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helaelaemond · 10 months

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TIPS FOR WRITING IN AN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY SETTING from someone who’s been through it!

This post is written with fanfic in mind, specifically about Michael Gavey as a Maths student at the University of Oxford.

University structure

At Oxford, you are there typically for three years. You’re not usually referred to as “first year”, “second year” or “third year/final year” as nouns, and are more likely to describe yourself as being “in my first year” etc. The only exception is your first few weeks at uni when you’re known as a fresher. Your first week in your first year is known as “freshers week”, and its lots of social activities around the uni and beyond.

OXFORD IS NOT A CAMPUS UNI. University housing and buildings are scattered around the city of Oxford, and so using terms like “on campus” are not applicable.

Term starts in early October, and most exams are wrapped up by June.

Housing

Oxford is one of four English universities that use the college system (the others being Cambridge - also called ‘The Other Place’ - Durham, and York) and for the sake of simplicity, you can think of this as a replacement term for ‘dorm’ (a term not typically used). You can find a list of all the colleges on the university’s website.

Within the college building, there are usually single rooms with en-suites, but some rooms have to share a communal bathroom.

University students do NOT have roommates - no one shares a bedroom. There are also some room types in a flat-like set up, with a cluster of a few rooms (2-8 typically) and a shared kitchen. This is less common at Oxford.

Students sometimes stay in university-provided accommodation for the duration of their studies, whilst some choose to live in private accommodation from their second year onwards. If they do this, they are still associated with their college, and by default their college does not change. Private accommodation usually means a regular house shared with a few other people - this is standard across all universities in the UK, not just Oxford.

Classes

Generally speaking, subjects that don’t require lab work have a pretty simple weekly structure of one lecture and one seminar per module. Lectures are observed silently, and seminars are for discussions. Even the boldest or more socially unaware individuals do not interrupt lectures (in my four years, I never ever experienced anyone interrupting or asking a question, and so if you’re going to write Michael doing that, be aware it is a huge taboo unless the lecturer has asked for participation). Students usually take 2-3 different modules per semester, and during the academic year, there are two semesters across three terms.

Reading week is a week of usually in late October/early November where there are no classes for a week and it is a time for self-study.

Most modules have at least one assignment (what Americans would call a term paper) due before the Christmas break in December, and then at least one exam after the break ends in January. Some modules on some courses have other assignments or contributors to grades (like group presentations) but this isn’t all that common. It is very rare for things like “extra credit” to be earned, if at all.

Unless reading a combined degree (like Politics and Economics), you only take one subject. There is nothing like a “major” and “minor”. When doing a combined degree, you take half your modules on one degree, and half your modules on the other, so it’s an even 50/50. You cannot choose any subject to do a combined degree for, and they are pre-set courses determined by the university. For example, you couldn’t do a combined degree of Maths and Geography just because you wanted to.

You don’t talk about what course you’re studying, you say what course you’re reading (which is why Michael says he’s “reading Maths” not studying it).

University culture

Nightclubbing isn’t much of a thing in Oxford. If you want a uni with great nightlife you go to Birmingham, Nottingham, Sheffield, Newcastle, London - not Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, students are much more likely to spend time in one of the dozens of pubs in Oxford. College parties (I.e university accommodation parties) don’t tend to be much of a thing either unless they’re organised by the social events committees in those colleges.

Elitism is an enormous problem at Oxford. For example, in 2015, 45% of all freshers were from private schools, while only less than 7% of children in the UK are privately educated. Classism is an issue that is so unbelievably rampant in places like Oxford that I can’t even begin to explain. But like many forms of prejudice in the UK, it’s rarely overt. It comes in the forms of exclusion from social activities (think a working class student not being able to go on a ski trip with course mates), social rules only familiar to the rich being the order of the day (having the right type of suit for a formal dinner).

Oxford is a place where lifelong connections are made that spill into entertainment, business, and (most worryingly) politics, but best believe that if you’re not from the right background, those connections are not yours to make. In fact, the likelihood of you even know they’re going on in the shadows is high.

Obviously, classism and elitism are themes of Saltburn, but please don’t take them too seriously, as it’s crucial to remember that the writer/director grew up in these very private inner circles of elites. As such, her spin is wildly… wild. She’s an incredibly unreliable source for basing any kind of opinion about these issues on.

That’s all I can think of right now! I highly encourage other people who have been through English universities to add on with advice you think you would helpful to writers 😁🫶

And if you’ve got any specific questions, let me know and I’ll help if I can!

#Michael Gavey x reader #Michael Gavey x you #michael gavey x y/n #Michael Gavey x oc

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mercedesvince · 1 year

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Can you do Scott pilgrim x male reader that mainly uses ASL to communicate <33

Scott Pilgrim x M. Deaf Reader

“Please”

The italicized text is ASL

You felt your pen glide across the texture of the paper. Looking back up at your computer screen you continued copying down your notes. Laying your pen back down, you returned your hands to your key board and continued typing on the google doc.

Even though growing up you had a tough time in school with your condition, you still wanted to peruse a degree in [subject of your choice]. Your relationship with the public school system was never the best. Having to learn to translate ASL to written english never proved easy, on top of that your school required you to take a foreign language class. It was a lot, but you managed, and now you’re set on earning your degree.

Lost in your thoughts as you worked on your notes, you missed the door to your shared apartment opening. You also happened to miss your boyfriend slowly creeping up behind you. Sitting at your desk, your back completely turned to entrance, you were scared out of your mind when you felt a sudden grab on your shoulders. Your body jolted up, turning around in an instant only to come face to face with Scott. You let out a sigh of relief, before slightly slapping his shoulder. “You scared me”, you signed to him. Scott looked at you for a moment, before slowly raising his hand, “Please”. You looked at him confused for a second, then you realized he meant to say ‘i’m sorry’. You reached out and grabbed his hand, a gesture that had becomes common, and showed him the correct movement. “Ohhh” he said. “That one was please wasn’t it?” you nodded at Scott smiling. You weren’t the best at reading lips, but you were probably better than the average person.

Still, it’s like people expect you to be some type of god skilled level lip reader, but fortunately for you, you never had that problem with Scott. That was one of the main reasons you fell for the guy in the first place, as much of a himbo as he can be, he took time to learn some ASL for you, he didn’t expect you to immediately be able to understand everything he said by reading his lips, and he treated you like just as much of a person as everyone else.

Scott looked over at the laptop, “What are you working on?”. You glanced back at your screen letting out a tired sigh, “Just a paper that’s due at the end of the week”. Scott nodded, a few seconds passed before Scott grabbed your hands, pulling you up from your chair. He pulled you towards the door, grabbing your coat off the small hangers you guys had and passing it to you. You raised an eyebrow at him, he turned to face you. “You said your papers due at the end of the week,” he smiled at you before continuing. “I have show tonight, but maybe we could hang out and spend time together before it,” he signed. “Plus, you need a break”.

Shaking your head at Scott, you put on your coat “Alright Scott, let’s go”. He seemed to gleam with joy at your agreement. Basically hauling you out of the apartment.

——————————————————————

You both looked at the comic variety in front of you. Scott had a few CDs in his hand, as he had taken you to your local record and comic store. You had been looking at the comic section for a while now, trying to make a decision on what would be your next read. Scott had appeared by your side, joining you in your search for a good comic. He raised his hand and pointed at one, “This one’s really good, when I lived with Wallace, I stole from his collection”. Letting out a light laugh, you looked back up in the shelf, he was pointing to a ‘Doom Patrol’ one. You reached out and picked it off the shelf, tuning it around to read the summary. You turned your gaze at Scoot once again, you nodded and saw his face light up in a smile.

You could never get enough of this man, his contagious smile, his cute eyes, his hair, everything. You grabbed his hand and the both of you made your way up to the cash register to check out. “That will be $55.76,” the guy at the register said, he looked like some edgy teen who didn’t wanna be there. He was probably your least favourite employee, he wasn’t mean or anything, but the girl who always smiled at you guys that also worked there was just better. You had pulled out your wallet, about to pay, but you missed the number the guy had said. He looked at you expectantly. Hoping he would get the hint to repeat himself, you stared at at him. In a few seconds, he gave you weird look.

Before you could even do anything else, Scott smacked the money on the counter. The kid looked taken aback a bit, before picking it up. Handing him his change and the bag with your things in it, you guys made your way to the exit. Outside the shop you stopped walking. “You didn’t have to do that”. Scott looked at you, his eyes slightly widening before his expression fell back into a smile. “I know, but I was planning on paying anyway”. Again with that contagious smile, you couldn’t help as one slowly grew on your face. “Thanks” you told him. “No problem [nick name]”. You both turned and began walking back toward your home, in hopes of burning some time while you waited for Scott’s showtime to pull around. Hand in hand, you leaned your head against Scott. He took a glance at you, before letting out a quiet “I love you [name],” under his breath.

#scott pilgrim vs the world #male reader #scott pilgrim vs the world x male reader #x male reader #x deaf reader #scott pilgrim #scott pilgrim x male reader #scott pilgrim x reader #ASL

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bookishgalaxies · 3 months

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Advanced Placement Credit Given to…

☾☼✧☽ summary: the ap classes these different characters would take

☾☼✧☽ type: headcannons, modern au

☾☼✧☽ warnings: n/a

☾☼✧☽ a/n: my ap classes are killing me-

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✧ albedo

chemistry and art history

I think the chemistry part is obvious, as an alchemist he would find this kind of thing fascinating. Obviously he would enjoy the rigor and fast paced layout of the class. CB requires 16 labs to be done throughout the year in ap chem and he would adore this as well. Definitely thinking he’s pulling an A in this class, actually an A+

Albedo’s an artist and a curious individual. I imagine he would find himself interested in the history of art and the different pieces. As a chemist he is always chasing after whys and hows; it only makes sense for him to look for this in art as well. He would also pull a high A I feel in this class due to his commitment to his studies

✧ amber

human geography

Amber isn’t much of an academic, but she appreciates geography I imagine. As an outrider who is exploring and navigating, she would find the history of places and maps fascinating. Amber also, or at least I seem to think, would have a hard time taking an intense ap class. This one is one of the easiest out of the ones CB offers. I think Amber would get an A in this class and I am firm believer that she unfortunately is the one who reminds the teacher when homework is due :/

✧ diluc

macroeconomics, microeconomics, and statistics

Macroeconomics covers the economic of wider areas like regions and nations. Diluc being someone who has a business that is known worldwide would I feel find value in knowing about the economics of not only his country but others as well.

