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I don't even know how to phrase this but I'm dumb as hell and realize I have trouble synthesizing information, can't make my own analysis, not at all a creative thinker, etc etc. My question is, how do I go about changing this? I read books, yes but what? Is that it? If I go to college, will that help? Or will that just mold me into a status quo smart guy? How do I even begin to get smart or whatever?

You're already asking yourself what it means to be smart so for me that means you're already smart. For someone who says that can't make their own analysis you are already analyzing yourself.

There's two lines of advice I can give you:

Read non-fiction books. Pick something that you're really interested in and start reading. Soak it in, enjoy it. I say that you pick something you're INTERESTED in first because otherwise it's homework to get smart, and what you want actually is not to be perceived as smart but to have knowledge. What do you WANT to know? You won't know it from fiction. Fiction is fine, fiction is fun, fiction can be well researched, but it can't teach you. Documentaries are good but even the deepest, best ones don't contain as much information as text. You need to practice reading text, more now than ever. If you find yourself overwhelmed by textbooks and the like, begin with introductory texts, even Wikipedia, or long articles in a subject.

Second, search everything you don't know. Don't ever leave a question hanging if you have access to the internet. If you don't know a word, a place, a person, a concept, search it, it takes less than 30 seconds of your day to read a Wikpedia summary about it. The reason I know so much geography for example is that every time I read a place that I don't know, I search it almost by instinct. Once you know where places are, your mind starts making maps on its own, relating one thing to other. This applies to actual geography but also all kinds of knowledge.

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6 Week Challenge Week 1 Day 5 8/11/24

I bought the above skirt second hand earlier in the year (this is when this photo is from, shoutout to old uni halls) and it was part of my clubbing outfit!

Today I:

Woke up early to finish my assignment for Analysing Grammar 🤡 I had too much fun with my friends last night

Went to my classes

Picked up a couple of easy dinner options at the supermarket

Vibed w my housemate

Tutored

Saw Paddington in Peru!! It was so good, I cried a lot

Went to a wetherspoons for dinner, sausage beans and chips my beloved

Went to a friend's house for pre-drinks before going to the club!! I think yous can infer why I'm posting this midmorning on Saturday slfbsldbks

Daily joys:

!!!!! I love my friends and I love having the courage to tell them that when drunk

The club night was musical theatre themed and it was soooooo much fun

Got to hug all of my friends at some point in the night, physical affection my beloved

Goals progress:

Submitted analysing grammar on time :D

I went out of my comfort zone today by answering questions in class and proactively starting/making conversation with people I wouldn't normally do it with!!

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05.11.2024 [😉]

📝: 밀린 글 쓰기/ just finished writing the article

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06.11.2024 [😙]

🎹: 밴드 공연 보는 날/ The day I saw the band perform

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By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.

Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.

This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):

Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):

Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.

But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:

Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.

Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation

Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.

Meditation

Martial arts

Sports in general

Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)

Woodworking

Cooking

If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers

Things can be easier. You do not have to be stuck forever.

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every day i do my job and contemplate the bleak imperialist power structures of global academia 👍🏻

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Trans-national Ethnography Reading List

Studies of trans in the academy usually kind of suck. There is a tendency to speak through us, to understand our claims to gender as either pitiful or dangerously conformist, and generally to just not listen to anything we have to say. Gender has traditionally been the property of feminist theorists, who have produced a lot of great work that's well worth using. But any researcher who does not seriously contend with the anti-feminine and anti-porn tendencies of feminist theory will find it impossible to take trans seriously: we tend to be really hot, sort of sexual, and always a little bit too loud.

Ethnographic research is pretty resistant to these academic neuroses. Because ethnographic work involves months-long immersion in a group and participation in its members' daily lives, ethnographers are forced to identify with trans people for extended periods of time, which tends to bleed away the worst of this shit [1]. Ethnography also has a strong ethic toward preserving research subjects' ways of seeing the world, enforced via direct quotes, frequent narration, and the prioritization of endogenous terms which research subjects already use. As a pleasant side effect, this also makes ethnographies a bit clearer to read than your average academic tome.

So with that in mind, I've got a list of stuff to read. If you are unused to academic jargon I would recommend the books (in italics), because they tend to be more 'traditional' and therefore readable. They're also more accessible because certain sites carry a wide catalog of free digital books. The articles aren't too bad either, but ethnography really deserves a few hundred pages more than an article gives, so the writing always looks a little bit squished. I'd read "Decolonizing Transgender in India" anyways, as well as Kira Hall's excellent piece.

READINGS

Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category. By David Valentine.

The Kothi Wars: AIDS Cosmopolitanism and the Morality of Classification. By Lawrence Cohen.

Decolonizing Transgender in India: Some Reflections. By Aniruddha Dutta and Raina Roy.

Dissenting Differently: Solidarities and Tensions between Student Organizing and Trans-Kothi-Hijra Activism in Eastern India. By Aniruddha Dutta.

Elsewheres in Queer Hindutva: A Hijra Case Study. By Aniruddha Dutta.

Subjectivities, Knowledge, and Gendered and Sexual Transitions. By Paul Boyce and Aksay Khanna, chapter in the Cambridge Handbook for the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality.

Shifting gender positions among Hindi-speaking hijras. By Kira Hall.

Perverse Citizenship: Divas, Marginality, and Participation in "Loca-lization." By Marcia Ochoa.

Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Performance of Femininity in Venezuela. By Marcia Ochoa.

The Made-Up State: Technology, Trans Femininity, and Citizenship in Indonesia. By Benjamin Hegarty.

Beauty that Matters: Brazilian "Travesti" Sex Workers Feeling Beautiful. By Julieta Vartabedian.

Bodies and desires on the internet: An approach to trans women sex workers’ websites. By Julieta Vartabedian.

Footnotes

The disgust can come back once they get away from us for a while. See Annick Prieur's 1994 article and her 1998 book, which have pretty different levels of casual transmisogynistic hate.

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2024/11/1

currently at the uni orientation :D

saw around the school and labs and it was all so cool!!

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term paper outlines say "cite sparingly and only use very short quotes" im going to die

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[270924] i found out today that my midterm includes an unit i thought it didn't. so i'm coping with the rush of anxiety with the nicest things i could find (my cat + fruits + sunlight)

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Books of 2024: A HALF-BUILT GARDEN by Ruthanna Emrys.

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秋の海（10月12日）

Jesienne morze

Autumn sea

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Rise and collapse of a wave. Details of paintings by Michael Zeno Diemer (1867-1939)

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Another photo set of this book cause it's just so pretty

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What does the fox say?

....fun fact i once took a course on a threatened indigenous american language and one of our exercises turned out to be translating this song. but the prof didn't tell us in advance so you could track people figuring it out by the chorus of groans through the classroom.

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The final few days of studying for my exam in Personality Psychology have begun... I really need to focus now.

Lecture question blocks: 9/19 Mock exams: 0/2

Let's go 📑✍️