#class X maths sample papers

[strawberrytrollis]

Slink Break (Hayden Christensen X Reader?)

Summary: Right before spring break, Y/N, who struggles with math, accidentally hits golden boy Hayden with a slinky. After some teasing and a lacrosse ball to the face, Hayden proposes a deal—he’ll tutor Y/N in math if she helps him with English. Reluctantly, she agrees, setting the stage for an unexpected connection.

Notes: Okay, okay, it’s been a while, and I’m not really sure where I’m going with this story—but in honor of spring break, I wanted to put something out there! Let me know if I should continue it. This is more of a sample, and I know it’s a slow-burn situation, so if I write another part, something will happen.

Word count: around 1.4k

Math had never been your strong suit—like, ever. Even after your mom wasted money on countless tutors, numbers still refused to make sense. The only reason you had a decent grade in the class was because of the retake policy… and the girl who usually sat next to you.

Listen, integrity was something you prided yourself on—except when it came to math. When it came to math, all morals went out the window.

As you stared hopelessly at some random equation on your paper, you absentmindedly fidgeted with a slinky your teacher had handed out in honor of the upcoming “Slink Break.” Corny, right?

Focus, focus, focus, you scolded yourself, flicking the slinky between your fingers. But, of course, after doing it for a while, the inevitable happened—your slinky flew across the room.

“Shit,” you muttered, pushing back your chair to retrieve it. You bent down, grabbed it, and just as you were about to straighten up, a familiar voice spoke.

“Be more careful next time, yeah? That lowkey hurt.”

You looked up—oh God. Out of all people, it had to hit Hayden.

Hayden was the golden boy of your high school. Varsity lacrosse, colleges scouting him, girls having field days in his DMs, and of course—valedictorian.

You quickly apologized, returned to your seat, and probably failed your test.

A few days later

When you got your test back, your suspicions were confirmed—a fat F was circled on your paper.

“Damn, she could’ve at least made it smaller,” Hayden commented, glancing at your paper.

“Yeah, and lemme guess what you got.”

He turned his paper toward you. A+. Obviously.

“Yeah. Figured.” You sighed, filled with envy.

“Hey, don’t be too jealous. I did just get a B-minus on my English paper.”

“No way, that paper was so easy,” you said.

“Yeah, well… English really isn’t my strong suit.”

You raised an eyebrow. “Wow. Mr. Golden Boy finally isn’t perfect at something?”

“Well, it’s just English,” he said, smirking. “I’m still perfect at everything else.”

You rolled your eyes. “I’m surprised you think I’m bad at math. I always pay attention in class.”

“You’ve been watching me in class?”

“Yeah, well—only when you’re doing something distracting. Like flinging a slinky at me the other day.”

“Oh God.” You groaned, facepalming before turning back to your work.

A few days later

“Holy shit, are we almost done?” you panted, struggling through the mile run in P.E.

“Hey, no walking!” your coach yelled from the sidelines—while sipping a Coke.

“He cannot be serious,” Stella, your best friend, muttered.

“I know, right? It’s like he gets some sort of power trip from bossing around teenagers,” you replied.

“No, for real—he should take some of his own advice. Man is borderline obese.”

“Probably because he hasn’t gotten laid in over a decade,” Stella “joked.”

The two of you chuckled—until suddenly, a lacrosse ball came flying straight at your face.

A few seconds later, you saw Hayden running toward you.

“Oh shit, my bad, Y/N.”

“Yeah, it’s totally okay,” you muttered, rubbing your face.

“Do you need to go to the nurse or—”

“Damn, I’m not that weak. It’s fine. Besides, Stella and I were just trying to get out of running laps.”

“Right, right,” he said, grinning. “Well, I gotta go. See you around, Slinky.”

“Yeah, see you around too, Golden Boy.”

As he jogged away, he glanced back and winked.

God, he was such a flirt. It was physically painful.

Stella smirked. “Okay, so when were you going to tell me you and Hayden were on a first-name basis?”

“It’s… kinda recent,” you admitted. “Not a big deal.”

“He’s totally gorgeous. You should so go for that.”

“First of all, stop glazing, he’s overhyped. Second of all—absolutely not.”

“Okay, girl. Keep telling yourself that.”

You rolled your eyes as you both walked back inside.

After school

As you walked to your car, just as you reached for the door handle, you noticed Hayden leaning against the driver’s side.

You frowned. “How come I’ve barely seen you in the six years we’ve been in school together, and now all of a sudden, you’re everywhere?”

“I don’t know,” he mused. “Maybe you’re just now noticing me. Or maybe I’m stalking you.”

“Yeah, alright.” You crossed your arms. “What do you want? Hopefully, a proper apology for hitting me in the face with a lacrosse ball?”

“What? What do you mean? I think my earlier apology was pretty proper.”

You scoffed. “‘Oh shit, my bad.’ Yeah, real proper. What’s up with guys and saying my bad? Just say sorry like a normal person.”

“Fine, fine. Look—I’m sorry. Happy now? I can even sign the lacrosse ball for you if you want.”

“Oh my God, get over yourself. I’m not one of your fangirls. Just tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Alright, alright. So listen—I was thinking about what you said earlier. You know, about you being terrible at math and me being a little rusty at English. And I was thinking…”

You cut him off. “W-w-wait. Me? Terrible at math? I said I was bad or mediocre at most.”

“Y/N, that’s literally the same thing. Now let me finish, will you?”

You narrowed your eyes. “Hmm.”

“Let me tutor you. I’ll help you raise your math grade so you can stop cheating off that poor girl who sits next to you. And you can help me with English—so I can be perfect at everything.”

“Wait, I don’t cheat off of her. I just… ask her for help. A lot.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. It’s pretty obvious. I’m surprised the teacher hasn’t caught on yet—maybe she just pities you.”

“Okay, I don’t wanna hear it. You’re literally asking me for help, yet you’re still dragging my math skills? You’re gonna have to do better than that if you want anything from me, Hayden.”

He sighed dramatically. “Y/N, it would be an honor to receive your help on my English work.”

“Mm, too fake. Try again.”

“Just help me. Please, please, please.”

“Okay, okay! Will you shut up?”

“Let’s do this,” you said, “but you better not tell anyone. You know, since you’re so perfect and can’t be caught getting help from anyone—especially me, golden boy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!”

You both laughed, then started figuring out how this was actually going to work.

[fiitjeepunecenter]

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[ntseguru-ntsepreparation-blog]

How to Study Mathematics for Class 10

https://www.ntseguru.in/blog/2019/04/06/how-to-study-mathematics/

[extremelyblackandwhite]

pairing: dad!bucky barnes x au pair!reader

warnings: age gap (reader is 10 years younger than bucky), smut (18+, dni if under 18)

summary: bucky and y/n discuss sadie’s future.

masterlist

She couldn’t believe some asshole had spilled coffee all over her dress and hadn’t even apologised. What was she supposed to do now? She had an interview to attend with someone whose secretary had made him sound like someone who made the dad from Sound of Music seem like the most relaxed man to ever walk the Earth. Yet, here she was about to walk into an interview to be an au pair with coffee stains all over her only interview-appropriate dress. She really needed this job, her tenancy was running out on her home and every single home in New York seemed to be occupied and she was quickly running out of money. If she didn’t get this job, she would be sleeping in the university library, eating whatever free samples she could find in student fairs. 

She mentally prayed to whatever gods roamed the skies, hell, the universe - wherever God was - for this man not to notice her stained dress, although the moment she opened the door and the man’s eyes immediately went to the dark spot on her white dress, she knew her prayers went unanswered. 

       - Hi, I’m Y/N. - she extended her hand towards his, attempting to block the stain as if he hadn’t seen it already. The man, Sergeant Barnes, was taken aback by the motion, looking at her hand as if she had offered him an offensive comment rather than her hand. - Your secretary said you’d be expecting me.

He cleared his throat, not really saying or doing anything other than pointing to the chair in front of what she guessed was his desk. She looked down at her shoes like a petulant child, feeling like she wasn’t getting the job. They always say to make the best impression - something she was sure she had now failed. 

      - You’re studying at NYU ... - he started.

      - Columbia. - she corrected him. - I’m in grad school and I promise I usually don’t look like this. I was trying to get some coffee and this guy spilled his all over me. Blotting didn’t seem to work ...

      - I didn’t ask any of that, Miss Y/N. 

      - I know but if you were to call NYU and ask if I go there they wouldn’t know anything about me. I’m really involved in student life at Columbia, I am part of the school paper, I was top of my undergraduate class and I shadowed Dr. Hill’s during early childhood psychology research last year. I also babysat for most of my teenage years. 

      - I didn’t ask any of that but glad to know you’re a very good student. 

      - Your secretary said you’d also be interested in someone who could tutor your daughter later on and I tutored in high school and my sister only knows maths because I drilled it into her. - she chuckled, nervously but he remained still, looking at her with the best poker face he could muster. - Look, I know you already don’t like me because I have coffee all over myself but you have a 2 year old, right? You must know the feeling of someone throwing stuff at you, maybe not coffee but ink or cereal. 

     - My daughter threw her whole orange juice in my face. Twice.

     - Oh ...

     - She’s going through a phase. Terrible twos. 

PRESENT DAY

     - I told you so. - Y/N spoke from the living room as Bucky attempted to take the remaining spaghetti noodles from his hair. - You gave her the plate before the knife and fork. That’s just an invitation for her eating with your hands and beginning a food fight. 

     - Says the au pair who is currently not doing any au pair work. - he grabbed a clean tea towel, trying to soak up as much tomato sauce from his hair as he could before hopping on a shower. - What are you doing?

    - Have you forgotten I have a PhD to finish possibly in the next 2 years? Data wrangling. 

    - You know, I have data analysts ...

    - I know. - she interrupted him. - Details of your utter incompetence at coding languages do not interest me. 

    - In my defense, when I was your ...

    - You’re 10 years older than me. - she interrupted him once more, her glasses slightly sliding off the bridge of her nose. - Data science is relatively new but not that new. Go shower before you start growing tomatoes on your head. 

Bucky merely chuckled at the idea before taking to the shower. Soon Sadie would turn three and hopefully she would stop throwing every single item of food at him when cutlery wasn’t in place - though Y/N thought it was more likely she would continue to do so until she no longer found it funny. Bucky chose to be more positive, besides, he didn’t like thinking about the future. In two years he’d have to find someone to fill her shoes and he didn’t think it was possible to find someone as good as she was. 

On the other hand, Y/N seldom found herself with time to wonder about what life would look like after Sadie. She wanted to continue on working in academia and some of her tutors had suggested she become a junior lecturer at the university, however she preferred not do dwell on the future, specially when she still had to defend her thesis. She also didn’t want to think of not being able to see Sadie. She had become attached to her, she was proud of her achievements and to think she would just become a murky memory in the 2 year old’s brain made her heart hurt. 

    - You want something to eat? - Bucky returned from the bathroom, dressed in the loungewear which she did not dwell looking at due to the fact it made her an unhinged woman. 

    - We just had dinner. 

    - We’re grown ups. Don’t you want some ice cream? - he joked. - C’mon, I’ve hide some from Sadie. 

    - I have to finish this data analysis tonight, James. If I don’t, I might as well quit and become Columbia’s biggest disappointment. 

     - You think you will become Columbia’s biggest disappointment when Casey Affleck went there?

     - At least he finished his degree. - she looked up from her laptop. - I’m gonna have to move in with my parents. 

    - You can live with me and Sadie. I’d much rather you have the girl talks with her. 

    - Oh so I get to live here and have to have all the complicated talks with Sadie? 

    - Okay. I’ll have birds and the bees, you get puberty, bras, periods, boys, actually scratch that, no boys until she’s 35.

    - 35?

    - You’re right. 85. Actually, make sure she waits until I’m dead. 

    - Won’t be too long. - she joked. - Now stop distracting me. I have work to do and as far as I know you’ve only hired me to babysit Sadie and not you. 

Bucky sat next to her, his eyes wandering to what she was doing before wandering back. He considered himself a smart man, business savy, but Y/N was smart smart. The kind of smart women who could probably take his business from under him and he wouldn’t even notice.  

   - You’re getting Sadie tomorrow? I know you have work at Columbia in the morning so I’m dropping her off but I can’t pick her up. 

   - Yeah, it’s on the calendar. - she pointed to the fridge on the kitchen with a pinned up calendar. - Stop talking, you’re distracting me.

   - You know ... I can have my data team give you a hand. - she finally looked up from her laptop. - I’m sure one of the managers would be thrilled to get on my good side. 

   - I can do it myself. - she replied, returning back to look at her laptop as if he had offended her. 

    - I know, but you don’t have to. 

She gave him a split second look, a world of words and feelings in the bright eyes which he was used to seeing everyday, before going back to her laptop. Bucky sighed, not knowing how else to continue the conversation without further upsetting her. 

    - If you’re too busy at Columbia, we can discuss how many free days you get a week. 

    - I’m fine, Sergeant Barnes. 

    - I can take Sadie to the office for one of the weekdays and then you can do your work by yourself. 

    - I can handle my work, Sergeant Barnes. It’s fine. 

    - You look stressed, Y/N. I won’t take any of your pay if that’s what you’re worried about. C’mon, Y/N, you’re not gonna do any good work if you’re stressed. Please. 