Microeconomics is more focused on the economics of an individual thing like companies. This is a class that would give the insight on the business side of economics.

Business requires a lot of data. Most of the time when analyzing data statistics is involved. Diluc would use statistics I feel to see what kinds of wine tend to sell on what regions and what happens when prices increase and decrease.

Diluc I see passing all of these classes, I think the economic ones with an A and stats with a high B.

✧ jean

comparative government and politics and psychology

Government and politics I feel is self explanatory because of how Jean pretty much runs Mondstadt. She has to contact diplomats from all nations and make negotiations. I think she would also find it kind of interesting about different types of government and how things are ran.

Jean would have to on some level be a people person. To some degree she would have to know how people think and feel. She would find the makeup of the human brain fascinating I think.

Jean is not letting herself get anything less than an A, let’s be real-

✧ lisa

english language and composition, english literature and composition, and latin (or teyvat’s equivalent, maybe Khaenri’ah’s language..)

Tumblr deleted Lisa’s part like 3 TIMES kill me :/. Anyways, I think the language composition and literature composition are obvious. I mean…..she’s a librarian.

The language thing I feel would stem from her wanting to be able to read more books. Therefor she wanted to learn a new language to broaden her selection of books

She wanted to take ap chem but decide to just do general instead. I definitely think Lisa could get an A in all three classes. I just think she gets distracted easily and would need someone to help her focus.

✧ sucrose

chemistry, biology, and computer science a

Obviously she would take chem with Albedo. I think it would take her a bit longer to grasp some of the concepts and Albedo might have to help her out some but she does overall well in the class, I say an A-

She flies through biology without a problem due to her interest in life forms. Is definitely earning an A+

OKAY HEAR ME OUT! So Sucrose wants to study how to manipulate life to make it better and brighter. I think she would be all over the idea of being a bioengineer. Thus, she would learn how to code.

Sucrose would do well in the comp sci a course I believe. I could see her being a really good problem solver and understanding Java well (the programming language you learn in comp sci a)

✧ venti

music theory

Don’t come for my throat, I love Venti I swear. However, I do not think he would preform well in this class. Music theory isn’t really so much about composing music as it is about the rules of composing music. I think Venti would do wonderfully with dictation (where you hear notes/chords and have to identify and write them). As well as sight singing (where you are given a sheet of music and have a certain amount of time to practice and sing it).

We all know Venti is great at composing music…but he doesn’t really like playing by the rules (aka all the figured bass line shit), so I don’t think he’d do so good. Venti can read sheet music sure but he didn’t take the time to memorize all the special symbols when he just knows music.

I’m going to be generous and give him a C considering he can do the dictation and sight singing. Anything where he’s having to analyze and determine cadences or other conceptual stuff he’s kind of screwed

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kaeya does not take any ap classes however he relentlessly bothers albedo while he is trying to study. Also totally tries to convince lisa at least once to bail on writing a paper and come to some party or whatever.

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thank you so much for reading !

stay hydrated and safe !

#albedo x reader #albedo #albedo x you #albedo genshin impact #lisa genshin impact #lisa x reader #lisa minci #jean genshin impact #jean x reader #diluc ragnvindr #diluc x reader #genshin diluc #diluc x you #sucrose #sucrose genshin impact #sucrose x reader #genshin venti #venti x reader #genshin impact venti

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nanthegirl · 6 months

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⭐︎Hi Hello⭐︎

I love reading everyone’s intro posts because they’re so cute and I’m nosy. So here’s mine🧍🏾‍♀️. Although I’m a bit concerned about redundancy because of my bio, but whatever.

• Nanu

• Medical Technology Student

• Germany

• Languages- English, mother tongue and German, B2 C1, who knows?

• Interests & Hobbies- Beginner violinist, trying to get into art, The Sims, crochet, reading, writing only for my Sims though and Disco Elysium.

I was so stressed about writing one of these and it ended up being very anticlimactic. Which is good.

More Semester specific info under the cut🧍🏾‍♀️. (03/04/2024)

I’m in my 6th Semester which, all things being equal, should’ve been my last. But I haven’t particularly been the best student due to a…. bunch of stuff. So I may end up taking an extra semester or two. I’m done most of my classes though so I just have exams to write. A lot. Im also doing the Lab for Physics 2 now cause I wasn’t able to do it in my 2nd Semester because my apartment didn’t have electricity or WiFi lmao.

Main Goals for The Semester

Get 1’s on every exam. Ridiculously ambitious considering the highest grade I’ve ever gotten is a 1,3 and that was just once but if I don’t see the point in not aiming for a perfect grade. Like, I might as well.

Up my gpa as much as I can, hence the 1’s. I want to make sure I get into a good masters program and I’m sort of glad I delayed a bunch of my exams cause I would’ve probably gotten shit grades if I wrote them then so. Silver lining.

Study consistently and try to be more interested in the material. I always feel like a fraud when I pass any exam cause I feel like I didn’t really learn anything and I won’t be able to get a job. My degree has some interesting parts and I want to learn to enjoy the entirety of it. Basically up my curiosity for knowledge.

Work on my German. I’ve not set down a solid plan for this yet but I definitely need improvement. I avoided all the electives that required presentations last semester and I heavily regret it now. The only way to dissolve the anxiety over speaking German is to give myself nothing to worry about in the first place. I’m also looking forward to being more comfortable with it so I can focus on learning my native language and many others.

Practice the violin consistently. I’m super shy about practicing in my apartment cause I assume everybody thinks it sounds terrible and it’s too loud but my goal is overcome that fear and make significant progress.

Practice drawing consistently. I really do want to improve my art and I’m like a beginner beginner beginner. It can feel super discouraging sometimes but also fun and I really hope I can stick with it.

Clean my room every Saturday.

I pqlanned to write a whole lot more here but I’m not in the mood anymore so the whole cut thing feels like a waste. But it’s been done. So. Thank you for bothering to read this and I hope you get to achieve all your goals🤍.

#I love studyblrs so much #I also love when people get detailed about what they’re studying #I want to knowwwww #studyblr introduction #studyblr #studyblr intro post #study motivation #university #studyinspo #study #studyspo

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saintsenara · 5 months

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okay, I'm super curious about your thoughts on when and how snape becomes a potions master. some people say he was still working on his mastery when he became a professor but i like to think he got it in early 1980 and he apprenticed with a potions master he was recommended to through his ~connections~ (cough malfoy cough).

although the idea of him teaching and grieving and also attempting to not fail at the one thing he knows he's good at does have its own angsty appeal

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

although i regret to say that i'm going to start the answer to it by being very pedantic...

the idea that masteries are something which exist in the wizarding world is complete fanon.

they have emerged as a trope due to a reading of the phrase "potions master" which does make perfect sense outside of the cultural context in which the books were written - by which i mean that it makes readers unfamiliar with the culturally-specific meaning of this bit of language think of masters degrees or other high-level qualifications - but which is nonetheless incorrect within context.

"master" [and the feminine equivalent, "mistress"] is just an alternative term in british english for "teacher". it doesn't imply anything about a level of qualification. "potions master" and "potions teacher" are synonyms.

the term is archaic - british people nowadays would exclusively say "teacher" - and it's very class-specific, in that it would have particularly been used to describe teachers in elite schools, whether fee-paying private schools or grammar schools [state schools which are academically selective].

as a result, it turns up in lots of the children's literature written before c.1980 - especially in boarding-school stories like malory towers and the worst witch which are explicit influences on the harry potter series. it's used in the text - especially in the earlier books - as part of worldbuilding which generally seeks to make the wizarding world feel whimsical by virtue of being very old-fashioned, which things like the fact that the most advanced technology wizards use is the radio and the steam train also hammer home.

that snape is the only teacher referred to as a master is connected to these genre conventions. because snape is so important to the full arc of the story, he's the teacher we spend the most time in the classroom with throughout the six books in which harry's at school. and he's therefore the teacher who - in the first few books - best fits a children's literature archetype which we would expect to find in any twentieth-century school story [with a magical setting or not] - the hated schoolmaster who is horrible to the child-protagonist and who every child reading can't wait to see get their comeuppance.

so snape is a potions master because he teaches potions. nothing more than that.

but that doesn't mean that it's not worth thinking about his training...

clearly, higher education of the type most of us are familiar with doesn't exist in wizarding britain - nor, i suspect, in wizarding europe more broadly.

and this makes perfect sense - not only because the magical population is so small but because the divergence of the magical and muggle worlds in 1689 takes place well before universities and university-level education look like anything a modern student might recognise. a seventeenth-century university education was still broadly generalist and aimed at trainee clergy, and careers which we would nowadays expect to require a degree - such as law, finance, medicine, science, and engineering - were generally taught by apprenticeship.

this is clearly how things continue to function in the wizarding world of the 1990s, since we know from order of the phoenix that healers are taught by apprenticeship [and, indeed, that hogwarts graduates all go straight into the workforce after they leave school].

potions - since it's analogous to chemistry - is nonetheless understood in-world as an academic discipline. but this doesn't mean - within the post-school educational structures we can suppose the wizarding world has - that it's a discipline in which one needs specific formal training in order to acquire a right to teach or publish about it.

the seventeenth century was a period - especially in britain - marked by a great expansion of scientific inquiry. this was - by our contemporary understanding of academic science - amateur. scientists wouldn't have been expected to have doctorates, to work at universities, or even to have attended them, and their experiments were often self-funded by personal wealth or dependent on a patron. the circles [often international] in which they debated, demonstrated, and reviewed theories and inventions were social ones - the gatekeeping line was class [with the level of education - and, primarily, of literacy - that this implied], rather than level of education itself.

these social circles often had a certain level of official standing - by which i mean they became, during the period, the learned societies, the most famous of which is probably the royal society. membership [or fellowship] of the learned societies requires a demonstration of some sort of contribution to the discipline they relate to - which means that the vast majority of contemporary fellows of such societies are university-based academics. but this wouldn't have been the case in 1689.

and we know that the wizarding world has its own equivalent of learned societies, because slughorn mentions one in half-blood prince - the most extraordinary society of potioneers.

which is to say, snape is probably a member of this society. he may very well publish papers in academic journals connected to the subject [as dumbledore does in transfiguration today], and he undoubtedly has a reputation among the wizarding world's men- and women-of-letters. but he doesn't need to have any formal post-hogwarts qualification in order for him to have acquired this reputation.

so what do i think he's doing between 1978 and 1981?

well... he's a death eater.

my theory has always been that snape comes to voldemort's attention - via lucius malfoy - because of his potions skills. the dark lord's operation would have needed potions - poisons to bump off enemies, healing potions because wanted criminals can't just turn up at st mungo's, potions to trade on the black market [as aberforth dumbledore tells us the death eaters do during deathly hallows], and so on - and voldemort would want to keep the production of these potions in-house, rather than risk hiring a private brewer [even a shady one] who might change their mind and go to the aurors.

