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Moments in time, preserved through sentiments Twitter | Ko-Fi | Patreon

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Guys I'm sorry but I need to rant for a moment, okay? And then I get to ask y'all for advice (TLDR at bottom) Okay cool. Um. Once more unto the break.

I am currently sitting in my school library trying to fucking study and I am so incredibly stressed because my finals are soon and I CANT GET MY BRAIN TO STUDY!!

And like I'm in the IB program right now (I've dropped it starting next semester cuz it was fucking with me for reasons) and I was a "gifted kid" all through elementary school, right, which is definitely fucking with me even more.

In elementary and in grades leading in to this year I was good at math. Like I was good at it. And now I'm fuckibg dying and have no idea what is going on and I am going to cry because suddenly I'm not good at this thing that I used to be amazing at. And it sucks. So hard.

And like I said, my brain won't allow me to study!! I put on background noise that feels nice on my brain (aka TARDIS humming) and I put my phone at the bottom of my bag and I sit down with Practice questions and gum to chew and I do fine and then. And then I hit a question that I can't figure out on the first try. And my brain fucking goes. WELP OBVIOUSLY WE'LL JUST FAIL NOW NO POINT IN STUDYING AT ALL. and suddenly I'm distracted by the frickin books on the bookshelf next to me or the conversation happening in the next aisle or the way I'm sitting. And then I go fuck it and reach for my phone, and can't get myself to put it down again.

And like, at this point I'm sure I'm neurodivergent of some kind, maybe ADHD? and I thought of it and it's been peer reviewed (my entire friend group is neurodivergent) and like. I think now that I've acknowledged this part of me it's maybe come to the surface a bit more. And combine that with my issues with asking for help, and my bad self esteem, and my gifted kid status and fear of being wrong and fucking up and everything. This is just fucking with me. Like so much. Like an astornonomical amount.

[TLDR; I think I have ADHD and my brain hates me a lot, and I need to study but can't]

So. I come to you, fellow neurodivergents of tumblr, for a final resort in figuring this shit out.

Seriously, do y'all have advice for actually managing to study? Because I am desperate. Please.

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hi!! i'm back after spending a long time focusing on my other blogs!

my url was nd-studying-writing-chaos, but i changed it to neurodivergent-studyblr.

i'm reworking a lot of the appearance of the blog, but i'm still a studyblr focused on neurodivergent students, hence the url!

a lot's been happening in my life lately, and i'm excited to see where things are going! hope you're all doing great, see you around!

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Five Quick Tips For Better Notes

Preview the reading. Spend 1-2 minutes and skim through the material. Look at headings to see what the major concepts will be. Use these to help check your understanding by turning the heading into a question.

Jot down facts that are new to you. (terms, dates, names, etc.). By making a short note of these you are actually building yourself a custom study tool to work on memorization for the exam. If you don’t make note of them, how will you ever know what you need to memorize?

Look for cues in the text. Words like “3 steps to…”, bold words, or italicized words can indicate important information.

Make note of questions you have about concepts. Just make a note, flag it as a question, and keep moving. This keeps you from getting stuck on one thing for too long, but you also won’t forget it was fuzzy. You’ll be able to come back later and decide if it does make sense after reviewing more of the resource or if you need to dig back into the area.

Build your notes in question/answer form. Use the objectives and/or headings to give you some starting questions and work to answer them in your own words. These also convert really well on quizlet.com for easy review.

Try It Yourself: 30-Minute Challenge

Grab your textbook, notebook, and a pen.

Do a quick 2-minute preview to get an idea of what is covered in the upcoming chapter.

Using the other tips above, take notes on the chapter.

Review your notes. Are they short? Will they help you to study for the exam a couple of weeks down the road?

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I believe in free education, one that’s available to everyone; no matter their race, gender, age, wealth, etc… This masterpost was created for every knowledge hungry individual out there. I hope it will serve you well. Enjoy!

