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From the Wikipedia page about the Fermi Paradox: Given the high scientific probability for alien existence, why can we find no evidence of their existence whatsoever?

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I haven't been very on top of my game recently with time management and self discipline...which is how I got here, awake at 1AM cramming for my chemistry midterm tomorrow night with what feels like a mild fever (though is probably just a side effect of a lack of sleep all week).

This isn't exactly an ideal situation. I'm not exactly proud of myself (far from it, in fact). But hindsight is 20/20 and I have no time for self loathing, so I'm gonna get through this.

After my midterm I'll sleep (read as: pass out) for a solid 8+ hours. Come Saturday morning I'll start off fresh. Go to the gym. Do laundry. Bake some cookies. Catch up on lecture material that I've put off up to this point.

Vouloir c'est pouvoir.

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some wildflowers

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“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”

-Brianna Wiest, in Thought Catalog

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The dangerously widespread unspoken understanding that academic writing is supposed to be incomprehensible really annoys me to no end. How can something that should serve as a vehicle for the divulgation of knowledge be barely intelligibile to anyone, except for (maybe) its author? It honestly baffles me that inaccessibility in education is not universally perceived as a disvalue.

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I keep forgetting that learning to code is just like any other language. Especially during that initial learning curve, if I don't use it (speak it) or practice it, I'll lose it.

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dreamy recipes 

♡ lilac cream tarts

♡ honey lilac posset

♡ rose honey rice pudding 

♡ plum blossom honey panna cotta

♡ wild violet sweethearts

♡ white clover pudding

♡ lavender tea milk punch

♡  dutch puff pancake with lemon curd & primrose cream

all recipes sourced from gathervictoria.com, which also has loads of interesting information on ancestral food traditions, herbalism, and women’s history ❦

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I’mma be real for a second. All the studyspo posts and studyblr reblogs won’t help you unless YOU make the change. Looking to stop procrastinating? Get better grades? Eat healthier? Get fitter?

All that’s stopping you from doing this is you. All you need is discipline. This took me ages of learning the hard way that that’s literally all it is. Discipline. It’s finding the root core of WHY you want to study WHY you want to eat healthier and it needs to be something strong that you can hold on to. Such as being top of your class, going to med school, practicing a good routine for after high school, wanting to feel better by eating better, want a longer life etc. etc.

After you find your motivation, hold on to it. And from there on out you have to fight for it. And practice. With practice it will become easier, I promise. Starting is always the hardest part but don’t give up. Discipline yourself to be who you want and achieve your goals. Don’t let anything stop you.

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Credit: @juliehangart

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12 March 2019, Tuesday 

So the university’s resident cat decided to sleep on my lap while I was reading outside <3 Is this what love feels like???

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concept: chaotic academia

it’s not as pretty and put together as dark academia

you’re wearing two cardigans, mismatched socks and some jeans that are bordering on “just about clean enough”. nothing will stand between you and your next cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate and adding extra sugar.

emptying your pockets at the end of the day and coming to a total of four pens, a pocket notebook, two receipts, and a highlighter.

your hair keeps falling in your face. you use a rubber band to tie it back. your fringe falls in your face. a paperclip is used to keep it back for the next ten minutes. you probably need a haircut.

the floor is the best place to study. there are so many books and pages of notes scattered around that the carpet can’t be seen anymore.

a rush before you leave class. your ID? got it. keys? got them. wait, where did your ID go again..? did you put your phone in your backpack or in any of the nine pockets on your person.

trash is piled up neatly in the corner, ready to be put into a rubbish bag and taken out. you’ll do it tomorrow, you say. you said the exact same thing last week.

you’re typing and you miss a letter. you go back to fix it. you miss a different letter. you go back to fix it. somehow you have fewer letters than you started with. you take it as a sign to take a break.

it’s time for a quick break. half an hour later you realise that you still haven’t gone back to work. Whoops.

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CPSC is fun and all but I just spent 1 hour trying to fix an error that ended up being because of a spelling mistake

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Maybe I'll finally get my ears pierced in 2020

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it won’t be like what you imagined. maybe you get the road trip to the beach with coffee in your hand and the radio playing, maybe you don’t. but happy shows up. it’s in a 2 AM game of jenga with your new college friends. it’s curling up for another marathon of netflix. it’s meeting the person who will be your best man at the wedding. it’s 4:45pm in the library when the girl in the study coral across from you quietly whispers “i’m going to set everything on fire” and then turns to you and asks if you wanna take a break for dinner (say yes, she’s very nice and you both need a moment away from the stress). it’s the mornings they have omelettes and in good books and in a puddle that looks cool. it’s sometimes picturesque, but more often it’s full-belly laughter at stupid things on the floor of your friend’s house while in the background someone is debating the best way to win settlers of catan. 

i know it gets dark early now and the tired is setting in and everything sort of feels blank and hazy and you want to spend ages staring at walls thinking of nothing

but happiness will find a way in. it will be small moments. look for them.

