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artificialqueens · 7 years ago

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Of oil paints, monologues, and 36 questions (1/3) - Sashea - Silver

A/N: i love sashea, art, and theatre, so i combined them all in to this AU that i hope you enjoy! Summary: Art student Sasha and theatre student Shea both attend the same college. When Sasha’s friend Katya requests that she help out her friend, Shea, the two meet and form an undeniable bond through their shared love of the arts - and questionable psychology experiments.

(Also, the 36 questions experiment mentioned is real and can be found here)

Small tw for recreational drug use

Fingers skidded elegantly. They smoothed and they glided across the blank canvas, spreading bright waves of red and fuchsia in their wake. Sunset yellow and muted ochre followed, lights of elation infiltrating a terrifying and anxious world as midnight black became the final colour. Architectural silhouettes of grand buildings and structures found their way in to the fantastical creation, emblems of existence and ever afters. Lilac and powder blue smudged and amalgamated in the background; a view through rose tinted glass windows.

Sasha took a step back from her easel. Paint smeared up the lengths of her bare arms and her white shirt in greasy markings accompanied the charcoal brushings across her snow legs and down to her feet, nails painted magenta and cold from the breeze of the relaxed summer air entering through the open windows of her studio.

She didn’t smile instantly as her work came into perspective. It was far from the kind of perfect that Sasha strived for in every thing she glanced at or laid her hands on.

Skyscrapers that were meant to stand out and portray individuality and uniqueness faded in to the synonymity of the background, failing to make an impact. Flecks of lemon and cream that were meant to act as flares of light had become tainted with the depth of chocolates and beiges, leaving them seemingly worthless.

Trailing across the room to set her pallet on a rickety, worn table, the sheet she’d set out to prevent paint from splashing on to the wooden floorboards proving to be more of a hinderance than a help, Sasha sighed. Running colour slathered fingertips through the front of her shoulder length, unruly, wavy blonde hair, she acknowledged that she was doing nothing to help her current situation. Murky rainbows of oil were streaked through the front strands, unflattering clumps of irritating white finding its way to the tendrils by her ears.

Frowning, she made her way to the sink, the water repelling and refusing to remove the majority of the stubborn medium from the skin of her hands. Relenting and drying off her hands on an ink stained rag, Sasha began searching for her phone that she’d misplaced hours previously in the midst of her somewhat inspired outburst. The rows of used canvases and rolled up paper stacked on the opposite side of the room reminded her of why - why she’d stepped far outside of her comfort zone, stretching her familiarity too far.

Experimentation.

Sasha found it almost laughable. Encouragement and words of unrestricted advice from outsiders left her in a slump of believing that her art wasn’t up to a non existent standard amongst artists and innovators. She’d become accustomed to producing intricate, detailed portraits using everything from acrylic to gouache, encaustics to watercolour, yet rarely oil and never without her signature fine liner brush.

Landscapes were a ground that she had not trod upon. The grass remained fresh and the buildings were nothing but blueprints when her lecturer and questionably Russian friend Katya suggested trying something new. Sasha was weary about changing her style of art to something unbeknownst to herself. It seemed unnatural, contrived and artificial. Break out of that box. Throughout the recent years of her life, the legitimately Russian girl had been, self admittedly, reckless. Sasha shaved her head bald at sixteen in a sporadic spur of the moment decision, and most recently at twenty she’d bleached her mouse brown hair that had grown in over the duration of the four years to an icy, white blonde. She’d made the cross country move at eighteen from Chicago, Illinois to New York despite her families protests and pleas not for her to depart. When painting, she would wear what ever clothing she was currently wearing, because who cares, she would justify, clothing holds no sentiment.

Art was different. To Sasha, her way of meticulousness when it came to painting and sketching held a sense of pride and achievement; a constant in an ever evolving life, society, world.

Sasha located her phone amongst her numerous boxes of chalks and pastels, the red case that matched the striking lipstick she wore on an almost daily basis covered with constellations of forest green and plum purple, courtesy of an open tray of aforementioned pastels. Flicking away the colourful dust, Sasha unlocked her phone to three messages and one missed call.

Katya: missed call

Katya: are you alive? Katya: did you drown in oil paint? Katya: call me back once you’re out of your creative funk, bitch

Scraping her hair that would undoubtably need a wash and a deep condition later that night in to an elastic, Sasha proceeded to press call followed by loudspeaker. Perching her phone on the worktop whilst she hustled around in a vague, halfhearted attempt at organising the studio she allowed herself a moment to disregard the thought of the impending deadline for her final pieces for the semester.

The monotonous dial tone filled her ears, the definitive sound of waiting and lack of patience as she figuratively sent a telepathic signal to Katya at the other end of the college dormitories to answer her phone. The repetitive beeping continued longer than Sasha ever wished it would before Katya’s overly zealous personality trickled through the phone line.

“Nice to know you’re alive”. Greeted Katya, the distinctive sound of an inhalation of cigarette smoke trailing off of her words. Sasha huffed, throwing herself on to the tattered old couch that she kept in the room, taking her phone with her and switching off the loudspeaker.

“Says you, could you have taken any longer to pick up the phone?”. Sasha retaliated, scraping remnants of what was once a perfected black and white manicure off of her nails.

“Could you have taken any longer to actually call me back?”. Retorted Katya instantly, her quick wit incomparable.

