#take my biology class

[essaywritinghelp]

[iztea]

things ~artistic talent~ does NOT translate well into

-make up

-techincal drawing like scientific diagrams/representations and what have you

-pictionary games

-cartoony figures that kids like

[mollyrolls]

i need to sleep for like 72 hrs straight

[yellowplumfruit]

this is gonna be a long one so bare with me as i ramble

i’ve realized fairly recently that doing art as a job is never going to be sustainable for me. while my hands being injured absolutely sucks and i hate it, it’s made me realize i was actually really stressed out, especially since art has been my single source of income. being a working artist means that there will be very little structure and it’s all on me to create my schedule. i can’t do that very well! and not it a “woe is me i cant do it”, but more of a “i understand my limits”.

the timing of this sucks though because i literally have one more semester left until i finish my art degree :’) but after the initial panic im actually kind of excited! i’ve actually decided that once i finish my degree, im going to get my prerequisites out of the way and then major in marine biology (nobody saw this coming)!!! i’ve always had a tough time seeing my future as a professional artist. it’s much clearer now with this new potential job:)

so once my hands get better (please please please be soon oh my god), i’m going to take less commissions and draw for myself more often 💕

[clonedchaos]

Happy Sea Otter Awareness Week! 🎉 🦦

Who knew? It’s Sea Otter Awareness Week!

I’m honored to share a birthday week with one of my favorite animal species, and I wanted to take a bit of time to yap about them— I’m an animal caretaker at heart, what can I say?

So what are Sea Otters exactly? They’re carnivores for one, mostly preying on hard mussels, crustaceans, and even urchins. They’re intelligent enough to use tools such as rocks or their sharpened canines to break open these hardy delicacies. Have you seen the action before? It’s adorable!

Pretty practical for an animal without opposable thumbs, huh?

Speaking of their prey, did you know sea otters are actually known as a keystone species? Kelp forests thrive in the ocean, producing around 50% of the earth’s oxygen! Cool, right? Unfortunately, purple urchins love to chow down on the bases of kelp, causing them to break off and die. These forests provide shelter, oxygen, and food for its diverse species that call it home. Without them, the ecosystem itself falls apart.

Fortunately, sea otters find no problem in having an urchin feast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Sea Otters also lack blubber. Instead, they have millions of tiny hairs clustered together to help them thermoregulate their bodies. Their whiskers, called vibrissae, help them detect prey that they might not otherwise see with their eyes. This is due to vibrations in the water.

Sea Otters also give birth to one pup at a time, given the high demands and dangers of the ocean. Fun fact— the mother will sometimes wrap her pup in kelp like a seat belt and leave to find prey. That way the little one won’t wander off and mom knows they’ll be right where she left them.

The bond between mother and pup is strong. They’ll even take in orphans and raise them as their own in rehabilitation scenarios.

Usually, males stay apart from the females, while the females stay with the pups. Sometimes they’ll aggregate in one area and form what we call “rafts”. They hold hands so they don’t float away from one another. :)

You can typically tell females apart from the males if the otter has scratches on her nose. For some reason, the males typically bite the female’s nose for courtship purposes— definitely not a way to get a girlfriend in our society, but it works for the otters I guess.

Sea Otters spend about 10% of their day— or around 2 hours— rubbing oil onto their fur. This oil is made in their sebaceous glands and is completely natural. It serves to keep their fur water proof; the water rolls right off! Many birds have similar behaviors.

Perhaps the most silly fact I learned about them was that sea otters have “armpit pockets” to store extra food in.

Human adaptations are so lame in comparison imo.

Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be an animal learning session if we didn’t talk about the sad reality of our climate and the planet. Sea Otters are threatened by oil spills, boating accidents, and habitat loss; amongst quite a few others.

With such a rapidly warming climate, toxic algal blooms can spring up on the coasts; in part due to fertilizer runoff entering our oceans. These blooms are toxic to many species, sea otters included. This messes with their neurological functions to the point they forget to do basic necessities to keep themselves alive.

So, do your part to limit your carbon footprint by recycling, eating sustainable fish, using non-chemical fertilizers, keeping our beaches clean, and please DO NOT APPROACH A SEA OTTER!

Yes yes I know they’re adorable, believe me. But it is literally illegal to touch or disturb one. Keep our furry friends safe and admire from a distance.

Enough with the doom and gloom, have some silly little sea otter pictures:

THEY USE THEIR STOMACHS AS TABLES, STOP— 😭😭😭😭😭😭

[dracothedeatheatingcupcake-ao3]

Please wish me luck everyone. In about 3 hours, I will be taking the final exam I have to take for my grad program, and if I pass it, I will officially be done with the program and will be able to apply for graduation.

I’m very nervous since usually I’m really good at test taking, but it’s been over a year since I last actually took a class for my program (I’ve been working on my final project and my internships for the past year and change), so a lot of this stuff is very fuzzy for me, since my memory sucks. Plus, my program was… not great. They had no lectures, all book learning, and I’m not great with book learning. I passed the classes, but none of them had exams. Just papers, which are much easier for me to do. I took a few practice tests and I routinely got between 65%-70% of the questions right. Which is… not great. I have studied, but I only really was able to study for the past week, since before that I had my internship and work to worry about.

