Enter, and tread lightly.

Here’s the list I’ve compiled from my research and y’all’s suggestions…

Books & journals.

Is there a skill you’ve always wanted to master someday, but kept procrastinating on? A language you started learning – then abandoned? A topic in class you’ve never quite grasped? Or maybe you just want to expand your horizon and try something new? Distract yourself from your usual studies?

This challenge is the perfect opportunity to achieve that! Pick a skill and see how much you can improve and grow in 30 days – or really start working on your to-read list (I know those books have been piling up), your portfolio for that dream job in Illustration you want, or your blog you’ve been meaning to post more original content on.

Self-growth and development are so, so important, which is the main reason why I created this challenge.

The idea of this challenge is that people from all communities come together to gain knowledge, add skills and just have fun with the amazing amount of resources out there. This way, we can all support and motivate each other, whatever field you might be interested in.

Post an introduction with the hashtag #30dol with your goals and expectations for the month (starting June 1st), and what your current level is. (Of course, you can join in later as well, but it’s fun to start a the same time!) In the end, you’ll be able to compare and see how much has changed!

Rules:

choose a topic or field you want to concentrate on

post an introduction to #30dol 

define your goals or aspirations

update daily or weekly, we want to hear from you! ♥

post a picture, a sketch, or audio, whatever you deem fitting to show us all your progress for the day/week

Here are some ideas for you:

bullet journaling (read about it here on @emmastudies, here’s an amazing online course on it) 

books/reading (if you don’t have a personal to-read list, here is one with the best books of the 20th century, best series with a gay plot/subplot, and books everyone should have read at least once)

coding (here are some sites to learn html, css, data science, python 3, java, etc.: x x x x)

design/illustration ( stickers and illustration, character illustration, Ink Illustration, 45 best adobe illustrator tutorials, 

business/freelance/open your own shop (tips on how to open your own sticker shop, digital skills: web analytics and marketing)

languages (apps like lingodeer, duolingo, lingvist, busuu, blogs like @lovelybluepanda. there are also so many pdfs and amazing websites out there depending on your target language!)

online mass education courses (edx, coursera, skillshare, futurelearn where universities and professionals teach you about their subject - be that astronomy, engineering, ancient greek history, artificial intelligence or medicine!)

social media (learn to take iphone photos for your tumblr or instagram, and here’s a great post by @studyquill on how to start and maintain a studyblr!)

photography (travel street photography, find photographers you admire like annie leibovitz or henri cartier bresson and read about their path, or browse youtube channels like negative feedback which specialize on photography)

creative writing (there are tons of workshops online - you could also try to set yourself a piece or word limit similar to nanowrimo) 

culinary (check recipe websites, or challenge yourself to try one new recipe a day, or dedicate the month to a specific cuisine)

music (learn music production, andrew huang has also made a video on how to start making music here)

film and filmmaking (karsten runquist’s channel is wonderful for film analysis,  learn about cinematography basics here and film history here)

painting (acrylic painting, sketchbook illustration. you could challenge yourself to fill an entire sketchbook/create a piece every day or week, or to improve a specific technique) 

Every resource linked is free (if you click on the links you can get Skillshare for free for two months and cancel anytime), so all you need is some free time and lots of motivation!!

I’m very happy to be announcing this to you all, and will be working on my Japanese for this challenge – so excited to see what you all and I will do and how far we can come!

Use #30dol as the general tag, and add your field (your specific subject, or writing, painting, lang(uages), pho(tography), film, book, design) to find people doing something similar! Though honestly one of the things I’m most excited about is the multidisciplinary aspect - we are such a brilliant and colorful community :)

All Souls College, Oxford University, Oxford, England

yeah sure! classics is Big and i really don’t know much about greece so this list is mostly about rome. also, if you already have a text you’re interested in then honestly. i’d just get the oxford world’s classics edition because they have really in depth introductions. 