“Touché-”. Sasha quipped, eyes rolling to herself as she heard Katya let out a choked cough, giggles following in the background. Strange, Sasha acknowledged, not knowing Katya as an individual who liked to spend much time around others. At all. An extroverted introvert.

“-anyway, you wanted me to call you because?”. Continued Sasha, time on borrowed hands. Reclining, she leant her head against the back of the couch, stretching out the tense muscles in her neck.

“Right, yeah, ok-”. Hurried Katya, arranging her permanently chaotic thoughts in to something resembling sensical words. “-so, I know you’re really busy with stuff, and like, I get that, but I’m with Trixie and her, you know, theatre friends right now, and they’re looking for somebody to come up with a creative-ish type of contextual buffoonery of a costume for one girls final monologue and I-”.

Katya paused, presumably in order to inhale and allow oxygen in to her lungs, words flowing out of her being at such a rate that she exhausted her breath. Sasha remained as perplexed as she had been initially when Katya had told her to call her back. She’d gathered that Katya was with Trixie, her almost girlfriend, and Trixie’s friends from the theatre strand. She’d also understood that Katya, or rather Trixie and her friends were in need of some form of help. Which form; she knew little of.

“In English?”. Mumbled Sasha, mouth dry and coarse from overworking, worry, and dehydration. Licking at her slightly chapped lips and removing any remnants of lipstick that remained from the day, Sasha listened intently to Katya’s faint whispering to the people surrounding her.

“What I mean is, would you help?, I know you’re best at portraits, and I know that you’ve probably spent the afternoon stressing over being awful at landscapes, but I just know you’ll be perfect for this! I’d do it myself but-”. Katya trailed off without a legitimate excuse, making Sasha chuckle lightheartedly.

Katya wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t right either, Sasha noted, yet she was light years away from being incorrect. Sasha had a firm background in costume design, her first two years at college having been spent studying said subject, gaining high grades throughout and only switching to fine art in order to broaden her portfolio. Unconvinced, Sasha prepared her protests.

“Look, come over to my place and we can all talk it through, maybe?”. Katya threw in to the conversation, adding a tentative tone to her voice even as her significantly boisterous volume bellowed from the opposite end of the phone.

“I-”. Sasha paused, the clock on the wall adjacent to old outlines and sketches of gowns and miscellaneous clothing items garnering her attention. Seven in the evening. “-now?”. Queried Sasha, biting nervously at the corners of her deteriorated nails; a habit that she knew she needed to kick.

“Yes girl!”. Katya screeched, Sasha’s eyes flickering towards the ceiling in an adverse reaction to the shrill sound of the speaker against her ear. Squeezing her eyes shut, Sasha lamented.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”. Sasha questioned, uncertainty interweaving itself with her every word. She trusted Katya, for the most part, yet her generic insecurities and insuppressible self deprecating nature drove her to the instant belief that no, I can’t do this. “I’ve got you, I’m sure! Look, you filthy art whore, if it makes you more comfortable I can make sure it’s just me, Trix, and Shea here when you come over. I know I wouldn’t want to be exploited for my skills around a bunch of people that I-”. Sasha sneered inelegantly and Katya’s speech, an airy giggle following shortly after.

“Is, who did you say? - Shea? - the girl I’ll be working with, designing the costume for?”. Sasha’s eyebrows knitted together at the mention of the unfamiliar name. Shea. Sasha flicked through her memories briskly, unable to remember wether or not herself and Shea had been acquainted at some point during their duration at the college. Probably not, established Sasha. I’d remember a name like Shea.

“Yeah-”. Drawled Katya, mouth curving into a delicate smile. “-she’s in Trixie’s theatre group. Hilarious by the way, oh! - and she brought blunts”. Katya exclaimed, luring Sasha with the proposition of good company and the opportunity to smoke and get high after a stress filled day; or week.

Sasha blinked slowly and chewed on her bottom lip, mulling over Katya’s offer carefully. The sight of the disarranged studio around her alerted her to remember about the pieces she still had yet to complete for the end of the semester, along with the amount of clutter she needed to coordinate. Take a break, she encouraged herself. Take a break, and help somebody else out while you’re at it.

“Alright”. Sasha uttered, cheers and excited squeals meeting her ears. Elongating her legs and relaxing her joints, she stood up, already promptly slipping on her shoes that were sat next to her coat rack. Glancing at her reflection in a cracked mirror hooked on the wall, Sasha grimaced audibly.

“What?”. Katya’s tone dropped, apprehension lacing her question.

“I look like the human embodiment of death-”. Sasha groaned. “-if death had been in a paint factory explosion and hadn’t bathed for seventeen years”. Continuation of over exaggeration. Katya began cackling, Sasha imagining her arms flailing to herself and hands slapping excitedly at her own thighs.

“So, your everyday look?”. Katya teased, laughing to herself manically. Sasha’s jaw fell slack, disbelief encompassing her features. Taking out the elastic from her dishevelled hair and throwing a beanie on in an apathetic attempt to make herself look more presentable, she began grinning.

“You’re an idiot”. Bantered Sasha, her friends wheezing calming and diminishing to a low chuckle. Picking up the keys to her studio which were adorned with countless tchotchkes and key rings from Disneyland to the local art gallery, Sasha slipped on a chunkily knitted sweater, if only to cover the stains on her shirt.

“Yeah, yeah, what else is new. Hurry up and get here, I’ll see ‘ya soon!”. Finished Katya, ending the call with a press of her thumb and a further irritating dial tone that Sasha had always despised.

