scholar diaries

Like this young person didn't even know about goddamn Gutenberg which is a SHAME. I linked to it and they went "aw yiss time to do a theft" and I was like "I mean yo ho ho and all that, sure, but. you know gutenberg is entirely legal, right?"

Project Gutenberg is a gigantic collection of books that are in the public domain.  You can read the books through the site or you can download them in various formats so you can get the format you prefer for your eReader of choice.

It is free. 

It is legal.

I was reviewing the list of the top 100 books downloaded yesterday and I saw a fair few that I had to read for college classes - so if you’re a college student and your professor assigns you to read Plato or any number of older works, check here before you buy a copy.

If you look at the first reblog from me I also recommended a few other resources, most of which were from www.archive.org, home of the Wayback Machine! They run openlibrary.org, where you can check out ebooks of some public domain titles! They even have the Bone series by Jeff Smith!

And archive.org itself has all kinds of public domain media including music and movies! For Dracula fans, here's a radio show adaptation of the book, starring Orson Welles! And here's a 1920 movie adaptation of "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring John Barrymore, the grandfather of Drew Barrymore!

I’ve got a whole host of interesting historical non-fiction off them, from etiquette guides to slang dictionaries to studies on British regional dialects to a directory of sex workers. If you write historic fiction or study social history or just plain want to know what people were calling their genitals in 1811, they have a book for that.

Hello, lovelies! I’ve gotten a couple of asks about studying so I decided to condense them into one post for you guys! I’m trying to hit a bunch of different topics so if you need an even more specific post you can send an ask! Without any further ado, have some tips! My studyblr is @spacey-scholar​

Prep

First, you always need a good base for your day! Especially if you’re studying a lot.

Make a good full breakfast! Ex. Eggs and Toast, Smoothie and fruit, Pancakes and a cup of juice. 

How’s your hygiene? Do you need to shower, brush your teeth, wash your face, condition your hair? Do it! You’ll be distracted if you feel messy!

Get dressed like it’s a normal day. Staying in PJ’s is okay! But being ready for the day seriously helps focus!

Likewise, your space should be clean. A clean space is a clean mind! Remove dishes, trash, scrap paper, and extra items. Wide down your desk, organize your pens and books. Your space should feel like your space!

Now make a list of what you need to get done! What needs to be done Now, what needs to be done Soon, and what needs to be done Later? 

Order your list how you want your day to go, and don’t put super-tough subjects back to back, or subjects that are similar exercises i.e. reading thirty pages of two different books back to back is no fun.

The Studying

It’s important to buckle down with No Distractions! If you find yourself distracted put your phone away! If you need your phone, put it on Do Not Disturb until you’re done. I also do this at night for better sleep. 

Pick the best technique for you, Pomodoro, reward-based, group studying, etc.

Play music but only if it will not distract you! If you sing along or daydream it’s the wrong music! Classical, Lo-fi, and White noise are all good! My Spotify Here has some good ones.

Use a nice journal (I don’t mean expensive!) and pens/pencils you enjoy using. I like to have a specific journal and color dedicated to each subject. 

Take notes on recorded lectures and classes, if you’re doing online classes right now try to screen record or record the audio! That way if you space out you can play it later and take notes, and you can absorb the lesson better instead of being distracted.

Don’t worry about your notes, stationary, pictures, being beautiful and your grades being perfect. Life doesn’t always look the way it does on Instagram. And the people who spend hours trying to get a good photo of their coffee are not studying! 

Use flashcards! Quizlet is good if you need premade ones! If you can save up and buy them, Barrons AP Flash Cards are the best in my opinion. Very clean, not too long, very durable, and cover all subjects.

Feeling Distracted 

If you catch yourself drifting off and getting into your head, get up and take a quick walk, stretch, or energizer. 

It’s okay if this happens, don’t guilt yourself! practice affirmation. The best and smartest still get distracted. 

If you are drifting, why? Are you hungry? Tired? Thirsty? Bored? Get a snack and some water, take a break and rest, find a way to make your studying more enjoyable. 

Remember that Motivation and Discipline are different things. Sometimes we just won’t be motivated, we won’t want to do it and it will be rather frustrating. But the cure to this is not shaming its discipline. Remind yourself “This may be hard, and I may not want to do this, but I want to reach my goals and If this is what It takes I will make it happen. 

