Draw me like one of your French majors

It is with a wry shake of my head on your arm that I find myself introducing a fancy new word. As a poet, I dislike jargon. But sometimes we do need a new word, and it can change the way we see everything.

That’s what happened to the sighted Deaf community with “audism.” Although it was first coined in 1975, by the Deaf scholar Tom L. Humphries, it didn’t receive a full discussion until after the hearing-sighted linguist Harlan Lane used it in his 1993 book “The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community.” Sighted Deaf people had always known that hearing society discriminated against them, but the new word suddenly made it much easier to identify and analyze.

As is typical of our community, several DeafBlind folks proposed variations on the Deaf theme. But none of them caught on. More recently, however, “vidism” has gained some traction. It’s a helpful concept for two reasons. First, it places a finger on some of the ways the sighted Deaf community has excluded us. Our brother Bryen Yunashko has done important work in this direction. The second reason is that the hearing blind community did not yet have a term to describe sighted privilege and bias, other than the generic “ableism.”

Yet addressing both audism and vidism still leaves too much behind glass. I knew there was something bigger there, and I longed for something that would shatter that pane of mystification. Something that would allow me to wrap my hands around its throat and say, “I’ve found you out, you old serpent!”

The sense of that malaise which affects all of us, DeafBlind and non-DeafBlind alike, had been growing stronger and stronger ever since the Protactile movement started in 2007. It has taught us so much about who we are. About what is natural and true. About how to live. About language. What we once put up with we can no longer tolerate.

What, I wondered, is the opposite of tactile? Researching our community’s history, I see that we have always been tactile. But hearing and sighted people have always attempted to keep our tactilehoods in check. We’ve always been denied access to some of the most basic human rights. What should we call this force of suppression?

A Standing Apart

I propose to call it distantism. The English word “distance” comes from “distantia,” Latin for “a standing apart.” A point could be made that distantism refers to the privileging of the distance senses of hearing and vision. The ways in which many cultures have evolved on the almost exclusive basis of these two senses have indeed been harmful to us. That insistence on sight or hearing to function in society means only one thing for us: death.

But that would be putting it too simplistically. Each form of social bigotry has its distinctive personality and its unique set of intertwining evils. So I would like to dwell on the concept of distantia, or a standing apart, which lies at the heart of distantism. We already have a Protactile word that describes people who pull away from touch, who refuse to connect. It is an attitude and a behavior. Many hearing and sighted societies prize it highly, and their members seek to maintain physical distance, however thin those margins may be. Their rulers and heroes stand alone– the more remote they are, the more highly esteemed they are. Even when the less privileged are squeezed closer together due to poverty, exploitation, or as punishment, distantism manifests itself in the long lines, tight cells or dubicles, and above all, their being removed out of sight and hearing. For all the hype around its ability to connect the world, technology has often served to isolate people in every other way.

Are sighted and hearing people wrong to use their distance senses and let it affect how they live? No. If they wish to be all eyeballs and flapping ears, they are welcome to such an existence. There’s nothing wrong with being organized or efficient. But we have problems when they impose their distantism on us.

Let’s read a classic distantist statement:

“The loss of both sight and hearing constitutes one of the severest disabilities known to human beings. Essentially, it deprives an individual of the two primary senses through which we acquire awareness of and information about the world around us, and it drastically limits effective communication and freedom of movement, which are necessary for full and active participation in society.”

It used to be impossible to argue with a statement like that, but with a critique of distantism we can begin to break it down. It’s an old trick, blaming injustice on its targets so that the privileged can pretend there’s nothing wrong. We are at the bottom of society because, what? Because we are DeafBlind. Which cannot be helped. Therefore, we belong at the bottom of society. It’s an amazingly easy trick to pull. They take things out of our reach and then they say we have limited awareness. Whatever they do is our fault.

I wish I could share everything this critique has unearthed for me, but it would take years to write! For now, I would like to touch on a few things that I think tell us a great deal about how distantism works.

Intervenors

Despite the many barriers we encounter in society, we can gain much awareness about the world around us. But when we go exploring or when we just exist, sighted and hearing people rush in to intervene. Can they help us? Please don’t touch. They will be happy to describe it to us. They will guide us. No, they will get it for us. It’s much easier that way. Hello! My name is Katie and I’m your Intervenor!