FREE ONLINE COURSES (here are listed websites that provide huge variety of courses)

Alison 

Coursera

FutureLearn

open2study

Khan Academy

edX

P2P U

Academic Earth

iversity

Stanford Online

MIT Open Courseware

Open Yale Courses

BBC Learning

OpenLearn

Carnegie Mellon University OLI

University of Reddit

Saylor

IDEAS, INSPIRATION & NEWS (websites which deliver educational content meant to entertain you and stimulate your brain)

TED

FORA

Big Think 

99u

BBC Future

Seriously Amazing

How Stuff Works

Discovery News

National Geographic

Science News

Popular Science

IFLScience

YouTube Edu

NewScientist

DIY & HOW-TO’S (Don’t know how to do that? Want to learn how to do it yourself? Here are some great websites.)

wikiHow

Wonder How To

instructables

eHow

Howcast

MAKE

Do it yourself

FREE TEXTBOOKS & E-BOOKS

OpenStax CNX

Open Textbooks

Bookboon

Textbook Revolution

E-books Directory

FullBooks

Books Should Be Free

Classic Reader

Read Print

Project Gutenberg

AudioBooks For Free

LibriVox

Poem Hunter

Bartleby

MIT Classics

Many Books

Open Textbooks BCcampus

Open Textbook Library

WikiBooks

SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES & JOURNALS

Directory of Open Access Journals

Scitable

PLOS

Wiley Open Access

Springer Open

Oxford Open

Elsevier Open Access

ArXiv

Open Access Library

LEARN:

1. LANGUAGES

Duolingo

BBC Languages

Learn A Language

101languages

Memrise

Livemocha

Foreign Services Institute

My Languages

Surface Languages

Lingualia

OmniGlot

OpenCulture’s Language links

2. COMPUTER SCIENCE & PROGRAMMING

Codecademy

Programmr

GA Dash

CodeHS

w3schools

Code Avengers

Codelearn

The Code Player

Code School

Code.org

Programming Motherf*?$%#

Bento

Bucky’s room

WiBit

Learn Code the Hard Way

Mozilla Developer Network

Microsoft Virtual Academy

3. YOGA & MEDITATION

Learning Yoga

Learn Meditation

Yome

Free Meditation

Online Meditation

Do Yoga With Me

Yoga Learning Center

4. PHOTOGRAPHY & FILMMAKING

Exposure Guide

The Bastards Book of Photography

Cambridge in Color

Best Photo Lessons

Photography Course

Production Now

nyvs

Learn About Film

Film School Online

5. DRAWING & PAINTING

Enliighten

Ctrl+Paint

ArtGraphica

Google Cultural Institute

Drawspace

DragoArt

WetCanvas

6. INSTRUMENTS & MUSIC THEORY

Music Theory

Teoria

Music Theory Videos

Furmanczyk Academy of Music

Dave Conservatoire

Petrucci Music Library

Justin Guitar

Guitar Lessons

Piano Lessons

Zebra Keys

Play Bass Now

7. OTHER UNCATEGORIZED SKILLS

Investopedia

The Chess Website

Chesscademy

Chess.com

Spreeder

ReadSpeeder

First Aid for Free

First Aid Web

NHS Choices

Wolfram Demonstrations Project

Please feel free to add more learning focused websites. 

*There are a lot more learning websites out there, but I picked the ones that are, as far as I’m aware, completely free and in my opinion the best/ most useful.

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Coping 101 - a masterpost of down to earth resources

This post doesn’t contain links to many professional resources - it’s a list of coping tips from people who are mentally ill/disabled themselves and who all decided to share what has worked for them here on tumblr. In the last 7 months I have been sharing content created for and by mentally ill/disabled people on this blog - and to celebrate reaching 5000 followers, I have decided to collect all the best coping tips I’ve come across in one easily accessible place. Enjoy!

Managing emotions:

Letting go of emotional suffering via mindfulness.