[this is also presumably what voldemort - undoubtedly at snape's request - tries to recruit lily to do.]

i have never believed that snape was taken on as a death eater in the expectation that he'd perform a combat role - there is a clear implication throughout the series that the only person he ever directly kills is dumbledore, and that he gets along badly with death eaters [such as bellatrix] who did take more violent roles in voldemort's terrorism.

so i presume that, when he leaves school, he ends up working as a personal brewer for voldemort - on a stipend presumably paid, at the dark lord's request, by either lucius or abraxas malfoy. i also presume that, outside of work voldemort specifically requests, he's given free rein to brew for other clients, study, experiment, and publish as he wishes.

and i further presume that if he trains with anyone, then that person is voldemort himself.

voldemort claims, in goblet of fire, to be interested in experimenting with potions. he appears to invent the potion made from nagini's venom which sustains his half-body prior to his resurrection - and i think the implication of the text is that he also invents the potion guarding the locket-horcrux. voldemort also evidently encourages snape's interest in the dark arts, and he also appears to have some influence over snape's comportment - the teen snape we see in order of the phoenix is extremely rough around the edges, in a way the adult snape, who both speaks and moves in canon very similarly to the adult voldemort, isn't.

voldemort taking such an interest in snape would - obviously - largely be a grooming tactic. snape clearly becomes a death eater because the organisation offers him a chance to belong and succeed which his class-background would ordinarily make impossible for him within wizarding society, and voldemort must therefore massively indulge his belief that he's never given the respect he deserves for his intellect. voldemort's obvious contempt for slughorn - who matters so little to him that he doesn't even bother to kill him - would, i imagine, also win snape round.

and by training snape in an academic rather than a combat sense, voldemort gains a valuable tool - someone he can place at hogwarts as a teacher to spy on dumbledore.

we can assume that voldemort was having dumbledore tailed throughout the first war - and, indeed, that this is what snape is doing when he overhears the prophecy - but that he couldn't watch him at all times because he didn't have a spy among the hogwarts faculty.

it is clearly voldemort who tells snape to apply for a teaching job in early 1980. he must also tell him to apply for the defence against the dark arts post [which we know snape canonically applied for first] - which means he must expect to be imminently victorious in the first war, since snape would only be able to stay in the position for a year...

the prophecy, which snape hears c. january 1980, obviously derails this belief slightly... and snape famously does not get the defence against the dark arts job for the 1980-1981 academic year.

how do we know this? because he tells us in order of the phoenix that he's been teaching at hogwarts for fourteen years. he says this right at the beginning of the autumn term in 1995 - so he clearly means that he's been teaching for fourteen previous academic years and the 1995-1996 year is his fifteenth. so... he started teaching at hogwarts in the 1981-1982 academic year.

voldemort settles on harry as the child the prophecy refers to after harry is born [so, after 31st july 1980]. we don't know how quickly he does this and we don't know exactly when snape defects to the order.

but, clearly, at some point during the 1980-1981 academic year, dumbledore hires snape to begin teaching from september 1981 onwards. he presumably tells snape to tell voldemort that his change of heart was because he didn't think snape was qualified to teach defence against the dark arts but that he does think he's qualified to teach potions [pointing, perhaps, to publications snape got out under voldemort's tutelage], and that slughorn's announcement that he intends to retire means that there's a position available. he then undoubtedly also tells snape to convince voldemort of the same pretence they'll use throughout the second war - that he's a loyal death eater passing information on dumbledore's movements to his master.

which is to say... when lily dies, snape has been in his job for at most nine weeks.

just imagine how miserable that must have been!

#asks answered #asenora meta #severus snape

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budo-bujo · 1 month

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Intro to Literary Studies

This is my intro post for cyberstudious's masterpost jam challenge! I wanted to participate because 1) there doesn't seem to be a lot of representation for humanities in studyblr spaces and 2) there are a lot of misconceptions about literary studies as a field (what do you mean it's not just reading books all day?)(Well, it kind of is but not like you think!)

Disclaimer: I study contemporary "American"* literature and while I have very close contact with people in other fields in my program, I will inevitably be biased.

What is literary studies?

Literary studies is a general term that describes the study of literature very broadly. In the US, this is mostly housed in English departments**, but there are a lot of overlaps with fields like comparative literature, film studies, visual studies, etc.

Generally, I think people's views of what literary studies is is incredibly skewed by high school English classes or maybe some general education courses in college, but those classes do not paint an accurate picture of the field at an advanced level. Literary scholars are performing intensive research, not just teaching or reading books all day! I will say that I didn't even completely understand what an "English major" does academically until graduate school because the work is just on a completely different level.

What are notable career paths/organizations?

Most people who do literary studies are interested in traditional academic careers as professors. However, with the state of higher education in the US, those jobs are insanely competitive and very rare. Other "alt-ac" careers include publishing, academic administration, or other public humanities work. Many people also get concurrent or extra degrees in library and information science, book arts, digital humanities, education, or other fields which can additionally open up your career options.

From an academic standpoint, it's difficult to list specific journals/organizations since the field is so broad. One kind of universal organization in the United States is the Modern Language Association (MLA) (yes that MLA) which has several regional and one large conference every year along with a journal that is pretty much the pinnacle of the field. However, there are countless smaller journals, conferences, and organizations for every specialization that are way more accessible.

What are different fields/specializations?

There are generally two ways to describe what you study: Time period and special area. People often dabble in other things, especially post-PhD, and some people end up switching fields entirely. However, PhD's are about specializing and going deep, unlike a Bachelor's English degree which usually has students completing survey courses and going broadly through a lot of different areas. Here is some more detail about time periods and special areas.

Time period is pretty self explanatory. This is just the time period of literature that you study. Again most people read more widely than this, and we do have to have general knowledge of all of them, but picking one to specialize in is pretty much required. Here are common, incredibly general, ways of categorizing time periods with some example texts/authors***:

Medieval (pre-1400): This is things like Beowulf that require learning Old English and also Chaucer which is Middle English.

Early Modern (1500-1800): Also sometimes called the Renaissance especially for the early texts. This is your Shakespeare and Marlowe etc.

Early American/Victorian (1800-1900): This is where American literature starts to show up with your Hawthorne and Melville. This is also British literature like Dickens, Austen, Bronte, Shelly, etc. Romanticism is huge here.

Modernism (1900-1945): Modernism is more of a style than a time period that includes many non-literary works, but because it was so dominating during the interwar years it's shorthand for the time period. This includes Eliot, Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Woolf, etc.

Post-Modernism/Contemporary (1945-present): This is where things get silly in my opinion, because quite literally everything post WWII is generally referred to as contemporary literature. This is my area of specialty so I could go off on it forever, but just know it's a very, very broad time period (arguably the most broad because it's so undefined).

While again these time periods are very broad, the distinctions are pretty significant. It drives me nuts when I tell people I study literature and they ask me questions about Shakespeare! It's also why most people's understanding of "Classic Literature" is very silly. Putting Dickens, Chaucer, and Toni Morrison on the same list makes very little sense!

Special Areas are kind of the core of the field regardless of your time period. This is also where I think the misconceptions around what we do comes from. Special areas can pull from literally any other field alongside literature/literary studies itself, and many literature scholars these days end up becoming very skilled in history, political science, psychology, sociology, art history, film studies, religious studies, or really any other field as a method of complementing their analytical skills. We read A Lot, but so much of it is actually theory!

Some common areas of expertise you will encounter include: Race/ethnicity, ecocriticism, postsecular studies, regionalism, postcolonial/decolonial, book history, performance, sexuality/gender, Marxism, Deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and so many more. Literature provides an avenue to study pretty much anything else you want!

What are the biggest goals/questions?

As I've already described, literature can be used to answer pretty much any question you want. If I were to describe a single question, it would probably be something like "What do literary texts show us about social and cultural issues and vice versa?" This question is very broad, but so is the field! And it allows you almost infinite possibility on how you want to approach the literature.

The central skill to all of this is close reading. Close reading describes the ability to understand a text down to the level of the word and pull out meaning much deeper than a general surface-level reading. This is a skill that takes tons of practice and years of reading to be good at, but is something that anyone can learn how to do! If literature is something that interests you, this is the skill you need to learn to build. If you care about "critical thinking" or "media literacy," it's the same skills!

Conclusion:

That's all I have for now! I may or may not post more of these this week for the challenge, but I am always available to answer questions about literature! I love talking about this stuff!

*I put "American" in quotes because I mostly mean texts written/published within the United States, but that's a bit of a nebulous category. **To add on to my note about bias, this is coming from the perspective of a scholar in the US who mostly works in English. I'm sure the field has some nuances and differences in other languages/countries, but this is not meant to be exhaustive. ***Note that these time periods are very vague and also incredibly Anglocentric so please take them with a grain of salt.

#studyblrmasterpostjam #studyblr #grad studyblr #challenge

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queenelsa567 · 4 months

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I saw the wildest take on ACOTAR tumblr today.

That we shouldn’t be doing literary analysis on “faerie smut.” We shouldn’t be using our knowledge about literature (whether that’s from high school or an English degree) to analyze SJM’s books.

It was just so wild to me for several reasons which I will outline below:

1. Literary analysis is not simply reserved for "high-brow" literature. Literary analysis is something that can be performed on all types of writing, although typically reserved for fictional writing or poetry. News flash: despite SJM's quality of writing, her books are still able to be analyzed. Literary analysis can be defined as the process by which aspects of a piece of writing are analyzed to determine a meaning in the text. It is not a super intense process and most people do it automatically while reading. However, there are certain analysis techniques such as motifs, symbols, and foreshadowing that require a bit more mental investment.