One of the things I have pondered is why, very early in the history of education of DeafBlind children, they started assigning each one of us a special teacher-companion. This wasn’t always the case. There were some classes where we shared a common teacher and we had each other. We can see in the record how distantism set in, and how hearing and sighted people wanted things to look right. It didn’t look good when we went around “groping in the dark.” It didn’t look good for us to cluster together and have too much fun. Education meant we had to sit behind a desk.

The solution was to assign each one of us a sighted companion. Such teachers made it possible for us to sit apart and for the classroom teacher to stand in front of us. They made us hearing and sighted by proxy. Even though we would be in constant contact with our special teachers, the pair of us made for a tidy unit that could and did stand apart. It also made for a most inspiring sight, the self-sacrificing teacher laboring as our only link to the world. It isn’t a miracle unless there is a miracle worker.

Today those special companions are called Intervenors or Interveners. The title is altogether too apt. Intervenors who eavesdrop on this article will protest, “But I let Jimmy touch anything he wants to!” No. It’s not just a matter of letting or encouraging. There’s a whole cultural element involved. There are distantist modes of touch and there are protactile modes of touch. A distantist cannot truly teach or empower our children to live and learn as tactile people. Yet the field of education of DeafBlind children has never included us as teachers. Why is that?

The Road Not Taken

September 30, 1841, might have been the beginning of a wonderful alternative history. On that day, our brother Oliver Caswell, then eleven years old, entered the Perkins Institution, where our famous sister Laura Bridgman had already been a student for four years. He met many people on that day, but he was immediately drawn to her, and the two latched together. Samuel Gridley Howe, the school’s hearing-sighted director, was the most insufferable distantist imaginable—a man who, for example, decided that blind people must read raised lines resembling print—but on this occasion he allowed Bridgman to serve as his auxiliary for Caswell’s first lesson. Thereafter Bridgman eagerly continued to teach Caswell, devoting many hours each week to the enterprise. Fortune also hugged them when Howe and his new wife departed on a long honeymoon in Europe. It was during his absence that a portrait was painted of Bridgman teaching Caswell to read and write.

In Deaf education, Deaf teachers were involved from Day One. Many graduates were promptly hired as teachers, and Deaf teachers would go on to found schools all over the world. Blind graduates of early schools for the blind were also hired as teachers and continue to play a leading role in that field. But in the education of DeafBlind children, we have not seen the same pattern. There are thousands of Intervenors working today. There are hundreds of teachers proper who work with our children in Deaf, blind, and public schools. There are hundreds of early-intervention specialists. None of these professionals are themselves DeafBlind. What happened to cause so complete a shutout of tactile teachers and leaders?

When Howe returned to his post at Perkins, he found that Bridgman had mingled too much with teachers and fellow students. She had learned too much and had many questions. He considered his neat experiment ruined. He immediately made some radical changes, and, later, for a period of five years Bridgman was in the company of one single teacher. Any suggestions of a future in a widening social circle was abandoned. Perkins would set an example for the world of assigning each one of us a special teacher-companion. They were to help us, keep us safe, protect us from bad influences, and, we can now see, make sure we aspire to the distantist ideal.

It is a common outcome of some forms of oppression that their targets must fit in a narrow space of cooperation and gratitude. The idea with distantism is that we can never uphold it perfectly, but we should make a continuous failed attempt to do so. This continuous failed attempt reassures society that we agree with their values. We are to be good, but never good enough. The field, which Howe firmly sent on its current course, excludes us because it needs to maintain a certain level of failure. If it was its goal to succeed completely in educating us, it would embrace our tactilehood and value us as teachers and leaders. Instead, distantism is the first condition, and for that to make sense, the field needs its work to be difficult and expensive, not easy and effective.

Under Different Names

We adults also receive intervention that serves a similar function. In the United States we have Support Services Providers and in the United Kingdom they are called Communicator Guides. In Canada, they don’t bother to pretend it’s something different. Their Intervenors serve both children and adults.

I am not saying that we don’t need sighted assistants. After all, we do live in a distantist society, and we should avail ourselves of distance-information readers. However, the way our SSP services are performed can be smothering. That’s why a key concern of the Protactile movement is autonomy. When I teach Protactile, I like to make it easier to remember what it means and how to spell it by breaking it down into three parts:

AUTO: They do a lot of things automatically, taking over, making decisions for us, making assumptions.

NO: We need to say “No!” to such automatic actions.

MY: We need to say “My!”—we will do things our way and make our own decisions.