She sighed, closing her laptop and stared at him. If she wasn’t staring at him as if he was the most unimpressive man alive, he would’ve high fived himself. Yet, the look on her face and the tears which were starting to pool in her eyes were sufficient to have him immediately forget any single sense of funniness about the situation. 

   - I am trying. - she sighed, hoping he hadn’t noticed the tears welling up, yet even the sigh came in interrupted breathes. - I really am trying and I can do it myself. 

    - Just because you can doesn’t mean you have to. I want to help you.

    - You hired me to help you not the other way around. - she shut her eyes, trying to somehow store the idea of her thesis away. - I’m just tired and overreacting. 

     - You can talk to me. - he moved his chair closer to hers. 

     - I just told you I’m tired and overreacting. It’s nothing special. - she rested her forehead on her hand. - Doing a PhD is hard work. 

     - I wouldn’t know. Didn’t do one. 

     - Maybe you should. You could become Dr. Sergeant Barnes. 

     - Too many achievements. - he joked. - I hope your academic vein rubs off on Sadie. I think she’s a pretty smart kid. 

     - She is but currently I think that she wants to be a ballerina. Although, last week she wanted to be an astronaut. 

      - No can do. No astronauting, I would miss her too much. 

      - What did you want to be when you were younger? - she questioned, a loving look gracing her features.

      - I wanted to be a super hero then I wanted to be an accountant. 

      - An accountant? - she chuckled. - No way. What kid wants to be an accountant?

     - My uncle was an accountant and I thought he was the coolest. What about you? Wait, let me guess. 

     - Go on. - she crossed her arms. 

     - A princess? 

     - Ugh, stereotypical much?

     - President Barbie? 

     - You’re joking but my parents bought me President Barbie when I was a kid, and Doctor Barbie as well. I didn’t like President Barbie’s outfit as much so I stuck to science. 

     - Always wanted to be a psychologist?

     - I am not a psychologist, Barnes. I am a scientist.

     - A psychologist scientist.

     - Stop. - she chuckled. - I’m sure Sadie will be fine. She takes after you.

     - She actually takes after her mother sometimes. - he shrugged. - Anna was really smart, bit feisty. Sadie reminds me of her sometimes. 

     - You never told me Sadie’s mum’s name. I thought her name would be something like Jessica or Melanie. 

     - Do you base your name assumptions on romcom villains?

     - Anna sounds like such a tame name. Not like someone who would just leave her child on her father’s doorstep. 

     - She never really wanted a kid. I don’t blame her too much either, she was really bright when we were together, anyway. I do hope that’s all that Sadie takes from her. 

     - She looks like you. - Y/N added. - Except for the reddish blonde hair, I’m guessing that’s Anna?

     - Actually, that’s from my mother. My mum’s grandmother had red hair, that’s why she’s spoiled rotten. 

     - You’re gonna do fine, Bucky. - she held his hand. - You’re a good dad and she’s gonna turn out just fine. 

     - You’re gonna do fine too, Y/N. I am looking forward to calling you Dr. Y/N. 

     - Dr. Y/N and Sergeant Barnes.

    - Dr. Y/N and Sergeant Barnes. - he bit the inside of his lip before smiling at her. - What a team.

    - Even though you hated me when you first met me. 

    - Whatever you say, Y/N. Whatever you say.

[pascalpanic]

Conferences (Maxwell Lord/Lorenzano x f!teacher!Reader)

Summary: Alistair Lorenzano is a third grader in your class, whom you absolutely adore. Upon meeting his father, Maxwell, you suddenly have much more interest in the Lorenzano family. Set after WW84.

W/C: 2.9k

Warnings: language, flirting, talk of divorce and trauma, lots of talk of children and such, especially Alistair. brief nondescript mentions of Maxwell’s shitty childhood. uh. Spoilers for The Great Gatsby lmao

A/N: well! I haven’t written for max in a long time but the ship request (which are CLOSED) i received here really made me inspired! hope u guys like it :)

Alistair Lorenzano was a joy to have in class. You mean it too, not like when you don’t have a comment for a child’s report card and you just stick that phrase on the bottom. No, Alistair is a genuinely good kid.

The little dark haired boy walked in proudly on the first day, even as none of the other children came over to say hello or pal around with him. He seemed lonely, but he marched up to your desk and placed a beautiful apple on the desk, giving you a gap-toothed grin and introducing himself with a handshake. Alistair didn’t talk to his other classmates much that day, or any other day really. He was usually preoccupied with a book of some sort.

He sits alone at lunch and recess, usually burying his nose in a book as the other children play. He’s progressed quite quickly, reading big wordy books the other fourth graders surely couldn’t handle. When a child has no one to play with, Alistair will sit with them and talk. He’ll always help a struggling classmate with their long division or come up with a good synonym for them. He rarely raises his hand, but he’s almost always correct.

He’ll come in early most mornings. He doesn’t talk much about his family, but he says his dad works early in the morning and that he has to drop him off earlier. That’s fine with you; the kid is a good conversationalist and will read quietly while you arrange lesson plans or grade spelling tests.

You wonder what his family is like. All you know about his father is that he works early in the morning. His mother has dropped him off late several times, but that always led to more early mornings; presumably his father’s doing.

As a teacher, you tend to shy away from family-based assignments. You’re fully aware that some of your students won’t want to share what their parents do for a living, or talk about them at all. That’s why you don’t know much about the Lorenzano family- you don’t ask and Alistair doesn’t share.

Conferences are approaching soon as you approach the midpoint of the first semester. Most parents don’t come if their children are doing well; typically, only the parents of struggling children make appearances. That’s why you’re surprised to read the note Alistair hands you when he walks in, thirty minutes before class begins, as always.

You frown reading the little note of paper, pushing your glasses up your nose. “You’re sure that your father needs a conference?” You ask the little boy. He looks confused. “I’d love to meet him,” you say hurriedly, sipping your morning coffee. “It’s just that… you’re a very smart kid, Alistair. Usually it’s the parents of kids who don’t do so well that sign up for conferences.”

Alistair shrugs, taking off his puffy fall jacket and hanging it on his hook near your desk. “I don’t know. Dad just said he wanted that time,” he says, pointing at your paper.

Dramatically uncapping a colored flare pen, you make a show out of writing down the name for your 7:30 time slot: Mr Lorenzano. “Well, I will see your dad then,” you tell the kid with a smile. He seems pleased that you’re excited. “What’s his name?”

“Maxwell,” Alistair informs you, sitting at his desk and cracking open his book.

You repeat the name, writing it down in the purple pen you chose. “Your family has very elegant names,” you tease Alistair.

Alistair shrugs. “Dad likes to sound fancy.”

-

Maxwell has never met you, but he feels that he knows you like an old friend. Alistair absolutely adores you, tells his father about you at any chance he gets.

You sound wonderful. He supposes that Alistair would adore any female figure in his life right now. Vanessa, the former Mrs. Lord, has all but rejected her son. When Alistair would spend time at her place, she’d practically ignore her own kid, prioritizing whatever she wanted to do. Several days, Alistair was late to or completely missed school thanks to Vanessa’s ignorance.

That’s why Maxwell has taken nearly full custody now. Vanessa didn’t argue it. She was glad to have Alistair out of her hair. Besides, she resented Maxwell for endless reasons, usually unfounded. She wanted to see him struggle.

But Maxwell thrived. Alistair and his father are as close as can be. Maxwell now works a menial job, after the whole Dreamstone fiasco, but he’s managing to make ends meet. When they have enough money left over, he’ll take Alistair to the movies or buy him a new lego kit.

Maxwell hasn’t found love since Vanessa, but he thinks you might be the one for him. One could call him a hopeless romantic; his heart builds and breaks as easily as a wave on the shore. You sound so nurturing and lovely, so wonderful to the one Maxwell loves most. That’s partially why he scheduled the conference with you.

The other part was that Alistair is a budding genius in Maxwell’s eyes. He flies through thick books day in and day out, and Max wants to accommodate the skills in his son. He constantly tells him how proud of him he is, but he wants to make sure he can keep helping him learn.

On the day of the conference, Maxwell is nervous. Why is he nervous? He combs his closet several times to find one of the nice suits from his glory days, but decides it to be ridiculous. He’s not sure how much Alistair tells you about his family, but he’s sure you know he is no longer the television personality Max Lord. Instead, he settles for a dress shirt and pants, tossing on a light jacket over it. The fall air is turning crisp, especially in the evenings.

Doña Gloria from next door knocks on the door at promptly 7:00, and Alistair pops up to answer it. He loves the old woman, and wraps her in a big hug. Gloria walks inside the apartment, grinning at the sight of Maxwell’s outfit. “Ah, making a good impression on the boy’s teacher,” she nods in approval.

“Hoping to,” he nods and adjusts the suede jacket over his lapels, fidgeting with the zipper. “Alistair, why don’t you go find that game you wanted to play with Doña Gloria?”

The child runs off obediently and the woman straightens his collar for him. “Little Maxie has a crush,” she sings.

“Gloria,” he frowns as he messes with the cuffs. “I’ve never even met the woman.”

She gives a knowing smile. “But you know her. You know her through Alistair, all his stories. I’m sure she will love you, mijo.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he sighs and pats his pockets, checking for his wallet. “She’s Alistair’s teacher. I can’t just-“

“You can do whatever the hell you want, Mr. Lorenzano,” the woman chuckles and reassures him. “Go get her.”

He shakes his head. “It’s a conference, not a date,” he says as he walks towards the door.

“It can be both!” Is the last thing he hears before he shuts the door, making him laugh.

-

Conferences, as always, are a pain in the ass. You sit and make small talk with parents, discussing their child’s skills with their times table versus their writing proficiency, their standardized test scores and how they stack up.

As the night passes, you grow more frazzled. Your hair, neatly tucked back, falls out in strands, and your glasses seem to slide down your nose more and more often. Some parents verbally abuse you for their children’s poor scores on their science test. Others try to get to know you a little too personally. All part of a day’s work.

A hopeful smile dares to peek out as you read your schedule and arrange your sampling of Alistair’s works. You’re eager to meet his father, to meet the man Alistair so rarely talks about but clearly adores.

There’s a knock on your classroom door at 7:30 on the dot. Shoving your glasses up your nose one time, you hurry to the door and allow the man in. “Hi, nice to meet you, Mr. Lorenzano,” you tell him and shake his hand, leading him to your desk.

Something about him seems familiar. He’s very attractive, that’s something. He doesn’t have his son’s dark, nearly black hair, but rather a light brown with bits of blonde interjected throughout. He has his son’s deep brown eyes, and his very presence makes you smile. He looks put together, dressed similarly to other fathers you’ve seen tonight.

You tuck your skirt under you as you sit in your chair. The man’s voice is smooth and beautiful as he speaks. “It’s nice to meet you as well. Alistair talks endlessly about you at home.”

Smiling, you shuffle some of his papers. The man is distractingly handsome, you find as you scramble to grab Alistair’s math test. “Well, he’s a very special kid. I adore having him in my class, truly. Your son is going places, Mr. Lorenzano.”

“Please, Max,” he shakes his head, producing something from a pocket. “Oh, and… for you.”

The sight makes you nearly laugh, but instead you break into a grin. The man’s large hand holds a shiny red apple, perfectly shaped. “Thank you,” you laugh and set it on your desk. “You know, I have no idea where that silly custom comes from.”

“I should ask Alistair,” Maxwell chuckles, his face heating as he takes in the beauty of your smile. “He knows so much. It wouldn’t be a stretch for him to know that.”

Nodding, you hand over an assortment of Alistair’s schoolwork and artwork. “He really does. I appreciate having a fellow avid reader in my class. He’s so bright, it’s… wild, really. Do you or… Mrs. Lorenzano,” you say, treading lightly, “do anything supplementary that advances his learning?”

Max looks down at the papers. “Well, she isn’t Mrs. Lor- Lorenzano anymore,” he shakes his head, his eyes not meeting yours for a moment. He stumbles, nearly using his former business name of Lord. “But no. I have nearly full custody of Alistair, and he flies through books. It’s absurd,” the man laughs, his pride in his eyes as he looks at you. “I mean, neither of us were ever as smart as this. I don’t know where he got it from.”

You frown at that. “You seem very smart, Max. May I ask what you do for a living?”

His brow furrows. “Alistair hasn’t told you?”

You shake your head, adjusting your glasses. God, Maxwell wants to do that for you, push them up your nose or better yet, take them off and kiss you deeply. “I don’t push kids to talk about their home lives. Some don’t want to share,” you shrug.

“I wish I would’ve had a teacher like you in my day,” he chuckles sadly. “I... well, I work currently for a corporate office in Arlington. It’s nothing very exciting, or anything that requires skill.”

You shrug, smiling a little. “It must be an important job or they wouldn’t pay you to do it.”

His chuckle is a little more upbeat. “I suppose. I just… my family was very poor when I was a child. I don’t want Alistair to feel ashamed that I don’t make as much money as his other classmates. Tell me, he doesn’t seem very social. Is he…?”

You want to phrase it properly, so you stutter for a moment. “Well, to put it plainly, no. Alistair does not talk much with his classmates. He’s a very quiet boy, as I’m sure you know. It’s not that they ostracize him, but rather that he chooses to be alone. He’s always reading rather than playing soccer or whatever,” you shrug. “It’s most certainly not exclusion on the basis of… having less money.”