When we reduce books, poems, and other writings to the phrase "it's not that deep," we undermine important aspects of the writing. Perhaps the author didn't mean for it to be that deep. As a writer myself, I know that sometimes that best writing happens by accident. But the point is, the author's personal opinions, biases, and attitudes influence their writing. It is that deep, because no author can be completely unbiased. I will discuss this more later.

2. Although SJM incorporates smut into her books, they are, primarily, romantasy. Romantasy is a genre that combines aspects of romance and fantasy, typically a romance novel that takes place in a fantasy world. SJM's books are not erotica. Erotica is a genre of literature intended to arouse sexual desire and typically contains lots of smut. As SJM's books are not completely smut, and fall into the genre of romantasy, they lend themselves to being analyzed as there are other aspects to them besides sex scenes.

You can analyze a romance book, even if it contains sex scenes. You can analyze fantasy books, even if they contain sex scenes. Why should you not be able to analyze a romantasy book that contains sex scenes? Even erotica can be analyzed (although I won't get into that here). This ties into my previous point. Literary analysis is not reserved for "high-brow" literature.

3. Any time you use "evidence" to support a theory you are making, you are performing literary analysis. This goes for shipping theories and other theories. Any time you say 'I think these two people are going to end up together for this reason,' you are performing literary analysis. (Hate to break it to you, lol.)

Example 1 - Light motifs being used for Elain. Elain is often described as being around and desiring light. You could interpret this as her being a foil for Azriel and that's why they should end up together. Or, you could interpret it as Elain will end up with the Heir to the Day Court, Lucien.

Example 2 - The theory that Amren could be related to the Asteri. Amren talks about how she came through a portal long ago and she has these mystical, angelic powers. Amren also was imprisoned for a while on an island that we learn in CC3 was a stronghold of Theia in a time when they were resisting the Asteri. This has led people to believe that Amren could be related to or created by the Asteri.

Neither of these things were/are outright stated in the text, but they can be inferred from textual evidence presented. This collection of evidence being collated and interpreted is a form of LITERARY ANALYSIS. (Shock. Horror.) There are many other examples, but I will not make you read that much. Therefore, SJM's works can be analyzed.

4. SJM's experiences inform her writing. SJM has outright stated that she modeled Nesta's experience after her journey with depression and mental health issues. SJM has also stated that she modeled aspects of Rhysand on her own husband. These are aspects that we know are informed by SJM's experiences, but it goes without saying that there are other aspects of her life that inform her writing that she hasn't publicly spoken about. That is, in fact, how idea generation and writing works. (Mind. Blown.)

I would also like to state that SJM's zionism informs her writing as well, especially in the ACOTAR and CC series'. I won't get into it here because there is a lot to be said and this post is already extremely long, but if you look for it, you will see it. In spades.

Donate to Palestine. Do good things for your community. Help others.

Importantly, analyze the books you're reading. Use critical thinking skills. Anyone who gets defensive about someone using their degree in English literature to analyze a book (regardless of what the book is) is simply offended that the analysis was well done and they couldn't have done it themselves because they don't have the rad skills to do so. Stay in English class kids. It's way more important than you think.

#acotar #a court of thorns and roses #acotar analysis #sjm critical #sjm analysis

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thorraborinn · 2 months

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hey man, hope you're well.

bit of an arb question for ya - and i totally understand if you'd prefer to skip it because time & effort etc etc - but if you're game i'd really be interested in your thoughts on the ᛇ rune.

thanks dude, appreciate it. even if you nope the hell outta this ;)

cheers

I'm sorry that I left you on read for months. The honest truth is that at first I had trouble reigning in the scope of my response and knowing when to cut myself off from researching (there are still things I've yet to read that could influence my take on this), and then I got busy and just straight up forgot. I'm gonna give you a response that will be completely unsatisfying but hopefully better than no response.

For more on the details of the different linguistic theories about the rune that I only briefly mention below see "The Yew Rune, Yogh and Yew" by Bernard Mees.

The problem I have talking about this rune is that any examination of it produces a lot of questions, all of them very interesting, and some which call into question what we can know about runes in general. Talking about this rune is like untying a knot where every time you loosen a section another one tightens. There are a lot of people on the internet who claim to have figured it out but who have not realized that the conclusions that must logically follow are not things they're likely to accept. It's hard to talk about it at all without saying a lot. This is entirely unlike ᛈ *perþō(?) *perþrō(?) where it simply becomes a dead end quickly due to lack of evidence. With ᛇ there is an extreme overabundance of mutually-conflicting possibility, plus a history of the rune being innovated in ways that obscures how it was used prior to that innovation.

I recognize that most people who want to talk about runes on this website are mostly interested in magical/divinatory uses. For better or worse I don't have anything to say about that, but if that's what someone's into then I urge you to at least consider that the mundane aspects of a rune form the ground of speculation about everything else, and any magical/mystical speculation should at least be inclusive of things we can see and touch. And I think that if someone chooses not to grapple with the evidence, they're actually missing out on what's actually interesting about this rune.

Even giving it a single name is loaded. In text I call it "the yew rune" but thanks to the particularities of English that doesn't work out loud. There's no possibility of writing or speaking its name without making some bold assertions about linguistics, whether one knows it or not. I think the most accurate way to give it a "name" results in this entire paragraph-length sentence:

There were a few synonyms for 'yew (tree/wood)', which may have included any or all of *īwaz, *īhaz, *īgaz, *īhwaz, and *īgwaz; that may or may not have arisen by the splitting of an earlier proto-form that is difficult to reconstruct; and which had some degree of exchangeability in some places and times; and the earliest name of the rune could have been any of these but it was also identified with one or another at different times.

*īwaz informs the normal OE word for 'yew' and the Old Norse rune ýr; *īhaz informs the OE rune īh/ēoh. Sometimes they get shoved together into *īhwaz, which on the surface is just a way of abbreviating "the above explanation"*īwaz and *īhaz", but has potential to be read at face value if you're willing to grapple with some questions regarding Proto-Indo-European, Verner's Law, maybe Germanic reflexes of laryngeals. *eihwaz is a name I see a lot but which is either definitely wrong; requires either significant reanalysis of the languages it was used to write; or undermines the use of the comparative method for reconstructing rune names at all (which, hey, maybe it should be undermined, but the consequences for the rest of the runes would be significant). Sometimes when people propose *eihwaz or anything starting *ei- they are actually intentionally saying "runes are older than Proto-Germanic" which is an argument one can make but you have to actually make it, and they are usually neglecting that at that time, the word for 'ice' was *eisa- and so this doesn't actually restore balance to the runes anyway.

The next set of problems involves its use in writing. In the earliest inscriptions we have, it's used very rarely but when it is it's indistinguishable from *īsa(z), i.e., it writes /i/. Later on, it also comes to write a consonant that was probably something like [ç], the sound in German ich, which was present in some of these languages but cannot be the first sound in a word. It would actually be pretty satisfying to argue that the [ç] sound was original, and that /i/ is a later thing coming from the principle that a rune's name should start with the sound it writes. But this is the reverse of the evidence -- are we supposed to just be okay with the idea that the rune's original usage just happened by coincidence not to produce any surviving evidence for hundreds of years, and then suddenly did?

The īh rune in Codex Vindobonensis 795, c. 798 with sound value given "i & h"

It would eventually gain other sound values too, including /k/ in some Old English sources and of course it becomes (or rather, merges with ᛉᛦ into) the /ʀ/ rune in Old Norse, then a weird multifunctional vowel rune for a bit before settling on /y/ which was its main use into modern times.

Ideally, if you lined up the questions about the reconstruction of the name in one column, and the problems in what sounds it was used to write in another, you could find overlaps and find items in each column that reinforce each other; but in reality the questions tend to multiply instead.

I have some thoughts about why most of this rarely gets discussed, even by people for whom runes are an important part of their religion. I think we have a cultural predisposition to recognized systematic order and balance as a sign of legitimacy, to the point that it even overwhelms material evidence. What this rune is evidence of isn't an original cohesive and complete system (whether or not that existed), but rather of persistent intervention over the course of a thousand years -- it cannot be understood in isolation of stone, parchment, and human hands. This is anecdotal but it seems that most people who are into runes at all are really only interested in that "original" pure unadulturated state that they suppose must have been the first iteration of runes, and view everything that comes after -- that is, all actual evidence -- as valuable only insofar as it points back toward that idealized system. But not only doesn't ᛇ do that (though admittedly, one day it might, if the right theory comes along), it shows that the way people interacted with runes over generations calls into question our assumption that the other runes do provide reliable evidence for that. I think that for most people who post about runes online or even write books about runes for a popular audience, this is in such violation of common sense that they don't find it worth consideration, and generally side with whatever one of the simple theories about it they most recently read. Even among professional linguists, most attempts to explain the rune simply aren't just neutral answers, they are expressions of panic and attempts to restore order. Admittedly, a theory could still be proposed that puts all this to rest. But the way people respond now, while it hasn't, while people habitually latch onto explanations that they clearly don't understand, is still revealing of our epistemologies.

If you want to find meaning in this, I might suggest something like this. One of the distinguishing characteristics of yew wood is its flexibility and springiness (making it so suitable for bows that ýr can simply mean 'bow' in Old Norse). Whatever the rune's earliest name was (or set of names were), it was somehow seemingly set up to stay relevant a thousand years in the future. Despite being redundant already in the earliest examples we have (maybe even when it was first used??), it found new usage for writing a [ç]-like sound (presumably *īha- was pronounced somewhere in the vicinity of [iːça]). Old Norse was eventually going to need a rune for /y/, and *īwaz was set up to produce a word by regular phonological development: *īw > ý (see also *tīwaz > Týr), and it's almost creepy how they thought to preserve that name despite needing to move it to a different graphic form, given that *elhaz/algiz worked perfectly well as the name of a rune for writing /ʀ/, but lacked a y.

[Edit: I should clarify that I don't actually think there's anything unexplainable or mystical about this -- I think it's a combination of the same opportunistic innovation that is characteristic of rune use in general and a little bit of coincidence].

