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anothertimdrakestan · 4 years ago

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Familiar Green

Damian Wayne x Reader Soulmate AU

In an AU where when your soulmate and you touch you feel sparks and intense warmth! Damian is around 16-18 ish in my head!

Being a sucker for a good love story you couldn’t help but always feel jealous watching your classmates, friends, and even strangers on the street find their soulmate. You watched as kids bumped into each other only to see their eyes meet at the feeling of sparks. What did the “sparks” even feel like? As a child you were about ready to touch an electric fence to understand the feeling.

As you grew up your focus eventually left your soulmate and you spent far to much time focussing on school work. You got into Gotham Academy on a merit scholarship from the Wayne Foundation and you were determined to put it to good use. Money was a sore subject and your family had been scraping by since you could remember. Your parents were soulmates and always said that their love would conquer all or some sappy shit like that. The only thing you were in love with was knowledge and that was just fine. In classes you were attentive and quiet, learning quickly no one liked a smart ass. Teachers often slipped you materials for projects knowing you probably didn’t have them at home and you sat in the back minding your own business.

You never ran with the popular crowd. You had friends you walked to class with and studied with, especially friends who were as driven as you but you never had a BEST friend. The person you tell everything to and a confidant who shares your passions and jokes with like no other. You would wait for the sparks to show you who that would be.

Currently, you were planning a speech for the annual Wayne Family Gala where all their merit scholars would show what they were doing with their scholarship. The speech was somewhere in between intense bragging about your grades, achievements, and experiments while also thanking the Wayne family every two words. You had it planned perfectly: big purse to get snacks for the endless speeches, the same dress you’ve worn the last two years, and one gratitude dance then home. Easy.

When the bell released you from the last class you began pushing towards freedom. Students grumbled and shoved through the tight halls and you rolled your eyes at the stupidity of those walking against the crowd or those stopped to chat about nothing. With the door in sight you sped up, pushing hard when you felt a zap. Your heart stopped, turning around to the sea of people pushing past you. The feeling was comforting yet alarming, the friction of just tapping shoulders was enough to stop you dead in your tracks. What seemed like endless hoards of people pushed past you while you stood begging for the person who felt it too to run back to you.

“Look at the genius who forgot how to walk”

Words shook you from a daze as you looked up to see a football star with a 2.1 GPA staring you down. Rolling your eyes you headed out for fresh air and a walk home to prep for the gala, but you couldn't shake the feeling resonating in your shoulder.

-- agressive time skippppp --

As you watched your classmate wrap up his speech on his first place win at the Math Olympics you realized it was time for yours. The two of you did a quick high five before you found yourself alone, shaking hands clutching note cards with bright white lights blinding you from seeing Gotham’s most powerful staring expectantly up at you. With a deep breath, you began recounting the highlights of your year. Finding Mr. Wayne’s face up near the front you saw him nodding as you detailed your research with collegiate professors, perfect test scores, and passion. Thanking the board members one last time you looked to the cameras and gave a big smile before heading back behind the stage.

Once away from the prodding lights you let out the breath held in for the entire speech. Until next year Gothamites. Detailing your plans to chat up the rich folk, dance in front of the cameras photographing merit scholars then leaving and probably getting fast food on the way home, you smiled to yourself knowing it was almost over. Heading out to the main floor you listened politely to the rest of the speeches before scouting out the person with the biggest net worth in the room.

Making your way around the room, you accidentally locked eyes with none other than Mr. Wayne who gestured you over. Estimating that the money held between Mr. Wayne and the men he was talking to stood around a couple trillion dollars you gladly complied, hoping to find a sponsor for more research, maybe even college scholarships.

“Hello Miss. It’s y/n right?” you politely greeted Mr. Wayne trying not to gawk at his suit that probably cost more than your family’s rent. Finding your inner confidence you took the opportunity to explain your passions and ask questions of the people in the semi-circle formed around you. While talking, a young man came to stand next to his father, clearly impressed with your credentials. After a couple glances you recognized the light smirk and emerald green eyes as Damian Wayne. You saw him as the opposite of you, he floated through Gotham Academy on Daddy’s wallet, barely showing up to school and often wearing dark sunglasses to hide what you assumed to be a hangover from partying the night before. Giving him a curt smile you continued, mostly focused on David Shield, a man about 55 who ran a series of fancy hotels, he shared passions with you and looked very interested.

The more you spoke the more Shield focused on you. Eventually, he offered to bring you to get a drink (non-alcoholic you assumed) and talk about a possible partnership. Quickly you began thanking the men around you will either a nod or a quick handshake. You couldn’t pass up the opportunity to shake Bruce Wayne’s hand and you almost fainted when you realized you were shaking hands with THE Bruce Wayne. Lastly you turned to Damian and saw Mr. Wayne pat his back, forcing him to hold out a hand, rolling his bright green eyes lazily. As you went to shake it Mr. Shield tapped your shoulder hurrying you saying “let’s go princess I’m in a hurry here” as he started walking off. This was the opportunity of your lifetime, you tried to walk past Damian, hurriedly trying to follow Mr Shield. When your shoulder brushed Damian’s and you felt the familiar sparks again your heart ripped in half. You could swear you heard them crack and pop in the air as you locked eyes with his green ones. Ready to forget about Mr. Shield you turned to Damian only for him to put two hand on your shoulders and mouth “Go I’ll find you” as he tried to direct you towards Mr. Shield. Where his hands made contact with your collarbone warmth erupted you could feel each finger radiating and sizzling against your bare skin.

In a daze, you felt Damian let go and you stumbled towards the bar. Mind racing you couldn’t stop turning back to Damian, who was in deep conversation with his father, both of them stealing glances at you. Trying to focus on the room and not the cold feeling from missing your soulmate’s touch you felt a hand snake around your waist and pull you towards the bar. Looking up at Mr. Shield who held your waiste for far too long you tried to shake off all thoughts of Damian and secure your future. Mr. Shield told you to call him David and he tried to order a fancy alcoholic drink for both of you. Asking for a club soda he paid and the two of you spoke about shared interests and a possible collaboration. Trying to focus on the conversation and not the feeling of your heart beating out of your chest was extremely difficult.

After sipping bubbly water with Mr. Shield David and him deciding to grant you the money you needed you felt ecstatic. Trying to wrap up the conversation and look for Damian Mr. Shield wouldn’t end the conversation with you. Your heart sunk as you saw the paparazzi follow Mr. Wayne, Damian, and his three brothers out of the ballroom. The only breath of hope you felt was seeing familiar green eyes frantically scanning the ballroom for who you hoped was you, but his eyescouldn’t find yours.

Defeated you returned to speaking with David but decided it was late and you were feeling more lightheaded than normal. He offered a ride home and you couldn’t pass it up, not feeling too well, probably because of the loud atmosphere and heavy air. Getting up you felt him place his hand in the small of your back and though you tried to twist or politely shake it off he kept it there. As you stumbled towards the door you felt worse and worse. Knowing something was seriously wrong you decided it was better to wait outside for your parents to come get you. You tried to explain the situation but Mr. Shield adamantly said you had to come with him. Beginning to get woozy and frustrated you started pushing him away.

“Y/n sweetie let me take you home” he purred

“You don’t even know where I live let me go” you stopped dead in your tracks.

“C’mon just right here let’s get in” he gripped your arm and immediately fight or flight kicked in and momma didn’t raise no bitch. You began to hit his chest, yell, and try to slither out of his grip. Your fist connected with his chin and he stumbled back, visibly angered he advanced toward you and you realized this was not going to end well. Closing your eyes you braced for pain but felt a smaller, latex covered hand wrap around your waist with a woosh.

With your eyes still closed you couldn’t tell if you really were floating in a stranger's arms or if you were just heavily drugged. Opening an eye you saw the gala building grow smaller and you decided it was definitely the former, but probably also the latter. Sucking in a breath you looked up to see a domino-masked, red and yellow-clad vigilante holding you with one arm and a grapple with the other. Realizing you were literally hundreds of feet above solid ground you wrapped your arms around Gotham’s own Robin squeezing his neck and feeling a familiar spark. Unable to connect the dots due to a heavily drugged brain you clung to the hero praying for your life until you heard

“y/n we’re safe now” from a familiar, and very concerned voice.

Peeking up you realized he was still holding you as you clung to him though he stood comfortably stable on the roof of a building. Gingerly you put your feet on the ground, not releasing him from your grasp feeling the sparks fly between your fingertips and his neck. Looking up at Robin you moved a hand to his cheek, sparks sizzling and jumping more so than ever. And in what was probably not your smoothest moment you mumble

“hey Damian” at the masked figure. Your fingers instinctively tug at the domino mask and as you expected, the same piercing green eyes looked down at you.

“hello y/n” he nodded. His eyes began to scan you for any signs of pain and you assured him you were fine.

“disgusting of David Shield to try to drug a teenager especially my own soulmate TT” your heart fluttered at the acknowledgment of the bond. You reached up to touch his face again just to check the sparks were still there. Like clockwork electricity danced between the two of you. Content with the feeling you decided to share some personal information. Whatever Shield gave you made you bold if nothing else.

“You know I’ve wanted a soulmate my whole life. I’d let Shield go after me again if it meant I’d get to meet you. Especially if it meant my soulmate was this hot holy hot damn” Damian’s eyes softened looking down at you and his lips pulled into a smirk but you could tell no amount of comfort would stop his anger.

“Trust me beloved no one will go after you ever again” he pulled you against him and you instinctively wrapped your arms around his torso, fitting together like a puzzle. Even with a cool breeze blowing around the top of the building the warmth from holding your soulmate was enough to have you melting into his arms. In that peaceful moment every cliche made sense. This was feeling you wanted to feel forever. You heard a light buzz from his earpiece with a voice asking about his location and status. With a curt reply Damian told you it was time for him to take you home. Holding onto Damian as he swung down he whispered in your ear

“I could get used to having you in my arms beloved” and with a giddy smile you replied

“I’d hope so lover boy you’re kinda stuck with me forever” at this he squeezed you tighter, his eyes shining with an emotion he’d never felt before and you looked up filled with excitement for the emerald green eyes you’d spend the rest of your life looking at.

#damian wayne #damian x reader #damian wayne x reader #dc #batfam #damian wayne x y/n

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addierose444 · 3 years ago

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How I Got Into Smith: Part II

In part I, I wrote about my high school extracurricular activities. In this post, I focus on the academic side of my application. I’ll be honest that these posts weren’t as well planned as I would have liked and that ideally, this part would have been first. It was initially going to be a single post, but I didn't have enough time to finalize this part before my unofficial deadline of Sunday at 11:59. It worked out in the end as splitting it into two parts created a new blog post out of thin air. Furthermore, it turns out I had a lot more to add to this part.

My academics were definitely a strong aspect of my college applications. For some additional context, I applied to Smith regular decision and was admitted with a presidential scholarship. To learn more about merit aid at Smith, click here. Smith was my first choice throughout the application process and I actually submitted my application before the early decision deadline. To read more about why I chose Smith or more accurately why it became my first choice, click here. For additional context, I attended a public high school in Vermont with a graduating class size of 106 with 65% of the class attending two and four-year colleges. If this post is interesting to you, you may also enjoy reading about my academic journey to engineering and computer science.

I’ve always loved school and education has been a top priority. Between middle and high school, I took six and a half years worth of high school science classes. In addition to the advanced track of our regular curriculum, I took a marine biology class that included a research trip to Bermuda and three APs (chemistry, biology, and physics C mechanics). You can read more about my AP experience here. Of the three main sciences, physics is my favorite. As a class though, I think AP biology was the best. I won departmental awards my first and last years. I was really proud of the first science award as it was a special award created just for me (as opposed to for a specific class year). The crazy thing about taking all these science classes is that I have taken very few science classes here at Smith. Thinking about this irony is part of why I thought to write this post in the first place. Technically I have only taken two science classes (PHY 118 and PHY 210) during my time at Smith. (And to be honest, PHY 210 hardly counts as it's really just an applied math class that’s offered by the physics department). You can check out all of my Smith courses here. The reality is that I fulfilled the introductory chemistry and physics requirements of my engineering major with AP credits.

In addition to lots of science classes, I doubled up on math classes in ninth and eleventh grades. Granted I didn’t take math my senior year and retook calculus at Smith. I think there were some clear flaws in my math education as many of the courses were too easy and had too much overlap year to year. At the same time, we didn’t cover enough trigonometry and had other gaps in our precalculus course. I did learn a lot in my AP statistics class and was surprised by how much I enjoyed the content. It makes total sense in retrospect as I now see math as an interesting and useful tool. Back in elementary and middle school, math was my favorite subject and I loved it in isolation of other subjects and real-life applications. In ninth grade, I got a math award, but unlike the other departmental awards, a lot of people got them.

My favorite class of high school was AP computer science A. In that course, I learned Java and the basics of object-oriented programing. In ninth grade, I’d been introduced to computer science through a semester-long Python course. In my senior year, I took an online website development course from my state university. I learned HTML, CSS, and some PHP. I also took a semester-long engineering course. It didn’t have math or science prerequisites, lectures, or structured assignments. What it did provide was a fun self-directed opportunity to learn how to use our new CNC machine and work with (mostly fix) the 3D printers.

Four years of English were required to graduate, so I took our required ninth and tenth-grade courses followed by an advanced expository writing course and an advanced literature course called world authors. I’ve always loved reading, but English classes and literary analysis aren’t really my thing. To read some of my reflections on writing, click here. I managed to win an English award my sophomore year which was cool as I’d never really seen English as a strong subject of mine. Granted, I didn’t like my sophomore English class as it only had seven other students who clearly didn’t want to be there and didn’t do assignments well or on time. I also took French all through high school and won awards my first and last years. I was generally more engaged with school than my peers, but French is where my peers’ lack of engagement had the most negative effect on my learning. I’m not trying to brag about any of my academic awards, but I do genuinely believe I did stand out on my own merit. When it came to French, it was more just that there wasn’t much competition.

Social science classes were the ones I generally avoided. Knowing that I only needed three years of social science to graduate and having already doubled up on math and science, I skipped the ninth-grade social science class. As a sophomore, I took the advanced version of our sophomore social science class called democratic roots. As a junior, I took AP U.S. history as U.S. history was required to graduate. The other AP courses were of actual interest to me and this was the only one I took for the AP designation. It was one of my least favorite courses, but I defend my decision to take it as the regular version was sort of a joke at my school. Furthermore, the APUSH teacher was also the advisor for the school publication and was able to write what I presume to be a strong letter of recommendation. As a senior, I took a semester of AP art history and another semester of art history through my local community college. The AP course was entirely online through UC Scout. I didn’t finish the AP course as the community college version was free due to my state’s dual enrollment program. The community college course was also fully online and was much more limited in scope.

I was in the jazz band from eighth through tenth grade. I played the electric bass, an instrument I picked up because they needed a bass player. Jazz isn’t my kind of music, so I never really got into it. To check out some of my favorite songs and musical history, click the respective links. I “quit” the jazz band as it conflicted with AP chemistry. The bass is an integral part of the rhythm section, but rhythm doesn’t come naturally to me and is challenging even with deliberate practice. I was used to being in all of the advanced courses but was in the intermediate jazz band with eighth and ninth graders. Additional required electives included health, financial literacy, and three semesters of physical education. The only class I did over the summer was an independent study for physical education credit. The running I did for the self-directed course probably helped earn me a spot on the varsity field hockey team. I also took a weight lifting class which I absolutely hated.

I wasn’t planning on sharing my actual stats, as there is so much more to college admissions than raw scores or even academics. What really matters is (in terms of academics) is the rigor of your courses in the context of the high school you attend. However, if you’ve read this far, I don’t really mind sharing my actual grades and scores. I earned straight As throughout high school and had a GPA of 4.26 (unweighted on a 4.33 scale). My school didn’t officially do class rank, but I am almost positive I had the highest grade point average. I do know that at the end of my junior year I had attained the “highest level of academic achievement” which I presume takes into account courses and grades. A lot of schools have gone test-optional due to the pandemic, but it’s worth noting that Smith was already test-optional. I don’t know exactly how merit scholarships work, but I am guessing that a strong SAT/ACT score would be necessary to earn one. My SAT score was 1500 (780 math and 720 verbal). I did study a lot over the summer before senior year and improved by almost 150 points from my PSAT. I also submitted SAT subject test scores of 790 for chemistry and 770 for math level II.