Always do just one more page of you’re tired. One at a time and oh you did it! Maybe just one more? One more? Eh, one more just to finish the train of thought, Oh just- I’m done? Nice!

If you really can’t focus just move on and come back to this subject, you can always ask for help.

Supplementary Things

There are so many apps you can use to study, for free! My favorites are Tide, Quizlet, Focus Keeper, Forest, Flora, Egenda, SpanishDict, Photomath, and Kahn Academy. 

You can also join a study group! You may know one, but if you don’t, there are a lot of online ones! I’m in a study Discord and have been for a while! it helps a lot and motivates me to finish my work!

You can make a studyblr, but don’t do it just for the aesthetics! It’s about studying, and sometimes that gets messy! Sometimes we fail a test, we spill our tea on our notes, we cry because we don’t understand the formula. That’s the part you don’t see!

Having cute stationery can really help, as well as nice organizers and decorations for your space! I don’t have much money so I get a lot of stuff on Amazon or FB Marketplace.

Health

Remember that no matter what you are good enough. It’s okay if you fail, it’s okay if you struggle.

It’s also okay if your path doesn’t go the way you expected! Maybe you go to a different school than expected! Or choose a trade instead! Maybe you take a gap year! Maybe your passion changes! Maybe it changes six times!

Your health is always more important than your school. If you are in pain, mentally or physically, if you are anxious, exhausted, burnt out, talk to your teachers about it! You matter more than a grade.

Your best is good enough! And your best doesn’t look the same as someone else’s best! Don’t compare!

I Am Not Ready To Die Yet by Aracelis Girmay

A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde

Snowdrops by Louise Glück

Most Days I Want to Live by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Insha’Allah by Danusha Laméris

A Good Day by Kait Rokowski

Invitation by Mary Oliver

Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón

Tommorow is a Place by Sanna Wani

The World Has Need of You by Ellen Bass

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower by Rainer Maria Rilke

To the Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks

Night Walk by Franz Wright

Sorrow is Not My Name by Ross Gay

Everything Is Waiting For You by David Whyte

The Letter by Linda Greg

Testify by Eve L. Ewing

You will often notice when you’ve made an error, or when there’s something you could have done better, or etc, and sometimes other people will notice too. But often, they won’t. So don’t point it out.

It’s really a sign of a lack of self confidence – you think that if you point out the error first, it will save someone else from having to point it out for you. That by being self-depreciating, no one else will feel obliged to point out your flaws.

But here’s the thing. People don’t notice jack shit, most of the time. Sure, yeah, sometimes you’ll fuck up and people will notice and mention it, and thats fine, but 95% of your errors will go unnoticed. Unless you choose to point them out, in which case, you ensure that 100% of your errors get noticed.

The above sentence was said to me during a dance rehearsal. I’m not a pro dancer by any stretch of the imagination – this was a fun little between-friends dance that we were going to perform at a medium sized function full of people we knew. Half the people in the group did have dance experience, which made me - a non-dancer - feel self concious. So every time I messed up the steps, I would laugh at myself or made an “agh” sound or be verbally frustrated with myself that I was struggling to get that move, or whatever. Which drew peoples attention to the fact that I’d made an error.

There were like 10 of us doing this dance; me missing one step went largely unnoticed in the scheme of things, because with ten of us, anyone watching the dance had so much to look at that the likelihood of them seeing me misstep was extremely low. Unless I made a big deal about it, which would draw their attention to me, and ensure that they were made aware.

I used to point out my mistakes all the time. Not just with the dance, but across the board in general life, too. “Agh, whoops,” or handing over a completed project like “I know I could have done [thing] better, but hopefully the rest is ok,” or whatever. People were often frustrated with me, and I feel, in hindsight, that they were frustrated with me because in their eyes, with me constantly highlighting my own errors, they knew I could do better but instead here I was, giving them a shoddy, half-assed, error-filled effort. By me pointing out my every mistake, they were aware of how many I was making, and they were frustrated by my seemingly endless errors.

