#Real World Python Projects

[cacmsinsitute]

Python for Problem Solvers: Addressing Real-World Challenges with Code

In today's fast changing environment, the ability to tackle complicated problems efficiently is a significant asset. With the growing demand for tech-savvy people in a variety of businesses, learning a programming language such as Python has become vital. In this post, we'll look at how Python enables problem solvers to handle real-world obstacles with code, revolutionizing how problems are approached and solutions are implemented.

The Power of Python:

Python's appeal originates from its simplicity, flexibility, and readability. Its simple syntax enables both new and expert programmers to generate clear, short code, making it an excellent choice for problem-solving jobs. Python provides the tools and modules needed to efficiently solve varied difficulties, such as data analysis, automation of repetitive processes, and the development of sophisticated applications.

Solving real-world problems:

Python's versatility to be used in a variety of real-world applications is one of its most appealing features. Python is useful in a wide range of fields, including data analysis, machine learning, web development, and automation. For example, data scientists analyze and visualize massive datasets using Python's sophisticated libraries such as NumPy, Pandas, and Matplotlib, yielding useful insights to drive decision-making processes.

Case studies:

Let's look at a few case studies to show how Python is used to solve real-world challenges.

Automating Business Processes: Many organizations use Python scripts to automate repetitive operations like data entry, file manipulation, and report creation. Businesses may use Python's automation features to streamline workflows, increase productivity, and eliminate human error.

Predictive Maintenance in Manufacturing: Python is used in predictive maintenance systems to analyze equipment sensor data and identify possible faults. Manufacturers may reduce downtime, optimize maintenance schedules, and increase production by using Python predictive algorithms.

Healthcare Analytics: To analyze patient data, spot trends, and forecast disease outbreaks, the healthcare sector uses Python. Healthcare practitioners may make better judgements, improve patient outcomes, and advance public health initiatives by utilizing Python's data analysis modules and machine learning frameworks.

In conclusion, Python is a very useful tool for problem solvers in a variety of industries due to its adaptability and simplicity of usage. Whether you work as a researcher, business analyst, software engineer, data scientist, or analyst, learning Python can help you become an expert problem solver. Individuals and organizations can take on challenging tasks with confidence, creativity, and efficiency by utilizing Python and its extensive library and framework ecosystem. This can lead to good changes in the surrounding environment.

Ready to use Python to reach your full potential? Come to our in-depth Python course in Amritsar with CACMS Institute! Take advantage of project-based learning and in-person instruction from knowledgeable instructors. Savor accommodating timings that fit your schedule. Learn Python the way you need to in order to succeed in the tech-driven world of today. For additional information, visit CACMS Institute or give us a call at +91 8288040281. Get your Python certification with us by enrolling in our Python training programme in Amritsar right now!

[kashish5647]

Unlock the Power of Data with Data Science Training at Corporates Academy

We live in a world where data is everywhere—every click, swipe, transaction, and conversation generates information. But what makes data truly powerful is the ability to analyze it, understand it, and turn it into meaningful insights. That’s where Data Science comes in. And if you’re looking to start your journey in this exciting field, there’s no better place than Corporates Academy.

At Corporates Academy, we don’t just train people—we prepare them for real-world challenges. Our Data Science course is designed to give you the technical knowledge, practical experience, and confidence to step into one of the fastest-growing and highest-paying careers today.

Let’s explore what makes this journey with Corporates Academy worth your time, effort, and investment.

The Rise of Data Science in the Modern World

In just the past decade, Data Science has gone from being a buzzword to a core business function. From tech startups to Fortune 500 companies, every business today relies on data to make smarter decisions, improve customer experiences, and stay ahead of the competition.

What does this mean for you? It means huge demand for skilled data professionals—and not just in IT. Finance, healthcare, marketing, retail, logistics, and even education are hiring data scientists to transform numbers into strategies.

But mastering Data Science isn’t just about learning Python or statistics. It’s about learning how to think like a data scientist—to ask the right questions, extract meaningful patterns, and tell stories with data. And that’s exactly what Corporates Academy helps you do.

Why Choose Corporates Academy for Data Science?

With so many institutes and online platforms offering data science training, why choose Corporates Academy?

Because we bring together the perfect mix of quality, practicality, and support. We’ve helped hundreds of learners—freshers, working professionals, and career switchers—enter the field of Data Science with strong skills and stronger confidence.

Here’s what sets our training apart:

1. Real-World Curriculum Designed by Industry Experts

We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all training. Our Data Science curriculum is carefully designed by professionals who work in the field. It’s updated regularly to match the latest trends and technologies.

From Python, SQL, and Machine Learning to Data Visualization, Deep Learning, and Model Deployment, the course covers every essential topic with a strong focus on practical application.

Each concept is taught with real-world datasets, case studies, and projects—so you don’t just learn the theory, you learn how to solve actual business problems.

2. Learn from Professionals Who’ve Been There

One of the biggest strengths of Corporates Academy is our team of trainers. They are data scientists, analysts, and engineers who have worked with top companies and bring that experience directly into the classroom.

They don’t just teach tools—they teach mindset. They share real challenges, industry insights, and practical tips that make you job-ready from day one. And yes, they’re friendly, approachable, and genuinely passionate about teaching.

3. Hands-On Projects That Build Your Portfolio

We know employers care about what you can do, not just what you know. That’s why our course includes multiple real-world projects, where you’ll work with data, apply algorithms, and present your findings—just like you would on the job.

By the end of the course, you’ll have a portfolio of projects that showcase your skills in:

Predictive analytics

Customer segmentation

Time series forecasting

Recommendation systems

Natural language processing

Data storytelling and visualization

And more.

4. Flexible Learning for Busy Schedules

We understand that many of our learners are either working or studying full-time. That’s why we offer flexible learning modes, including:

Online live classes

Classroom training

Weekend and weekday batches

Self-paced content for revision

This way, you can learn at your convenience without compromising on quality.

5. Career Guidance and Placement Support

At Corporates Academy, we don’t just leave you after the last class. We help you prepare for the next step—your career. Our team offers:

Resume building

Interview preparation

Mock tests

LinkedIn profile optimization

Placement assistance with partner companies

We want you to walk into interviews feeling prepared and confident—because we’ve walked with you every step of the way.

Who Should Learn Data Science?

One of the best things about Data Science is that you don’t need to be from a tech background to succeed. While a basic understanding of math and logic helps, it’s your curiosity and problem-solving mindset that truly matters.

This course is perfect for:

Fresh graduates looking to start their career in tech or analytics

Working professionals aiming to switch to data science or analytics roles

Engineers or IT professionals seeking to upskill with AI/ML knowledge

Business professionals who want to make data-driven decisions

Entrepreneurs who want to leverage data for smarter strategies

No matter your background, if you’re ready to learn, we’re ready to teach.

Success Stories That Speak for Themselves

Over the years, Corporates Academy has helped hundreds of learners take their careers to the next level. And we’re proud to see our students working at leading companies in roles like:

Data Scientist

Data Analyst

Machine Learning Engineer

Business Intelligence Analyst

AI/ML Developer

Data Engineer

Many of our students come back not just to thank us, but to refer their friends and colleagues—because they know we deliver what we promise.

A Community That Grows With You

Learning can sometimes feel like a lonely journey, especially in technical fields. But at Corporates Academy, we’ve built more than a classroom—we’ve built a community.

Our learners stay connected through forums, discussion groups, alumni networks, and mentoring sessions. You’ll never feel alone. You’ll always have someone to reach out to—whether it’s for a doubt, a career tip, or just motivation on a tough day.

Let’s Talk About the Future

If there’s one skill that’s going to remain in high demand for the next decade, it’s Data Science. Every industry is being transformed by data, and the need for data-literate professionals is only going to grow.

Whether you want to become a data scientist, improve your decision-making, or simply understand the future of work, now is the best time to get started.

And at Corporates Academy, we’re here to make that future a little easier, a little smarter, and a lot more achievable for you.

Start Your Data Science Journey Today

Ready to transform your career with the power of data? Don’t wait for the perfect time. Create it with the right training, the right guidance, and the right support.

Visit www.corporatesacademy.com and explore our Data Science course—including batch schedules, curriculum, and registration details.

It’s not just about getting a certificate. It’s about gaining the skills, mindset, and confidence to thrive in a data-driven world.

Let Corporates Academy be your partner on this incredible journey.

[srishadigital]

Top Python and Django Bootcamp – Best Full Stack Training

Top Python and Django Bootcamps – Best Full Stack Training in 2025

Are you looking to become a full stack developer using Python and Django? Whether you're a beginner or someone looking to level up your skills, enrolling in a top-rated Python and Django bootcamp is a smart move. In this guide, we’ll explore the best Python and Django bootcamps for full stack training in 2025, based on course quality, instructor experience, hands-on projects, and job placement support.

Why Learn Python and Django?

Full-stack web developer,widely used in web development, data science, AI, and automation. Django, a high-level Python web framework, allows rapid development of secure and maintainable websites. Together, they form a powerful stack for building robust full stack applications.

Benefits of Learning Python and Django:

Easy to learn and read

Excellent community support

Used by tech giants like Instagram, Pinterest, and NASA

High demand in the job market

Top Python and Django Bootcamps in 2025

1. Coding Dojo – Python Full Stack Bootcamp

Location: Online & In-Person Key Features:

Covers Python, Django, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, SQL

Career services and 1-on-1 mentorship

Hands-on full stack projects

Why Choose Coding Dojo? Their curriculum is intense and comprehensive, ideal for anyone aiming to transition into a full stack development role.

2. Le Wagon – Full Stack Web Development Bootcamp

Location: Global (remote and in-person) Key Features:

Teaches Python, Django, JavaScript, SQL, Git

Real startup projects

High employment rate post-bootcamp

Best For: Beginners who want a well-structured and global learning experience.

3. CareerFoundry – Full Stack Web Development Program

Location: Online Key Features:

Beginner-friendly curriculum

Python, Django, React, and more

Job guarantee or your money back

Best For: Flexible learners seeking a career change with job placement support.