So basically ᛇ is distinguished by how often it's been bent and twisted and made to fill gaps that arose as a result of language change while always maintaining continuity with its earlier forms. Its name may or may not have alternated between some closely-associated variants, but it was never changed outright, unlike a bunch of others. It exhibits a plasticity that's fitting for a rune meaning 'yew,' and it was given that name long, long before demonstrating its suitability. All this can only be seen by taking the long view, looking at how it unfolds over time, by specifically turning away from an idealized, atemporal proto-Elder Futhark.

#runes #heathenry

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topazadine · 21 days

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A Primer on Dyscalculia: The Learning Disorder You Weren't Told About in School

I rarely see people discussing this learning disability, to the point that many believe it doesn't exist (ie, saying math is the universal language and everyone understands it but just doesn't try) so I thought I'd explain a bit about what it is.

Dyscalculia is a learning disability characterized by difficulty with math, numbers, and some systematic learning that requires the use of memorization and application. Like its relative, dyslexia, it is not that someone is "stupid" or "not trying hard enough" to learn math; our brains are essentially wired not to absorb information in this form.

Common symptoms of dyscalculia include:

Inability to do basic math problems

Struggling to count, often using their fingers to count

Difficulty using multiplication and division

Challenges with visualizing heights, lengths, and widths

Difficulty counting change

Struggling to read a clock or divide time into reasonable measurements

Challenges with memorizing numbers, dates, and sequences

No one is actually sure how many people have dyscalculia because it is rarely diagnosed. Right now, estimates are around 3% to 7% of the population, but this is likely a vast underrepresentation.

Educators still believe the myth that everyone can do math and that those who say they can't are just refusing to apply themselves. This causes lifelong problems for dyscalculiacs because if not treated early enough, it is nigh-on untreatable.

Many people with dyscalculia may complete math problems in unusual and time consuming ways. For example, if you asked me to divide 145 by 5 without a calculator, this is how my brain would have to do it:

100 by 5 (20)

20 by 5 (4), then multiply this by 2 (8), then divide 5 by 5 (1)

And finally, add up all the results (20+8+1) to get 29.

Numbers that are not easily divisible or "chunked" like this would be nigh-on impossible for me to do in my head. I wasn't able to memorize the times tables and in fact needed a laminated times table well into elementary school (think 5th grade).

I distinctly remember feeling like everyone else was on the helm of the USS Enterprise when they could so easily shout out answers to simple multiplication or division problems, and I was always the last person to do those stupid times table sheets. Sometimes I couldn't even complete half of it by the time everyone else was done.

I failed 3rd grade math class and had to be assigned a tutor. This was despite getting all As in every single other class. In fact, I failed multiple math classes during my academic career.

Since my grades were so high in other classes, I had to petition to be put in a remedial math class. Everyone assumed that because I did well in things like English, science, civics, and so on, I must have been able to do what my peers could.

A college-level physics class was the hardest class I have ever done in my life, and I have a Master's degree in International Relations, which requires a lot of very dry and complicated political theory. That is the A I am most proud of because it required far more effort than anything before or since.

No one told me what dyscalculia was or identified a problem throughout my entire time in education. I had to seek out resources myself in adulthood before finally learning what my problem was. This, of course, led to significant "math fear" and self-esteem issues, especially in a society that is obsessed with STEM.

This learning disability can have far-reaching effects and impact things that other people may not even consider. There are many connections between systematized learning and math.

Dyscalculiacs may also have trouble with:

Learning languages

Playing musical instruments (because sheet music and tempos are a form of language + math, though it is possible to learn by ear)

Reading maps, including general world geography

Estimating distances

Navigating a new place because they can't make "mental maps"

Dancing (due to the sequencing)

Reading diagrams

Remembering step-by-step instructions without a cheat sheet

Completing complex tasks that have a lot of steps

Starting a project that necessitates doing things in a certain order, such as building something

Cooking or baking (because it requires measuring and matching measurements to specific ingredients)

Repeating sequences, like a phone number

Remembering numbered streets or highways (like I-480, 5th street, or etc)

Playing games that require counting or keeping score, like Yahtzee, card games, and so on

Completing spreadsheets with numbers

Of course, not every dyscalculiac will struggle with all of these things because there are different degrees of severity. Many also learn tactics to compensate. For example, I never learned sheet music but did well in choir because I memorized all the songs entirely by ear.

I have developed visualizations of common routes I travel and can navigate to them by remembering the landmarks I pass. If you tried to ask me specific step-by-step directions of anywhere, I couldn't tell you, but I can tell you that you'll pass a KFC on your right if you're going east (parallel to Lake Erie), and then you will turn left at the big shopping center.

There are plenty of adaptations that everyday people use which are lifelines to dyscalculiacs in ways that other people may never recognize. Formulas on spreadsheets, conversion websites, built-in calculators, and turn-by-turn navigation apps are all examples of accommodations that appeal to everyone but are especially important to dyscalculiacs.

So, the next time you scoff and say "everyone can do math, they're just being lazy" or "cooking is easy" or "anyone can learn a second language if they want to" or "using a calculator is cheating" and so on:

Recognize that you are ignoring a very real learning disability. These statements are ableist.

Such rhetoric is equally damaging as anti-dyslexic statements like "everyone can learn to read," "open dyslexic fonts are ugly," "audiobooks are cheating," "video lessons are lazy" and things of that ilk.

Ableism takes many forms, many of which people refuse to recognize. Difficulty with math is a widespread problem, and it often has nothing to do with trying hard enough or refusing to learn. I remember breaking down in tears trying to do my times table; I would spend hours trying to understand them.

These issues are NOT a lack of willpower or application. They have to do with real neurological deficits. Please be kind to those who can't do math, and stop assuming we're lazy.

#learning disability #learning disorder #neurodivergency #neurodiversity #neurodivergent #dyscalculia #actually dyscalculic #disability #disability rights #invisible disability #disability justice #accessibility #disability awareness #disability advocacy #actually disabled #disabilities

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tangledinink · 2 years

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third chapter of I'm Sorry, Teenage Mutant What Now? is here!!! read it on ao3 or below the cut-- my tag for this au is here if you wanna lookit all the other bits and boobles ive got for this story.

[ prev chapter ]

Amongst the Hamato family, there were four different languages known, to varying degrees of fluency. Quite obviously, all five of them knew English. To be fair, only Donnie and Leo were in any advanced literature classes, but that was beside the point.

The first additional language the boys learned was Japanese. Donnie remembered when he was five, their Dad offered to teach them. Many people were surprised that he managed to get four young boys interested in language lessons, but they had been so thrilled to learn to speak the same way their Dad could-- to speak the ‘Ninja Language,’ as he had pitched it back then. It's not like they had picked it up right away, but between Japanese cartoons on the TV and their Dad speaking in his native tongue at home, they all eventually got pretty good at it. Nowadays the skill was mostly used for watching anime together, keeping secrets from classmates, and making far-fetched requests from their father. He was more likely to say 'yes,' they found, if requests were made in his first language. He usually still said no anyway, but it did help! Donnie had the statistics to back it up.

The most recent language to enter the household was Spanish, and that one was all Leo and Donnie. Leo had started taking Spanish in middle school to meet a requirement, and, to the surprise of everyone except their father, who remembered how quickly he picked up languages in the past, took to it like a fish to water. He was quickly moved to advanced classes in the subject, and then later began sprinkling Spanish into his everyday vocabulary for the express purpose of showing off. Donnie couldn't allow his twin brother to outdo him in anything academic, so shortly after, he began learning Spanish as well. Quite frankly, they were probably both as fluent as they were simply because they were both so determined to be better than the other.

In between Japanese and Spanish, there was American Sign Language, and this one had been entirely for his benefit, Donnie recognized. Everyone in his family could sign. April had even learned, back when they were little. April didn't participate in his and Leo's unspoken Spanish competition, despite Donatello's numerous invitations, and she didn't know more than a few simple words of Japanese that she had picked up over time. But she was fluent in sign language.

Nowadays, Donnie considered himself quite eloquent, actually, and his entire family could certainly tell you that it could be hard to get him to shut up sometimes once he got started. But that hadn't always been the case.

Look. Talking was... hard sometimes. It was a difficult concept to explain to someone who didn't get it . It wasn't like he hadn't known how to talk, or he didn't understand language. The words were there, at least, they were in his head. He always knew exactly what he would say, if he could, always had thoughts and feelings on every situation he walked through as a child. But when he tried to speak, a lot of the time, the words just wouldn't make it out. They'd be gobbled up in his throat-- caught up in a traffic jam and clumped together in this thick, sticky glob that he couldn't swallow around, making his entire head feel all warm and fuzzy.

So usually, he just didn't try.

He could do short sentences and key phrases by the time he was four, most of them echoes of phrases he had heard in the past, but he could still remember how he would go weeks without saying a word. To be fair, when he was little, it wasn't like he was averse to sitting by himself and playing alone or reading. He still wasn’t, actually! He kind of preferred it at times. And it wasn't like he and his family didn't communicate. His brothers never really seemed too worried about the fact that Donnie didn't talk, (though he could tell even then that his Dad was,) and nods, gestures, or noises were usually enough to get the basic point across. His twin was especially good at interpreting the various clicks and trills and squeaks that he was inclined to make at that age.

But it could be... frustrating, to put it lightly. There were so many things in his head all the time, and he had nowhere to put them. If someone didn't understand what he was trying to tell them, he didn't have any other options to turn to. Chirping didn't work? Neither did pointing? Well, guess what, we've exhausted all possible choices. Cowabummer.

Yeah. It was... admittedly, the source of more than a couple of meltdowns.

Things had changed when they moved to New York.

His memories from back then were pretty fuzzy, and Donatello was pretty sure that there were more than a couple that were fabricated or exaggerated, but he remembered when they moved-- at least parts of it. He was sure his father did, too. Because at first, Donnie had hated it.

---

Yoshi muttered a few curses in Japanese under his breath, hunched over the kitchen counter and scribbling furiously in his planner. He swore he must be forgetting something, but everything seemed accounted for. Get the kids to school, meeting with his lawyers, conference call after that, he had to talk to his agent, still, there was that parenting class, then he had to pick the kids back up. The renovation guy should be around this afternoon so he could finally corner him-- wait, had he actually submitted that paperwork to the city this time, or had he forgotten again--?