Then I got told to “stop advertising your mistakes,” and it was a bit of a revelation moment for me. I made a concious effort that day to minimise my reaction to my own mistakes – for the rest of the rehearsal and into the final performance – and you know what happened??

After the performance, countless people said some iteration of the phrase, “I didn’t know you could dance!!”

They thought I was a dancer. That I’d been dancing for years. They hadn’t noticed any of my missteps.

I messed up multiple times during the final performance. If I watch the recording and focus on me, I can see my missed steps, the time I span clockwise on the spot instead of anticlockwise, the time I was slightly out of alignment with the other dancers, etc. But if I watch the dance as a whole, watching all 10 dancers instead of just me….. I dont notice the mistakes I made. They blend in. Theres too much other stuff going on for anyone to notice the one dancer who spun on the spot in the opposite direction to everyone else.

And everyone thought i was brilliant. All I noticed, while dancing, were my mistakes, but no one else saw them, and everyone who saw the dance was super impressed with it and with me. That would not have been the case had I reacted to every one of my errors as I’d made them.

So I took that concept and applied it to the rest of my life. And you know what???? People were less frustrated with me. Because they weren’t noticing my minor errors, and I wasn’t pointing them out any more, so from their perspective, it looked like my output had improved. It looked like I was making “less errors.” I wasn’t, its just that before, I was pointing every one of them out, and now, I was letting people notice them on their own. And they didnt notice them.

You are always going to be hyperaware of yourself and your own mistakes, but other people are way too distracted by their own crap and have too much other stuff drawing their attention to notice your every misstep. So stop pointing your mistakes out. Stop being your own worst critic. Everyone fucks up now and then, its fine. You fix the error if you can, and you move on. You dont have to pre-empt someone else pointing out your mistakes, because its extremely likely that they wont notice your errors. Unless you point them out.

I don’t mean being in a relationship with someone who’s stringing you along or never getting over someone hoping they’ll eventually like you back, obviously, but like... the idea that if someone doesn’t return feelings for you then they were never worth your attention in the first place or that they should “look at what’s right beside them” or whatever is so bad but I also see it everywhere. Sometimes someone can be worthy of your love and also not like you back that way.

On top of that is the expectations of perfect love or that being in unrequited love is pathetic or sad, or that you can only be happy if someone you like a certain way likes you back the same way, and I fully blame societal amatonormativity for this. In movies and books unrequited love is always framed as either “they were never good enough for you (and usually there’s an undercurrent of about implication they were ‘using’ you)” or “by the end they realized what they were looking for was right beside them the entire time, they fall in love the end” and like

Yeah, it sucks when someone doesn’t like you back, but I’ve been in unrequited love a few times now and my general experience is that I don’t love them less because they love me differently. All my loves were close friends first, and they all remain close friends to this day, aware of my current or former feelings, and it’s... okay.

It’s okay to not be in storybook love. It’s okay to love someone differently than they love you. It’s okay to love someone who’s aroace or gay or straight and can’t be into you that way. It’s okay to be in love with someone and not want to start a relationship with them because you’re not ready or you’re happy single or you’re relationship types aren’t compatible, and it’s okay to fall in love with someone who loves someone else who isn’t the bad guy either.

Love is supposed to feel good. Loving being in love without it being requited is okay. Nobody has to be the villain or the bad guy or the one that’s missing out—sometimes, they just don’t fall in love with you, and that’s okay! If you fell in love with them for the right reasons, you should still love having them in your life, and love having them in your life while your feelings settle and you can both move forward.

Feelings are valid. Jealousy and pain and yearning are par for the course, but what you do with those feelings matters more than whether or not your feelings were returned. It’s okay to be in love with someone and happy to be their friend, because friendship isn’t a backburner to romantic or queerplatonic feelings or anything else. They can love you as a friend.

Stories can end without romantic or qp or other requited resolution—in my experience, sometimes it makes your relationship stronger, to be able to talk about those feelings and move forward without having them be requited. You can move forward, or move on, or stay in love or fall in love with someone else, and it’s okay. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t and maybe we want different things from the people we love, but it’s not a waste of time or a waste of feeling or a waste of a friendship for something to not work out how you’d hoped.

