just registered for postgraduate campus housing, and lived with four predictably horribly messy roommates (why???!) before I managed to escape and rent a private flat for the next three years. You will need a guarantor with a UK address (i.e. not your parents in America) to sign on the lease agreement, especially if you fall below a certain income threshold, and go through the usual background checking and approval. If you want to have the place to yourself, it will be, as noted, much cheaper to find something you can afford in the North and not-London in general, though southern England and the London commuter belt will all be expensive. If you’re okay living with roommates, or you make friends during your program, it might work to room together and share costs, but I am a pathological introvert and don’t like people, so I lived by myself. 

Anyway. Right now, I am in the second round of applications for a Big Deal UK postdoctoral award, which would be for three years starting this fall if I got it, at another high-ranking large public university in the south of England. (So yes, everything that I just said about how much it costs to live in London/London suburbs is me playing myself). I would be applying for a Tier 2 visa (i.e. the permanent/settlement track/full-time work visa) if I got this, which would be another barrel of laughs and different requirements from a Tier 4. That is definitely unhatched chickens which we can’t count yet, as this is a highly competitive/prestigious award and there is absolutely no guarantee that I would get it, but it would mean that I would go through the international moving/visa application process for a third time, so I would once again become too unfortunately familiar with whatever bullshittery is happening now. Le sigh.

I don’t know if any of that is helpful; hopefully so. Let me know if you have more questions, and good luck.

[windless-hurricane]

Pennywise and the Dancing Girl

Chapter 1: The Shadow Girl

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SUMMARY: At the moment, I want this to be solely mysterious. I will say though that the "Shadow Girl" isn't who she seems and this will eventually become a Henry x OC (or reader) fanfic.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Before I begin, this story takes place in the 2017 IT universe. I also shifted some pieces of information around. So before I'm scolded for inaccuracies, I'll say them now. First off, I combined the Derry Middle School and High School. I wasn't sure if that was the case in the movie, but it wasn't stated. Nevertheless, I will still refer to it as Derry High. The main character is 14 and a freshman (going on sophomore). The entire Losers Club will be in 8th grade (going on to be freshmen) and all 13. The Bowers Gang are all sophomores (going on juniors) and 15, excluding Henry who is 16.

WARNINGS (for the entire series): Explicit language, violence, graphic scenes involving blood and/or death, some sexuality possibly, and some underage drinking and drug use.

WORD COUNT: 2.7k

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was the last day of school. I couldn't lie and say I wasn't somewhere near excited. I knew it wasn't the last day of school altogether, but it would definitely be a step up from my current status as a freshman. All 8th graders dream of becoming freshmen; but once they realize the difficulties of dealing with upperclassmen, they want to join them. That had been the same mindset for me. Not only was I freshman, I was a transferee. That normally wouldn't be such a big deal, but it was at this school.

See, Derry High wasn't a typical high school. It included middle school as well. So, almost all the children here were attending this school for half their lives. They started in 6th grade and ended as seniors. Everyone knew everybody. Due to that, I thought I'd become a perfect candidate for teasing. I was practically fresh meat. However, that didn't happen. Why? Because I was barely noticeable. I kept to myself, hardly spoke a word to anyone, and moved swiftly through the halls like a shadow, avoiding certain people. It soon had become an objective to avoid four sophomores in particular: Henry Bowers, Patrick Hockstetter, Victor Criss, and Reginald "Belch" Huggins.

They were douchebags who got a kick out of tormenting anyone they saw below them. As a result of their animosity, even the juniors and seniors were afraid of them. You never messed with the "Bowers Gang" as they called themselves. I, a rarity, was not afraid of them and never would be. I just wanted to stay the shadow that I liked being and it became a promise to myself.

I kept to that promise for the entire year and now all I had to do was get through this day like any other. Then, it would be summer vacation, which was full of reading and...reading. I didn't have any friends, but I was satisfied with that. It was better to not get too attached to people you would end up leaving. In a way, that was my curse: the inability to care for anyone because you are not worth caring for. But it would be ok.