4. Thinkful – Software Engineering Bootcamp

Location: Online Key Features:

Personalized mentor support

Focus on Python, Django, and front-end tools

Career coaching and job support

Why Consider Thinkful? Their structured mentorship model helps keep students on track and confident in their learning journey.

5. General Assembly – Software Engineering Immersive

Location: Online & In-Person Key Features:

Project-based learning

Covers Python, Django, JavaScript, and more

Career coaching and employer network access

Perfect For: Aspiring developers looking for a fast-track program with strong hiring partnerships.

How to Choose the Right Python and Django Bootcamp?

When choosing a bootcamp, consider the following:

Curriculum depth: Does it include both front-end and back-end skills?

Instructor support: Are there live sessions or mentorships?

Flexibility: Is it full-time or part-time? Online or in-person?

Job support: Does the bootcamp offer resume help, interview prep, or a job guarantee?

Final Thoughts

The demand for skilled full stack developers continues to grow in 2025, and Python with Django remains a top choice for building scalable, secure web applications. Investing in a quality Python and Django bootcamp can significantly boost your career prospects.

💡 Pro Tip:

Before enrolling, take advantage of free trial lessons, attend info sessions, or connect with alumni to get real feedback.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Are Python and Django enough for full stack development?

Yes, when combined with front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and frameworks like React or Vue.

2. How long does it take to learn Python and Django?

You can build a strong foundation in 3–6 months with a structured bootcamp and consistent practice.

3. Is Django still relevant in 2025?

Absolutely. Django is widely used in the industry for its security, scalability, and fast development capabilities.

[technology-123s-blog]

Start Your Machine Learning Projects Journey with Takeoff Projects

Machine learning is a growing field that has changed how businesses work and make decisions. At Takeoff Projects, we provide students and professionals with exciting opportunities to explore Machine Learning Projects that solve real-world problems. These projects are designed to help you learn by doing, making complex concepts easy to understand. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced coder, our projects are tailored to match your skill level.

One popular project involves building a spam email detector. This project teaches you how to use algorithms to classify emails as spam or not based on their content. You’ll work with datasets, clean the data, and train a machine learning model to improve its accuracy. Another favorite project is creating a movie recommendation system, like the ones used by streaming platforms. This project introduces collaborative filtering and how to personalize user experiences by predicting what they’ll like.

For students interested in finance, we offer projects like stock price prediction, which involves analysing historical data to forecast market trends. You’ll learn how to use Python libraries like Pandas and Scikit-learn to process data and build predictive models. Another exciting project is image recognition, where you train a model to identify objects or faces in pictures. This project gives you hands-on experience with neural networks and deep learning techniques.

At Takeoff Projects, we also focus on healthcare solutions, such as predicting diseases based on patient data or developing systems to monitor a patient’s health. These projects help you understand how machine learning can save lives and improve medical services.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What kind of bubble is AI?

My latest column for Locus Magazine is "What Kind of Bubble is AI?" All economic bubbles are hugely destructive, but some of them leave behind wreckage that can be salvaged for useful purposes, while others leave nothing behind but ashes:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Think about some 21st century bubbles. The dotcom bubble was a terrible tragedy, one that drained the coffers of pension funds and other institutional investors and wiped out retail investors who were gulled by Superbowl Ads. But there was a lot left behind after the dotcoms were wiped out: cheap servers, office furniture and space, but far more importantly, a generation of young people who'd been trained as web makers, leaving nontechnical degree programs to learn HTML, perl and python. This created a whole cohort of technologists from non-technical backgrounds, a first in technological history. Many of these people became the vanguard of a more inclusive and humane tech development movement, and they were able to make interesting and useful services and products in an environment where raw materials – compute, bandwidth, space and talent – were available at firesale prices.

Contrast this with the crypto bubble. It, too, destroyed the fortunes of institutional and individual investors through fraud and Superbowl Ads. It, too, lured in nontechnical people to learn esoteric disciplines at investor expense. But apart from a smattering of Rust programmers, the main residue of crypto is bad digital art and worse Austrian economics.

Or think of Worldcom vs Enron. Both bubbles were built on pure fraud, but Enron's fraud left nothing behind but a string of suspicious deaths. By contrast, Worldcom's fraud was a Big Store con that required laying a ton of fiber that is still in the ground to this day, and is being bought and used at pennies on the dollar.

AI is definitely a bubble. As I write in the column, if you fly into SFO and rent a car and drive north to San Francisco or south to Silicon Valley, every single billboard is advertising an "AI" startup, many of which are not even using anything that can be remotely characterized as AI. That's amazing, considering what a meaningless buzzword AI already is.

So which kind of bubble is AI? When it pops, will something useful be left behind, or will it go away altogether? To be sure, there's a legion of technologists who are learning Tensorflow and Pytorch. These nominally open source tools are bound, respectively, to Google and Facebook's AI environments:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

But if those environments go away, those programming skills become a lot less useful. Live, large-scale Big Tech AI projects are shockingly expensive to run. Some of their costs are fixed – collecting, labeling and processing training data – but the running costs for each query are prodigious. There's a massive primary energy bill for the servers, a nearly as large energy bill for the chillers, and a titanic wage bill for the specialized technical staff involved.

Once investor subsidies dry up, will the real-world, non-hyperbolic applications for AI be enough to cover these running costs? AI applications can be plotted on a 2X2 grid whose axes are "value" (how much customers will pay for them) and "risk tolerance" (how perfect the product needs to be).

Charging teenaged D&D players $10 month for an image generator that creates epic illustrations of their characters fighting monsters is low value and very risk tolerant (teenagers aren't overly worried about six-fingered swordspeople with three pupils in each eye). Charging scammy spamfarms $500/month for a text generator that spits out dull, search-algorithm-pleasing narratives to appear over recipes is likewise low-value and highly risk tolerant (your customer doesn't care if the text is nonsense). Charging visually impaired people $100 month for an app that plays a text-to-speech description of anything they point their cameras at is low-value and moderately risk tolerant ("that's your blue shirt" when it's green is not a big deal, while "the street is safe to cross" when it's not is a much bigger one).

Morganstanley doesn't talk about the trillions the AI industry will be worth some day because of these applications. These are just spinoffs from the main event, a collection of extremely high-value applications. Think of self-driving cars or radiology bots that analyze chest x-rays and characterize masses as cancerous or noncancerous.

These are high value – but only if they are also risk-tolerant. The pitch for self-driving cars is "fire most drivers and replace them with 'humans in the loop' who intervene at critical junctures." That's the risk-tolerant version of self-driving cars, and it's a failure. More than $100b has been incinerated chasing self-driving cars, and cars are nowhere near driving themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Quite the reverse, in fact. Cruise was just forced to quit the field after one of their cars maimed a woman – a pedestrian who had not opted into being part of a high-risk AI experiment – and dragged her body 20 feet through the streets of San Francisco. Afterwards, it emerged that Cruise had replaced the single low-waged driver who would normally be paid to operate a taxi with 1.5 high-waged skilled technicians who remotely oversaw each of its vehicles:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general-motors-self-driving-cars.html

The self-driving pitch isn't that your car will correct your own human errors (like an alarm that sounds when you activate your turn signal while someone is in your blind-spot). Self-driving isn't about using automation to augment human skill – it's about replacing humans. There's no business case for spending hundreds of billions on better safety systems for cars (there's a human case for it, though!). The only way the price-tag justifies itself is if paid drivers can be fired and replaced with software that costs less than their wages.

What about radiologists? Radiologists certainly make mistakes from time to time, and if there's a computer vision system that makes different mistakes than the sort that humans make, they could be a cheap way of generating second opinions that trigger re-examination by a human radiologist. But no AI investor thinks their return will come from selling hospitals that reduce the number of X-rays each radiologist processes every day, as a second-opinion-generating system would. Rather, the value of AI radiologists comes from firing most of your human radiologists and replacing them with software whose judgments are cursorily double-checked by a human whose "automation blindness" will turn them into an OK-button-mashing automaton:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

The profit-generating pitch for high-value AI applications lies in creating "reverse centaurs": humans who serve as appendages for automation that operates at a speed and scale that is unrelated to the capacity or needs of the worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

But unless these high-value applications are intrinsically risk-tolerant, they are poor candidates for automation. Cruise was able to nonconsensually enlist the population of San Francisco in an experimental murderbot development program thanks to the vast sums of money sloshing around the industry. Some of this money funds the inevitabilist narrative that self-driving cars are coming, it's only a matter of when, not if, and so SF had better get in the autonomous vehicle or get run over by the forces of history.

Once the bubble pops (all bubbles pop), AI applications will have to rise or fall on their actual merits, not their promise. The odds are stacked against the long-term survival of high-value, risk-intolerant AI applications.

The problem for AI is that while there are a lot of risk-tolerant applications, they're almost all low-value; while nearly all the high-value applications are risk-intolerant. Once AI has to be profitable – once investors withdraw their subsidies from money-losing ventures – the risk-tolerant applications need to be sufficient to run those tremendously expensive servers in those brutally expensive data-centers tended by exceptionally expensive technical workers.

If they aren't, then the business case for running those servers goes away, and so do the servers – and so do all those risk-tolerant, low-value applications. It doesn't matter if helping blind people make sense of their surroundings is socially beneficial. It doesn't matter if teenaged gamers love their epic character art. It doesn't even matter how horny scammers are for generating AI nonsense SEO websites:

https://twitter.com/jakezward/status/1728032634037567509

These applications are all riding on the coattails of the big AI models that are being built and operated at a loss in order to be profitable. If they remain unprofitable long enough, the private sector will no longer pay to operate them.

Now, there are smaller models, models that stand alone and run on commodity hardware. These would persist even after the AI bubble bursts, because most of their costs are setup costs that have already been borne by the well-funded companies who created them. These models are limited, of course, though the communities that have formed around them have pushed those limits in surprising ways, far beyond their original manufacturers' beliefs about their capacity. These communities will continue to push those limits for as long as they find the models useful.