the iliad (tr. caroline alexander) and the odyssey (tr. emily wilson) - homer. it’s…… homer

the oresteia (tr. sarah ruden) - aeschylus. tragedies are really short so you can read them quickly to see if they’re something you like

symposium (tr. robin waterfield) - plato. i’m not a fan of plato but imo the symposium is short and fairly easy to read, and a good place to start with for greek philosophy

a brief history of ancient greece: politics, society and culture - sarah b. pomeroy. i haven’t read this but i’ve been told it’s a good introduction to greek history

the rise of rome: from the iron age to the punic wars - kathryn lomas. this book covers around 800 years of history, putting rome in the context of the rest of italy. and it has really good analysis of the ancient sources and modern archeology. i also found it very accessible as a person who knew nothing about the period or archeology

the war with catilina and the war with iugurtha (tr. william batstone) - sallust. the history itself probably isn’t the most important, but it’s quite short, and a good introduction to roman historiography. also i love catilina,

augustan rome - andrew wallace-hadrill. it’s only 171 pages but is an amazing introduction to the period. it goes through the history and then looks at literary and cultural developments in relation to that history

the aeneid (tr. sarah ruden or frederick ahl) - vergil. it’s like….. possibly the most influential piece of roman literature ever

amores (tr. a.d. melville) - ovid. if you’re interested in latin elegy/augustan rome/ovid himself

the origin of empire: rome from the republic to hadrian - david potter. which was published like. last week so i haven’t read it yet. but it’s from the same series as the rise of rome and from the introduction and table of contents it looks equally good!

you can also be a goblin and get into roman history via historical fiction:

roma sub rosa series - steven saylor. my favourite……. detective novels set in the late republic. wicked characterisations of literally everyone

the cicero trilogy - robert harris. the books that got me into roman history. about cicero and will familiarise you with the politics of the late republic reaaaally quickly. humanises cicero but in the process oversimplifies Many Things

ugh, god, this is not going to be helpful, i’m sorry. to be honest i’ve just sort of… plateaued? it’s exhausting to be constantly reminding yourself that things won’t work out. it’s a fact, a statistical reality; stressing myself out about it doesn’t do anything to change that, as one rejection email i received yesterday put it, “given the number of applicants, we can offer less than one percent a fellowship.” i just feel like… any self-perceived inadequacies pale in comparison to the bare facts of the situation, and the only way to tackle that statistical reality is to just.. apply… and whatever!! if it happens it happens! i can confidently say that i’ve done just about everything i could have done to give myself the best shot; if that’s more or less than other people, that’s not something i can really control at this point. i may feel less-qualified or prepared, but that doesn’t matter in the face of the truth, which is that i’m going to apply to things anyway. otherwise, what’s the point of going through any of this in the first place?

applying for things is mechanical more than emotional for me, at this point. i’ve sent in 27 applications this year: 10 for tenure-track medieval lit jobs, 14 for postdocs, 3 for other jobs that are outside my field of expertise. last year i applied for 18 fellowships and grants, many of those for the second time. i get a lot of rejections. if i let myself emotionally attach to that process any more than the bare minimum, i would probably have dropped out of grad school by now.

*Curtsies* Now this is my kinda book rec (shocking, I know). *Deep breath* aaaaand maybe look into:

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Eve Babitz, Sex & Rage

Mikhail Bulgakov, Black Snow

Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal

Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Mark Andrew Ferguson, The Lost Boys Symphony

Jonathan Galassi, Muse

Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

Keri Hulme, The Bone People (lots of trigger warnings, approach with caution)

Siri Hustvedt, The Blazing World

Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude

Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea, The Black Prince, and Under the Net (but really honestly anything by Iris Murdoch)

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

W. Somerset Maugham, Theatre

Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls

Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth (the intersection of art and science in this book is fascinating)

Laura Van Den Berg, The Third Hotel

Kate Weinberg, The Truants

Kayla Rae Whittaker, The Animators

Meg Wolitzer, Sleepwalking and The Interestings

Jan Wolkers, Turkish Delight (this one is very NSFW and also comes with a lot of trigger warnings)