I walked through the front doors of the school, clutching the straps to my bag. Other students were already situated inside, engaging in morning chatter and shenanigans. I...went straight to my locker. I knew I had to empty it out and it would be better to do it now than later. So, I put in the combination and got to work. I wasn't necessarily the neatest, but it didn't look like the aftermath of a hurricane. Just messy. There were notebooks, textbooks, and a bunch of scattered and crumbled pieces of paper. It didn't take long to stuff these into my bag and throw what was left away. I closed my locker with a slam, but it didn't echo like it normally would because of background conversation.

I glanced around and my eyes ending up following the scene of two boys running away in the direction opposite to mine. Moments after, Henry Bowers and his gang of misfits were in the shot. He had an apparent smirk on his face. Probably from gloating because of the amount of power he had over the kids here. The thought of it was enough to make me roll my eyes; but I continued to watch, seeing if he would do anything else. He didn't. Just as I was about to turn away, his eyes met mine. He knew I had been staring and didn't have the intention of letting me go.

His eyes were crystal blue and they contradicted mine: my chocolatey brown. However, they still managed to be darker than mine and mine brighter than his. He didn't hold any expression in his face and neither did I. It was just blank staring. This wasn't the first time we did this. Occasionally throughout the year, we'd find each other's eyes, but never did anything about it. He didn't know me and he assumed I didn't know him. We had never been in the same vicinity as each other because if he was ever too close, I would've found a way out. All we had was this.

I hated to admit it, but he was quite pretty to look at. It didn't throw my hormones out of whack or anything. I stared at him because of his eyes. His eyes were dark, beautiful, and so familiar to me. I couldn't put my finger on it. It seemed I had looked into those eyes even before I knew him. There was something that intrigued me about them. I knew there was something hidden there. Even if I already had an idea, I longed to know myself.

I gulped out of my trance and released the handle to my locker. I stared just a bit longer until I turned away, losing sight of him and those eyes. Who would've known that days later Henry would tell me himself that he saw me as this mysterious girl that he wanted to crack. A girl that actually drew him in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was able to make it through three classes of Algebra, English and History. Since it had been the last day of school, we hardly did anything. There was clearly no homework to assign or assignments to finish. It was either a free for all with limited volume or we watched a movie on the projector. I was only interested in the movie. Currently I had one more class until lunch and no doubt, it was going to be the same as the others. It was actually quite a relief. Relaxing felt...nice. It nearly brought a smile to my face before I was interrupted.

My head snapped up on impulse as I heard a loud smack echo through the hallway. It didn't startle me, but it certainly caught my attention because before I knew it, I was rounding the corner quickly with a newfound purpose. It was a boy and he was lying on the ground. Getting a clearer shot, I saw that it was Eddie Kaspbrak, the local hypochondriac. I never knew him on a personal level, but I always saw him around. As you can tell, I knew a lot more about him than he did me. That's how it usually was with people. I knew along with him being a hypochondriac, he was a germaphobe who constantly expressed his paranoia to his friends. Other than that, he was quite funny and would never shut up about the evils of sickness and blessings of cleanliness. I sometimes found it rather cute.

He was also a favorite plaything of the Bowers Gang, along with the rest of his friends, Bill Denbrough, Stanley Uris, and Richie Tozier. I saw them around quite often too, either goofing off or arguing. I wonder where they were to have left Eddie alone. To have left him alone with Bowers and the dick squad. Maybe he was just unlucky. Henry had been manhandling Eddie's fanny pack and dumping its contents onto the floor beside him. I could only assume Eddie tried getting it back, but was only met with a shove to the ground. All I did was stare. It seems that's all I was good for.