#college #Smith College #high school #academics #college admissions #grades #standardized testing #SAT #high school classes

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ms-demeanor · 5 years ago

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After reading your "ultra-long postivity post", now I have kind of a weird feeling because i relate a lot to pretty much everything you said, but i ended up approaching the "not everyone can x" from the opposite side, being the "gifted kid" teachers used to hold everyone to unrealistic standards (that i knew most couldnt achieve in the given timeframes), and now i get frustrated when i dont develop skills immediately, because i have done it before and feel like i should be able to and aaaaaaaaaa

Funny story: when I was a kid my parents had both my sister and I tested for learning and developmental disabilities. This testing included IQ testing.

It identified that we were both “gifted” kids* and that I’m dyslexic.

It totally missed my ADHD, though!

The problem with that is that my parents. Hm.

Okay my parents both grew up in very poor families. VERY poor. And they both wanted to go to college and knew the only way that they could was through scholarships. So they became debaters. They met at a tournament in high school.

Debaters are weird. You need an efficient working memory and strong recall and the ability to think quickly on your feet. Being witty and kind of an asshole are also good traits for debaters. Basically you’ve either gotta be really fuck-off smart to be a competitive debater or you’ve gotta at least *seem* really fuck-off smart.

And my parents were champion debaters at a national level. The Whittier College debate trophy has my mom’s name written directly under Richard goddamn Nixon. My dad was on the USC debate team and competed against Harvard and won. Not only that but he ended up coaching debate for USC and Cal Tech.

So as kids who grew up in extremely poor families and were able to go to college and get middle-class jobs and buy a house because of intellectual ability my parents placed A LOT of importance on intellectual ability.

So that IQ score became a large part of my life.

First we attacked the dyslexia. The approach was basically teaching me a bunch of sight words because sounding out phonics doesn’t work when the letters get screwed up. And because I was *gifted* we did a lot of really BIG sight words.

It took about six months to get me up to speed from “memorizing the pages of a story to match the pictures because I couldn’t read along in class” to “the first book I read on my own was The Hobbit.” I guess that counted as “cured” because that was the last time I got any kind of educational assistance.

At that time I was at a gifted school, a really tiny private school that was also an after-school daycare where we did full-day classes and then did gymnastics and swim from 3-6pm. I also was there over the summer because my parents worked.

So going from “tiny private school where the teacher has you stand up in class to read your failing grade in front of everyone so that she could shame you into performing better” to “fine public school in a suburb wealthy enough to have arts programs” was a major, major change. They did an aptitude test because I was transferring in from a different district and there was much discussion about whether or not to move me directly from the second to the sixth grade.

The district refused, thank fuck.

The public elementary school didn’t *have* a gifted program so it took very little time for me to become the Certified Weird Kid. My third grade teacher had me read aloud to our class for twenty minutes a day. I taught the class the multiplication table.

When it got to be time to go to the junior high school my mom went to a meeting for the school’s gifted kids program. APPARENTLY one of the kid’s dad’s basically said “I don’t understand why you’re wasting school funds on field trips for the stupid kids, the school should spend more of its resources on kids who have a chance of actually meaning something to the world” and my mom decided that while being gifted was important it was less important than making sure I wasn’t exposed to assholes of that caliber on a regular basis.

(thanks mom, I actually do really appreciate that reprieve)

Several teachers pushed me into advanced classes - my math teacher insisted that I take the advanced algebra classes in the seventh and eighth grade.

The GATE kids *WERE* assholes and were extra bonus special assholes to me because math was the only advanced class that I was in. (At my junior high school you had to pick your elective based on what level of classes you were in - to take the GATE classes you HAD to take a music elective; if you took art, drama, shop, or home ec you couldn’t take the smart kid classes. The algebra class was a new, separate addition to the program so *some* of the kids in the “electives for dropouts” program could take algebra. Schools are really fucked up, guys, in case you didn’t know schools are really fucked up and that was BEFORE No Child Left Behind).

I got a C in that algebra class and sat in my room for literally an hour screaming at myself for being such a selfish, distracted idiot that I let myself read my books instead of studying harder for the class. (clearly very healthy, normal twelve-year-old behavior)

When it was time to go to high school my teachers made a united plea to the district to transfer me into honors/IB/AP classes.

The kids in the honors/IB/AP classes continued to be kind of awful to me. I got extremely depressed and basically started doing the lazy-but-brilliant thing of completely ignoring homework or in-class work but performing spectacularly well on tests or essays in the classes that I wasn’t catastrophically failing

I was the only person at the school who got a perfect score on the vocab part of my SAT. I was the only honors kid who hadn’t been in SAT prep classes. There was only one other kid who graduated with the same number of units as I had, we’d outstripped the valedictorian and salutatorian but three classes each. I only applied to one college - I got accepted for painting but my interviewer urged me to move to the writing program and I got accepted for that too.

My financial aid didn’t come through and my dad wasn’t willing to cosign for loans on “an art program at a trade school.”

I got accepted to Pratt Institute on their Writing for Publication track which included an internship with the New York Times for third-year students in the program.

At that point I had a Columbia Scholastic Press award for my work on my high school yearbook.

Let me tell you, the community college that I went to and spent five years variously failing and succeeding at had a fucking *killer* newspaper and magazine when I was there. The local community newspaper that hired me when I was 21 was also much better designed and edited than it had any right to be for the three years I worked there (getting paid a whole eight dollars an hour and sometimes working 20 hours straight to get it in to the printer on time).

When I transferred to the state school I got perfect grades and worked full time and won every contest offered by the school’s English Honors society (which I couldn’t join because I was a transfer student and hadn’t done honors classes my freshman and sophomore years). I started a literary magazine with some friends when I graduated; we published four full issues online before it fell apart.

You know what’s also funny?

Even the food-service job I had to pay my way though the community college I felt terrible about attending was a skills test. I was a barista, so of course for a while I was a competitive barista.

I disappointed my parents a lot. I heard a lot of “we know you’re better than this.” I got told I was too smart to be screwing up this bad. I mentioned it a couple weeks ago but my results from that IQ test got compared to my sister’s and that was the justification for holding me to a higher standard. “You’re measurably brilliant, why aren’t you acting like it?”

Here lies the corpse of a gifted kid. Look on my works ye might and despair.

I am the perfect picture of a twice exceptional gifted kid and the reason I wrote all of this out is to tell you one thing:

“Gifted Kid” is a label that someone applied to you, it has nothing to do with who and what you ARE.

It’s very, very unfair that the adults in your life used you that way. I have an exceptionally terrible memory of being singled out as the only one who passed the first test in my IB World History class; “Why is Alli the only one of all of you who is writing at grade level? You’re supposed to be the smartest kids in the school, why did you all fail?”

That’s awful for the kids around you, that’s awful for you. It doesn’t do anybody any favors if people around you are being informed that you’re setting the curve they’ll be judged against. And it really, really doesn’t do YOU any favors because it doesn’t take long *at all* for your brain to learn that that’s all you’re good for. If you aren’t the best at a thing then what’s the point, you HAVE to be best because they already SAID you were best and if you aren’t then all these other people hate you for setting a standard that even you can’t keep up with.

You end up competing with past versions of yourself and focusing on those things that make the grownups in your life praise you because the grownups in your life has praised you in such a way that it’s turned all the other kids against you.

You know who bullied the fuck out of me? The kids I taught the times tables to, the kids I read to for half an hour a day.

Those kids were MEAN to me but the teacher who told me to read Boxcar Kids to the class after lunch everyday was NICE and she told me not to worry, they were just jealous and I should be proud of my gifts.

“Anon did this in three minutes. What’s taking the rest of you so long?” - what a terrible weight to put on a child. You’re right. Not everyone can do everything.

Fucking hell.

Adults what the everloving shit is wrong with us? Please don’t treat kids like that.

Okay.

But here’s the other thing:

If there’s any time in your life that it’s easy to acquire skills with no apparent effort it’s when you’re a child surrounded by a support system that is engaged in making sure that you can acquire those skills.

It took three adults, two dictionaries, and several hours a day to teach me enough sight-words to throw me into “look at baby genius*” territory but from my perspective as a little kid I was just reading cool stories.

I spent four hours a day in the yearbook room and ditched and failed other classes so that I could work on the yearbook. I collected hundreds of magazines to get an eye for layout. But from my perspective as a teenager it was a fun activity that I did with the closest thing I had to friends.

I’m sure that there are some skills that you had a natural aptitude for, some things that came naturally. But I’m also sure that you didn’t learn those skills with no effort, it’s just that now as an adult with a life and other shit going on it takes more effort to learn to do things.

In all likelihood you weren’t a savant who did everything perfectly the first time you tried. It just seems that way because even really smart kids don’t know when they’re bad at things and are mostly being compared against other kids (with the few rare exceptions of music prodigies or math prodigies or those kids who end up in science grad programs at 12 and boy howdy do I think there’s a whole other can of worms when it comes to the way child prodigies* interact with the world).

You wanna know what probably saved my life in the last few years?

That “anti-capitalist love notes” tumblr post.

You are worth more than your productivity.

I was actually kind of offended the first time I saw that post on my dash. “No I’m not,” I thought. “You’re only worth what you can do, everyone knows that. People care about what you do for them.”

And why the hell would I think anything else? That’s what I’d learned for pretty much my whole life.

It took me a really long time to understand that I was wrong. I matter outside of what I can do for people or how well I perform. I matter more than being able to perfectly recite poetry from memory or do calculations on command or sit down at a piano and play a piece I’ve never played by sight-reading it.

And you matter outside of that too. You’re more than your performance, you’re better than being gifted. There are people who love you for the way you make them laugh and how you listen to their stories and for the simple joy of your presence.

It’s nice to be clever, it’s handy in a lot of situations even if it does come with a lot of baggage for some people.

But god damn, it’s important to be kind.

* Personally I have issues with the way that society constructs the concepts of giftedness, genius, and prodigies. There are a lot of “gifted” kids who were the kids who scored in the top 5% of their class in school but there are also gifted kids who were doing high-level math or reading novels as toddlers; there are prodigies who showed an aptitude for music young and who were then schooled in that instrument to the exclusion of all other activities (and I bet there are a fair number of kids who might be considered prodigies if they were trained to play flute for nine hours a day and didn’t have friends but thankfully we don’t *do* that to very many people - side note, ask me my opinion about olympic athletes some time). Words like “genius” and “gifted” are very nearly meaningless and almost *never* accurately reflect skills proficiency or long-term success or are reflected in income or respect. People think that geniuses are hypercompetent robots with their shit together but literally every adult I know with a genius-level IQ is some variety or other of total fucking tire fire.

#congratulations you have unlocked level two of my tragic backstory #long post

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thehuskerrumble · 4 years ago

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Deuces Wild

Knob Noster 8 Higginsville 9

Two nights, two conference opponents, two 9-8 victories, and two walk-offs, give the Huskers their first winning streak of the season. Higginsville hosted the Knob Noster Panthers on Tuesday, for their second home game in as many nights, and for the second game in a row, they needed some late inning heroics to bring home the dub. It was a marathon, as both teams combined for 15 walks, 16 hits, and 17 runs. And, once again, the Huskers had to come from behind 3 different times before closing out the contest. Get used to it folks, because it appears that there is a lot of parity in this year’s conference, and we can expect a wild, wild MRVC East.

Ernst with the “Blew Bayou” pitch

The Huskers kicked off the first inning with one of their better starts of the year. Senior Kelan Ernst breezed through the first inning, needing only 9 pitches to induce two ground balls and a strikeout. Then the Higginsville lineup gave the coaching staff a rare early lead, by bringing 6 batters to the plate, and scoring two runs in the bottom half of the opening frame. Jace Kerley led the game off with a free pass, and then scored easily when Mason Rumsey laced a triple into the right-center gap. Two batters later, Cade Limback picked up a two-out RBI, by stroking a solid single into left. Huskers 2 Knob 0

Rumsey chasing Kerley home with a three bagger

But then things began to quickly unravel in the second. The Panthers took advantage of two hits, two Husker errors, and four walks, to score five runs and reclaim the lead. Knob Noster saw eleven batters come to the plate, in a painful inning that left the Husker coaching staff contemplating their life choices. Huskers 2 Knob 5. But the boys in blue have been behind plenty of times this season, and to them it ain’t no thing. They simply tied the game by putting up another crooked number in their half of the second. Jackson Kouril led off with a single to left, and then swiped second base with a head first slide. Garrett Pemberton followed with a walk, and then Micah Graham dropped down a sac bunt, advancing the runners to second and third. Next, Jace Kerley stepped to the plate, first pitch swinging, and lifting one in to shallow center. With only one out, Coach Figg held the runners, and it turned out to be the correct decision, as Rumsey continued his big night by driving a two-run double into centerfield. He would eventually score on a throwing error by a Panther defender. And just like that, we were all knotted up. Huskers 5 Knob 5.

No rest for the weary

Higginsville made a pitching change in the third, giving the ball to Kouril for his 392nd inning of the season. He struggled a bit early, hitting the first batter and walking two of the next three, but a strikeout and some great defense limited the Panther damage to just a single run. Huskers 5 Knob 6. The score remained that way until the top of the fifth, when the Panthers were able to tack on another run by way of a triple and an RBI single. Huskers 5 Knob 7. Higginsville would match that run in their half of the fifth, when a Rumsey single and stolen base led to a Limback sac fly to center. Huskers 6 Knob 7. Kouril held the Panthers scoreless in the sixth, keeping the game close, and giving Knob Noster time to have a pitching meltdown in the Huskers next turn at bat: Connor Reynolds and Kouril led off the sixth with back-to-back walks, and the Panther staff elected to make a pitching change. It started out well enough for Knob, as the new pitcher fanned the next two batters. But then he proceeded to throw 12 straight balls, walking three Huskers in a row. He worked his way out of a bases loaded jam by inducing a ground ball to second, but not before the Huskers had once again taken the lead with two more runs. Huskers 8 Knob 7.

I didn’t get a pic of Russell’s throw, so here’s one of him running to first

Higginsville then slammed the door on the Panthers, with three easy outs, sending the fans home for an early dinner. No, that’s not true. Of course it didn’t happen that way. Instead, it went something like this: Jackson Kouril made quick work of the first two batters, retiring them on a ground ball to second, and a nice fielding play on a come-backer to the mound. But after starting the next batter off 2-2, an inside pitch got away from him, plunking the batter and sending the tying run to first. Next up was Knob Noster’s number 3 hitter, and he wasted no time, driving the first pitch he saw into centerfield for a two-out double. The runner at first raced all the way home for Knob’s eighth score of the contest. Game tied, again. But there was no time to feel sorry for themselves, as Kouril now had to face the Panther’s clean-up hitter, with the go ahead run in scoring position. Jackson again worked the count to 2-2, but the next pitch was roped into center for a solid single. With good speed at second base, it appeared that the Huskers would surely be trailing in their final at bat. But sophomore Camden Russell had other ideas, as he charged in hard from center, scooped up the ball, and fired a strike to Kerley at home plate. Jace was in a perfect position, and slapped the tag on the runner, preserving the tie. Collective exhale. Huskers 8 Knob 8.

Action Jackson for the walk-off!

Higginsville would head into their last at bat, hoping to score a run and put an end to this madness. Limback got the first opportunity, and he took full advantage by lining a single into left field. He then nabbed second base, when the Panther pitcher chose to work out of the windup instead of the stretch. Connor Reynolds then drew a walk, bringing Jackson Kouril to the plate with two on and nobody out. Kouril was looking for sweet revenge, and it was served, cold. On a 2-1 count, Jackson drilled a single up the middle, driving in Limback for the finishing touch on the Huskers second walk-off in as many nights. It was only fitting since Kouril wears the number 4. And if you are familiar with first grade math, 2+2=4. Deuces Wild! (I know, it’s a stretch. But I would like to see you guys come up with a title for each game. It ain’t easy.) The Huskers win again in dramatic fashion, and improve their record to 3-5 on the season. Go Huskers!

