#my prof is cool

[xxplastic-cubexx]

cherik as that one pink nightgown and blue pajamas holding a candle picture

this is so rushed but like. but like i see the vision and i needed to share it with all of you ok. pov you got caught raiding the fridge at 3AM

[ratcandy]

no professor you don’t understand I was up half the night because I was watching this spider make its web. No no hang on you’re not understanding it’s a net casting spider I wanted to see it make its net. Professor. Professor listen

[the---hermit]

oral exam tips

I have at least one other post on exam tips, but they were mainly focused on giving tips on history exams. To me oral exams in academia have been the norm since high school, but I know that in other countries that might no be the case, so I decided to write down a list of advices coming from someone who is quite used to this kind of tests.

If you aren't used to having oral exams, you might need to change your study method, or at least add a few steps. I recently made a post entirely dedicated to my study method, which might be useful for this, but what I suggest is to add a step in which you review things out loud. What I would do is to just sit down with your notes or your materials and pretend to give a lecture on everything. Even better if you have a friend or family member to listen to you, because by having an active listener you will be forced to not skip stuff and have clear explainations, and they might ask you questions or clarifications. Those are always good because that might happen during the exam as well, but also it will help you memorizing those things. I recommend reviewing out loud multiple times. This way you will get more comfortable with the exposition of the topics you will be tested on, and you'll have a chance to find your own "voice".

by finding your own voice I mean finding a good compromise between using your own words to explain things, while still using the correct specific vocabulary of whatever topic you'll be tested on. This is fundamental. You are not there to recite a poem by heart, you are there to show you have understood the topic, that you sat with it and made it yours. You have to show you know how to clearly explain things but also reflect on it, making links with other things, and so on. At the same time there's some academic and specific vocabulary you want to include, because you are not in fact discussing the topic with a friend. So practicing out loud before the exam is good to find a good compromise between these two things.

I kind of mentioned it already, but it is absolutely fundamental to show that you understood the topic and not just memorized it. Whatever you do do not learn things by heart. It's better to be slightly insicure about a specific date, than to repeat your book word by word. And if you practice enough, and are comfortable enough with the informations in general believe me you can work around those things you can't remember perfectly well as you are being tested. Moreover your mark on the exam will be much higher than if you just learn things by heart.

on the very delicate topic of not remembering something specific you have been asked. Don't panic, you can still kind of save it. Whatever happens do not stay silent. There are several things you can do depending on whatever the question is, and I will later tell you a very specific example of something that happened to me. As I said do not panic, surely you will remember about some context on the topic so start by talking about that. As you are giving the context you might start to remember additionals informations, or you might build up enough informations to be able to logically guess whatever you are not remembering correctly. If you are half sure about something go for it, even if it's the wrong info if you contextualise it well enough you'll show you knew about that and it might just be read as a slip of you confusing two things. Now there might be situations in which the question is so direct that you can't do much, it happened to me once during my Greek history exam. I was asked the specific date of an event, and I could not for the love of the gods remember it. You know what I did? I told the professor, I cann't rememebr the exact date, but giving certain informations (that I then explained) I can tell you it was more or less in this half of this century. What I did was admit a fault, but while doing that I showed her that I knew what we were talking about it, I had enough informations on the matter to logically place it on the chronological line and contextualize it, and showed her that I can in fact work with the informations I studied. And at the end of my exam the professor complimented me on those exact things, saying she appreciated seeing me use my brain instead of midlessly memorizing informations I didn't understand.

So whatever happens do not stay silent. Anything is better than that.

Another potentially bad thing that might happen, and believe me it happened to me multiple times, is panicking so bad that you cannot get the words out, or confuse things. You know what happened everytime I found myself in that situation? The professor clearly saw me panicking, and told me to calm down, wait a couple of minutes, get my ideas in order and try again. And I got good grrades despite that in the end. You are under a lot of pressure, because you are giving an exam, and you have to be quick and ready instead of being able to reflect like with a written exam. Professors know that, and they keep it in mind, and they can tell when you are mixing things up because you are nervous, and not because you don't know things. I once had a professor look at me in the eye after i mixed up numbers on two dates twice in a row, and told me I know you know them take two deep breaths and try again. And I did. I have so many personal stories from my previous degree in which professors saw I was nervous and told me that it was okay I just needed to take a minute and breathe, and honestly that was exactly it. It was okay and I really needed to breathe, and then the exam when well.

The best tip I can give on answering questions is to balance the actual answer of the question with additional informations. You want to give context and add more infos to whatever has been asked to you, but you should also try not to lose focus on what was being asked. My personal way of doing this is to structure the answer in three parts: 1. general context that works as an introduction to the actual direct answer 2. the actual answer 3. further additions like more context, comparaisons and links with other topics or informations you had to study. This way you show off you know things, you make sure to show the professor you are not just rambling because you don't know the answer, and finally show you are comfortable enough with the informations to reflect on them and link them to other things. Ideally the professor will stop you while you are speaking, that in my experience is the best possible sign, because they are satisfied with your exposition and want to move onto other things.

So always build up on the answer to the question you have been asked. Never stop at just the information that serves as an aswer. You studied, it's your time to shine and make yourself proud.

Contextualizing your informations is absolutely fundamental no matter what, again because it shows you have a clear idea about what you are talking about. This can mean making a small introduction on the time and place, if you are an historian like me, or maybe give an introduction on the person you are talking about (whether they are an historical figure or a scholar you are talking about). Adding the little informations you weren't asked about is great. You are briefly mentioning an even and know the date? Add it in. Everything is a good addition.