Maxwell’s shoulders relax a little. “Well, I’m glad. Honestly, I don’t mind that he’s quiet. I’m glad he’s learning.”

“I’d usually disagree, but I have to say the same,” you chuckle. “He’s a really good kid, Max. You should be proud to have him as a son. Don’t tell anyone, but he’s my favorite student.”

He’s absolutely beaming with pride. “That’s all I could ask for. Thank you.”

“Of course! How could I not love that kid?” you chuckle as you admire a drawing Alistair made of a scene from his favorite book. “Was that all you wanted to talk about?” You ask, unsure if he had more concerns.

Maxwell’s almost startled by the question. “Oh! Yes, I got sidetracked,” he chuckles, pushing his hair out of his eyes. He’s painfully beautiful, and his laugh makes you laugh in return. It’s safe to say you really like the Lorenzano family. “He just goes through book after book, it’s endless. Do you have any recommendations for continued reading? I want him to keep going like this, truly.”

Tapping a pen against your gradebook, you think on it for a moment. “I guess the best way would be positive reinforcement, but not reward. If you, say, incentivized it, he might see it as a chore to earn the money or toy or whatever.”

Maxwell nods as he listens, a small smile on his face as he listens to your voice and intellect. Yes, his theory earlier was correct. He does have a crush on you. “Naturally.”

“So, my recommended course of action would really just be praise and support. Tell him you’re proud of him. Offer to take him to the library to pick out some more. Those little things mean more to a kid than we can know.”

Max does know, actually. He knows because he was deprived of them as a child, because he tries to use them as often as he can so Alistair never feels the way he felt. “I can most definitely do that.”

“Great,” you nod, fidgeting with the stem of the apple in front of you. “If he ever wants to do more math or puzzles or such, the library has lots of great resources for that as well. I also have lots of worksheets I could send home with him.”

“If I can tear him away from that book,” Maxwell chuckles. “Do you have any favorites? You mentioned you read a lot.”

“Oh, god,” you laugh, and Maxwell is enchanted by the sound. “There are too many options! My favorite book of all time would probably have to be the Great Gatsby. I love the classics.”

Maxwell’s smile turns bittersweet. Jay Gatsby’s life reminds him far too much of his own for comfort now. Before, he’d call himself a Gatsby in reference to lavish parties and living large. Now, he feels like Gatsby dead in the water. “Wonderful book,” he nods. “F. Scott Fitzgerald is a literary mastermind.”

“Do you read too?” You ask, intrigued. His personality shows more and more and you’re desperate for even more of it.

He shakes his head. “Not as much as Alistair, I’m afraid, but when I have the time.”

You grin. “My plans for tonight are to go home and read with some takeout. No one to disturb me or anything. I’m very much a homebody, so it’s usually just me and my gradebook and my houseplants. Takeout is the most excitement I get. I’m looking forward to working through this book though; I’m currently reading Wilde.”

“Ah, what book?”

“Picture of Dorian Gray,” you smile and look down at your tote bag with the book tucked into the side. “If I have any brainpower left. Most of these conferences are energy-suckers.”

“How many do you have left?” He asks, curious.

“You’re the last of the night, actually,” you chuckle and cross your arms on the desk, looking over at him and silently hoping he reads your interest.

“The night you have planned sounds lovely, I must say,” Maxwell chuckles. “I do love takeout, but I know of a wonderful place near here. I… we could go get dinner, if you’d like.”

Tilting your head to the side, you scrunch your nose to push your glasses back up. “That sounds wonderful, Max. It’s nice to converse with someone who isn’t 9 years old for a while. And someone so interesting,” you openly flirt now that you can tell he’s picking up on your messages.

“Me? Hardly,” he shakes his head and laughs. “I’m sure you have much more fascinating stories than me.”

“I am a third grade teacher, Max,” you laugh. “If you want stories that involve boogers, the ever-present cooties, and long division, I’m your gal, but it hardly extends past that.”

“I guess we’ll just have to find out. Do you like Italian food?”

“I love it,” you grin. “Does that mean wine?”

“Always,” Maxwell says in a mockingly offended voice, as if you’d even dare to ask such a thing, with a look of disgust.

“Thank fucking god,” you laugh before clapping a hand over your mouth. “Oh shit. Oh-“ you wince as you try to cover your curse with another curse. “Sorry. When school hours are out, I can’t hold back any longer.”

“No need to,” he assures you. “A woman like you could do whatever she wants and I’d be happy to just be in her presence.”

“Mr. Lorenzano,” you tease. “This is a parent-teacher conference!”

“Then let’s head to dinner and continue this in a nonprofessional capacity, shall we?” He asks, standing and pushing back his rolling chair.

“That sounds great,” you smile. Alistair’s father sure is something. Yes, you certainly like the Lorenzano family.

-

taglist:

@remmysbounty @mishasminion360 @blo0dangel @binarydanvvers  @sleep-tight1 @apascalrascal @randomness501 @spideysimpossiblegirl @notabotiswear @pedro-pastel @sanchosammy @lv7867 @greeneyedblondie44 @hunnambabe @astoryisaloveaffair @emesispo @pedritobalmando @magikfanatic @a-court-of-feysand-and-elorcan @princess76179 @starless-eyes-remain @tacticalsparkles

[ntseguru010]

If you are confused about how your maths paper would be? Then solving these Sample Paper for Class 10 Maths 2019-20 before your exam would be the best way to kick start your preparation.

More Info: https://bit.ly/2rLxomb

[deobienthusiast]

my smart little cookie

• pairing: hong minchan (verivery) x reader

• word count: 1,490 words

• genre: fluff

• warnings: none (ˢᵗᵘᵈʸⁱⁿᵍ)

• notes: my first verivery request and it’s one of my biases💙

• requested: yes | no by anon

It was officially official. You hated math. You absolutely could not get yourself to like it. Honestly, you just wanted to question every teacher that said you would use math in your everyday daily life. Was math really necessary? Did you really need it? You didn’t think you did, but your math teacher seemed to think otherwise.

With a big exam worth more than half your final grade coming up, you had done nothing but try and cram the material into your already frazzled mind. It felt like the more you stuffed in, the more that fell out. You let out a low groan as you heard a deep chuckle emit from your bed behind you.

“It’s not funny, Minchan.” You scowled out to your boyfriend without turning around to face him.

You heard your bed creak with each shift of his long limbs moving across the top of it before feeling his warm breath right on the side of your neck.

“I wasn’t laughing at you, love. I promise.” Minchan said as he pulled up another chair to the desk you had quite literally buried under papers.

Your boyfriend was quite the card. Minchan was a tall, lanky boy with fluffy black hair that sat just so atop of his head and bounced with every step of his long legs. He had the brightest personality, and the best gummy smile you were certain you’d ever see on a person. He was also quite the genius. Minchan was a whizz at school, math especially. His high IQ and charming good looks coupled well together as he was every girl’s dream. You just happened to win the grand prize.

Minchan never had a problem with his exams, and better yet, loved being able to take them. You, however, were quite the opposite. You were more of a science nerd while Minchan was the mathlete. You two were total opposites.

You sighed. “I’m going to fail this exam.”

Minchan smiled. “No you’re not. You’re going to do great like you do with every other exam.”

Shaking your head, you let it fall atop of the open math book that was also buried under paperwork. Minchan laughed again, making you look at him with a scowl that he could actually see.

“There’s a post-it stuck to your forehead.” He whispered as he gently pulled it off.

He looked over the small note written on the post-it before looking back at you. You were attempting to take in more information before Minchan’s long fingers crept into your vision, closing the book.

“Chan!” You whined as he pulled you from the seat.

He brought you down stairs, sitting you on the couch as he spoke.

“Sit. Stay.” Minchan told you softly as he headed back upstairs.

You did as you were told but not without great difficulty as the time ticked away that you could’ve used to study. You started to feel yourself get more and more antsy before your boyfriend came back into view. He reached for your hand.

You followed him back upstairs as Minchan opened the door for you. Your eyes widened at the sight of your now tidy room. Turning your attention to your desk that had previously been covered by mounds of math paper, it was neat and laid in stacks as Minchan pulled you into the chair that you had previously been occupying.

“I’m going to help you study, and you’re going to pass your exam.” Minchan said.

You shook your head. “I’m a lost cause, Chan.”

He smiled with a laugh. “Don’t say that. Besides, you have me as your teacher.”

You couldn’t help but smile. “You don’t have to do this.”

Minchan leaned in to press a soft kiss to your nose as he whispered. “Yes I do. What kind of boyfriend would I be if I let you fail?”

You giggled as he scooted his chair as close as the two chairs the both of you were in would allow. Minchan sat with you for what felt like hours as his fingers scaled the papers and pages of your math book, occasionally picking up a pen to help you find easier ways to solve certain problems.

Halfway through your study session with Minchan, he moved back to the bed before rejoining you and handing you a small sample quiz.

“Why?” You asked with a pout.

Minchan grinned. “Extra practice. Trust me. This will help. It’s got the three problems you’ve been struggling with the most. Take it without my help.”

You whined before gripping the pencil and taking the small quiz. Minchan watched you intently before you handed the paper to him. He read over it fairly quickly before smiling.

“You’ve got this.” Minchan said, pecking your forehead.

As you sat at your desk, the classroom felt more intimidating then the music posters hanging up in the comfort of your apartment. You looked around at the other students as they all seemed more calm on the outside then you were. It was times like these where you wished Minchan was in your class, as just being able to see his smile would’ve been enough to calm you down.

Your teacher made his way into the class, letting you know how important the exam was as you felt your phone vibrate.

Min🥰💖: You’ve got this😋

You smiled at the text from your boyfriend as you turned your phone off. Your teacher handed you the exam as you took a deep breath. You’ve got this.

The whole exam took almost two and a half hours. When you were finished, you let out the breath that felt like you had been holding for the entire exam. You grabbed your bags, moving the paper through your hands before giving it to your teacher. You didn’t feel entirely confident as you exited the classroom.

The first face your eyes landed on was your boyfriends as he was leaning against the lockers across from your classroom. He gave you a smile as you returned it tiredly.

“Well,” Minchan started. “How did we do?”

You shrugged. “I won’t know until the end of the day.”

Minchan grinned. “Then I’ll keep you company until then. You did well though, my smart little cookie.”

You blushed at the cheesy name as he threw one of his long arms around your shoulders. The two of you walked to the nearest bakery, Minchan paying for a loaf of chocolate bread as you two found a small table towards the back of the bakery to sit at. You both ate away at the loaf as Minchan watched you.

“Why do you still look nervous? The exam is over. You know you passed.” He said.

You eyed him through narrow slits. “What do you mean ‘you know you passed’, if I haven’t even gotten my score back yet.”

Minchan leaned onto the table, putting his weight on his arms and elbows. “You had me as your tutor. That’s how I know you passed, and you are exceptionally smart. Whether you believe me or not. Look at me,”

You pulled your eyes from the dark colored loaf of bread as you looked up at the dark eyes of your boyfriend. They held a warmness to them that would make even the most solid block of ice melt on sight.

“You did amazing. I guarantee it.” He finished off with a whisper.

“You promise?” You asked him.

Minchan nodded as he grabbed one of your hands, intertwining your fingers as he gave your hand a squeeze. “I promise.”

The two of you cleaned up the area you had occupied as you intertwined your fingers again, allowing the tall boy to pull you out of the bakery. You both walked around the town square for a little while longer before a timer went off on Minchan’s phone.

“The scores have been posted.” He said softly.

You let out a sigh as you pulled your phone out. You took your time getting to the website to find your score as you slowly looked over the scores of your classmates. Some did okay while others probably didn’t even want the test to be on their record. You saw your name and looked up at Minchan. He nodded as you clicked on it.

Minchan watched from the other side. Both of your heads hitting against each other as you craned your necks to look down at the phone. 98.

Minchan let out a yell of happiness as he pulled you into a tight hug. You finally felt relief wash over you as you wrapped your arms around the boy, burying your face into the crook of his neck. You heard him laugh, tightening his grip around you if that was even possible.

“I told you you would pass.” Minchan said happily as he pecked your lips.

You hugged him again, looking up into his dark eyes.

“My smart little cookie.” Minchan said with a smile.

[random-mha-thoughts]

Study Date (Todoroki x Reader)

Pairing: Todoroki x Reader

400 follower special!  Thank you guys so much again 🥰🥰

Genre: Flufffff

Summary: Todoroki and you are up doing homework late in the library when he exhibits some very strange habits.

Inspo: A part of this headcanon post by @bnhaclaimedmysoul​, that blog is floof central I love ittt

Word count: 1,077

Tags:  @yuki-osaki​ @liviitehe​ @iamsoftsodonttoucheume-blog​ @bunnythepipsqueak​

a/n: Surprise reveal!  This is a little sample piece for a Todoroki x fem!Reader multi-chaptered fic I’m working on in the background.  Not sure where I’ll be publishing it, but that’s a far away thought from now.  I still have to work out the kinks for the plot, but the characters are pretty much set already.  Here’s a little part that serves as a deleted/bonus/extra scene that doesn’t really fit into the plot, but I think it’s really cute and can stand alone as a gn!reader drabble that anyone can read for now.  I didn’t put a lot of details to give anything away, but I will say that this is the calm before the storm :).