Rumsey flashing the leather all evening

Web Gem:

In the third inning, with two on and two out, the Panther’s number 3 hitter smashed a hard hit grounder up the middle. Shortstop Mason Rumsey tracked the ball, but had to quickly change directions when the ball deflected off of Jackson Kouril. Rumsey managed to pick the ball out of the grass and fire a seed to Cade Limback, who made a nice stretch to retire the runner. Difficulty Scale: 8

Cade “Limber-back” Not a pic of the web gem, but you can see how nimble the big guy is

Almost Web Gem:

With two outs in the top of the fourth, shortstop Rumsey ranged deep to his right, fielding a ground ball at the edge of the outfield grass. With all of his momentum going the wrong way, he managed to get off a great cross-body throw, and Limback once again made an outstanding stretch for the final out of the inning. But while the Huskers were all celebrating the play and preparing to bat, the homeplate umpire made the decision to over rule the call, claiming that Limback’s foot had just come off of the bag. My guess is he must have spent some major dough on Lasik surgery or something, cause it’s the only explanation for his ability to see a play on the wrong side of the bag, from 90 feet away. I can’t help but marvel at the advances in modern medicine. Difficulty Scale: 9 (for Rumsey). Difficulty Scale for the Umpire: 10+

Pemberton footage

Web Gem:

Two batters later, in the same inning as the “almost web gem”, the Panther’s number 8 hitter lined a single into right field. Garrett Pemberton fielded the ball, and let it fly towards home, as Knob was attempting to score another runner. The throw was just a bit off line, towards the first base line. But Jace Kerley knocked it down, and then picked it up bare-handed, diving towards the plate. The tag was in time, keeping the score close in a game where every run ended up making a difference.

I don’t know what’s going on here

Web Gem (the defense was en fuego):

As mentioned earlier, Camden Russell also picked up an outfield assist, on his great throw to cut down a runner at the plate, in the top of the seventh. It was a huge moment in the game, and turned the momentum back in the Huskers favor.

Three hits, three runs, and four RBI’s

Almost Cycle:

After hitting a triple in his first at bat, a double in his second, and a single in his third, Rumsey stepped to the plate needed only a long ball to complete the elusive “hit for the cycle” in his final plate appearance. But instead, he was only able to manage a measly four pitch walk. He has brought shame upon himself and his family.

Box Score:

JV GAME

(I had to leave early and missed it, but Kimberly got some great pics!)

Up Next:

Monday, April 12th, 4:30 p.m., the Higginsville Huskers host the Lexington Minuteman in a conference matchup at Fairground Park

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late-nite-student-ramblings · 5 years ago

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Reflection on my first year- Scheduling classes.

So an old friend of mine just had orientation, scheduling their first semester of classes and that got me thinking of my own experience with scheduling classes. Just as an advance, I was assigned my degree advisor from the beginning due to declaring my major from the get-go. I’m aware that some/most universities don’t do this so I will ask around to my friends at other universities and update if I can.

So my perspective is narrow because with my degree I have very few options for classes to take, especially in the beginning. However, I did have some variety outside of my degree-specific credits so I will do my best.

1) Learn what you need to take.

This is what your advisor is for. At orientation, we met with our advisors, told them what degree we wanted to pursue and the type (what you wanted to concentrate on w/ your degree). We were given a map track for the classes we’d be taking for all four years and we’d focus on just the ones for the upcoming semester.

Ask what classes are pre-recs for classes down the line so you can get an idea of how much wiggle room you’ll have if you eat dirt the first time around.

We had to take placement tests so you may have to take pre-rec classes if you didn’t score high enough to be where you should.

2) Start as early as possible.

As soon as the information is available, start looking. The sooner you start the sooner you can have peace of mind that you’ve got it done. It’s also good to start early because you can detect problems early on before you even register. I was able to use 3) to layout my classes before anyone could schedule and ended up finding an overlap that would’ve affected over half of the people in my major. Was able to tell our advisor and they were able to work it out before enrollment dates started.

3) Look at the times available.

There are many ways to do this. My university has a scheduling system where we input the classes we need and it will generate a number of schedules based on the times. This was good for when I had a lot of choices for a few different classes.

Another option is an online schedule maker. This works well if you're a visual person and like to see your options rather than try and juggle them in your head. You do have to manually put in the classes and times tho so would only recommend if you like entering info or are just impatient like me and don’t have a lot of different options for classes.

https://www.freecollegeschedulemaker.com/ << This is my favorite.

4) Look at the location.

After looking at the possibilities of your schedule pull up a university map and mark where your classes will be. I almost made the mistake of scheduling two classes 15 minutes apart with a 20-minute walk between them. Also, look for back and forth schedules, due to a limited number of choices some of my classes a go from building A to building B, back to building A, Back to building B. If they’re close together maybe it's not a problem but again you don’t want to have to speed walk to all of your classes.

5) Look at the professor.

Rate my professor is a thing and I’m sure there are many things similar. Depending on how many reviews said professor has that could be either good, bad, or neutral. A lot of reviews usually mean that the prof was an extream (good or bad). So noticeable that people cared enough to bring it to others attention. If you can’t find them, they’re new or maybe just mediocre, so maybe see if they’ve taught somewhere else or, do some research on other profs too, for back up. Just remember, at the end of the semester, to go back to whatever you used and leave a review for others.

6) Live and adjust.

Regardless of what schedule you get, you’ll have to get used to it to stay on top of things.

Do you have more time than expected for lunch?

When can you expect to get home?

Did you find that a certain building is really good for studying in between class times?

Did you find out the bus goes right to your first class so you don’t have to get up as early?

Do you now need this time for office hours?

Is a nap before your long lecture a good idea?

Noticing small things like this can really help optimize your time and experience.

7) Evaluate it.

If it's your first time scheduling classes like this, this is a great chance for you to see what you can handle.

Things to keep a note of:

How did you like waking up for your earliest class? (My earliest class was 8am so I learned quickly)

Do you work better with a big block of classes or spread out with big gaps in between?

Certain buildings have certain qualities, learn them and keep note (mental or otherwise). Chances are you’ll be in the building again sometime. (ex. the maths building was always freezing, loud construction was common for some of the older building, this building was a good place to study from 2-4. This place had really good deli sandwiches).

How were your study habits with this schedule?

8) Keep talking to your advisor.

We have to talk to our advisor every semester in order to register for classes but if you have more questions, later on, don’t be afraid to email them and ask. I ended up going two additional times due to conflicts with scheduling that I’d noticed and once for a change in concentration (still an engineer just different type).

If you have more to share, feel free to add! Happy to clarify anything in the post or just have a chat.

All the best,

-E.

#College #College Tips #College life #schedule #scheduling classes #classes #University #university life #university tips #student life #student tips #first year reflection #studyblr #student

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thomasword-blog · 5 years ago

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M13U1A1 Globalization and Education

INTRO

There was a phrase that my middle-school self promised to never utter, “I am a middle-school teacher.” Well, I am a middle school teacher and have been for the last four years. The school I work at, Pride Prep, was founded under a vision of project and action based learning with an emphasis on relationship based teaching. It was understood that we would not unionize because the school would take care of us. Though we would be required by state law to participate in standardized tests, as an organization we would not pay attention to the results. There we stood, a public charter school, free from the restraints of the system, able to focus only on the well being of the students.

Given my background in construction, graphic design, and CNC operation I been hired run the school’s maker-space. However, the school was short on math teacher, so instead of helping kids build projects I found myself in the classroom teaching math. I had no formal mathematics background, had never taught before so I didn’t know enough to know better. I tailored my curriculum around my construction, design, and business background. The students built board games, chairs, and copper art pieces. Each build was a different iteration of scaling, fractions/decimals, perimeter/area, addition, subtraction, multiplication, unit rate and so on. The students would then cost and price the products for resale so that we could use the profit to buy new supplies. For me it was a blur of a year; a trial by fire of classroom management. For the kids it was an illumination of the power of math as a real world tool.

TESTING

As a public school we where required to participate in state testing. We went in with our chins up, knowing the growth our student’s had made, hopeful that we would score on par with other public schools in our district. Our CEO (also acting as principal) reassured us that the test scores did not matter but when the test scores came out changes started happening in the school. We had performed on par with schools of similar demographics but it turned out the public scrutiny of the tests had more sway than was originally anticipated (see https://create.piktochart.com/output/20093013-u2m3a1-sps-and-pride-prep). As was discussed in Minori Nagahra’s (2011, p.375) review of Globalizing Education Policy, our school was about to start, “implement[ing] policies set elsewhere and have [our] school achieve according to various league tables of performance indicators.”

The following year, in response to the test score, we created our schedule around the needs of the math department on the premise that math is very linear and sequential and requires a solid foundation of concepts before progressing. The problem with this was the unintentional ‘tracking’ of students in other classes. Tracking, or the leveling of students based on demonstrated abilities, is a very controversial topic. Research has shown that tracking sets the stage for a student’s self expectations such that when they are in what is perceived to be a ‘dumb’ class they have a very hard time breaking the mold. While students in mixed level classes have a much easier time stepping up to greater challenges. In addition, “Data shows minority and low-income students are few and far between in high level and Advanced Placement courses,” (Brindley, 2015, p.4). Our admin was aware of the problems with tracking and has since done their best to juggle students schedules so that they can have a leveled math class while maintaining mixed abilities in other disciplines.

This year, however, I was not on the math team. I had signed up for my teacher certificate training with Teach Now and was on track to becoming a science teacher. As such I was given a science class and joined up with the science team to develop curriculum. In silent response to the test scores we aligned the curriculum with The Next Generation Science Standards. We used them to develop projects that ensured students had exposure to a more mainstream science curriculum. The past year science was run as an inquiry based workshop where students led their lines of inquiry based on their areas of interest. The core standards were addressed by means of the online platform Summit PLP.

As a result of the curriculum change, science projects became more like simulations than actual inquiries. We incorporated more practice and rote skill building into class time without a solid demonstration of the need for the skills. This diminished engagement thus begged the question of how do we keep up engagement while also giving students the tools they need to do well on a standardized test. We answered this question by incorporating design into the science curriculum. If we where studying keystone species we would have the students do a deep dive into one species, make a custom t-shirt and then sell them at venues to make money to be donated to conservation and preservation organizations. We also made backstories for the different experiments and workshops we did so the students had a colorful notion of why they where doing what they where doing. This payed off as our test scores in science where 74% passing while the state average was 63%.

RIGOR, CITICENSHIP & CAPITOL

The increase in test scores was not enough for our parents. There was a large cry out for more rigor in our school. The implementation of design in science and the remnants of inquiry based learning gave the parents the impression that we more of an arts and crafts school than an academic institution. Some wanted more ditto work others wanted more instruction. And while the school was founded on internationalist principles as defined in the article, Internationalism and Globalization as a Context for International Education, We would need to take on more of a globalist (as defined in the same article) approach to making our school a more desirable, thus competitive, institution (Cambridge & Thompson, 2004, p.164). A school school needs money to operate. Our first two years we had money from Bill Gates to fall back on but we made a choice as an institution to not use it unless we had no other options. Gates is an avid supporter of charter schools and even though ours is a public charter school, it is a step in the direction of public money for private charter schools. Our school was not founded on the neoliberal idea that schools should be part of a Laze Faire, free market (Nagahra, 2011, p.373). Instead it was conceived of as a dynamic institution that could defy union norms in the interest of a rich education. We hoped to be a school that students wanted to be at because we where doing the right things.

The parents, however, had a hard time swallowing such an optimistic pill. Naturally they wanted their kids to go out into the world and be successful and more often than not this involved attending college. Even though we where using a vetted program to ensure students where getting their required standards, Summit PLP, we had to respond to the call. Since we are a public school we are allocated dollars by the number of students we have. If the numbers go down the budget goes down. If the budget goes down we loose the resources to implement great projects. If we loose the great projects we loose more students. Eventually we loose the school.

As a response to the call, our CEO decided to begin the acceptance process into the International Baccalaureate program. This would lend credibility to our program and give us a framework to steer our projects. There are ivy league schools on the east coast that look at students with IB diplomas as their first draft (J. Ewan, personal communication, 2014)*. And what a way to level the playing field. Our school has around 50% free and reduced lunch. And students come from all walks of life. The only other school in our city to offer IB is a private school that charges over $30,000 a year in tuition and recruits wealthy students from china as a staple source of income. This does make the school more international but it also perpetuates the schism between the haves and have nots.

Ans so it was, for the next two years we steeped ourselves in ATL’s, Global Contexts, and Statements of Inquiry. We tried very hard to balance the rigorous academic expectations of IB, with the original project based philosophies of our school. When things became too academic parents again stepped up with complaints. Only this time the complaints where that the school had lost its focus on project based learning. The drive to compete to be an institution that creates college candidates had overridden the desire to make well rounded, experienced, and thoughtful citizens capable of solving alien problems. On the down side we finished last year, our fourth year, with a higher than average attrition rate. We lost teachers mid year because they could not handle the pressure of balancing the IB with meeting the social emotional needs of kids from all walks of life. However, we are a resilient and dynamic (sometimes too dynamic) institution. And while we never will find a perfect solution to balance out the requirements of a free market competitive system with that of creating global citizens and stewards, we will continue to work creatively within the parameters we are given to maintain the first with the true aim of creating the latter.

Resources:

Nagahara, M. (2011). Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard: Globalizing education policy. Journal of Educational Change, 12(3), 377–383. doi: 10.1007/s10833-011-9170-1

*, J. C., & Thompson, J. (2004). Internationalism and globalization as contexts for international education. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 34(2), 161–175. doi: 10.1080/0305792042000213994

Brindley, M. 'Leveling' Raises Questions About Educational Inequality. Retrieved from https://www.nhpr.org/post/leveling-raises-questions-about-educational-inequality#stream/0

*J. Ewan is a 14 year veteran teacher who spent several years teaching in public and private schools on the east coast.

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bi-rezi · 5 years ago

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super productive day!!!

- scheduled hair appointment! i’m going to get it cut into a more blunt bob (its finally grown out of the “shaggy awfulness” stage but i still dont like the look of this much layering) and get it dyed pink!!!

- filled out necessary forms to get me into my friend’s prom!

- took placement test for college!! got super good scores, especially in math. next i need to make an appointment for a scheduling consultation, basically, and im going to have my act scores and these, and with those combined i might be able to skip a level in math and/or english, which is cool!!! i got a 27 in math on my act, and that’s just high enough to put me over the level for the advanced math track. i didnt do as well on the placement test in english, but i got a 35 in language and a 36 in reading on my act, so i feel like im good there, lol

#txt

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optomstudies · 6 years ago

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Hi! I'm currently doing an 30 day exam prep challenge and I'm trying to come up with a reward system. I've set them for 5, 10, 15 days in a row and after every exam date from then. Do you use a system for rewards? I mean, not just little treats after a productive day but rather bigger ones and maybe increasing their value progressively to motivate myself to stay on track and not necessarily taking a lot of time from my study routine. Thanks in advanced, your studyblr is my absolute fave! ♥

Question: What do you reward yourself with when you study?

Answer: Mostly, nothing.

Interestingly enough, I have personally never had a rewards system in place.

You know the gummy bears thing where people place a gummy bear after every paragraph/page? I just always felt more sickened by having food rewards than rewarded :L I actually don’t really know why this was the case, so I thought about it a little and this is the post haha

When I say rewards here, I’m not talking about breaks - you need breaks to continue studying. I’m talking about little sweeteners like food, catch ups with friends, going out, etc.

When I studied, I relied a lot more on intrinsic motivation and the end goal in sight.

I would study something in order with the idea/feeling of memorising and understanding a topic 100%. I never really had to even think about the bigger endgoal, which was scoring 95%+ in an exam, coming 1st in rank, becoming the best optometrist I could be, etc. (although occasionally when I was tired I did think about it).

I saw studying more as something I had to do than something that I had to labour through

so I think that made a big difference for me. I see so many students trying to use a reward system, but oddly enough I never really had to. Studying was an act of discipline for me; I received no rewards for completing it, but for doing it. I remember now how one of my classmates got a new car from her parents for getting into a law degree….. I wasn’t even expecting some extra pocket money from my parents LOL I have just never needed to be rewarded for what I think is something rewarding in itself, i.e. being proud of yourself for learning well. Perhaps my parents had something in the way they raised me so that I thought like that?

One tip I try and give, but is easier said than done, is to just think only about the task itself.

I always did this, so I never struggled with finishing study (at least in high school LOL). The best way I can describe this is like when you’re trying to figure out a particularly difficult maths question. In that moment, you aren’t really thinking about anything but trying to solve it.

In fact, thinking about rewards or goals would often distract or discourage me from the task itself, and I would quickly run out of motivation (when it has actually been shown that willpower is not a finite resource; it is only a finite resource when you think that it is).