Sometimes I get a new SSP and she asks for my shopping list. She is ready to take charge and have me merely tag along, holding on to the cart. She’s confused when I do not give her a list and I take charge, directing us toward the places where we will find what I want. She is now more like a detector, or a device that I take out of my back pocket to consult. Only she is far more intelligent than any machine could be and there’s a wonderful rapport—that is, if she is able to unlearn her distantism. It is my responsibility to learn and know the world around me; it is part of her job to help me update that knowledge as we go along. But it is not her job to retain any of this knowledge herself.

Having a SSP is still useful, but it makes such an enormous difference how it’s done and when. Sadly, most SSP, CG, and Intervenor programs leave the professionals’ distantism intact. As a result, they often take charge, make assumptions, push our canes away from making contact, pull us back from people, put themselves in the middle of interactions instead of support our direct communication with others, and guide us in such a way as to maintain a margin between us and the world around us. No wonder we have limited awareness!

Their distantism finds its ugliest though unconscious expression at many of our gatherings, conferences, and retreats. You know the routine: We are each assigned a SSP. Instead of helping us connect with each other, they end up being the ones with whom we talk the most. Their presence creates a network of distantism that separates us from each other or makes it harder for us to find each other. They also can destroy moments when we cluster and go tactile. A friend shared with me an experience he had with a yoga activity at a retreat. The yoga instructor was a sister, and she wanted the group to do it in Protactile style. So there was a happy clustering, and people helped each other and passed on information. But it didn’t look right, and one of the SSPs standing back intervened by going to her “client” to correct his position. “That’s not what the position is, it is this.” Soon the other SSPs slipped into the group. In a few moments there was a nice straight row, everyone paired off and standing apart.

The White Cane

Even when we shake off those pesky intervenors, distantism follows us still in the form of the white cane. Now, I love my cane, but it was also one of the first things that told me there is something wrong. As I pointed out in my essay on protactile design, “My Dream House,” it is not our home if we need a cane. What this means for our present discussion is that the instant we feel the need for a cane, we are in distantist territory. One of our long-term goals should be to claim more and more territory where we do not need a cane at all, because the design of these environments is tactilely accessible and appropriate.

For going out in the public, I think we still need to ask the question: Why were we given the white cane? The three words Orientation and Mobility specialists repeat like a mantra are “independence,” “freedom,” and “safety.” Our brother Robert Sirvage has observed that in Amerikcan Sign Language all three are said the same way. Our crossed wrists turn away from each other and move apart, as if breaking out of handcuffs. That’s freedom, and also independence and safety. I now realize that this is the ultimate distantist fantasy.

The white cane makes it possible for us to go many places over a wide variety of terrain all the while avoiding contact with our environment except through our cane. It is a magic wand that conjures up a bubble for us to float in. Sighted Orientation and Mobility instructors have always taught us one-on-one, the better to dance circles around us and make sure the bubble grows stronger. They like to scout out a location first, find a path through it, and then bring us there, saying, “Go straight until you feel a curb, then take a 45-degree turn and walk until you encounter a railing.” A code of aimed turns and sailing until we hit something then another turn.

The field has yet to accept any DeafBlind instructors, adamant in the belief that we cannot teach each other to travel. They are right—we cannot possibly teach each other how to travel in their sterile, desolate, meaningless mode where the goal is for us to go down the middle, in a straight line. They want us to disturb the world as little as possible. Ironically, sighted people make that easy to accomplish by parting like the Red Sea before our rod. Joke: How am I supposed to find anyone if everyone runs away from me?

The bubbles they put us in are sometimes so thick they are more like tanks. I cannot count the times I would approach a brother and sister and get the feeling I’d just interrupted their process of steaming forward. Often they’d be holding something in their other hand, and I must wait for them to disassemble their tank-bubble before we can interact. That’s why I have worked on making my bubble as thin as possible, ready to pop the instant there’s an opportunity for connection. For me, this has meant finding the right cane: a slender beauty made of fiberglass. It’s so light that I can hold it like a pencil if I wanted to, with just two fingers. It’s no tank. It’s a mere whisker, sometimes feeling ahead, sometimes tucked in favor of other modes of experience.

One of these other modes is traveling and exploring together. I agree with Sirvage’s suggestion that we need community-based approaches. This would go against the whole thrust of the rehabilitation system, which is a monument to distantism. It’s built on one-on- one instruction, which effectively isolates us and tells us that we are broken and need to be fixed.

Final Irony

Before I bring up one more thing about distantism, let’s read that quote again:

“The loss of both sight and hearing constitutes one of the severest disabilities known to human beings. Essentially, it deprives an individual of the two primary senses through which we acquire awareness of and information about the world around us, and it drastically limits effective communication and freedom of movement, which are necessary for full and active participation in society.”