Enjoy~

My head almost falls off my propped arm, heavy with sleep in the middle of doing a problem.  Sitting up straight and stretching, I see the time on my phone says 9:37 PM.  I let out a groan, realizing I've been awake for at least 12 hours at this point.

"Are you okay?" Todoroki's smooth voice expresses concern at my sudden noise.  His pencil freezes in place over his notebook, mismatched eyes gracing me.

"Yeah, just a little tired."  I rest my head against my hand again, pulling my earbuds out.  The steady instrumental playlist must have been low enough that it almost put me to sleep.

"Would you like to go back to the dorms?"

Flipping through the textbook pages in front of us, I sigh.  "I still have a lot of these math problems to do, I can't stop yet."

Going back to work, I plug myself back up.  I pull myself back into a monotonous rhythm of switching between writing and pushing buttons on my calculator as lo-fi music plays on loop in my ears.  The numbers have meshed into my brain and become meaningless, and using the same equations over and over have me running on muscle memory.

Suddenly, hands softly capture both sides of my face and I'm snapped out of my reverie.  Todoroki's deep stare bores into my soul.  The difference in temperature of his hands confusing the senses in my cheeks, but even more unsettling is the way his eyes remain unmoving.  The intensity almost makes me believe he has something to say, but I can't fathom the words to ask what it is.  All I can do is stare back at his unreadable expression, making me more flustered as the endless seconds tick by.

As abruptly as it happened, Todoroki lets go of me and returns back to his own homework, leaving me dazed and confused about what just happened.  The breath I didn't know I was holding finally exhales from me and I remain watching him.  Nothing about his demeanor suggests he just did such a rogue action, or for what reason he did it.

Am I supposed to do nothing?  Do I just disregard it?  His uncaring reaction tells me I should.

Somehow, it's woken me up with a new shot of energy.  I reach into my bag and pull out a box of Pocky to keep up that energy while I finish up this dreaded homework.  I chew on a chocolate stick, considering that he might have done such a strange thing because he doesn't know any other ways of expressing emotions.  In hindsight, it might have been affection in his eyes, they were definitely intense enough for something like that-

I'm shaken out of my thoughts again mid-chew when Todoroki nestles my head between his palms again, the same intense and unreadable emotion creased in his eyes and his furrowed brows.  My gaze flickers between those orbs and the thin line of his his lips pressed together, unable to meet his eyes for very long.  I'm about to find my voice to ask him what's gotten into me.

And he quickly presses a kiss to my nose before letting go.

My eyes widen and heat flows to my cheeks, stomach doing a quick flip.  Oh.  My mind scrambles to calm my heart beating at just a simple peck on the nose.  Todoroki seems fine, he'd already picked up his pencil and gotten back into his rhythm while I'm still staring at him dumbly.

He must have been trying to figure out how to do it properly from before, silly boy, I think, smiling to myself and basking in the warm aftermath.  I can't concentrate on the stupid math in front of me because of his little gesture.  The grin on my face can't be helped, refusing to relax.

To calm myself, I grab another stick of Pocky and bite into it to keep my mouth busy doing something else.  Scanning over my paper to pick up where I left off, I spot a mistake I'd made in my work.  Holding the long treat between my lips, I grab my eraser to clear the entire problem and start over.  Picking my pencil back up to fix the whole problem, I furiously rewrite the work over, being the perfectionist I am and reprimanding myself for making such a stupid error.

In the middle of writing, Todoroki holds me once again.  He looks down at the treat still hanging out of my mouth.  Tilting my head up slightly, he inches closer.

And bites off three-quarters of the stick, our noses brushing briefly.

If my face was hot before, it's nothing compared to now.  This time, Todoroki removes his hands and leans back, chewing thoughtfully.  By some miracle, the words come out, albeit in a stutter, "I-If you wanted some, you could've said so."

"I thought it would taste better from your lips."

The suave way the words naturally flow out makes me embarrassed, even though we're the only two here.  I feel the heat intensifying and making me dizzier.  "For someone who can't express your emotions properly, you're a smooth-talker," I mutter, chewing the small piece leftover between my lips.

He shrugs.  "It felt right to say, I guess."  It's nonchalant, but I can see the slight tinge of pink across his own cheeks.

"Does that mean I can make a far-fetched conclusion about you?" I smirk, wishing to get back at him.

The color spreads and saturates on his face.  "I know I apologized about that, it was rude of me."

"I know, I just like teasing you about it."  I hug his arm, comforting his ashamed expression that didn't leave at my assurance.  "I'm over it, really.  We'll be laughing about it in the future."

The poor boy isn't convinced, the guilt still present in his features.

Instinctively, I press a kiss to his icy cheek, watching the darkness morph into shock with a chuckle.  "It's my turn to fluster you," I offer in defense.

Cheeks red as his hair, he looks away to hide the color, but the warmth even under his cold side gives away his embarrassment.  "We should finish our homework.  It's getting late and we have class tomorrow."

I unwind myself from him reluctantly and place the box of Pocky between us, leaning my head against my arm again.  This time, to silently admire the beautiful color of my precious boyfriend.

[wilstudies]

Get a grade 9 in a language GCSE!

Please note:

1. These tips are almost entirely applicable to any AQA language at GCSE. 2. Modern Foreign Languages at GCSE Level is anywhere from A2 to B1 (dependant on the tier and grade) on the CEFR scale, but, there is no official equivalent.

In November 2018, whilst in Year 10, my teacher saw that I was excelling in French, with my extensive knowledge of tenses and idioms. So, she proposed that I’d do the January mocks, alongside Year 11, despite not knowing more than half of the subject content. Then we’d see where I’d go from there.

I followed the AQA exam board, higher paper. Specification. You can find the Kerboodle textbook I used, here.  

Here’s what I did:

Throughout the year, I was also studying the Year 10 content (Theme 1 - Identity and culture) in class.

In my own time, each month I’d cover one or two units, completing the more challenging activities on each page of the textbook. Luckily, each unit was only 4 double-page spreads long.

In January I completed my mocks. This was the first time I had ever sat in an exam hall, so it was really daunting to be doing it with a bunch of kids who were older than me, even though I knew I had enough knowledge. Overall, I got a secure grade 8, in my mocks, despite not knowing half of the course content.

I also did “pre-exam mocks”, two weeks before each exam. These consisted of specimen papers which are notoriously harder, so my results looked almost exactly the same as past papers, which was upsetting as I couldn’t see that I’d actually improved. But practice is practice!

MY ACTUAL GCSE RESULT: 

With a lot of work. I managed to achieve a grade 9 (the top mark, higher than an A*), which was insane. I’m so, so proud of myself, and grateful for all of the teachers that supported me!!!

^Edit from 25/08/2019.

LISTENING

In my opinion, listening is based purely on practice and knowing the exam technique that works for you.

To practice: 

frenchpod101 intermediate listening comprehension

Going through every specimen track and listening activity I could find - pausing it after each sentence, saying it once in French, then translating it into English. I’d do this in the shower, on the way to school, wherever.

Know your vocab!

My exam technique:

In the 5 minutes reading time: underline keywords and themes in the questions. This time goes very quickly, but I’d also try to jot down a few synonyms in the French section too.

Multiple choice questions: the process of elimination; key vocab; negative and positive tonality and opinion words - watch out for negative structures!

Completing the sentences: note down words said in French or translate each sentence into English in your head, then remember it when it comes to writing it down.

French section: fill each sentence with key French words that you hear. Don’t worry about accents, unless it helps you determine the word.

Remember each track plays twice.

READING

The January Mock: I didn’t know much of the course content, so I struggled with the translation. I also circled and placed a question mark near any words I didn’t know, as it was a mock and my teacher would be able to note down any translations for me. I think what boosted my grade, to a 9 for this paper, was knowledge of grammar.

T/F/NM questions are usually a gamble. Just look for explicit information and know your negative formations.

Texts change their minds often: look out for counter-arguments and opposing exclamations

Use the method of elimination for multiple choice: rule out if there’s no mention. Be wary that a text can mention an option, but say it wasn’t that.

Texts often refer to things mentioned prior.

If you know a certain type of texts are your kryptonite (it was the classical stories with dialogue, for me), then download as many of that genre as you can. Understand the way speech and dialogue works, and the structure, before you tackle the vocab.

Many say skim read and don’t read the whole thing, but I found it easier to translate big chunks in my head as I went along and lightly annotate each text, which just comes with practice.

WRITING

Top tip: don’t go any more than 10% over word limits!!!!!!! Teachers say they have to mark all of it - no they don’t. If you do double the word limit, your last few bullet points could come after the cut-off point, cutting off access to half of the marks!!! 

90 WORD - 99 words maximum! About 20-25 words per bullet point.

150 WORD - 165 words maximum! About 75 words per bullet point.

Which brings me to mention, that you must cover every bullet point: those are your content marks, which cover about half the marks of each question.

90 WORD Question (16 marks)

Content - 10 marks: Making sure your writing covers each bullet point enough.

Quality of Language - 6 marks: Using interesting vocabulary, such as “malheureusement”.

Stick to about one page.

If you’re giving an opinion, great, just stop there. If you explain it too much, you risk going over your word limit.

150 WORD Question (32 marks)

Content - 15 marks: Every. Bullet. Point. Detailed.

Range of Language - 12 marks: get in those adjectives, idioms and grammatical structures!

Accuracy - 5 marks: correct basic tense conjugations (present, past, future simple/future proche)

In order to hit all of these I came up with a mnemonic checklist, and it scored me full marks in a specimen paper I did for my teacher! And I made it into a cute phone background, so I’d start to remember it, I still can now, hehe! You can find it here. If that doesn’t work, then download it here.

SPEAKING

Know your question words! (x)

For the roleplay and photocard, my teacher printed off me a load of practice cards in bulk and annotated two or three every day, using the planning techniques mentioned below.

Roleplay - 2 minutes; can be any theme. 

When planning, try to avoid writing out answers, but just keywords and gaps for you to fill in with pronouns or articles etc.

Keep it brief, one sentence per bullet point, but cover each part of each bullet point. 

Photo card - 3 minutes (aim to speak for at least 2). 

Plan with a small spider-diagram of nouns, opinions, anecdotes etc. for each known question. 

Use one or two prepped anecdotes for the prepared questions - e.g. where you went last year, who with, what you did. 

For the unknown questions, keep it short and sweet and fill up any time with opinions and reasoning.

General conversation - 5-7 minutes. 

Lie and make up stories! Be creative and use the words and structures you know.

I was a little extra and I prepared every theme as flashcards. You can’t get away with only revising your chosen theme! 

I made flashcards that could cover several types of questions: I had bullet points of topics and keywords on one side and a sample paragraph on the other. 

Pretty sure I made about 80 flashcards oops.

I also went through the mark scheme and see which areas I could secure marks in and which areas I needed to improve.

VOCAB

Learning vocab is SO important!

I started by making spreadsheets of jumbled word lists from the specification and doing a colour-coded match up. 

You can access a pdf of all of the vocab grids here. There might be the odd word missing due to copy-pasting errors, but if so, don’t stress, just look it up in a dictionary and note it down - sorry in advance!!!

Then with the vocab that I had to look up in a dictionary, I added to a Quizlet and wrestled it into my noggin. 

You can find the Quizlet here.

Remember that:

sauf - except

puisque - since

presque - almost

GRAMMAR

To me, learning tenses was like learning formulae for maths. So find a way to learn rules like that, if it’s easier for you.

e.g. Conditional Tense = subject + (future/conditional stem + imperfect ending)*

*note that future stems are the same as conditional stems.

Know your DRMRSPVANDERTRAMP verbs, and their past participles. These verbs go with ÊTRE and always agree with the subject.

Know your auxiliary and irregular verbs.

MUST KNOW: avoir, être, aller, faire, vouloir

HELPFUL: devoir, pouvoir, vivre, boire, voir, dire, savoir

OTHERS: mettre, prendre, venir, écrire, lire, recevoir

I learnt these by making flashcards, and then brain dumping them on paper over and over again until they stuck - my teacher thought I was insane, madly scribbling away.

Memorise some key structures that can be used in writing and speaking. 

If you want 7+ structures, find them here.

MISC TIPS

Always write notes about improvements and errors in practice papers and mocks.

Find a native french internet friend.

In my opinion, music, movies and TV shows aren’t great for revision. However, if you begin to understand them, they are a great confidence boost.

I highly recommend the Skam France series, which you can find with and without les sous-titres (subtitles) here.

And here’s my french music playlist on Spotify.

MORE ASSISTANCE

I’m happy to offer my assistance to anybody who needs it, pop me a dm or an ask if you think others will find it useful too. 

Here’s some ways I could help:

Finding some resources about a certain topic (videos, worksheets, mindmaps) - I have them all backed up hehe

Sending you some of my past answers

Sending you pdf of my general conversation/irregular verb table flashcards

Marking practice answers

Talking to you in french

Etc. etc.