The other important thing is that you need to break the work up into small chunks.

This is the main difference I found with my studying at university. When I had so much to do, even just focusing on the task itself became difficult, because there was just no end to the amount of work that I had to do. At least at the pace that I did things there wasn’t enough of a break, because as soon as I would plod through one assignment, the next one would come up. I think when you are dealing with the workloads you face in university, working in short, effective bursts is much more effective.

In this case, I did find that I would also need discipline, because rewarding myself with playing games/watching videos would actually be a lot more toxic because physically I wouldn’t really get a break in the true sense of the word.

That’s not to say that a rewards system is not a valid way to motivate yourself. Whatever works to get you to study and do well academically. I’m just trying to share a somewhat subconscious part of my own studying methods.

Follow optomstudies for original posts and study masterposts! Links: all originals + langblr + masterposts + web directory!

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echodrops · 6 years ago

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Hi! I'm a high schooler considering majoring in creative writing, and I was wondering if there are any tips, pros and cons, advice, etc. you could give since you teach it? :3

Ahhh, I’m excited to get asks like this because I love to hear that people want to major in creative writing–nowadays there’s such a heavy emphasis on STEM careers, and poor English is so often ignored… But I hope I can do this response justice. Please keep in mind that I can only share my own experiences and that the path I’ve taken may not work for everyone!

I guess if you’re in the “considering” stage, the number one thing I would suggest is that you ask yourself two things:

1) What is my “absolute” goal? If I could score my dream job at the end of college, what would that look like?

2) What am I willing to consider doing instead if I don’t score my dream job at the end? What other related careers could I enjoy?

If you’re considering creative writing as a career, your likely end goal is to become a professional writer and make a living off your writing, right? (Some people treat that like a pipe dream, but it’s no less likely, and in fact sometimes far more likely, than any other creative career.) But becoming a writer who is well-known enough to live off your advances and royalties will likely take you a significant amount of time–even if you are published, especially in the early years, you may not be earning enough from your books to pay the bills all by yourself. (If you’ve got a supportive significant other that has a high-paying job, by all means, get them to pay the bills while you build up your writing fan base–then you can repay later when you’re rolling in royalties!)

But you will, at least at first, very likely need to ask yourself: What am I willing to do as a day job?

And I think the answer to that question is really what determines whether or not you should pursue a creative writing degree.

A degree in creative writing is one of the most versatile college degrees you can get. (Certainly I’m biased, but there do seem to be certain degrees that are simply more applicable to a wider field of career options–someone who gets a degree in sculpting can sculpt, for example, but I’m not sure about its applicability beyond that.)

English, like math, is a broad enough type of degree that it achieves some “universality.” A huge, huge number of careers require strong writing and communication skills. English degrees can get you into law school, into marketing and content-writing careers, into teaching careers, into office jobs, into HR and PR positions, into management, and essentially into any position in which writing will be a major component. Demonstrated ability to write well and clearly is a golden ticket to many jobs because it is a skill that many people lack. Even people who might otherwise be better qualified for a technical position can still end up rejected in favor of people who are able to express their skills in a more professional manner!

So getting an English degree/having creative writing for your emphasis is a far, far safer career choice than many people will lead you to believe.

But just because the degree can apply to many fields doesn’t always mean it’s the best degree for those fields–the “jack of all trades” saying is applicable here. There are certain careers that English degrees feed into very well, and others where you’ll have to stretch things a little. So, another question:

Are you interested in any of the following?

Teaching

Writing content/reviews for products or websites

Handling correspondence, such as managing emails for a business

Creating and managing social media accounts

Tutoring/Proof-reading for pay

Technical writing (someone has to write all our user manuals after all)

Managing records or handling public relations

If so, you can probably sign up for a creative writing degree with no real worries. Case closed, problem solved. XD

But if none of that stuff looks remotely interesting to you, you might want to take a deep breath and think about your other options (of which the following are just some):

Skip an undergraduate degree in creative writing specifically, but plan on studying writing in graduate school, such as through an MFA program (a bit difficult but not uncommon)

Double major in creative writing and another field where the day jobs interest you more (difficult but very useful)

Skip formal education for creative writing entirely and go it on your own to become a great writer (not ideal, but also not totally impossible)

Having a creative writing Bachelor’s degree can help you on your way to becoming a professional writer. But it isn’t a requirement to become a great author–in fact, many authors never formally studied creative writing before writing their great novels (Kurt Vonnegut was in science; Ernest Hemingway was a journalist before a novelist, etc.). If day jobs in other fields interest you more, pursuing a degree there doesn’t mean you’ll never write and publish your great novel.

Nor will skipping a creative writing Bachelor’s degree block you from ever studying creative writing later on: in my MFA program, only three of the seven of us in the poetry track had undergraduate English degrees. It is possible to earn an undergraduate degree in a totally different field and then still go on to study creative writing later if you decide that writing on your own isn’t working.

Furthermore, you’re not locked into certain classes at most colleges–you could take a creative writing minor or simply take writing classes as part of your electives, and still get the benefits of the education, while earning a different degree where the day jobs interest you more.

As a personal aside, when I was an undergraduate student, I was very nervous about my ability to succeed in the writing field, and so I decided to go the double major route, with English as my “fun” degree and criminal justice as my “pay the bills” degree. Ironically, almost a decade later, here I am, paying my bills with my “fun” degree. I rarely use my criminal justice degree as anything more than a party trick (people really love to talk about murder). But studying two subjects gave both myself and my family relief, and I did learn many, many things that would later appear in my writing, so I have no regrets.

Basically, what I’m getting at here is: When you think about how you’re going to be paying your bills for 5-10 years after college, what careers can you see yourself doing other than writing fiction/poetry? If none of the things you imagine line up with the “easy to get” English degree careers, that’s a sign that maybe you should at least consider studying something else and just take your writing classes on the side instead. (Or double major, if you’re a masochist like me lol.)

Ultimately, I’m not enough of an optimist to tell you that you should blindly follow your passion for writing and assume it will all work out–the basic fact is you’ll almost inevitably need a day job, at least for a while, and that’s what I think the deciding factor in your major should be.

Nevertheless, one of the biggest hang-ups I hear from people thinking about majoring in writing is that they are worried the degree will be worthless, and that simply isn’t true. Almost all my friends from college were English majors (we flock together) and all of my English major friends are gainfully employed–none of us are homeless or starving or still living off our parents. Some of us might have better jobs (I’m not going to brag–lol jk yes I am–with my professor’s salary I own two houses and am two months from completely paying off my gorgeous 2SS RS Camaro), but essentially every English major I know is doing well for him- or herself. (This may not be everyone’s story though–I’m sure some others have struggled; I just don’t know them.)

The longest time I was ever unemployed since earning my creative writing degree was a period of four months after grad school, when I moved back to southern California and realized the job market there was horrific. THAT SAID, even during my four-month job search, I took an internship at a refugee and immigration center and got the opportunity to help people literally escape human trafficking rings and modern-day slavery, so that was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.I haven’t always liked the jobs I’ve had, but I’ve never felt afraid of not having enough money to feed or house myself since leaving college with a creative writing degree.

You can do perfectly well for yourself with a degree in writing. I wouldn’t even call it a risky choice, at this point. So if that’s the sticking point in your decision to major in writing–that part I wouldn’t worry too much about.

As for advice… ah, this post is really long already. If you want some advice about what to look for in schools you apply to, or what to do if you do decide on creative writing as your major, send me another message and I’ll try to whip something up.

Hope this is what you were looking for!

#college advice #life advice #writing advice #???#I have no idea how to tag this lol #why you should get an English degree #or maybe some cases where you shouldn't #creative writing #creative writing major #IRL stuff #echo answers asks

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robininthelabyrinth · 6 years ago

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Fic: The Beginning of Wisdom - Chapter 3 (Ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Leonard Snart (Len) & Leonard Snart (Leo), Len Snart/Mick Rory, Leo Snart/Mick Rory, Len Snart/Mick Rory/Leo Snart, Leo Snart/Ray Terrill, Len Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: In which Leonard Snart is twins.

(the life and times and loves of Len and Leo Snart)

—————————————————————————————————–

Life went on.

Even if Marie was gone, she had left them Lisa, and for Lisa they would give up anything. Any comfort, any safety, anything.

Giving up school was certainly easy enough.

Len proposed that they swap out days of attendance, so that CPS didn't look too closely at them, and Leo agreed. It did not seem like a great sacrifice, especially since it would only be a short while: they could care for Lisa, yes, but only long enough to ensure that she was taken care of elsewhere.

Their father knew very well what drew the attention of the police; he would never let them stay home to guard her.

A friendly neighbor agreed to take her into the little daycare she ran from her home; the Leonards watched her like a hawk for weeks before conceding that the neighbor's friendliness was just that, and concealed no darkness.

(They still came for random inspections at least once a week. The babies and children there all loved them dearly, a reaction neither of them could explain, but which they repaid with kindness and laughter whenever they could.)

Their grades suffered that year, marked down for poor attendance, but their test results easily overcame that deficiency and they advanced to the next grade without any serious difficulty.

As always, they presented the best overall set of grades (Leo's, usually, but only by a little) to their father, and as far as Leo was concerned, that was all.

Len did not think the same.

A thought had come to him, an idea stealing in through the dark one night as he lay awake, comforting himself by watching his brother's chest rise and fall, and he could not rid himself of it.

He could not, because he could not share it with his brother.

"What do you want to do when you're older?" he asked one day after school, as they played with the babies at the daycare.

"Are you asking the babies?" Leo laughed, even as the older children all shouted out their answers, throwing out suggestions like "fireman" or "spaceman" or "dinosaur researcher".

"No," Len said, after they had finished praising each child's choice as excellent and brilliant and innovative and certainly within their capacity to achieve. "I meant you."

Leo blinked. "I hadn't really thought about it."

"Neither have I," Len said, his voice grim as he thought of all the reasons they had not given the future any mind: too tired, too scared, too concerned with surviving today to think about tomorrow. "You should."

Leo hummed noncommittally, but Len persisted.

After months of nagging, and trips to the library to research careers, and visits to career fairs at the high school where Leo complained that they were the only under-ten-years-olds present, Len finally got his answer.

"I don't know, okay?" Leo exclaimed, throwing up his hands. "I might be interested in psychology, or maybe fashion design, but I won't know for sure until I go to college and figure out what I'm good at. Isn't that what everyone else does?"

"Yes," Len said. "That's fine."

"You're being stranger than usual," Leo told him. "Won't you tell me what's on your mind?"

"I had an idea," Len said. "I'll tell you about it, but not now."

It was the first secret he ever kept from Leo.

After that, their divergence began to accelerate. Leo began to focus on his artistic skills, which Len did not care about, and on the higher world of literature, which Len was bored by, and the intricacies of biology, which Len understood but did not love. Len, instead, focused on math and the science of angles, physics, where the answers at the lower levels were simple and the questions at the higher levels were fascinating, but which Leo thought were a gigantic boring waste of time given the presence of calculators.

They both spent hours playing with Lisa, but Leo taught her shapes and the alphabet, while Len taught her sleight of hand and how to measure time.

Leo became more confident in himself.

Len, who had always been confident, became even more protective.

Their father called on them more and more for jobs, but now, instead of splitting them equally, Len took the lion's share.

"Are you sure?" Leo asked, frowning at his brother. He found that he valued his father's esteem less now that he was assured the affection of both his brother and little Lisa, and even a friend or two outside that circle: he was sociable and well-liked but not reliant on others, by his own preference, and having a support team was invaluable to him in staying that way.

"If you don't mind," Len said. He valued his father's praise as much as ever – even more so, now that he had more people to protect, as his father's goodwill was a necessity in protecting them. He did not tell Leo about the extra bruises he obtained when he took responsibility for Lisa's childish mistakes: he had learned by now what it was to be a burden on others, and also that once you keep one secret, it was easier to keep the next. "Your literature essays are a lot more tricky than my math proofs, after all."

"I suppose," Leo said, screwing up his nose. "But are you –"

"I'm sure," Len said firmly.

And so Len went on the jobs, and Leo stayed behind.

Len even liked some parts of the work he did with his father: he was deemed old enough to listen in on the planning, although his suggestions were appropriate only when phrased as innocent questions, and he was extremely proud of his skills, his light fingers and his quick mind, all aspects that helped him be a successful thief.

Those parts, he liked.

Other parts, he hated.

Other parts –

He came home to Leo one day, shaking, for once seeking comfort instead of offering protection.

"What happened?" Leo demanded.

Len shook his head. He had no words: no words that could convey the depth of hurt in his heart, the violation of his soul, that had come when his father had forced him to pull the trigger of a gun when it was pointed at another man – to deliberately end another life before its time.

Another life that lived and breathed and loved; a life that might have had brothers and sisters, too, a Leo and Lisa of their own now left bereft; a human life.

Leo could not understand, and Len never wanted him to.

He had never felt so alone.

Leo got the story out of Len eventually, despite Len's best efforts to repel him. Just as Len had gloomily foreseen, the knowledge caused Leo great pain, for he could do nothing to help assuage the agony in Len's mind. He could do nothing but offer his presence, alive and breathing, Lisa at their side doing the same.

That was still some comfort. Len took that comfort to heart, and it broke through the icy barriers he had erected to hide himself from what he had done.

And so Len wept: an act their father had forbidden as weak.

When their father called for his Leonard, hours later, drunk and laughing and joyous at a job successfully accomplished, Leo went to him in Len's place so that he would not see the tear tracks on Len's face.

And in Len's place, Leo was given a beer and a slap on the back in congratulation for 'becoming a man', which was all the recognition that their father saw fit to bestow upon the incident.

Leo drank the beer, and thought to himself for the first time that perhaps he hated his father.

After that, Leo insisted upon going on the jobs more often again, especially once they became more and more frequent, taking days out of school instead of merely nights and weekends.

Len agreed to relinquish some of the jobs to Leo, secretly relieved to have some time to rest from the thankless never-ending task of pleasing his father, but he insisted that Leo only take the ones where no firearm was involved.

They fought over that, a real fight like they hadn't had in years, but Len held his ground and stood firm. His hands were already bloody; Leo's were not, and he intended for it to stay that way.

Eventually Leo conceded, though he never stopped worrying over it.

Years passed.

Lisa grew up, and grew talented, and there was nothing her brothers would not give her: Leo his presence at her ice skating practices, cheering her on, and Len his growing skills at picking pockets and cracking ATMs in order to pay for the increasingly expensive lessons.

Years passed, and there were more men who needed shooting.

Len's hands stopped shaking after each kill. Instead, they started twitching – not just after a death, but all the time: a nervous tic, a compulsion, a need to move, to act, to steal.

Leo read books from the library about it, books about anxiety and trauma and negative reinforcement and feedback loops, and came up with the word kleptomania, but for all the knowledge he gained on the subject, he could not stop it from being true.

Len was sick, now, in a way Leo wasn't, and that was something they had to deal with.

Leo thought that at least they would deal with it together.

Len did not agree, but it would be some time before Leo found that out, for Len had grown very good at keeping secrets where he thought he needed to.

But all secrets come out in the end.

After one year that had been particularly bad – job after job, night after sleepless night, their father intent on winning a promotion within the foul ranks of the Family to which he had sold himself and using his child (his children) ruthlessly to get there – Leo finally discovered the oldest of Len's secrets.

Of course he did.

It was inevitable: the truth of it was in their final report cards for the year, of which they only ever presented their father with one.

"You're failing out," Leo said numbly, staring at the numbers that marked his brother's test scores.

"My test grades are fine," Len said, not disagreeing. "But not enough to overcome the issues with my attendance."

Leo nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from the rows of zeros and no-shows, looking desperately for some sign of unreachable hope, some signal that this wasn't happening.

He saw one zero that makes his eyes go wide, and he jabbed at one of them with a frown. "That was my day," he said, the slightest shade of triumph in his voice: for if they had made one mistake, then surely they might have made others – perhaps even enough others enough to save Len even from such a miserable performance. "I went on that job that day – remember? I remember, because you had to borrow my textbook."

"Yeah," Len said. "I remember."

"But you're still listed as a no-show that day!"

"Yeah," Len said again. "Because I told them I was you."

Leo stared at his brother.