The final irony is that a DeafBlind man, the late Robert J. Smithdas, wrote these words. Many hearing and sighted people have expressed the same sentiments, but distantism is so pervasive that we all have internalized it. Helen Keller spoke of us as being imprisoned in the “double dungeon of darkness and silence” and that we are “the loneliest people on Earth.” She was being fanciful, but what is true is that the marginalization we experience is too often literal, involving physical margins.

That we find distantism even in ourselves is good news, for it proves that it is a serious, society-wide sickness. When our sisters, the magnificent Jelica Nuccio and aj granda, launched the Protactile movement, we knew it was a historic event. Now that we know more about distantism and how poisonous it is, their achievement seems all the more astonishing.

Think about it. Billions of people on this planet, and all of them agreeing that hearing and vision are required for leading full, normal lives. Billions of people of one mind that being DeafBlind must be an unendurable fate. Billions of dollars poured into the hope of medical cures. Distantism, that old serpent, held the whole world in its remote-control spell.

I dream of the day when I won’t have to look at this fucking chart….

So there’s this thing we say to express the way we act, the way we acted or the way we’re gonna act, and it’s:

EN MODE

Basically, it ressembles the “be like”

Here’s an example of what my best friend just sent me:

To translate:

Okay there’s a possibility I might go talk to him

And be like

Hey I’ve got a crush on you bye

Hahahaha

Just wanted to take a quick break from studying to share with everyone my absolute favorite way to memorize terms!! I decided to share because it took me until the beginning of my senior year of college to learn this trick and I wish I had learned it sooner! I’ve used it to memorize Italian translations, important facts in geography, and even more overwhelming things such as the name (both english and latin) and location of every muscle, bone, and tendon/ligament in the human body.  Feel free to message me with any questions! Happy studying!!!

🌵  Step 1. First I start off with index cards for definitions (in this case they were already made for me … thank you Kaplan GRE prep!!🙌🏼). 

🌵  Step 2. Then I use two of the index cards to make a “don’t know” and “know” card. 

🌵 Step 3. When first trying to learn a definition, I start with three cards, all of which go on the “don’t know” pile. As I memorize each one I put it in the “know” pile (I define memorize as being able to repeat the definition back… keep in mind for this example I’m learning the definitions of English words!)

🌵  Step 4. Once all three of the original cards are in the “know” pile, I pick up all three and test to see if I still can repeat back the definitions for each one.  Any card that is correct stays in the “know” pile while any card that is wrong is moved to the “don’t know” pile.

🌵  Step 5. Let’s say after the last step I had 2 cards on the “don’t know” pile and one card still in the “know” pile.  I then re-study and re-memorize the two cards in the “don’t know” pile until they can be moved to the know pile.

🌵 Step 6.  I then repeat step 4 and step 5 again checking for accuracy.

🌵  Step 7.  Once the first three cards are all steadily in the “know” pile, I add 3 more cards and repeat step 3 through step 6 all over again.  This time, after the three new cards enter the “know” pile, I check my accuracy with all 6 cards before moving on! 

“La flemme”, short for “j’ai la flemme” (I have the flemme) roughly means the mental (and/or physical) incapacity of doing a generally simple task, of doing anything really, but also takes a slightly ironical acknowledgement of the link made between this incapacity and laziness, as the best way to translate would be “I’m too lazy/tired for this right now” even though the meaning actually covers a broader idea of discouragement and ennui.

Notice the sound similarities, especially between the words 伤害 /shānghài/ TO INJURE and 上海 /Shànghǎi/ SHANGHAI.

have a look at my phd rejections

last fall, I walked by an office door on campus, one that belonged to a well established professor. letters were pasted all over it. what were those letters? rejections. I was in awe, surprised that someone was willing to be so outwardly vulnerable in a profession so caught up in accomplishment culture. that moment continues to inspire me.

so here are my rejections. they’re not easy to post but I refuse to be ashamed of them.