These standalone, "toy" models are derived from the big models, though. When the AI bubble bursts and the private sector no longer subsidizes mass-scale model creation, it will cease to spin out more sophisticated models that run on commodity hardware (it's possible that Federated learning and other techniques for spreading out the work of making large-scale models will fill the gap).

So what kind of bubble is the AI bubble? What will we salvage from its wreckage? Perhaps the communities who've invested in becoming experts in Pytorch and Tensorflow will wrestle them away from their corporate masters and make them generally useful. Certainly, a lot of people will have gained skills in applying statistical techniques.

But there will also be a lot of unsalvageable wreckage. As big AI models get integrated into the processes of the productive economy, AI becomes a source of systemic risk. The only thing worse than having an automated process that is rendered dangerous or erratic based on AI integration is to have that process fail entirely because the AI suddenly disappeared, a collapse that is too precipitous for former AI customers to engineer a soft landing for their systems.

This is a blind spot in our policymakers debates about AI. The smart policymakers are asking questions about fairness, algorithmic bias, and fraud. The foolish policymakers are ensnared in fantasies about "AI safety," AKA "Will the chatbot become a superintelligence that turns the whole human race into paperclips?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/27/10-types-of-people/#taking-up-a-lot-of-space

But no one is asking, "What will we do if" – when – "the AI bubble pops and most of this stuff disappears overnight?"

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/19/bubblenomics/#pop

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

tom_bullock (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tombullock/25173469495/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[python333]

residual self-image — python³

― ― ― ―

synopsis residual self-image is the mental projection of your digital self; it refers to your own physical appearance that is understood by you, that is projected unto you by yourself. you see yourself as something to be ashamed of. price sees something different.

relationships platonic!captain price & gn!reader.

characters cap. price.

word count 7.6k

warnings anxiety/panic attack [not sure exactly how to classify it; i think it's more of an anxiety attack?], reader takes SSRIs [zoloft/sertraline], suicidal thoughts and almost-suicide attempt, reader is the most unreliable narrator known to mankind, second person pov [you/your/yourself], usage of [name], usage of [c/n] for call sign/code name, bad matrix references/spoilers for the matrix and the matrix: reloaded.

note please please PLEASE let me know if this comes off as me romanticizing having anxiety or taking antidepressants so that i can fix/rewrite it /srs i don't take any form of antidepressants or anxiety medication and i also am not diagnosed with either of those!! nothing i say is final!!! i do not have firsthand experience with what reader goes through in this fic!! sorry i disappeared for a second, have some food as an apology. again, feel free to correct me on anything you think is inaccurate and i will (most likely) change it!! also sorry for like 3k words of backstory oopsies

In The Matrix, Morpheus gives Neo two options: blue pill, or red pill?

He says that if Neo takes the blue pill, “the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe”. But the second option, the red pill, if Neo takes that, he will “stay in wonderland and [he] show [Neo] how deep the rabbit hole goes”. Neo, of course, takes the red pill, and is shown the “real world”. 

Neo is thought to be “the One”. With the “O” in “One” being capitalized, so you know that it’s a pretty important title. 

In the end, Neo becomes confident in who he is and what he can do, and defeats the “Agents”. Trinity confesses her love to a “sleeping” Neo, their ship is getting attacked by whatever those weird fuckin’ creatures were called, and Neo defeats the last of the agents. The end. 

You take pills too. But yours are blue. They’re matte, powdery, baby-blue pills that are branded with the name “ZOLOFT”. It’s sertraline, to be specific, and you’ve been taking it for the past few months. You’re new to pills like these, ones meant to treat anxiety and depression and a number of other medical issues, so you didn’t know how much to take at first. You asked your doctor so many questions. You think about it often, and wonder if, even though it’s their job, that doctor had gotten annoyed at some point because of your inquiry. 

These pills do similar things to the ones in The Matrix, though. You take them, preferably at night, and wake up in your bed like you always do. You believe whatever you want to believe, and another chapter is closed at the end of every day, marking another page closer to the end of your story. 

Some days, the story feels like it’s going to end sooner than expected. 

A side effect of sertraline―or, well, Zoloft specifically―happens to be suicidal ideation. It’s not that common, not that talked about, and isn’t the most well-known. But then again, most mental disorder-treating medicines have some kind of side effect like that, and plenty of people take things like antidepressants without an issue―or so you thought―so surely you could deal with something as simple as sertraline, right?

Wrong. So, so, wrong. 

It’s probably really bad for a person who works in a military group to be dealing with such thoughts. You think about quitting sometimes, for the sake of the other people in the task force, because what could happen if the wrong straw breaks the wrong camel’s back while you’re doing an assignment? What if, caught in the crossfire between your team and your enemy, you say fuck it and decide that it’s all just too much? What are the odds of that happening? What are the odds of anything happening? What were the odds of the Earth being created, of the first animals evolving, of the first humans speaking the first languages? Statistics are so important, chance is so important, and odds determine everything. What are the odds of you deciding whether or not you have the will to live? The ability to keep going, to keep the routine you’ve always kept, to keep from taking one of those G19s from the armory and turning off the safety before pulling the trigger? To commit to such a permanent solution, one you’ve deemed as the “s-word”, because thinking about it sometimes is too much.

Or maybe it’d be a rope, your brain continues without your consent, A chain. Anything that will hold your body weight up enough for you to dangle from the fan on the ceiling―an image that makes you lean towards a chain, sickeningly enough, because of the idea of your abnormally stretched neck on display. The purple bruising that would appear, the indentations of each link, the smell of your blood and the metal of the chain unable to be told apart. Maybe your eyes would still be open, and it would look like you’re staring down at anyone who walks into your office. There’s so many possibilities. They add up, and create new odds, new chances. Every time you simply think, you are creating a new way to go about life, and that creation is sometimes stored so deeply in the back of your mind that it haunts you. It comes back around, becomes more common, the chances of it happening go up. 

Sometimes the odds feel like they aren’t in your favor at all. Sometimes you wonder how you could’ve ever thought that any part of the universe was against you. It’s not bipolar; it doesn’t come and go in extremes, it just comes and goes. The odds will lower in your favor some days, and you will deem those days “bad days”, and other days they will be so high you don’t even think about “good days” or “bad days”. But those other days are almost as bad as the “bad days”, because they go by so quickly. You take them for granted so easily, too easily, and they leak through the thin lines between your fingers, leaving you with nothing by the end of the day. 

Sometimes on “bad days”, your hands go from cupped to praying, and you will plead with yourself to just get better. You never do, on those days, and after taking your medicine you will go to sleep and believe that the next day will be better. Or, at least, convince yourself that the next day will be better. 

You would’ve understood if Neo took the blue pill. If he stayed in blissful ignorance, even after all of the weird shit that happened to him. If he continued to wake up every day in a “normal” world, to sell computer systems and hacking programs, to be anyone but “The One”. 

Because that’s what you do. You take your medicine, and go on with life as normally as possible, even with all of the things that you’ve been through. You wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for saving the world, or beating up robot-alien-things, or whatever. Just like how you don’t want to be held responsible for really just… taking care of yourself. 

Which you’re shit at, by the way, if that doesn’t make things worse. 

You take your sertraline and that’s about it. It’s not like it doesn’t work, it’s just underwhelming sometimes. Before you got on it, you would take more things to heart, think about things more, and were probably a little more prone to actually killing yourself. After starting to take it, it was admittedly pretty rough. It felt like your anxiety had increased a little, like your paranoia had only heightened, and everything felt so elevated. 

Then, maybe a few months after beginning to take it, everything dimmed out. Like one of those lightbulbs you can dim, everything gradually came back down, and even lowered to a more tolerable level. You were glad, at first, that you had endured those first few months the way that you did because you’re not sure you would’ve even been here to this day had you not. Reading several articles and Reddit posts about Zoloft definitely didn’t help, especially as someone who was taking it partially for anxiety, but still, you managed. 

And then you realized that just taking the medicine didn’t do as much as you hoped it would. 

It helps you deal with anxious and depressive thoughts, yes, but you still feel like something’s missing. That lightbulb in your mind has dimmed, but it’s only just enough light to see ahead of you. Before all of this, the light was bright enough to blind you, to make you see that dreadful stark-white that still sometimes haunts you―when it dimmed down to where it is now, it was obviously a relief, but you feel like now there’s not enough light. 

You understand the whole point of the medicine is to dim that light, to help bring down your mental state to a more “normal” one, but you think that even people who don’t have diagnosed mental disorders feel strong emotions like you used to. Maybe not as strong, but definitely something adjacent to it. You miss that, funnily enough―getting strong enough emotions. 

Right now, you’re sitting at your desk in your office, staring down at the plate of mashed potatoes in front of you. You get it almost every time it’s offered, and endure the teasing you get from your teammates, all for one purpose. 

To hide your pills in it.

Mashed potatoes are starchy, yes, but easy to swallow without chewing. They’re thick enough to help hide the feeling of the pill going down your throat, and don’t leave that weird aftertaste in your mouth that taking your medicine with water does. You tried taking the pills with water at first, like you would with any other medicine, but with this specifically you just can’t. It’s too easy to notice, they’re too big to just hide with water, and it feels like swallowing a rock every time you take them with water. 

So, mashed potatoes it is. 

The pill is already mixed into it. You had folded the small blue tablet into the mushed vegetable with a plastic fork, trying to keep it as hidden as possible, making sure no hints of blue bled through the beige-yellow of the potato.

You’re now watching the mashed potatoes, unblinking, as if it’s going to grow legs and run away from you. It’s never truly easy swallowing the medicine, even with the mashed potatoes coating it, but it’s usually easier than it is today. Then again, today was deemed a “bad day” the moment you woke up, so this was to be expected. 

You grab the white plastic fork after a brief moment of hesitation and pierce the food with it, hand trembling ever-so slightly as you do―not from anxiety, but from your lack of water intake―and pick up a clump of potato with little strength. The vegetable oddly weighs your hand down the tiniest bit more than usual, but you ignore this in favor of pushing yourself to just force the food into your mouth. You try your best not to chew, your jaw only really moving to chew the side of your cheek instead to satisfy your urges, and eventually manage to swallow the food. 