DBT strengthening statements

Handling negative emotions

The “emotions are signals” method

The “mindfully recognizing emotions” method

Healthy perspectives on emotions

The “emotions are like hiccups” method

The “healthy outlets” method

Managing anxiety:

Coping statements for anxiety.

Breathing exercise gif

Breathing exercise gif 2

Things to remember when having an anxiety attack

The “just show up” method

The “panicky friend” method

Grounding techniques 

The “I can survive the next 10 seconds” method

The “distract your brain” method

The “you will be able to cope” method

Managing depression:

7 depression tips and why they work

Depression tips

21 tips to keeping your shit together when you’re depressed

Managing executive dysfunction:

The “might as well” method.

The “one step access” method.

Why self-discipline isn’t always the answer. 

The “use whatever works” method.

The “taking care of someone else” method.

The “june-bugging” method.

Tricks for pushing through executive dysfunction

The “do several things at once” method

The “accept your limits” methods

The “turn it into a game” method

The “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly” method

The “tricking your brain” method

The “untangling the spaghetti” method.

The “smaller steps” method

The “emergency cleaning” method

The “letting go of should” method.

The “my body is an animal I need to care about” method

The “fork theory” method

The “remove the barriers” method

The “half-ass things” method

Managing negative thinking:

Challenging cognitive distortions.

Finding alternative thoughts.

Challenging negative thoughts

How to get over past mistakes

Toxic positivity vs hope and validation

How to improve your self-esteem

Negative and positive cognitions

The “self neutrality” method

The “separate your negative qualities from your identity” method

Self talk to help end obsessions

Ten forms of twisted thinking + ten ways to untwist your thinking

Managing self care:

How to practice balanced self care.

Why hands-on hobbies are important

Ways to self-soothe

A list of mental illness workbooks 

Ways to start feeling again

How to get back on track after a breakdown

How to self-soothe and treat yourself

Types of healthy coping skills

The “parenting yourself” method

An interactive self care guide

The “don’t ignore your needs” method

Online self care

Making the most of therapy

Free worksheets for people who can’t access therapy

The “add good things to your life” method

Showering for spoonies

The “do what you can” method

The “it isn’t a waste of time just because it won’t cure you” method.

Self care cheat sheet

The “create something” method

Managing school:

Studying with anxiety and depression

Studying with mental illness

Coping with dissociation in school

Managing exam periods when you’re mentally ill

The “done is better than none” method

How to survive college

Managing urges to harm yourself:

What to do to when you’re suicidal

Questions to ask before giving up

Alternatives to self harm

Coping with suicidal thoughts

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We are all aware that libraries across the United States are under attack. Thanks to groups like Moms for Liberty and other outspoken “concerned citizens,” there has been actual legislative action at multiple levels of government to limit what libraries can do and provide to their communities. Even in the places where there hasn’t been that kind of action, those same concerned citizens have mounted acts of intimidation to instill fear and block access...In light of this, I’ve heard many iterations of the same question: how can we help? What do libraries and library staff need right now?

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nobuddy feels like they have a sharp attention span these days, right? and we all just click “agree on terms of service” because its hard to love yourself sometimes, well

enter Terms of Service, Didn’t Read: a website and a browser addon that streamlines the terms of service of many popular web services to be read by the tech sunday drivers.

It’s graded from A (great) to E (awful) and if you have the addon you have access to the info about the website on your bar

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bad news, professor, the sixty dollar book of short stories and poems that you "edited" for our english 101 class is out of stock from the school bookstore, the included texts are all available online, and I have constructed a google doc to share with the class.

Kids, if you are in an English 101 class and you have a textbook that costs more than twenty bucks you should check your syllabus and see if the assigned readings are available online.

English 101 professors fucking love stories that were originally published in the New Yorker or poems that are 100 years old.