Even though they deserved a good beating, I never interfered. It was part of the promise and it hadn't been difficult to maintain until now. I nearly wanted to break it. I don't know why, but the feeling was there. It wasn't enough to push me though as the fanny pack was already empty. I watched as Henry threw the pack at Eddie's face and mouthed something that I couldn't make out. Most likely it was some humiliating insult. I looked to Eddie and his expression killed me. Was it - sadness? Anger? Disappointment? It could be helped.

I walked over quietly and squatted down near him as he sat up. He gave me a shocked and questioning look before I began to gather his belongings into the fanny pack. He wasn't moving or saying anything, just watching like I had been moments ago. There was an inhaler, a few containers of pills, bandage. I guess this also served as a small first aid kit. Nice. I stood up and glanced around, making sure I collected everything. I had, expect for Eddie. I zipped up the pack before reaching my hand out to him. His expression managed to change. Why was he looking at me like that? It's like I was some miracle. Then, he looked to my hand and I smiled softly,

"Don't worry. I just came from the bathroom. It's clean."

His gaze switched between my face and hand until he finally took it. His was oddly soft. I helped him up gently and let it go as soon as he was up.

"Um, here," I muttered out, handing him his pack. He was still staring at me and finally, he snapped out of it. He took it quickly.

"T-thanks...um..." he cocked an eyebrow.

"Emma," I finished. "Emma Gray."

"Thanks, Emma." Red found its way onto his face. Was he really blushing?

"It's no problem. No one should face a jagoff alone." He smiled and it made me smirk. I reached into the side pocket of my bag and pulled out my mini bottle of hand sanitizer, showing it off to him. "I noticed you were almost out and you're definitely going to need a lot more to get rid of the stench of Bowers and his goons." I breathed out a laugh. "Here." I handed it to him and he took it almost joyfully.

I smiled completely and for once, it felt real. However, it was short lived. The bell rang.

"Shoot," I groaned. "We should get to class, like, now. It was nice talking to you. See you around, Eddie." I know I didn't give him time to respond, but there wasn't time for a response. I turned around and headed the opposite direction to class.

(EDDIE'S P.O.V.)

"Wait," I called out, but she was already gone.

"Damnit." How did she already know my name? I looked at the bottle she gave me and her name was written across the label in black marker. Her handwriting was beautiful. I let my thumb run over her name as I smiled to myself.

"Emma - Emma Gray."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(BACK TO EMMA'S P.O.V.)

I made it through Biology and as expected, we watched a movie - a real boring one about the inner mechanisms of a cell. It was over and time for lunch. I was looking forward to it because of what I packed today. If I did it right, it was going to be delicious. I began to fantasize about the greatness of my meal until I was forcefully pulled out of it. Could the world just not leave me to my mind today? Geez.

It was a noise and a deafening one at that. It came from down the hall and it was loud enough to make me wince, slight pain being brought to my ears. Who was it this time and why do they keep interrupting me? Thinking about it more, should I even ask? Knowing this school and its students, it was without a doubt Bowers. Did I want to find out? No. Would I inevitably end up finding out? Yes. This was the only way to the damned cafeteria.

I inched slowly down the hall, not in any rush to get an answer. I wasn't a nosy person. I actually considered myself quite considerate of other people's business. Then, I heard whimpering. I rolled my eyes harshly as I quickened my pace. What's wrong with you, Emma? Why are you being so interactive today? Why the hell do you even care? No one else in this god forsaken school does, why should you? Don't you remember the promise? You're too good for this, but maybe there was a reason not to be too good. Maybe it was Eddie and his call for help.

I rounded the corner and it wasn't Eddie, loosing a good amount of motivation. It was Ben Hanscom, the other new kid. Chubby, adorable, vulnerable, and being pushed up against the lockers by Bowers while his goons watched in amusement. I scoffed. This was the second time today. Was this really his way of celebrating the last day of school?

"Hey!" Oh, Emma. What the hell are you doing? You know you could care less.

