studies revisited

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I think all Gilmore Girls fans can agree that Rory Gilmore is the original studyblr! If I’m having a chill study session, I’ll play an old episode where she is extra motivated or there is a big focus on academics. The following are my go-tos!

SPOILER ALERT

I wrote short descriptions with each episode so SPOILER ALERT for everyone who hasn’t seen or is still watching Gilmore Girls! 

S01E02- “The Lorelai’s First Day at Chilton”

Rory starts at a new prestigious school. She has to deal with proving herself academically.

S01E04- “The Deer Hunters”

This episode deals with academic failure and studying hard to move past it. 

S02E02- “Hammers and Veils”

Rory has anxiety over not having enough extra-curricular activities for college applications. 

S02E04- “The Road Trip to Harvard”

Rory visits her dream school and gets a good look into college life. 

S02E18- “Back in the Saddle Again”

Rory has a challenging group project. 

S03E03- “Application Anxiety”

Rory receives her Harvard application and gets stressed over the competition. 

S03E08- “Let the Games Begin”

Rory visits Yale.

S03E16- “The Big One”

Rory has to give a speech and has to comfort a friend who doesn’t get into her dream school. Rory also receives her college letters. 

S03E17- “A Tale of Poes and Fire”

Rory picks her college. 

S03E22- “Those Are Strings, Pinocchio”

Rory graduates high school and deals with paying for college. 

S04E01- “Ballrooms & Biscotti”

Lorelai and Rory have to deal with the stress of preparing for college. 

S04E02- “The Lorelais’ First Day at Yale”

Rory starts college. 

S04E03- “The Hobbit, the Sofa, and Digger Stiles”

Rory begins her college shopping period. 

S04E06- “An Affair to Remember”

Rory has trouble finding a good place to study while she is behind on her class syllabus.

S04E08- “Die, Jerk”

Rory is told to toughen up her journalistic writing, so she writes a harsh review and faces the consequences. 

S04E10- “The Nanny and the Professor”

Rory participates in the orientation for her school newspaper. 

S04E14- “The Incredible Sinking Lorelais”

This episode once again deals with academic failure.

S05E10- “But Not As Cute As Pushkin”

Rory gives a tour of Yale to a high school student. 

S05E20- “How Many Kropogs to Cape Cod?”

Rory starts an internship.

S06E13- “Friday Night’s Alright for Fighting”

The student news has to pull a hectic all-nighter to publish the paper.

S06E14- “You’ve Been Gilmored”

Rory becomes the editor of her paper.

S06E16- “Bridesmaids Revisited”

Rory speaks at a journalism panel. 

S07E21- “Unto the Breach”

hey guys, on my instagram i asked if people wanted to see videos that motivate me studying, pushing my limits, and most important help me stop procrastinating. so here is my top 5 videos, hope you like them! (instagram: thomreads)

video number one: The ABCs of SUCCESS - Amazing Motivational Video for Students, Studying & Success in Life

video number two: Grey’s Anatomy, Cristina Yang: “Be unstoppable.”

video number three: Legally Blonde - I’ll show you how valuable Elle Woods can be!

video number four: Michaela Pratt | That’s My Girl (How To Get Away With Murder)

video number five: From FAILING STUDENT to ROCKET SCIENTIST - The Motivational Video that Will Change Your Life

my american lit professor went to this poe conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a book nerd. he reads moby dick to his four-year-old son. and poe is one of the cornerstones of american literature, right, so this should be right up his alley?

wrong. apparently poe scholars are like, advanced. there is a branch of edgar allen poe scholarship that specifically looks for coded messages based on the number of words per line and letters per word poe uses. my professor, who has a phd in american literature, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on racism in poe’s works, because that’s relevant to his interests.

background info: edgar allen poe was a broke white alcoholic from virginia who wrote horror in the first half of the 19th century. rule 1 of Horror Academia is that horror reflects the cultural anxieties of its time (see: my other professor’s sermon abt how zombie stories are popular when people are scared of immigrants, or that purge movie that was literally abt the election). since poe’s shit is a product of 1800s white southern culture, you can safely assume it’s at least a little about race. but the racial subtext is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what poe says about race (if he says anything), and the poe stans get extremely tense about it.

so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about poe’s theoretical racism. because it’s academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like “this isn’t even about race!” and another professor is like “this proves he’s a racist!” people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that poe is like writing a critique of how racist society was, and the racist stuff is there to prove that racism is stupid, and that on a metaphorical level the racist philosophy always loses—

then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart literature person, loudly calls: “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORANGUTAN?”

some more background: in poe’s well-known short story “the murder in the rue morgue,” two single ladies—a lovely old woman and her lovely daughter who takes care of her, aka super vulnerable and respectable people—are violently killed. the murderer turns out to be not a person, but an orangutan brought back by a sailor who went to like burma or something. and it’s pretty goddamn racially coded, like they reeeeally focus on all this stuff about coarse hairs and big hands and superhuman strength and chattering that sounds like people talking but isn’t actually. if that’s intentional, then he’s literally written an analogy about how black people are a threat to vulnerable white women, which is classic white supremacist shit. BUT if he really only meant for it to be an orangutan, then it’s a whole other metaphor about how colonialism pillages other countries and brings their wealth back to europe and that’s REALLY gonna bite them in the ass one day. klansman or komrade? it all hangs on this.

so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass poe stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the orangutan argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships torn—the red faces and bulging veins—curses thrown and teaching posts abandoned—panels just like this one fallen into chaos—distant sirens, skies falling, the dog-eared norton critical editions slicing through the air like sabres—the textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a literary theorist, a 17th-century man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for god’s deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.

much later, when my professor told this story to a poe nerd friend, the guy said the orangutan thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.

so my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. then out of the dead silence, the panel moderator stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man: