Academic encouragement & procrastination

school shouldn't be your only purpose.

i firmly believe that education is one of the most valuable things a person can gain in their lifetime, and in today's world, we too easily forget that access to education, especially at a university level, is a privilege.

this isn't about being ungrateful. it's about recognizing that many academic systems are flawed. rather than focusing on learning, they prioritize performance. a simple (but telling) example is that research shows that making mistakes is one of the fastest ways to learn, yet academic systems penalize mistakes and frame them as failure. this pushes many students toward performance anxiety, panic attacks, and an overall unhealthy relationship with school.

we can't dismantle the system, but we can change the way we relate to it.

build a life outside of studying. especially through hobbies that involve creating something, not just passively consuming – painting, pottery, making music, dancing. anything that helps you to a) step away from academic stress, b) feel productive in an enjoyable way, and c) produce something tangible you can look at, reflect on, and gradually improve.

school-related anxiety often comes from one place. you've learned to measure your worth by your academic performance. "i got a good grade → i'm capable → i deserve respect and love. i failed a test → i'm not good enough → i've let everyone down." it's rarely that black and white, but that's the underlying logic many of us internalize. when you fill your life with more things, you naturally reduce the weight any single one of them carries, school included. the pressure eases, almost on its own.

keep it simple. these should be things you genuinely enjoy, not new obligations. the point is to build a life that feels full and meaningful beyond grades and deadlines. when school is the only thing in your life, every exam feels like everything. when your life is rich and varied, you start measuring your value by how satisfied you feel, not by what grade you got.

when i was in high school, i only studied. i was a straight-a student who was miserable and used to puke from anxiety before school. now i'm in university, i go to the gym, i'm learning three languages, and i'm taking a graphic design course. and somehow? i'm getting top marks in all my exams, and i'm so much more at peace than i was at 17.

This past semester was the first semester where I didn't felt like I was dying all the time.

like, something was DRAMATICALLY different. I had the social stamina to hang out with friends and actually started making friends with my coworkers. No mental breakdowns. I wasn't walking around in agonized suffering anymore. At work I started leading events and actually being comfortable doing the public-facing parts of the job.

Something changed, but what?

So the weird thing is. I think it may have been. The Bucky Barnes fanfiction. I started posting it the day before classes started. I had been in the remotest pit of a depressive episode and as soon as I locked onto this writing project, I felt life return to my body.

Maybe having a creative project to pour myself into that was completely outside of the realm of college gave me the strength to continue. I felt a lot before like I was suffocating because my life had narrowed to this tiny sliver. It felt much better to have something important to me that wasn't part of college.

Or maybe putting the guy through The Horrors helped me to find catharsis with/process some of the shit that was passively hurting me in the day to day? Like, I don't know, I'm aware on some level that I bottled up and locked down my own traumas and horrors for a long time and it Affected Me, and I eventually found my way to, like...a craving to work some of that out creatively. I dunno, it's good. It really helps with the self-compassion thing.

I also took a yoga class, which was really good because it wasn't like an "exercise" class and like "pushing" yourself, but more about like...existing in and noticing your body and how all the parts work together, and where you're holding tension and kinda systematically wringing that out. Very good. Had a couple yoga videos though that triggered the absolute fuck out of me because of the "push through pain" kinda mindset. So be careful with that one.

I will say that some of it probably was building over time. Like. As much as the academic pursuits have beat me with hammers and crushed me with bricks, I have grown in a valuable way from the experience, in the sense that I have learned to just. Choose for myself what I want to give a fuck about. Not play along with the institution's incentives and pressures.

Like. It was almost a problem, but it wasn't? Instead of making rational judgments about whether I could afford to slack off, I slacked off because I just did not fucking care.

And the sense of "omg omg omg shit fuck shit there's a deadline I'm going to be late I have to turn this in aaaaauuughhg" feels very hard to let go of, because it seems to be the thing motivating you to meet those deadlines. It's the thing that keeps you safe from failure. And people will encourage you to hold onto it.

My mom would ask me, "Oh, when's your paper due" and I would be like "Yesterday," and she would be like "omg you have to get that done" and I would be like *shrug* and she would be like "you still have time to work on it tonight" and I would be like "I don't want to work on it tonight."

And it was fine. I made a B+ in the class, actually. If I had spent the weekend grinding to finish that paper as fast as possible it would have done nothing but make me exhausted. Nothing is as serious as you're supposed to feel like it is.

I feel serene, or maybe indomitable, because I do not feel the pressure the world applies to me anymore.

Last year, going through the worst and most grueling gauntlet of horrors, I was sitting there realizing that whatever happened, I was going to wake up tomorrow, in this body that keeps me alive and allows me to feel, in this world where everything is interesting. And if I didn't wake up tomorrow, well, it wouldn't be my problem anymore anyway.

Like...I was just an animal. A creature. I had days where I broke down consciousness to its atoms, noticing myself as a creature reacting to stimuli like I was a paramecium floating around in a drop of pond water. Colors! Light! Interest?? Mystery??? Snacks! Hunger! Snacks! Good! The constructions around me were very flimsy and fake, and pleasures and interesting things were real, and I would wander around just...doing what my body seemed to want to do. I thought of myself as a wildlife, fulfilling my biological needs, investigating novel stimuli.

Sometimes with the biological needs thing you really have to like, throw off all social and external expectations about what behaviors are allowable and go full creature mode to figure out what the fuck your body wants. Sometimes this means eating whatever the fuck you want, whether it seems like a meal or not, and eating it until you genuinely don't want to eat it anymore. Sometimes this means sleeping when you feel like sleeping and not waking up until your body says so. Lay on the floor, roll on the ground, pick a direction and walk as far as you can, run really really fast, sit in your room buck ass naked.

One day last month I legitimately fell asleep at like 5pm and when I woke up again it was 4:45am. I got dressed and went outside and went on a long walk, halfway across town, past the gas station and the apartment buildings, all the way to the pollinator garden at the park. It was dark and I was completely alone and I noticed how the stars became more visible even a short ways outside the lights of the town.

Another time I went downtown to the railroad tracks and decided the follow the railroad tracks as far as I could. I was wearing flip-flops so I got stabbed with a stick very nastily, but I walked over a mile and I passed through a tunnel under an old bridge with cool graffiti on it, and a drip of cold water from the ceiling of the tunnel landed on the back of my neck! and I kept going until I started leaving the town, and then backtracked and climbed through some scrubby bushes and trees and came out onto a small road where there were some kids playing basketball and they all stared at me, but I am unaffected by staring. And then eventually I found my way back to campus.

🍪 diss work 6.16.26

I had such a good day yesterday that I decided to have the exact same day over again today. And lo, it was just as awesome the second time. :)

"My pet human, Greg, hasn't left his bed in a long time. He's just scrolling his phone all day" Greg needs enrichment. Add enrichment in his enclosure and take him on walks

"Greg has been super lethargic and sad recently for seemingly no reason" Greg need vitamins, take him outside for some vitamin D and fresh air. Perhaps a picnic

"Greg won't sleep even though he's been super lethargic" Greg needs a schedule, especially for the lights in his enclosure.

"Greg has been super distant recently and keeps crying to sad music" Humans are pack animals, he needs to hug another human and hang out. Perhaps pack bond with a rock together

"Greg has been flailing around and panicking, his breathing is way faster than it should be" Greg is overwhelmed. Take Greg out of the situation and give him time to calm down. Perhaps somewhere cozy with tea and a movie

"Greg won't do what he needs to do" Train him. Humans do great with positive reinforcement, give him little treats when he's doing good

"Greg he's been super anxious and tired, he can't seem to enjoy his days" Humans needs to move around. Give Greg something to exercise with. Things like stretching, weight lifting, walking, or even dancing will help

"Even though I've taken really good care of Greg, he still has been having issues" Greg is ill, take him to the doctor. You might need a specialist (therapist, optometrist, oncologist, etc)

The sharpest, best-trained pilots make worse decisions when they're tired or sick or stressed out, so there's two of them. The most dedicated and experienced air traffic controllers garble an instruction over the radio sometimes, so pilots are trained to always repeat clearances back to catch misunderstandings quickly. The best and brightest maintenance mechanic still overlooks a screw or misconnects a wire once or twice in her career, so aircraft systems are built with two or three or four layers of redundancy, and pilots are exhaustively trained to deal with failures safely. 

Bobby pin your graduation caps to your hair with at least one pin on each side. Of course, use as many as necessary especially if you're in a humid climate where shrinkage might shift the hat over time.