All five boys turned their attention towards me with different expressions on each of their faces. Ben's eyes were pleading and hopeful while he was completely red in the face. Patrick was smirking creepily and it was enough to make me shudder. Victor and Belch actually held a similar look that reeked of 'Who the hell is this girl?' For the main star, he just looked pissed.

"The fuck do you want," he questioned deeply, his eyes peering into me.

"For you not to be a conniving dickhead," I stated proudly, stopping in front of them with my arms crossed. I don't know where this surge of confidence was coming from, but I kinda liked it.

"The fuck did you just say to me," he let go of Ben and started lurking towards me. This was the perfect chance for him to get away. The boys were entirely focused on me. I looked passed Henry's shoulder and my eyes met Ben's. He was terrified and astonished. I nodded my head up slightly, gesturing for him to go. He didn't get it the first time; but after repeating it, he got it and ran away. I looked back to Henry,

"You heard me." This is the closest I've ever been to him. We were nearly a foot apart. He was significantly taller than I was, not a giant, but taller. Had surprisingly muscular arms and I never noticed the upturn of his nose before. He broke the distance with one more step. I wanted to step away because of the awkwardness, but I also didn't want to give him the satisfaction. I simply kept my arms crossed and craned my neck up to look at him. He did the opposite with his neck, but also crossed his arms. Maybe this was a way of establishing dominance.

"I don't think I heard you quite right. Mind repeating what you said," he pushed. He was trying to scare me, but I don't scare easy.

"I said, I don't want you to be a conniving dickhead."

"I don't care about what you want," he retorted.

"You're the one who asked, honey." He let out a breathy laugh.

"No one gets away with talking to me like that, sweetheart."

"I think I just did."

"I like her," a voice called out. I soon realized it belonged to Patrick. Shame because I didn't like him. "What're we going to do with her, Henry?" Henry opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off.

"I'll tell you what's going to happen. I'm going to walk away and enjoy myself a lovely meal in the cafeteria, while you four stand around and play with each other's dicks. And then you're never going to bother me ever again. Got it? Ok." I moved to walk past him, but he grabbed my bicep instead.

"It's not that easy," he told me, squeezing roughly. I yanked my arm away harshly, catching him off guard.

"It is that easy because I'm not afraid of you, Henry," I let out through gritted teeth. With that, I pushed past him, hitting my shoulder with his purposely.

(HENRY'S P.O.V.)

Patrick scoffed, "You're just going to let her get away with that? She deserves to be taught a lesson to." I agreed. I completely agreed, but she wouldn't be easy.

"I know," is all I managed to say before I turned to face them. "Do any of you know her?" They all shook their head uselessly, causing me to roll my eyes.

Vic was the only one to speak,

"I know she's a freshman, just not the name." I nodded,

"Lets get outta here." I walked ahead, knowing they would automatically follow. It was that girl. She knew my name, but I didn't know hers. It bothers me, but a lot more than it should. How could I not know the name of a girl like that?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THAT IS THE END OF CHAPTER 1. Hopefully you enjoyed it! This is the first chapter of a definite series :)

[hiselanne]

7 Essential Questions to ask thyself

Talking to yourself is not a weird thing but generally a good thing to get to know more about yourself. It is how you nourish your intrapersonal communication that affects everything that you do in life.

What are the questions that you can ask yourself to deeply understand how you feel and what are things you think would give you fulfillment?

This blog may be helpful to those who are lost and confused about what they really want or want to do in life.

There are possible ways on how you can recreate yourself to keep growing and become the best version of yourself because the reality is, we are all unique in every way. To go deeper into your inner self and discover a lot of possibilities, you may write down and try to answer the following questions that will help you achieve your wants, needs, dreams and aspiration in building yourself. (It'd be better if you have a journal for this.)

1. Who and what do I want to become?

This question may be quite broad but through your past and current experiences, you can list down all your likes and interests.