An Overview of Note-Taking Styles

if you’re ill (chronic or otherwise), it is productive to spend a day sleeping and resting up. your body needs you to rest so that it can heal.

but something that is true for everyone is that things like healing from trauma, learning new things, practicing hobbies, building relationships… are all productive ways to spend your time. just because you’re not making money doesn’t mean you’re not being productive.

looking after yourself is productive. looking after others is productive. hell, playing with your pet is productive.

productive means being in a state of producing something. that’s all it means. and when you’re doing the things your body needs you to do… you’re producing your own well-being. you’re producing neural pathways. you’re producing happiness.

HOW I PLAN MY WEEK AS A PHD STUDENT

I found the lack of structure and timetabled events the most difficult adjustment to make when I started my PhD last month. I love structure and I love routine, being without one made me panic quite a bit. One thing that has helped with this adjustment is planning my weeks using Google Calendar.

I have 5 separate calendars:

DAILY

This is the calendar I use to schedule mundane events and tasks that happen on a daily basis. At the minute, this just consists of scheduling in a lunch hour and taking my meds.

PERSONAL

My personal calendar is used for significant events in my personal life that have been planned weeks in advance and shouldn't be missed unless there's an emergency. As you can see, this week I had an appointment for my eyelash extensions and I also have a gig on Saturday. I have the alerts for this calendar switched on so I never forget when I have something important coming up.

PHD

This calendar is used to mark important milestones and events relating to my PhD. This includes mandatory lectures (I only have 3 this semester, and 2 have already passed!), meetings with my supervisors and academic advisor and deadlines.

TO-DO

My to-do calendar is the one that gets used the most regularly. Instead of writing a to-do list, I put the things that have to be done into my calendar with an allotted amount of time. If I know how I want to spend my week, I can do this on a Monday morning and other times I'll do it on a day-to-day basis. This week I know there's certain things I need to do while they're still fresh in mind and so I've already filled them in. Before using this method, I'd find that a to-do list is way too flexible for the way my mind works and I'd spend hours on a task that only really should've taken 30 minutes. I find that my time blocking my to-do list, the things on the list actually get done and I'm more productive with my time

WORK

My last calendar is for work. At the moment, I teach at the university, I tutor high school maths and I am also a specialist mental health mentor and counsellor. All of the hours I spend working are put into my work calendar so it's easy to keep track of my hours worked and, in turn, my expected pay every month.

‘I dream. Sometimes I think that’s the only right thing to do.’

Absolute beginner adult ballet series (fabulous beginning teacher)

40 piano lessons for beginners (some of the best explanations for piano I’ve ever seen)

Excellent basic crochet video series

Basic knitting (probably the best how to knit video out there)

Pre-Free Figure Skate Levels A-D guides and practice activities (each video builds up with exercises to the actual moves!)

How to draw character faces video (very funny, surprisingly instructive?)

Another drawing character faces video

Literally my favorite art pose hack

Tutorial of how to make a whole ass Stardew Valley esque farming game in Gamemaker Studios 2??

Introduction to flying small aircrafts

French/Dutch/Fishtail braiding

Playing the guitar for beginners (well paced and excellent instructor)

Playing the violin for beginners (really good practical tips mixed in)

Color theory in digital art (not of the children’s hospital variety)

Retake classes you hated but now there’s zero stakes:

Calculus 1 (full semester class)

Learn basic statistics (free textbook)

Introduction to college physics (free textbook)

Introduction to accounting (free textbook)

Learn a language:

Ancient Greek

Latin

Spanish

German

Japanese (grammar guide) (for dummies)

French

whose migrant mother was this? the story of the native american woman who became the face of the 1930s depression (and got almost nothing for it)

bauhaus design is everywhere, but its roots are political how even a simple choice between what font to use can be a political act

edvard munch: what a cigarette means munch + tobacco = art? (yes we’re still on the topic of art as a political weapon)

art that was never finished how great masters sometimes even didn’t finish stuff. also! the history behind the colour aquamarine

fka twigs on mary magdalene (if you like asmr you’re gonna love this)

having a coke with frank ohara (technically not art history but this video is too good for me not to mention)

video postcard: woman at her toilette a quick dive into my favourite painting of woman impressionist berthe morisot

this documentary about georgia o´keeffe (that ive seen about 10 times)