Thank you for reading! Please reblog to help any others that might find this useful. If any of the links are faulty, please pop me a dm, and I’ll get them sorted asap!! 🥐

-Wil x

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[wrongfullythinking]

Science and Data and Freedoms

There are millions of these rants around, so you are under no need to read mine.  In fact, what I am about to say here should not be taken as anything more than one person’s opinion.  OPINION.  I have several qualifications (I will get to those in a second), but still, this blog is primarily concerned with, as the title suggest, wrong thought.  And yes, thoughts can be flat-out wrong, but that’s another topic for another time, yes?  I primarily abandoned this blog when tumblr decided to advocate for censorship, and well, if you don’t think that was very bad thinking, then I can’t help you and you certainly should stop reading now.  But mostly, I find myself needing a little bit of a platform to rant, so here it is.  This is not for you.  This is for me.  But maybe, if you read it, and you learn something, then it was a little bit more than that, and that’s entirely unnecessary but I’ll be fine with it.  Don’t worry, I’ll keep it a secret.

My qualifications 1) I have a Ph.D. from a major research institution in America.  What that means, most importantly, is actual training in how to read and understand academic writing. 2) I teach statistics, among other things, and I teach in a public health college at another major research institution in America. 3) I work with epidemiologists, though I don’t claim that title myself (I describe myself a psychometrician with an expertise in educational measurement), and I am currently working on several projects using epidemiological methods. 4) A portion of my work in educational measurement focuses on critical thinking, particularly the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Premises So, let’s organize this in a logical manner.  To do so, we generally start with a series of premises.  Here are some of mine. 1) Most people are afraid of dying. 2) The fear of dying plays some part in how people live their lives. 3) People are willing to make some tradeoffs between Safety and Liberty. 4) There is an inverse relationship between Safety and Liberty.  The more liberty, the less safety.  This is only a unidirectional inverse relationship (as liberty ascends, safety decreases), and NOT true in the opposite direction (as safety ascends, liberty must decrease).  This is VERY IMPORTANT. 5) People are poor estimators of their own odds of death, and especially how certain events (say, getting drunk at a party or smoking a hallucinogenic drug or driving recklessly) contribute to their risk of death. 6) There is much unknown about the “novel coronavirus” or SARS-COV_2 or Covid-19 (use whatever term you are comfortable with, the distinction between all of these is arbitrary and unimportant... the root of communication is exchange of messaging between two parties, and all these terms work fine in most cases, since we’re hardly in a lab where it is very important to separate out disease, virus, symptoms, and classifications). 7) Action has been taken by governments and individuals exceeding their statutory authorities. 8) Some of the actions taken by governments and individuals makes no difference in the ability of people to live disease-free, but does have other impacts. 9) The “other impacts” in Premise 8 can directly cause loss of life, as well as other ramifications (lack of social mobility, inability to secure safe food supplies, increase in spousal/partner/child abuse, lack of ability to achieve an education, etc.) that have social and personal consequences for potentially many years, if not generations.  This is the most controversial premise, because it has a tendency to operate on some slippery-slope type logic, which is exactly what I am going to rant against in a second.  Be wary of this one!  But it is important too.

Statistical Problem #1: Never Believe a Point Estimate If you take (my) Stats101 class, and hopefully anybody else’s similar course, one thing that should be a key takeaway is “NEVER BELIEVE A POINT ESTIMATE.”  That’s huge.  Never.  Believe.  A.  Point.  Estimate.

So, for the people who haven’t had a Stats class recently, what is a point estimate?

When you see something like “an estimated 2.2 million Americans will die from the coronavirus if action is not taken,” that “2.2 million” is a point estimate.  It is a single point.  And point estimates are a hallmark of bad reporting of often bad science.  In statistics, any time we make an estimate, we generate a confidence interval: that is, the range around which we believe that estimate to be actually correct.  This is because we don’t measure everybody; we measure a small sample, and use math to make estimates.  Since we didn’t measure everybody, there is some degree of uncertainty, and so we calculate a range that we think is very likely to contain the actual number.  This is called a confidence interval.  The wider the confidence interval, the LESS confident you are.  The narrower the confidence interval, the more confident you are.

An example.  The New York Yankees hit 306 home runs last year, and had 5561 at-bats over 162 games, meaning they hit a home run about once every 20 at-bats.  Let’s say I believe the season will be cut in half (so, 81 games instead of 162).  So, I want to know how many home runs the Yankees will hit in this shortened season.  Let’s work through several examples.

The worst example (okay, not actually the absolute worst, because I could just guess, but pretty bad). In half the games, the Yankees will hit half the home runs.  So that’s 306/2, so that’s 153.

Here’s another BAD example, but it does look legit, doesn’t it? Half of 162 is 81.  So in half the games, they will have half the at-bats, so that’s 2780.5 at-bats.  They hit a home run previously in 5.5026% of their at-bats, and 5.5062% of 2780.5 is 153.  The Yankees will hit 153 home runs next year.

A much better example The Yankees averaged 1.8888 home runs a game (306 / 162) last season.  If we take the low-end of 1.5 home runs per game (or three home runs every two games), and a high end of 2.25 home runs per game (or 9 home runs every 4 games), we expect the Yankees to hit between 121.5 and 182.25 home runs in the shortened 81 game season.

Is there a perfect example? No.  This is a great question.  Introductory statistics students will start to add all sorts of great considerations to this question: in the shortened season, won’t pitchers have less time to get warmed up, so home runs will go up?  But the same is true for batters, so home runs might go down?  If the shortened season starts later, and is played in more colder weather, are there fewer home runs?  How did the Yankees roster change?  Are they playing against more fly-ball or ground-ball pitchers?  Who changed in the rotations of the teams they will play most?  Will the rule change about facing three batters or the end of an inning increase the amount of home runs?  What about conditioning of athletes who are homebound?  No statistical estimate can take into account all factors.  And we don’t try to.  We just play the games and then call it history. So, what are the problems with the “much better example” besides not adding in all those other things? There is nothing wrong with it, it is just not very precise.  A range between 121.5 and 182.25 is more than 60, which is basically half of the low-end.  We could be like, 50% wrong from our low end and still be in the range!  That’s not very precise!

So, what does this have to do with the current issues? Mostly, I want you to very carefully consider any number you hear without a confidence interval.  If you hear a number like “2.2 million,” realize that without a stated confidence interval, the interval could be ANYTHING.  Something like, oh, I don’t know... 2.199 million.  Yep.  In other words, the only thing you could take away from that number is “anywhere between 1 person and 5 million people.  And how much are you willing to give up for that particular risk?

Statistical Problem #2: Confidence Intervals WITHIN models So, to this point, hopefully I’ve described all the things that can go wrong if you don’t use a confidence interval in your ANSWER.  But what about in the MODEL (or the prediction) itself?  Let’s say that, in the above example, we wanted to know how many home runs the Yankees will hit, and we know that MLB will shorten the season.  But we don’t know by how much.

So, let’s say that I estimate the season will be between 60 and 100 games.  That’s a pretty big margin.  Using my earlier estimates, now my confidence interval expands again: 1.5 x 60 for the low end is only 90 home runs, and 2.25 x 100 is 225 home runs!  Now my range is [60:225].  That is VERY imprecise!

The important part is that this problem compounds each time we don’t know something.  You get a wider and wider range, the less you know.  So, the more you want to put into a formula, the more you need to know... and the less you know, the wider your estimate.

Statistical Problem #3: The Missing Denominator None of the math here is particularly difficult, especially with the aid of computers and a bit of training.  So, if somebody is presenting it to you like it is super complex, think of them like a stage magician: distract, watch the glitter, and you will never notice my hand pulling the pigeon out of my coat pocket and putting it into my hat.

So, what have models been hiding from you?

The big missing piece is the denominator, or in this case, “how many people have the virus.”  That’s a VERY important number.  We need several things to build an epidemiological model, and without even an estimate of “how many people have it,” then all the rest of this is pretty much pointless.  This is because “how many people have it” is needed for at least the following: 1) Transmission Rate 2) Infection Rate 3) Fatality Rate

Luckily... we’re actually getting close to having that number!  Or at least, a confidence interval for that number.

Understanding recent data

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1.full.pdf

Basically, that paper says that in one county with a lot of cases, they estimate there are somewhere between 2.49% and 4.16% of the population infected, and they wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers are between 1.80% and 5.70%.  There are about 1.93 MILLION people in Santa Clara county.  1,930,000, and between 2.49 and 4.16 are ALREADY infected. So, let’s math that out, and I’m using their narrower confidence interval here.

Low End (2.49%): 48057 already infected High End (4.16): 80288 already infected.

So, now we have an actual denominator!  Or at least, RANGES of one.  They’re pretty confident the actual number is somewhere between those.

The date is important here.  The data here is April 1.  That range (48000-80000) the number of infected people as of April 1.  As of April 17th (over two weeks later), Santa Clara had reported 73 deaths.  63 of those had one comorbidity, and only 5 had no comorbidities.  Here’s the source.

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/dashboard.aspx

So, what’s the fatality rate?

LOW pop prev: No comorbidities: 5 / 48000 = .0001041666. LOW: One or no comorbidities: 68 / 48000 = .00141666 HIGH pop prev: No comorbidities: 5 / 80200 = .000062344 HIGH: One or no comorbidities: 68 / 80200 = .00084788

We’ll go broad here, and assume one comorbidity.  Hey, a lot of us have something that is an issue, right?  But let’s apply those number to the American Population of approximately 330,000,000 people.

LOW (zero or one comorbidity) pop prev: 330mil * .00141666 = 467,497.8 HIGH (zero or one comorbidity) pop prev: 330mil * .00084788 = 279,800.4

There’s your number.  WOW, you say!  Wow!  A QUARTER TO HALF A MILLION PEOPLE MIGHT DIE!  That seems shocking!

It is, super shocking.  Remember, that’s the zero-case scenario.  The scenario where we do nothing.  Worst-case.  No vaccine, no medication, no treatment, no social distancing, nada.

Oh, let’s go ahead and go over some other numbers.  Not scenarios, actual data.

Motor Vehicle Deaths (2018): 36,560 Medical Error Deaths (2011): Between 210,000 and 400,000 https://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx Accidents (2017): 169,936 Diabetes (2017): 83,564 Influenza/Pneumonia (2017): 55,672 Suicide/Self-harm complications: 47,173 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

((Note, because somebody will inevitably ask: The “Death by Guns” rate is a tough one to count, because the majority of gun deaths are also suicides.  The Gun Homicide+Accident fatality rate is likely between about 10,000 and 13,000 per year (about a third of the car accident fatality rate).  If you’re interested in that number, be sure to look at the data split by category, or if you are interpreting suicides with guns in your gun death count, just be explicit about it, don’t be a pigeon-holding magician.))

Interpretation: Doing nothing at all, we would expect Covid to jump the rates of Influenza/Pneumonia deaths from 7th to 3rd in America, with somewhere between about 340,000 and 530,000 deaths.  I arrive at that number by adding 60,000 to the estimates above, for other non-Covid related Flu/Influenza deaths.  That would put Influenza/Pneumonia above the estimates of death due to medical errors, and well behind the two leading causes of death in the US (CVD and Cancer).  This is provided that there is no emergent medical option.

So, what’s the downside?  Why not do all these drastic things (like shelter-in-place orders and be forced to shut down your business) if it prevents between 1/4 and 1/2 of a million deaths? That’s a good question!  The point here is that orders have consequences, and most of them are unknown at the time of the order.  For example, let’s take a pretty simple policy: requiring every driver to car insurance.  Seems like a fundamental thing, right?  Well, now you’ve also driven the price of car ownership up.  More rural areas (which are often poorer) now have an additional cost burden, that is not shared by people who live in major cities with large public transportation networks.  And you’ve created a secondary market (insurance agents) who now have incentives to raise prices, and huge potential for collusion.  And what about people who defy that order?  Well, that’s tricky-- in some places there are additional policies for covering wrecks involving uninsured drivers, and in those places, car insurance costs more.  So you’re paying more, out of your pocket, because somebody else didn’t follow a policy.  And that means you have less money to go shopping or go out to eat, which means fewer people at stores have jobs.  All of this ties together.

So, what are the unintentional consequences of the shelter-in-place and business-shuttering orders?  The most obvious ones are the losses of income, including jobs, and the 10 million accompanying jobless claims.  But is that such a big problem?  Think about what is happening in homes without jobs... and remember, you are still legally required to pay car insurance.  So that’s the direct one.

But there are multitudes of indirect ones.  For example, this is not an academic article, but...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/03/21/coronavirus-pandemic-could-become-child-abuse-pandemic-experts-warn/2892923001/

And remember, a lot of children who are subject of abuse are from low-income families.  And what did they normally get?  Free and reduced-price lunch at schools.  Now, they aren’t getting those.  Sure, in a few places here and there, some schools are delivering similar meals.  But the vast, vast majority of elementary and high-school aged students on free/reduced lunches are not getting them.  So that leaves parents (or caretakers) to pick up the burden.  Those same parents and caretakers who are filing the 10 million unemployment claims.  Uh-oh.  Sounds stressful.

Guess what stress does to people?  It makes them sick.  And you know what happens when you get an ulcer?  Hopefully not much, but bad ones can end you up in a hospital.  Where there are many procedures, but most of them minor.  Unfortunately, hospitals right now are being forbidden from doing elective surgeries.  And elective surgeries helped pay for other services, like necessary surgeries and emergency care.  So, the ER is literally understaffed, even in regions where there are no COVID patients, because the state has forbidden the tummy tucks that pay the salaries of ER nurses.