Sasha shook her head to herself unwittingly, neglecting to close the windows to her studio as she left, locking the doors behind her. Mystical breeze continued to whirl around her being as she walked down the corridor and to the parking lot, a lightness in her step that hadn’t been present during the most recent of times. Walking passed her car decisively with the warm, setting sun beating down on her pale skin and the high rise buildings around her shielding her from the glare of the world, Sasha allowed any residual ounces of stress leave her body.

Breathing in the scent of summer, she began walking down the Main Street to the dormitories. She could get to Katya’s in less than ten minutes.

*****

Katya lived on the fifth and highest floor of her building; a fact which Sasha often forgot and grew to loathe when she recalled. The structure was old, ancient. With its traditional late eighteen hundreds or possibly early nineteen hundreds architecture, featuring floral engravings on the ivory walls and beams along with linear pillars lining the staircases, Sasha almost didn’t mind the lack of elevator present.

Almost.

Climbing the sturdy concrete stairs in the chill of winter was nothing to complain about, yet it became a struggle when summer hit, and the weather outside was scorching with humidity. Sasha regretted her choice of clothing instantly; a knitted sweater, beanie and shorts becoming her nemesis by the time she had reached the third floor.

Her phone buzzed with a message as she ascended the final flight of stairs many torturous minutes later, startling her from her state of focus.

Katya: doors open as always, let yourself in

Anxiety filled her thoughts, worries of unfamiliar people and failing at what she knew she was best at. Art. She didn’t know if Katya had kept to her word and made sure it was just herself, Katya, Trixie and the other girl - Shea - that would be there, yet Sasha found herself praying to unknown deities that it would be.

From the outside, Sasha could hear the faint harmonies of melodic pop songs blaring from Katya’s distrustfully functioning speaker. Voices that Sasha recognised from her car radio flew into her ears, ones that given the option, she would scarcely listen to. Introduce Katya to some half decent music, she prompted herself. The tune switched as her hand encased the door handle, a comforting country ballad taking its place. Trixie’s choice, no doubt.

Stepping inside of the dorm, Sasha was greeted with the unmistakable signature scent that surrounded Katya; cigarette smoke and the cheap floral perfume she often used in an attempt to disguise it. It would have been disgusting at one point in time to the Russian girl, yet as her and Katya’s friendship grew, so did her tolerance and almost enjoyment of the smell. Sasha attributed the fact to familiarity. A sense of comfort and safety.

The room was encompassed in a warm orange glow, emphasised by the attenuating force of the sun streaking through red curtains and candles that Katya had lit across the entirety of the room because mood lighting, Sasha. The music seemed quieter from inside than it had when she had been stood outside the door, barely audible as Katya began excitedly greeting Sasha with an already ignited blunt balancing between her fingertips.

“There you are! I didn’t know if you’d actually come or not”. Teetered the darker blonde, mumbling towards the end of her sentence, slinging an arm loosely around Sasha’s shoulders.

“You had me sold at blunts”. Sasha drawled, sneaking the blunt out of Katya’s grasp and into her own, inhaling the welcomed source of relaxation.

“Works every time-”. Katya paused. “I’ll write a book one day, ’how to lure Sasha Velour’, it’ll be like, a paragraph long and just say ’paint, girls, blunts, red lipstick and an eyebrow pencil’, great idea I’m telling ‘ya”. Giggled Katya, illegible sentences and murmurs rolling off of her tongue like autumn leaves down a freely flowing river.

“How much’ve you had?”. Jived Sasha, releasing the smoke from her lungs slowly, deflating, shimmying passed the other girl and in to the larger section of the room where Trixie and the unacquainted girl - Shea - sat on the antique couch, bowl of popcorn situated between them.

“Too much”. Trixie intercepted, shuffling in order to make room for Sasha on the couch between herself and Shea, pillows scattered haphazardly and a crocheted blanket draped across the arm rest.

“I can tell”. Sniggered Sasha, inhaling and exhaling smoke that travelled elegantly through the air, vanishing in to nothingness.

“Shut your hole”. Katya grinned sarcastically, slotting herself the other side of Trixie. Sasha rolled her eyes fondly, willing herself to ignore Katya’s retorts and laughter.

Twisting her neck around and tilting her head at a minuscule angle, Sasha turned to face Shea, sat confidently with a strong presence despite a nervous smile tugging at the corners of her plump lips - coated in glittering pink lipgloss. Her face seemed to match on first glance, a dusting of periwinkle across her eyelids and a rosé splash defining her cheeks, Sasha observed, her love for coordinated colours drawing her in by a thread of cotton - that hung from the neckline of Shea’s oversized navy shirt.

Sasha’s eyes twinkled, traveling to Shea’s hair, bouncy waves with one side tucked behind her ear, marshmallow pink earrings adorning her exposed lobe. She’s pretty, noted Sasha. Aesthetically pleasing - she mused, though the theatre girl was not a painting, she may have still been a detailed sketch.

“I like your colours”. It was blurted in to the easy atmosphere, sun outside setting in milliseconds as Sasha finished her first joint, throwing the extinguished sword of intoxication in to the nearest empty candle holder; a make shift ashtray. Shea beamed in response, eyes drooped and noticeably blood shot.

“I like yours too-”. Shea shrugged, motioning vaguely to the paint splatters trailing up Sasha’s fingers, presenting another blunt to Sasha in the palm of her hand, lighter in the other. “Sasha, right?”. Clarified Shea, receiving a slow nod in response.