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Productive Things That Aren’t Studying

washing the dishes

making your bed

tidying your book/dvd shelf/shelves

cleaning the cupboard/wardrobe

reading

sleeping

writing a blog

planning your month/week/day

replying to messages or asks

responding to emails

sorting through letters/mail

clearing your email inbox

organising stationery

clean your sinks

clean your toilets

pet your pet

sort through old clothes

give to charity

go on a walk

go on a run

clean down any surfaces

work out

meal prep

get rid of empty shampoo bottles from the shower

clean out old food from the cupboard/fridge

empty out your school bag

call your parent

unfriend/unfollow people you no longer interact with

watch a TEDTalk

empty the bins/trash

clean the mirrors in your house

hug your pet

wash some clothes

buy any birthday cards/presents that you need to

reply to any old texts

make a tumblr post on productive things that aren’t studying

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Okay, so you’ve been called smart all your life. As a kid, you were one of the smartest in your class. Maybe you could read at a much higher level than your peers, or you could fly through multiplication drills like they were nothing. Then, you get to high school and suddenly you’re surrounded by lots of people who were ‘gifted kids’. None of what made you ‘special’ seems all that important now. Your work is actually challenging, and it’s actually requiring effort.

If you’re experiencing this, just know that so many students have gone through the same thing. Maybe it happens in high school, maybe college. But a lot of us who were considered gifted as kids suddenly run into this and it challenges our entire identity. It can be paralyzing, but it’s 100% possible to overcome it and succeed! I’ve compiled a few tips for ex-gifted kids dealing with impostor syndrome and self-doubt. I’m not a therapist, psychologist, or any sort of education expert. I’m just speaking to my own experiences, and I welcome any input from others who have insight into this as well!

1. Understand that working hard does not mean you aren’t intelligent. If something doesn’t come naturally to you, that’s not a reason to give up. Believing that people can do things “just because they were born with a talent for it” is only going to hurt you. It’s not true! People may have natural aptitudes for things, but hard work is involved even for the smartest or most talented people. You are capable of learning anything, and you don’t have to be “good at it” right away to do so.

2. Comparison will kill you. You are your only competition. Focusing on how you rank with other students, and comparing yourself to your classmates is going to exhaust you. By focusing on others, you can’t put your full energy into focusing on your work and yourself. You belong. Even if you struggle with your work, you belong. Focus on your own self-improvement and doing your best.

3. Don’t focus on the goal, focus on your current actions. If you’re always thinking about the future, and about whether you’ll get into that school or that program or win that award or get that scholarship, you’re not using that time to get work done. Don’t worry about college applications, just do your homework. Focus on what you are doing now to reach your goals so you can apply to schools with confidence later.

4. Your grades may not reflect intelligence, but they do reflect work ethic. Don’t let others convince you that grades mean nothing. They sure as hell mean a lot to colleges, and thinking that you should “reject the current education system” is not going to harm anyone but yourself. If you don’t feel like you’re learning anything in your high school classes, that’s all the more reason to want to get into a university that will challenge you. If you put effort into your work, it will not let you down. Your hard work will be reflected on your transcript. Don’t lose focus.

5. Talk to someone. Let people know if you’re struggling. It can be hard to feel like you aren’t allowed to identify as “smart” or to feel pressure to constantly compete and improve. I went to a highly competitive high school that pushed kids to cope in dangerous ways. This is not healthy and not okay. If you’re feeling overwhelmed you need to find healthy coping mechanisms. Speak with someone you trust and don’t let yourself spiral. Don’t try to self medicate. Your well being is always more important than your grades. Period.

6. Enjoy yourself. School may seem like hell, and you may feel like it will never end and you’ll always be stressed and worried. But high school is only four years, and you can do things during that time that you probably won’t ever again. Take advantage of things that seem fun, even if people think they’re nerdy or weird. Try and remind yourself that you’re lucky to have your education and you have the power to do great things with it. Don’t lose sight of your own ability and your bright future!