"Yeah," Len said a third time. "I lied and I said I was Leo on the days I went in and you didn't. I did your tests, I did your homework, I did your class participation –"

"But why?!" Leo demanded. "You – you're Leonard –"

"So are you," Len said firmly, his eyes glinting angrily. "Maybe I got that name first, being the oldest, or maybe I didn't; who even knows at this point? It doesn't matter. It's both our names now. But more than that, you're not just Leonard. You're the Leonard that's going to do good."

"What?"

"You're going to college," Len said, that long-ago decision spilling forth at last. "Just like you said you would: go to college and see what you're good at. You're gonna be good at so many things, and you're gonna pick one, and then you're gonna have a real job. A real life. Dad only wants one of us for his jobs, after all, and that's going to be me."

"But –!"

"I'm the one who's a kleptomaniac," Len said, his voice bitter – not at Leo, who he looked at only with love in his eyes, but at the necessity of this whole pretense. Bitter, not at his father whom he never blamed as much as he ought, but at the life he saw as inescapable. "I'm the one who's a murderer. You're going to make it straight, Leo, with no crime at all. You're going to be good."

"I don't want to make it straight!" Leo cried out. "Not without you!"

"I'll always be there," Len said, "when I can."

"That's not good enough! Why can't I be like you, huh? Why can't I –"

"I don't want you to be like me," Len said. "I want you to be better."

"You haven't given me a good reason to stick to the straight and narrow," Leo said, crossing his arms as he glared.

"You'd be able to adopt Lisa when you turn eighteen," Len said promptly. He'd had longer to prepare for this conversation than Leo. "But only if you have no record."

Leo faltered.

He’d always said and thought that there was nothing they would not do for Lisa.

But –

This?

"You don't have a record either," Leo said, but it's weak and he knew it. "Not yet, anyway."

"The police have always let me go when they catch me because I've been small and had good grades," Len said. "I'm still small, but with my grades like that? They'll ship me off to juvie next time they nab me."

Neither of them pretended that he wouldn't get nabbed. It was practically a feature of some of their father's plans, to leave Leonard behind to take the fall.

It might not happen on the first job Len ran, nor even the tenth, but it would happen eventually. And then Len would be taken away, painted with the brush of the bad kid.

The bad twin.

And once one was marked as good and the other as bad, they would be separated with all the force that society could bring to bear upon them.

"Why didn't you just split the days with me?" Leo whispered.

"Because we were out of school enough days to fail us both," Len told him, his voice gentle but sure and certain. He had not made the decision lightly, but make it he had, and he would defend his decision with all the force of his mind brought to bear upon it. "I did the math."

Math was always Len's talent, but Leo could do it, too. He couldn't dispute Len's conclusion.

"I don't want you to," Leo said.

"I don't want to, either," Len said, and that plaintive plea reached him where nothing else would have: his cold mask of calmness broke into tears that beaded up in his eyes, tears that he would never let anyone but Leo see. "I don't want to be like Dad, Leo. But it seems like one of us has got to be, and I'd rather it be me."

"Not like Dad," Leo, who hated their father now more than ever before, a searing hatred that burned at his heart until it was as cold as stone, said. "A thief, yes. Maybe even a murderer. But you will never be like Dad."

Len pulled Leo into his arms the way he always had, and Leo clung back to him like he always had, and they curled up in their single bed the way they always had.

Neither wanted to think of the day when those easy expressions of affection might not be so easy to come by.

There was no more switching, after that.

Len stayed home, caring for Lisa and catching up on his sleep, brushing up on his skills – his light fingers to take things, his quick eyes to spot traps, his ready mind to plan escapes. He ran small, simple jobs of his own. The jobs were intended to be practice runs, preparation and learning to develop his skills for the real events, but they also usually produced enough money to buy Leo and Lisa some small treats.

He did not get caught on these jobs of his own.

Leo, in turn, threw himself into his studies, forcing himself to become better at math rather than relying exclusively on his brother's talents, pushing himself to excel more and more in what he was already good at, and devoting himself to extracurriculars he had previously ignored: extracurriculars he might need to cite on an application to college. Len had sacrificed so much so that Leo could make it, and, to honor that sacrifice, make it Leo would. And he would make it no matter what obstacles, whether poverty or his birth in the slums, stood in his way.

And though they knew the day would soon come to divide them, they tried their best to stay together.

They were careful, risking more of their father's anger than usual to ensure that his plans worked well, that he would not be caught, that Len would not be caught, but in time the day came that all of their caution was for nothing.

And, as Len had predicted, this time the grim machinery of justice did not have mercy: the child with the good grades and the ex-police father could be pitied and forgiven, but the child who was rapidly growing into a delinquent, whose grades were bad, whose father had been kicked off the force?

He got none of that mercy.

Len was taken, first into police custody where he was too terrified to speak, and then, when they tired of that, before the juvenile court. There, the judge sentenced him to a stint in the local juvenile hall.

Local, here, meant all way over in Keystone, since the actual local one had been shut down as a result of some sort of allegations of misconduct and abuse.

Len thinks that he would have preferred the abuse, if it meant that he could stay closer to home.

After all, he was used to abuse, wasn’t he?

He wasn’t used to distance.

"It's only a few hours away, taking the buses," Leo said that night, watching as Len packed away what little clothing he could spare. His knees were pulled up to his chest and his arms were wrapped around them, and he felt far colder than the room actually was. “We could visit, me and Lisa.”

“If you leave for that long, Dad will notice,” Len said. He’d already done the math, his faithful companion which never lied to him, and had already started to armor his heart against the loss of his other half for months on end.

If Leo wasn’t there to protect his heart, he’d have to do it himself.

He hopes he can.

"Dad won't notice that I'm still there at all," Leo said. He’d done some thinking of his own on the subject. "I'm planning on staying with a friend from school instead. You know how he thinks there’s just one of us, mostly; I'm hoping he thinks you're just gone, and doesn’t call for me."

"Lisa –"

"I'll still take care of her. Not like Dad will bother to, or notice that she’s still getting fed on time. I’ll make it a big secret and tell her she can’t tell Dad I’m around. She’s a good kid; it’ll be fine."

"Okay."

“We’ll call you,” Leo said. “And we could come to visit you – maybe on a long weekend – if Dad’s away –”

“If that happens, then okay,” Len said, and smiled. He did not believe they would be able to come, but he appreciated the promise.

Leo did not smile. He knew how hard it would be for them to make it. "There will be phone calls."

"Every day," Len promised.

“You protect that stupid heart of yours.”

“I will.”

“No new friends.”

“Leo…”

"And you have to promise not to die in there."

"I promise. It's only three months, Leonard."

"A lot can happen in three months, Leonard."

"Take care of Lisa," Len said, because he could not deny that truth. "And yourself."

He left the next day.

Leo stayed at home, curled up with Lisa with him instead of Len so that he could sleep, and wondered how Len would survive.

He wondered, too, if being away so long would teach Len how to live without them.

He wondered what Len would do with that knowledge.

As Leo thought this, Len arrived at juvie.

#leonard snart #leo snart #len snart #lisa snart #my fic #beginning of wisdom

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illumoux · 6 years ago

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IB ➞ Art school???

I’ve gotten some PMs with questions about taking the IB Programme in high school and how it’s now affecting me in art school now so I thought I would finally do a Post(TM) about it. Again, everything I’m about to talk about is based on my personal experience but please feel free to talk with me if you have any concerns about this post. I want to put myself out there and help others if I can since I had so much support getting to where I am now. If you have any other questions about art college or the likes, please feel free to shoot them my way 💘

WHAT IS IB?

The International Baccalaureate Programme (aka. IB) is a “fast paced” program for middle and high school students that’s supposed to promote students to think independently and critically. At my school, there was a set courselist, with one or two elective choices. Some courses were Standard Level (SL) and some were Higher Level (HL), which certain post secondary schools allow to swap out for first year credits. IB is different in different schools and different countries though, but overall, It’s meant to be an alternative and more challenging high school experience.

IB + ME:

I can’t say I had the most positive time in IB or anything since I was also REALLY struggling with mental health at the time and had hated every moment I was in high school. But upon reflection, there really were things to be gained from the experience. Pros and Cons.

I was in full IB until second semester grade 10. At that point, I was already thinking about studying art after high school, but was afraid to commit to it entirely because there was so much pressure from my parents and peers to go into a “respectable” career and get a “high paying job in science or math or business” or something. So I dropped to partial IB as a compromise and took IB math, Art and HL English, as well as regular Ontario Uni level Physics, Bio, CompSci, etc etc etc.

DO YOU USE ANY OF THE STUFF YOU LEARNED IN IB CLASSES IN ART SCHOOL?

No.

I have an official credit for Grade 12 Advanced Functions but the most math I do now is occasionally multiplying by 12. Could I solve a quadratic equation now? Don’t even know what that is anymore.

BUT! You never know what could inspire you. I was so interested in quantum physics, I’m literally writing a story about parallel universes. Learning is almost always good.

LET’S TALK ABOUT IB ART FOR ONE HOT SECOND:

I did find IB Art incredibly applicable and helpful because it taught me how to keep a sketchbook and understand the creative process, neither of which you actually directly get graded on in the animation program at Sheridan but is personally tremendously beneficial for developing ideas and creating pieces. Now I draw thumbnails for everything I do. And I appreciate them!

Even if you walk away from IB Art with the most garbage collection - no sweat, it’s only high school and it’s learning the process of creating art that is so so important! When I applied for Sheridan Illustration (the same year I was accepted into Sheridan Animation), I basically repeated a simplified version of the IB Art process and was accepted into the program with a portfolio score of 80, with 9/10s in Process/Ideation, Media Exploration and Sketchbook, which you REALLY focus heavily on in IB Art.

I would highly recommend taking IB Art if you are thinking about doing art after high school, or doing art in general.

BEING AN ART STUDENT IN IB:

I hate that Art Kids(TM) have a bad rep. People always assume that art is a dead end career and we all starve and we’re all morally questionable people but that’s not true at all!

But being that Token Art Kid in IB (outside of IB Art class) actually made me feel awful back then. I was always kind of an odd one out. That’s not to say that people weren’t nice or anything. But there was so much pressure to not go into art. Ever since I was a kid, I’d always wanted to be an “artist when I grow up” but I found that in high school, I’d often say that I was “interested in art but was also thinking of pursuing an alternative career in this and that” because I was afraid of being looked down on in an environment where everyone around me wanted to do something “brainy”. Admitting that I wanted to do art almost felt self depreciating because everyone else was actually going to get a “real job” and live “better lives”. But that’s totally not the case! I ended up spending a lot of time taking a bunch of science and math courses I didn’t really like to maintain my twenty thousand irrelevant Back-Up Plans.

IB AND LEARNING SKILLS:

I think no matter what you do, having good organization and time management skills is always going to be so so important!

Sheridan Animation is such a loaded program, you really have to try to schedule your time well. I used to complain about the IB courseload but I honestly feel like Sheridan Animation is so much more laborious. We had 8 courses + an elective last semester, each about 2 to 3 hours a week, plus all the time you had to put into doing homework and living life and sleeping.

Even though IB is meant to keep you busy to force you to learn good work ethics, I don’t think forcing someone to work harder necessarily means that they are going to learn how to manage their time. I was 100% unmotivated and depressed and self destructive in high school. I was in IB for four years but I always studied the night before an exam up until the very last one. And when I graduated and moved out, I realized that I was a mess and I had to change, and it was that self realization was what motivated me to learn how to slowly put together my life back together. Only then did I start taking steps to curate my life and learn how to plan ahead and schedule my week and get! stuff! done!

So all in all, maybe IB does put you in an environment where having good learning skills will benefit you, and maybe that will motivate you to learn how to maintain a good work ethic. But I really do think skills like how to study and learn and live life is something that you have to be aware of as an individual and want to work towards. Being in IB may help with those things, but it isn’t going to suddenly grant you powers to study two weeks in advance and keep track of all your assignments in a way that works for you. You have to learn to do that yourself.

HL CREDITS (AT SHERIDAN):

Not all schools acknowledge HL credits. Sheridan claims to. I know people in Sheridan Animation who have used their HL credits at other universities before coming to our school but I’ve never spoken to anyone at Sheridan who has used them in a Sheridan program.

This is lowkey a call out post @ Sheridan, but I have tried applying for advanced standing with my IB HL credit to replace my electives twice, but neither time went through. They claimed to not have the proper paperwork, and when I paid for IB to send my transcript to Sheridan, it was never found (despite there being a confirmation email from IB that it had been sent to the right place) so I was unable to get it processed due to a lack of paperwork. And when I tried to follow up through email, I was ignored.

(If you have successfully gotten your HL credit request to go through at Sheridan, please PM me and tell me how :’^))

I do know for a fact that even if you could, in theory, replace some electives at Sheridan with your HL credits and as long as you still had enough courses a semester to consider you a full time student, you would still pay the same amount of tuition. You would just be less busy.

SHOULD I TAKE IB THEN?

Honestly, it’s up to you and your own life!

I know I rambled on for so long only to give the most passive and watery advice but I think you should do what you believe is best for you! Just be aware that whatever you choose is going to lead you to a different future and all your actions will have consequences (good or bad or either) and be okay with that.

Sometimes, I wish I didn’t do IB so I could have more free time to draw. Maybe if I drew more in high school, I would have gotten into Sheridan Animation a year earlier. But if I did that, I wouldn’t have learned how to paint in Art Fundies and have the friends I do now and live with people I love. Everything I’ve ever done up to this point has brought me here and I wouldn’t change a thing about the past so all I can do is work on making my future, you know :))

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. Good luck!

#sheridan help #sheridan animation #ib program #ib #art school #high school advice #ib advice #block text #long post

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falconsandfishes · 6 years ago

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platonic relationship

i have a bone to pick with plato. see the socratic method is basically the scene in montynpython in which a woman is weighed against a peice of wood to determine if she is a witch. and this is pretty much also the measurement system women use for me judge a cardio junkie by his ability to withstand smoke fumes. ive been up all night listening to eminem because i wish that i had the mysogny that he had because logically i should be mad at these females who lie to me but apparently developmentally theyre limited.

so pretty much i just want my neck not to hurt and my side and platonic love isn really the kind which could support my lumbar spine but if you think im angry you are right and maybe if i rhyme my brain will work this time and ill finally be able to explain was never targeted at my objects of affections at all i like to walk around the mall see a cutie with a skirt on and she sees me looking at her tells her grandmother to leave her there because this place looks fun as she smiles at me there comes abu my friend who judges me and judges you and as i stare at her i can tell she wants me too probably more emotionally mature than my mom and a virgin with her skirt on and its workun but i have the confidence of a plastic bag floating in the wind shes cheesing while i hide behind her even though shes 4 11 and im 6 4 and because he was there i didnt pass because i dont cross paths but even thinking about having a girlfriend makes him mad. if shes too young for me i would have figured that out but it doesnt help that no matter how young or how old even the weather lady im told shes not right for me so will you make up your mind please can someone define maturity because apparently there is a reverse correlation between it and age and socrates was no sage im not really impressed that he drank poison similarly i smoke weed which takes me back to age three and birthday parties then i think about how much my life failed but only because everyone always stood in front of me. so snitch on me when i talk to you when youre in front of me at your desk and say your story about butterflies is the best begging middle and end. meawhile i havent even gotten to the first page of my legend of the sword it had a much more compliated plot which was cut off. then tell me i didnt count to tenthousand while you were listening to the teacher say the is spelled t h e and put me in a remedial reading class with a bunch of girls and address us as the girls so we can read books about a mouse who lives with his family in a house but if girls and boys are the same how can you explain i was the only one in that group to be bumped up to the advanced on by 2nd grade. i guess reading the encylopedia of animals wasnt a wase memorized their latin names bufo sativa phylobates. so by third grade i was getting so good at math that they took me out of class and had me testing material meant for 5th graders and it was really lame how can i explain all the flaws in the system to all the other people who were also ruined by it.

finally one girl who was definitely old enough for me waved at me when i looked at her and i got a boner and walked over to the ladies at the tea shop who looked at me with a disgusted look on their faces then some gangster looking dude older than i am replaces me with his hand on her shoulder.

before i was 18 i could beat up my dad and ever since then i knew not many people in my generation had much of a chance against me but i looked so thin they were not understanding. high iq causing depression have anothe smoke session even though you have athsma everyone remember to complain that i prefer to get high off one big hit i stayed in high school till i graduated but i left.

unfortunately with brain damage i could still make straight as which made me think i was ok gpa jumping above 3.68 when i only show up an agerage of 3 days.

