#from the po box

[notesbyash]

Hello, there. I don’t know if you answer asks like this, but, please, feel free to ignore it if you don’t. So, I was wondering if you had any tips on how to study efficiently? I keep seeing people (myself included) getting long hours of studying and I just feel it’s not healthy in the long term. What are your thoughts on this matter, though? Would you mind sharing?

Hello anon - I do my best to answer asks, I'm just slow in getting around to them most of time~

Have been turning that question around in my head myself actually, the idea of studying more efficiently. A while back I made this post of practical things that helped me out in undergrad. I think they still hold true, but it also speaks to where I was in that point in life, spinning my wheels and constantly behind deadlines. Not that I'm not still now, but I'm doing my best to stay ahead (though I also have the luxury of fewer classes and some understanding advisors).

I think the things I struggle with the most, and frankly always have, are motivation and balance. At the end of the day, persistence and resolve are more important than personal motivation when it comes to studying; I have a routine and a set place to study, and remain relatively strict with myself about not allowing anything but work when I'm there. But I find that without at least some kind of positive motivation it becomes incredibly difficult to avoid burnout. It seems easier to find that motivation in graduate school; you're allowed to specialize and dive into your interests much more than in undergrad just by virtue of the way it's structured. However, with my program specifically, I'm still forced to take courses that have seemingly no relevance with what I actually want to be doing.

What has helped me maintain some motivation through them has, strangely enough, been customization. Ways to connect with myself and things I love despite having to study topics that I may find tiring to parse. I've personally always had a fascination with 60s era technical reports and documentation, the aesthetic collision of analogue devices and early computers - the world built in Remedy's 2019 video game Control fit me perfectly and has been incredibly influential in my life. I've developed a filing and notation system that replicates the lore collectibles in game; I format my class notes and homeworks as internal memos written to document and summarize technical discoveries, turn my projects into experimental reports. Little things, simple changes, that bring me a little more joy when trudging through confusing material.

This rolls into my next point: balance. The moment I lose myself to just the work is the moment the burnout begins. I'm the type of person to live and breathe what I do in some senses, but instead of letting my interests consume me I've sought to infuse myself into my interests. To cultivate joy in tedium. I've found it important to hold onto yourself outside of academics, to indulge in personal interests even if it feels like a waste of time in the moment. To make those indulgences regular, noting that regularity and frequency aren't always the same thing. A morning cup of tea, a favorite writing pen, a bit of time on a weekend spent watching a show or visiting a local park. Something where you can breathe and truly let yourself rest.

And then, as ever, remember your goal, strengthen your resolve, and move forward from a place of hope and personal fulfillment as best you can.

It's not easy, it really isn't, but I believe in you. Be kind to yourself anon, and don't undercut your own achievements - the little things matter, perhaps the most of all.

[sqwdkllr]

I actually love the federation pov and inside thoughts of the npcs because it gives us a better idea on how truly horrible they are and have a cult mentality. AND it gives more dimension to the villains rather than “federation guys bad”

[livegastrodonreaction]

This has probably been said before, but the parallel of Suletta reaching out to a battered and hurt Miorine in both this scene and in Planet Quetta, complete with the exact same small, polite little smile, is just. screams in agony

In planet Quetta, Suletta's hands were bloody. She didn't understand what she just did. She still loved Miorine, but she loved blindly, too caught up in Prospera's plans. And this made her love dangerous and uncanny for everyone around her. Yes, she extended her hand, but it was as if Prospera were extending that hand and not her.

Here, Suletta extends her hand from a place of understanding. She finally understands the motives of her mother and Miorine, and she's ready to re-forge her bonds with Miorine without them being bound to Prospera's plans. She loves, but doesn't love blindly, and with her newfoud wisdom she can use her incredible amounts of love for everybody around her to protect them. She extended her hand and took a step forward on her own.

This show makes me want to shove every knife in my knife drawer down my fucking throat. AUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHH

[ceo-of-jawdrop]

Originally I was going to draw a scene from INWCT and I tried but unfortunately it didn't go as I planned :(

So I scrapped the idea for now and decided to draw Alt!Cesar instead!

[your-fave-isdoomedbythenarrative]

Ted from I have no mouth and I must scream is the most doomed-by-the-narrative character ever.

Ted from I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is doomed by the narrative and trying to escape.

[moominpopzz]

Just spent like 2 hours sorting beads god I love autism

[questionablealibi]

Hi hello! Apologies for the lack of posting - I've been in a stump recently because I've been brainstorming ideas on how the HELL to build around my Stanley and Narrator and their individual backgrounds and how their parable came to be because i've been wsnting to build them into something cool but i've BURNT myself out in the process and now i cant even pump out a single DOODLE

All you lot are probably only gonna get some sona doodles for the time being- i cant bring myself to screw around with elias and o'neil yet my brain is RHEGHD mussed right now :')

I might make a few exception on occasion though ^^; cant ignore them for too long ive grown to love them

[starthelostboys]

i think that even after she becomes a vampire and starts living in a cave, star inexplicably still has several subscriptions to various fashion magazines that she gets her hands on every month

[mike-wheeler-faggotry]

no bc the more i think about it the confession was Not the thing that mike was planning to explain to el, because it directly contradicts the conversation with will on top of the car. like “sometimes it’s scary to open up to people like that. to say how you really feel. especially to the people you care about the most… because what if they don’t like the truth?" yes, will is projecting his own experience here, but it’s equally important to note that mike agrees. and it’s not just casual agreement—they use a close-up shot of his face here, emphasizing that he’s truly and wholly identifying with will’s words here. this shot in particular purposefully reveals to the viewer that conflicted expression and that blink-and-you-miss-it nod… 

so that brings into question, what is mike afraid to tell el? what is his "truth" that el might not like? 

and there’s where the faux confession comes in. that monologue wasn’t a truth that el might not like. in fact, it was just the opposite. it was a lie that mike thought el would want to hear. it was a lie that mike thought would save el… and consequently save the person who could save max, hawkins, his family, his friends, the world. and it was a lie that he told because he was falsely under the impression that el needed him in that moment and would always need him in every moment after that. no pressure, right?