Are you taking an English 101 class during the fall semester? I give it an 80% probability of including an Edgar Allan Poe short story and you DO NOT PAY for Edgar Allan Poe short stories you go to Gutenberg.org and you read for free. (my class is doing the cask of amontillado and i look forward to memeing with you in october.)

Anyway if you're in an English or Composition class and your professor has assigned the third edition of the Little Seagull handbook this site definitely does not include the entire text at the bottom of the page and you definitely should not save it from there. (i would not recommend trying to download the PDF, tho. Just copy the text.)

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use, and i cannot stress this enough, thriftbooks

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so for those of you who don't know, I was recently diagnosed with ADHD-I. So far, I think my favourite thing that I've learned is the idea of "embrace the pivot".

Have you ever found a productivity system that works for you (whether it be your Google calendar, bullet journaling, agenda-ing, etc), and you're so pumped because it's like finally! Now I can actually get some stuff done! But then time passes, days or weeks or years, and the novelty of it runs out, and then it kind of just... Stops working. It can be so frustrating, because this thing that used to work no longer works for seemingly no reason.

But, that isn't a failing of the thing, that thing worked for a certain amount of time, and that's good! I used a massive agenda in my first year of uni, and it kept me on track for all my assignments. My second year agenda? Barely touched it. Instead, I started to use a bullet journal, and that was the thing that helped me through most of the year. But as time went on, my spreads got less creative, and in the final term, I didn't even want to touch it because it was too much work. So I switched to Notion.

The agenda didn't fail me, and neither did the bullet journal, it just worked for a certain amount of time. And when that time inevitably runs out, you can just say, "thank you for serving me for so long, I'm going to pivot to the next thing." And then you do it without feeling like you should try harder or like that thing failed you.

This doesn't just have to apply to productivity either. Systems, tools, habits, hobbies, coping mechanisms.. They all serve their purpose. It's okay to let them go when the time comes.

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Writing Antagonists, Antiheroes and Villains

Obviously there’s a lot of overlap between the three, despite their differences, which is why this is all one post. In fact, some of the articles have one of those words in their title but the content of the article belongs in one of the other categories.

I think the links about the antagonist’s journey are some of the most interesting on this list.

Antiheroes

Heroes and Anti-Heroes - What’s the difference? Anti-heroes in Science Fiction Movies 5 Types of Anti-Heroes You Need More Scoundrels in Your Life: How to Write a Han Solo Hero in Six Easy Steps! Han Versus Luke – Who’s the Better Hero? Defining and Developing Your Anti-Hero, excerpt from Bullies, Bastards & Bitches by Jessica Page Morrell 4 Ways to Make Your Antihero Deliciously Irresistible

Antagonists

When Being Bad is Good: Creating a Great Antagonist Being Evil: Plotting From the Antagonist’s Perspective 10 Traits of a Strong Antagonist 12 Tips On How To Write Antagonists Your Readers Will Love To Hate Types of antagonist Seven Types of Antagonists Ten Tips for a Terrific Antagonist 10 Essential Tips for Writing Antagonists How To Write The Bad Guy Likable Villains 3 Traits Your Hero and Villain Should Share Guide to Writing a Villain A Guide to Villainous Motivations

Villains

Guide to Writing a Villain Creating an Interesting Bad Guy The Sympathetic Villain WriteWorld: Villains Exploring The Dark Side: The Anti-Hero’s Journey - despite the title, this article is about villains, not antiheroes as the term is usually understood Killer Personalities The Antagonist’s Epiphany How to Create a Credible Villain in Fiction How to Avoid Creating a Weak Villain 5 Characteristics of an Epic Villain Writing a Great Villain 14 Motives for Becoming a Supervillain Writing Villains Vs. Writing Heroes Villains Are People Too, But… A Short Defence of Villains by Agnes Repplier Villains: because a good bad guy is the author’s best friend. The Other in Fiction: Creating Wonderfully Wicked Villains Three-Dimensional Villains: Finding Your Character’s Shadow 10 Traits of Highly-Effective Villains Writing Tips #79:How To Write Better Villains Villains by Vicki Hinze The Sixteen Villain Archetypes

The Antagonist’s Journey

Exploring The Dark Side: The Anti-Hero’s Journey The Villain’s Journey Does the Villain’s Journey Mirror the Hero’s Journey? Forget the Hero’s Journey. Women want an Antagonist’s Tale Return to the Antagonist’s Tale

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zlibrary gone... FUCK TIKTOK FUCK BOOKTOK I hope that app burns in hell

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Beware!