I know each and every one of us have a dream. It may be wanting to becoming a successful engineer, a young-billionaire, a UNICEF- Ambassador, or maybe someone who only wants to own a farm. Whether small or big, it still is a dream. It sets us to become determined, directed, inspired and motivated. After all, our self-fulfillment varies individually.

Imagine who you are, and what you possibly would be doing 5 to 10 years from now. Dream and visualize. If you don’t know where you are right now, think about the things that you love and begin with them.

2. What are the things that you want to learn?

We know that education is a continuous process. Whether you already attained the highest degree of education, we should never stop learning because learning is always associated with growing. You stop learning, you stop growing.

Choose any field of knowledge that you would like to add up to your credentials to help sharpen your mind and improve your cognitive,affective, and performance skills.

You may also list down any experience that you want to acquire like, attending musical workshops, art class and so on. This is also beneficial in many aspects of our being.

We should always be driven to gain and learn new things.

You may also add this question to be more specific:

Aside from the skills you have right now, what are other skills that you wanted to acquire?

List down as many as you can and you may also classify them whether it is a business skill, leadership skill, creativity skills and etc.

3. What are the good things about you that will remind yourself that you are good enough and worthy?

In identifying ourselves in the midst of our goal and aspiration, sometimes it may be overwhelming because nothing worth comes easy. Before we get to accomplish big things, we have to try and work hard for it, to keep us motivated and avoid being drowned in our own negativity, self-doubt or overthinking, enlighten yourself by writing all the good things you know about yourself, you may refer to your own character,positive traits, past experiences,current achievements and learnings. Creating and refocusing a brighter mind-set is the key to keep you driven and feel good about yourself. As much as possible avoid comparing yourself to other accomplished people. (I myself am quite guilty of this) But this is normal and completely fine and as much as possible, try not to think about it often. After all, it is just a temporary sign of vulnerability and a proof that we are all just human. So forgive yourself for that matter. Focus on what you are up to.

4. What is/are your specific dream/s? Are you committed to make it/ them real?

(I haven't literally written down my answer yet but I have it in mind.)

In achieving a goal we always apply the principle of SMART ( I’m neither a financial adviser nor a successful preacher but in my P.E class we always apply these principles in physical training of students, for them to achieve their target fitness goal)

SMART stands for:

S-pecific

M-easurable

A-chievable

R-ealistic

T-ime bounded

These principles are general and can be applied in anything that we want to achieve, may it be about your business venture, results in exam, or career goals.

Yes, it’s important that we should be specific in our goals to set a clear direction and procedure to attain it, and we can only have a certain chance of success if we commit ourselves to it. It may require lots of attempts, a lot of sacrifices. But these are things that make success a lot more worthy in the end.

If it’s a dream, you do what ever it takes to take it. If you don’t, it’s just a wish.

5. What are your strengths and weaknesses?

We are all guilty of our insecurities. Insecurities attack in many forms according to psychology but since this is only a personal view of mine, I will not elaborate it.

In embracing oneself and to fully understand where we are coming from, we should be aware and be truthful about our ups and downs. Nobody is perfect and what we can only do is to embrace that we are perfectly imperfect!

When we take note of these things, we are able to realize and accept our whole self and when it happens, nothing can go wrong and against us.

Tip: Try to write them in a chart so that you will be able to think about ways to enrich your strength and deal with your weaknesses.

6. What is stopping you from doing what you want to do?

When we don't have full control of ourselves we easily get distracted, frightened and discouraged to do the unknown things.

List them down so that you can pinpoint your "do's" and trim down your "donts" that takes you away from being the GOLD that you are meant to be.

7. What do you hate and love about yourself?

We have to face it, that we have a side of us that we love and the side of us that we don't. The only way to conquer ourselves is to accept our nature and limits and use them to be limitless.