You see the tumble here?  This is where I cautioned earlier about the slippery slope argument, and it is an absolutely valid critique of what I’m putting here.  But we’ve gone past speculation territory and are now in data territory.  And (again, work in health care education), I know some people who are starting to see these effects.  One of the faculty at my school (teaches our Law course) is a lawyer for a rural hospital service.  He has watched them lay off or furlough over 60% of workers.  And they have had... wait for it... 0 covid cases.  The few that were suspected, they flew down to a much larger hospital.  At high cost, because they can’t charge for COVID services.

Meanwhile, you’re talking a rural system that was one of the top employers in four different counties.  Laying off or furloughing 60% of workers.  The guy was so upset telling me about this that he almost cried, especially because he knew the families of so many of the people his board had just let go.

Any caveats to add? The big caveat that I place on the interpretation here (basically, that’s we’ve VASTLY oversold the risk of this thing) is that we don’t know about secondary infections.  If you can get infected twice, and that second infection is harmful or make you able to spread the disease to others who are then harmed, then all these numbers are too low. Bottom-line it for me, WT. Fear leads to the dark side, where you have no freedoms.  Don’t give up things because you were scared and because somebody showed you a point of data that you should not believe.

[mandy-hanae]

Forewarning: an exceedingly long list of bullet journal page ideas below :)

Hi everyone, it’s been a while! So, long story short, I’ve made a very long list of bujo page ideas that I think are useful, interesting + fun! Fyi, I’ve arranged the ideas (i.e. the bullet points) under each categories according to my own priority + interests. Also, I’ll be updating this list from time to time, so feel free to suggest new ideas simply by replying this post! ;)

planning

index (table of contents)

key, legend, specifier

goals (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, future)

goals (short-term, long-term)

new year resolutions / goals

daily spread / log (routines: morning, evening, night)

weekly spread / log / schedule

monthly spread / log / review

future log / yearly calendar

x-year plan (where x = number of years)

to-dos / tasks (daily, weekly)

10 minute tasks

reminders (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly)

important dates

deadlines

birthdays

anniversaries

holidays / special days

appointments / events

diary / journal

trip / travel / holiday / vacation planning

wedding planning

progress tracker (events, goals, etc)

vehicle maintenance (timeline, checklist)

home maintenance (timeline, checklist)

bullet journal (aka bujo)

bujo routine

bujo hacks / tips

bujo themes

header / banner ideas

doodle / drawing ideas

doodle page (doodle a day challenge)

sketchbook (doodling / drawing pages)

title + sub-title ideas

date ideas

divider ideas

layout / spread ideas for bujo

handwriting page

font page

hand lettering / brush lettering / calligraphy

washi tape collection / swatches

pen colours swatches

highlighter colours swatches

brush colours swatches

water colour samples

stationeries / art supplies wishlist

stationeries / art supplies inventor

practice page (hand / brush lettering, doodle, drawing, colour combination, etc)

page to try out new stationeries (pens, markers, highlighters, brushes, etc)

full-page journal entries

bullet journal page ideas

bujo goals

what is bujo + how to bujo? (bujo introduction + guide)

journaling techniques

lifestyle

habits to break

new habits to adopt

chores list / tracker

shopping list

cleaning routine / schedule / tracker

tidying days tracker

laundry tracker

productivity tracker

outfit planning / inspiration / ideas

time management tracker

work / job / career history + timeline

financial

no buy list

no spend days tracker

money-saving tips

savings goals

savings tracker

spending / expenses tracker

monthly budget tracker / planning

debt payoff tracker

income tracker

income growth tracker

bills tracker

gas mileage tracker

self-care / self-improvement

self-care activities / tips

about me (self-introduction)

bucket list

wishlist / wish board

vision board

abstract feelings (drawing therapy: express my feelings, draw my emotions out)

things that make me happy

hobbies tracker

new hobbies to try

hug / cuddle tracker

what do I enjoy + love? / things I enjoy + love

things I got into recently

dream journal / log / tracker

highlights this past year

experiences this year

“fuck it” page (vents / rants; let all those swearings out)

memories of the month

memories / special moments you don’t want to forget

in-do list (things I’ll quit doing)

my horoscope / zodiac sign info

my personality test result / mbti type info / my personality traits

small things that matter

everyday “nothings” I’m grateful for

timeline of my life

map of my life

happy thoughts

notes to self

positive affirmations

sentence-a-day log

one-liner journal

letter to past / future self

personal stories / thoughts (like diary)

random thoughts

skills to learn

things I want to learn

reward tracker

gratitude tracker (things, people)

20 goals before 20

30 goals before 30

things that are stressing me out

how to reduce the things that are stressing me out?

learned lessons / things to reflect on

things to improve

things I love about myself / what I love about myself?

how to stop self-hate / self-loathing?

my values

how to live out my values?

things I’m proud of

things I didn’t do as much as I liked

“flaws” I am grateful for + why

comments

advices

level 10 life

life goals list / tracker

resolutions page

achievements / accomplishments in life

what am I working / fighting for?

how to succeed?

“one smile a day” challenge

my observations about people

where do I want to be in x years? (where x = number of years)

read at least one chapter log

health

hydration tracker (water intake log)

menstruation tracker

mood tracker

relaxation tracker

methods of relaxation

sleep tracker

healthy meals / snacks ideas / options

healthy meal planning / tracker

snacking tendencies tracker

food to eat / avoid list

no x days (where x = food to eat less; e.g. snack, junk food, alcohol, sugar, carbs, etc)

how to cope with mental illness? / mental health management (depression, stress, anxiety, etc)

step count tracker

daily step count goals

energy tracker

migraine tracker

meditation tracker

mental health tracker

meal / food tracker

meal / menu planning

recipes to try / things I want to cook

ratings on things I cooked

favourite recipes

medicine tracker

skin care routine

calorie tracker

exercise / workout tracker

fitness tips / guide

fitness goals

fitness routines / sets

measurements tracker

weight loss / gain tracker

bmi tracker

yoga tracker

yoga poses to try

study (school, university, college)

printables / print outs

things to do before a new semester starts

academic / semester calendar

classes / lectures schedule (timetable)

assessments tracker (assignments, lab reports, projects, homeworks, etc)

project / assignment planning / breakdown (brainstorming new ideas)

important dates (upcoming tests, finals, group discussions, etc)

deadlines tracker (assessment due dates)

study plan for a subject / course / class

studying schedule / timetable/ routine

studying / revision tracker (study hours log)

revision checklist (topics, chapters, subjects, courses, etc)

scholarship activities / events

definitions list

formulas list (maths, chemistry, etc)

vocabulary to learn list

semester goals

grades / exam results tracker

study / school / university supplies list

study / learning websites

reference books / textbooks to buy

study space layout (actual / dream study space)

dream study space ideas

organization tips / ideas for university

productivity tips / ideas for university

before-class routine / checklist

hours spent in library

study tips / hacks

improvement tracker

note-taking method / system

color-code system

studying techniques / methods

how to study smart / efficiently?

how to stay motivated?

how to focus in class?

how to get good grades? / how to improve grades?

how to stop procrastinating?

tips for time management

syllabus / modules list

lecturer / professor / teacher info

past papers tracker

how to overcome failure?

“funny / weird things that happened in university” list

best campus food

favourites

stationeries (pens, markers, highlighters, brushes, etc)

food / meals (desserts, snacks, beverages, drinks, etc)

swatches (stationeries: pens, markers, highlighters, brushes, washi tapes, etc)

colours / colour schemes / colour palettes / colour combinations

hobbies / pastimes

movies / tv series / documentaries / anime

books / manga / manhwa / manhua

genre categories (movies, tv shows, anime, books, manga, music, etc)

songs / playlists / albums / podcasts

lyrics

song artists / bands

apps

ice cream flavours

things / items / products I own (skincare, makeup, etc)

seasons

font types

words

quotes

podcasts

brands (notebooks, clothings, skincare, makeup, etc)

cafes / restaurants

animals / pets

holidays

plants (flowers, leaves, etc)

stores (online / physical stores)

indoor + outdoor activists

poetry

recipes

presents / gifts

feelings

people

aesthetics

celebrities / influencers

characters

blogs / tumblr blogs / websites / youtube channels / instagram accounts

six word stories

scent / smell

fruits + vegetables

sports

checklists

organization ideas / tips

tea / coffee consumed tracker

to watch (movies, tv series, documentaries, anime, etc)

to read (books, articles, manga, manhwa, manhua, etc)

to listen to (songs, playlists, albums, podcasts, etc)

to buy (groceries, shopping, etc)

to try (food, beverages, activities, etc)

to visit (cafes, restaurants, etc)

to travel (places: countries, states, cities, etc)

things to try / attempt

craft / diy project ideas to try

zero waste tips / habits

green living tips / habits

packing checklist (travel, trip, vacation, moving, etc)

adulting list (things I need to learn to become an adult)

maps (colour the place you’ve visited)

before-bed checklist

road trips

random acts of kindness

destinations / places to travel with friends

progress tracker (e.g. book series: pages, chapters, volumes; tv shows: episodes, seasons; podcasts progress, etc)

boredom buster list (fun things to do)

lists

usernames + passwords

playlists for certain moods / occasions

new music discovered

new songs added to playlist

gift / present ideas

things I googled

foreign language vocabulary to learn

new vocabulary

inspirational / motivational quotes

questions I want answers to

story / plot ideas

character ideas

beautiful words to use more often

untranslatable words

365 words to learn (learn a new word per day challenge)

addresses

convenient / useful knowledge

useful unknown facts

interesting / random facts

important contacts / emergency contact info

upcoming releases of things that I like / love (release dates)

pros + cons list

outfits / clothings I own

fashion / outfit inspiration (print outs, magazine cut outs, etc)

how to make someone happy

authors to know

the most important people in my life

collections

flowers / leaves (dried / pressed)

polaroid pictures / photos

swatches (pens, markers, highlighters, brushes, washi tapes, etc)

fortune-telling paper strips / fortune cookie fortunes / amulets

ticket stubs / tickets (movie, train, amusement park, concert tickets, etc)

receipts

stamps (ink)

postage stamps

clothing tags

bookmarks

maps + brochures from travel

greeting cards / postcards

food wrappers / packagings

wrapping papers from gifts you’ve received

cute paper / gift bags

stickers

magazine / book cut outs

business cards

books purchased (titles, date + place of purchase, etc)

social media (blog, tumblr, instagram, pinterest, youtube, etc)

content / post ideas (planning)

social media planning (timeline, content, event, etc)

followers / subscribers count

blog goals

blog information

blog statistics

content updates

social media tracker (time spent on social media)

blogs, tumblr blogs, instagram accounts, youtube channels, pinterest boards, websites, etc to follow

fun

room layout / dream room ideas / room decoration ideas

dream home ideas

aesthetic page (mood board, style board, inspirational photo board, etc)

morse codes

brain dump

brainstorming

pretty + cute things (literally anything pretty + cute)

song of the day

art journal

collage art

colouring page

pen tests page (scribbling page)

random notes

things to look forward to

countdown to a special day / event

“don’t break the chain” challenge

100 days of productivity

moon phases tracker

musical pieces you’d like to play

journal writing prompts

cryptography

invention ideas

best purchases made

“if I had a million dollars”

pet care log

plant care guide + log (plant watering, etc)

family tree

food / snacks / beverages reviews

restaurant / cafe reviews

places travelled review

movies / tv series / anime reviews

book reviews

constellation chart

30 day challenges

hogwarts houses

zentangles

knitting patterns

things that my friends like

friends page (where my friends write stuffs in)

tattoo ideas

philosophical stuffs

[ntseguru-ntsepreparation-blog]

Class X Board Sample Papers - Maths

NTSE Guru provides you class X sample papers for your sound preparation. The sample papers are designed by experts having years of experience. You must know the board exam question paper pattern and marking scheme before facing the exam. Click here for sample papers -  Maths sample paper  

[katewillaert]

My Secret Origin (Part 1): How To Fail At Comics

[Above: Art from 20 years ago, when I was in High School.]

What do you want to be when you grow up?

When I was four I said “mad scientist.” It was 1987 and I was a big fan of The Real Ghostbusters and Doc Brown. My mom insisted “mad scientist” wasn’t a profession. And weren’t those characters are inventors? What did I want to invent?

Clearly I hadn’t thought this through.

My mom also informed me that all those cartoons I watch were made by people. Those were drawings, and there are people whose job it was to draw those.

This blew my mind. From that point on I decided I was going to be an animator.

Discovering Art

I don’t remember when I first started drawing. It seems like something I always did growing up. As far as my memory is concerned, I came out of the womb holding a pencil and began drawing before I said my first words.

In reality, I probably started in preschool when I was four, just before I discovered what an animator was. I remember my favorite subject to draw was the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters. I must’ve drawn it something like 10 or 20 times.

My mom kept almost all of my childhood art, so in theory I could figure out when I started drawing from that...except the earliest drawings were ruined when the basement flooded.

After the flooding, my mom was condensing what was left, and I saw something surprising: a box filled with Ecto-1 drawings. I hadn’t drawn it 10 or 20 times, I’d drawn it 100 or 200 times. Repetitively, over and over, without consciously thinking about what I was doing.

It was practice without realizing I was practicing. I guess that’s how my art “leveled up” so quickly?