Right off the bat, you can tell the cluster you swallowed had the pill in it. Lucky me, you think almost bitterly, not sure whether you should be happy or uncomfortable, at least it’s over with. It’s not that it’s a bad thing that you got to the pill so quickly, but usually you’re able to get a few bites of medicine-less potato in before the actual medicine itself. Nonetheless, you scoop up another fork-full―fork-full?―of mashed potatoes and try to eat as much as you can to get rid of the weird feeling of having a pill going down your throat. 

Just the fleeting thought of having a pill that big going down your throat makes it feel like your esophagus is closing. You feel yourself grow closer to nausea at the feeling, setting down your fork and pushing the paper plate of your dinner aside, just to rest your elbow on the table and put your forehead in the palm of your head. It’s bad enough that you feel ashamed because of the fact you even have to take antidepressants, so it’s even worse that those same antidepressants are throwing bad side-effects at you. 

Ashamed because needing medicine to function the same way anyone else does feels so pathetic to you. Maybe it isn’t pathetic. Actually, you know it isn’t; you don’t look at other people who do the same thing and think that they should feel as ashamed as you do. But you still look at your bright orange prescription bottle, labeled with your legal name, and think that you shouldn’t need it. 

You think, for a moment, that it’s because of how much you’ve dehumanized yourself. 

Dehumanized is such an ugly word, and it leaves a strange bitterness in your mind after thinking about it, but deep down you feel that it’s true. You know that you’re human, obviously, because physically that’s what you are. You are, undeniably, a homo sapien―a person, a living being that is a bipedal primate mammal. You, in a less literal sense, have those same cords attached to you that Neo did when he first went to the “real world”. 

But you need those cords, you think, lifting your head so that your chin is resting in your palm instead of your forehead, you need to stay attached to the Matrix. 

Because you took the blue pill. You found a way to keep yourself attached to the Matrix, to keep yourself grounded to what you wish you could experience without them. And those cables weigh you down, and that pod you stay encased in limits your movement―sometimes you feel more like the pod than the person inside of it―but it all seems so worth it to you, doesn’t it? To keep believing what you want to believe, to wake up everyday and dose yourself with that fifty-milligrams worth of sertraline hidden under a pile of food, to eat that food and swallow that pill even though it makes you feel like a mutt? 

You take a shuddering breath in, your thoughts building up in volume and mass, more questions entering your mind too fast for you to process them all. You feel that familiar rush of adrenaline, the kind that triggers your ‘fight-or-flight’. It lights your nerves on fire and causes them to jump, to electrify, and you feel your fingers twitch with the feeling. It almost feels like there’s something crawling along your nerves, under your skin, and the thought almost triggers your gag reflex. Your eyelids flutter, barely shutting for just a moment before you force them open. Your gaze flits over to the still-mostly-full plate of mashed potatoes. 

You’re usually able to finish them, even on “bad days”. But today, with nausea swirling uncomfortably in your stomach, and a too-big pill going through the thin tubes inside your body, you find that it’s much harder to even think about picking that fork back up. You can almost feel your heart beating through your palm, that continuous th-thump, th-thump growing exponentially faster, and your palm getting sweatier by the second. You shift your feet and find that invisible needles are poking at the bottom of them, small pins that push and prod at your skin that leave a strange hot-cold feeling. It forces you to take the pressure off of your feet by holding them up ever-so slightly, the soles of your shoes just barely touching the ground. 

You swear your heart rate increases at all the different sensations lingering on your body. You can feel your breathing starting to pick up, and for God knows what reason, you suddenly find it difficult to keep your eyes locked onto one object. Your gaze dances around the room as a surge of chills runs up your spine. A trail of goosebumps rises after each wave of biting cold, passing over the bony projections of your dorsum. After having so many of them, you know instinctively the signs of an oncoming anxiety attack, and know how quick those symptoms escalate from simple shallow breaths to the inability to keep your breathing consistent at all. Yes, they develop slower than a panic attack does, but the gradient from fine to not-fine is hard to view as slow when there’s so many symptoms to keep track of.

At the thought of such a thing happening, your gaze instantly locks onto the prescription bottle sitting on your desk. It’s still uncapped―fortunate for you, because you’re seriously doubting your ability to uncap something with a child-proof cap on it right now―and in your eyes is practically glowing. It’s so tempting, because it’s just right there, so easily accessible, so easy to just grab and pour however many pills you need down your throat. The thought makes you realize how dry your mouth feels, how constricted your throat feels, but your mind is too filled with a flurry of incoherent thoughts to dwell on such feelings. 

With your free hand, you grab the uncapped bottle. It shakes with your hand, now more from your building anxiety than your dehydration, and makes the tablets inside rattle. You bring it to your lips, ignoring the chiding voice in the back of your mind telling you how disgusting it is to just put it on your mouth like that, and shake it just enough to get a single pill out of it. The dryness of the pill sticks to the wetness of your mouth, just below the border of your bottom lip. You set the bottle down and poke at the pill with the tip of your tongue, the weird vanilla-like taste of the medicine spreading across the muscle easily. 

Your mouth is dry, so you have to use the residual saliva sitting on your tongue to slick the pill up enough to go down somewhat-smoothly down your throat. It’s still rough, and some areas of the pill remain powdery, the feeling of it sliding down your throat enough to make you gag. For a brief moment, the action causes the pill to lodge in your throat―it’s not big enough to make you choke or anything, but it’s enough to make your heart beat faster and your hands grip onto the edge of your desk tightly. Your thumbs are tucked under the edge, the first knuckle at the tip of your finger bent and the flesh of the tips of your fingers turning lighter from the pressure. 

You cough once you feel the pill go down your esophagus entirely, and breathe raggedly afterwards. Deep down, you know that the medicine takes some time to work, and that if you gave it a little longer than a minute that you’d start feeling better. But the reeling anxiety that wraps around your throat like a chain seems to pull you impossibly farther away from that betterness, and forces your throat to tighten to a point where your breathing feels limited. You go from breathing through your nose to your mouth, where you can still taste the lingering artificial-vanilla with every inhale. 

It’s getting worse, an annoying voice tells you, one that manages to be louder than the others, the medicine’s supposed to help. You’ve only taken a hundred milligrams so far. Another and it’s a hundred and fifty. An overdose is only if it goes over two hundred.

It’s stupid logic but more tempting the more you think about it. It is, after all, only a third pill. You’d be pushing it—

Do you really care all that much that you’re pushing it? What if you want to break that limit? The limits you made, to keep yourself alive, that you still sometimes question the existence of? 

―but that doesn’t really compute well in your mind, and you soon find yourself reaching for the bottle again. Each pill shakes with your hand, and with each tremor another wave of tablets hits the sides of the bottle, like a visual representation of the thoughts that bounce off of the walls of your brain. You lift the bottle, and bring it to your lips, the area that makes contact with your mouth cooler than the rest of the bottle from earlier when you had done the same thing. You’re about to tilt it up before you hear a sudden knock at your door. 

The noise is startling and makes you drop the bottle, the pills spilling over the edge of it and onto the table. 

“Shit,” you curse quietly under your breath, quickly flattening your hand and sweeping all of the pills into a pile, and picking them up in clusters. You manage to get them all back in the bottle before another knock sounds out, and cap the bottle before opening up one of the small drawers on the side of your desk and shoving it in there. 

“Come in!” you call out in a strained voice, praying that you’ll be able to keep it steady for as long as the person at the door needs to talk to you. You close the drawer just as the door creaks open. 

Much to your horror, you look up to see your Captain. 

Your palms are still sweaty as he walks in, so you try to discreetly wipe them off on your pants, and hope to whoever can help you that he doesn’t pay too much attention to the sweat gathered on your forehead. You take a deep breath as silently as you can, attempting to gather yourself before Price can notice anything being wrong.

“It’s a quarter past two,” Price comments once he walks in, closing the door behind him, “why are you still awake?” 

You look over to the digital clock on your desk almost immediately and, oh shit, it is exactly 2:15. You look back over at Price, who is busying himself with pulling the chair that was once in front of your desk around it, presumably to sit next to you. You still feel the dreadfully fast pace of your heart, that th-thump, th-thump, th-thump that you can hear blaring in your ears. It makes itself known in your chest, in your wrist, even in the base of your throat―almost every pulse point in your body has forced you to become aware of its existence.

You swallow dryly, trying to ignore said feeling, and reply, “Why are you still awake?”

Price raises an eyebrow at you, pulling the chair up beside you and sitting down in it, “I asked first.” 

You look at him with an unimpressed look on your face. “Can’t sleep. Why are you up?”

Price hums and leans back in his seat, arms crossing over each other, “Same reason.”

It doesn’t sound like a lie, but it doesn’t sound entirely true either, in your opinion. It’s not that you don’t trust him, but he just seems like he’s up to something. What that something is, though, you aren’t sure. 

“Why the food?” Price nods over to the plate of mashed potatoes, very noticeably unfinished. 

Your gaze follows his to the mashed potatoes. You can still feel the moisture on the palms of your hands, the small tremors that wrack your fingers, and Price’s presence does nothing to soothe your flaming nerves.

“Wanted dinner,” you shrug as casually as you can, forcing a neutral expression onto your face―you briefly overthink what a neutral expression looks like, and decidedly just let your face relax the best you can, “I didn’t get any when everyone else went, I was busy with something, and didn’t really want to head over to the mess with so many people over there, plus I was busy.” 

You look over at Price after your lengthy explanation, not realizing just how lengthy it was, and watch the corners of his lips quirk up into an amused-yet-worried smile. 

“You said you were busy twice,” he points out, before pausing, and pointing out again, “and it looks like you’ve taken a few bites out o’that at most.” 

You don’t bother to look at the mashed potatoes again; you know very well how they look, and know how undeniably full the plate looks. 

“Didn’t feel that hungry,” you make up a poorly thought-out excuse, that even you can understand is unbelievable. 