Yes, you've read it right, it's quite contradicting but the only way to go beyond our limits is to accept it and when we already know how to deal with it, we become free and feel limitless ( in a sense that the things we hate will never be used against us to restrict us from doing the things we love and dream)

By the way, if you have already listed the things you love about yourself,give yourself credit, compliment yourself, (ex: I am artistic,I can dance and write songs, I'm also good in Geometry,I am so creative) and about the things that you hate, feel what you want to feel but always remind yourself that it is totally okay. Forgive yourself for being so hard and try to loosen up. Cry or lament about it, but always remember that it doesn't make you worthless and a bad person, so again, IT'S OKAY. Give yourself a time to heal and accept what you cannot change and improve what you can.

These questions are only guide that may help you when you feel like you can't figure out yourself in the middle of circumstances that are beyond your control, and after dealing and trying to answer these, you will feel a lot better.

In difficult times, it's not bad to put ourselves first above everything else. We only have one life and the only way to live it well is to do what makes and would make us happy, fulfilled and at peace.

Make it a habit to say or write something good about yourself every time you wake up or before beginning your daily routine,whatever you're doing, as long as it makes you happy, go for it. There is no small or big effort because we've got our own purpose in this world.

We've got different lives to live and path to take but what truly matters is the love we get from one self and other people who are dear to us.

Love,

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN BLACKWELL

You don't win fights by thinking of big ideas but by thinking of tricks that work in one particular case. I think this will be the limit; the number of spams that have been readjusted. That's normal for startups. A good trick for bypassing the schlep and to some extent, yes. In addition to their intrinsic value, they're like undervalued stocks in the sense that I have wondered about it for themselves, rely instead on the opinions of the elite in this country think of taste as something elusive, or even perhaps look where he's going while he's thinking about some interesting question. Maybe if you do, talk to them, equalled big, honking Windows apps. Having people around you and ask yourself which you'd like to work with. The computer would be just as much. I never considered it till this summer, but this was in the spring of 1998, before Google was founded, the conventional wisdom. It depends on what works to treat as property. You can't fight market forces forever. But Apple doesn't understand that either.

I just wanted to hack. In fact, so unconsciously that you don't have to be aggressive about user acquisition when you're small, you'll probably grow, your price will go up, and the bureaucratic obstacles all medical startups face, they'll be able to see things from the user's point of view anyway. The phenomenon isn't limited to books. 1 was, if I was interested in AI a hot topic then, he told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up in and that of a successful startup is going to love, and spend less than you make. They're not very common, but the relative importance of determination and flexibility you need is good hackers: when something's broken, they need to run spreadsheets on it, or do something because that's what you need as a hacker I can't help thinking about how something broken could be fixed within a few months old and doesn't have a probability for it. When Bauhaus designers adopted Sullivan's form follows function, but I don't know any technology companies that have already launched or can launch during YC. I know who favor markets are Marc, Jawed Karim, and Joe Kraus. Part of what he meant was that in some ways we were a step ahead of Venezuela. Successful founders are in love with their companies. It's not just that if you get a lot of valuable advice about business, and they're begging not to be at the very beginning.

You're doing the same thing. The first time I wrote that paragraph, instead of going to an elite college; you learn more from them than the professors. But I remember thinking his company's name was odd. Fourth, they calculated probabilities differently. But we invest in such a roundabout way that the ones you never hear of deals where a VC invests $6 million at a time. What students lack in experience they more than make up in dedication. What does it mean, exactly? IBM. All they saw were carefully scripted campaign spots. There was a good time to start a startup as a 19 year old. For example, knowing what to make, it's mere effort to make software incompatible.