practice your sky hook do your pushups get embaressed when an asian princess sees you do them 20 hanlaps perfect form and im not even a jock wow id better stop. next thing the girl i like is sitting on my lap in class telling me she likes me back shes sitting on my desk shes rubbing my face my life isnt gay justnsaynsomehing and youll get laid.

nah ill let some kid with adhd steal her seat and ill help him with math instead because i didnt tell her this but im alread braindead. my soul probably died with my pet lizard or my kitten perhaps it was internet addiction.

what makes you think youll be make it as a porn star? you know im hot. well maybe i just didnt want you to act like a slut. i still remember the blonde who waves at me and smiled my freshman year it was clear that the world was my oyster the only problem was i couldn make my own choices.

i wanted to be an actor but i was so good at acting nobody got it. was so good at debating everyone liked to argue. was so succinct couldnt get the last word. so fast nobody would pass me the ball so dominant in wrestling i had to pretend i couldnt win just to have a friend.

pretty much i feel like the last cro magonon stuck on an island without charlotte saisselin bounce baby bounce three story house you look so cute in a blouse. hey look theres charlottes stalker i think il wave my arms around.

bounce baby is a reference to eigth grade i was watching a 100 meter race and then some black guy said that she never raced again. weed turned her from a goth into a wigger and after that i figured id become one too but it wasnt till 2009 i started to dress like you. what happened was i got some clothes from olympia sports to wear as warmups on the basketball court and to work as a salesman i shaved my head smiled knowing i was dead but still i couldnt even say i wanted to kiss girl without that not being cool enough for my nephew and her bowl broke too

it fell from her car on the pavement and she said that he didnt even get to hit it.

so now im living in my dads room on the floor and finally my back isnt sore i have a well paying job im away from mom i have iron lungs and dad still doesnt approve because now i play too much basketball.

hi im interested in going to california. i meant connecticut but califonia will do since its warm there. sure steve come on out west but read the fine print your 20s are dead.

prove you wrong shame on me. dont prove you wrong brag proudly. stay out west and let your dad die. watch him act like an asshole at home back east one more time. your reward for having surived on the street for years as a middle clas kid

your friend says he thought you were dead. by the way he has this girlfriend in connectiut. oh you were the one who set him up with her? theres a whole website or three centered around her?

better get you to spend your money on heroin and make you seem like a jerk in front of my dad. my excuse is im skitzophrenic.

all because my dad shamed me for growing up even crazier than him. thats why i called up my friend and asked him to date my girlfriend.

there must have been something in those amphetamines which made me keep stopping at her house. i found them up on the shelf years after i tried to spill them out.

it was the first time an adult had ever called me immature. he also said my handwriting was bad and i needed a cure. talking to him i began to get red where even to begin? i have a lot of prblems at home and this isnt fair. see my dad camps in the yard and gets drunk watches us through windows andmy sister punches me in the head. mom pretty much works till shes in bed.

every day she watches the same soap opera and oprah which i record for her on tape. my sisters friends call me gay so i go over and play with the kids from the other neighorhood all day.

one of them listens to a lot of eminem. his favorite song is if you dont like it you can suck my dick. hes in reform school and proud to be off his meds. when i talk about biking down a steep hill and blending into traffic he thinks i meannliterall blend in.

two gay twin brothers end of the road honor roll kids. play baseball and have alcoholic parents. hey ill tell the girl steve likes he likes her then she will never talk to him again. accept his chalenge to a fight and he will bang my head into a tree which is the same thing i did to another kid who tried to jump me but got sperated from his friends.

refuse to dance with the only girl in middle school who has hips. make fun of the girls intelligence who sits next to you in math and has giant tits. refuse to eat candy off the first girls tounge then your science teacher who pushed pills on you flips on the tv its 911

stare at a girl all day and say you dont like her. girls think youre gay if you have a boner. telll me a calculator doesnt mattrer for a test but i do worse without one. make a flag pencil it isnt cool enough for the other kids.

sit with the retarded kids timmy and jimmy. watch nick all night fresh prince and bill cosby.

your sister wont stop torturing you so hold her at knife point. buy knives at school try to resell them and for the first time ever the kids you sold them to ge caught witth knives.

stay in the program with three teachers who gave up on you. one leaves to become a dean suddenly your grades go up. kids are jealous because you dont do homework. girls smile at you knowing that your test scores are high despite that.

throw shotput as far as a high school kid without any exercise or practice. run around the track dozens of times in pants you still arent good enough yet.

go to an alternative program reluctantly in high school its sort of like jail. everyone smells like cigarettes the air is stale. this isnt good for you but we will make you think if you leave you will fail.

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5hfanfiction · 7 years ago

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you're like a piece of art (you need to be nailed against a wall)

A/N:

Part of a one shot book on wattpad, at jaureguicabello5eva

–

Camila doesn’t know what she’s looking at exactly. Actually, she does know what she’s looking at, she just doesn’t understand the big deal. Like, it’s a bunch of colorful squares and rectangles? She thinks she’s absolutely capable of painting that, and she doesn’t even consider herself an artist, so yeah, pay her whatever they’re paying these “abstract” artists. Whatever that means.

God, she feels uncultured as fuck, she thinks as she takes a sip of her third(?) glass of champagne.

Camila’s spending her Friday night in a too-tight red dress at the Museum of Modern Art in New York instead of catching up on sleep like she had planned. The museum is holding an exclusive exhibit for the weekend that features several works from known artists around the world. Not that Camila actually knows any of them.

Dinah, her best friend since coming out of the womb, had scored passes for the event from the sister-in-law of her cousin’s best friend’s girlfriend? Camila lost track after sister-in-law to be honest. Dinah knows way too many people, and she’s related to like half of California, so who knows?

Anyway, Dinah had gotten these passes and had planned to surprise her ex-boyfriend, who is the broody, artist, mysterious, lying, cheating, S.O.B. type apparently. After finding her ex in a very compromising position with some wench in their previously shared apartment, Dinah had immediately broken it off and proceeded to get over him by getting under as many people as she could, until she got over that too, and now she’s sort of just wallowing in self-pity.

So, Camila, because she’s the greatest best friend in the world, naturally, offered to go with her to the stupid exhibit anyway in hopes of cheering up her best friend, and maybe you’ll even get lucky with some hot-shot artist who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars painting blobs, Dinah!

Well, now she’s kind of regretting her decision. She loves Dinah, she really does, but is everyone who attends exhibits just naturally broody and boring or does she just have to widen her perspective?

–

Lauren is in heaven. She thinks this must be where starving artists lay their brushes down and go to die. She’s surrounded by incredible pieces that range from hundreds of years old to decades to within the last few years. There are pieces from your classic Van Gogh and Warhol, to newer pieces by Philippe Parreno, and her personal favorite, Weiwei. She’s convinced she’d actually died and gone to artist paradise.

She’d gotten a hold of a pass for this exclusive exhibit from Normani, her best friend, and who, by the way, was already Lauren’s favorite person in the world before she’d given her the pass, but now undoubtedly and solely owns the green-eyed girl’s heart.

And because the universe is being extra kind today, the exhibit just so happens to have Piet Mondrian’s Tableau I on loan from Museum Ludwig in Germany.

Lauren is absolutely ecstatic. She’s been having kind of an artist’s block lately and there’s nothing like one of the greatest pieces in abstract history to inspire her. Mondrian’s Tableau I is a math-based geometric perfection that brings colors and lines and absolute arithmetic precision to life and Lauren can’t wait to see it in person.

She’s majoring in architecture [A/N: sorry I keep writing Lauren as an architect/aspiring architect lol] though if things were up to her, she would have majored in fine arts with a focus on painting and drawing. She’s a great painter and she’s not too bad at digital design either, but her passion lies in drawing. Give her a pencil and anything can be her sketchpad.

She’s studying architecture because it incorporates her love for design and drawing and you need to major in something realistic, Lauren. There’s a reason they’re called “starving” artists. Do you really want to starve your future husband and kids?

Has it been mentioned that her mother can be a bit overbearing? Well she is, and so Lauren is going to let her mom have her way because as suffocating as her mom can be, the dark-haired girl does love her with everything that she has. But since she’s hell bent on getting some say in the matter, she’s also minoring in fine arts with a focus on, yup, drawing and painting.

She needs inspiration for her project in her Drawing II class as well as for her Advanced Urban Design class and thinks Tableau I is the best of both worlds. Some people might think his work is just rectangles and squares but those are probably the same people who think pineapple on pizza is okay, which it’s not.

Also, her mother doesn’t know it, but she’s pretty sure she’s not going to end up with a husband anyway. Not when she’s just laid her eyes on the most beautiful person? goddess? God’s gift to gay women? she’s ever seen.

Lauren is on her way to where she knows the painting is displayed when she spots a brunette squinting at Mondrian’s work. One of her hands has delicate, slender fingers wrapped around an almost-empty flute, while the other is worrying the bottom of her luscious lip.

Normani who? This woman owns Lauren’s heart now as far as she knows.

Lauren is your typical artist/aspiring architect so of course, she carries a sketchbook and pencil everywhere she goes. She pulls them both out and sits on a bench not too far, but not too close to pretty, brown eyes either. She doesn’t want to seem creepy, even though she is being creepy.

Lauren forgets the world around her as she gets completely absorbed in trying to capture the beauty in front of her as best as she can. She needs to capture how this girl’s long lashes curve up in the most tantalizing way and the delicate way they fall over her mesmerizing eyes when she blinks. She needs to properly portray the gentle slope of her nose, the curve of her mouth when her desirable, full lips smile, and the defined cheeks and sharp jawline that flank her entire face.

And that ass though.

She’s finishing up on outlining how her hair falls perfectly down her curved spine when she looks up and the object of her affection is gone.

“Shit,” she whispers to herself. “Where did she go?”

“I’m right here,” Normani says as she takes a seat next her. “I thought you’d be glued to an art piece by now, Laur” Normani chuckles. “You were so excited to come here and I find you just sat here, not even appreciating the work around you?” Normani clicks her tongue.

“Whatcha got there anyway,” she asks as she leans over and tries to see what’s got her friend busy.

Lauren scrambles to close her sketchbook and answers, “Nothing, just- um,” she struggles to look for an excuse that’s not I was drawing this pretty girl I saw. “Just working on a piece for my class,” she finally says. “All these pieces have given me the right inspiration,” she says with a bright smile and a thumbs up.

“Uh huh,” Normani says skeptically. “Anyway, I have to get back to finish this thing that’s due tomorrow. Did you want to leave with me or do you wanna stay for a bit?” Normani asks her friend.

Lauren takes one last desperate look around the museum for any sign of the mystery girl, and finally gives up when she sees none. “I’ll go with you I guess,” she answers despondently.

–

It’s been two weeks since Lauren saw Ms. Brown Eyes and she still can’t get her out of her head. The girl’s been hounding her thoughts, partly because she feels frustrated that she can’t finish her piece, and partly because, well, pretty girls tend to occupy her mind a lot.

She’s rushing out of the Starbucks on campus to get to her design class on time for once when she spots the same wavy, brown locks that she’d been trying to re-create on paper, sitting on one of the outside tables. She guesses it won’t make a difference now if she’s late to class one more time.

She goes here! Of course she goes here!

When Lauren sees the girl get up to leave, she immediately follows her before she realizes what she’s doing. Stalking is probably not the way to get her point across to the girl, although, she’s not really sure what to say to her.

Hey, I saw you at the museum and then I started drawing you without your permission, but you left before I was able to finish, so do you mind just posing for me for a bit. Also, you’re really pretty. My name is Lauren and I’m an idiot.

That doesn’t sound like it would get her a very desirable outcome.

So, naturally, she proceeds to just follow the girl like the creep that she actually is and finds out that she’s taking a class in the BIOL. building around two-thirty on Thursdays. The stalking gets a bit out of hand and before Lauren realizes what’s happening, she’s basically got the girl’s schedule on three out of the five days of the week memorized.

In her defense, she really just wants to get a few more details on the girl’s face so she can finish the drawing. She’s an excellent artist, but she’s also a perfectionist, and her memory just isn’t doing the girl justice.

“Mani,” she catches up to the girl one afternoon. “I saw her again but she took a different route to the CHEM building today, and so I still don’t have enough details for my sketch,” she pouts. Lauren has given up on keeping the girl a secret from her best friend and since that cat got out of the bag, it’s all she ever talks about now.

Normani rolls her eyes and tells her, “You are an actual stalker. Just go up to the dang girl, geez. I’ve never seen you have so much trouble talking to a girl.”

“She’s not just some girl, Mani” Lauren insists.

“So you think the best course of action is to never speak to her,” Normani deadpans.

“Alright, fine” Lauren responds. “I’ll talk to her tonight. After her night class in the physics lab building” she decides with a determined nod of her head.

Normani looks at her like she’s crazy and shakes her head, “I’m not even gonna say anything about how that sounds.” Lauren rolls her eyes but slings an arm over the other girl’s shoulder. “I think I’m in love, Mani” she sighs dramatically, putting a hand over her heart as the other girl laughs and pushes her away.

–

So the whole coming up to and talking to mystery girl plan has totally fallen through. Lauren’s not sure how she got to where she is but that’s not important at the moment. Right now, she’s truly reached absolute stalker level because she’s currently following her in the dark to what Lauren assumes is her apartment on campus. Every time she tried to approach her, the green-eyed girl’s nerves got the best of her and she ended up psyching herself out. Now, the window in which it’s acceptable to approach a stranger about possibly drawing them has passed and Lauren is stuck.

She’s so lost in her thoughts she didn’t realize the girl she was following is no longer in front of her. She takes a few steps forward and when she passes an opening to an alley, the mystery girl jumps out in front of her with her hands holding something pointed towards the dark-haired girl and screams,

“I HAVE MACE! STAND BACK” the girl screams and Lauren can’t help but think even her voice is sexy, and wow she’s about to be sprayed.

“No! Wait,” Lauren pleads, raising both her arms up. “I’m not going to hurt you I swear” she tries to convince the girl.

Camila is a bit taken aback by the girl in front of her. When she first realized she was being followed, she expected some buff, tattoos-in-the-face, hoodlum, who may or may not be armed with a knife or – or like nunchucks (she’s never robbed anyone before, she doesn’t know which types of weapons are appropriate).

Anyway, she wasn’t expecting this- this, beautiful human being. God, those eyes are mesmerizing, she thinks. But, back to the topic at hand.

“Okay green eyes, I’m gonna need you to explain yourself and if you so much as make a move,” she warns, “I’m going to spray you.”

Lauren keeps her hands up and decides to just rip the band-aid off. This situation cannot get any more out of hand so she thinks it’s best to just come clean.

She takes a deep breath and says, “Okay, well, I saw you at MOMA a few weeks ago and I was just so taken by your beauty and I thought you were the prettiest piece of art there so I started drawing you for my class, but I lost you before I had the chance to finish, so I started to sort of follow you around? You know, to add details to my sketch but it’s so hard when you’re constantly moving, so now I have this unfinished piece and it’s due tomorrow and I was wondering if you would mind posing for me? So I can finish my drawing?” Lauren rushes her words all in one breath. “How was your physics lab by the way?” she asks with a nervous chuckle.

Camila tries to process all the information and when she does, she can’t help but flush red. This gorgeous human being called her pretty? And she wants to draw her? She’s not sure if she’s creeped out or endeared.

She decides on the latter.

She slowly brings her hands down and puts her mace away. Lauren relaxes at that and throws her a meek smile. “I mean, it’s probably a hundred percent not safe because you just admitted to stalking me and you’re a complete stranger, but you’re really pulling off the whole awkward-but-cute thing you got going on, so….” Camila trails, putting a finger to her chin and pretending to think.

“…sure,” Camila concedes. “I’ll pose for you.”

“YES!” Lauren exclaims and then clears her throat. “I mean, thank you so much,” she says, her cheeks flushed. “My name is Lauren by the way.”

“I’m Camila,” the younger girl answers back while trying to contain a smile, extending one of her hands.

“Great, where do you want to do it?” Lauren asks after shaking hands with her. Then she realizes what that sounds like and backtracks quickly, “I mean do the drawing, for my piece, not like, do it in that way – I mean not that you aren’t, you know, attractive - because you totally are, and I’m not assuming you’re even into gir–”

“Oh my gosh, Lauren. Calm down,” Camila says amidst her laughter while putting a hand on Lauren’s arm to calm the girl down. The touch is doing things to Lauren’s body and she feels a spark of heat travel from where Camila is touching her to the rest of her body, sprinkling a comforting kind of warmth in its wake.