But!!! I’m hoping that all will go well here. I’ve been working towards my master’s and school counseling credential for about two and a half years now. I started August 2021. And if I fail? I’ll just have to pay the $130 and retake the test later. Which will suck, but at least it will be like a practice test, yeah? And I’ll know exactly how the test is formatted, so it would be easier.

Anyway, sorry for rambling, I’m very nervous. Wish me luck!!!!!

[shrinkthisviolet]

is Morgan also interested in pursuing 5+ majors or is she also of the opinion that Jesse's a little insane for that? lol

Oh she is definitely not interested lol

I mean for starters, I'm of the opinion that E2 is unique in letting their students pursue that many majors because OHHH MY GOD (especially since one of them is biochem?? Girl how tf are you doing 4 majors on top of that??)

And for another thing...Morgan's pre-med anyway, so that plus her major (which I haven't actually figured out yet 😅 it's not biology tho. Maybe psych?) keeps her plenty busy as it is. She thinks Jesse's absolutely nuts for pursuing five majors

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[loafbud]

Just took my first biology exam and got a pretty decent score of an F! 🎉🎉🎉

[vincentaureliuslin]

my mom signed me up for these online college courses

[vitamin-zeeth]

I'm on exam leave atm and it's soo telling that even tho I'm literally a week away from my first exam this is the best I've felt the whole school year. Like yeah I have a ton of revision to do but also I just made brownies yesterday. Like I just went "I wanna make brownies" and I did. I can just fuckin do that now. This is amazing.

[fvedyetor]

fvedya . can you PLEASE elaborate on the icelandic penis mueseum that you casually mentioned in the tags . im literlaly begging

YES I CAN

(um i talked quite a bit and i think some people may want to opt out of hearing about this soooo its under the cut)

ok so theres this museum in iceland called the 'the icelandic phallological museum' that features penises. HUNDREDS of specimens' species' penises its so crazy. including whales!! whale penises are wild, a lot of people mistake them for monsters in the ocean (tbf, in grainy photos, they do look like the lochness monster. but no, they're just cocks.)

the museum also has a bistro called the phallus cafe and bistro where you can get penis waffles. and theres a gift shop with penis themed wares.

the penis museum is looking for human donors last i heard. its been a while since i checked in on the museum so take it with a grain of salt, but they have a human penis on display but its really small and sad due to poor conditions and a bad detachment process so they are supposedly looking for a bigger and healthier one!

anyways its like my dream to go there (and omg if i could work there- thatd be so cool!!)

anyways heres the website theres not many photos and its not really explicit or anything (they got to be professional on the internet ykyk) but the waffles look soooooooo yummyyyyyy omg

[irisbaggins]

"My God, your entire life rests on how you do in three exams in your last year." My god Siobhan, same. The whole American experience is wild to me, that last year is where you're done with everything. Last year meant everything for our High Schools, where if I failed even one exam I was fucked. I'd have to take an elective year just for the chance of fixing that fuckup. I was one ball of stress throughout that whole fucking year, and then I got math and biology as my exams. I thought I was going to die.

So, I guess, nice (??) to know someone else at the table had the experience of their last year in HS being a nightmare of a time. Also, horrifying. What is up with us Europeans where everything hinges on just a few exams that are randomly selected and can be in your worst subject?

[drop--pop--candy]

physics sucks ass because i can't even ask other ppl for help since there are. five of us. in that class. and the other four are seniors who want nothing to do with me

[zozoubbb]

hear me out, that episode of rgu where nanami convices herself that she has layed an egg is an analogy to periods. i know it is a filler episode and it doesnt need to have meaning, but i think that ep simbolizes getting a period. like, having a period is somewhat similar to laying eggs, cause when you get one your body disposes of your non fertilized eggs, and besides that, that episode talks alot about maturing. also, nanami gets scared because she has no idea on whats going on with her body and she thinks that other girls will laugh at her if she tells them that she has layed an egg, cause shes scared of it being a common experience that she is late to. in my opinion, that episode was trying to mimic the experience of a first period in a more funny and ridiculous way.

[elvencantation]

guess this is a first for me. someone i’ve been sort of friends with and talked to on tumblr and has helped me with crochet patterns and invited me to their crochet server turns out to be a terf so i had to block her 😭

transphobia?? in this year of our lord 2024?? grow the fuck up

BLOCK ME IF YOU DO NOT RESPECT TRANS PEOPLE. DO ME A FAVOR I AM SO TIRED OF PEOPLE BEING ASSHOLES BECAUSE THEY DONT UNDERSTAND SOMETHING THATS NOT MEANT FOR THEM

also you don’t need to understand something to not be a dick about it. just mind your own goddamn business and leave people alone

i’m sorry I guess I just needed to rant a little

[quibbs126]

So I was just doing a Wikipedia rabbit hole search of plants for Cookie Run related reasons and came across that apparently cacao is from the mallow family, as well as okra, cotton and durian (at least according to Wikipedia, I don’t know how accurate this is)

I know this wouldn’t be how it works, but seeing this, I’m now just imagining this is a Cookie family, with each of those four being siblings (and in my head cacao and cotton being the actual canon Dark Cacao and Cotton, though that makes even less sense) with a Mallow Cookie as their parent. Wouldn’t make much sense but now I want it for some reason. They’d be five very different Cookies but somehow all related