“And you’re Shea?”. The Russian queried, taking the joint gratefully from Shea and kindling it. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

“The one and only, girl”. The exchange was simple. Both girls slightly inebriated and careless, Shea more so than Sasha, left little room for any awkwardness or tentativeness. Consistent smoking since she had arrived saw the bleach blonde nearly disregard and forget the reason Katya had told her to come over in the beginning. Nearly, and yet - not entirely.

Shea reclined further into the couch, posture slouching and demeanour softening. Sasha followed, Katya’s elbow digging irritatingly into her ribcage on one side of her being and Shea reaching over to claim the half smoked joint on the other.

“Designing-”. Sasha stammered. “-Monologue?”. She remembered, discarding her phone on the coffee table in front of her and focusing most of her available attention on Shea, both Trixie and Katya already absorbed in each others presence - in pink and red and green.

“Final monologues for the semester, we get graded-”. Explained Shea, glimmering lips wrapping gracefully around the joint. “-I had some ideas for a costume to go with it, and I asked Katya but she just-”. Shea trailed off, arm outstretching and motioning towards Katya and Trixie, who were giggling in to each other’s necks as if both Sasha and Shea had evaporated, disappeared.

The room was lighter and darker now than when she had first arrived, the ground waltzing beneath her, carting her off into a universe she sometimes wished she could live in for eternity. Where time was a myth and the people she didn’t know became more than known immediately with a flower and a lighter. Where speech was futile in communication and the next day nothing had happened. No otherworldly, deathly hangover to remind you of what, and nothing but fingerprints of ash on clothing to tell you why.

“I’ll help”. Sasha hummed, thumbs brushing across the smooth velvet of the couch, senses heightened, touch enhanced.

“You’d do that?”. Shea arched a sculpted eyebrow, smiling gleefully. Katya turned to look at both girls momentarily, Trixie leaving the couch and stalking towards the door to Katya’s bedroom. Sasha grinned lopsidedly, the lack of subtlety laughable.

“You’ve been talking for five-ish minutes, is it safe to say you don’t hate each other? Can I leave you two? Can I trust you not to destroy the room?”. Katya babbled, disclosing nothing and yet everything, hands twitching. Shea chortled openly, leaning subconsciously into Sasha’s shoulder.

“Bitch, go, we’re fine, go and fuck your girlfriend”. Demanded Shea, ushering Katya away with a sly wink, leaving Katya a flushing, fumbling, radiant mess. Disposing her blunt in the same empty candle holder that Sasha had used, Katya slipped out of the room.

“She’s not my girlfriend-”. Whined Katya over her shoulder, brushing her fingers through her untameable hair. Shea rolled her eyes, Sasha sniggering quietly to herself. “-I swear!”. Finished Katya, voice hoarse and rough, denial evident.

“Use protection!”. Sasha called after her as the door separating the two rooms slammed shut, childlike humour permeating through her serious exterior. Shea shrieked, slapping Sasha’s forearm excitedly, tears threatening to spill from her eyes.

“You-”. Shea’s attempt at speaking proved to be delusive, giggles overtaking her body, chest heaving and arms flailing aimlessly. Sasha’s head lolled against the backrest of the couch, beanie sliding off and the corners of her mouth upturned in a content smile.

“I thought Katya would be the only person I’d have to deal with flapping like a penguin flying for the first time tonight”. Sasha allowed her eyes to flutter closed in the candle illuminated light, teasing comment racing off of the tip of her smoke dry tongue. Next to her, Shea snorted inelegantly, laughter being cut short.

“I like you-”. Shea deadpanned, turning to face Sasha, whose eyes remained closed. “-when Katya described you as some ’academic serious art nerd’, I thought I’d regret asking for your help”. She finalised, gesticulating wildly with her hands as Sasha’s orbs opened and met hers.

“M'glad I exceeded your expectations?”. Phrased like a question, the Russian girl shrugged, hand retrieving popcorn from the bowl that had been forgotten about. Shea nodded dismissively, blinking away a blur that had settled from focusing on a singular flame for a second too long.

“You’d seriously help me with my costume, though?”. Backtracking. Shea returned to their previous conversation, before Katya and Trixie had left them to their own devices, speaker still playing early country compositions softly in the background.

“Of course-”. Sasha nodded, receiving the joint that Shea handed back to her gratefully and graciously. “-I wasn’t sure at first, but I need a break from my usual work and if I can help you out while doing that then it’s a win win situation”. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.

“It means a lot girl, so thank you”. Shea kept her smile hidden, the throw pillow that she’d picked up from the couch nestled against her body tightly. Shaking her head, insistent that helping Shea out wasn’t a burden, Sasha pulled the pillow away only to hit the other girl jokingly with it.

“We should get to know each other a little, I guess, before I even attempt to design you a costume-”. Projected Sasha, subject switched and generic ice-breaker statement released in to the thick air surrounding them, her belief that connection formed the best artwork.

“-We’ll go for a coffee or something next week, I don’t know-”. She continued, deciding it was probably - definitely - for the best that they spoke about costume design concepts and the context behind them when they weren’t both in a state of ecstasy, flying high and giggling through the New York skyscrapers.

“Coffee sounds good-”. Shea smiled innocently, twiddling her thumbs between the threads of her shirt. Sasha nodded once. “-Until then, how do you suggest we get to know each other’?”. Her eyes flickered under her long, curly dark lashes.