Price blinks at you, slowly, before sighing. 

“Are you alright?” Price asks, looking more concerned than amused now. You should’ve known from the moment that he walked in that you wouldn’t be able to hide anything from him. If not for the fact that he always seems to know what’s going on, then because of the overwhelming presence of your disquietude. 

You look at him and try to figure out what to say. What is there to say? You were panicking just two minutes ago, with your prescription bottle in one hand, the other too shaky to hold up the damn thing. You can still taste that vanilla. You can still taste the plastic. The bottle itself never once touched your tongue, but every time your tongue rests in your mouth, the tip of it pokes at the same exact place the bottle made contact with. You expect it to taste of vanilla, like its contents, but it doesn’t; it tastes like the pharmacy you got it at. It tastes like the sterile white of the counter, the fingers of the person who handed it to you, the money you spent on it, and the time it took you to get it. 

It’s nothing pleasant. The strange vanilla of the pills aren’t either, but they’re preferable to the bottle itself. 

Price notices you zoning out for a moment, and waves a hand in front of your face. Your eyes unconsciously track his hand for a moment before you blink back into reality and look at him. You knew you were fucked earlier, but when you look at his expression, at the look in his eyes as he watches you snap back to reality, you know that he knows. Maybe he doesn’t know exactly what happened, or how it happened, but he knows something. Fuck, he knows. 

Or, maybe he does know. Maybe he heard your cursing through the door, even with your low voice, maybe he heard the pills spill onto the desk, maybe he heard the opening and closing of the drawer, maybe he―

He’s staring at you.

―has security cameras set up in here, because he does in every room, every hall, everywhere but the bathrooms and the sleeping quarters―

He’s talking. It’s muffled by the sound of your own heavy breathing.

―or maybe it’s just intuition, a gut feeling he has, where he just knows that something’s wrong, that same gut feeling that everyone seems to get when something isn’t the way it’s supposed to be―

Your palms are sweaty. Your heart is pounding out of your chest. You’re starting to feel a little lightheaded.

―the same “gut feeling” that you experience every day but have to ignore because it’s not a gut feeling it’s anxiety and your real gut feelings feel the almost the exact same way anxiety does so you may never know if you ever get an actual one―

Price grabs onto your arm, though the feeling of his skin on yours can’t push past the skin-crawling sensation that coats your skin.

―but how do you really know that your gut feelings aren’t gut feelings? How do you know that anything is anything? That it’s really Price that’s sitting next to you, that it’s your own office you’re sitting in, that―

“[name]!” Price’s voice snaps you out of the trance you seem to be in, and you sharply inhale at the sound of his voice, his volume much louder than you expected it to be. 

You didn’t realize how fast and heavy your breathing had really gotten until this point. You look at Price, a little more on the panicked side now, with restless eyes that can’t stop flitting all over his face. He takes his hand off of your arm before you can even notice it was there in the first place, and leans back away from you. 

You try to take deep breaths, but each breath feels like trying to breathe underwater, and each inhale-exhale leaves you shuddering. You look down at your lap, breath hitching and stuttering, and the moment you open your mouth in the hopes of breathing easier, you are all too aware of just how dry it’s become. You’re sure you let out some kind of sound that alerts Price of your growing distress, because he hesitantly leans forward and takes a deep breath. 

“[name],” Price keeps his voice soft and quiet, quieter than he’d been just a few seconds ago, his soothing voice a gentle wave crashing against the rock of your mind, “you’re okay. Look at me, soldier.” 

Like a remote to TV static, the noisiness of your mind is partially calmed and the waves that wash over your brain provide sweet escape from the overwhelming adrenaline and cortisol thrumming in your veins.

Mindlessly, you do as he asks, his words grounding you and tugging you back down to Earth more effectively than any anchor could. When you look at him, his eyes are clouded with concern and there’s a small frown on his face that almost perfectly juxtaposes his usual quokka-smile.

You know you’re still trembling. You can feel the hairs that stick up on your legs and arms, the weird hot-cold feeling that creates pinpricks of discomfort across your body, the way your heart is trying to escape the prison cell of your ribcage—but none of it compares to the unbelievable dizziness you feel. Your head is a balloon filled with helium and it is slowly deflating, but not fast enough. You feel like you’re no longer in control of your own body—or were you ever in control? 

Your stomach is churning. There’s a sense of dread that dwells there. You might throw up. 

Cutting through your thoughts is Price once again.

“You listenin’?” your Captain asks, to which you nod after a delay of a few seconds. Price holds a hand out and gives you a questioning look, the question of ‘can I touch you?’ clear enough on his face that you nod lightly and he takes your hand gingerly.

“Do y’know where you are?” Price asks. You nod, and he softly requests, “can you tell me where?”

“My office,” you answer simply, the gravel in your voice making you wince. The warbling that escapes your mouth is nowhere near your usual voice, and for a moment you think you might be right about needing to vomit, but you manage to push it down and pray. Price ignores this and pushes on.

“And who am I?” he asks, as if he doesn’t know. 

“... The Captain.” Price purses his lips—he doesn’t really want to accept this as an answer, because he wants you to say his actual name, but he knows what you mean, and you know what he’s doing. He knows that you mean that you’re here, that you’re present, and you know that he’s trying to ground you the best he can.

“Do you know my name?” he questions, to which you nod again, though a little more moderately, seeing as the repetition of nodding your head only makes you more lightheaded, “what’s my name?”

You take a few shaky breaths, ones that are shallow and uneven, ones that hitch enough for it to be so noticeable that Price manages to pick up on it. You open your mouth to talk, but find that your tongue is too heavy to lift to create coherent sounds. The thought somehow heightens your anxiety, something that seems to be noticeable to Price, judging by how his expression shifts to something impossibly softer.

“Here, let me—” Without another word, Price cautiously brings your hand up to the middle of his chest, where his sternum is. 

He exaggerates his breathing, taking long, deep breaths in, and similarly long exhales. His chest rises and falls satisfyingly, and it’s clear that he wants you to copy him. You try your best at first, taking that same too-deep breath that he does and fail almost immediately as you choke on the air you attempt to inhale. Price brushes his thumb over the back of your hand and takes another exaggerated breath, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth. You keep your gaze more focused on the lower half of his face as you copy him, oxygen going in through your nose, and carbon dioxide going out through your mouth. 

That one successful breath is followed by an unsuccessful one, then another successful one, then another, and it’s a little rocky but you find that soon enough you’re breathing. There’s air flowing in and out of your body smoothly, with each exaggerated breath you take, almost in sync with Price, until finally he puts your hand back into your lap but continues to hold it. He squeezes it once before letting go, and clasps his hands together. 

“What’s my name, soldier?” he asks, and this time you think you can answer him. 

“John Price,” his name feels weird coming out of your mouth, especially with no honorifics, but he accepts the answer anyway. 

“Good,” Price praises, giving you a small smile, “you’re doing good.”

The approval he gives you helps to calm your nerves the tiniest bit, and you feel yourself slowly coming down from the God awful high that you’d just been on. Again, you’re not sure how he knows, but he senses that you’re calming down―is it because your breathing is steadier? You aren’t nearly as restless? You’re no longer zoning out?―so he leans back in his chair and watches as you do the same. 

“Now,” he breathes out, “can you tell me what’s going on with you?” 

You look away from him for the briefest moment, sparing a glance at the cabinet you know the bottle of your pills lays in, before looking back at him. If he noticed you pulling your gaze away from him for a split second, he doesn’t mention it nor does he make it known that he did. 

“There’s not really anything going on,” you shrug, to which Price scoffs. 

“[c/n],” he looks at you, disbelieving, “two seconds ago I had to help you breathe normally. I know that there’s something that’s going on, somethin’ that had to trigger what just happened.” 

You stay quiet and he gives you an expectant look. The pressure from his fixed glare makes you feel like you’re about to explode. 

Finally, you answer him defeatedly, though vaguely, “I was in the middle of taking my medicine when you knocked.”

Price stays silent, expecting you to elaborate. 

“And…” you try to find a way to make it sound less awkward than it does in your mind, though you suppose there’s never really a correct way to go about something like this, “I almost took more medicine than I needed to.” 

The silence continues, but now Price looks less expectant, and instead more of a mix between concern and something else you can’t identify. That something, though, is still soft, and still has a hint of pity―maybe sympathy?―to it.

“Almost?” he repeats, “was that on purpose?” 

When you think about it, it’s complicated. You didn’t necessarily intend to overdose, you just dismissed the idea of it. Or, at least, you don’t remember trying to overtly kill yourself. Then again, you knew the risks of taking more pills than prescribed to you; had you taken that third pill, you would’ve only been one more away from an overdose, and even then you’d still probably get some kind of health issue. 

Price’s face hardens when you don’t answer immediately. He must be taking your silence as a “yes”. 

“Not… really,” you answer slowly, “I don’t know what I was thinking.” 

He nods, waiting a few seconds before asking, “Have you thought about it before?”

By it, for some reason, you sense that he isn’t asking exclusively about taking one too many tablets.

It’s tempting to be dishonest about it; it’s a shameful thing to you, to use the things that are supposed to help you to harm yourself, to be so careless with your own life. You know that it isn’t necessarily all your fault, but there’s still that small part of you that can’t help but feel guilty for using something so many other people try so hard to get to almost kill yourself with. 

After a few beats of silence, you decide to answer, “Yeah.” 

Price nods again, and he looks like he expected that answer. “D’you want to tell me more about that?”

You could, hypothetically, go in-depth about all of your weird thoughts about committing. The ones you’d been having just, what, fifteen minutes ago? Thirty minutes ago? The ones about chains wrapped around your throat, stolen guns from the armory, deep purple bruising and a stretched neck. Those thoughts, the ones that try to make ending your life sound pretty, that try to make it sound appealing. It’s not to convince yourself, you don’t think, but rather to help you come to terms with the fact that you were already convinced that you were going to commit at some point. The thought still scares you, because you’re a pussy―terrible, terrible choice of words, a voice at the back of your mind insists, you’re not a pussy, you’re just like anyone else―but you felt like you just knew that you were gonna die by your own hands. That you’d already made the choice, and now you have to understand it, to realize it. 

