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Experiencing burnout in an area you love doesn’t mean you are no longer passionate about that thing, or are any less good at it. It’s often an indication that there are other parts of your life that need your care. A garden looks most beautiful when every flower is watered, and you deserve to nourish yourself in the same way. You will flourish again.

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he gets it

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“The truth is, we live like bats, labor like beasts, and die like worms.”

- Margaret Cavendish

A long winded analysis of femininity in Madeline Miller’s Circe:

Circe is a goddess. And she is a witch. And a mother and a daughter and a sister and a lover. But she is also, and most importantly, a woman. And that is the most striking thing about Miller’s characterization. Her womanhood is neither an insignificant piece of her character nor the only part that matters. She is not a great character despite being a woman nor is she a great character merely because she is a woman. She is a well-rounded (and well-written) character in her own right with femininity intricately woven through each one of her steps and stumbles and never thrown in your face as a show of diversity, as false proof of equality. She has both vivid strengths and fierce flaws and neither are written to appeal to the male gaze. Her faults are not attached solely to her femininity, but are instead fleshed out and complex and difficult to understand. They sneak up on us like a shadow, looming in the back of the reader’s mind, always present but never truly seen. Glimpsed through a window clouded with fog. But Miller never lets us evade the truth, forget the fact that existing as a woman is hard. There is no easy way out. Be too strong and too independent and the world will prove to you how weak you are. Have too many flaws, make too many mistakes and they will laugh in your face to say we told you so. 

There is also, I think, this aspect of surviving as a woman in a world that would wish nothing more than to see you bleeding on the ground. Pasiphaë highlights the destructiveness of playing the games of men, the ones intended to take a woman’s voice and feed it to the wolves before letting it be heard. Circe refuses to play along, and ends up under the boots of men anyways. We are consistently reminded that there is no escape from the whims and wishes and wars of men. The men in Circe’s story are self-absorbed and dismissive and cruel, and even the half-decent ones are shaded grey by most of her narrative. Miller knows that existing as a woman means there can be no redundancy, the price will always be too steep. Because redundant means not needed and not needed is as good as dead. You must be beautiful and useful and obedient and silent, and for many of us that story becomes exhausting. We survive in spite of men, and the resulting resentment turns men into pigs. 

Reading Circe was a complicated experience for me. The prose, the plot, the characterizations, they were each of them stunning, and I think everyone should read this work of art. But it also left me with a profound sense of grief. I felt absolutely gutted by the end. This was not the grief of TSOA, that familiar, mournful empathy. This was somehow deeper, like all those things I already knew had been reinforced with a stark reality that felt … brutal. Thousands of years after the fact, hundreds of translations later, and Circe is the witch in Odysseus’ story. Medusa’s head is proof of Perseus’ bravery. Helen is the most hated woman in Greece for a war waged in her name by men. Women are beaten and raped and bought and sold and murdered in story after story written by men to be read and used by men to prove the inferiority of our humanity. And this is why Miller’s emphatic declaration of Circe’s womanhood is both beautiful and painful at once. Even as we read line after line of strength and resilience and unapologetic womanliness, we can’t escape the knowledge that it will be used against her, that it has been used against her. That it has been used against us. 

Circe is more than a woman and that is crucial to the telling of her story, but the fact that she is irreplaceable as a woman cannot be ignored. It matters, to the story and to the readers. To readers like me, who know that her narrative is filled to the brim with pieces of my own, with pieces of my mother’s and sister’s and every woman’s, everywhere. To exist as a woman is a singular experience, and Madeline Miller has captured it expertly in these pages. Cavendish‘s words have never felt more applicable than to this story of a woman who lives like a bat and labors like a beast, but in the end, refuses to die like a worm.

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You want to know the logic behind my actions? 

Here is one explanation:

Call me by a man’s name instead of a woman’s, 

and suddenly every horrific thing I’ve done,

makes me a hero. 

“Medea’s Reasons” by Salma Deera

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ADULT CHEAT SHEET!!

adulting tips from an adult who doesn’t adult good

how to disappear online

schools don’t teach you this

different knives and their uses

how to grow the fuck up | part 2

what to do when you’re alone on valentine’s day

another ‘adulting’ masterpost

ultimate getting a first apartment checklist

dealing with the worst case scenarios 

adulting life hacks

24 hacks for the cheapskates in all of us

guides to life (getting an apartment, writing a resume, protect house from break-ins etc)

open jar lids

ultimate guide for what to buy and when to buy

style essentials

11 ways to wear a scarf

11 ways to tie a necktie

things i never learnt in high school

writing adult emails

how to balance a checkbook

what to do if you suddenly find yourself homeless

6 tips for saving the most while shopping

money making hacks

how to make a skivvy roll

tips for living alone

life lessons for adulting

fashion reference

lose your wallet?

crisis hotlines

how to break out of zip ties

how to disappear completely

tips for self defense | really important

what should I do if I get robbed?