…it’s almost shakespearean to see will’s lie to mike result in mike’s lie to el. it’s a classic case of dramatic irony: the audience is privy to the knowledge of will’s self-sacrificial lie to mike, and all the while mike himself is entirely unaware. and now we’re seeing that lie beget more lies, more misunderstandings, and more drama where nobody in the love triangle is happy. and in proper shakespearean fashion, it’s only a matter of time that these lies get exposed.

(on another, tangential note—i found this interpretation of this scene very intriguing and quite plausible. i mean, why would the writers interrupt a low-pressure scene where mike was going to talk it out with el, if they were just going to let him say the same exact thing a few minutes later but in a life or death situation? if mike had even just confessed when they were sitting one-on-one at the table together, it would come across as much more genuine. but he didn’t, and i actually doubt that it was his intention to confess his love in that scene at all. what he was going to explain to her changed both because of what will told him and because of the severity of the situation they were in. if mike sees it as a choice between telling a scary truth and still having the world end, or telling a comfortable lie and saving the world because of it… i can see why he chose to lie.)

I don't have anything else to add, I agree wholeheartedly.

[silverangelbox]

Thank u dad for making me go on walks at the age of 10 to lecture me about how no man will ever marry me if I’m fat. Thank you uncle for picking on my weight when I was 5’3” and 110 until I got myself down to 90

[notesbyash]

Congrats on getting into your dream phd program!!! Would you mind sharing a little bit about what you mean by cold emailiing working? I'm going to have to start applying to phd programs next year and I'm feeling nervous about it and would love to hear how you did it. Thank you!!!

So. (this is a long rambly post, beware)

PhD applications and programs are unique from undergraduate applications (and most Masters programs) in that it's more of an apprenticeship application than anything. There are certain programs where you're admitted to the program as a whole but in my experience these are relatively rare.

The way that I conceptualized PhD applications, and the way that I was suggested to conceptualize them by my mentors, was to approach it as applying to work with a particular faculty member/lab. From an institutional perspective, think of it as a hiring process. Faculty members write grants to get money to fund some project, then the pick from a pool of PhD applications to find someone that they think will best fit the bill and be able to produce research. This is why it's helpful to not only have a solid GPA (something I didn't have) but also to have prior research experience and publications under your belt (I have research experience but no publications which. f). You're trying to boost the case that if you're handed money, you will be able to make "good use" of it.

So in review - faculty are looking for someone who has an academic or industry background that matches their research intent, has the qualifications to be trusted with a long-term project and displays a level of dedication to not dropping out when the going gets hard. Seems straightfoward enough.

Now comes the networking. See, research lab websites are notorious for not being updated. Faculty profiles are notorious for not being updated. It is incredibly difficult from an outside perspective to even know if a faculty member has the funds or space in their lab to take on a new student. If you've applied to a program but there's no faculty member who has the funds or availability to take you on, you're out of luck before you're even measured against the other candidates.

The fastest way to save time (and money because jfc these apps aren't cheap) is to straight up cold email the faculty member or lab you want to work with and ask if they're taking students. Include a little bit about yourself, your background and why you're emailing them. Talk about how your interest matches theirs. Reference a paper or two they wrote recently. Not everyone cold emails faculty, so this is a great way to stand out and get them to see you as an individual, not just an application number. From there, you'll get a response. Sometimes the lab/faculty won't have the funds to take on a new student in which case you've saved yourself time and money. Sometimes they do have funds and will want to know more about you or see some work. These conversations don't always have to be long, but it allows you to get an idea of the faculty member, the lab, and/or the program culture. It gets your foot in the door and a chance to see what the next 4+ years of your life might be.

The core of this is that when you apply to a PhD program, you apply to do research. You should be going into a PhD program with, basically, an idea of what you want to do with your life (academically speaking) and how you want to contribute to the field (I was asked point blank what I wanted my contribution to the field of aerospace to be when I died at the end of my career). You find a faculty member or lab that you want to work with because that allows you to fulfill your own dream research, because the work that they are doing is work that you want to contribute to and that you believe in.

Cold emailing faculty members allows you a chance to directly communicate with the people you want to work with and tell them that this is where you really want to be, that you have a clear goal and that you're dedicated to your craft.

(And it means that sometimes, you happen to be exactly the person they are looking for.)

[da-birb-writes-sometimes]

As a note, spam reblogs are A-OKAY!

[grimgummies]

Y'ALL I'm havin a huge nerd moment because I found a video which I had assumed was lost to time

I dunno who decided to archive the page for the exact Youtube search query 'Sonic Heroes 2' back in 2019 but I CANNOT THANK THEM ENOUGH because not only did they preserve something that I considered important as a child but the archival of the page on the Wayback Machine allowed me to download that very video for safekeeping

[yoinkschief]

Gosh, I lost my touch to drawing humans.

I haven't drawn humans in a while. I would love doing whiteboard though too

Behold, unfinished Tord's dad. Something looks wrong, I don't like it but he kinda 😳

WHOAG WHAT THE HELL

SLAY

WHAT

I'M GOING INSANE HE'S SO AGHHH????/POS

[frecklystars]

I finally fell asleep after almost 60 hours of not sleeping at all. I had a dream about Nick Blaemire… I miss him dreadfully. But it was a very good dream, and I haven’t had any good dreams in such a long time, I’ll take it

[onlyforalwayswith]

Penguins practice Oct 12, 2023