#take my online writing class

[onlineexamhelpers-tutor]

[choking-on-roses]

My goal was to grade 10 papers today. I really really reeeeaaaallyyyyy didn't want to and had to fight tooth and nail through the executive dysfunction. I clawed my way through at a pace of one essay per hour. I hated it, but I did it!

It's not even the fact that I reached my goal that made me happy (it was arbitrary). It's the fact that I'm even capable of getting through difficult things I don't want to do at all. I have been working on my self-discipline and focus for years and I'm very proud of myself for how far I've come.

[brittlebutch]

finally found a place to read With the Light online and i'm thrilled; if you haven't read this manga i do Legitimately recommend it

[roguemonsterfucker]

Sorry to talk about it again but I'm just still flabbergasted by the whole plagiarism thing

Like... When watching hbomb's video the first time and seeing him point out the rewording of stuff to change it *just* enough to (hopefully) not get caught stealing... I flashed back to my college days of when I did exactly that. 😅

There was a limit on how many actual quotes I could use, so I got around that by literally looking at my sources and rewording it enough to get past the plagiarism checker (TurnItIn.com my belothed) without losing the meaning of the text that I honestly didn't fully understand because I was writing on topics I had no real knowledge of myself.

BUT BUT BUT

I still cited my fucking sources.

Yes, I was using other people's words so I could get through the hell that was college, but if you read my stuff, you'd know exactly where I got it from. I never claimed credit for all the ideas.

And... again... I was just doing it to survive. I wasn't making money. I didn't even end up actually graduating, so it didn't even help me academically.

Somerton on the other hand not only rarely *if ever* credited the people whose words he stole, he was doing it for money, while also putting down fellow queer creators. He *wanted* full credit for all the ideas in his videos. To cite his sources would be to pass the credit on to others. And he couldn't do that.

Edited to add: It's probably a bit extreme to say I "stole" anything for my papers. Like I said, I cited my sources. I just paraphrased what I could when needed, probably to a degree that was questionable at worst. I just have anxiety and feel like "OH NO I"M A TERRIBLE PLAGIARIST."

[willowgast]

in news from grad life, my supervisor asked me about phd plans today and upon hearing i want to take a few years to do various non-academic things before i start one, immediately produced an application form for a scholarship to study abroad in iceland for a year? like this was not remotely on the radar of what i was planning for next year but tbf i hadn't actually planned that much, and i was initially looking at a master's programme in iceland before i settled on the one i've actually ended up on, so... why not! could be living in iceland this time next year! sometimes niche, half-buried teenage dreams do come true!

[pynkhues]

Does this mean we might get your extended thoughts on the reunion scene, if you're doing some longer posts? :)

That's the plan for the weekend, anon!

[nerdyqueerr]

Outsourcing academic decisions to tumblr dot com

Further context for each course:

"Weird Fiction" is an English course that will have me reading and annotating tons of short stories. Reading reviews + syllabus online has led me to believe that the prof is strict as hell and not very generous. However if I do ok on the midterm I get to write a short story instead of a final exam. Online synchronous.

"Religon and the body" is a new religion course which is about. Well. Religion and the body, whether that's death rituals, food purity codes, sexuality, etc. Reviews of the prof seem to say she's flexible but the course has also never been taught before so who knows if the content and evaluation format will work for me. Online asynchronous.

[anik]

my problem is i can’t do work if i think it’s fucking stupid

[beaniebabs]

i don't wanna brag or anything but i finished my first college semester with 3 A's B)

[feeshies]

i still remember that during my senior year in high school, we had a new english teacher (we went through english teachers like acid through rice paper lol) who decided that, since we only had roughly 3 months in a semester, it would make more sense to analyze short stories instead of "covering" full novels. we still read novels, of course. but we spent more time going over short stories and poems written by these authors.

as a result, not only did we get to finish more works during the semester (instead of just reading the "highlights" or reading half of the book and watching a movie adaptation for the rest), but we had more time to give thoughtful analysis of the works we went over.

for my sophomore english class, we read 1984 and until i went back and reread it as an adult, i didn't take away much except for the sex scenes in the movie version our teacher forgot to fast forward past.

but in my senior year class, we read one of george orwell's short stories: the hanging. what resulted as a class-wide discussion that was so lively that we almost missed that lunch had started. not only did being able to finish the story and discuss it properly make it feel more meaningful when i went back and read orwell's longer works, but that very story has worked its way into my own writing. whenever i write about death, i think about the hanging. it's so ingrained in me that when i was processing my own anxieties over getting surgery, specific passages from that story were entering my mind. that wouldn't have happened if my experience with this story was limited to a crunchy pdf and a worksheet telling me to "find the symbols".

in that class, we read more complete works than i ever had in an english class before. we only watched movies if there was an adaptational or thematic point the teacher wanted to make -- not as a stand-in for reading the actual book. sometimes i think about where i would be now as a reader and a writer if i had him for more than one semester. because yeah he was fired lol. apparently one of the reasons was that he wasn't sticking to the curriculum by not assigning more full books. also he was a conspiracy nut but that always seemed to come up second. that's a story for another day.

when his replacement took over, we had to read (parts of) a christmas carol. and one of our assignments was a christmas themed word puzzle. one of the words was "coal". it was like watching dead poets society but backwards.

[stockholmgf]

i made it the whole semester without crying over school and they got me at 3 am two days before it’s over

[lezbianz]

should i take 20.5 credits next semester :3

[lizbotw]

i found a folded schedule and campus map from 2014 in a book at my university’s library today. almost a decade it went untouched. my heart hurts i love life

[jawesomesauce]

[soyeonsbabygirl]

I’m never taking another online class AGAIN.

[asinglesock]

had a stress dream that I'd been enrolled in a fifth class this semester and not known about it and that I was failing because of never attending class or turning in assignments