Lauren flushes a deep red that’s accentuated by her light features and rubs the back of her neck.

Once Camila thinks the girl has gone back to her normal pale color, she answers Lauren’s question, “We can do it at my apartment, so at least if you turn out to be a sociopath, my roommate, Dinah, will hopefully get back to the apartment and find evidence of what you might have done,” she winks and Lauren is blushing again in no time.

On their walk to Camila’s apartment, Lauren says “Well if I were really crazy and was planning on killing you, I think I would be called a ‘psychopath,’” she explains. Camila furrows her eyebrows and Lauren elaborates,

“Both obviously have problems regarding their conscience and the way they think, but psychopaths tend to seem like well-adjusted members of society. They can even have charming personalities and hold high-paying jobs, like, they could be doctors,” Lauren explains.

“Sociopaths, on the other hand, are a bit more obvious in their behavior and they tend to be antisocial, and since you think I’m “awkward-but-cute” which I’m going to interpret as subtly charming, I would be a ‘psychopath,’” she concludes.

Camila looks at her and says, “Yeah, your knowledge of this is not helping your case in convincing me that you’re not out to kill me.”

Lauren looks back at her and shakes her head, “I was just clarifying you know,” she says nervously. It’s like she’s lost all of her ability to function socially around this girl. “I swear, I’m not usually this weird,” she responds with a nervous chuckle.

“I hope not,” Camila winks and continues to walk on.

Once they’re in the apartment, Lauren is wringing her hands nervously and Camila raises an eyebrow, “Is something wrong?”

“No, I just-” Lauren sighs.

“Not to push my luck or anything, but since we’re here and you’re willing to pose, do you mind if I start the drawing over? Like the one I’ve been working on is kind of hard to finalize because I’ve had so many viewpoints of your face. So, if it’s okay, would you be willing to pose for a whole, new drawing instead?” Lauren asks nervously.

“Well, since we’re here anyway,” Camila thinks about it. “Sure,” she finishes with a smile.

Laurens spends a couple of hours perfecting her drawing. Well, she tries to perfect it anyway. She doesn’t think it’s possible for anyone to capture Camila in a way that does her beauty justice. Now that Camila isn’t constantly moving and because she doesn’t have to draw from a distance, she does a better job at highlighting some of her features.

When she showed Camila the finished product, Camila had gasped into her hand and praised her talent so much that Lauren was convinced the blush on her cheeks was going to be permanent.

Now, they find themselves watching Black Mirror on Netflix and no, they’re not Netflix and Chilling. They’re actually just watching.

Lauren is in the middle of a passionate rant about the dangers of social media especially bullying in social media after watching an episode where literally hundreds of thousands of people died because of it, when Camila catches herself staring at the girl’s beauty.

Lauren is obviously pretty on the outside, but after spending a few hours with her and speaking with her about her passions and views on life, Camila is convinced maybe that the saying about beauty coming from within is true because Lauren is the embodiment of beautiful. She’s breathtakingly exquisite without reservation.

“Sorry, I’m ranting,” Lauren says with a weak smile.

“No, I think it’s great. I think you’re great,” Camila responds without thinking.

“Um, thanks” Lauren says. Then, she doesn’t know where she gets the courage, but she asks anyway,

“Would you like to have coffee or something, some time this week, my treat” Lauren asks shyly. “You know, it’s the least I could do to thank you for saving my assignment and not calling the police,” she says with a nervous chuckle.

“Are you asking me out,” Camila asks teasingly.

“I mean we can do something inside,” Lauren responds cheekily.

“Oh my gosh, you’re a dork,” Camila says mid-laugh. Lauren thinks she’d gladly shed her bad girl persona and be the biggest dork if it elicits laughs like this from Camila.

“It’s a date,” Camila says and Lauren’s heart soars.

Lauren is about to bid her goodbye when a loud clap of thunder, accompanied by a sudden downpour of rain and strong winds, sound from outside and reverberate through the apartment.

The girls jump and Camila says shakily, “Um, maybe you should stay the night? It’s late and it’s raining, I don’t want something bad to happen to you,” she explains. “Also, I’m not sure when Dinah is coming back, kinda depends on how her date goes.”

Lauren starts to refuse and says, “I don’t want to impose and-”

“Honestly, Lo. It’s fine. I’ll feel better knowing you’re safe,” she says with a genuine smile.

“Okay, I’ll take the couch,” Lauren concedes, the nickname catching her off-guard but sending another wave of pleasant warmth through her chest. She recognizes this feeling and she knows it’s way too early, but Camila’s soft smiles and genuine concern and just her overall presence is captivating Lauren in a way she’s not sure she has a chance to go against.

“No you can-,” Camila starts to protest.

“No, Camz,” Lauren says resolutely.

She shakes her head internally for letting the name she’s been calling Camila in her head all night slip out loud. “I’ve already asked too much from you, I’m not gonna take your bed too,” she says with a smile when it doesn’t look like Camila is going to object to the nickname.

“Okay,” Camila breathes out.

–

It’s about two in the morning when Lauren sleepily rubs her eyes as she hears movement from the far side of the couch. She jumps up from the couch in fright when she sees a figure standing above her and sighs in relief when she realizes it’s just Camila.

“Shit, Camila,” she gasps. “You scared me.”

“I’m sorry,” Camila answers quietly, her breath shaky.

“Is everything okay?” Lauren asks the younger girl.

“Um, it’s just that – I mean the thunder, you know, it hasn’t really stopped,” Camila answers weakly.

There’s a curve to Lauren’s mouth when she says, “Are you scared of thunderstorms?”

“What, no,” Camila says indignantly. “Of course, not. You’re scared of thunderstorms,” she throws back lamely.

Lauren raises an eyebrow and tries to stop herself from smiling.

“Okay fine, I’m scared of thunderstorms, so you’re either coming with me to bed or I’m joining you on the couch,” Camila dictates while crossing her arms.

Camila’s words spark a jolt of lightning through Lauren that starts from the base of her stomach and courses through her veins, spreading to her extremities, leaving her hot and bothered. She shakes the many different, dirty ways she’d made out of Camila asking her to bed and responds as steadily as she can, “Y-yeah, I’ll just join you. I don’t think we can fit in this couch anyway.”

She knows she wasn’t successful in hiding Camila’s effect on her when she spots the younger girl smirking at her shaky response from the corner of her eyes.

The heated atmosphere between them dies down when they settle in Camila’s bed. It’s not long before they start talking about anything and everything under the sun. They get in passionate debates about world issues and laugh at the silliness of toe socks.

Lauren, for her part, is decidedly continuing conversation between them because she recognizes a distraction is what Camila needs as she realizes early on that Camila’s fear of thunderstorms is pretty serious. Camila can tell that Lauren is fighting off sleep to keep her company and she feels herself falling.

It’s been less than twelve hours, Camila she thinks. There is no way she’s actually falling, right?

She goes to sleep free of the nightmares that usually plague her whenever there are thunderstorms and dreams about green eyes and white smiles and flushed cheeks instead.

–

The next morning, Camila walks out of her room and she is immediately jolted awake by the sight in front of her. Lauren had borrowed her clothes to sleep in and she’s wearing Camila’s favorite oversized hoodie that goes down to Lauren’s mid-thigh, sufficiently covering her short shorts and giving the illusion that she’s not wearing anything underneath.

Her messy hair is in a loose ponytail, highlight her widow’s peak and a few dark strands are framing her face. Her burrows are furrowed as her tongue is poking out between her teeth, seemingly in great concentration as she mixes what looks like pancake batter.

The sight is doing unhealthy things to her heart and even unhealthier things to the heat between her thighs.

She walks forward and makes her presence known. The green-eyed girl looks up and flashes her a smile that is threatening to combust her heart from where it’s trying to escape from her chest. The morning light catches Lauren’s eyes perfectly, making them the lightest green she’s ever seen them and highlighting the brown specks that are scattered right around her pupil. Camila’s heart needs a break, for crying out loud. How can anyone look this good at – Camila checks the time - seven in the morning?

She’s shaken out of her thoughts when she hears a raspy voice say, “Good morning, I hope you don’t mind me taking over your kitchen. I made you breakfast,” she says while gesturing to a plate that’s already made with eggs, bacon, toast, and pancakes. Okay, she seriously needs to stop.

Lauren’s voice sounds even sexier in the morning and Camila has to take a deep breath to collect herself. She’s about to respond when –

“Why thank you, kind stranger,” Dinah says, walking out of her own room and grabbing Camila’s toast from her plate, proceeding to stuff her mouth with it.

Camila scowls and Lauren just looks amused.

“Wow, none of Camila’s previous hook-ups have made it past midnight before,” Dinah says while chewing. “And here you are making her breakfast and shit,” she says chuckling.

Lauren feels unmistakable heat creep up her neck and into her cheeks as Camila throws a piece of bread at her best friend, “Dinah! We didn’t hook up. Jeez,” she says scandalized, not yet at least. “She’s a friend. I helped her with a project. Lauren, this is Dinah,” Camila says gesturing to her friend, “Dinah, my friend Lauren,” she says as she introduces the two.

“Hm-mhm,” Dinah says, eyeing the two skeptically. “We all know what ‘friend’ means,” she says with exaggerated air quotes.

–

Their coffee date goes well and they continue to find out new things that they like about each other. Lauren is as passionate about her art as she is about world issues and Camila somehow pulls off being goofy and sexy at the same time while still keeping up with Lauren in their many, varied conversations.

They’ve gone on a few dates when Camila asks Lauren to go on a road trip with her to Baltimore one weekend. Lauren says yes without even thinking about it. She thinks she’ll follow Camila to the ends of the earth if she asks her.

Camila is finishing up her make up on the dresser in their hotel room when Lauren comes out of the bathroom, already made up, except for her dress, which she’s holding in the front of her chest with two hands.

“Hey Camz,” she says as she turns around and flips her hair over her shoulder so Camila can have access to her back, “Can you zip me up please,” she asks with her head only half-turned. She misses the way Camila basically drools at all the exposed skin.

They’ve only been dating a couple weeks and haven’t gone further than heated make out sessions where Camila had snuck a couple gropes on a breast or two and Lauren had made herself familiar with expanse of skin that is Camila’s ass. But right now, Camila is seriously considering throwing away her plans and throwing Lauren to bed instead and telling her she won’t need clothes for the rest of the weekend.

She’s shaken out of her trance when Lauren’s voice floats through the air and addresses her, “Camz?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” she says as she stands up and goes behind Lauren. They make eye contact through the full body mirror in front of them and shoot each other meaningful smiles.

Camila steadies her shaking hands as she rests her left hand on Lauren’s hip and the other grabs the zipper near her lower back. She swallows hard and slowly pulls the zipper up, her knuckles grazing Lauren’s skin and leaving goose bumps in their wake. She hears a soft gasp from Lauren and she squeezes her hard on the hip. When she sees Lauren through the mirror closing her eyes with her red-painted lips slightly ajar, Camila leans forward, turning her head to face Lauren’s side and grazing her mouth on Lauren’s ear as she breathes out, “Can’t wait to help you of this later,” she husks as she gives Lauren one final squeeze and a quick, but deep kiss just below her ear.

Lauren turns around breathless and says, “I don’t care what the surprise is, I want you naked on this bed now.”

–

Camila should really get an award for having the world’s greatest self-control. After Lauren not so subtly expressed that she’d wanted to take Camila to bed, Camila had to power through and convince Lauren that the surprise is worth seeing.

Not very many people can defer such an offer from one Lauren Jauregui.

Lauren walks into the Baltimore Museum of Art and an energy of pure excitement courses through her as she looks around the exhibit. The museum had secured an exhibit from Ai Weiwei, Lauren’s absolute favorite contemporary artist. Weiwei is the perfect embodiment that showcases the intersectionality between Lauren’s two loves, art and activism. He uses his prominence to give voice to victims and decry faulty governments. He’s using a hundred percent of his profits from this specific exhibit to help the refugees in the Middle East.

The exhibit was pretty hard to get into and many other prominent artists and powerful figures had already secured VIP passes to this exclusive, one-night show months ahead, from what Lauren knows anyway. She looks at Camila and her heart soars at the way she’s looking back. Surrounded by magnificent art and Camila is looking at her like she’s the central piece.

“How?” she asks quietly, Lauren’s eyes stuck on Camila’s.

Camila shrugs her shoulders and says, “Pulled a few strings. I knew some people so…” she trails off when Lauren keeps looking at her like she had brought the moon to her.

“Thank you,” Lauren says sincerely squeezing Camila’s hand in hers.

“Anything for my girl,” she says with a with a wide smile.

–

After spending a couple hours in the exhibit, Camila finds Lauren in front of Weiwei’s Odyssey, a wallpaper piece that covers an entire wall on the far side of the gallery. The piece depicts the struggles of refugees in the Middle East in an ancient art style in which the characters in the piece are drawn as if they would have been in ancient times, on earth ware clay (Shaw, A. (2017) “Lest we forget, Ai Weiwei’s first show in Turkey is a meditation on refugee crisis. The Art Newspaper) [A/N: I still don’t know how citations work].

Camila comes up behind her and gently wraps her slender arms around Lauren’s midsection, laying her chin on the other girl’s shoulder.

“Do you like your surprise,” she whispers softly.

A fond smile forms on Lauren’s red lips. “I love it,” she says turning her head slightly. “I don’t even remember mentioning my favorite artist’s name to you” she says furrowing her brows.

“You may not have said his name, Lo” Camila explains. “But you mention his works a lot. Gosh Camz, there’s this artist I love. His pieces are so powerful and he’s a self-taught architect. He’s like me basically! An artist, an architect, and an activist,” Camila says in a deep, husky voice in what is supposed to be her imitation of Lauren’s raspy voice.

Lauren laughs softly, and god, she is endeared by the woman in front of her. “I do not sound like that,” she says mid-laugh. “I hope you don’t do that impression of me to anyone else.”

Camila feels that familiar warmth in her chest whenever she hears Lauren laughing because of her and she tightens her arms around the girl, trying not to say anything that could definitely scare the other girl away. Two weeks is way too short for such deep feelings.

“But I can’t believe you pay enough attention to my ramblings to pick out my favorite artist just from talking about different pieces. I mean, I talk about a lot of other pieces too,” Lauren continues to point out.

“Well, it really isn’t hard to pay attention to you, Laur,” Camila responds softly. “I know you don’t notice it, but half the room pays attention to you even when you’re not doing anything. It helps that I’m also always so in tune to everything you do. It’s like my body and mind are programmed to listen to and watch everything you do,” she finishes.

Lauren’s heart is hammering against her chest. She can’t believe Camila turned out to be even more beautiful on the inside once she got to know her. She turns around in Camila’s arms and wraps her own hands around the other girl’s neck.

“You know, you called me ‘your girl,’ earlier,” Lauren says.

“Oh did I?” Camila pretends to scrunch up her face.

“Well, am I?” Lauren asks hesitantly. “Your girl I mean, like, are we girlfriends?” she powers through the mad blush that is taking over her face.

Camila can’t believe this precious human being is all hers. “Lauren Michelle Jauregui,” she responds while trailing her hands down Lauren’s back so softly Lauren might not have noticed it if all her nerve endings weren’t firing like crazy at the moment.

“Will you be my girlfrie-,” Camila tries to say.

“Yes,” Lauren breathes out before she even finishes and attacks Camila’s lips with her own, immediately slipping her tongue in Camila’s mouth when she gasps. Lauren indulges in the warmth of Camila’s mouth and tongue and the soft breaths she’s letting out for every particularly hard swipe of her tongue before she pulls back, lest they get kicked out for public indecency.

Camila opens her eyes slowly, still slightly dazed, “I’m gonna go research a bunch of exhibits you like if I get thanked like that every time” she says in a breathless voice.

Lauren laughs and then leans close to Camila’s ear, playing with the hairs behind her neck when she rasps out, “That’s not all, baby. I plan on thanking you a lot more when we get back to the hotel.”

Camila swallows hard and responds shakily, “H-how exactly are you going to do that?”

Lauren smirks and subtly sucks on Camila’s skin where her jaw meets her neck while wrapping her slim fingers around Camila’s neck lightly, but noticeably more tightly than before,

“How about…,” she whispers, “I let you have your way with me?” she says and Camila drags her out of the museum before Lauren even has a chance to figure out what’s happening.