Again I have definitely already mentioned in previous points but showing you are capable of reflect on the topics you are talking about is always a bonus. Make sure that when you are giving personal options or personal reflections you are stating this is your thought, but that is usually appreciated. After a good exposition of a topic you might even get the professor asking you your opinion on certain things. It happened to me multiple times, often I was asked to give an opinion of books I had to study for the exam, and that always prooved as an oportunity to add more informations and as I said show that I could make reflections of my own.

Last thing, that again kind of came out from other points, is that you want to show you are comfortable enough with the topic to be able to jump from one point to the other while reflecting on things or making comparaisons.

I am pretty sure I have forgotten something, but once again if you have specific questions I am happy to help, my inbox is always open. I know people who aren't used to oral exams are very scared of them, but as long as you try to approach it like a normal conversation on the topics you had to study, and you have practiced, things will be fine. To be quite honest with you after years of experience I'd say I very much prefer oral exams to written ones, because you can in a way shape the conversation and bring it to the topics you liked the most, know best. I hope this post was somewhat helpful to someone out there, and good luck if you are about to take an exam!

[mrehkka]

(I screwed up the text placement on the last page, read from professor membrane top left, down to zim bottom left, then dib top right)

Poor Dib lol

Btw i headcanon that zim has an internship at membrane labs when they're in high school. Zim talks to Membrane about Dib and them hanging out (he thinks the boys are dating and just not telling him yet) and the professor is hoping zim's "real science" attitude rubs off on Dib lmao

[sophapop]

"For all you lonely boys...

I will be president"

Without blur effect

Og concept and sketch - @prisile

Line art and colors - me :]

[chiropteracupola]

the great joy of unexpectedly noting the presence of other queer people out and about in the world!

[catboybiologist]

Do you get periods? Do you menstruate blood or not?

🙄 just ask me what my genitals are and be up front about it

[queer-reader-07]

so i'm not taking a chem class this quarter which is sad and painful for me on many levels. and this has resulted in me telling a couple friends that i "might start learning the ochem 2 reactions for fun" and apparently that's not a normal thing to say

[dangans-ur-ronpas]

i know i signed up for these classes but it's amazing how much they make me want to (remembers) grits teeth. affect the trout population or whatever the kids say these days

[kafkasgirlhood]

just spent all day locking the freak in because OHMYGODDD it's the last week before winter break and MAN do my teachers LOVE giving me work

[revelingrexan]

an assignment from last semester! it was a "style emulation" project, where you pick three shows from a list the professor provides, as well as two from a list of:

objects (one handheld size, one person-sized); animals (one small, one large); and celebrities (one male-presenting, one female-presenting)

i'm happy with how these turned out!! 😄

[oneofthosecrazycatladies]

Word of advice to incoming university students from someone whose been a university student for nearly a decade now:

Having a good professor seriously makes all the difference. I just had finals for the summer and I took a math class. On the final exam, there was one question I didn’t know how to do so I just skipped it and left it blank…my professor didn’t take off any points for that.

My professor also dropped my lowest test score which raised my overall grade a couple percentage points.

I mean, if you’re just a genius or child prodigy or something then maybe you don’t care about what professors you have, but if you’re just a regular-brained peasant like me, make sure you do your research and actually put thought into the classes you take because who teaches them can make all the difference.

[andyoullhearitagain]

Ok, DS9, "Little Green Men," the dog. Did Odo, like, knock out that professor's dog and lock him in a closet, or was everyone on that military base like "Oh I thought that was YOUR dog"

[mewdivorce]

holding a midterm rn im sooo bored

[rainbowresurrection]

Still Thinking.

In TOS there was a lot of promise on fleshing out the Vulcan culture. You get phrases in Vulcan before you ever get any phrases in Klingon. Which makes it interesting that moving forward, you learn much more about the Klingon language.

As a language lover I'd be interested to know what the body of the Vulcan language would have looked like, had it been more officially explored. You know it would be filled with dichotomy, due to the ancient and ritualistic roots of the language versus the need for utmost logic, which would influence both grammatical structure and the writing system(s).

From what I've seen, the writing leans far more on the "ancient tradition" end of things. It's beautiful, yet it is lacking in terms of practicality.

I like to imagine that they would have multiple modes of writing- the loopy cursive writing for religious and cultural / ceremonial practices, and maybe a more standardized and phonetic script for daily use (likely to also be vertical and cursive, but can be written horizontally as well). Also I'm not sure how phonetic it is to begin with so I'm just making shit up here.

Well I know one thing for sure, they have at least 2 scripts, based on the writing seen on Spock's robes vs other scenarios (perhaps Old Vulcan or Ceremonial Vulcan).

Another fun thing I like to imagine is that perhaps Vulcan follows a root based system like Hebrew or Arabic. For example in the male names, the most common denominator is S----K or S--R--K.

SpocK, SaReK, SuRaK

Women, it is the letter T.

T'Pring, T'Pau

Both genders use the consonant P.

sPock, t'Pring

So, those consonants could be based on a certain shared notion, whereas the vowels change the nuance of the translation.

Arabic (Modern Standard) example, paying attention to the consonants:

KeTeBe = writing

KiTaaB = book

MeKTaB = desk

MeKTaBe = library

(sorry for the weak transliterations, it makes more sense looking at it in Arabic, you'll see the commonality in the consonants):

كتب

كتاب

مكتب

مكتبة

[opens-up-4-nobody]

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