You are in that room full of TVs, with The Architect in front of you, telling you that you have no choice. That, in fact, the problem is choice. You are surrounded by a million other yous, all protesting, all denying that you have no choice but to kill yourself, all yelling “Bullshit!” because deniability is the most predictable of all human responses. 

But, you remind yourself, The Architect was wrong. He told Neo that he couldn’t do anything to save Trinity from her “fate”, but Neo did save her. He plunged his hand into her chest and forced her heart to beat. 

That’s true. 

And, you add on, The Architect is a computer program, tasked with mimicking human emotions, despite never having felt them. He could never understand the power of human will, of the desperation so many humans have to live. 

Because The Architect was never alive. He is a sentient computer program, whose job is to create a world in which humans can “live” while they are fed on in the real world, but his problem was his inability to create anything less than perfect. We aren’t expected to be perfect, and are taught that flawlessness doesn’t exist, which is why he came to the conclusion that he needed a “lesser mind” to help him create a better Matrix. 

You aren’t supposed to succumb to the idea of having no choice. Because that, in itself, is a choice. Everything you do is a choice. Even if everything you do will only add up to the same ending, to the same fate, why should you waste time not making the choices you want to make? When you assume that you have no choice, you assume that everything you do will go to waste, but that’s not true. You aren’t the only person that exists. You aren’t the only person who makes choices. The choices you make affect other people’s choices, and those choices affect another person, and another, and another. You still have to live through the choices you make, as does everyone else, so even if everything will end the same, why should you make inherently bad decisions when you could be making good ones? Why should you go through things you don’t have to go through, just because you believe that nothing matters in the end?

“Not really,” you answer Price, snapping yourself out of your thoughts, “I don’t… want to think about it too much right now.” 

Price looks a little more worried now but he doesn’t protest your decision.

“Is there anything in here that you could use to hurt yourself?” he asks after a moment, “Or that you’ve already used?” 

You bite your tongue. Technically, the pills count, you suppose, but those are your meds. You can’t really have those confiscated.

“Other than the medicine, no,” you answer truthfully, much to Price’s relief, as is evident on his face as his hardened expression softens. 

“Good, good,” he shifts in his seat. 

He’s gearing up for something. You can tell with the way he subtly presses his clasped hands together, the way his face goes through a mix of emotions, and the way the deafening silence of the room really seems to be getting to him. 

Suddenly, he asks you, “D’you think you’re going to… ?” 

He doesn’t ask you explicitly, but you have a good idea of what he’s asking.

“I was thinking about it,” you respond softly, “before you came in.”

Price nods, having expected that answer. You’re not sure if it was obvious, or if he just assumed you were thinking about it because of you confessing to having thoughts of it before this. 

“Y’know I have to tell someone about this, right?” Price reminds you gently, as if you didn’t already know, “Someone up the chain. Might be Laswell.” 

You hum affirmatively, because you didn’t expect anything less from him, and know that it’s for the better. It doesn’t make you feel any better, obviously, but you know how to be realistic when the time calls for it, and you know that if the roles were reversed you’d do the same thing. Not because it’s mandatory, but because when you imagine Price in your situation, the thought wraps itself around your heart and twists. 

The room is silent for a beat, and you get the feeling that Price is somehow more uncomfortable with the quiet than you are. He shifts in his seat while you stay still, and he clears his throat to break the silence for a brief moment before speaking up again. 

“It’s late,” he points out the obvious, before pausing and irresolutely asking, “do you want to head back to my quarters with me for the night?” 

His words confuse you for a moment. You open your mouth to ask why, before it suddenly hits you―oh, right, you just basically confessed to being suicidal. He doesn’t want to leave you alone right now. 

“Yeah, sure,” you agree, less questioning than Price expected you to be judging by his momentary look of surprise, before he nods and begins to get up. 

He pushes his chair behind him, standing up straight, and holds a hand out for you to grab. You grab it gingerly and use it to haul yourself up, your knees cracking as you do after having been sat for so long. You wince at the sound and Price gives a light-hearted chuckle.

“I thought I was s’posed to be the old one?” he teases, making you give him an unimpressed look and let go of his hand. The room falls back into soundlessness.

You both remain silent as Price leads you out the door of your office, turning off the lights and closing the door after you, and continues to lead you down to his sleeping quarters. His are farther down the hall from yours, because of his higher rank, and therefore takes longer to walk to from your office. The long walk is quiet enough to hear a pin drop, but you both don’t mind this, as the atmosphere here is more comfortable than the one in your office. 

Eventually, you make it to his room, where he opens the door for you and signals for you to walk in first with his hand. You enter the room and hear him enter shortly after you, and go to sit on his bed before pausing. 

“I’m still in my…” you gesture to your clothes, gear-less but still not your “normal” sleeping clothes. Price raises an eyebrow at you as you wave at the state of yourself. 

“I’ve seen you sleep in worse,” he points out, “and I think you sleep in this than in your actual sleeping clothes.” 

You’re about to ask how he even knows about that, before he answers you before you can voice your question, “I’ve seen you walking back t’your quarters in these clothes and hear you snoring a second later at least ten times.”

You close your mouth and sigh through your nose, before muttering, “Didn’t know I was talkin’ to fuckin’ Sherlock Holmes.” 

Price snorts at your retort, “If I’m Sherlock, are you Watson?”

You think about it for a moment, before shaking your head negatively. 

“No?” Price toes off his boots and walks over to you, sitting on the bed, “Then who are you?” 

You sit down next to him, “I dunno. I’m like…” 

“Like Neo,” you continue, ignoring the way Price’s eyebrows immediately raise, “and you’re Morpheus. But less smart.”

“You’re not Neo,” he scoffs, “and I’m not a less-smart Morpheus.” 

“I wasn’t askin’ you,” you grumble, shaking your already-loose boots off of your feet and crawling up Price’s bed. You manage to snake under the covers and feel Price’s eyes on you as you do, staring holes into your face.

He hums in acknowledgment, not bothering to answer you verbally, and instead gets up to lift up the covers and get into bed. The bed is small enough as-is, but with two people inside of it, it obviously gets much smaller. Price doesn’t seem to mind, though, and turns so that his back is facing the door and his front is facing you. Directly in front of you is the base of his neck, but if you tilt your head up, you can see him looking down at you with tired eyes. 

You let out a soft breath through your nose and realize just how tired you are. Price seems to notice this, because his arm comes up and rests across your side, his hand splaying across the middle of your back. He gives you a comforting sweep of his hand, before settling it on your upper back, absentmindedly rubbing his thumb in soothing circles against your clothed back. 

You close your eyes, and he closes his, and it feels like you’ve woken up in the real world and removed the cables from your body.

[schmergo]

If you think I was a kid who loved to read, you’d be right, but that doesn’t just mean I was reading, like, Newbery Award nominated prestigious children’s novels. Because in my experience, most kids who love to read are more gourmand than gourmet. I was also reading:

* Class rosters. I begged my teachers for these. I wanted to try to memorize everyone’s middle names.

* Similarly, old yearbooks. I liked judging whether people’s names matched their faces and making up different names for them if they did. I also loved reading baby name books and making lists of names I liked.

.* The personals section of the newspaper. I liked picturing the people as they described themselves and imagining which combination of people on the page might like each other.

* The ingredients of food packages. Not even for any real informational reason, I just really liked certain fantasy-sounding words like thiamine and riboflavin.

* An old World Book Encyclopedia from the 1970s. I would sneak out of bed to read it because the bookshelf was near my bedroom door and I could crawl to it without making the floor creak. My favorite entries were the ones about Hawaii and tigers. I kinda developed a ritual of rereading the Hawaii article when I had read a scary book before bed and needed to calm my brain down.

* My dad’s Dave Barry and Woody Allen humor books and also transcripts of all of the Monty Python’s Flying Circus episodes. This is probably why my sense of humor has been so weird from such a young age.

* The part of the church hymnal with ceremonies for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. I liked to imagine them.

* Wine catalogs at friends’ houses. The descriptions of the wines seemed so poetic and abstract. I also liked when they said “fruit on the nose” because I pictured a dog balancing a whole piece of fruit on its nose.

* My parents’ parenting books. I liked to see if I was exhibiting developmentally appropriate behavior. I am not 100% sure if doing that is, in fact, developmentally appropriate behavior.

* Those little brochures advertising various roadside attractions and tourist activities at rest shops. I would grab as many as possible when we stopped to use the bathroom on a road trip. Also, travel guides in general.

* I checked out the entire “unexplained” section of the library over the course of third grade. (Dewey decimal 001.9.) Ask little me about Project Blue Book, I guess.

* I LOVED party planning books, especially ones with highly specific themed parties that seemed impractical to put on in real life like a whole chess-themed party culminating in a game of human chess, complete with lemon chess pie for dessert.

* Seed packets. I find the writing style of these very endearing. It always sounds so affectionate toward the plants.

* My grandma’s Reader’s Digest magazines, which felt like Russian roulette because they sometimes published disturbing articles that gave me nightmares. (Reader’s Indigestion?) I especially vividly remember a feature on adopted kids who need to wear Ilizarov apparatuses to straighten their limbs because they became malformed due to severe neglect at orphanages.

* For some reason, I loved reading restaurant menus and imagining what kind of food different fictional characters would order from there.

* And last but certainly not least, because I think this is a relatable one: the AMERICAN GIRL CATALOG! No, I never had an American Girl doll, but getting the catalog was a source of much excitement.

[biopractify]

Free online courses for bioinformatics beginners

🔬 Free Online Courses for Bioinformatics Beginners 🚀

Are you interested in bioinformatics but don’t know where to start? Whether you're from a biotechnology, biology, or computer science background, learning bioinformatics can open doors to exciting opportunities in genomics, drug discovery, and data science. And the best part? You can start for free!