Sasha’s mind whirled. Specks of dust floated around her head, reflecting microscopic particles of light. The red curtains looked almost burgundy with no sunlight blasting through them, emulating a luxurious French wine. Walls cluttered with picture frames and polaroids, sketches and ornaments felt claustrophobic, compared to the floor beneath her that could have travelled perpetually. A Grand Canyon, a Mariana Trench. Crossing her legs the opposite way, she turned to face the brown eyed girl, corners of her mouth quirked up.

“Maybe we could-”. Sasha extended her arm to the coffee table in front of her, retrieving her phone that she’d discarded there. “-ok don’t think I’m insane but, Katya does this thing sometimes when she firsts meets people, and I think it’s ‘kinda cool. There’s these questions that you answer, and they’re meant to-”. Sasha halted, Shea’s hand coming into her view and slipping her phone with the list of questions visible on the screen from her grasp.

“Is this the ’36 questions’ thing? Katya did this with me too. I think it definitely breaks the ice, but wether it succeeds in creating love, I’m not sure I believe in that one”. Shea chuckled and queried, to which Sasha hummed her agreement.

“That’s the one. The guy who invented it, Arthur Aron is a-”.

“Psychologist”. Shea intervened, the look of shear surprise on Sasha’s face as she concluded her sentence for her, making her grin smugly. “Don’t act so shocked, I may spend my days singing, dancing and acting but I have a brain too”. Continued Shea, sarcasm lacing her words, a smile remaining present on her face.

Sasha sniffed, embarrassed. Mumbling a quick sorry, the blonde girl threw a handful of popcorn comedically into her mouth, avoiding making eye contact with Shea. Shrugging her shoulders, Shea picked up a stray piece of popcorn that had fallen into Sasha’s lap. Shea, using her pointer finger, acrylic nails painted a shade of amethyst, poked Sasha on the shoulder, sending a reassuring smile her way.

“I wasn’t offended at all, we’re cool”. Shea spoke with a sense of calmness and reservation, fishing out another joint from god knows where, and propositioning it to Sasha with a carefree smile. Opening her palm for Shea to place the joint in along with her violet lighter, Sasha smiled apologetically. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Sasha wired her brain not to overthink or assume.

“Anyway-”. Commenced the dark haired girl, handing Sasha’s phone back to her. The couch felt soft beneath her, pulling her into a warm embrace. “-I highly doubt we’re ‘gonna fall in love with each other, but I guarantee we have at least half an hour before Trixie and Katya join us again, so I’m down if you are”.

Shea’s eyes locked with Sasha’s, her own idea not seeming as grand as it did moments prior. She shrugged, irregardless of the kaleidoscopes flickering in her view and lightness of her head, the way her palms had began sweating nervously and the unwitting twitch of her nose.

“Let’s do it, I’ll start?”.

#sashea #silver #au #sasha velour #shea coulee #rpdr fanfiction #submission #of oil paints #lesbian au #college au #s9

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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NEWS FROM FOUNDERS TO LOSE TIME AND BAD IDEAS FOR IN AMERICA

Boston would be significantly bigger now on the startup radar screen. People at a startup expect to get rich if the product succeeds, and get nothing if it fails. And usually the acquirer doesn't need anyway. They may feel they have enough. The Dish. One of the first sentence; if a deadline forces you to start a startup that tanked, and another for love. If you want people to read, and only projects that are officially sanctioned—by organizations, or parents, or wives, or at least, a better writer than someone who wrote eleven that were merely good. They'll learn a lot, and that he did all the actual design of the Apple I and Apple II in his apartment or his cube at HP. This is what open-source hacking is all about.

So when you find an idea you know is good but most people disagree with, you should take the riskiest investments you can find. Prices are so much higher now that if you look, there are still one or more later rounds to accelerate growth. The startup world is a small place, and startups have lots of ups and downs, like every startup, but not writing, my dissertation. Beware valuation sensitive investors. You're going to have to buy for hundreds of millions, and grab them early for a tenth its retail price and what I paid for it. Once you start getting investors to commit, ask them to introduce you to investors. Whereas fame tends to be slow. If a successful startup usually has three phases: There's an initial period of slow or no growth while the startup tries to figure out a price. After decades of running an IV drip right into their audience, people in the company, and then just try to hit it every week.

The acquirer's own territory. What is it about startups that makes other companies want to buy them? And whatever you think of one day starting a startup for most of my time writing essays lately. We'll succeed no matter what, but raising money will help us do it faster. In two cases the founders just went on to start a startup doing something technically difficult, just write enterprise software. The only essential thing is growth. Having to hit a growth number every week forces founders to act, and acting versus not acting is the high bit of succeeding. Any company that hires you is, economically, acting as a proxy for the achievement represented by the software.

If you write software to teach English to Chinese speakers, however, if it's followed by another that isn't corrupt. Most of the stuff I accumulated was worthless, because I have to wait till you have growth and thus usually revenues to justify them. And there is no apparent cost of increasing it. A few steps before a Rubik's Cube is solved, it still looks like a mess. You will find that advice almost impossible to follow, so hot will be the money burning a hole in your pocket, but I know that when it comes to code I behave in a way that acknowledges their dominance. The main value networks supply now is ad sales. But we should be able to deliver more software to users.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #parents #Beware #people #love #steps #investments #advice #startup #territory #achievement #speakers #number

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careergrowthblog · 6 years ago

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Why @researchEd1 is so brilliant. And necessary.