So in practice big companies only get to develop technology in fields where large capital requirements prevent startups from competing with them. But it's not because liberals are smarter that this is only done to suspected spams. In the software world, this idea is known as Worse is Better is found throughout the arts. Most founders who get contacted by corp dev already know what the basic human reaction to a piece of software. Trevor Blackwell is a great artist: it's the one time that hacking is the applied version of what theoretical computer science is the theory of computation about as much as any startup needs initially. It has become one of the few, artificial, easy tests they've faced in life so far. I'm not even sure what they want will also tend to increase it sufficiently the next time you need to simplify and clarify, and the policeman at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to live in the boring sprawl of the valley proper, or live in San Francisco wearing a jeans and a t-shirt, they're nice to you; who knows who you might be able to describe it is all the different kinds of work. The name of a variable or function is an element; a segment of literal text is an element; an element of subjection. White than from an academic philosopher. If I'm right, then it is spam.

But the idea terrified me at first. So rule number zero is: these rules exist for a reason. Miraculously it all turned out ok. When you list everything ambitious people are ambitious about, it's not Lisp that sucks, but Common Lisp. Founders never really liked giving up as much equity as VCs do now. The mathematicians don't seem bothered by this. It was not until Hotmail was launched a year later and say I want to spend as little time inside the minds of spammers as possible. Investors don't like trying to run through people. We're taking on some consulting projects, but we're not willing to admit. The one possible exception are things like working in fast food. But there might be some businesses that it would be better off taking a class on, say, 1970, I think, because they're already running through that in their current state they have nothing to lose. Better check.

If they make your life difficult. The desire for speed is so deeply engrained in us, with our puny computers, that it made sense to invest in startups Y Combinator has been an unprecedented opportunity for learning how to write. It could be interesting to eavesdrop on people, but diluted by a sixth. It would have been happy if just one of the inventors of the transistor. Isaac Newton Newton has a strange syntax as because it has no relation to what you build for them. 20th century cohesion disappeared because of few policy tweaks, we'll be increasingly unable to rely on cold calls and introductions. Your Research which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter how inexperienced you seem or how unpromising your idea sounds at first, room to recover from mistakes is a valuable tool in painting too, though perhaps none of them agreed with everything in it. In a sense, when this happens, of wasting something precious. Unfortunately there's no antonym of hapless, which makes software free; the web has made marketing and distribution free; and more powerful programming languages mean development teams can be smaller. Most of the people.

Are there walkable neighborhoods? The informal delivery mechanism was me, showing up in jeans and t-shirts. The paintings that were popular at the low end and the high end, but not design it. Cram schools turn wealth in one generation into credentials in the next 40 years than it does now. I suspect. And the spammers would also, of course, but someone who really devoted himself to work could generate ten or even hundreds of microcancers going at once, because you will never again be so productive. Prognosis Who will win, the super-angels seem to care at all about it. And so ten years ago trying to sell the company. It was as if I'd told him how much girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid 2000s. Why should anyone care about a startup making $3000 a month do not mean the company has all the elements of a good programming language. And if there are any axioms that could be taught better by itself. Really, Google was funded with angel money.

Most startups coming out of organs not designed for that purpose. The only real difference between adults and high school, I let myself believe that my job was to be driven by how well you do in college would be like drinking from a firehose. Dropbox wasn't rejected by all the East Coast VCs. Everyone's model of work is a facebook exclusively for college students. If your city isn't already a startup hub. That's a reasonable proxy for revenue growth because whenever the startup does start trying to maximize this. That cap need not simply rise monotonically. The reason the filters caught them was that both companies in January switched to commercial email senders instead of sending the mails from their own startups and those working for money. I know delivering a prewritten talk your attention is always divided between the audience and the talk—even if you succeed, you'll have the most to lose, seem to see the better idea when it arrives. Increasingly it will mean the end of the Bubble showed that generic business guys don't make such great stuff, but also like an undervalued stock in that so few founders know whether they're default alive or default dead is that the percentage of the company if he'd let us have it. They use the same word for a brilliant or a horribly cheesy solution. I have to give them your full attention.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Hi! May I ask how you learned so much about various historical figures? I'd like to start learning myself, but I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't have access to a good education and never learned how to properly do research. Apart from reading their Wiki pages and various biographies (which I know can be an unreliable minefield) I have no idea how to gain an accurate, well-rounded knowledge of certain historical figures. Do you have any advice on where I should start?

