🐝🍃 in yourself

1 Learn typical recipes (maybe try to recreate them)

2 Watch movies (not only the genres and themes you prefer, but watch their classic movies that everyone there already watched)

3 Listen to music (same as 2)

4 Watch and read the news (follow the news on social media)

5 Watch people travelling around the country

6 Follow youtubers (the vloggers who visit buildings, who talk about festivals and holidays and do stuff at the town)

7 Read books (you can read in english and then re-read in the target language, it’ll make easier)

8 Follow random people on social media (in that way you’ll can see the everyday language, photos of some city, political stuff, etc)

9 Follow meme pages - memes aren’t spaceless and timeless, they talk about some subject the people from that culture are talking about

be up front and honest about the things you do not know

acknowledge the intrinsic value of others’ knowledge bases, even if they do not seem important to you from your institutional context

do not feign mastery where you have none

respect the gaps in others’ knowledge bases

be generous, not only with others

but also with yourself

you overwork yourself at the risk of legitimizing a culture of overwork 

privilege voices and perspectives that have historically been left out of the academy

nothing is ever neutral or apolitical

support the progress of other scholars

I have seen a post circulating for a while that lists 10 short stories everyone should read and, while these are great works, most of them are older and written by white men. I wanted to make a modern list that features fresh, fantastic and under represented voices. Enjoy!

1. A Temporary Matter by Jhumpa Lahiri — A couple in a failing marriage share secrets during a blackout. 

2. Stone Animals by Kelly Link — A family moves into a haunted house.

3. Reeling for the Empire by Karen Russell — Women are sold by their families to a silk factory, where they are slowly transformed into human silkworms. 

4. Call My Name by Aimee Bender — A woman wearing a ball gown secretly auditions men on the subway. 

5. The Man on the Stairs by Miranda July — A woman wakes up to a noise on the stairs. 

6. Brownies by ZZ Packer — Rival Girl Scout troops are separated by race. 

7. City of My Dreams by Zsuzi Gartner — A woman works at a shop selling food-inspired soap and tries not to think about her past. 

8. A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor — A family drives from Georgia to Florida, even though a serial killer is on the loose. 

9. Hitting Budapest by NoViolet Bulawayo — A group of children, led by a girl named Darling, travel to a rich neighborhood to steal guavas. 

I’d like to add:

11. Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor

12. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (this one is my favorite short story of all time)

13. The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

14. Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates

15. Désirée’s Baby by Kate Chopin

16. The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin

17. Impressions of an Indian Childhood by Zitkala-Ša

18. “My Dear You,” Rachel Khong — love, loss, & absurdity in the afterlife

19. “The Husband Stitch,” Carmen Maria Machado — a feminist retelling of the folklore story “The Green Ribbon”

20. “Inventory,” Carmen Maria Machado — one woman’s retrospective list of her life’s sexual encounters

21. “Boys Go to Jupiter,” Danielle Evans — what happens after a white college student poses for a photo in a Confederate flag bikini

Overcompensating for the snow by making my study setup extra tropical 🌵🌿

library - prints or handwrites everything, makes their own study guides, always forgets headphones, watches netflix during their study breaks, owns a million pens but only uses like two

cafe - chai or matcha fiend, dresses up to feel productive, organized purse or bag, studies with one earbud out, everything academic contained on laptop or tablet

in bed - tendency to skip classes that don’t take attendance, fond of bubble tea and sweets, studies best when wearing comfy clothes, addicted to cute stationary and pens

lounge - no inside voice, takes charge on group projects or study sessions, master at using microsoft office, owns a million insulated coffee mugs, wireless headphones, actually wears a watch

kitchen table - cannot study without a snack, only drinks coffee they made themselves, keeps phone plugged in 25/8, likes to spread out, makes to-do lists on scraps of paper then loses them