Later I discovered other details about my early development. There was a time around age 2 where I stopped talking. There were times when I liked to line up toys. My obsession before art was Legos, building complex shapes and stairs.

Today these might be recognized as possible indicators of autism, but this was the ‘80s.

Because I was shy and lacking in social skills, a teacher suggested to my parents that I might benefit from being held back a grade. I had a summer birthday, so holding me back would make me one of the oldest rather than the youngest.

Thankfully my parents didn’t take that advice. I would’ve been miserable. Despite being the youngest in my class, I surpassed everyone in terms of scores. A CAT test says I scored “higher than 99% of all 3rd grade student in the nation in total language.” 91% in reading. 90% in math. My reading comprehension was 98% in the nation, but was brought down by my reading vocabulary which was only 72%.

Yet this new information called into question a things about myself I’d never considered. Maybe certain things suddenly made more sense? In particular, the way I don’t have interests so much as obsessions. Any time I take an interest in a topic, it leads to an obsessive amount of research.

Discovering Comics

I think the first comic I ever saw was a Chick Tract some kid showed me in Sunday School. He was surprised I’d never seen one. It must’ve hadan impact on me, because I attempted to draw a tract-style comic starring C.O.P.S. (“Fighting Crime In A Future Time”).

I didn’t discover REAL comic books until a few years later. In 1991, Terminator 2: Judgement Day marketing was in full force and I thought it looked so cool. But it was Rated R, and I was only seven. My mom spotted a couple issues of a Marvel comic adaptation (drawn by Klaus Janson), and I guess that was the compromise until it was out on video.

I attempted to illustrate a comic imitating Janson’s cram-packed panel-per-page ratio. It was an epic crossover where Michael Keaton Batman encounters a Delorean driven by a T-1000, then the Ninja Turtles show up, and maybe the Ghostbusters? I knew how to introduce characters but not how to finish a story.

At this point I was still imagining becoming an animator, even though I barely knew anything about what it involved beyond some flip books I’d done. But all that changed when I discovered the X-Men.

X-Men and Batman: The Animated Series both debuted on FOX during the fall of 1992. I was a huge fan of the Tim Burton Batman movies and I’d seen every episode of the ‘60s show when it was revived in reruns, but I didn’t know the comics existed? I didn’t even know where to find comics.

My brother and I were both really into this new X-Men thing, and my brother was given a set of X-Men comics for his birthday. I borrowed them of course, and wanted to see how the story continued. My mom showed us a book store in the mall that had comics, and then we discovered the local comic store. That started my monthly addiction.

Now age 10, I decided I no longer wanted to be an animator. Comics were my true calling. And my dream was to break in at age 16.

Learning Comics

Age 11: I went from reading just Uncanny X-Men to buying the entire X-line, thanks to and event called Age Of Apocalypse.

Age 12: I started buying Wizard magazine. The first two issues I bought included life-changing information, like that you get hired by building a portfolio and showing it to editors. There was industry news, and art tutorials by Greg Capullo. I added the magazine to my monthly buy list. An X-Men 30th anniversary special gave me the entire history of the characters, and a run-down of the key artists and writers with examples of their work. It was like a Rosetta Stone before Wikipedia.

Age 13: I started buying most of Marvel’s output thanks to an event called Heroes Reborn. I never got into the Batbooks, I guess because the art didn’t look as cool? Comics contained ads for the Joe Kubert School, which became my backup plan if I didn’t break into comics on my own. I also discovered the internet around this time.

Age 14: My first year of high school. I spent every lunch hour in the library browsing the internet, since we didn’t have a computer at home yet. I discovered several comic art forums where pros and amateurs traded tips. During the summer I attended a week long art session taught at a local college by a professor who grew up on ‘60s Marvel. There I learned I’d been using paper that was much too thin to ink on, and I learned about the importance of Jack Kirby.

Age 15: I started buying Comic Book Artist magazine. I thought it’d be about drawing tips, but instead it was filled with fascinating comics history, which became an obsession of its own.

Age 16: A year of disappointment. I knew I wasn’t at the level I needed to be to get pro work, but wasn’t sure how to get to the next level. Nowadays there are all sorts of resources I could’ve used, but back then there was no Youtube, no social media, and few books about the craft of comics.

I was now certain the Joe Kubert School was the way to go.

Changing Plans

My family took a trip to Dover, NJ to visit the Joe Kubert School campus, and it was pretty disappointing. The town didn’t feel super friendly, and the school wasn’t accredited, which raised issues in regards to getting student aid. Plus the idea of spending so much money on a non-degree.

The guy showing me around tried to sell me by pointing out that comic companies don’t care about whether you went to college, they just want to see the portfolio.

I took this to heart and decided not to go to college. I was pretty crushed at first, because I’d had this dream plan for so long, and now I was plan-less. But eventually a new plan began to form.

It was time to start doing conventions.

A startup called CrossGen had a sample script and were taking submissions at SDCC 2000, so I went there. I still felt like my work wasn’t quite ready for prime time, but i was worth a shot.

And nothing came of it, other than a cool Crossgen rejection letter in a box somewhere. None of the other publishers could be bothered to even send that.

In hindsight, I was trying to enter at maybe the worst possible time in comics history. When I first started reading comics, they were at their peak during a boom period. When the bubble burst, the industry experienced year-over-year plummeting sales with no bottom in sight. No one was hiring.

But I kept at it, hoping for a lucky break. Top Cow was impressed that I did backgrounds (lol), and suggested I send in “background samples,” but I didn’t want to go down that route. But maybe that’s what a lucky break looks like? (On the other hand, many aspiring pencillers who start as inkers or colorists get stuck there.)

The next summer I went to Chicago with a Marvel sample script. I’d just graduated from high school, so I was really hoping. This time I got a critique from an editor who had actual advice to offer, and I learned a few things. But still no one was hiring.

I thought if I just stayed home and worked on art for a year, I’d eventually come up with pages so impressive that they’d HAVE to hire me. And if it didn’t work out after a year, I’d start looking for a college.

But now I was struggling with a new problem. I suddenly hated my art. I’d heard about a few professional artists who didn’t like looking at their own art, but I was certain this was different. After all, they’re actually good.

The year passed and I accomplished nothing. Based on things I’d heard, I was nervous that college might actually price me out of comics entirely. But I didn’t know that for sure, and I was super inexperienced when it came to money, since I’d never lived on my own before.

But I kept hearing how so many people have gone to college and they all turned out okay (this was before social media and before student debt became a crisis). I was clearly having trouble moving forward on my own, and Youtube still didn’t exist, so what choice did I have?

Choosing Schools

There were only a few colleges with comic art programs back then (maybe three total?), but one of them just happened to be over here in Minnesota. Art school appealed to me because all the classes were art-focused, so I wouldn’t have to waste my time with math and other BS.

And as I humble-bragged earlier, I’m good at math. But I hated it. At one point some kids from Math League asked if I’d join the team. “‘MATH LEAGUE?’ You mean you do math for FUN??”

I hated math so much, I took harder, accelerated math courses via a local college, just so I could finish math early and spend my last years of high school wonderfully mathless. If there’d been a similar way to graduate from high school earlier, I would’ve taken it. When I realized we were all graduating regardless of how much work we put in, I stopped caring so much about grades and let an occasional B+ slip in.

When I would see classmates busy studying for their SATs or ACTs, I was so glad I didn’t have to bother with that.

But the joke was on me. Because this art school didn’t just require a portfolio review (which I was more than ready for). It also wanted ACT test results.

I remember wondering if I should study before I take it, since everyone took it so seriously in high school. But I didn’t even know how to study. It’s not a skill I’d learned, because I never needed to. So I decided to wing it.

You’ll hate me, but without studying I scored in the top 96% for English, the top 94% for Reading, the top 96% for Science...but only top 87% for Math, because I hadn’t taken a math class in three years. That brought my total down 90%..

(Later, I had to learn to study in order to pass some horrifically-taught art history classes. That teacher made me hate art history, which is ironic given how much of my own writing is focused on history.)

So I got into the school, only to discover that even structured teaching wasn’t going to solve my new art problem. During my first year I told my mom that I don’t enjoy art anymore, and she thought it might be depression. I mean, that’s plausible, losing interest in your passions?

In hindsight, I now have enough experience with real depression that I can definitively say it wasn’t that. I mean, I was occasionally depressed back then, but hating my art was unrelated. It took me years to figure out the actual problem.

Dunning Kruger

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is named after a study which found that:

1) People who aren’t knowledgeable about a skill tend to think they’re better at it than they are, because they don’t know enough to know what they don’t know.

2) Conversely, people who ARE knowledgeable about a skill tend to think they’re worse at it than they are.

My problem went one level deeper. I’d learned a shit ton about every skill related to comic art, but I hadn’t put in as much time actually practicing. And now practicing was tough, because I was hyper-aware of how bad every line was as I laid it down.

In other words, the exact reverse of when I was four and drew repetitively on auto-pilot. Back then I was oblivious that I was practicing anything at all. Now I had the benefit and detriment of a critical mind.

But this realization came later. At the time I was just miserable and didn’t know what was wrong with me.

Halfway through art school, I realized I’d likely already priced myself out of comics, and I needed a real degree that would function back-up plan. So I switched majors. Instead of a Comics major filling my electives with design classes, I became a Design major filling my electives with comics classes.

In order to change my major, I had to explain it to the head of the school. This was awkward because it partly involved explaining how the comics industry worked, and he didn’t want to believe it. He told me I was being cynical.

I tried doing comic samples one last time after college, for a convention in 2006, but couldn’t even finish a page. Then sometime around 2008, I gave up drawing entirely.

How I got started again is another story.

You can also find me on:

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/katewillaert/?hl=en

Twitter -  https://twitter.com/katewillaert

Art Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/katewillaert

History Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/acriticalhit

[musutofu]

【 I, My, Me, Mine 】

♡ pairing | Toga x ᶠᴱᴹ Reader ✑ word count | 3.9k �� genre | angst ✗ warnings | knives, blood, character death, identity theft ✮ A/N | the Toga origin story literally no one asked me to write

The harsh white light that glows overhead, filling the quiet room with equally muted tones has settled painfully in Toga’s head. With every second ticking past she can feel a pounding against her eyes like a prisoner beating against their cell walls. But perhaps that isn’t all attributed to the headache that’s steadily scraping against her skull. There’s always been another person inside her; smaller, weaker, easy to ignore. The pain of their nails scraping incessantly inside her head has long since become a sort of white noise, only recently has it spiked to a volume that impossible to ignore. To her credit, Toga had tried to pretend she didn’t hear the little niggling voice in her head spike in volume all those months ago, but it was a fruitless endeavor. Every time she gets her mind to quiet, to become sweet and docile–the girl everyone thinks she is; the girl she should be–she does something that has her mind screaming out at an earsplitting decibel.

It had started as a soft hum that now buzzed through her head like a fitful swarm of wasps, stinging and stinging until her mind is swollen, overflown, with thoughts of her, her, her. At times, Toga just wants to slap her hands over her ears and scream at the top of her lungs, willing everything else to silence. But that’s not what sweet and docile girls do, especially not in the middle of a classroom. But this accursed room is always when that little voice gets bigger, going from a lisping child to a lumbering beast with just one glance at her. Knowing the cause should make it easy to ignore, easy to contain her mind that’s threatening to detach from her will completely. And it would be that easy if she weren’t so magnetic. It’s a Herculean task for Toga to know she’s there, in the same room with her, to know she could look up and see her. Then not do it. It’s a sort of masochistic game she plays with herself, resting to see just how thin she can stretch her mind before it breaks. She’s getting close to the answer if the pain still galloping through her head like a herd of wild stallions is any indication.

Toga looks for a distraction that doesn’t involve the paper sitting in front of her. She’s in no mood to deal with mathematics and the margins of her worksheet is already filled with the aimless scribbles of her restless hand. To stop from tapping her pen and drawing attention to herself, Toga takes to poking at her pencil case. The gel like material gives with each prod, mutilating the pastel character decals printed on it and warping the overhead lights to a less offending brightness. After a particularly hard jab the unzipped opening gives way like a belly split up the middle, but instead of entrails the rest of her school supplies spill onto her desk. Amongst the pens, pencils, and erasers is an innocent looking box cutter. The sweet Hello Kitty design is as unoffending as it can get, but Toga is more interested in the blade still sheathed in the pink plastic.

With a steady glide of her thumb the blade emerges from its sheath, catching the painful light on the edge. It’s a new blade, never used, never tainted. Toga has plans for this particular blade. Her wrist flexes carefully, working to not flash a refraction of the light across anyone’s unsuspecting line of vision. If she’s caught her blade will most likely be confiscated with a lecture on being more diligent when it comes to her studies as the only replacement for what could barely qualify as a weapon. This wasn’t a weapon, not really. Knives were weapons. This meager blade could only offer her a taste of what she wants. And taste she does and the blade finally catches on what has been the object of her thoughts for these past, seemingly endless, months. The clean blade offers her a mirror-like surface to spy on her from like the Evil Queen looking through her magic mirror. The fairest one of all is on full display for her eyes only, working as studiously as ever on her math problems like all the other students around her.