When the cops pull you over

big emergencies -  sinking ship |  stuck in an slevator |  falling on ice |  survive nature [stranded]

tape hands for a fight

things to keep in your car

covering up tattoos

heimlich maneuver for dogs

how to become an adult

how to unlock car with shoelace

30 things I learnt the year I turned twenty

guides to life

other cheat sheets

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Heather Havrilesky, How to Be a Person in the World

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hard at work ghibli characters aesthetic

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if you’re in you’re early-mid twenties and they fucking suck, i promise they fucking suck for most people because it’s the time when you are really figuring out who you want to be how you fit into the world who you should surround yourself and it’s mostly misfires and painful learning experiences and reckoning with your childhood and learning to heal your deep wounds, it’s a very very painful transformation process and it doesn’t really end as you get older, you keep growing and learning, but you learn more and more the tools you need and you can equip yourself with them in times of hardship and find the spaces where you belong that can hold you

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you haven’t met all the people that’ll love you yet

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⠀⠀▬  ʙᴛs sᴏɴɢs ᴡᴀʟʟᴘᴀᴘᴇʀs​ • ᴅᴏɴ·ᴛ ʀᴇᴘᴏꜱᴛ !

⠀⠀♡ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴏʀ ʀᴇʙʟᴏɢ ɪғ ʏᴏᴜ ᴜsᴇ/sᴀᴠᴇ｡ [ ✧ · ゚: ]

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Free MCAT Study Materials!

Here’s master post of some great MCAT study materials and resources. Click on the bold titles to open links to folders containing the files listed below. Good luck!!!

2015 KAPLAN MCAT REVIEW BOOKS (pdf links listed below)

Behavioral Sciences Review

Biochemistry Review

Biology Review

Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills Review

General Chemistry Review

Organic Chemistry Review

Physics and Math Review

BIOLOGY

Molecular Biology; Cellular Respiration

Genes

Microbiology

The Eukaryotic Cell; The Nervous System

The Endocrine System

The Digestive and Excretory Systems

The Cardiovascular System; The Respiratory System

Muscle, Bone and Skin

Populations

The Berkeley MCAT Review - Biology Part 1 (2011)

The Berkeley MCAT Review - Biology Part 2 (2011)

BIOCHEMISTRY

Lab Techniques

GENERAL CHEMISTRY

Atoms, Molecules and Quantum Mechanics

Gases, Kinetics, and Chemical Equilibrium

Thermodynamics

Solutions

Heat Capacity/Phase Change/Colligative Properties

Acids & Bases

Electrochemistry

Intro to Chemistry

Electrostatics

Gases

Thermodynamics and Thermochemistry

The Berkeley MCAT Review - General Chemistry Part 1 (2011)

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY

Molecular Structure

Hydrocarbons, Alcohols, Substitutions

Carbonyls and Amines

PHYSICS

MCAT Physics Book (2015)

Translation Motion

Force

Equilibrium, Torque and Energy

Momentum, Machines, and Radioactive Decay

Fluids and Solids

Waves

Electricity and Magnetism

Light & Optics

Linear Momentum

PSYCHOLOGY / SOCIOLOGY

SCIENCE

MCAT PRACTICE TESTS / QUESTIONS

Practice Tests

Solutions

OTHER MCAT STUDY MATERIALS

Examkrackers Complete MCAT Study Set (2007)

These materials will help build your knowledge and test taking skills, they may not fit the current MCAT exam criteria but it will definitely build your knowledge of the subjects being tested.

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to everyone making progress that nobody else recognizes, I’m proud of you

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shoutout to the students that don’t have a good study environment. who have to share a room with family members. who don’t have a desk or permanent place to study. who have to study with noise, distraction or yelling around them. Who live in tiny apartments with noisy neighbours. who have to hurry home because before dark because they don’t live in a safe neighbourhood. who are surrounded by crime and gangs and are just doing their best to survive. who get woken up by police sirens on a regular basis. who only have third-hand twice repaired technology to study with and no backup plan for when their laptop inevitably breaks. who are dealing with language barriers, being the family translator, prejudice and trauma from having to flee their homes or country due to violence. who are worry about getting evicted from their homes in the middle of exam season. who are subject to the whims of bosses who can’t cut their hours and wreck havoc on their lives.

I can’t really offer you much help or pretend that I understand what you’re going through but I hope that you know that you have the support of this community and are free to express these challenges and worries without judgement and that you belong in this community. 

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- Rick Riordan.

That man.