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vaguely academic things to do to keep yourself entertained

go down a wikipedia research hole by clicking the first term you don’t understand

binge a crashcourse series end to end (personal recs: world history, history of science, big history, philosophy)

find free books on project gutenberg

download some western classics for free

borrow books and audiobooks from the libby app or borrowbox

start a commonplace book

take a khan academy course

browse MIT’s free online course materials

teach yourself to code

go on a google scholar essay dive

try the open access button to avoid some paywalls for academic media, or install unpaywall that does a similar thing

research the history of the place you where you live

tempt the wrath of the duolingo owl and learn a language

search for online streams of the local tv in your target language’s country and use as background noise for immersion points

print and scrapbook favourite poetry and literature quotes

improve your handwriting by doing handwriting exercises

learn philosophy with the philosophize this! podcast. actually just check out all the educational spotify podcasts there are many good ones

start a weekly club with friends to share new and interesting things you’ve learnt that week

clean and reorganise your study space, physical or digital

check out online museums

fave educational youtube channels that I adore: vsauce, crashcourse, smarter every day, kurzgesagt, school of life, tom scott, r. c. waldun, vsauce3, primer, mark rober, veritasium, asapSCIENCE, scishow, TED-ed

hopefully you’ll find something to enjoy! happy learning x

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how to google better: writer's edition

Welcome back! Today I will be sharing some tips to use Google to its full potential. I find that a lot of people don't know how to use these, but once you get used to them it makes research quicker and easier. These are technically universal, so you can use it for any type of research you need! :)

@thewritersuniverse on instagram ���

quotation marks

ex) highest to lowest "military heirarchy"

Putting quotation marks around words you want to search guarantee that the search results will include the exact word(s) in the quotation marks. In the example, the search results will always include BOTH "military" and "heirarchy", not just one or the other.

tilde

ex) myths with ~dragons

Tildes are used when you want synonyms of the word to appear in your search results. In the example above, you will get search results for myths involving dragons and other similar creatures that may be considered synonymous to it.

two periods between numbers

ex) chinese royal family 1350..1600

Two periods are used to search a range between the two numbers connected by it. In this example, you're searching for Chinese royalty between the years 1350 and 1600.

dash

ex) sherlock holmes -movie

The dash is used when you want to exclude a specific word from your search. In this example, you want to look up Sherlock Holmes, but exclude all search results for the film.

vertical bar

ex) agents | publishers

You can use the vertical bar to signify an OR in your search. In the example, you'd be getting results for agents OR publishers.

site:

ex) what happens when stabbed site:quora.com

The "site:" feature will give you results specifically from the site you put after it. In this case, you will receive search results from quora.com for your question only.

location:

ex) asian market location:losangeles

Putting a location next to "location:" will give you search results limited to that location (lmao). Here, you will find asian markets in Los Angeles.

filetype:

ex) nsa ufo report filetype:pdf

The "filetype:" feature will give you results only in the mentioned format. In this example, you'd be looking for UFO reports from the NSA in pdf format.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people learned this in computer class or something when they were 13, but there's no harm in refreshing our memory! I hope this helped turn your research more efficient :)

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Random question but does anyone know of a good log or journal app? Something simple that you can navigate through a calendar?

I need to make a daily journal but my adhd makes it hard to keep up and most apps are too much like real journals to be any helpful to me. I’ll look on my own but hoping someone has something they can recommend! Thank you🫶