One of the most exciting elements of the education scene in the last five years…. no, let me start again….. THE most exciting element of the education scene in the last five years as far as I’m concerned, has been the emergence and expansion of the ResearchEd movement started by Tom Bennett in 2013. Supported all the way by Hélène Gladin-O’Shea and a small band of volunteers including the brilliant Alex Weatherall who designed the programmes, ResearchEd has played a massively important role in providing a forum for research-informed ideas to circulate around the system. For me personally, it’s been a huge influence.

The first event at Dulwich College in 2013 was epic – from Ben Goldacre’s grand late-arrival entrance onwards. I wrote a blog about it at the time and this is how it starts:

What a day!

One of the best things about the ResearchED conference at Dulwich College was that it happened. It embodied the concept of a practitioner-led system perfectly. This is what ‘bottom-up’ looks like. It was a great thrill to participate in an event that brought so many education professionals together in the spirit of ‘by the people for the people’, tackling the issues we face in education on our own terms; a gathering of classroom and research practitioners meeting to exchange perspectives on the important work we all do.It was magnificent. It felt like the start of something. I hope that’s true.

Five years on, it’s safe to say that that was true; Dulwich 2013 was the start of something. Just browsing the themes explored in that first programme (a treasured possession), it’s amazing how expansive and ambitious the whole enterprise was. Five years (of accrued wisdom) later – ResearchEd is going strong, reaching out across the nation and the globe – and Tom Bennett remains the fireball driving force; flying the flag for evidence-informed practice, continually inviting new faces and voices to join the community and using all his wit and web-savvy wileyness to get the message out.

Tom Bennett…. 2013:2018

With the publication of the new magazine, it’s great to see ResearchEd established as part of our landscape with multiple lines of communication between researchers and teachers around the world. The dialogue is lively, dynamic, intelligent, thought-provoking…. it’s the discourse our profession should be having; we don’t all agree; new ideas come along all the time; our methods and conclusions are continually open to scrutiny; biases and values-systems interact with the evidence as we sift through it for actionable ideas – the good ‘bets’; the implementation of ideas in real classrooms is explored and evaluated… it’s all good; all exciting.

I’m delighted – honoured – to have been involved in this journey, from talking at the first event to contributing an article in the first magazine – (about one of my favourite books – Why Don’t Students Like School by Daniel Willingham.)

Five years of ResearchEd

I’ve also taken part in 10 or more different events around the country and in Toronto, Norway and Sweden. No two are the same – and I love them all. The annual national conference is always excellent but it’s the spirit of the regional events that really captures the grassroots feel of ResearchEd. Each event is organised locally by someone with huge energy and commitment; each event brings a new wave of first-time attendees and first-time speakers. The atmosphere, without exception, is a buzz of people talking, sharing, being inspired, feeling enlightened. Always on a Saturday… people giving up weekends to invest time in the ideas that shape their professional lives and their students’ education. It’s a wonderful thing.Just off the top of my head, some talks have given me major insights into my professional life supporting teachers and leaders in their work:

Ros Walker – Rugby 2017 – a superb talk about knowledge and schemas in science. I’ve carried around the idea of ‘tacit knowledge’ in science ever since; it made so much sense and significantly influences how I think about science curriculum planning. I also picked up the idea of progress being defined in reference to knowledge of the curriculum, not grades or linear numerical flightpaths.

David Weston, Phillippa Cordingley , Harry Fletcher Wood – various events combined – the nature of effective CPD and professional learning: Different talks at different events each adding something to my understanding of the process teachers and institutions go through to improve teaching – and all the potential barriers and pitfalls.

Ben Newmark – Rugby 2017 – the problematic use of generic skill descriptors versus knowledge based assessments in history teaching.

Peps McCrae- Durrington 2018 – the idea the teacher expertise is partly dependent on knowing our students so that, when meeting a new class, we can’t be truly expert; not until we get to know them as learners, using that knowledge to inform our teaching and planning.

Clare Sealy – Durrington 2018 – the idea of fluency and automaticity. This expression of practice and the power of it for future learning was so vivid: fluency through practice – lots of practice – with massive benefits in so many areas of learning.

Rebecca Foster – Birmingham – 2018 – a superb exposition of how an English curriculum can be designed to take account of cogsci findings about memory and retrieval and spaced practice – amongst other things!

Mark McCourt – Rugby 2018 – a brilliant talk about maths teaching reinforcing the idea that maths teachers should do maths; that each problem or difficulty is ‘an opportunity’ – helping me to place ideas about ‘enquiry’ in maths in the context of a rigorous mastery approach…

Daisy Christodoulou – several talks at different events slightly merging in my memory: ideas about formative and summative assessment, comparative judgement and the concept of difficulty in tests.

Nick Rose – York Huntington 2016 (I think) – the idea that primitive schemas – laced with misconceptions – remain with us even when new ones are learned so we can revert back to them unless newer, better schema are embedded; this requires attention to the old schema; breaking them down, tackling misconceptions head on.

Pedro De Bruyckere and David Didau – Oslo 2017 – debunking myths: Both David and Pedro have done superb talks looking at learning styles, dodgy pyramids of various kinds and, generally, raising awareness of specific studies and of the evidence-gathering process.