–

They’re cuddled up on Lauren’s bed one night with Lauren’s arms wrapped around the other girl and Camila facing away from the green-eyed girl, the brunette’s own hands playing with Lauren’s fingers, which have snuck their way in Camila’s shirt and is drawing patterns on her toned stomach when Lauren breathes out against her neck,

“Will you let me paint on you?” she asks.

Camila turns around in her arms and brings both hands to Lauren’s face, cupping her face gently when she responds with a cheeky smile, “You want to paint me like one of your French girls?”

Lauren laughs lightly and turns her head to plant a quick kiss to the inside of Camila’s palm. Camila’s gaze softens at the action and she’s close to saying the same words she’d made a conscious effort not say to anyone for a very long time when Lauren says,

“No I mean like, paint on you” she says. “I want to paint on your back, specifically.”

Camila shakes her thoughts away internally and thinks about it for a second. “Hmm, that’s very tumblr-y. And kinda gay. That’s very tumblr-y and gay, Laur” she finally says.

“Well then it’s perfect for the both of us,” she says with a bright smile. “Come on,” she implores while running her hand down Camila’s back and up her shirt, tracing the soft skin along the ridges of her spine as she leans forward to breathe out against the other girl’s neck, “Your back is so sexy, baby. It would be like making art on art,” she husks out after sucking on a sensitive spot on the other girl’s neck.

“You can be very persuasive,” Camila half says, half moans.

Lauren smirks against her skin and pulls back, “So is that a yes?”

Camila looks her girlfriend in the eye and says, “You’re way too charming for your own good, you know that? It’s kinda scary, like what if down the road you want to paint our kids’ room a crazy color or display raunchy paintings in our living room because it’s art, Camz.”

They both seem to realize the implication behind Camila’s words and the brunette flushes a deep red as her hands become sweaty.

Shit. She’s gonna run. I totally freaked her out.

Lauren’s heartbeat is thunderous in her chest and she can’t help but picture a future with Camila. A slow smile forms on her lips and she says before the other girl can backtrack, “Then I guess I’ll just have to persuade youthe only way I know if I want paintings of naked girls in our homeor if I want to paint our kids’ room a light shade of smaragdine.” [A/N: it’s green].

Camila’s heart leaps in her chest and it’s like Lauren and Camila’s hearts are competing to see who can jump out of their ribbed confines first. They look at each other with soft smiles and twinkles in their eyes, and against all the dating rules they’ve placed for themselves, with love. With Lauren’s response confirming that the green-eyed girl is in this for the long run, Camila can’t help but think she can’t wait to hang paintings of naked girls and design smaragdine-colored rooms.

That’s how Camila finds herself on her stomach with her top off and wearing only her Iron Man boy shorts with Lauren straddling her, the green-eyed girl perched right on top of her butt. They both go to sleep in just shirts and underwear so Lauren herself is sitting on Camila with nothing but a shirt and some lace underwear and Camila is finding it hard to focus.

They’re facing towards the foot of the bed so Camila has a perfect view of Lauren working on her back through the mirror on Lauren’s dresser, which is in front of the bed across the room. Lauren’s The 1975 shirt, or is it Camila’s(?), has already collected a few paint spots as Lauren seems too absorbed in her work to notice anything else. Her hair is up in a messy bun and her tongue is poking out between her teeth in the way that it does when she’s concentrating and she’s wearing her glasses and Camila is in love.

She’s still reluctant to say it because it’s still way too soon in her opinion and she’s had her heart broken too many times. She’d given her heart out way too easily in the past and she refuses to lose in love again. Her thoughts are broken when Lauren moves on top of her.

The older girl leans forward and props her right hand by Camila’s chest, her fingers grazing Camila’s exposed side boob, while she uses her left hand to work on, apparently, a very small detail on Camila’s back because her face is inches from Camila’s skin and her hot breath is sending a warm, tingling sensation throughout her body. Lauren leaning forward also shifts where the green-eyed girl’s center is sat on top of Camila’s ass and the friction causes Camila to moan.

Lauren seems to be shaken out of her focus and immediately asks, “Shit, are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“NO! Um-,” Camila clears her throat. “I mean it’s just um-” she tries to gather her thoughts to no avail and swallows hard.

Lauren looks at Camila’s flushed cheeks through the mirror and sees how her blush has spread to her ears and the back of her neck. She smirks, “Oh, I see what’s happening. Can’t you keep it in your pants for like two seconds?” Lauren says while chuckling, their point of contact making Camila feel every vibration through her body.

“No I can’t just keep it in my pants. Have you seen yourself?” Camila huffs indignantly.

Lauren just shakes her head and laughs. She leans forward and puts her brush down, placing both of her hands on either side of Camila’s head, being careful not to touch the paint, and turns to give Camila’s cheek a lingering kiss followed by a whisper in her ear, “Later, babe.”

Lauren finishes up and takes a picture of Camila’s back with her polaroid camera while remaining seated on Camila. She retrieves the picture and can’t help the smile that forms on her lips. The flawless curve of Camila’s back had been the perfect backdrop for the galaxy that she painted, the swirls of the cosmos perfectly complementing the shape of Camila’s body. She can see her own pale thighs dotted with paint and contrasting against Camila’s tan skin as she straddles her. Camila’s head is turned to the side, showing her mid laugh with her eyes closed and smile wide.

Lauren looks at it and knows she’s in love.

–

Lauren and Camila are at another exhibit and this time, it’s Lauren’s.

It’s been three years since Lauren stalked Camila on her way to her apartment and started their story of a lifetime. Camila graduated with high honors and is now nearing the end of her first year as a medical student. Lauren, on the other hand, had been picked up by a benefactor when Camila and Lauren spent the summer after graduation in France.

Her patron’s massive wealth combined with her incredible talent meant it took almost no time before Lauren gained ground in the art scene and became one of the fastest rising artists in the world. Following the footsteps of her artist/activist hero, Lauren has been donating a good portion of her profits to various charities, some she’d founded herself, after she had established a steady pace in her career.

Now, she’s in the middle of one of her most important exhibits yet. The gallery is filled with art pieces that depict her own life. Her benefactor had convinced her to create a showcase as a way for people to “get to know the artist.” She had used as many different media as she could think of to symbolize the many different layers and nuances that make up her life. She has her career, her friends, her family, her hobbies and interests, and of course, she has her Camila.

Lauren feels exposed and not because there are people looking into different aspects of her life, but because even after years of being with Camila, she feels the most nervous about her art when it comes to the brown-eyed girl. What if she thinks the whole exhibit is ridiculous and narcissistic?

“Hey, babe” Camila addresses her cheerily as she comes up to her girlfriend, effectively stopping Lauren’s train of thought. She looks up and sees her inspiration for just about every significant art piece she’d sold.

“Hey,” she says. “What do you think?” she asks nervously.

Camila comes up to wrap her arms around the other girl’s neck and Lauren instinctively places her hands around the girl’s waist. “I think you continue to amaze me with your talent is what I think,” Camila says, pride shining in her eyes.

Lauren lets out a sigh of relief and grabs Camila’s hand, “Come on, it’s time to reveal the central piece.”

Lauren is next to Camila as the curator for the gallery is giving an introduction about Lauren and her piece and Camila can feel the nerves radiating from the girl next to her. Lauren had refused to show Camila the piece before the actual exhibit. She had even worked on it in secret, sneaking out at night and sneaking back in the early hours of the morning. It had caused quite the problem for them.

–

Camila stirs awake and her hands instinctively reach out for her girlfriend’s warmth, only to be met with cold, empty sheets. She sits up and rubs her eyes, adjusting her eyes to the darkness and finding no sign of the green-eyed girl. She gets up and calls out into the empty apartment,

“Laur?”

Nothing.

Her heart thuds in her chest and she feels a familiar ache in her chest. Lately, Lauren has been busy “working on something” and she’s barely seen her. She had trusted the girl early on, but Camila had been cheated on so many times she knows the signs like the back of her hand. She picks up her phone and dials the other girl’s number only to see it vibrating on the coffee table.

“Damn it, Laur” she whispers.

She tries to stay up for the girl but finds herself falling asleep on the couch after a couple hours. She’s stirred awake when she hears keys jingling on the door. She stands up and crosses her arms immediately. Lauren walks in looking tired.

“Long night?” Camila asks harshly.

“Camila, what are you doing up?” Lauren asks.

Camila looks at her like she’d lost her damn mind, “What am I- are you kidding? Where have youbeen?” she asks angrily. Her temper rising against her own volition.

Lauren sighs and moves to the kitchen, “I’m tired Camila, can we not do this right now? I told you I’ve been working on something.”

“Something or someone?”

Lauren turns her head and says angrily, “Are you serious? Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“You’ve been out late most nights and all you have to say about it is you’re ‘working on something’.” Camila says heatedly. “I mean, we live together and I barely see you, Laur,” Camila says, her voice cracking. “I just miss you.”

Lauren looks at her with an unreadable expression, “Do you not trust me?”

Camila looks at her and stays silent. Lauren scoffs and shakes her head, “Unbelievable, after almost three years of being together, you still think I’m like your exes? Like I’m just gonna get up and leave? What do I have to do to show you that I love you and I’m here for the long run?” she asks exasperatedly. “You’ve been looking for reasons to not make this work, Camila, and as far as I know, I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Lauren I’m sor-”

“You know what, I can’t do this,” Lauren says picking up her keys again. “Come talk to me when you’re ready to listen” she says as she walks out the door.

That following night, when Lauren doesn’t come home, Camila cries herself to sleep. Lauren had left her phone again in her haste to leave and now Camila doesn’t know how to reach her.

Lauren is spending another late night at the studio and when she walks out of the ART building, she sees Camila by the steps. “Camila?” she asks. The girl turns around and gets up quickly. Her body is aching to bring Lauren in her arms and hug her and never let her go again, but she’s not sure where they stand so she keeps her hands to herself, choosing to stuff them in her pockets instead. Her eyes are swollen and she looks like she hasn’t slept in the last couple days. Lauren’s heart breaks at the sight. She thought she was doing the right thing by giving them space.

“I’m sorry,” Camila says, trying to keep her tears at bay. “I do trust you Laur. I do. It’s me, I just get so insecure,” she looks up with pleading eyes. “Please come home.”

Lauren closes the distance between them and wraps her arms around the other girl. She’d miss Camila and her warmth and just her these past few days, it’s like she’d been on autopilot until she got to touch her again. “I’m sorry,” she responds. “I’ve just been so stressed lately and I thought I was doing us a favor by giving us a break,” she turns her head to give Camila’s head a kiss.

Camila pulls back with tears in her eyes and leans forward to give Lauren a watery kiss, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Lauren sighs. She’s glad to be home again.

The next morning, Camila wakes up to empty sheets again but when she turns her head, she sees a single rose with a note,

“I love you, Camila. I’m sorry if I did anything to make you feel otherwise. I’ve packed your stuff. Get dressed and come meet me downstairs, I’m getting the car ready. We’re going away for the weekend. – Yours forever, Lauren”

Camila smiles to herself and gets ready as fast as she can. She sees Lauren downstairs leaning against her car and holding a bouquet of red roses with her attention on her phone. “Is this how you’re going to make it up to me every time we fight?” she asks as she approaches the green-eyed girl.

Lauren looks up and smiles as she offers her girl the flowers. “Actually, I’ve had this planned for a while. I’d been working late because I was trying to finish my piece so we can have this weekend all to ourselves,” she says sincerely.

Camila’s gaze softens and she starts to feel guilty. “Don’t,” Lauren interrupts her moping. “I should have done a better job at communicating with you. We both messed up,” she says as she brings Camila’s chin up with her fingers. “We’re going to continue to mess up but it won’t matter because at the end of the day, we’re always going to come back to one another. My heart isn’t capable of doing anything else but beat for yours, okay?” she assures Camila as she kisses her forehead.

–

Camila looks over and sees the girl worrying her lip and fiddling with her fingers. Camila reaches out to stop her fingers and interlaces their hands instead. Lauren gives her a soft look and mutters a “thank you” in her ear when she leans over to give her forehead a kiss.

“…and now, it’s time to reveal, The Center of Her Universe,” the curator announces as the veil is pulled down from the framed piece.

There are soft gasps all around and flashes flicker as the invited press takes pictures of the gigantic drawing in the center of the room.

Camila herself is finding it hard to breathe. She’s looking at the piece and it’s causing a rush of emotions that bulldozes right through her entire being. The art piece is a larger-than-life drawing of a girl that looks a lot like Camila.

The artist’s perspective shows the girl’s side profile. She’s standing with her hand worrying her lip as she looks to be concentrating on what’s in front of her. Camila notes the familiar geometric shapes that the girl is looking at.

Tableau I.

It’s a drawing of Camila when Lauren first laid eyes on her.

What makes the drawing breathtaking is the fact that on the dress Camila is wearing and throughout her wavy, brown locks, there are miniature drawings of different scenes from Camila and Lauren’s time together. The mini scenes are drawn with exquisite detail despite the seemingly non-existent space. There are sketches of their movie dates, gifts they’ve given each other, and quotes and declarations of love they’ve said over the years.

Camila, with tears in her eyes, turns to look at Lauren, who of course, is already looking at her.

“Lauren,” she whispers in awe. “This is incredible.”

“It doesn’t do justice to half of your beauty and what you’ve done to my life since I found you,” Lauren responds sincerely. Camila can’t say or do anything but throw her arms around Lauren and say, “I love you so much.”

–

They’re sitting on the rooftop of the gallery a couple hours after the exhibit had come to a close with Camila’s arm intertwined with Lauren’s and her head leaning against the other girl’s shoulder.

Camila can’t think of any other place she’d rather be.

Lauren disrupts the silence when she reaches for something in her jacket and for the second time that night, Camila is speechless. In front of her, Lauren is holding onto an open small box with a ring.

“I actually wanted to this at the reveal, but then I remembered how every milestone in our relationship had always just been between the two of us and I also didn’t want to pressure you in front of those people so…” Lauren says with a nervous laugh.

Camila looks up into her favorite green eyes and she sees the other girl’s nervous gaze as if Camila could even say anything other than yes to her.

“Like I wanted to depict in my main piece,” Lauren starts. “You’re the center of my universe, Camila. You’ve brought nothing but happiness and pure love to my life and I can’t thank you enough. You continue to be my number one supporter and have stayed by my side through everything. I want to spend the rest of my life showing you how grateful I am for you if you’d let me, so…” she takes a deep breath.

“Camila Cabello,” she starts again, “Will you marr-”

“YES!” Camila answers and throws her arms around Lauren’s neck and kisses her as if to say every single thing she doesn’t know how to describe in words through the way her mouth moves along Lauren’s. She’s kissing her to show Lauren that with the green-eyed girl, it’s always going to be a resounding yes. Lauren owns her heart and everything else. She owns all of Camila.

“A thousand times yes,” she breathes into Lauren’s mouth as the other girl’s lips curve into a smile.

–

Camila is admiring the ring on her finger when she suddenly says to the other girl, “I still can’t believe you didn’t just come up to me that first day in MOMA,” she says with a confused look.

“That was probably honestly for the best,” Lauren says.

“What, why?” Camila asks curiously.

“The only thing that was going through my mind at the time was a lame pick-up line that definitely would not have worked in my favor,” Lauren says laughing to herself.

“What was it,” Camila asks.

Lauren looks at her and concedes. She clears her throat and says in a deep, husky voice,

“You’re like a piece of art,” she starts.

When Camila only raises an eyebrow, she continues.

“I want to nail you against the wall.”

–

The End.

–

A/N:

Hey everyone,

I’m back with another one shot. I’m compiling my one shots in a book on wattpad under @jaureguicabello5eva (still working on getting these on ao3). I have a few ideas and I’m going to try to upload semi-regularly.

Feel free to send me some prompts or just general things you want to see in future stories and I’ll see what I can do.

Comments/feedback give me life so please tell me what you think. Talk to me about some ideas, scenes within the story, your thoughts on the plots, the characters, point out some typos if you want, etc.

Hope you guys enjoyed this one!

side note: there are pictures in wattpad if you want to have a better idea of the pieces being referenced

-Maddox

#UPDATE #one shot #AU #slash #camren #angst drama #humour #romance fluff #submission #youre like a piece of art you need to be nailed against a wall

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