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Intellectually I know people go to grad school on a whim. I've seen the memes. But I guess I never really got what a whim meant? Or I guess that it was more reserved for people who weren't international students?? Idk. So fal everyone I know who's gone to grad school abroad has done it very intentionally. And it was a draining, anxiety-inducing, heart wrenching process every time. Until now. Until a kid just applied because he had the money and nothing to lose. Just because he could. With no idea, no passion for anything in particular, no concept of anything, just time and money and good grades. And he got in. He got in. He got into a program a friend of mine with an infinitely more thought-out and mature profile didn't. And I know meritocracy is a lie. I know admissions like a lot of things aren't fair. I know all of this. But I still want to scream. I want to scream and cry and pull out my hair because I just cannot fathom that this just happens. That you just wake up and decide just because to apply to grad school with mediocre letters of recommendations and a random writing sample and just say you'll do whatever research in whatever area because your interests are just so broad and you'll just move to a different country and if you don't get in well it was just a try to see what it was like and improve your profile and whatnot. I just. I can't describe what that attitude makes me feel. The rage. Is it just the impostor syndrome that makes me feel so stunned like I could never approach it that way or if that's just irresponsible or just a display of incredible privilege that I just do not have. The fact that grad school is a dream of mine that feels impossible for me to achieve because I don't trust my profile to clear the barrier for entry and this kid just did it. With no effort. Just to see what it was like. I don't even want to get it.

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there are two key questions to gauge what sort of Weird Girl someone was as a preteen.

a) horses, dolphins or dragons?

b) Vikings, Ancient Egyptians or dinosaurs?

tell me in the tags please. if you were allowed to pick your own room decor between 7 and 13 the answer to A should be self evident bc every Weird Girl I knew who was allowed to pick had one of those three themes.

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i do think i should get to murder plato myself for making me read "hippike hippike all' hippois." what is the reason

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homer wasnt a real person??? /gen

dude asking that is like throwing a golden apple into a crowd of homeric scholars and telling them it goes to the most pedantic

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i learned about astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who as a student discovered pulsars, credits her discovery to impostor syndrome and a fear of being kicked out of college; “I’m a bit of a fighter, so I decided until they threw me out I would work my very hardest". That discovery earned the 1974 Nobel Prize (x)

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I fucked up. I really really fucked up

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funniest emperor commodus moment was when he decided to rename the month of october to “hercules” and everyone had to be like yeah i guess today is the 7th of hercules now

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I have been having issues w Tumblr and so I couldn't be here on nye/nyd but I wish you all a happy new year and I'll post a things of 2021 soon

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I’m thankful for my 10th grade history teacher because:

“I have to teach the book.” He said. “You have to read it and I have to give a test on it to make sure you know what’s in it.”

“Okay,” we said. “This is what school is.”

He also said “but I don’t have any rules that say I can’t teach you more than one book.”

“But this isn’t English class,” we complained.

“No it’s not,” he replied as he handed out photocopies of a different book I do not have the name of. I would learn later that he paid for the photocopies himself, because he could not afford to buy a set of books for us, and the school wouldn’t help. We had to turn in the photocopies at the end of the lesson. He’d done this for years, and the packets of paper were sets of folders containing well read photocopies and some pages were crumbly and he’d replace whole packets or pages in a single packet at a time. He had a whole cabinet full of these folders, broke down by chapter, out of a different book. Some of the packets included photocopies from more than one book, some news articles, a couple academic papers. We were not always required to read those, but we were promised extra credit if we did.

“Write me an essay,” he’d say.

“Ugh,” we groaned. “What about?”

“The differences between what’s in the packet and what’s in your books.”

And we would. He’d accept full essays and he’d accept a simple list of differences, but that was always an assignment. Point out the differences.

“Which fact do you believe?” He would ask us.

“The packet,” we’d answer.

“Why?” He’d ask.

“Because they don’t want us to have them,” we’d answer.

“Good,” he’s smile. “With this chapter, I’m not going to give you a packet. I want you to make your own packet based on the information in this chapter in your government supplied textbook.”

“Ugh,” we groaned.

But we learned how to do some simple research, and we were told that Wikipedia could be edited by anyone, but everyone that edited had to present sources. We had to come up with twenty pages worth of extra information on the chapter in our textbook. The textbook’s chapter was something like ten pages long. We had to do our essay/lists on what was left out/added/changed. It was a good two week long project.

“Why am I making you do this?”

“Because it’s busy work,” someone answered.

He frowned. “Because one day you’ll be presented something as fact and you’ll have to decide if it is fact or not.”

“How do we know the difference?”

“Maybe one day one of you will grow up and be able to give a simple answer to that question because I don’t have that answer.”

“You just didn’t want to do the work to make a packet yourself, huh?”

He smiled. “That is an advantage to having minions.”

And then he laughed like an evil vampire and we watched a movie.

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You look around the lecture hall and notice all the other students have fallen asleep. You look towards the lecturer, who has now stopped talking and is staring straight at you. “I don’t know how you’re still awake, but I guess we do this the hard way.” He says before pulling out a sword.

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Roommate psychological warfare chamber

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ho ho holy shit it’s december first (1st)

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Did I fell in love this year? No, not at all

Are all my top songs happy sweet love songs? Yes, they are.

I daydream a lot, okay?

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spotify wrapped is HERE! send me a number 1-100 and I’ll tell you the song it corresponds with on my top 100 playlist!

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museum studies goofs, 2/?

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I went back to therapy today. I cried and it was so good. I got to say some things out loud that I haven't been able to put into words, I felt incredibly validated in the reactions I'm having to my current shitty situation, I started working towards a plan to not fall apart once I'm out of here and no longer have to stay collected. So great!