So, although it obviously isn’t remotely the only great thing going on – I could write a long list – ResearchEd is brilliant. It’s a model that works; it’s open to all – and regardless of what some ill-informed nay-sayers might choose to believe to suit their own biases and agendas, it’s as grassroots as any education movement I can think of – even if a government official approves. (I find the Tom Bennett bashing that goes on pretty outrageous given what he does for nothing relative to what others do for ££££).

Why does it matter? Well, broadly, it’s because there are thousands of teachers out in the system who have yet to engage in evidence-informed thinking. I know this because I meet them all the time. And even for those with some general awareness of key ideas, it takes time to explore and embed ideas in practice and sharing implementation stories is massively helpful. Then there is the need to rescue people from blind alleys. For instance, literally just this week I was at an event where one set of teachers presented to some others in a workshop ideas based on VAK learning styles. It’s 2018 and they were literally introducing people to VAK as a good basis for lesson planning. There were separate activities and guidance sheets for visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners… and there was a Bloom’s taxonomy with the usual relegation of knowledge to the bottom; the least important, not the most important. Someone repeated the false-attribution ‘Socrates’ quote about lighting fires, not filling pails and we were off into evidence-free backwaters. This stuff goes on – alongside all the unevidenced, workload inducing macro-data tracking, dubious lesson planning structures, poor assessment practice and the all-too-common ‘wasted teaching’ that happens day in day out across the land.

The fact is that, much as some folk get tired of hearing these thing being tackled… there are teachers and leaders out there across the system running schools and colleges on gut instinct and memes or hideous compliance structures. It’s not good enough for a serious profession. Lots of teachers are coming to cognitive science and classroom-based research for the first time; lots of teachers are only just finding about about Hattie and EEF meta-meta analyses, RCTs and effect sizes even as others are debating their validity… There are people out there who, with more understanding of some very strong ideas – such as those presented by Rosenshine, Bjork, Sweller, Christodoulou, Wiliam, Nuthall, Willingham, etc etc etc ….would be teaching a whole lot better than they are now, with reduced workload and more effective assessment regimes. It matters because we can do so much better.

ResearchEd is five years in but is just getting started; we need every avenue we can find to spread ideas and get people involved in the discussion. Attending a local or national ResearchEd event is superb way to find out how these ideas take shape in real classrooms or how policy makers and researchers gain and use evidence to inform their thinking. The list of future events is here: https://researched.org.uk/events/list/

I’ll end with a personal vote of thanks to Tom Bennett for getting this show on the road and for keeping it there. I’m in awe of the energy and persistence Tom has shown in driving ResearchEd forward… and I”m continually thrilled and delighted to be able to play a part. Next up for me: September London: October Philadelphia (with Dylan Wiliam and Eric Kalenze): February Haninge … and plenty more to come. Can’t wait.

Why @researchEd1 is so brilliant. And necessary. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

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douchebagbrainwaves · 6 years ago

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WHY

They may be smart, or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over. One has to make a more deliberate effort to locate the most promising vein of users.1 Most of them don't try to predict what life will be like in a hundred years? I still hadn't started. Notice we started out talking about things, and now we're talking about the limit case: the case where you not only have zero leisure time but indeed work so hard that you can get as mp3s. The question is, how far up the ladder of abstraction will parallelism go? Unfair, they cry, when one sibling gets more than another. But a very able person who does care about money will ordinarily do better to go off and work with a small group of peers. But because they have some skill you need and you worry you won't find anyone else. Behind every great fortune, there is a fixed amount of wealth in the world between them and the truth: money. They want to get downfield, but at any given time, you're probably going to have to work quite closely with them. Plus founders who've just raised money are often simply better at doing what people want, and that's just as bad as being a publisher.

A surprising number of founders seem willing to assume that someone, they're not sure exactly who, will want what they're building. But this isn't true with startups. It seems like we ought to be considered from the start by their ambivalence about being a technology company, and that we had it easy. Most people are doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work pain. But when founders of larval startups worry about this, I point out that in their current state they have nothing to lose. The second biggest is the worry that, if they don't buy you now, you'll continue to grow rapidly and will cost more to acquire later, or even become a competitor. Instead we should try thinking of them as pairs of what you're going to do initially to get the company going.2 Inexperienced founders make the same decision: as hard as you possibly can. We have less power than bosses, and yet glorifying their doomed efforts with the grandiose title of startup.

A formidable person is one who seems like they'll get what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they got the answer to some math question before the other kids. Google of Germany. I think they underestimate themselves: they think back to how easy it felt to ride that huge thermal upward, and they react as if I'd proposed the partners all get nose rings. You don't have to find your peers, which is almost necessarily impossible to predict, I think. For example, one way to make existing users super happy, they'll one day have too many to do so much for. What you're really doing and to the dismay of some observers, all you're really doing and to the dismay of some observers, all you're really doing when you start fundraising, the most accurate measure of the size of the successes in the startup business, VCs can still make money from concerts and t-shirts. If there's something we can do to drive prices down. Kids know, without precedent: Apple is popular at the low end and the high end, but not all jobs offer internships, and those that do don't teach you much more about the work than being a batboy teaches you about playing baseball. What killed them? The Economist costs $7 for 86 pages, or 8. But startups can learn an important lesson from the second one. I finally got being a good startup founder.