Here’s a list of the best free online bioinformatics courses to kickstart your journey.

📌 1. Introduction to Bioinformatics – Coursera (University of Toronto)

📍 Platform: Coursera 🖥️ What You’ll Learn:

Basic biological data analysis

Algorithms used in genomics

Hands-on exercises with biological datasets

🎓 Why Take It? Ideal for beginners with a biology background looking to explore computational approaches.

📌 2. Bioinformatics for Beginners – Udemy (Free Course)

📍 Platform: Udemy 🖥️ What You’ll Learn:

Introduction to sequence analysis

Using BLAST for genomic comparisons

Basics of Python for bioinformatics

🎓 Why Take It? Short, beginner-friendly course with practical applications.

📌 3. EMBL-EBI Bioinformatics Training

📍 Platform: EMBL-EBI 🖥️ What You’ll Learn:

Genomic data handling

Transcriptomics and proteomics

Data visualization tools

🎓 Why Take It? High-quality training from one of the most reputable bioinformatics institutes in Europe.

📌 4. Introduction to Computational Biology – MIT OpenCourseWare

📍 Platform: MIT OCW 🖥️ What You’ll Learn:

Algorithms for DNA sequencing

Structural bioinformatics

Systems biology

🎓 Why Take It? A solid foundation for students interested in research-level computational biology.

📌 5. Bioinformatics Specialization – Coursera (UC San Diego)

📍 Platform: Coursera 🖥️ What You’ll Learn:

How bioinformatics algorithms work

Hands-on exercises in Python and Biopython

Real-world applications in genomics

🎓 Why Take It? A deep dive into computational tools, ideal for those wanting an in-depth understanding.

📌 6. Genomic Data Science – Harvard Online (edX) 🖥️ What You’ll Learn:

RNA sequencing and genome assembly

Data handling using R

Machine learning applications in genomics

🎓 Why Take It? Best for those interested in AI & big data applications in genomics.

📌 7. Bioinformatics Courses on BioPractify (100% Free)

📍 Platform: BioPractify 🖥️ What You’ll Learn:

Hands-on experience with real datasets

Python & R for bioinformatics

Molecular docking and drug discovery techniques

🎓 Why Take It? Learn from domain experts with real-world projects to enhance your skills.

🚀 Final Thoughts: Start Learning Today!

Bioinformatics is a game-changer in modern research and healthcare. Whether you're a biology student looking to upskill or a tech enthusiast diving into genomics, these free courses will give you a strong start.

📢 Which course are you excited to take? Let me know in the comments! 👇💬

[womaneng]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Zeynep Küçük Woman Engineer (@woman.engineer)

Learning to code and becoming a data scientist without a background in computer science or mathematics is absolutely possible, but it will require dedication, time, and a structured approach. ✨👌🏻 🖐🏻Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started:

1. Start with the Basics:

- Begin by learning the fundamentals of programming. Choose a beginner-friendly programming language like Python, which is widely used in data science.

- Online platforms like Codecademy, Coursera, and Khan Academy offer interactive courses for beginners.

2. Learn Mathematics and Statistics:

- While you don’t need to be a mathematician, a solid understanding of key concepts like algebra, calculus, and statistics is crucial for data science.

- Platforms like Khan Academy and MIT OpenCourseWare provide free resources for learning math.

3. Online Courses and Tutorials:

- Enroll in online data science courses on platforms like Coursera, edX, Udacity, and DataCamp. Look for beginner-level courses that cover data analysis, visualization, and machine learning.

4. Structured Learning Paths:

- Follow structured learning paths offered by online platforms. These paths guide you through various topics in a logical sequence.

5. Practice with Real Data:

- Work on hands-on projects using real-world data. Websites like Kaggle offer datasets and competitions for practicing data analysis and machine learning.

6. Coding Exercises:

- Practice coding regularly to build your skills. Sites like LeetCode and HackerRank offer coding challenges that can help improve your programming proficiency.

7. Learn Data Manipulation and Analysis Libraries:

- Familiarize yourself with Python libraries like NumPy, pandas, and Matplotlib for data manipulation, analysis, and visualization.

For more follow me on instagram.

[hamsterbellbelle]

Hello🐹Now that is near the end of the year, it's time for the personal top-5 list of my builds and CCs that I’m most proud of😤also a little bit of self-promotion…_(:з」∠)_  

This year I did 22 builds (a little bit more than last year...xD) Last year I said I'd hope to build Mass Effect Normandy, Shepard’s apartment, a high school fit for the Cyberpunk 2077 world...but none of that happened..._(:з」∠)_ Well I'd hope again I'll be able to build those this year xD

Anyway…to the list! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

5. Komorebi Thrift and Bubble Tea Store🎦|| This year I tried to create a No-CC build every month, and honestly I'm quite surprised how much stuff sims 4 have (of course debug items included...xD). Interestingly, the thing I love most with this build is the vending machine at the entrance..._(:з」∠)_

4. Nomad Campsite🎦|| I had a lot a lot of fun building this. This turns out better than I imagined ( •̀ ω •́ )✧ Only thing I wished I could've done is make those tent a "real room" so electronics inside won't break..._(:з」∠)_

3. Waterfront Nightclub🎦|| I really really love those catwalks above the dance floor, it added so many potential to storytelling ( •̀ ω •́ )✧ This is also one of the very few builds that I'm not using in my game-play save...instead it's for you guys hehe🧡

2. Lestat’s Apartment🎦|| I love vampires and I love cyberpunk, this is one of my dream apartments xD The way the showcase video is made is also one of my favorites ( •̀ ω •́ )✧

1. Abandoned Subway Strip Club🎦|| I've build like 4~5 strip clubs now and honestly this is my favorite one ( •̀ ω •́ )✧ I just wish I had more space to really build the subway parts with more abandoned tunnels...

To the CC List! ⬇️⬇️⬇️

I know I didn't make much CCs this year...but somehow it's still kinda hard to pick a favorite...I like them all xD

5. Heart Shape Animated Neon Sign || Seriously huge thanks to Syboulette for her patience and guidance🧡🧡I never thought I'd be able to make animated stuffs like this \(≧∇≦)/ And also, check out this 🔞18+ animated neon hehe Animated Phallus Sign

4. Miniature Space Hamster Set || When the poll results came out, I was kinda disappointed...but then I thought:😤I'll do it myself! And OMG I'm really not good at making build-mode items xD I'm also so glad that Sims 4 Studio added the function to mod stairs and fences just in time for the project ( •̀ ω •́ )✧

3. City Living Cyberpunk Food Stall || I need to make more of these ( •̀ ω •́ )✧ xD

2. Ashtray with Animated Smoke || My first ts4.script object...I feel so proud of myself xD...Python is weird..._(:з」∠)_

1. Secret Passage - Science Portrait || I love secret passages...bookcase doors, hidden door behind a shelf, etc...I really gotta make more of these...xD

[educationmore]

Python for Beginners: Launch Your Tech Career with Coding Skills

Are you ready to launch your tech career but don’t know where to start? Learning Python is one of the best ways to break into the world of technology—even if you have zero coding experience.

In this guide, we’ll explore how Python for beginners can be your gateway to a rewarding career in software development, data science, automation, and more.

Why Python Is the Perfect Language for Beginners

Python has become the go-to programming language for beginners and professionals alike—and for good reason:

Simple syntax: Python reads like plain English, making it easy to learn.

High demand: Industries spanning the spectrum are actively seeking Python developers to fuel their technological advancements.

Versatile applications: Python's versatility shines as it powers everything from crafting websites to driving artificial intelligence and dissecting data.

Whether you want to become a software developer, data analyst, or AI engineer, Python lays the foundation.

What Can You Do With Python?

Python is not just a beginner language—it’s a career-building tool. Here are just a few career paths where Python is essential:

Web Development: Frameworks like Django and Flask make it easy to build powerful web applications. You can even enroll in a Python Course in Kochi to gain hands-on experience with real-world web projects.

Data Science & Analytics: For professionals tackling data analysis and visualization, the Python ecosystem, featuring powerhouses like Pandas, NumPy, and Matplotlib, sets the benchmark.

Machine Learning & AI: Spearheading advancements in artificial intelligence development, Python boasts powerful tools such as TensorFlow and scikit-learn.

Automation & Scripting: Simple yet effective Python scripts offer a pathway to amplified efficiency by automating routine workflows.

Cybersecurity & Networking: The application of Python is expanding into crucial domains such as ethical hacking, penetration testing, and the automation of network processes.

How to Get Started with Python

Starting your Python journey doesn't require a computer science degree. Success hinges on a focused commitment combined with a thoughtfully structured educational approach.

Step 1: Install Python

Download and install Python from python.org. It's free and available for all platforms.

Step 2: Choose an IDE

Use beginner-friendly tools like Thonny, PyCharm, or VS Code to write your code.

Step 3: Learn the Basics

Focus on:

Variables and data types

Conditional statements

Loops

Functions

Lists and dictionaries

If you prefer guided learning, a reputable Python Institute in Kochi can offer structured programs and mentorship to help you grasp core concepts efficiently.

Step 4: Build Projects

Learning by doing is key. Start small:

Build a calculator

Automate file organization

Create a to-do list app

As your skills grow, you can tackle more complex projects like data dashboards or web apps.

How Python Skills Can Boost Your Career

Adding Python to your resume instantly opens up new opportunities. Here's how it helps:

Higher employability: Python is one of the top 3 most in-demand programming languages.

Better salaries: Python developers earn competitive salaries across the globe.

Remote job opportunities: Many Python-related jobs are available remotely, offering flexibility.

Even if you're not aiming to be a full-time developer, Python skills can enhance careers in marketing, finance, research, and product management.

If you're serious about starting a career in tech, learning Python is the smartest first step you can take. It’s beginner-friendly, powerful, and widely used across industries.

Whether you're a student, job switcher, or just curious about programming, Python for beginners can unlock countless career opportunities. Invest time in learning today—and start building the future you want in tech.