I applied to 9 programs in total this cycle. I maxed out a credit card (and my mental health) while preparing and submitting them. Through a great deal of desperation and no small dose of luck and chance I was accepted to 2 of them.

what is missing from the “2 acceptances” conversation is the fact that I received >3x the rejection emails than the ‘congratulations.’ 7 rejections. seven. rejections. do you know how difficult reading 7(!) rejections is? even though I counted on that many to start with?

no one prepares you for how it feels, when you want something really bad. when you think a program is a perfect fit. when you picture yourself on the campus, working within and around that specific community of scholars

some of these letters I received on the same day. one notice was a personal one (notre dame), suggesting that I was short-listed in committee but didn’t end up making the cut. another was terribly impersonal and didn’t even include my name (michigan). most were distant and unfeeling, as if I didn’t pour hours of blood, sweat, and tears into preparing the applications after hours and hours of researching their specific program

first of all, and probably most importantly, make that paper about something you actually give a shit about. if you can write an essay on how long shakespeare’s dick is when you’re talking to your friends, that’s a good topic. don’t choose something u don’t care about, you will Want To Die

“okay but the only topics are ones i don’t care about” talk 2 ur teacher 99% of the time if you’re like “here’s a well-thought-out thesis can i talk about this instead” they’re like “sure lmao i just couldn’t think of other paper topics to suggest”

“they said no” cool find the one u hate the least and try to tie it into something u like. for example i really hated this stupid paper i had to write about a stupid book so i ended up writing about the food inside the book and whether or not it was a historically accurate depiction of food. turns out i fucking love talking about food. i also remade some of the old recipes and brought them in as part of the presentation of my project and people went fuckken nuts bc BREAD. basically i thought about “what motivates me? uh food” and followed that. it was a 45-page book about bread and i looked like a really good student when really i just love bread (somewhere, oprah smiles over me)

the 20-pagers are the ones you Actually Cannot Do the night before. i know we all got real fuckken cocky back in hs when we learned how to do 5 pages in one night w/out trying too hard but 1. as a teacher now i can tell u for sure that teachers do know you rushed it, we just Don’t Care bc We’re Not Paid Enough and 2. twenty pages is not the same thing. you need to actually take the time to do it. this is the actual version of “you’re not in hs anymore” DONT lie to yourself and think “it’s fine i’ll do it in one day” you will !! Regret it!!!! 

“raquel. raquel. listen to me. do you actually believe i’m capable of time management. raquel i have depression i barely manage to exist.” same. but the truth is that when i started like?? actually following the rules of timelines and taking my time etc it actually really helps mental illness. you don’t feel pressured all the time by a deadline, so your anxiety chills a little bit. small progress being acceptable means that on depression days, you don’t have to worry you’re fucking it all up. when it’s 15 minutes every day (even if it’s only 1 word a day) it feels a lot better.

ask the teacher what timeline they’d recommend. they actually Know.

always ask if it’s informal or formal (if you can use “I” statements or not). informal essays can rely on personal feelings and are so much easier and trust me if you find out on the day it’s due that you could have written 12 pages about your feelings instead of 12 pages of research, you will Be Very Upset

i lie to myself all the time and move the deadline up. i write it in my agenda as at least 2 days before it’s due. surprise!!! i tricked u, self!!! you can’t procrastinate!! 

agendas/planners need to be what actually works for you. i liked to prioritize w/colors + keep lists. i really love crossing things off lists. it’s like… a balm. for me, i usually say i have to finish the first 2 things, start the 3rd thing, and “touch” at least half the list. if i finish the whole list i get a prize. also i get to cross off everything which is so satisfying i’m sure it’s someone’s idea of a rush. there’s so many “how to” documents on these that i won’t get into it but frankly?? if you don’t write it down you will not remember it. “yes i will” no you won’t greg. just do it. write it down. write it where u can see it. not there, greg. greg, somewhere good. my friend is smart af and uses a post-it on her laptop. that doesn’t work for me bc i can just? use my hand to cover the anxiety? so choose somewhere good greg.

nervous system, skeleton, meat, skin. nervous system is the thesis. skeleton is quotes/data. meat is the analysis of that data. skin is the fancy transitions + beautification.  meat goes on both sides of bone, and skin goes all around. nervous system has to touch everything. do what your teachers have been begging u to do since 3rd grade and start w/an outline. do this while you read/research. i usually have a starter thesis like “lady macbeth is a feminist ICON” then take the quotes i think fit. but if while you’re reading u realize u wanna talk about the use of feminine language and how shakespeare parallels daintiness w/sharpness, u still have a bunch of quotes you can use or not use. this works also w/research papers. just pull what u think is something u wanna talk about. copy-paste it but leave a link to where u got it. then put a bullet point under that says roughly why u mention it

if you just write the outline like you’re keeping notes to yourself you’d be amazed how quickly you write the essay bc we get stuck in academic language but it’s easier to translate “this is why bees are the #bomb” into a paragraph. i mean you just rewrite your notes to yourself in academic speech. “The above passage illustrates the growing necessity of pollinators such as bees in an agricultural environment.”