Toga greedily absorbs everything she can about her in this moment. Mere drops compared to the monsoons she’s been gifted with in the past but it’ll be enough for now. It has to be. There’s only a few minutes left of classes for the day and she doesn’t work her part-time job today. Toga’s sure of it. Just as she watches her now, she watches her always. Wanting so badly to know about her; her likes, her dislikes, what makes her happy, what makes her sad, everything. It’s more than a wanting, it’s a necessity. She’s like a drug that invaded her mind and clouded her thoughts with nothing but the next time she’ll get her fix and Toga is a blissful addict. A fang catches on the plush edge of her lip, biting down to muffle the nearly erotic noises that are threatening to bubble to the surface.

She isn’t doing anything. Not really. But it’s all the small intricacies that make her entire being. Like each thread of a tapestry. Alone they don’t seem important, but what would the artwork be without them but an idea and an empty loom. Toga tastes her own blood, bitter and metallic on her tongue as she presses the tip of her pen against her mouth. Her lips are parted in the way Toga imagines they’d look if she were making a lewd noise, but only a sigh escapes those petal soft lips as she stares down at her desk pensively, pen catching between her teeth in thought. Toga spares a look down at the risk of missing even a second of her to see the pen so similar to the one being brandished so erotically between your lips. There’s only the faintest hint of chipping on the cap. Because she don’t chew her pens, she simply bites. Holding it in place then releasing. Toga wonders how it would feel to do such a thing to her. To set her fangs against the delicate skin of her neck and feel her sink into submission before releasing her. Her thighs snap together beneath her desk.

The sound is caught in the cushion of the final bell. No one notices Toga’s slip up, her debauched display that breaks her facade as a sweet and innocent girl. She’ll be glad to be rid of this place if only until tomorrow. Her mask can come away and be replace with a more convincing one. Their blood tastes different on her tongue. Toga hums hauntingly at the thought of her blood. Perhaps today will be the day she finally gets more than a menial sample of the liquid ambrosia flowing through your veins. She stumbles against the back of lockers at the thought of how her blood tasted on her tongue. It had been a simple happenstance during the time the both of you were assigned to clean the classroom. A clumsy slide of her hand against a stack of papers had split her delicate finger open. It was a small sliver, only a single pearl of blood beading at her fingertip but Toga had been unable to stop herself. Facade forgotten in the face of what she craved most in that moment. She had laughed so abashedly at the feeling of her tongue laving at the small cut. Toga has played it off as a gesture between friends, a worry that she might get dust in her wound if it wasn’t attended to immediately.

Because she was her friend. Toga had made it so. Anything she could do to her closer to her was done in a heartbeat. At the thought of her already slinking so far away from her, Toga’s chest tugs like there’s a string tethered from her heart to hers. She rushes through shoving her belongings in her locker and runs through the emptying halls just in time to see her dropping her bike lock into her book bag. The bike in question is an eclectic collection of stories that Toga knows by heart. Originally a somber black beneath the chipping teal paint, her father had painted it to be a unisex color; a bike shared between all three of his children. Her brother, though younger, was large for his age and able to ride it with ease. There are marks of him in the Hero trading cards pinned ever-so carefully to the back tire spokes. Her older brother is evident in the sawed off handlebars; an act of rebellion to remove the silver and white streamers that originally resided there. Her only addition was the faded and ripped flame decal slapped in the center of the guardrail; a act of solidarity with her older brother’s more rugged intentions for the communal mode of transportation.

Toga watches as she mounts the bike, carefully of sitting properly with uniform skirt–although a pair of shorts always resides beneath the pleated fabric–and kicks off the wet pavement. She wonders why she bothered to ride her bike to school in the first place. Winter is waning, but still hanging on to the last dregs of cold weather. This morning had been deceptively warm only for the clouds to fall heavy and break open with bursts of icy white just as the first bell rang. The snow has mostly melted in the afternoon snow, but there’s always the chance of small puddles icing over as the sun begins to set. It’s why she follows her, Toga insists, although it isn’t that at all. It’s an alibi for if she’s caught, but only if. She knows the route she takes home as well as her own, knows the people that linger on the way there. Toga steps into a thicket of bushes a few blocks out from campus and crouches in the fading light. Here she strips off her uniform, folding it into her bag and replacing it with something entirely new.

The woman that runs the food cart she passed everyday is clumsy and susceptible to the easy smiles and coquettish laughter that Toga has to offer. The day she caught the woman with an open wound was imminent, but took longer than expected. It had taken weeks to get even a few drops of her blood and it tastes oddly greasy on her tongue, much like the food she sells. The woman and her cart have been missing this past month, the cold keeping them at bay. Toga can only hope today isn’t the day she’s fooled into returning to her normal routine just as she was fooled into riding her bike. Toga can see her up ahead, small in the distance, but just a glimpse of you is enough to have heat spreading through her already ruddy cheeks. She wills her out of her thoughts and takes in a deep pull of the brisk air, fading out of existence as she walks the same path she’s taken so many times. Hopefully her familiar face will be enough to lure her into the trap she’s set out, but only time will tell.

A safeguard presents itself as she passes a group of children tossing chunks of ice and snow at each other. One child goes down with a wail, fat tears leaking down his flushed cheeks in an instant. Toga can small the blood and see the plan formulating. She makes a stop, ignoring the way her new body groans and lurches under its heavy weight, crouching down to assist the child. The cut isn’t terrible, just a few centimeters long and shallow, but there’s blood to be tasted, an identity to be borrowed. She soothes the cut with a maternal kiss and tastes the tart of his blood on her tongue. After a moment the tears stop and he goes back to playing. Toga ducks into a shaded store front that’s been closed for the day, taking off the woman’s clothes to become a child. With another long pull of frigid air Toga fades out of existence, only appearing again once she’s standing directly in her path. As expected, the worn tire treads don’t take well to the ice hidden in the deepening shadows and she goes flying over the flaming handlebars to land heavily in a snow back. The slush cushions her fall and Toga mourns the painless landing. There’s not a single trace of her blood in the air. Soon there will be. Very soon, Toga reassures herself. Disappearing long enough for her to start to come to.

For a moment, Toga thinks she’s missed a delicious taste of your exquisite blood, that her senses failed her. But as she moves closer to her prone, but awakening form, she realizes the red-dyed snow is the result of a Crimson Riot trading card stuck in the pile of snow like a throwing star. The Hero’s namesake color being drawn off the paper by the watery bed she’s attempting to rise from. Without bothering to remove her closes, Toga uses her last dregs of blood to nearly triple in size. The child’s clothing tearing in favor of the delivery man uniform she dons inconspicuously. It had been a lucky break that Toga had witnessed the poor man’s first workplace injury as he sliced his palm open along with the box of packages he was delivering. There’d been enough blood for her to maintain this form for at least a few hours, but with his burly build and long legs Toga won’t need all that time. She leaves her bike to be found by the next passerby in favor of turning for home. A place where no one would dare call her anything less than sane. The voice in her head rejoices at the promise of having her all to herself. No one could stop her from being her true self when it’ll be just the two of them.

She stays docile in Toga’s arms the entire trip there, eyes opening for only a few minutes before closing again. The bruise on her head is darkening with the coming of night and Toga wonders if she has a concussion. It makes no nevermind to her. She always admired how she was rebellious in small ways; wearing bright colored shorts beneath her bland school uniform and refusing to wear a helmet when she rode her bike. It’s all so endearing and Toga wants to know why she does these things, how it feels when she does it. She wants to know everything. And she will. Her parents make no move to stop her as she caries her trophy over the threshold, dropping grey sludge in the entryway as she returns to the form they gave to her. Toga was born to be a predator. They made it so. Now they must reap what they’ve sowed in her. The fierce, feline appearance; a mane of wild blonde hair, restless golden eyes that split down the center, insatiable fangs that ache for her next taste of blood. Toga is only doing what’s expected of her as such a natural born predator. She’s the meek prey, still weak in her arms. Toga can do as she pleases with the spoils she’s won. They don’t even venture to ask who she is. And if victory weren’t so palatable on her tongue she’d make them see, she’d tell them exactly who she is.

The goddess that’s bewitched her looks degraded on her bed. Simple linen sheets of a soft orange like the fading sun cushion you. White pillows spreading out like wings beneath your head and shoulders. She’s the perfect picture of divine grace and Toga can’t wait to feel just as angelic. But first she has to see. Her limbs are cold and pliable under her hands, like a freshly dead corpse. Her clothes fall away piece by piece until only her underwear keeps her celestial innocence. Clothes don’t matter anyway. Toga has a uniform exactly like hers, so does every other girl in their class. She has to unwrap her before basking in the full glory of her. Toga maps out the skin she’s never seen before. Poking and prodding warmth back into her body as she takes in the hidden marks and scars she hadn’t known existed. It’s exhilarating to run her finger over the constellation of beauty marks sitting high on the soft expanse of her thigh, to feel the slightly raised texture of the scar just above her hip bone, to marvel at the pattern her waistband has left in her skin. Toga drinks in every part of her like she’s just traversed all the earth’s deserts without a drop of water. It’s a miracle there’s anything left of her body for her to wake up in.

Watching her wake is like a dream as her lashes flutter to life to reveal the dim light of her eyes. She’s confused but placated by the wide smile Toga affords her, fangs glinting like pearly blades in the soft light. The voice is thundering through her head again, louder than ever before. Begging her to take, to claim, to possess, to be. Because that’s what all this was about, Toga become closer to you. They say the closer you are to your friend the more similar you act. Toga wants to be closer than close to her. She wants to be so close that no one can tell where Toga ends and she begins. Her head lolls back against the mountain of pillows, hazy eyes still trying to become acclimated with her surroundings. The subtle movement stretches her throat in an enticing arc and Toga’s fangs almost pulse with the need to consume and duplicate. Even with her so close the taste of her blood is fading from Toga’s memory. She needs more. And she’d have it. She’d have her.

The soft column of her trachea rises and falls with each erratic breath she takes. Toga leans closer to feel the air on her face, to fill her lungs with it. She is her. Toga inhales with her every exhale. Two sides of the same coin. Two bodies for one girl. But there can only be one. Toga profs at her ribs, slipping a hand under her shirt that’s become much too large after returning to her normal but incomplete body, prodding at the ladder of bones just under her own skin. They’re different in ways Toga can’t explain and she hates it. She hates her. She loves her. She is her. She speaks in fear as Toga’s nails rake heated welts across her skin, trying to claw her open. To see why they aren’t the same on the inside either. Blood rises through the tears in her skin and the cloying scent of her blood soothes Toga. Her tongue is like molten lava against her cold skin as she likes over the drops of blood spilled forth by her own hand. The taste is almost orgasmic and Toga drops her head between the valley of her breasts, whining as the taste being to leave her mouth. It’s not enough.

Toga activates her Quirk, finally seeing herself as she should be. As her. Gone are the blonde flyaways and vertical pupils. Her fangs have receded back into her gums and her body has become something it isn’t. Something it should be. She’s become her and Toga loves it.

“Look how beautiful we are. Look how beautiful I am.” Toga growls in that seductively sweet drawl she’s always spoken with. It’s the voice of an angel. The voice that first afflicted her with this curse to be as one with the goddess she worships. But there can only be one her. Toga forces her to look in the mirror. To see her. There can only be one. And Toga wants to be it. She deserves to be it. Not the weak angel who won’t say a thing to calm her worshipping prophet. She doesn’t deserve to be herself. What type of deity knows forgiveness but not mercilessness? Toga knows of the harsh other half. A thing she could never know of. But that’s beneath the mask of sickly sweetness. Toga knows of both sides. She is what Toga should be, what she appears to be. And she hates it. The reflections she watches her through, the routines she’s stalked her through; they’re her own. Toga is the real her. This girl is an imposter that must be dealt with.

The grey sludge beginning to drip from her shoulders reminds her to remove the imposter carefully. To protect and preserve. To collect then dispose. Her blood is Toga’s blood and she needs it. It’s hers. She stole it! Toga throws her back on to her mattress. The pillows are just pillows, the sheets are just sheets, the girl is a corpse living. The knives Toga wouldn’t dare bring to school are easily accessed her and she approaches her with one of her favorite blades, a needle, and blood bag. The cold blade is placed on her sternum, for later she promises, and the needle is stabbed into her arm with precision. Toga coos in time with her whining as the blood she stole is returned to its owner at a slow gush. It takes a few bags until her lips are pale and her eyes a dull. She looks like a cheap imitation as Toga glows with elation. The real her. She lifts your cardigan from the other discarded clothes on the floor. Tugging it over her head, ruffling the buns atop her head, to mimic the imposter in an act of poetic irony. When Toga looks in the mirror the only person she sees is herself.

Toga presses her nose into the cuff of her cardigan that’s slowly been stretched out of shape after years of wear. Even still when she sniffs the soft fabric Toga swears she can smell her. Just the faintest hint of her magnificent blood. But there’s no blood left to speak of. It’s all gone. Gone and used until she can’t turn into herself anymore. She’s left in this purgatory between as she appears and as she sees herself. Her untamed blonde hair doesn’t stay in the buns she made look so dainty and polished. Her bangs are choppy and uneven after being hacked down to length with her Hello Kitty box cutter. And her fangs still ache for the taste she’ll never have again. Toga misses her. The her she used to be. Maybe a new friend will help fill the void aching behind her ribs. After all, Mr. Stainy has blood to spare.

[ajaysirmath]

Math's | Ajay sir | TPLive Kota

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