Globally recognized as a premier educational hub, DataMites Institute delivers in-depth training programs across the pivotal fields of data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. They provide expert-led courses designed for both beginners and professionals aiming to boost their careers.

Python Modules Explained - Different Types and Functions - Python Tutorial

[tkwritesdumbassassins]

smashes through your wall and drops writer asks hehe

#4, 7, 24, 40, 49

Hyo!!! Thank you so much for the asks ♥

From this ask

4. What detail in [insert fic] are you really proud of?

All of them: how immersive they feel, I guess would be the best way to put it? I often pride myself in doing a lot of research in whatever fandom or story I write. Characters, scenes, settings... etc. My degree is in Sociology--specifically Cultural Sociology-- where I was taught to observe all the intricacies of the world to not only better grasp it but also the various peoples that reside in it

It is often why I have such detailed settings, because the little touches make it feel all the more real. They feel lived in, and not just theater backdrops for the characters to move around in.

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

okay okay okay this one is something I'm SUPER proud of. So! For my ongoing Dragon Age project, several characters I am writing are from the fantasy equivalent of a mixed version of Spain and Italy. One scene in particular was driving me absolutely batty because I didn't think a character would say good luck yet at the same time I couldn't think of a good alternative. Then Verdi, My WONDERFUL friend pointed out the very traditional Italian saying of "In bocca al lupo/crepi il lupo" (Translates to "Into the wolf's mouth"/"the wolf will die" Similar to "break a leg", it's to stave off bad luck.)

Of course, it's Dragon Age, so I tweaked it a little to match the vibe. (In bocca al draco/crepi il draco".) Since then, not only have I received several lovely comments on it, but also several of my friends have began utilizing it in their Dragon Age fics as well.

Bonus: It is canon that Lucanis, one of the characters in question, IS superstitious about these things! SO I managed to correctly predict another aspect of him before the game came out.

24. Are there any easter eggs in [insert fic], and if so, what are they?

In Caveat, there are several little easter eggs. My favorites are the Monty Python nod and two mentioned authors based off of real-life literary greats. (Machiavelli and Shakespeare.) There are probably a few others I'm forgetting about, but those are the most memorable to me

40. Do you tend to reread fics or are you a one-and-done kind of person?

I reread all the time! Especially my favorites

[blogbyrajesh]

Why Every Student Should Participate in a Hackathon

In today’s fast-paced digital world, the ability to solve problems creatively is just as important as technical skills. This is where a hackathon shines. Whether you're a developer, designer, or business-minded thinker, a hackathon gives you a unique platform to showcase your talent, build new skills, and contribute to innovative projects—often in just 48 hours.

If you're a student, participating in a hackathon might just be the smartest decision you can make for your personal and professional growth.

What is a Hackathon?

A hackathon is a collaborative event where teams work together intensively over a short period—usually one to three days—to build a project from scratch. While coding is a central part, modern hackathons welcome all kinds of talents: UI/UX designers, content creators, marketers, and product thinkers.

Hackathons often come with themes—like sustainability, mental health, AI, fintech, or social impact—which help guide participants to build projects around real-world challenges.

The Student Advantage: Why Join a Hackathon?

If you’re still in college or university, here are a few solid reasons to sign up for your first hackathon:

1. Learn by Doing

A hackathon is one of the best places to learn hands-on. You’ll get to apply classroom theories to real-world projects, often learning more in one weekend than in an entire semester. You’ll also pick up new tools, technologies, and frameworks on the go.

2. Build Your Resume and Portfolio

Participation in a hackathon instantly boosts your resume. Employers love to see initiative, teamwork, and problem-solving skills—all of which are demonstrated by joining a hackathon. If you create something impactful, it could even become a long-term project or startup idea.

3. Network with Industry Experts

Many hackathons feature mentors from top companies and industries. This is your chance to ask questions, get feedback, and even connect with potential recruiters. Some companies even hire interns or offer job interviews during or after the event.

4. Win Prizes and Scholarships

While not the main goal, many hackathons offer cash prizes, internships, tech gadgets, and free software licenses. Some also provide travel scholarships or job offers to outstanding teams.

5. Collaborate and Build Friendships

You’ll work closely with peers from different departments or even universities. Hackathons foster a spirit of teamwork and trust—and you may just walk away with lifelong friends or co-founders.

How to Prepare for Your First Hackathon

Pick your tools early: Whether it's Python, React, Figma, or Firebase, be comfortable with at least one or two tools.

Form a balanced team: Find people with different strengths—developers, designers, and storytellers.

Have a problem-first mindset: Instead of jumping into building, understand the user and the issue deeply.

Practice your pitch: Your idea might be amazing, but if you can’t explain it well in 2-3 minutes, judges may miss its value.

Stay open-minded: Hackathons are chaotic and dynamic. Be ready to learn, adapt, and pivot.

Choosing the Right Hackathon as a Student

There are thousands of hackathons held worldwide every year—on campuses, online, or hosted by organizations. Look for events that welcome beginners and provide mentorship. Sites like Devpost, MLH (Major League Hacking), HackerEarth, and local student communities are great places to start.

Also consider themed hackathons like:

Education hackathons for building student-focused tools

Green tech hackathons for solving climate problems

AI hackathons for machine learning enthusiasts

Conclusion

A hackathon is more than just an event—it’s an experience. It pushes your limits, grows your skills, and opens up new opportunities. As a student, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. So step out of the classroom and into the hackathon arena. You might just discover your next passion, your dream job, or the idea that changes the world.

[oneictskills]

ICT Skills | An Online Live IT Training

ICT skills gives Live Online IT Training with job-oriented computer courses in India, We provide online programming certificate courses like Python, Java, Kotlin, C language, C plus plus, We serve online live full-stack Web Development Project Training programme such as Full stack framework based training with Django, Laravel, WordPress, PHP, Java, Node js, React JS, Mongo DB, Express js and as per student requirement, We (ictskills.in) give training on various field like online live UI-UX Design, Digital Marketing, Graphic Design, Web Design with essential tools HTML, CSS, SASS, Photoshop, illustrator, Canva, Figma, Indesign, Javascript with ES6, CorelDraw, Publisher, ICT gives live classes for basic to advanced skills in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, English, Hindi, Gujarati typing and as per school or college computer subject syllabus training in INDIA and World-Wide, We are teaching with Gujarati, Hindi, English language.

ICT Skills delivered training by a live instructor, in real-time. Virtually is training the student receives or accesses over the internet rather than being physically in the classroom with the instructor, We give Government authorized certificate to student. We conducted IT courses via the Internet. We are generally conducted through a learning management system, in which students can view their course syllabus and interact with instructor.

Enroll for Best Online IT Training | ICT Skills India

Contact Details: Ahmedabad, India Call: 09499569596 E-mail: oneictskills@gmail.com Website: www.ictskills.in Instagram Id: @oneictskills

#ictskillsin #oneictskills #ictskills #ict #institute #computer #ittraining #courses #india #ahmedabad #gujarati #hindi #english #liveclass #class #onlineclasses #stayhome #onlineclass #cbseclass #live #onlinecoaching #engineering #cbse #icse #designing #school #college #professional #ictweb #ict_ahmedabad

[vidumali]

Why I Love Studying at Sabaragamuwa University

🌿 Hey Tumblr fam! I just wanted to take a moment to share something close to my heart — my experience at Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka, a place that’s more than just classrooms and assignments. It's where I found peace, passion, and purpose. 💚

🌄 A Hidden Gem in the Hills

Imagine studying on a campus surrounded by misty hills, green forests, and natural waterfalls. Sounds dreamy, right? Well, that’s exactly what SUSL in Belihuloya feels like. The air is fresh, the environment is peaceful, and nature literally whispers encouragement while you study. 😌🍃

📌 Location: Belihuloya, Sri Lanka 🔗 Official Website of SUSL

💻 My Faculty: Computing

As a proud student of the Faculty of Computing, I can honestly say that SUSL is more than qualified when it comes to academic excellence. 💯

Our professors are not just knowledgeable—they actually care. We work on cool projects, explore real-world tech, and even get support for internships and future careers.

?

👩‍💻 Tech, Talent & Tenacity

You might be surprised, but SUSL is seriously catching up with the tech world.

Let me break it down for you—our Faculty of Computing is organized into three departments, and each one opens up different futures:

🖥️ Department of Computing and Information Systems (CIS)

A great fit if you're interested in IT infrastructure, system design, software, and business applications

You learn how tech supports and transforms businesses, governments, and society

🛠️ Department of Software Engineering (SE)

Perfect if you love to build software from the ground up

Focuses on software architecture, testing, DevOps, and full development lifecycles

📊 Department of Data Science (DS)

The department of the future! 🌐

Teaches you how to work with big data, machine learning, AI, statistics, and more

If you like solving puzzles with data, this is your world

No matter which path you choose, you’ll get:

Modern course content aligned with global tech trends

Hands-on labs and access to real tools (GitHub, Python, VS Code, cloud platforms, etc.)

Internships with leading IT companies

Final-year projects that are often built with startups or community needs in mind

Some of my seniors are now working at top companies, others are doing research abroad—that’s the kind of transformation this faculty creates. 🙌

For more information: click here

🫶 Why SUSL Feels Like Home

Here’s a little list of what I adore about life here:

Friendly community – always someone to help you out

Calm campus – no traffic noise, just birds and waterfalls

Opportunities – tons of events, workshops, clubs

Affordable – both the university and the area are budget-friendly

Balance – education + mental wellness = perfect combo

🌐 Not Just a University – A Lifestyle

Sabaragamuwa University doesn't just prepare you for a career; it shapes you as a human being. It’s not all books and exams—we grow, we laugh, we support each other.

Whether you’re into tech, social sciences, management, or agriculture, there’s a faculty that fits your vibe.

✨ Learn more about SUSL here

💬 Final Thoughts

If you're thinking about studying in Sri Lanka, or even just curious about a different kind of university experience, I highly recommend checking out Sabaragamuwa University. It changed my life in the best way.

💚 Tag a friend who needs to hear about this gem! 📥 DM me if you want tips about the application process or student life here!