The chaos in his schedule was reflected in his home, his four children loudly chasing each other around the living room in various states of dress and disarray, playing some game or another and most definitely not getting ready for school. Yoshi sighed softly, rubbing his temples. Right... first things first. Get the kids to school. Then tackle the rest.

"Red! Help your little brother put his shoes on, please." He instructed primly, raising his voice to be heard over the racket. To his credit, Raph perked up and responded immediately, grabbing Mikey's hand and dragging him off to help wrestle his sneakers on. "Leo, I laid out your clothes on your bed. These are not it. Go and change."

"This outfit is better!" Leonardo defended, gesturing proudly to his swim trunks and dress pants, layered over top of each other on his stubby legs. Shirt not included.

"Tomorrow, we can pick an outfit together. Today, you will-- Purple!!! "

He was mid-lecture with one twin when he spotted the other out of the corner of his eyes, having planted themselves in front of the hallway mirror, Sharpie marker in their hand and poised to begin writing on their own face. Yoshi managed to pull the pen from his grip just in the nick of time, though he nearly fell on the floor in doing so. Not a good back feel.

"We do not write on our faces with markers, Purple." He explained, and even he could hear how exhausted his own voice was. This was only their first week of school. He already got enough looks as it was, he could not show up to kindergarten with one of his children's faces having been Sharpied- -

Donatello stared up at him with wide eyes, blinking slowly from behind his glasses. His lower lip wobbled slightly, and, after a moment, he pointed at his own eyebrows with both hands, tapping a few times.

Yoshi sighed softly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Right. Of course. This thing Donnie had started doing several months ago, though he still had no idea why-- Drawing eyebrows onto his mask each morning.

"My son." He said slowly. "You already have eyebrows."

Donnie stared at him.

And then promptly started to sob.

Yoshi's heart clenched. "Donatello--"

His son plopped down onto his butt on the floor and screamed. Ah, one of those, then. His sympathy didn't leave, but he would admit, a thread of exasperation did join it. This was the last thing he needed right now.

"Okay! Okay, alright, fine. We will get you your eyebrows, Donatello. You will have proper eyebrows." He tried to soothe. Donatello's screaming lessened slightly, but the tears didn't stop, hiccuping and taking deep, heaving breaths that shuddered his entire frame. Yoshi took the chance to spit out some quick instructions to his remaining children. "Leonardo, go get dressed, now, and put your shoes on. Raph, Mikey, grab you and your brother's bags, let's go."

"Come on, Purple. Get up. Come on." He slowly eased the child to his feet, and Donnie, in response, latched onto his father's arm and refused to let him go, his bottom lip still trembling, tears and snot dripping down his face. Okay, sure, fine. He could carry him. His purplest child didn’t care for being touched except for when he did , he had found over the years. "It is okay. We are getting eyebrows..."

He didn't bother with getting shoes or socks onto him, just shoved them into his purple backpack to deal with later and gathered up his remaining sons, and got them out the door. Halfway down the street, he realized he forgot his phone on the kitchen counter, went back, retrieved it, and then left a second time. And the five of them made their way across and down the block to CVS.

With a short order to his eldest to keep an eye on Mikey and for them not to leave the aisle, he made his way down the make-up section. Balancing a teary-faced and barefooted Donatello on his hip he picked his way through the various products and displays until he found what he was looking for.

Eyebrow pencils.

Selecting one in an appropriate shade, (he was an actor, do you think he doesn't know make-up?) he quietly held it out to his son.

"Here. Will this work?"

Donatello took the pencil into his hands, turning it over a few times. He glanced up at his father again, tapping on his eyebrows once more.

"Yes. You can draw on your eyebrows with this."

He stayed quiet for a bit longer, and then he nodded. Thank god.

"Good. Here, sit, and I will put on your shoes, okay?"

Donnie nodded again, and Yoshi kneeled down, setting his child down on the linoleum floor and digging his socks and shoes out of his bag. Slowly, he rolled his socks onto his feet, one at a time, and then got his shoes onto his feet as well, velcroing them tightly the way he knew his son preferred. Donnie watched him silently as he did so. Once he was done, he picked himself up off the floor, and then picked Donnie back up as well, holding him up so he could see himself in one of the little mirrors they had tacked up on the product displays.

"Can you see?" He asked softly.

Donnie nodded a tiny bit, examining himself in the mirror for a moment before he got to work, very slowly and purposefully filling in each brow, his nose scrunched up with focus.

Yoshi let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding. For a little while, he just let them be quiet. In the background, he could hear Leo, Mikey, and Raph chattering about something or another, stacking up shampoo bottles in the aisle like bowling pins. At least they were being quiet.

"Donatello."

Donnie hummed softly in response, not pausing in his task.

"I know that things have been very different lately. And you don't like it very much when things change."

Donnie nodded slightly.

"And I know that you want to go home. But this is our home now, my son. You will get used to it. I promise."

Donnie frowned slightly, moving one hand to tap at the side of his head, tugging on his ears.

"Yes, it is louder up here sometimes, isn't it?" He sighed. "... I know you don't like the traffic or the crowds very much. Or when the renovators work on the apartment."

Donnie shook his head fervently, his frown deepening.

"I know. I know, my son. But I promise it is temporary. And soon we will have a very wonderful new home."

He knew his kid wasn't quite convinced.

"There are many things to love about the city, Donnie. Like school. You like school, don't you?"

Donnie shrugged a bit, looking down at his feet. He had been so excited when he came home the first day, but Yoshi could tell that his enthusiasm was waning over time as things became more and more overwhelming.

Yoshi sighed softly. "We will work on it." He assured. He paused a moment, hesitating just long enough to convince himself that he actually did believe the next sentence out of his mouth. "I wouldn't have brought us here if I didn't believe it was truly for the best. This is the best place for our family, Donnie. Including you. Can you please trust me?"

It took a bit, but eventually, he nodded in response.

At least that was a start.

"This weekend," He began, slowly, because he still wasn't entirely sure about this. Was it too soon? Would it be too much for him? But God knew he could use the help-- "I'd like for us to go meet some people together. Just the two of us. I've been speaking with some folks who'd like to talk to you," he explained. Donnie stared him down, and Yoshi internally scrambled a bit, because he always struggled a bit with Donnie. He was five, but he was so goddamn smart, he was never completely sure how much he should or should not try to explain things at times like these...

"They're doctors." He continued. "But different from Dr. Davis. I promise no shots or touching. Just talking. Can we do that?"

Eventually, Donatello nodded, and Yoshi's shoulders sagged slightly with relief.

"Okay." He said. "Are your eyebrows done?" A nod. "Can I put you back down?" Another nod, and Yoshi set Donatello back down on the floor, who went to go fetch his backpack and wrestle it onto his back.

"Boys! Come on. Put those away, it's time to go." He said, turning to begin to round up his other sons.

"Already!?" Mikey cried.

"But we didn't get anything!" Leo protested.

"I've already got--"

"How come Donnie gets something and not us?!"

"No fair!"

"I want something too!"

"Dad! I want a pencil too!"

Oh for God's sake. Yoshi sighed deeply, tilting his head back, staring up at the ceiling for several moments, questioning the course of his life.

"Fine. You may each get one item from this aisle. You have five minutes. Go. And if there is any fighting, you will not get anything ." He warned, and the three remaining children squealed, racing down the make-up aisle to pick out their prizes.

They were definitely going to be late to school this morning.

---

Nowadays, with years of speech therapy and social skills group and therapy behind him, Donnie found talking to be easy. Non-verbal episodes were relatively infrequent and short-lived, and even then, he and his family could always sign with each other instead. Even if he was still verbal, he and his brothers still signed often.

Whenever words were difficult, it was just easier to sign instead.

Donnie had opened his mouth and closed it about five times now, considering what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it in between packing up his bag, having already changed out of his Gi and back into street clothes. Eventually, he just decided to use his hands.

'Is something going on with Dad?'

Mikey paused, looking up from his own duffle bag, tilting his head to the side slightly.

"What? Why?"

'Didn't he seem weird to you today?'

"Well..."

"He's kinda got a point." Leo hummed from the nearby locker room bench, lacing up his sneakers. "He's been out of it all weekend."

'Ever since Mikey lit his room on fire.' Donnie corrected, and Mikey bristled in defense.

"I told you I didn't set my room--!"

"Hey." Raph interrupted, frowning a bit, before he slipped into ASL as well, his bag already packed and his hands free. ' Maybe it just spooked him. You know how he worries.'

'Not like this.' Donnie protested, wrinkling up his nose a bit. ' Every time I looked at him the entire tournament, he was just staring off into nothing. He's never like that unless re-runs of Baywatch are on.'

"Maybe he's tired," Leo suggested. "I don't think he's really been sleeping that much. Have you seen the bags under his eyes? Plus, I caught him up in the living room the other night going through some papers or whatever at, like... three in the morning."

"And what were you doing up at three in the morning?" Mikey asked dryly, not looking up from the zipper he was trying to muscle shut.

"Hey. Look. This isn't about me. This is about Dad." Leo said quickly, getting to his feet and slinging his duffle over his shoulder, beginning to sign once he had the hands to do so. No point in risking anyone overhearing them when they didn't have to... plus, he knew Donnie liked when they all signed instead of mismatching. 'But what are we supposed to do anyway? Confront him? You know he won't talk to us about it. He's, like, the king of weird spooky secrets.'

Donnie frowned a bit, shrugging. He was loathe to admit it, but Leo did have a point. Their Dad hated to talk about himself or his past outside of trivia about his acting career. Donnie had tried to ask him about their extended family once, and he had just totally shut down. He wouldn't even tell them what his parents' names were. And the four of them had always tried to respect that. I mean... they knew it was all really complicated. I mean, jesus, he had basically been kidnapped and presumed dead for, like, twelve years. That had to be traumatic, right?

Most of what Donnie knew, factually, about their move to New York, he had gotten from old magazine articles and talk show segments that he found online later in life. He knew what all the reports and stuff said, sure, about the abusive ex, (their mom, he thought dimly in the back of his mind, whose face he couldn't even remember,) the going into hiding, the forced isolation. But none of them had ever talked about it. He had been really little back then, so he couldn't really remember very much. His memories were more just general feelings or ideas rather than any actual events. He remembered playing pretend games with his brothers more than anything else. He used to think that that was odd, because he had never been much of a 'pretend' kid as compared to his siblings growing up, but his therapist noted that it was common for small children to use fantasy or make-believe to 'escape' from bad situations or explain away trauma. So he supposed maybe that was it.