keep track of your sources + label them. don’t just write “(SOURCE)” instead if you’re using multiple sources use the lazygirl way which is (SA1) or whatever shorthand u have for each source. then when you need to finish your sources you go to your little source document, find the one labelled SA1 and then “Find+replace” w/the actual source.

integrate quotes so it reads w/clarity which means don’t do this but if you’re running late on it and don’t have time to look up the quote u want to fit this situation, technically you can “use any” word you want (56). so yeah “there is” a moral question about it but you “can” make up quotes (79, 90). don’t “actually” do this unless you’re seriously in a crunch. which u shouldn’t be, bc u managed ur time, right?

running late part 2 (which again would never happen bc you followed my advice and made a little time table for yourself but anyway if it does somehow magically happen) i really recommend using school computers to do your work. ur surrounded by people who will hold u accountable + u will focus

running late pt3 on the day of it being due, around 5 PM, be honest w/yourself and see where you are. if you’re like “it needs 2 more hours” okay. but if you’re like “this is……… not started” email the teacher. they’ll be so much more receptive the earlier you do this in the process. it looks like “i’m genuinely struggling and i hope to finish this on time but i’m worried i won’t” instead of “i started this at 11:58PM and am asking for an extension”. please also just… be honest? 

“my teacher won’t accept late work!” they all say that, he probably will, particularly if you have a note from the school therapist being like “lmao she’s got so many mental illnesses idek how to help her”

“no he really doesn’t, he doesn’t care” you can file for disability if you have mental illness, and, in fact, you should if it’s something that often stops you from completing work on time. i didn’t bc i found that it just let me procrastinate for a longer time, but having that on file means you can go to the dean.

“no!!! raquel you’re not listening i have 2 pages and he doesn’t take late work!!!!!!!!!”  okay. yeah that’s bad. but nerves, skeleton, meat, skin. what is it that you’re struggling with? is it that your can’t find any quotes to back up your thesis? impossible, tbh, you need to be more willing to purposefully misuse quotes (don’t do that). but the better option is to just change the thesis. 

“i don’t even have that!!” did you. do the reading? if you even just watched the movie, you probably have an opinion on something even if it’s “this is bad.” you can use that. use why you didn’t like it to write a hate-fueled examination on how whiny the main character is and why u think the author is trying to point out how miserable cis white boys are to deal with. 

“i don’t have enough sources!!!” go to wikipedia’s page about it and look @ the sources. try to like actually read some if you have time but frankly in a hurry a student (me) might be compelled to just slap the source in there. 

“how the fuck do i analyze this”. u know how ppl agonize over why an actor breathed in a scene. melt into that kind of thinking. you can literally force the words to mean whatever you want. i’ve talked about word choice so specific that i based a 12-page essay on three separate uses of the words “my dear”. i talked about the possessive “my” and how it developed for like 5 of those pages. and always repeat the thesis like a million times. after every analysis you should talk about how it links to the thesis. that is like a free 3 sentences every paragraph.

“i did all that and it’s still 3 pages too short” quick ways to Beef Him Up: definitions are great in research papers + essays bc you can talk about either word choice or like the definition of every process used in getting the data. also make the conclusion hella informative (it should answer “what does this mean moving forwards” most of the time, tie it into modern life or into the past). thicken ur intro with “here’s a quote from this guy about it and what he personally felt about acid-base titrations”, use a paragraph to talk about the history of the data/book, use a paragraph to talk about the modern reception of the data/book. also look for where you can use two words instead of one even tho like grammatically don’t do that.

worst comes to worst, brevity is the soul of wit. most teachers prefer concise over rambling and all over the place. if you choose to scoot under the page limit, tho, your writing etc needs to be exceptionally clean. frankly i’ve only done this once and it was terrifying

make computer read it aloud 2 u before u submit. “raquel….. i can’t look at it anymore”. you’re not looking @ it, you’re discovering you wrote “breath” not “breathe” and u need to change it

tutoring centers exist, i worked in one, and this is how i know they actually Help and have Good Ideas

ask about extra credit and do it tbh

Je suis au bout de ma vie

“I’m totally giving up on life”

(Used a lot by me and other university students during exam periods)

être de bon poil: to be in a good mood. 

être de mauvais poil: to be in a bad mood.