dedication is the way to satisfaction

Don’t. 

That’s it. 

You shouldn’t pet strangers’ dogs without asking either.

In Boston while waiting for the T, there was a woman with her service dog in full gear also waiting. Two young women went right up to the dog and the moment one of the women reached out to pet the dog, the older woman slapped her hand away and said “My dog is working, do NOT pet.” And I smiled because those young women were in the wrong.

One of my dog’s jobs is detecting seizures.  He gives me a few minutes warning.  If he can’t warn me because he’s distracted, I could fall and hit my head. 

I could die of a head injury because I wouldn’t have time to find a place to sit and sit down.

But, hey, a stranger gets to pet my dog. 

Here’s an article on what happened when someone pet a service dog and it DID distract the dog resulting in the owner suffering a seizure and injuries. 

For anyone who doesn’t feel like reading, here is the key points:

Hailey has multiple illnesses including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and epilepsy. Her service pup in-training, Flynn, has the important task of alerting her roughly 10 minutes before she has a seizure. This gives her time to find a safe place so that she does not injure herself while seizing.

buy local! good for the economy and the planet

make more vegetarian and vegan choices. u don’t have to go veg, but every once in a while if you can cut down on your meat consumption then do

join environmental clubs & work w others to plant gardens, make petitions, and other good stuff!

go to town hall meetings w your representatives!!!! can’t stress this enough because if u go you can let them know that environmentalism is a concern for voting members of the community and they’ll be more likely to advocate for policies that help the earth

Scientists have created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles – by accident. The breakthrough could help solve the global plastic pollution crisis by enabling for the first time the full recycling of bottles.

The new research was spurred by the discovery in 2016 of the first bacterium that had naturally evolved to eat plastic, at a waste dump in Japan. Scientists have now revealed the detailed structure of the crucial enzyme produced by the bug.

The international team then tweaked the enzyme to see how it had evolved, but tests showed they had inadvertently made the molecule even better at breaking down the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic used for soft drink bottles. “What actually turned out was we improved the enzyme, which was a bit of a shock,” said Prof John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK, who led the research. “It’s great and a real finding.”

28/💯 Days of Productivity ✨

filling a notebook with random conversation phrases overheard from strangers

writing 100 poems in one week (inspired by @alwaysbringabookwithyou)

creating moodboards for your friends

learning lyrics in a foreign language

reading challenges of any kind

creating playlists for different moods, seasons, times of the day

turning an unused notebook into an art journal

writing short stories on words from a random dictionary page

learning everything about a certain year or historical period

listing 100 places you want to visit

imagining the best version of yourself and jot down first steps to become them

100 Days of Productivity - Day 70/100 March 11th, 2018

Here’s an old picture of annotations I completed a while ago. Today was a really lovely day - I watched a history documentary on Netflix and completed some modern readings on the Romanovs (because I’m a major history nerd). Also, seeing as I just recently reached 12,000 followers on this blog (which is crazy), I was considering starting a YouTube channel. I would post study with me videos, study advice videos, book review and recommendation videos, maybe some lifestyle and gaming videos. What do you guys think? Would you be interested in seeing that kind of content?

Tips from a language major:

•When learning new vocabulary write the meaning in your language once and the new word at least three times

•If you are learning a new writing style (I.e. Hanzi, kanji, Sanskrit, etc.) write the character at least three times, the meaning and the pronunciation once. -do not write the pronunciation above the character, write it to the side, otherwise you won’t even try to read it. -Learn! Stroke! Order!

•when reviewing vocab try to use the word in a sentence.

•do not pay attention to the technicalities of the grammar. Do not attempt to compare it to your own language. This will seriously mess you up for 80 years. Just pay attention to the sentence structure and make similar sentences.

•if you are learning a tonal language (I.e Chinese) or language that has sounds that don’t exist in your language watch videos of people pronouncing things and try to match their mouth movements.

•if all else fails on your tones just speak quickly.

•watch TV shows in that language and yes watch them with subtitles. But please be aware that may not be how people speak in real life (I’m looking at you, Japanese/Chinese/Korean learners)

•DO NOT BE AFRIAD TO MAKE MISTAKES of you mess up during a sentence just correct yourself and keep going.

•flash cards, flash cards, flash cards. Real and digital.

•spend at least an hour a day on it (OUTSIDE of class), if you’re trying to learn on your own you’re gonna need more time.

•talk to yourself in that language, take notes in it, set your phone to it. You probably look crazy but that is a-ok.

•listen to music in that language, while it probably won’t do much for your ability in the beginning it will help you distinguish sounds once you get pretty good.

•and lastly, don’t give up. It took you like ten years to grasp your own language it’s gonna take awhile to grasp another.

220118 [10/100 Days of Productivity]

High key eating instant noodles while I type this because college culture am I right? 

Honestly though I have a busy week coming ahead, but I had a great time today; I had a sort of meeting with a couple of people, but it ended up being a super fun time of us snorting at vines and memes, so there was that. I feel pretty productive though! Got down a bunch of stuff and am taking on this week confidently!  ✨