He remembered it being dark most of the time. And he remembered his feet being cold a lot. There was this sound that he heard in his head a lot when he thought of it, but he had no idea what it was. Shhhh shhhhh.

But that was about it. He and his brothers, in turn, didn't really talk about it amongst each other either, or with other people. It just felt... weird. Or wrong, somehow, he supposed? Whatever.

'Maybe he's just having a bad week or something,' Raph shrugged. 'Or it's just one of his things. I know you wanna help, but maybe we should just mind our business. Let him work it out.'

'We could just ask.' Mikey's hands were free now, too. 'We're his family! I'm sure he'd at least appreciate knowing we care! Even if he doesn't wanna talk about it.'

Leo wrinkled his nose a bit. 'Okay, fine. How about this? If he's still being weird by the time we get back from the swim meet on Wednesday, then we'll ask,' he suggested, a hand on his hip.

'Sounds like a plan.' Raph confirmed, nodding a bit. 'Until then, everyone better be on their best behavior! The last thing we need is to stress Pops out even more! No skipping classes. No fights. No explosions or fire of any kind. '

Donnie wasn't going to lie, there was something kind of satisfying about sharing Raph's pointed look with Mikey. His littlest brother was absolutely scowling, glaring at his oldest brother's back as they filed out of the locker room to go find their dad, weaving past the crowds of other competitors and parents as they went.

At some point, Leo fell into step beside him. His twin brother tilted his head at him slightly, one brow raised.

'You good?'

Donnie nodded a little, conjuring up his voice again to reassure the other.

"I'm fine. Not nonverbal. Just worried about Dad." He explained shortly, and Leo's stance relaxed slightly.

"Okay, cool. Just checking, Hermano." He hummed. "... I mean, I was a little worried that my incredibly awesome ninjocity today was so brilliant and amazing that you were just too shocked to speak, or something. Did you notice, by the way? That I took first place in the lightweight category? What place did you take again? Just wondering."

Donnie rolled his eyes, looking down his nose at the other and pursing his lips. "Right. Also, unrelated, which one of us was victorious at that gymnastics meet on Friday? I'm having a bit of difficulty recalling, dear brother, perhaps you could help jog my memory..."

"Psh! Please, that's in the past , Donnie. You've gotta live in the now . And right now, I won, and you lost, and everyone should appreciate how amazing I did, and also the fact that I totally kicked your ass! God , tournaments are the best. It’s the only place where I’m legally allowed to kick you in the head."

“And what about the rest of the time? When you kick me in the head anyway?”

“Be gay do crime, Donnie,” Leo said with a shrug. “Also, it’s usually revenge for you kicking me in the head.”

“Fair enough.”

---

With how much Donatello had fidgeted with them at first, Yoshi had been a bit afraid that he wouldn’t be willing to wear the headphones, or that they’d do more damage than they helped… but he seemed to have finally adjusted, his arms hanging limply at his side.

And Yoshi was starting to think that the people at the Counseling and Testing Center were on to something. Because his son wasn’t flinching or fidgeting, wasn’t pulling at his ears or whining or scrunching up his face.

This was the calmest he had seen him in weeks.

Thank god.

A part of him was thinking, how in the world had he never thought of this before? But most of him was just relieved to see his child without any discomfort or pain. Waving to him slightly to get his attention, he offered his hand to Donnie, and they took it immediately, clinging on fast to their dad’s fingers.

“Ready?” He questioned, making sure he was loud enough that Donatello could hear him through the noise-canceling headphones.

Donnie nodded firmly, and so off they went.

Yoshi felt a bit bad for taking Donatello out on his own for the second weekend in a row, leaving his other sons behind with a babysitter, but quite frankly, he felt like the purple one deserved it. He would simply have to arrange one-on-one time for the others later to make up for it. Today was for Donnie.

If he was ever going to adjust, he needed to have things to love about the city. Proper things.

Every step of their journey out of the apartment, Yoshi was impressed over and over with his child. With his headphones on and his dad’s hand held tight, he faced the city streets, the traffic, and the crowds alike bravely. When they made their way down to the subway, he stayed close to his father the entire time, not wandering off or straying. On the train, he sat quietly with his book in his lap, flapping his hands as he read. And when a woman with, quite frankly, far too much perfume boarded the subway, he pulled on his dad’s sleeves until he understood so they could move to a different train car.

The whole way to Manhattan, Yoshi was proud.

They eventually approached their destination, and honestly, it took a bit longer than he had expected it to because Donnie kept wanting to stop and examine things. He stopped to investigate the relief out front of the lions, and the sculpture of Theodore Roosevelt and his horse. He was fascinated by the many tiers of stairs leading up to the building, as well as the four massive columns framing the main entrance. He dragged his feet through the line for tickets, rubbing his hands up and down the velvet ropes, a tiny smile on his face the entire time as he explored the texture with his fingertips.

But it was fine. The day was for him, and it was nice to get to see him enjoy everything properly now that he wasn’t quite so overwhelmed. And it was worth the wait, because when he finally managed to herd Donatello to his end goal, he was rewarded with the most overjoyed, elated squeal he had ever heard out of his child as he took in the glory of the American Museum of Natural History’s space exhibit.

Yoshi chuckled softly, hurrying his pace a bit to keep up with them as they darted forward to the nearest model and plaque to begin reading.

“Dad!” He shrieked excitedly, turning around just long enough to make sure his father was still behind him, pointing excitedly up at the diagram in front of him, scaled replicas of their galaxy’s planets hanging overhead. Donatello kept looking up, and then back down, and then up again, and back down, like he was too thrilled to decide what he wanted to look at first.

‘Universe. Galaxies. Stars. Planets.’ the diagram read.

“Yes, I know. Do you like it?”

Donnie nodded so hard, his headphones nearly fell off.

“I was hoping you would.”

‘The observable universe contains as many as 100 billion galaxies and extends billions of light years in every direction.’

“I had a feeling you would enjoy museums.” Yoshi continued, squatting down so he could be on the same level as the five-year-old. “And we have all day to explore the entire place if you’d like. It’s quite big.”

Donnie’s eyes widened a bit, as though it had just sunk in that there was more still to see.

“Don’t worry, my son. We can come back as many times as you’d like.” Yoshi assured. “And when we’re finished with this one, there are lots of others. Libraries, too. All sorts of things I think you’ll like. And we have plenty of time to see all of them.”

‘What is the Universe? The universe is all the matter, energy, and space that exists. We can observe only a part of it— the observable universe. The entire universe, including the part we cannot see, may be infinite.’

[ next chapter ]

#sorrywhatnowaufic #sorrywhatnowau #sorrywhatnowfic #tmnt #rottmnt #tmnt human au #fidgetwing #rise donnie #rottmnt donnie

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hpowellsmith · 1 year

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Do you think a degree is a good place to start to get into the narrative designer scene? I don't have any sort of degrees and whenever I look at job postings it kind of intimidates me.

You don't necessarily need a game design degree. There isn't a single route into getting a narrative design job and most of the narrative people I've worked with have academic experience in other areas. Classics, publishing, linguistics, screenwriting (and other kinds of writing), film, literature, teaching, computer science, biomedical science, history, and philosophy are all things that come to mind off the top of my head. I personally have an English Literature bachelor's degree and a postgrad teaching certificate.

I do know a few narrative people with game design degrees and they speak highly of that experience - but it isn't essential and there's some ambivalence in the field of games about how much value you get from it. It would really depend on where you were attending and who was teaching it, and so on. Do research the lecturers and their industry experience before signing up to anything!

A lot of narrative jobs will require some sort of degree. Not all! But many will explicitly. Then, more trickily, there's the implicitness of it all: it's rare that I've encountered a narrative person at a studio who doesn't have a degree, and among many other things that's a marker of the lack of class diversity in the field.

That said: a degree is unlikely to directly help you get a narrative job unless it's very specific (eg you're an expert in the Franklin expedition, and the game is about trying to rescue the ships). It will more give you transferable skills. My PGCE helped me learn to deliver presentations and pitches. My English degree helped me discuss art. My PGCE taught me about being rigorous about developing skills and assessing where I'm at and taking feedback. My English degree pushed me to read widely. But none of that fed directly into getting a job in games - when I graduated from my undergrad degree I didn't know how games jobs worked anyway and neither did my career advisors.

Whether or not you have a degree, you need to have examples of your skills and how you've applied them to your work. If you've had jobs in other areas, you can refer to that - you're great at spotting data entry errors? fantastic. you can meditate an argument between a group of crying five year olds? great. And most of all you need completed examples of your writing and your games work for your portfolio. It doesn't have to be massive ambitious projects, but you need to prove that you know how games fit together, what makes them feel good or not good to play, and can apply it to your own work.

Make interactive fiction. Make a small game, or a bigger game, in bitsy. Join a game jam and work with other people on something - that will give you something to talk about in interviews, and teach you about working with other people on a creative project. Finish things! Not only will that give you more to discuss, it will also mean that you have a better sense of the bigger picture of interactive storytelling. I got my first studio job off the back of years of short hobby IF and a completed CoG game; I brought skills from my studies but I wouldn't have got a foot in the door without those projects to show that I could write well, understood narrative design, and could finish games.

Some unsolicited advice:

Be cautious about expensive game writing courses. They can be valuable for networking and pushing your to be rigorous about your work, or they can be a money sink. Remember that in 99% of "dream studios" there will be people working there for whom it's a nightmare. Don't put people on pedestals and remember that studio games are a team effort - but also respect and celebrate your own contributions. Don't dunk on games in public: I've seen a lot of people do that and then turn around and ask for a job from the people they were dunking on. It doesn't make people inclined to say yes. Don't neglect your peers in favour of trying to get in with a crowd that's already established; but if trusted people offer mentorship (such as Limit Break in the UK) go for it. When you are one of those established people, don't pull up the ladder behind you.

Here is a doc of resources from Raymond Vermeulen and another from Adanna aka AFNarratives. Also there are a ton of free talks available from AdventureX, Narrascope, Writer's Guild of Great Britain, and the GDC Vault about narrative which are both interesting and useful.