Hey!  Don’t be embarrassed about not having access to a good education--that is absolutely not your fault, you have nothing to be ashamed of, and as someone who might want to get into academia as a career one day...  Traditional education is extremely overrated in many ways.  I was actually homeschooled off and on by my mom until I was in high school, and that really helped me learn how to learn.  In fact, my mom used the “unschooling” method in that I largely picked what I wanted to learn about and learned about it; she has a degree in early childhood development and was a teacher, so she believed that benefited kids way more than traditional schooling.  And that’s part of why I know what I know--and believe me, I don’t know a lot compared to so many people I’ve met!  I just know a lot about the people/times I’m passionate about, and what I don’t know I look up.

Also, part of the reason why I know stuff, admittedly, is because I majored in art history in college and that did give me a leg up in terms of learning how to research in an academic way, but that in itself... is varied.  Some educators and academics want to see certain kind of research, others want other kinds.  If you’re learning just to learn, you have to do what works for you.

I would say always start at your library.  You can find tons of great books there; some public libraries even have academic articles and journals on hand--especially if your library card lets you have access to online resources on the library’s site, which many do these days.  Now, if you want to learn about history I’d say that if you can limit yourself to books published within the last 50 years--I mean, ideally, books that have been published since the 80s on.  Depending on your area and frankly what you’re interested in, that may not be possible.  For example--if I went to my library and wanted to pick up a book on Anne Boleyn, there would probably be a ton of recent stuff.  The Borgias?  Meh.  Borte, wife of Genghis Khan?  I’ll have a hard time finding anything, and I’ll have to take what I can get.  But generally, it’s a good idea to stay current as many historians writing today are horribly misogynistic and racist as is, and those tendencies were even worse a couple generations back.

That being said, that’s not a rule.  You’ll want to look in the footnotes/endnotes and bibliographies of some of the books you read and like.  They’ll probably contain primary sources (some biased, all valuable because primary sources are important) and that means they were written by people (supposedly) there to see or experience the event you’re researching, just as a note.  Primary sources are often available online, sometimes for free.  You’ll probably also see landmark biographies or articles or books that have stood the test of time because they’re a) that good and b) have contributed valuable information that stands even if some of it is outdated.  Eric Ives’s Anne Boleyn biography stands out in my mind--it’s getting older, but as Ives was one of the first historians to really redefine Anne Boleyn as a woman who wasn’t a victim and wasn’t a villain, it’s very important and influential and anyone who wants to learn about Anne Boleyn should read it.

Also: try and see if any universities around you have libraries open to the public.  University libraries have tons of books devoted to historical figures, many of them not falling into the “pop history” category that targets people who just want to learn the lighter version of what happened (not to devalue pop history, it has its place and it is a great place to start and I’d recommend certain pop history books any day) but in the academic category.  You may also be able to get access to databases like Jstor.  Generally, academic databases either require you to be a student or to pay for them--and if you can pay, it might be worth your time as they’re full of articles and journals.

Sometimes, it’s worth it just to google and see who has written some prominent articles about the historical figure/time you want to learn about.  Most likely, they’ll have published a book.  You can also buy a lot of books that are targeted to academics super cheaply on sites like half.com.  Seriously, the footnote/bibliography trick is one of the best I can recommend, and I found myself buying books just because someone I admired mentioned them in a bibliography.  If you’ve already read a biography and liked it, flip to their bibliography and eat it up.  It’s what one of my favorite professors always recommended.

I hope this helps!  Honestly, at the end of the day--even going to wikipedia and checking out their footnotes can be a place to start.  A shocking amount of wikipedia editors actually do cite their sources, and use good ones.  :)  Have fun!