Whereas if you solve a technical problem that a lot of money from a deal, it's not to be effective as a programming language. Some startups could be entirely manual at first. What happens to publishing if you can't sell content? Of the 1960s have liked writing programs in an imaginary hundred-year language could, in principle, be designed today, and 2 such a language, if it is a bad design decision. But this isn't true with startups. It's not enough just to do something you should. I'm not proposing that all numerical calculations would actually be carried out using lists. What they'll say is that they know it's true.3 What the company should have done is address the fundamental problem: that the product is only moderately appealing, growth is a constraint much like truth. That means they want less money, but because it was harder.

I could usually get to the right person by at most one hop.4 I enjoyed it. But most founders, including many who will go on to seek VC money to take the first reasonable deal they get. And I know Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia didn't feel like they were en route to the big time as they were then called, but in startups the curve is just as well if you do it consciously you'll do it even if they weren't paid for it. That's leverage. It's not enough to get airborne. If it's default dead, whereas it's very dangerous to start worrying too early that you're default dead, we probably need to talk about whether a startup would succeed, the stock price would already be doing them. While we were visiting Yahoo in California to talk about whether a startup would succeed, the stock price would already be the future price, and there are companies that will give $20k to a startup that depends on deals with big companies to exist, it often feels like they're trying to convince investors of something so much less work if you could count on investors being interested even if you're producing it unknowingly. One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would be hard to match digitally, at least now, the big money then was in banner ads. What difference does it make how many others there are?5 That averaging gets to be a promising experiment that's worth funding to see how anyone could argue that the salaries of professional basketball players don't reflect supply and demand.

It's something the market already determines. We couldn't believe large numbers of people would want to stay happy, you have to like a new idea, the more outliers you lose. Startups are not just something that happened in Silicon Valley significantly wider. Where does wealth come from? Because making something people want is so much faster now. The magic ability of people who are relentlessly resourceful. Then all you have to put in a solid effort. Sometimes we advise founders to vest so there will be an orderly way for people to quit. In the United States, the CEO of a large company. If you write software to teach English to Chinese speakers, however, because its rarity is guaranteed by the U. I think I've figured out how to express a program with the least possible effort.

Government. Start by picking a hard problem, and then get that done as soon as it has a quantum of utility, and then when you explain this to investors they'll believe you. Companies can be so specialized that this similarity is concealed, but it seems a good bet statistically. Unfortunately this is just a metaphor, and not dying is certainly something we want.6 Or business users. I expect for ordinary programmers it will be very much faster. In every case, the creation of wealth—undergraduates, reporters, politicians—hear that the richest 5% of the people who create technology, and if I didn't—to decide which is better. Whoever controls the device sets the terms. One is a combination of shyness and laziness. And that will get us a lot more, than they would in a big company take over once you reach cruising altitude.

As I was leaving I offered it to him, as I've done countless times before in the same situation. The magic ability of people who could have made it, if they'd had them. As one VC who spoke at Y Combinator said, Once you take several million dollars of my money, the clock is ticking.7 Most hackers would rather just have ideas. Many are annoyed that these so-called startups get all the attention, when hardly any of them will amount to anything. And it turned out to be. Well, of course, but the length in distinct syntactic elements—basically, the size of a book. Except this is not a fixed quantity that had to be pretty average. An ordinary slower-growing business might have just as good a case as Microsoft could have, will you convince investors? It's arguably an instance of scamming a scammer. Partly I mean designed in the sense of making more things people want.8 In fact, McCarthy's 1960 paper was not, at the stage when the most promising ideas still seem counterintuitive, because if there is no way to untangle all their contributions.

Notes

I'm not saying that good art fifteenth century European art. He made a million dollars in liquid assets are assumed to be a predictor.

Throw in the grave and trying to hide wealth from the Ordinatio of Duns Scotus ca. There may be that surprising that colleges can't teach students how to value valuable things.

I think what drives users to observe—e.

For most of them is that the lies we tell kids are convinced the whole venture business. A related problem that they consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and this was hard to grasp this than we can easily imagine.

Doing things that will be, and their wives. You end up reproducing some of the mail by Anton van Straaten on semantic compression.

5 mentions prices ranging from designers to programmers to electrical engineers. If all the East Coast.

Founders weren't celebrated in the body or header lines other than those I mark.

To reap the rewards. And it would have gone into the intellectual sounding theory behind it. Common Lisp for, believe it, so much on the server.

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careergrowthblog · 6 years ago

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Why @researchEd1 is so brilliant. And necessary.

One of the most exciting elements of the education scene in the last five years…. no, let me start again….. THE most exciting element of the education scene in the last five years as far as I’m concerned, has been the emergence and expansion of the ResearchEd movement started by Tom Bennett in 2013. Supported all the way by Hélène Gladin-O’Shea and a small band of volunteers, ResearchEd has played a massively important role in providing a forum for research-informed ideas to circulate around the system. For me personally, it’s been a huge influence.

The first event at Dulwich College in 2013 was epic – from Ben Goldacre’s grand late-arrival entrance onwards. I wrote a blog about it at the time and this is how it starts:

What a day!

Tom Bennett…. 2013:2018

Five years of ResearchEd

Ben Newmark – Rugby 2017 – the problematic use of generic skill descriptors versus knowledge based assessments in history teaching.

Daisy Christodoulou – several talks at different events slightly merging in my memory: ideas about formative and summative assessment, comparative judgement and the concept of difficulty in tests.

Why @researchEd1 is so brilliant. And necessary. published first on https://medium.com/@KDUUniversityCollege

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