None of this is any guarantee of anything, there are a lot of people competing for not many jobs and if you find someone selling One Weird Trick to get into the field of narrative design, avoid them. I've seen talented people with a lot of experience struggling to find another contract after one has ended. So I don't want to act like I have it all figured out - but I hope it's helpful.

#indie games #game writing #narrative design #game industry

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thisislittlerunaway · 1 month

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My take on Nic and word play:

Given that Nic has praised her fans on being great detectives I think it is quite likely that she chooses what she posts on SM wisely with different layers of message for the GA, casual fans and hardcore fans to interpret.

It is obvious she has posted cryptic messages before, the Ratatouille being one of them - to this day no one seemed to have offered a convincing enough interpretation of this very random post.

Furthermore, Nic also has a passion for words and the English language (don’t forget her university degree), and we have seen how exceptionally eloquent she is during interviews. Her choice of words are well considered, requiring lots of thoughts and showing great awareness of what’s going on around her.

Finally Nic is known to be chronically online and she keeps up with all the latest trends and gossip on the internet, including what her fans are talking about.

With these in mind, one definitely should not overlook her SM posts and just read them for what they are, especially when there have so much dramas going on lately (papgates, HBS, L’s PR disaster and the hatred he faces).

So let’s have a look at her recent insta posts in the past couple of days and try to add some layers of meaning to them, perhaps we might be on to something? 😉

First, while we know that Nic was advocating for a good movement by reposting this in her story, could this at the same time be a plea for fans to stop the hatred towards Luke?

Then there’s the Wordle post which showed Nic is clearly proud of her achievement (she should be - that’s impressive), but has anyone looked up all the meanings of the word ‘anvil’? There’s one that sounds… really interesting:

‘You can refer to a difficult experience that changes someone or leads to something good as a particular type of anvil.’

Is it Nic’s way of assuring fans that this difficult period will lead to something good eventually? One can even interpret this further as Nic sympathising with Lukola fans who are starving in the restaurant, and promising them they will get well fed soon once S4 filming starts.

Following her Wordle post Nic posted a photo of her playing Scrabble at the pub with some Guiness coasters on the table. As any Lukola fans and they would know Guiness is Luke’s favourite drinks Is she suggesting that she is with Luke? Or is she subtly hinting that Luke is in her mind? To be fair, just the idea of entertaining these possibilities in our head is enough to lift our spirit. Maybe Nic knows the impact the post can have on us and deliberately staged her photo a certain way to keep us happy, how kind! 😉.

The words seen on the Scrabble board are also interesting. Maybe they mean something (lots of drama-triggering words: fate, dead, lied, dirt) but I try to not overthink this because with Scrabble you play what you pick so can only make certain words each round.

Finally, Nic made a rare grid post earlier today to celebrate her best friend Camilla’s birthday. This immediately made me think about Luke’s first pap walk. While L seemed to be ignoring A, refusing to hold her hand and running away when the paps appeared, Nic praised her best friend on covering her face and protect her from the paps. It seems she’s trying to tell Luke: ‘see THIS is how you treat your loved one during a pap encounter’ 🤣. Another way of looking at this post is Nic trying to tell us Luke isn’t serious with his alleged gf. Otherwise he would have protected her from the paps like Camilla did to her. So Lukola can just chill now and don’t have to worry about a L&A end game.

#lukola #nicola coughlan #just speculation #take it with a grain of salt

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dubericlub · 19 days

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Day 1/100 of productivity.

I am on my way preparing for my IELTS.

I am so sorry if I didn't use good grammar or something missing with this post :) So, the fact is, I wrote this post for myself. I don’t have any expectation that people will read this post but there’s always a possibility to find it - I am sure about this.

This is the first time for me to write a post on tumblr because I usually just read someone’s post. So I find that I need some challenge because after I got my score in TOEFL ITP, I never have any excitement to study again. Even though my score is not really good :) At that time, I wanted to apply for a scholarship for my master degree in Indonesia. That’s why I took the TOEFL test for the requirement. Then my parents and also my lecturer really pushed me to apply for my master degree abroad. I felt so confused after my parents said that. I didn’t know how to start because I knew that I don’t have good capability in English, especially speaking. But in the depth of my heart, studying abroad is always my dream. I still remember when I was in junior high school, I loved to collect information about “Living in the Netherlands, How to get your scholarship, etc”. Also I loved to read someone’s story when they were struggling to get a scholarship before they really got it. I want to study in the Netherlands, and I already have a specific university that I want to go to. I know this journey isn’t easy and never going easy. I know that I will face a lot of hurdles. I know that I will feel confused, want to give up. But I will remind myself as much as I want to give up, if I am not taking any action, if I am not ready with these challenges, if I am not tough, if not not study hard, I never have any possibility to level up my life, my family, my parents. We have been living in unstable financial conditions for a long time. So I want to be the person who takes care of them. I don’t care about the perceptions from people who suggest that I shouldn’t have to take my family’s burden or the one who said that I don’t have to take responsibility for my parent’s life because I WILL.

#study blog #study aesthetic #academia #light academia #dark academia #study motivation #studyspo

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soracities · 1 year

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hi mim, i'm sorry if this comes across as rambling, but i wanted to ask you, how do you choose what to study/pursue when you don't know what you want? i recently moved to a new country with my family and i've taken a gap year to prep for an entrance exam back home, but i don't know whether i want to continue in the new country or go back to my home country, whether i should study x or y degree, i just feel torn both ways. and what makes it worse is that,secretly, i would love to study english lit or anything to do with languages, but my parents would never allow it unless it's a last resort. i just feel like i'm betraying myself no matter what i choose in the end. would really appreciate any advice on what the heck to do <3

Oh anon, this is such a tricky situation to be in and I can absolutely understand all the doubt, worry, and confusion you're going through. I grew up with a lot of friends in variously similar situations and it's never as simple as just telling you to "follow your heart" or "do what you want" because all the various considerations that you have to make and bear look different for everyone, and they cannot always be so easily dismissed or ignored.

I think one thing that might help in this is to focus less on what you want as a career, and maybe spend some time trying to figure out where your values lie and what kind of life you envision within those values--take the subjects that you enjoy most, for example: what exactly is it about those subjects that excite you? Do you value a host of different and new experiences, or do you prefer to deepen the experiences you've already had? If you enjoy working with or being around people, what capacity does that enjoyment reach its full potential for you? Is it in receiving new knowledge from others or being able to share new knowledge with others? Is it in providing aid, information, or comfort to people? Is it in working out a particular problem? How important is financial stability to you, and what are you willing to sacrifice or not sacrifice for that stability? What are the broadest possible options within that category? Do you want a stable 9 to 5 where it's easy for you to plan things out because you have a reliable routine? If not, why not? What does "stability" mean for you in the first place?

Some of these are all fairly vague questions, I'm aware, but I think it helps far more sometimes to isolate these things, rather than look at them in terms of what career you do or don't want, because focusing on "doctor" or "architect" or "teacher" or "accountant" disguises the day-to-day reality of what those jobs contain, and this reality is what will tally far more with the things you actually value. For example, my favourite subjects in school were languages, English, history and the sciences: my top two choices were biology and literature, but if I were to go to university now, I absolutely would not study English literature at all. I love it deeply, but what I love about it is not something that I can only get from a degree. What I value about literature is not necessarily something that would align with studying it as a degree. On the other hand, mathematics has always been something I had a very fraught relationship with; i also don't like the idea of being boxed in by expectations (my reading and watching habits are testament to that)--however: I'm not opposed to studying accountancy despite it being something most people don't associate with me at all. And I'm not opposed to it because the things accountancy involves--a fixed work week (which also means fixed free time), a particular set of problems requiring a particular set of tools (I enjoy that kind of focus)--are things I can see myself doing provided it's in the name of something important to me. Does this make sense?

I also want to add that whatever degree you choose, whatever job you settle on, is not a life sentence: just because you choose engineering or data science doesn't mean you will be an engineer or a data scientist for the rest of your life. You can, at any point in your life, at literally any age, change course or pursue something new or something radically different. You don't come with an expiration or a use by date--as long as you are still here, the world will still be here and the opportunities you find within it along the way are endlessly broad and full of surprises. It's a conversation that's cropped up quite a few times on this blog so I have an entire tag for it here, which I hope will go some way in giving you some hope, anon (and if it helps, I never went to university, but here I am losing my mind over literature on the regular and subjecting you all to it, too 💗).

As for the issue of what you want to study and where--I don't know how immense the pressure is from your parents, or how open they are to compromise, or exactly what their own reasoning for their stance is (I'm not saying that it's fair, only that it may help to know what "education" and a degree mean and symbolise for them, and if, once you know that, there's wiggle room available for you), I also don't know what your financial situation is or how much freedom you have in that regard and these are all things only you know. I will say though that it's important for you to make a list of concrete differences, pros and cons, and considerations between studying in your home country and studying where you are: what will accomodation look like for you? what universities are in your options and what do you value in those universities? what are the financial constraints between the two countries, if there are any? Are you able to mix programs between faculties so that you can do a major / minor degree? one that will allow you to compromise between what your parents expect and allow you to pursue a subject important to you?

I think the last one is something I would advise you to try and look at in line with all the questions from above (and you can absolutely add in more questions of your own for yourself). I don't know if your parents are set on a few, very specific courses by focusing on specific careers (i.e., the usual Big Three of Medicine, Engineering, Law), or if they are a bit more open and just looking at degrees themselves (which would be broader, if not by much). If it's the latter I think it is absolutely worth seeing if there is something that can align with the values most important with you and somewhat placate your parents also--just as an example, if they insist on something technical and scientific, there are a range of options in linguistics which also open up the pathway to languages for you: additionally, languages and multilingualism is something important and if it's something that helps broaden your prospects for employment (I hate talking in those terms, but you know what I mean) it might be worth bringing up, especially if you can tie it in or find a course that allows you to bridge the gap, even somehow, between your own interests and your parents' expectations.

Again, I'm sorry that you're in such a difficult position, anon, and I'm sorry too that I can't offer more to you. I really do hope, though, that some of this has been useful to you, even in just a small way. Sending you all my support and best wishes. Regardless of what you decide, please don't ever think that you are done for after decision. The world is so much bigger and so much broader than you can even imagine right now, I promise 💗

#ask #anonymous #the road is long and we have time

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